I heard rustling, like someone scooted away from the corner. I slipped around and discovered a young woman pressed against the wall. She was thin, very young, with short blond hair. She wore a black baby doll T-shirt and faded jeans. She couldn’t have been more than about nineteen or twenty and looked especially pale in the shadowed, nighttime lighting outside the building.
“Hi,” she said and ducked her gaze away from me, a sign that she didn’t want trouble. Her shoulders slumped, and I could imagine a tail between her legs.
I stood quietly and smelled her: sweating, frightened, and wolfish. And one of Carl’s. If he knew she was here . . . I couldn’t imagine that he knew she was here. If he’d wanted to pass along a message, he wouldn’t have sent her—small and cowering.
I avoided staring at her, but it was hard not to. I wasn’t sure I knew what to do with this.
“What are you doing here?” I said.
“Becky said I should come talk to you.”
“Becky.” I drew a blank for a moment, then remembered a Becky among Carl’s wolves. Standoffish, another one that I’d avoided because she’d been tougher than me.
Then I remembered another Becky, the werewolf who’d called into the show a couple of weeks ago about a submissive in her pack who needed help. It hadn’t occurred to me she’d been talking about Carl’s pack.
I gave her half a smile. “You couldn’t just call in like everyone else?” I thought I was being funny, but she looked down, frowning. She inched away; any minute, she’d bolt.
We were in the open here, which made me uncomfortable. Just because she hadn’t been Carl didn’t mean Carl couldn’t sneak up on us. He might even be looking for her. Made me nervous.
Backing off, I said, “You want to come inside and talk? We’ll stay in the lobby. I’ll leave the door unlocked.”
After a moment, she nodded. She still wouldn’t look at me. I turned and walked away, made sure not to look back, but I could hear her following.
The security guy at the front desk waved at me as I returned to the lobby, and paid attention when the woman followed me in. She glanced around and wouldn’t leave the vicinity of the front door.
“Everything’s okay. I’m just going to borrow a couple of chairs,” I told him, grabbing a couple of the plastic chairs from the wall. If she needed help, I didn’t want to scare her off, and that meant leaving her an escape route. I didn’t want to corner an already frightened wolf.
She was trying not to look scared. She kept pushing her shoulders back, trying to straighten up, and her frown had almost become a snarl.
I put the chairs by the door. We could talk out of anyone’s earshot. “Sit.”
And she did, just like that. Completely obedient. I bet Carl loved it.
I sat more slowly. “What’s your name?”
“Jenny.”
“And what’s Becky want you to talk to me about?”
“I shouldn’t be here,” she said. “I shouldn’t have come.” She glanced at the door, as if expecting monsters.
“Can you try for a minute to forget about the whole werewolf thing? We’re just a couple of people having a chat. I can’t talk to you if you’re scared of me.”
She closed her eyes, took a breath, and that seemed to steady her. Her wolf lingered, though. It probably never really went away for her, and always guided her responses.
“Becky wants me to get away from Carl. She wants me to leave town. You did it, and if I talk to you, I might be able to, too.”
“It’s really not as hard as it seems.”
“But I don’t want to.” She started crying, quiet tears slipping down her face. I found a clean tissue in my bag and handed it to her. “He takes care of me, I owe everything to him, he’s a part of me, I can’t leave that.”
Then why are you crying? I wanted to ask. I let her talk.
“He’s not an angel,” she went on. “I know that. But he can’t help it, he—” She stumbled to a stop. Her rhetoric amazed me. Did she even realize what she was saying?
She was young and pretty. Carl treated the women in his pack like they were part of his own personal harem. I knew firsthand what he did to the young and pretty ones. He wasn’t above smacking them around.
“The thing about being a werewolf,” I said. “The bruises heal quickly. No one ever sees them. Makes it easier to just roll over and take it, doesn’t it?”