The Wolf Gift (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 1)

Now if this was so, it could mean a lot of things.

It could mean that Felix,s precious tablets were in good hands, collected and saved by a concerned fellow archaeologist who might soon return them to Reuben when he learned of Reuben,s honorable intentions, or who might take better care of the tablets than Reuben could.

It gave him a little peace to think of this.

And furthermore: this person, this person might very well have some information about what had happened to Felix. At least it would be a connection, wouldn,t it, to somebody that knew Felix.

Of course that was about the most optimistic and reassuring spin that could be put on this little mystery, and if Reuben had still been in the habit of hearing Celeste,s critical voice in his head, which he wasn,t, he would have heard her say, You,re dreaming!

But that,s just it, Reuben thought, I,m not hearing her voice every minute, am I? And she,s not texting me or calling me. She,s at the movies with Mort Keller. And I,m not hearing my mother,s voice either, and what the hell do either of them know about it? And Phil wasn,t listening when I told him about the tablets, he was reading Leaves of Grass, and I didn,t tell Mort, did I? I,d been too groggy with painkillers and antibiotics to tell Mort anything when he came to the hospital.

Reuben went upstairs, unpacked his laptop computer and brought it down to the library.

There was an old typewriter stand to the left of the desk, and he set up the computer there, verified the wireless connection, and went online.

Yes, before the Man Wolf of San Francisco had ever attacked, Marchent,s story had made headlines as far away as Japan and Russia. That was clear enough. And he knew enough of French, Spanish, Italian, et al., to see that the mysterious beast who,d slain the killers had been given substantial play everywhere. The house was described, even the forest behind the house, and the mystery of the beast of course had been part and parcel of the appeal.

Yes, a friend of Felix could have seen the entire configuration: the house, the coast, and the mysterious name: Nideck.

He left off tracking the story. He checked on the Goldenwood kidnapping. Nothing had changed except parents were breaking faith with the sheriff,s office and the FBI and blaming them for the little girl,s death. Susan Kirkland. That was her name. Little Susan Kirkland. Eight years old. Her smiling face was now available in full color - a sweet-eyed little being with blond hair and pink plastic barrettes.

He checked his watch.

It was already eight o,clock.

His heart started to pound, but that,s all that happened. Closing his eyes, he heard the inevitable sounds of the forest, and the incessant song of the rain. Animals out there, yes, things rustling in the dark. Birds in the night. He had a strange, disoriented feeling that he was falling into the sounds. He shook himself awake.

Apprehensive, uncertain, he got up and closed all the velvet draperies. A bit of dust was stirred, but it soon settled. He turned on a few more lamps - beside the leather couch and the Morris chair. And then he started the fire. Why the hell not have the fire?

He went into the great room, and built up that fire too, with a couple more short logs. He banked it well. And made sure the screen in front of it - which had not been there that first night - was secure.

Then he went into the kitchen. The coffeepot had long ago gone off. It didn,t take a genius to figure out how to make another pot.

And within a few minutes, he was drinking a tolerable brew from one of Marchent,s pretty china cups, and pacing the floor, soothed by the crackling noises from the fireplace, and the steady song of the rainwater flowing in the gutters, and down drainpipes, and over roof tiles, and down windows.

Funny how he heard it now so distinctly for the first time.

Trouble is, you,re not paying enough attention to all these little details. You are not being scientific.

He set the coffee down on the library desk and started pounding away on the matter in a password-protected document that nobody could have made head or tail of anyway.

A little while later he stood at the back door, looking out into the darkness. He had killed the big lights, and he could see the trees now very distinctly and beautifully, and the high slate roof of the servants, wing, covered in tangled ivy and flowering vine.

He closed his eyes and tried to bring on the transformation. He pictured it, evoking those dizzying sensations, letting his mind go blank except for the metamorphosis.

But he couldn,t bring it on.

Again, there came that sense of aloneness - that he was in a truly deserted place.

"What are you hoping for? What are you dreaming?"

That somehow it,s all related, the creature that changed you, the name Nideck, even the theft of the tablets because maybe, somehow, the ancient tablets contained some secret that has to do with this, with all this?

Nonsense. What had Phil said about evil? "It,s blunders, people making blunders, whether it,s raiding a village and killing all the inhabitants, or killing a child in a fit of rage. Mistakes. Everything is simply a matter of mistakes."

Maybe somehow this was a matter of blunders, too. And he,d been lucky, damned lucky, that the people he,d so thoughtlessly slaughtered had been "guilty" in the eyes of the world.

What if a brute beast was responsible for the bite that had changed him - not some wise man wolf, but simply an animal - like this famous mountain lion? What then? But he didn,t believe that at all. How many human beings since the dawn of time have been attacked by beasts? They don,t turn into monsters.

At nine o,clock, he woke up in the big leather chair behind the desk. His shoulders and neck were stiff and his head aching.

He had an e-mail from Grace. She,d spoken again to "that specialist in Paris." Would Reuben please call?

Specialist in Paris? What specialist in Paris? He didn,t call. Quickly, he typed out an e-mail. "Mom, I don,t need to see a specialist in anything. I am well. Love, R."

I am after all sitting here in my new house waiting patiently to turn into a werewolf. Love, your son.

He felt restless, hungry, but not hungry for food. It was something much worse. He looked around him at the big dark room with its crowded bookcases. The fire had gone out. He felt anxious, as though he had to move, had to get out, had to be somewhere.

He could hear the soft murmuring sounds of the forest, the lisping of the rain falling through the dense branches. He could not hear a large animal. If there was a mountain lion out there, perhaps she was fast asleep with her cubs. Whatever the case she was a wild thing, and he was a human being waiting, waiting in a house with glass walls.

He e-mailed Galton a list of things to buy for the house, though probably most of the stuff was there. He wanted a lot of new plants for the conservatory - orange trees, ferns, and bougainvillea - could Galton handle that? What else? There had to be something else. The restlessness was driving him crazy.