I shook my head. He’d hinted at it, but then we’d realized just how wide open that door was, and everything was focused on shutting it and making sure it was locked.
“I could feel you. All of you. My pack. But it was more than that. I could feel all of them. The people here. In the territory. I felt the grass. The leaves. The birds in the trees. Everything. You know this place, Gordo. I know you do. You are in touch with it in ways that most others are not. But I think it’s more than that for me. You are the earth and I am the sky. So yes. I know they’re in the garage. I know they’re scared. I know they’re hurt. I know they’re as stubborn as they’ve ever been. And we’re going to make the Kings pay for all they’ve done. Their names don’t matter to me.”
“Dirt and leaves and rain,” I muttered.
He cocked his head at me.
“I—it’s something Mark tells me.” I looked away. “It’s what I smell like to him.”
“I will bring him back to you,” Ox said, and I closed my eyes. “To all of us.”
“You can’t promise that,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Watch me,” Ox said.
“I LOVE you,” Joe told us from the porch, Ox at his side. “I love all of you. You are my pack. And this is our town. It’s time to take it back.”
NEVERMORE. NEVERMORE. Never—
I MOVED through the back dirt roads of Green Creek, snow crunching underneath my feet. Mark was on my right and Elizabeth on my left. It wasn’t until after Ox had told them to go with me that I realized what he was doing. He was trying to keep those who remembered the last time Elijah had been here away from her. Carter had been too young. But the three of us were not. I didn’t know whether to thank him or be pissed off.
It didn’t matter.
We could deal with it later.
The stump that had once been my right hand was wrapped with a bandage, and a sock placed over it. Jessie told me that while she trusted my magic, she didn’t know these other witches. We couldn’t know if there was nerve damage. I needed to avoid frostbite. “We’re going to have to get that checked,” she told me, fitting the sock over the stump. “And somehow figure out how to explain how it happened, and how it already healed.”
“Half the town already knows about wolves,” I reminded her. “I saw the doc in there too. What’s a magically healed amputation in the face of that?”
“This is going to explode in our faces.”
“Maybe. But if it does, we’ll deal with it then.”
The forest felt unnaturally quiet, as if it and the nearby town were empty. Rico and Jessie had made their way to the Lighthouse with orders to keep everyone safe in case the hunters somehow found their way to it. Jessie looked like she was going to argue, but Ox told her that he was trusting her to keep the rest of the humans safe. Rico sighed but agreed. “I mean, if I’m going to get shot, it might as well be by my girlfriend. At least I’ll expect it coming from her.”
It was slow going, even though we kept to what were normally dirt roads. The snow was deep, and the drifts even deeper. I stumbled a few times, but a wolf was always there to keep me upright.
gordo gordo gordo.
“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered, putting my remaining hand on Mark’s back.
He was there, somehow. Mark. The bonds between us were frayed and tenuous, but they were holding. Because of Ox or because I bore my wolf’s mark upon my shoulder, I didn’t know. I believed Ox when he said he would find a way.
It was gordo gordo gordo and MateWitch and some wolf-blue song of mine and mine and mine. He was echoing in my head, agitated and twitchy, but I held on to it as best I could. It meant there was hope.
He helped me up again, and I was about to take a step forward when Elizabeth froze, ears perking, tail curved up behind her. Mark growled lowly next to me before he herded me against a large tree.
It took a moment to hear what they did.
Voices.
They were faint at first. But they grew louder as I breathed shallowly through my nose. The vines on my arm began to tighten under my coat, pulling against my skin. My magic was wilder than it?
??d been before, and I felt a phantom sensation where my hand had once been, like I still had fingers that could curl into a fist.
Elizabeth moved a few feet away from us and began to dig in the snow, the powder and ice piling up behind her. Her claws scraped, and I worried she was going to give us away before she finished, lowering herself into the indentation she’d created. She blended in with the snow and trees.
I put my back against the tree trunk, Mark standing in front of me, not even trying to conceal himself.