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My thoughts were vultures, preying on the present. The second I felt happy, the moment I dropped my guard, worries and doubts tore it apart. When the first tear streaked his shirt, I pulled away and rolled onto the bed where I could hide my face.
“I'll be fine,” I said as he laid beside me. I thought he might touch me, wanted his comfort, but he left me alone to take up residence against the pillows.
“You don't have to be,” he replied in a soft voice. "It's not fine what happened to you. It's not going to be fine for a while.”
I turned his direction, frowning. “Maybe never.”
“Maybe,” he agreed, pensive as he regarded the room's decor. He rolled against me, laying his hand on my arm. When I didn't move, he let it fall heavier. His bright eyes were inches from mine. “Animals have healing effects on people. I could be a wolf, let you stroke my fluffy tail.”
The thought made me crack a smile. “You aren't fluffy.”
“No, Ma'am, but you had cats who were. Why don't you tell me about Samson and Igor?”
It took a lot of breaks and tears but I told him about Samson's bravery and the patience needed to care for Igor after her rescue, how much work went into getting her to trust me, how Samson always grumbled, but I could tell he enjoyed having the younger cat around. Caelan listened, genuinely listened to every word.
???
The room's curtains were outlined in a dull orange glow when I woke up. The sun had changed position, leaving the room gray. Caelan, who’d fallen asleep beside me, was nowhere to be seen. At half past six I took a quick shower and turned on the news.
Blurry footage from a bar. Over it a scrolling title: Werewolves in West Hartford? TheAttack on Nokhurst Crossing. I changed the channel. News stations worldwide aired the same footage or similar, gruesome variations. One featured a young woman with tears in her eyes, stumbling through a recount of what she'd seen. She'd thought it was a hoax, a kind of movie stunt, until a werewolf grabbed her best friend. The woman's voice trembled. She cried. Disgust welled in my stomach and I shut the TV off.
Caelan sat outside on a bench beside the room, watching the moon crest a stand of white pines. Bats skirted the lights of the parking lot.
I sat beside him. “It didn’t come down to a vote, but you got what you wanted. The Otherworld is out, at least in some capacity.”
“With technology these days, it was a matter of time,” he said. “We could’ve gotten in front of this, done things the right way, the smart way. Instead, chaos.”
“The two worlds colliding won’t be better for everyone, but I think for most it will. No more invitations. Speaking as a future hunted human, that’ll be nice.” I lifted a hand. “I know, I know, August and the Otherworld are gunning for me anyway.”
“It’ll stop a lot of killing,” he said. “Reapers won’t know what to do with themselves. There’ll be trouble.” He passed me a paper from his notepad and a small velvet box. “You better memorize the words. You won’t get but one chance.”
Inside the box rested a fine silver necklace with a dark stone fixed to a simple backing. When I held it to the setting sun, the sapphire seemed matte and dull. “You sleep any?”
“Wink or two.”
“Sleep when we're dead, right?”
“If we’re lucky.”
Caelan helped me with the necklace, and from then on we were quiet. He drove with a hand on my knee. Resting my hand on his, I sat with the paper on my lap, mumbling the binding spell over and over as the stars took control of the sky.
My blood, their blood, these words.
The hard part wasn't the spell: it was getting the wendigo to bleed.
As we pulled along the road near the abandoned zoo, I felt a sudden twist in my gut, a sickness in my stomach and true, genuine foreboding.
A half mile remaining, a stifling thickness pressed the oxygen from the air.
One quarter mile to go, the feeling worsened to light-headed nausea.
We arrived at the overgrown parking lot. In the distance, a partially-collapsed, log-hewn sign read, “Ozryn Zoo.”
Caelan's officers had turned out in full along with about thirty others. The ‘Connecticut’ sheriff, whose authority over the case extended across state lines, lifted me onto the tailgate of his truck, then jumped up and introduced me to the group at large with a warning that I was not to be eaten, bitten, clawed or otherwise intimidated.
“I trust you,” he whispered, “Don't trust them. They wouldn't even permit body armor for you.”
The east coast sheriffs were all present, as was August, who had an arm around Winona. The brunette bounced on her toes, smiling up at me in wicked glee. In the crowd I also spotted Jorge, whose nervous expression broke to give me a whistle and a wave. The woman beside his lanky frame, Jali, I thought, rolled her eyes.
