Wolfsong (Green Creek 1)

There was no key.

I took a breath.

Shook my head.

Looked again.

It was there. Just a little bit in the dirt. A potato bug lay curled against it, shell shiny and gray.

I took the key and realized the last person to touch it had been my mom.

Dad had never used it. He never needed it. If he came home late, stumbling out of his truck, lost in a fog of beer, the door had always been open.

I’d never used it. I came home from school. From work. From the library. From a walk in the woods where I’d felt Thomas’s territory humming through my veins.

She’d been the last one to touch this key.

I remembered the day I’d held my own work shirt for the first time, my name embroidered in careful stitches.

I remembered the first time I’d held Joe’s hand, the little tornado who said I smelled of pinecones and candy canes. Of epic and awesome.

This felt just as important.

I climbed the steps again to the house.

I put the key into the lock.

The tumblers clicked.

I twisted the key.

I pressed my forehead against the wooden door and breathed it in.

The light was fading behind me. Shadows were stretching.

I took the key from the lock and put it in my pocket to keep it safe.

I turned the doorknob and opened the door. It creaked on its hinges.

The shadows were deeper in the house. I took a step and was assaulted with the smells of home, of furniture polish and Pine-Sol. Of spring flowers and autumn leaves. Of sugars and spices. It smelled warm, but it was there, wasn’t it? That odor of greasy pennies, undercurrent to the smell of home. Because this wasn’t a dream. I could feel the pain in my chest so surely that I knew.

I closed the door behind me.

It was dark in the house.

I was going into the kitchen. Or upstairs. To her room. Or my room. I needed new clothes. I’d been wearing Carter’s for the last week, and even though I smelled like pack, I needed to smell like me. It was a plan. A good one. I’d go upstairs and get a change of clothes, a few changes, and then I’d—

I was in the living room.

I was told how it would be.

One of the strange wolves had told me.

He’d said, “I’m sorry. We tried. We tried to clean it as much as we could. But the… it soaked. Into the wood on the floors. It—”

It was there. A dark stain, the edges of which were ragged. It had been scrubbed. It had been power washed. It had been scraped. But they couldn’t get it all.

My mother’s blood had soaked into the bones of the house.