She had gone to the house of a woman named Wendy, a librarian who lived near the park.
A woman who was my father’s tether.
Because sometimes, the heart wanted something it should not have.
There was a fight.
Wendy died.
I was drowning.
The eyes of the strange men burned orange.
My father had felt his tether break.
His magic burst. It had made him do a terrible thing.
Later, I would see the footage on the news, even though Abel told me to leave the TV off. Of a neighborhood in a little town in the Cascades leveled to its foundations. People died. Families. Children. My mother.
My father did not.
“Where is he?” I asked numbly.
Abel nodded to one of the strange wolves. He stepped forward. He was tall and moved with grace. His eyes were hard. The very sight of him caused my head to spin. “He will be taken,” the strange man said. “Far away from here. His magic will be stripped so he can’t hurt anyone again.”
“Where?”
The man hesitated. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. It’s for your own safety.”
“But—”
“Thank you, Osmond,” Abel said.
The man—Osmond—nodded and stepped back with the others. Richard leaned over and whispered in his ear.
You can’t trust them, Gordo, she whispered in my ear.
“I will give you time,” Abel told me, not u
nkindly. “To process. To grieve. And I will answer all your questions I can. But we are vulnerable now, Gordo. Your father has taken your mother from you, but he has also taken himself from us. We need you now more than ever. I promise that you’ll never be alone. That you will always be cared for. But I need you now. To accept your place.”
Thomas said, “Dad, maybe we should—”
Abel flashed his eyes. Thomas fell silent. He looked back at me. “Do you understand?”
I felt sick. Nothing made sense. The raven was screaming somewhere in my head.
I said, “No.”
“Gordo,” Abel said. “You must rise. For your pack. For us. I must ask you to become the witch to the wolves.”
MARK HELD me as my grief exploded.
He whispered promises in my ear that I desperately wanted to believe.
But all I could hear was my mother’s voice.
You can’t trust a wolf.