Ravensong (Green Creek 2)

They don’t love you.

They need you.

They use you.

The magic in you is a lie.

the second year/it was midnight

JOE STARTED speaking less and less as the second year dragged on.

It didn’t matter, though. We all heard his voice in our heads.

WE TOLD ourselves the trail wasn’t gone. That Richard Collins was still out there, moving. Planning. We kept our ears to the ground in case anything came up.

One night outside Ottawa, Carter disappeared for hours. He came back smelling of thick perfume, lipstick on the hinge of his jaw.

Kelly was angry at him, asking him how he could be so selfish. How he could even think of fucking some woman when they were all so far from home.

Joe didn’t say anything. At least out loud.

I lit a cigarette near the ice machine. The smoke curled up around my head in a blue fog.

“You gonna say something too?” Carter asked me after he’d slammed the motel door behind him.

I snorted. “Not my business.”

“Are you sure about that?”

I shrugged.

He leaned against the siding of the motel, eyes closed. “It was something I needed to do.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“You’re an asshole, you know that?”

I blew smoke out my nose. “What do you want me to say? That you’re right and Kelly’s wrong? You’re your own man and can do what you want? Or that Kelly has a point and that you should be thinking with your head and not your dick? Tell me, please. Tell me what you want me to say.”

He opened his eyes. They reminded me so much of his mother’s that I had to look away. “I want you to say something. Jesus Christ. Joe’s barely talking. Kelly is in one of his goddamn moods. And you’re just standing there like you don’t give two shits about any of us.”

All I wanted to do was have a fucking cigarette in silence. That’s all I asked for. “I’m not your father.”

That didn’t sit well with him. A low rumble rolled from his chest. “No. You’re not. He actually cared about us.”

“Well, he’s not here. I am.”

“By choice? Or because you feel guilty?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “And what the fuck would I have to feel guilty about?”

He pushed himself off the wall. “I don’t remember, you know? What happened when the hunters came. I was too little. But my father told me. Because it was my history. He told me what you did. How you tried to save—”

“Don’t,” I said coldly. “Don’t you say another word.”

He shook his head. “It’s my history, Gordo. But it’s yours too. You ran from it. From your mate. Mark didn’t—”

I was up in his face even before I knew I was moving. My chest bumped against his, but he stood his ground. His eyes were orange, but his teeth were blunt. “You don’t know the first goddamn thing about me. If you did, you would know that I was the one who stayed behind. I was the one who was left in Green Creek while your father took off with the pack. I kept the fire burning, but did any of you ever stop to think of what it did to me? You’re nothing but a subservient child who doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing.”