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Understanding hit me like a rock to the head. Grace hadn’t been requesting an apology. She’d been using twin-speak, begging me to attract Clarence’s attention.
And I’d done so...but only through sheer dumb luck.
It was clear my twin knew that. Clear that she resented my lack of faith in her abilities, my assumption that she’d be unable to strategize while a dagger was tearing away her beauty. Rather than meeting my gaze now, she averted her eyes, staring off into the dripping distance.
Grace wanted me gone. I knew this as surely as I’d known where she was located during the DAR luncheon. But that wasn’t our only problem.
Clarence was strong despite the rope cutting off his oxygen. He reached back, blindly but successfully. His fingers snagging in Grace’s hair...
...And I reacted without thinking. Right knee to his groin while my left hand slammed into his forearm. He folded in on himself with a gasp and a groan and I snatched the ragged pelt off his shoulders before it could splash into the mud.
Lack of pelt deflated Clarence more than my blows had. His eyes squeezed shut; his face scrunched up as if a week of pent-up agony had released in a second.
The rope connecting him to Grace was lax now, but I twitched it aside anyway. No need to give him a weapon. Speaking of which....
I stooped, gathering up Uncle Reason’s dagger with bloody fingers. Looked up at my twin with questions in my eyes.
I wanted to cut her free, but I’d have to touch her to do so. Unfortunately, her face was as stony as the cliff face. Her back might as well have been a razor-wire-topped fence.
The dagger drooped in my hand. It was a relief when our cousins came pouring out from beneath the trees, and not because Grace and I needed backup.
What we needed was an excuse to delay the conversation brewing in the air.
I grabbed at the straw. Turned away from the twin whose face no longer resembled mine in even the most basic fashion. Strode over to Bastion—carried comatose between Luke and Justice—and wrapped our cousin up in his long-absent skin.
***
NOTHING HAPPENED. I held my breath until I could hold it no longer. And still Bastion lay unmoving beneath his ragged pelt.
Meanwhile, out of the corner of my eye, I caught flickers of motion. Slim sawed through the rope binding Grace’s hands then ripped off a sleeve to press against her facial wound. Luke used the same rope’s bitter end to hogtie Clarence. After that, they joined us, hovering around the comatose form of my favorite cousin, five of us waiting for magic to bring Bastion back from wherever he’d gone.
But even though Bastion breathed, there appeared to be no life left in him. His skin was clammy. His face was gray. I could barely see his chest rise and fall.
“This is how he was before...” Justice closed his eyes. “You know.”
I did know. I tried to drape my own fur across Bastion for an additional boost of energy, but the pelts repelled each other like similarly charged magnets. The ragged fur slid sideways, losing contact with Bastion’s body. Mine leapt back to smack me across the face.
Grace’s eyes flashed as she rearranged the moth-bitten pelt across Bastion’s torso. “We don’t need you.” She twitched the pelt again to center it, in the process shouldering me out of the circle of watchers.
Pushed aside, I glanced at Clarence to make sure he wasn’t creeping off to wreak further havoc. To my surprise, the boy lay flat on his back, his face even paler than Bastion’s had been.
I stepped closer. “He’s barely breathing.”
There was an empty spot in my chest where I should have felt pity. Yes, Clarence had killed three innocents. But he was a kid, dying of cancer. He’d been desperate, clutching at straws.
And...the extenuating circumstances meant nothing. Clarence could die right now and I wouldn’t lost any sleep over it.
Luke’s hand on my shoulder was what reminded me of my promise. The implicit one I’d made to the Smythewhites when I accepted their offer of employment. The explicit one I’d made to Luke when we thought Clarence was a young werewolf not yet aware of his lupine abilities.
I cleared my throat. “We have to get Clarence to a hospital.”
Grace spoke without looking. “Why are you still here then?”
“My pelt. It might help you.”
I reached out to hand over the item in question, but my twin failed to mirror the motion. Instead she shrugged. Ignored me as I hesitated then folded the fur atop a rock.
Justice was too deep in concern for Bastion to countermand her. So Luke was the one to assess the Clarence situation by my side. “We’ll be faster if we trade off carrying him.”
Slim nodded, reaching out to wipe incriminating blood off Clarence’s face with the one sleeve he had remaining. “There are clothes for you in my car,” he promised, joining himself to Luke’s plan, and to mine by proxy.
So that’s how we went—a human and a skinless my only backup. The four of us survived an hour of exertion and sorrow. Forest, car, emergency room. The doctor’s question when we were finally admitted was clipped.
“What happened?”
I shook my head. There were no words to explain the horror.
“We went hiking,” Luke interjected. “Clarence has cancer. He fell.”
Such a simple explanation...and they bought it. No one asked about my bare feet, Slim’s one-sleeved shirt, or the too-large clothes that barely covered my blood-stained fingers. All they wanted to know was Clarence’s medical history, contact information for his parents, whether we had a copy of his insurance card.
I found myself laughing hysterically at the final question. “Insurance? There is no insurance. What happens happens.”
I could plan my entire life around regaining my self-name, could dive in to help my twin when she was being mauled by a serial killer, and she’d still resent me. Despite every effort, Bastion would fade until there was nothing left in his pelt to top his vitality up.
Luke’s arms wrapped around me. “Shock,” he explained, guiding me out of the waiting room and into a unisex bathroom. The light stayed off as he clicked the door shut behind us. I didn’t resist as he pulled me close until my head pressed in the hollow beneath his shoulder.
“You’re safe,” he promised, and still I stood with my whole body clenched like a fist that was unable to open. “You were honorable,” he added.
And there, in the cinnamon-scented darkness, I finally fell apart.