Those wolves moved aside, stretching and shaking out their fur, and another group moved forward, and then another. Esmé turned out to be a lovely tan wolf that could have made a fortune shooting wildlife calendars. Miguel, the wall of muscle who had terrorized Molly almost a week earlier, was a muscular, rangy wolf with a dusting of black where most of the others had brown. Deacon Crosley was a grizzled gray wolf. He yawned once, displaying a mouthful of fangs that would make any predator proud.
They all trotted off into the darkness, deeper into the woods. I watched them go for a while, entranced. Before she’d gotten very far, Will called to Esmé, who paused and waited at the edge of my radius. Will walked Lizzy toward her, whispering something in a low, soothing voice. Lizzy nodded and took the last careful step away from me, and towards her life as a werewolf. I looked away, not wanting to watch her go through the change again. I can be cowardly like that. When I looked back, Lizzy was in her wolf form again, and Esmé was nuzzling her, nudging her, getting her to move. I found myself smiling.
Will came and stood beside me. “You did good work today,” he said quietly.
“Bullshit,” spat a voice behind us.
Will and I both turned. Lydia stood there, still dressed, the last werewolf beside Will to change. She looked very sane, but that was almost scarier than when she’d been twitchy. She was trembling with anger.
“What’s wrong, Lydia?” Will said patiently.
“I think this . . . person . . . killed Anastasia,” she growled, pointing at me. “You-all seem to be playing nice, pretending like everything’s fine now. But Ana’s gone.” Her voice broke on that last word.
Confused, Will looked at me. “I thought—Scarlett?”
Fuck it. “It’s true,” I said, as calmly as I could manage. “Anastasia attacked me two nights ago. I think maybe she followed me home from your house.” I pulled down the collar of my jacket, showing them the bruises. “She tried to kill me. I stabbed her in the heart.”
Lydia let out a scream of anguish and dove for me, but Will stepped in front of her and held her back.
“Why?” Lydia screamed, her voice a raw gash on the night air. “Because she was on to you? Because she knew you have a cure?” I glanced around. The other werewolves had heard the commotion and returned, gathering in a loose circle just outside of my radius. Several of them pawed the air, agitated, but most stood silently, staring eerily at me.
“I don’t have a cure,” I said wildly. I could feel anguished tears threatening to spill over my cheeks. “Please believe me, I can’t cure anyone!”
“Eli!” Lydia screamed. “You cured Eli!”
There was a sudden tug of magic on my radius, and then a familiar voice said, “Cured me of what?”
Lydia whirled around. And Eli stepped forward out of the darkness.
I felt the steady pulse of magic in my radius, and I stared at him with my mouth open. He was a werewolf again.
He was a werewolf again.
By my side, Will subtly put a hand under my elbow to steady me. Eli walked toward us until he was right in front of Lydia. He was nude, but unaffected by it. “Hey,” he said to her. “Hi, Will. Scarlett.” He was careful not to let his eyes linger on me. “I’ve been running around the forest looking for you guys for hours.”
Lydia dropped to her knees. I couldn’t see her face, but whatever Eli must have seen made him stride forward and kneel down to hug her.
“Where were you?” she cried, wrapping her arms around him.
“I had a family thing, back in New York,” he said casually, patting her back. “I had to keep it quiet because . . . you know. It’s a vampire town.” I just kept staring at him, speechless. What an awesome cover story. Why hadn’t I thought of that a week ago? “Sorry I couldn’t say anything. What’s all the fuss?”
Lydia sobbed into his neck, telling him about Ana’s death.
I glanced at Will, who seemed to have adjusted to Eli’s second change a lot faster than I had. Too fast, actually. I wheeled on him. “You?” I whispered. “You did this?”
He nodded. “Sorry I couldn’t tell you,” he murmured. “We weren’t sure if it would work. I was afraid his body might reject it the second time, and he said if you knew, you’d try to stop it.”
“I fucking . . . you’re damn right I . . . ,” I sputtered. He grinned at me. Then he moved toward Lydia and Eli.
“Come on, Lyddie, let’s give these two a chance to talk. You’ll run with me tonight, and when we get back, we’ll talk about a memorial for Ana,” he said soothingly. She nodded, still crying, and rose to her feet, allowing Will to lead her outside my radius for the change.
And then it was just Eli and me.
“Hi,” he said softly, smiling up at me.
“No,” I mumbled. I swayed once, and Eli barely had time to look alarmed before I fell, sideways, landing on my left. He scrambled across the ground toward me. By then I was shaking, and tears had come. “No,” I wept. “No, no, no, this can’t be happening.”
“Shh,” he whispered. “Shh, it’s okay, I wanted to.”
“You did not!” I wailed, trying to control my breathing. “You did not, and don’t say that you did. You were happy . . .”
“I’m happy with you,” he insisted. I started shaking my head, and he took my face between his hands, gently forcing me to look at him. “Listen, listen. That morning, I followed you and Lydia to the diner.” I froze, my sobs hiccupping to a stop. “I heard what she said to you. I knew she would never give up until she saw me.”
“I could have changed her,” I hissed. “I could have fixed it somehow, or talked her out of it . . .”
“No, you couldn’t,” he contended. “You were right, I could never stay in LA unless I was a werewolf. And this is my home. You’re my home,” he said simply.
I stared at him through my tears. It was like the fucking “Gift of the Magi.” I’d thought I was fixing his whole life by changing him into a human again, and so he tried to fix my whole life by changing himself back. I let out a half-hiccup, half-laugh. Men.