The Wolves of Midwinter (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 2)

“But I can see damn well that you don’t like those others,” said Stuart. “And that Helena, she was frightening. Is she lovers with that man, Hockan? And when you talk about our inherent sense of good and evil, well, I can’t connect it to that dislike. What happens when you hate a perfectly innocent and upright fellow Morphenkind?”

“That’s just it, we don’t hate!” said Sergei. “We are resolved never to hate, and never to quarrel. And yes, from time to time, there is trouble. Yes, I admit, there is trouble. But it’s over quickly, as it is with wolves, and then we go, finding our own peaceful parts of the world, laying claim to them.”

“That might be what’s bothering them the most,” said Thibault softly. He glanced at Margon, and when Margon didn’t interrupt, he continued. “We have laid claim once more to this part of the world, and we have an enduring strength which others find—well, enviable.”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Margon, raising his voice. “This is Yule and we receive all others as we’ve always done—even Helena and Fiona.”

It was Felix who brought the discussion to a decisive close, announcing that the guesthouse was now completely ready for Phil, and he wanted to take father and son down now to see it. He confessed that he was mildly annoyed the workers hadn’t had it ready before the banquet, but then he’d pulled them off the guesthouse to work on the party and, well, it just didn’t get done. “It’s ready now for your father,” he said to Reuben, “and I can’t wait to show him the place.”

At once they went up to collect Phil, who’d just finished his own breakfast, and the three proceeded down the cliff in the light rain.

The workmen were gone, all the plastic draping and debris had been taken away, and Felix’s “little masterpiece,” as he called it, was ready for inspection.

It was a spacious gray-shingled cottage with a high-peaked roof and stone chimney. Trellises on the front flanked its double doors where vines would be replanted in spring, said Felix, and the garden beds would be full of flowers. “I’m told that’s how it used to be,” said Felix, “one of the most charming spots on the whole property.” There was quite a little patio now restored in front of the cottage, of old flags uncovered and patched, where Phil could sit out in the spring and summer, and that too would be wreathed in spring flowers. This was the place for geraniums, said Felix. Geraniums love the ocean air. And he promised that it would be spectacular. Giant old rhododendrons grew beyond the trellises in both directions, and when they came into bloom, said Felix, they would be a vision of purple blossoms. In the old days, he’d been told that the house was always covered in honeysuckle, and bougainvillea and ivy, and it would be once again.

A giant sprawling scrub oak stood just below the house on the edge of the patio and there was an old iron bench circling its immense gray trunk.

Reuben had seen little really of the building when first he ventured here with Marchent, to a half-burnt ruin surrounded by Monterey pines and hidden by weeds and bracken.

The little guesthouse hung right on the cliff over the ocean, its large small-paned windows having an unobstructed view of the slate-colored sea. Thick scatter rugs covered the highly polished wide-plank floors, and the bathroom had been upgraded to a marble shower and tub fit for royalty, or so Phil claimed.

There was plenty of room in the parlor bedroom for an oak rocking chair by the large Craftsman-style fireplace opposite a leather recliner, and a rectangular oak table under the window. The bed was on the far north wall opposite the fireplace with a curved lamp at the head for reading. And a good-sized oak desk facing the room fitted comfortably in the far right corner.

A wooden corkscrew stair to the left of the front door went up to a huge finished attic. The window from there had the best view of the sea and the surrounding cliffs as Reuben saw it, and Phil might eventually work up there, yes, he said, but for now the coziness of the house proper was perfect for him.

Felix had picked these furnishings, but assured Phil that he must make the place his own and replace or remove anything that wasn’t to his liking.

Phil was grateful for all of it. And Phil was comfortably ensconced by nightfall.

On the desk he set up his computer and favorite old brass desk lamp, and tolerated the newly installed telephone though he said he would never answer it.

Built-in bookshelves flanking the large fieldstone fireplace were soon filled from the cardboard boxes arriving from San Francisco, plenty of wood was stacked nearby, and the little kitchen was fitted out with Phil’s special espresso machine, and a microwave, which was all he needed, he claimed, to live the hermit life of his dreams. There was a small table beneath the window just big enough for two people.

Lisa stocked the refrigerator for him with yogurt, fresh fruit, avocados, tomatoes, and all the raw stuff he ate all day. But she had no intention, she declared more than once, of leaving him to his own devices here.

A faded patchwork quilt appeared on the daybed, which Phil explained had been made by his grandmother Alice O’Connell. Reuben had never seen this before, and was vaguely fascinated that such family relics even existed. Phil said it was the wedding-ring pattern, and his grandmother had made it before she was married. A couple more things came out of the trunk, including a little white cream pitcher that had belonged to Grandma Alice, and several old silver-plate spoons with the initials O’C on the handles.

And he takes out these old treasures, Reuben thought, that he’s had all these years, and puts the quilt on his bed here because he feels that he can do that now.

Though Phil claimed he didn’t need the huge flat-screen TV over the fireplace, he soon had it turned on with the sound down constantly, as he played one DVD after another from a library of his treasured “great films.”

The rocky paths from the guesthouse to the terrace or to the road were no problem at all for Phil, who had dug out yet another family heirloom from his trunk, an old shillelagh that had belonged to Edward O’Connell. It was a thick and beautifully polished stick with a weighted knob at the end for popping people over the head, presumably, and made the perfect staff for long walks, during which Phil wore a soft gray-wool flat cap that had once belonged to old Edward O’Connell, as well.

With that cap and staff, Phil disappeared for hours on end, rain or shine, into the broad Nideck forests, often not appearing till well after supper when Lisa would force him to sit down at the kitchen table and take a meal of beef stew and French bread. Lisa went down every morning, too, with his breakfast, though often he was gone before she got there, and she left the meal for him on the counter in his little kitchen while she cleaned the guesthouse and made his bed.