THIRTY-NINE
In the aftermath of violent change, you think you yourself are changed. And maybe you are. But after a while, things get back to normal. You start thinking about the fact that you need a new winter hat. You stop thinking about how you almost lost your mother and how she still has a thin scar on the inside of her wrist. You have that first argument when she criticizes your lack of a hairstyle. And then you remember that your husband and his new girlfriend killed her animals and are now on supernatural probation, which means they can't get furry unsupervised for a year. The sheriff, Emmet, turned out to be a gruff, taciturn, seven-foot man with hands the size of dinner plates and a sharp beak of a nose. When he shook my hand, I saw that there was dirt embedded deep in the wrinkles of his dry, hard skin, and when he tipped his long-brimmed Stetson hat to me, I saw that someone had carved crude symbols or letters on his forehead. I asked Red whether anyone thought the sheriff of Northside looked a little unusual, and he smiled and said that anyone who actually met him was already well-acquainted with weird.
At first, I'd thought that the sheriff had let Magda and Hunter off too lightly, but something about Emmet made it hard to argue. He did say that they'd have to perform community ser vice, which in their case meant maintaining the cairns and wards all along the North-side town limits. I hardly thought this seemed sufficient, but at least they would have to wear bright orange jumpsuits when they did it.
And then I woke up feeling tired and cranky on the last day of the old year, with a cramp low in my abdomen. I could feel that it was that time of the month, but because I was in Pleasantvale and not in Northside, the pull of it was weaker than before.
My father had left just a few days ago after coming up from Florida, tanned and too thin, to celebrate our survival. He had wanted to bring his new girlfriend, but had finally agreed to leave her at home out of respect for my mother, who was still mourning the loss of her animals.
“She'll get better, Doc,” Red reassured me. And at midnight, I saw him rescue her from my father, walking her underneath the mistletoe to kiss her gently on the cheek and whisper something that seemed to take her by surprise. She turned in my direction, and even from across the room I could see her eyes brighten. It was close enough to the full moon for me to tune my hearing in.
“So your bite wasn't infectious, but Abra's might be?”
Red whispered something else, and for the first time in over a month, I saw my mother's old flirtatious look reappear. She hooked her arm through my boyfriend's and walked him over to the buffet table, which was groaning with meat and pies and three different kinds of potatoes. I heard a noise and saw a bounding blur of large, curly dog. It was Morgan, a standard poodle who had broken out of the kitchen and was making a beeline for the roast beef. Red fixed her with a stern look and Morgan had the good sense to back off. He might not have been the biggest wolf around, but he was the biggest wolf around our house.
Except for me.
I felt him come up behind me, a full plate in his hand. “How're you doing, Doc?”
I leaned back into him and let him put a piece of chicken in my mouth. It's hard to be a complete vegetarian around the holidays. Especially given my lunar cycle of meat-hungry hormones.
I chewed while Red smiled at me. “You want to step on over here where it's quiet?”
I followed Red into my favorite spot in the house, a lovely little central hall area with a fountain in the middle of the room and a skylight overhead. The real El Greco house in Spain is open to the sky here, but this is as close as you can come in New York State. The others were still audible from the living room, but they seemed far away. From where we stood we could see out of two large windows, and I took a deep breath and felt better.
“I'm okay, Red. It's just—this is too claustrophobic for me.” I hadn't been able to bear the thought of living in Red's cabin, so close to Magda and Hunter, who were still living in the Barrows' ancestral home. And, I suppose, I hadn't wanted to live in a place that had so much wild magic floating around. I didn't like believing in magic. I didn't want to embrace a lifestyle that meant losing control once a month—especially now that I'd seen where that could lead.
“Now, that's just what I was wanting to talk to you about. I know staying here at your mom's has been kind of rough on you, but I think I might have a solution in mind.”
“I think I have one, too. I think I need to go back to Manhattan.”
Red looked a little startled for a moment, but then he collected himself. “I guess I understand that. You thinking about the Medical Institute?”
“I'd like to finish my internship. If they'll take me back.”
Red jammed his hands into his back pockets and whistled softly. “The city, huh? Well, as the good book says, Whither thou goest, honey, I go along for the ride.”
I put my hand on his shoulder. “I'll be working almost all the time.”
“Since you don't sleep much nights, I reckon I'll still get to spend a few hours with you after dark.” Red grinned. With his hands still in his back pockets, he scraped the toe of one of his scuffed cowboy boots like a cowboy straight out of central casting. “Hell, after dark's the best time, anyways.”
“You'd hate being in the city.”
Red met my eyes, serious, all trace of the redneck act gone. “You might hate it too, Doc. You haven't been back since the change.”
“Then I need to find that out for myself.”
Red put his arms around my waist and we looked out the window together, at the dark night and the bare, brown earth and the skeletal trees. A glitter of white caught my eye.
“It's started to snow, Doc.”
I nodded. I was crying.
“Ah, don't do that, Abra. I'm not going to let you get away. I've been looking for the right mate for way too long to let a little thing like an internship get in the way. I can wait a couple of years for kids—so long as you make an honest man of me now.”
