Nightwolf

I step into the house. It’s only been a week and yet I feel like it’s been decades since I was last in here. The smell of the house fills my nose, warm and spicy and comforting—home—and I so expect to see my mother hovering in the background by the kitchen door. Her apron on, her hands clasped in front of her, that proud smile on her face.

But my mother isn’t there.

Her absence stabs me, hard, but I push through in slow motion.

I take the wine from Lenore as Wolf brings my bag up to my room. Odin scampers past him down the stairs.

I drop to my knees as Solon’s dog wiggles over to me. Odin’s a black pit bull, the gentlest, cutest dog you’ve ever seen, and he always makes me feel calm. I jokingly call him my therapy dog and that’s never been truer than in this moment, when stroking his silky fur and being the subject of his kisses makes me feel I’m going to be okay. I feel like I’m leveling out, just a little.

“He’s missed you,” Lenore says, balancing the extra glass on the staircase bannister and pouring me a drink. “We all have. It’s good to see you home, even if just for the night.”

And that’s all I want to give. Just the night. Just a chance to sleep in my own bed and get some rest and have a shower. Yes, a shower will help, with my own shampoo and towels, and a change of clothes.

I take the wine from her and talk with her for a bit, as if she wasn’t with me all day yesterday. She’s been so great, so amazing, having stepped up in every way. Solon too, even Ezra has come by once to make sure I wasn’t alone for too long.

But now I’m here and I just want to feel like a human being again.

The only human in the house.

I push the thought away.

I take the glass upstairs and go straight to my room. Wolf put my bag on the bed and I go to my closet and sigh with relief at the sight of my clean clothes, the sheer variety of them. I grab some—a long tunic sweater, a pair of silk black harem pants—and throw them on the bed, grab fresh underwear and a bralette, then head straight into the bathroom, into the shower, and I stand under the hot water for a long time.

I cry for a long time.

There’s something about the heat, the pouring water that drowns out all sounds, washes away all tears, the feeling of being utterly alone, that makes the tears come when you’re in the shower. This is no exception.

Eventually, when I feel clean enough, I get out.

Put on my comfy clothes and lie back down on my bed.

Just for a moment.

I think about my mom.

Can you hear me? I think. Can you hear me mom? Are you okay?

I keep trying to talk to her in my head, hoping she can hear me. Hoping that in the depths of her coma, wherever she is in that darkness, that she can hear me reach through time and space for her, arms outstretched.

And then things kind of slip away.

I slip into the black.

Into sleep.

I go willingly, hoping I can find my mom there.

Chapter 14

Wolf

I stare up at the ceiling, lost in the structure of the beams. There’s a black spider I’ve been watching trying to spin a web in the corner. Such a painstaking labor, such a work of art. This spider spins and spins, because it has to. It knows it has to in order to eat, in order to feed. It doesn’t know it’s creating art, doesn’t appreciate the symmetry. It just does what it has to do to live.

I used to relate to the spider. Setting the trap. Snatching something unaware, a life, and taking that life, using that life to feed myself. Spinning life up in that web until there’s only death. I was a predator. And, despite all the formalities and ethics and consent of today, I’m still a predator. Because if Dark Eyes didn’t exist, I would have to kill to survive. I would have to cause death in order to live.

And yet now, in these last few days, I don’t feel like the spider anymore. I feel like I’m caught in someone else’s web. I’m caught in Amethyst’s web. And she’s like the spider, having built this elaborate thing, this work of art, that she’s not even aware of.

A trap I’m willingly stepping into. I can’t even help myself.

I’m falling for her. I’m falling for her at a time when I’ve never been so lost. She is the light, she is the moon in the darkness of my soul and I am reaching for her, trying to grab hold.