The Wolves of Midwinter (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 2)

He marveled as he listened to her. All his life he’d loved live music, and heard so little of it, existing as most of his friends did in a luxurious world of recordings of every type of music imaginable. This was heaven to him, hearing the soprano, and indeed just watching her, watching the expression on her face as she sang, and watching the graceful attitudes of the violinists as they played.

Wandering off half reluctantly, he ran into his editor Billie Kale and the gang from the Observer. Billie apologized for their photographer snapping pictures everywhere. Reuben was fine with it. Felix was fine with it. There were fellow journalists from the Chronicle here too, and several television people who’d been down in the village earlier.

“Look, we need a picture of that library window,” said Billie. “I mean we have to say something about the Man Wolf having been here!”

“Yes, go right ahead,” said Reuben. “It’s the big east window. Take all the pictures you want.”

His mind was on other things.

What was it with those exceptional women? He saw another one, a dark-skinned beauty with a mass of raven hair and bare shoulders in fast conversation with Stuart. How intense she seemed, and how fascinated was Stuart, who took her off with him apparently to see the conservatory, disappearing in the crowd. Maybe Reuben was imagining things. There were a lot of beautiful women here, he reminded himself. What made those particular ladies shine out?

More people were taking their leave, what with the long day in the village and the long drive home. But it seemed others were just coming in. Reuben accepted thanks to the right and to the left for the party. He’d stopped long ago mumbling that Felix was responsible for it. And he realized that he didn’t have to make himself smile and shake hands. It was coming naturally to him, the happiness around him contagious.

There was that woman again, the one who’d worn the lovely hat in the village. She was seated on the couch beside a young girl who was crying. The girl looked about eleven or twelve. The woman was patting the little girl and whispering to her. A young boy sat on her other side, with his arms folded, rolling his eyes and staring at the ceiling with an air of mortification. Good heavens, what could be wrong with the little girl? Reuben started to make his way towards her but a couple of people interrupted with questions and thanks. Someone was telling him a long story about an old house remembered from childhood. He’d been turned around. Where was the woman with the little girl? She was gone.

Several old high school friends approached him, including an old girlfriend, Charlotte, who had been his first love. She already had two children. He found himself studying the fat-cheeked baby in her arms, a writhing mass of lively pink flesh that kept pushing and stretching and kicking to escape his mother’s patient arms as she took it in stride, her older girl, now three years old, clinging to her dress and staring up at Reuben in glum wonder.

And my son is coming, Reuben thought, and he’ll be like this, made of pink bubble gum with eyes like big opals. And he will grow up in this house, under this roof, wandering through this world and inevitably taking it for granted, and that will be a wonderful thing.

He couldn’t find his old high school love at all in Charlotte. But a song was nudging at him, what was it? Yes, that strange unearthly song “Take Me As I Am,” by the October Project. Mingled suddenly with memories of Charlotte were memories of that song seeping out of Marchent’s room from a spectral radio.

Again, he made his way to the eastern window, this time in the library, and though the window seat was occupied from end to end, he managed to look out again on the sparkling forest. Surely people were watching him, wondering about the Man Wolf, wanting to ask questions. He heard a faint whisper of those words behind him, and “right through that window.”

The music had become noise, as the sounds from the dining room met with the great swell from the pavilion, and he felt that old familiar drowsiness come over him that so often did when he was at busy and crowded events.

But the forest did look fantastical.

The crowds were thicker than ever, even though a light rain was falling. And gradually Reuben realized there were people high in the trees everywhere. There were shaggy-haired men and women and pale lean little children in the trees, many of them smiling down on the people below and some of them talking to the people below, and these mysterious beings all, of course, wore the familiar soft chamois leather. And the guests, the innocent guests, thought them to be part of the tableau. For as far as he could see, the Forest Gentry were there, dusty, bedraggled with leaves, and even here and there clothed in ivy, sitting or standing on the heavy gray branches. The more he looked, the more detailed and bizarre and vivid they became. The myriad lights twinkled in the falling rain and he could almost hear the mingled laughter and voices as he looked out on them.

He shook himself all over and stared again. Why was he dizzy? Why was there a roaring in his ears? Nothing had changed in the scene. He did not see Elthram. He did not see Marchent. But he could see a constant shifting and reshuffling amongst the Forest Gentry because innumerable members of the tribe were disappearing and others appearing right before his dazzled eyes. He became fascinated with it, trying to catch this or that lean and feline figure as it vanished or burst into visible color, but he was making himself even more dizzy. He had to break the spell. This had to stop.

He turned and began to drift through the party as he’d drifted through the village fair. The music surged. Real voices played on his ears. Laughter, smiles. The sense of the bizarre, the horror of the bizarre, left him. Everywhere, he saw people in animated conversation, infused with the excitement of the party, and unusual meetings of locals with friends he knew. More than once he studied Celeste from afar and noted how much fun she was having, how often she laughed.

And again and again he marveled at the Distinguished Gentlemen and how they helped the party along. Sergei was introducing people to one another, and directing the orchestra musicians to the dining table, and answering questions and even accompanying people to the stairs.

Thibault and Frank were always in conversation and motion, with or without their women companions, and even Lisa, who was busy with the management of the feast on every level, took time to talk to the boy choristers and point out things to them about the house.

A young man approached her, whispering in her ear, to which she answered, “I do not know. No one told me where the woman died!” and she turned her back to the man.

How many were asking that very question, Reuben thought. Surely they were wondering. Where had Marchent fallen when she’d been stabbed? Where had Reuben been discovered after the attack?