She opened drawers, photo albums, tool chests, shoeboxes full of
letters, rusty tackle boxes, suitcases that had been in the dark since her
mother left. Her mother, who had fled as far south as she could go without
leaving Wyvernhold, was back home from her brief visit north, and no help
whatsoever when Carrie called her.
“Why did I leave your father?” she repeated incredulously. “If you’re
asking that question after all these years, then you already know the answer.
Why are you still up there? Move down here, where it’s warm and beautiful. We
’ll have fun together.”
Zed, whom she’d hardly seen in a couple of days, appeared one morning as a
step across the threshold of the farmhouse, making her straighten, turn
eagerly toward the sound. After another step or two, she recognized him and
drooped a little over the box of photos she had pulled out from under Merle’s
bed.
Zed himself appeared finally, walking carefully, tentatively through the old
parlor, around piles of clothes, scattered papers, yawning chests and cases,
their contents strewn across the floorboards like tidal debris after a
tempest.
She blinked at it, startled at the scale of her devastation.
“He won’t let me talk to him,” she explained tightly. “He won’t let me
ask. So I’m looking for clues.”
“Find anything?” he inquired with caution.
“No.”
He thought a moment. “Maybe I could ask? He talks to me now and then. I think
he likes me. I’ll buy the wolf a beer and tell him you’re—ah—worried?”
She sighed. “Tell him I miss him, and I don’t understand a word he’s not
saying.” She stared at the hillock of photos she had pulled out of the box,
saw herself, gap-toothed and curly-haired, laughing up at her father. “I’m
missing something,” she said slowly, frowning at the past.
“What?”
“Something. I’m not seeing it. Something’s under my nose . . .” She looked
up at Zed again, saw his patient, mystified expression. She got to her feet
finally. “Do you want some coffee? I think I made some. Maybe I didn’t.”
He smiled, shook his head. “I can help you with this later. If you can tell
me what you’re looking for. I’m working at the co-op this morning. You?”
“Prep and lunch.”
“I’ll come to the Kingfisher after work; maybe I’ll run into Merle.”
“Good luck with that,” she said grimly.
She took a question along with Hal Fisher’s daily note to the one other
person she knew who could read minds, and whose behavior was also generally
incomprehensible.
“My father turned into a wolf a couple of nights ago and howled at me,” she
told Lilith as she handed over the note. “Did you know he could do that?”
Lilith stood stock-still in front of her writing desk, staring at Carrie
through the half lenses balanced on the end of her nose.
“Why did he do that?” she asked slowly. “What did you say to him? You’re
not leaving us, are you?”
Carrie swallowed what felt like a spoonful of dust. “You did know,” she
whispered.
Lilith looked at the envelope in her hand, fanned her face with it. “Well.
Not that exactly. I’ve never seen him do that. But—”
“But you’re not surprised.” Her voice shook. “What exactly is he?”
“Ask him.”
Carrie flung up her hands. “How? He won’t let me. Nobody answers questions
around here! Nobody!”
Lilith tried; Carrie saw the impulse in her eyes. But when she opened her
mouth, nothing came out. She closed her mouth, and a floodtide of pain,
sorrow, hopelessness broke across her face, deepening the fine lines on it and
leaving a sheen of unshed tears in her eyes.
Carrie put the back of her hand against her mouth, her own eyes filling. “I’
m sorry,” she breathed, without knowing for what. “I’m sorry.”
“Carrie.” Lilith paused, swallowed. “Whatever you said—whatever you did—
to make Merle shape the wolf, listen to him. Listen to that howling. He’s
trying—”
“I know. I know. But I don’t know why.” She blinked back tears, added, her
voice a harsh husk of itself, “I don’t understand wolf.”
“You understand fear. You understand beware.”
“But of what?” she asked helplessly, and was unsurprised when Lilith did not
answer.
She saw Zed alone at the bar when she went through the swinging doors. She
caught a glimpse of Merle later, when she was about to leave, alone again in
the late-afternoon crowd, his pale eyes intent, unblinking, on her face. She
blinked, surprised, and he was gone again, like shadow melting into shadow.
He was talking to her, she realized then; he had her attention; he was telling
her something.
What?