The Wolves of Midwinter (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 2)

“I’m sorry, Felix. But you know, those first days, those first heady days, when I didn’t know what I was, or what would happen next—or whether I was the only man beast in the whole world—there was such a hedonistic freedom there. And I have to get over that, that I can’t slip out at will and become the Man Wolf. I’m working on it, Felix.”

“I know you are,” said Felix with a sad little laugh. “Of course you are. Reuben, Nideck Point is worth the sacrifice. Whatever we become, wherever we go, we need a haven, a refuge, a sanctuary. I need this. We all need this.”

“I know,” said Reuben.

“I wonder if you do,” said Felix. “How does a man who does not age, who does not grow old—how does such a man keep a family manse, a piece of land that is his? You cannot imagine what it means to leave all you hold sacred because you have to. You have to hide that you don’t change, you have to annihilate the person you are to all those you love. You have to abandon your home and your family and return decades later in some alien guise to strangers, pretending to be the long-lost uncle, the bastard son.…”

Reuben nodded.

He had never heard Felix’s voice so full of pain before, not even when he spoke of Marchent.

“I was born in the most beautiful land imaginable,” said Felix, “near the River Rhine above a heavenly Alpine valley. I told you this before, didn’t I? I lost it a long time ago. I lost it forever. The fact is I do own the property again now—that very land, those ancient buildings. I bought it all back—lock, stock, and barrel. But it’s not my home, or my sanctuary. That can’t be reclaimed ever. It’s a new place for me now, with all the promise of a new home perhaps in a new time, and that’s the best that it can be. But my true home? That’s gone beyond reprieve.”

“I understand,” said Reuben. “I really do. I understand as far as I can understand. I don’t know how but I do.”

“But time hasn’t swallowed Nideck Point for me,” said Felix with that same low emotional heat. “No. Not yet. We still have time with Nideck Point before we have to slip away. And you have time, lots of time, with Nideck Point. You and Laura, and now your son, too, can grow up at Nideck Point. We have time to live a rich chapter here.”

Felix broke off as though deliberately reining himself in.

Reuben waited, desperate for a way to express what he felt. “I will behave, Felix,” he said. “I swear it. I won’t ruin it.”

“You don’t want to ruin it for yourself, Reuben,” Felix said. “Forget about me. Forget Margon or Frank or Sergei. Forget Thibault. You don’t want to ruin it for yourself and for Laura. Reuben, you will lose everything here soon enough; don’t throw away what you have now.”

“I don’t want to ruin it for you either,” said Reuben. “I know what it means to you, Nideck Point.”

Felix didn’t answer.

A strange thought occurred to Reuben.

It took form as they drove up the sloping road from the gates to the terrace.

“What if she needs Nideck Point?” he asked in a soft voice. “What if it’s Marchent’s sanctuary? What if she’s looked beyond, Felix, and she doesn’t want to go beyond? What if she wants to remain here too?”

“Then she wouldn’t be suffering, would she, when she comes to you?” Felix responded.

Reuben sighed. “Yes. Why would she be suffering?”

“The world might be full of ghosts for all we know. They might have found their sanctuaries all around us. But they don’t show us their pain, do they? They don’t haunt as she’s haunting you.”

Reuben shook his head. “She’s here, and she can’t break through. She’s wandering, alone, desperate for me to see her and hear her.” He thought about his dream again, the dream in which he’d seen Marchent in rooms filled with people who took no notice of her, the dream in which he’d seen her running through the darkness alone. He thought of those curious shadowy figures he’d seen vaguely in the dim forest of the dream. Had they been reaching out to her?

In a low voice, he described the dream to Felix. “But there was more to it,” he confessed, “and now I’ve forgotten.”

“That’s always the way with dreams,” Felix said.

They sat parked before the house. The end of the terrace along the cliff was scarcely visible in the mist. Yet they could hear the sounds of hammers and saws from the workmen down the hill at the guesthouse. Rain or shine, the men worked on the guesthouse.

Felix shivered. He drew in his breath, and then after a long pause, he placed his hand on Reuben’s shoulder. As always it had a calming effect on Reuben.

“You’re a brave boy,” he said.

“You think so?”

“Oh yes, very,” said Felix. “That’s why she’s come to you.”

Reuben was bewildered, lost suddenly in too many shifting mind pictures and half-remembered sensations, unable to reason. Of all things, he heard that dreamy haunting song again that the ghost radio had played inside the ghost room, and that spellbinding beat paralyzed him.

“Felix, this house should be yours,” he said. “We don’t know what Marchent wants, why she haunts. But if I’m a brave boy, then I have to say it. This is your house, Felix. Not mine.”

“No,” Felix said. He smiled faintly, sadly.

“Felix, I know you own all the land around this property, all the land to the town and back and north and east. You should have the house back.”

“No,” said Felix gently but resolutely.

“If I deed it over to you, well, there’s no way you can stop me from doing it—.”

“No,” Felix said.

“Why not?”

“Because if you did that,” Felix said, his eyes glazing with tears, “it wouldn’t be your home anymore. And then you and Laura might leave. And you and Laura are the warmth shining in the heart of Nideck Point. And I can’t bear the thought of your going away. I can’t make Nideck Point my home again without you. Leave things as they are. My niece gave you this house to get rid of it, rid of her grief, and rid of her pain. Leave it as she willed it. And you brought me back to it. In a sense, you’ve given it to me already. Owning a great cluster of empty rooms might have meant little or nothing—without you.”

Felix opened the door. “Now come,” he said, “let’s take a quick look at the progress on the guesthouse. We want it to be ready whenever your father comes to visit.”