The Wolves of Midwinter (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 2)

“Well, it’s good to see you know the background of all this,” said Phil. “You have an astonishing grasp of the big picture.”

Christine dozed against the back of the breakfast room chair. Phil tried to bring her into the conversation, but she said sleepily, “Jamie gets all worked up about these things.”

“You have no idea,” said Jamie in a low confidential voice to Phil and Reuben, “what it is like to be the twin of a girl!”

The next morning, Lisa drove south to collect clothes and personal items for the Maitland family, and Phil took Lorraine and Christine and Jamie for a walk in the woods as soon as the sun came out from behind the clouds.

Reuben spent the morning calling guesthouses and hotels throughout the little city of Carmel with no luck in finding Jim. Grace found out Jim hadn’t used his credit cards or ATM cards since his disappearance.

Felix and Sergei asked Reuben if he wanted them to join in the search. They could easily fly down to the Monterey Peninsula and start looking for Jim. “If I was certain he was there, I’d say yes,” said Reuben. “But I’m not certain.” He had a hunch. He started looking for monasteries—isolated monastic communities that had guesthouses anywhere within a hundred miles of San Francisco. It was frustrating making the calls. Jim might not have checked in under his own name. And he was reaching out to remote rural places that obviously knew nothing of the San Francisco daily news or that Jim was missing. Sometimes he couldn’t understand the thick accent of the person who answered. Sometimes no one answered the phone at all.

By afternoon, Lorraine seemed to be completely in love with Phil, laughing irresistibly at his little jokes and catching his most obscure witticisms and literary quotes.

Jamie was so drawn to Phil, so eager to argue a million questions, that Lorraine tried gently to separate them now and then, but it didn’t work, and Phil was clearly impressed with Jamie, and holding forth on everything from the superiority of baroque to the current state of San Francisco politics. Laura and Felix took Christine throughout the whole conservatory, explaining all the various tropical plants to her. Christine loved the orchid trees, and the exotic lobster claw palms. She asked what Father Jim Golding thought about these plants. Did he have a favorite? Did Father Jim Golding like music? She loved to play the piano. She was getting better at it, she hoped, all the time.

Jamie not only looked like Jim, he sounded like Jim. Reuben thought he could see Jim in Christine as well. She was the shy one, the quiet one, the sad one, and Reuben knew it was going to be that way until Jim appeared and took her in his arms. But she was a very clever little girl. Her favorite novel was Les Misérables.

“Because she’s seen the musical!” said Jamie scornfully.

Christine just smiled. Who was her father’s favorite author? she wondered. Did he read the poems of Edgar Allan Poe? What about Emily Dickinson?

Lisa cooked a huge dinner in the guesthouse, and Reuben tried to put on a brave face when he assured them they’d hear some good news from Jim soon. He went out into the night to call Grace, only to confirm there was nothing new. The police had confirmed Jim was on foot when he left the Fairmont Hotel. His apartment had been searched, and the little cashbox under the bed was empty.

“That means he probably has a couple of thousand with him,” said Grace over the phone, “and no need to touch his credit cards. Your brother always kept that much, just to be able to help people. If only he knew what was going on. The new rehab fund is up to two million! People are making donations in his name, Reuben! And this is Jim’s dream, this rehab shelter right by the church, where he can offer decent rooms to recovering addicts!”

“All right, Mom. I’m going back down to Carmel tomorrow morning, and I’m going to cover the entire area if I have to seek out every single little guesthouse or bed-and-breakfast in existence from Monterey to Carmel Valley.”

He texted the last four or five pictures he’d taken of Lorraine and the kids, being most careful not to include the robust and radiant Phil in any of them.

For a long time, he stood outside in the cold darkness looking through the multipaned windows of the guesthouse. Phil was sitting by the fire reading aloud to Jamie and Christine. Lorraine was lying, with a pillow under her head, on the carpet in front of the fire. He heard a footstep in the shadows behind him, and then he caught the scent of Laura, of Laura’s hair and Laura’s perfume.

“Whatever happens,” said Laura, “they’re going to be all right.”

“That part I know,” said Reuben in a thick voice. “They’re part of our family.” He turned and took her in his arms. “I wish we could be alone tonight in the forest,” he said. “I wish we could go off up there into the treetops, and just be us alone.”

“Soon,” she said. “Soon.”

Inside the warm cozy house, Lisa brought in steaming mugs on a tray. Reuben could smell the chocolate. He nuzzled his face into Laura’s warm neck.

“You’ve never told me,” she whispered.

“Told you what?”

“How did I do during the Twelfth Night Feast?”

He laughed. “Are you joking?” he said. “Your instincts were perfect.” He was thinking, remembering, and he could not bring his human attitudes now really to bear on what had happened. He could recall every second of it; but he could not feel what he’d felt when the Twelfth Night Feast had been in full swing. These are the monsters, these are the reeking killers who slaughtered a boy and a priest, who poisoned children, who sought to maim and murder Jim. “You were one of us,” he said to Laura. “And there was no male or female, really, or young or old, or lover and lover, or father and son—we were kindred. Just kindred. And you were part of it, as were we all.”

She nodded.

“And how was it for you?” he asked. “The first taste of human flesh.”

“Natural,” she said. “Completely natural. I think I thought too much about it beforehand. And it was simple. That’s the word. No conflict involved at all.”

It was his turn to nod. He smiled. But it was a slow and sober smile.

The little gathering broke up about eight.

“We turn in early in the country,” Phil explained. Lorraine was obviously exhausted. But Jamie wanted to know if he could stay up to watch the eleven o’clock news.

They climbed the hill to the house, and found Felix in his robe and pajamas in the library. He gave Reuben a knowing glance. Phil would change sometime close to midnight. That was the way with new Morphenkinder. And Felix would not let Phil go out into the woods alone.