On the other side of the window, the snow looked powder-soft, and I watched it filling the air like a cloud. Behind me, I could hear the steady rhythm of Red's heartbeat. “So I'll commute for a while. A couple of years we won't see each other so much. That's not too bad, is it?”
I shook my head. I wanted to believe in what he was saying, but I'd lost the faith that had kept me with Hunter. Maybe Red would stay with me, driving back and forth whenever I had a day off. But I still remembered him huddled beneath my mother's caftan, fighting his own instincts. He'd said he controlled the change, that his initial attack on my mother and the subsequent wrist-licking had all been part of an elaborate trick, and I half-believed him. But that wasn't exactly comforting, because it meant he'd lied about what kind of animal he was. If Red really had been faking, then he was more coyote the trickster than he was admitting. In the Native American myths I'd heard, coyote was the card that always played wild.
So how could I trust him, knowing that duplicity was part of the package?
Which brought me back to thoughts of Hunter. I suppose I'd always known, deep down, that Hunter was capable of cheating on me. I may even have thought there was a chance our marriage might not last. But I never thought he would leave me so completely that he didn't care if I lived or died. I never thought he would tear me apart and then blame me for everything. My mother had warned me that I wasn't reading Hunter correctly. But who'd have guessed my lack of insight would nearly cost her life?
“Abra.”
I turned to Red and discovered that he had dropped to one knee. Despite the submissive position, his smile held perfect confidence. Well, why wouldn't he feel secure? We'd spent the past month in a kind of extended recuperative honeymoon. “You haven't answered me, Doc. Suppose I ought to say it right.”
I couldn't smile back. “Oh, please don't.”
“Don't be embarrassed—I'm not. Abra Barrow, you are the cleverest, least pretentious, gentlest, and most passionate woman it has ever been my good fortune to know. I may not be quite up to the job, but I sure as heck would work at it. Take me on as your husband, woman, and I promise you won't live to regret it.” He took the ring box out of his back pocket and flipped the top open. It was a lovely ring, a deep coppery gold set with a golden Topaz, the color of my wolfish lover's eyes. I thought about how much Red must have invested in this—time, money, the risk of my disliking the ring—or refusing him.
My face started to go, first the mouth contorting, then the eyes filling with tears. It wasn't pretty crying, and I knew it. “I'm so sorry,” I said, and Red jumped to his feet in one graceful motion. His arms came around me and I rested my cheek against the soft flannel of his shirt. “I want to believe it could work. I want to say yes.”
“Sh, Abra. I can wait.”
“I don't know what's wrong, if I've lost faith or if it's just too soon after Hunter. But I'm scared of how people change. Even people who don't change.” I sniffled, and Red stroked the back of my shirt. “I mean, if Hunter hadn't turned into a werewolf, would I ever have noticed he was no longer the man I'd fallen in love with?”
“I'm done with that kind of change, Abra. I'm not a man who needs to go finding himself anymore. Hunter still is.”
“I know, you're probably right. But I still can't do it. I know in my bones that what I need now is to get my life together. You can't wait for that, Red. And I can't risk hoping that you will. I have to let you go now.”
“Not now. Not to night. Dump me tomorrow. Dump me the day after tomorrow.”
At the edges of my consciousness, I could scent the tinge of Red's despair, and behind that, the desire in him, the desire that was so intermingled with love it never felt like a thing apart. The way it had with Hunter.
I leaned into Red and started to kiss him and the taste of him made me feel drunk with the change again, the pull of the other like the pull of the moon. I broke away.
“I can't do this, Red.”
His hazel eyes searched my face. “Hold on to the ring for me?”
“I can't do that.”
“Well, do it anyway.” He pressed the ring into my hand, and I let him.
“This feels wrong.”
“I won't let you go, Doc. But I'll give you the space you need to figure things out.”
“I'm sorry.”
Red walked to the front door, already unbuttoning his gray flannel shirt. “Don't be too sad. I'm coming back.”
“Okay,” I said, my voice breaking on the word. He walked out the front door and the cold night air raced in to take his place. I stared through the dark window for a long time, watching Red shake off his boots, unbutton his jeans, and then turn to look at me over his left shoulder, naked and unabashed. I thought I saw him wink, then change form between one eyeblink and the next. Four-legged, he bounded with astonishing speed toward the tree line. When I turned around to try to face the brightly lit room again, my mother was there.
“That was stupid,” she said. She was cradling Pimpernell in her arms, and when he saw me, he wriggled with happiness.
“I know.” I reached out my arms for the dog.
Placing Pimpernell in my hands, my mother put her arm around me, and for a moment, we just leaned into each other. “Well,” she said at last, “I've done stupid things, too. Like your father. And look what came out of it.”
I laughed, my forehead against hers. “The most stupid thing of all,” I said, and my mother stopped smiling. Pimpernell barked, a shrill little reprimand.
“No,” she said. “The smartest.” And then, after a moment, she added: “Now, could I talk to you about the lycanthropy? Because Red had a very interesting suggestion …”
But as much as I sometimes wanted to, and as much as my mother longed to run with the wolves, I couldn't quite bring myself to bite her.