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“Go on.” I nudged the corner gently with my foot. “This belongs to your family.”
Tiny fingers unraveled the top and reached within. Aiden lifted a corner of plush white fur.
Cal’s hand crept over her mouth. She fell to her knees. “Stevie! Oh, God, Stevie!”
Aiden wrapped himself in the pelt.
Cal crawled for her son, pulled him onto her lap, sobbing, snuggling her damp cheek against him and the fur. As she held brother and son close, a wail raced through the pack, breaking through human vocal chords into otherworldly highs. People twitched and quaked, dropped onto all fours, shifting and howling and dragging themselves toward the alphas future, current and deceased.
“Upstairs!” Cal’s lengthening jaw split her lips as she addressed me. “Under Stephen's bed.”
We hit the bedroom as howls rose into the night. Caelan locked the door, though I was certain we didn't need it. A multitude of albums sat dusty beneath the bed. Most were dated by years; but one was labeled, ‘Pack Adoptions.’ I sprawled on the floor, flipping through generations of parents and children and the occasional turned adult.
It took about twenty pages before I reached a young Stephen.
Then there her name was, in delicate calligraphy beneath a photograph dated the year I lost my family. I traced the names beside it: Stephen. Calico. Rhetta.
Except it wasn't Rhetta, not how I knew her. Moonbeam pale skin, blue eyes, brown hair growing out silver at its roots. The girl sat on the back of a truck at Rose's Berry Farm, settled between older kids, a bag of blueberries in her lap. My fingers trembled over her smiling face. Grandma had taken me there picking, too. How close had we come all these years?
I flung the album across the floor and slouched against the bedframe. The sheriff sank beside me.
“I looked straight into her eyes, Caelan,” I said, rubbing mine. “What kind of shitty person doesn't recognize her own sister?”
“It ain’t your fault.” He took my hand. “Your grandmother convinced you she died.”
“I should have known.”
“You and your sister are pieces in whatever game your grandmother was playing, Marcy. You can’t be expected to know the rules when you weren’t aware you were on the board.”
“Ronan thought the shaman brought her back to life. Maybe whatever magic he called on changed her. Zakar, or whatever’s pulling his strings, called my blood special; I’d imagine Rhetta’s is even more so. And he’s been monitoring at least her nine months. ...What if he’s after her baby?”
“He’s after a bride,” the sheriff said. “Between the women whose hearts he ate and his creeping on you, he’s made that clear, but I think he might could be curious about that baby.”
I whipped open the bedroom door. The volume of the werewolves’ cries rattled the paintings. “Calico!” I shouted into the mournful din. Caelan pulled me back inside before I could reach the stairs.
“I'll get her,” he promised. “Wait here.”
I returned to the floor, moved onto a new album with new years, watched my sister age into the woman she was today. There she was with a prom date, old boyfriends, dear friends, exploring and adventuring in ways I’d only imagined she would have, if she’d lived.
And there she stood, a bridesmaid in Evita and Stephen's wedding. I flipped through the pictures with tentative wonder and delight, as if the album were part of a dream and the slightest slip of thought would wake me into a dark, sisterless reality. Another page and she was dancing with Jazeel, Cal, and a man I could only assume was Cal’s husband at the time.
Anger struck at the thought of my grandmother keeping us apart, of Rhetta knowing and never reaching out.
I turned the page to a full view of the wedding party.
A younger Caelan stood beside Stephen as best man.
“He was my best friend.” Arms crossed, Caelan leaned against the door frame. He seemed uncomfortable, fixing on the carpet between us. “He saved my skin when I first got out. When he went missing, I made it my top priority to save his. I’m so sorry I couldn’t return the favor. Still don’t know where he went or was before running into you that evening.”
I stood and moved beside him. “Did you know about Rhetta, about me?”
He tipped my chin toward his face as though to ensure I understood the truth in his eyes. “No,” he said.
A dappled hand knocked his warmth away.
“The reaper isn’t family. It isn’t his secret to bear.” Based on the condition of her outfit and the thin rivulets of blood drying down her throat, Calico managed to halt her transformation, but she'd been mobbed by werewolves who hadn’t. “You shouldn’t even be here,” she hissed, pushing his chest. “Stephen is dead because of you!”
Caelan took a quiet step back. “His beliefs were his own,” the sheriff said. “I think he died protecting Miss Davins.”
