Then she saw Ella’s face, tight with anger at the thought of
Stillwater, her spatula pressing down on a spitting round of burger until it
seared.
As though he read her mind, he said swiftly, “Think about it. I can be
patient. You know where to find me.”
He gave her another sweet smile, opened a big, graceful hand in farewell.
A door opened, slapped shut behind her; she jumped.
“Carrie!” her father called sharply. She turned, her own hand still raised.
Merle stepped out from behind the scaffolding, scanned the parking lot,
looking as though he were scenting it, tense and watchful, like some four-
legged beast with its hackles raised.
“What?” she wondered bewilderedly. Now what? Nobody ever explained anything,
so how exactly was she to know? She glanced behind her; Stillwater had already
gone. “Where have you been?” she asked Merle, but he didn’t explain that
either.
“Who was that?” he demanded.
“You sound exactly like someone’s father,” she said irritably.
“Well, I am.”
“Well, now is not the time. And never mind who that was. It’s my business.”
“I know,” he said grimly.
“You know what? Who that was, or that it’s my business?” She threw up both
hands, scattering questions everywhere into the night. “You want me to make
decisions without giving me anything! I might as well go work for him—it’s
got to be less mysterious than this falling-down place. Rituals with letters,
rituals with cauldrons, a bloody gaff, a missing knife, everyone in a time
warp, looking back at the past, wishing for the good old days, hinting of
portents, speaking in riddles, knowing things but never saying, never
explaining—and you’re mad at me for just thinking of going to work for
Stillwater. How did you even know he was out here?”
He was silent, looking at her, and still, so still that for a moment he seemed
to fade into the night, become one of those half-invisible things, both seen
and unseen, so familiar that no one ever bothers to look, to recognize, until
it’s too late.
Then he did vanish. A wolf sat in the place where he had stood, its muzzle
lifted and open in a long wild cry. Carrie, stunned motionless, heard in its
fierce energy, its plaintiveness, the only answer that Merle could find to
give her before the wolf ran off into the dark.
She was still trembling, her hands still icy, when she stopped the truck
beside Zed’s cabin. She couldn’t move except to wipe away the stray tears
that told her she wasn’t entirely a solid lump of ice. A solitary thought
surfaced now and then from what seemed the completely functionless tangle of
her brain. Why am I surprised? was one of them. Another came eventually, when
she saw Zed’s car lights turn onto the slough road: How long ago were there
wolves around Chimera Bay?
After another silence, she heard her door open, felt Zed’s hands tug at her.
“Hey. It’s me. Carrie. What’s wrong? Why didn’t you wait inside? You’re
so cold . . .”
He took her inside, wrapped her in a blanket, and gave her something hot in a
cup to thaw her fingers. She couldn’t seem to stop shaking. Finally, he took
her shoes off and pulled her into bed under the covers, where he could wrap
himself around her.
“What happened? Carrie? Do you want me to call 911? Is it your dad? Did
something happen to him?”
She drew a long breath, finally feeling bits of her—a lung, a nostril, an
earlobe—begin to come back to life.
“No,” she whispered. “And yes. Either I’m going crazy, or my father turned
into a wolf in front of me.”
She felt his chest rise as he sucked breath. “No. Merle’s a werewolf?”
That had not occurred to her; she thought about it.
“No. I don’t think so. It wasn’t like that. It was more like— We were
arguing in the Kingfisher parking lot—and he needed—he needed a different
way to get me to understand what he was saying. Or not saying.”
“Wow.” He pulled up, leaning on an elbow, gazing down at her. “That is so
cool.”
She felt her face melt, remember how to smile. “So. No 911.”
“Where’d he learn to do that? What is he?”
“I don’t know.” Both eyes heated at once; the candles he had lit blurred
and swam. “Another unanswered question.” The tears broke; she wiped at them,
smiling again. “I hope he doesn’t run around Chimera Bay like that and get
himself shot. I should have known. I should have known by now not to be
surprised at anything he would do. He talks to crows. He talks to the moon.
Sometimes he makes me wonder exactly how long he’s lived in this world. He
says things—things that seem to go so far back that I don’t understand how
he can know them.”
“It’s so amazingly bizarre. Like the life cycle of a salmon.”
“What?”
“That old, that strange. Or like sharks that never seem to sleep. Orcas. The
leviathans of the deep that take your hook and don’t let go until you’re the
one struggling on the end of the line, and they’ve changed the way you look
at the world.”
A shiver ran over her, gossamer and cold as a ghostly finger.
“I wonder,” she whispered, “what leviathan is making my father afraid.”