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“I can’t stay with you.”
“That’s alright.”
“Believe me when I say I’ll know if you snoop.”
“I’ll behave.”
“Alright.” Caelan fidgeted, playing with the door lock. “Backup’s almost here. Would like to change the tire, if you’re okay?”
“Go ahead.” It was a wonder he hadn't already escaped the truck and retreated into the spring air and left this heavy staleness behind. “Hey, how can anyone enter Stag Hill?”
“The coach driver and footmen will turn back into mice within a few hours, Cinderella.”
“This isn't a fairytale.”
“Says the girl who lost her shoe.” He helped me out of the truck. “Raised dead run on timers. Not even the southern queens have preserved the state of undeath beyond a few days, let alone so many at this scale.”
“Does the necromancer need to be nearby to speak through the dead?”
“Once he’s attached his signature to the corpse, they’re his eyes to borrow whenever and wherever he pleases.”
“Was it the necromancer or the demon addressing us?”
“Hard to say.”
Blue and red lights filled the breadth of the road not fifteen minutes later. We learned a large oak had felled across the road a mile back, delaying help one step further. Caelan addressed a small assembly of werewolves. The majority stripped off their clothes, changing one after the other, hands and paws alike, except a photographer and what might've been a medical examiner. The pair moved to photograph the fallen woman and werehyena.
As the flashes faded, the dead woman's body stiffened and swelled. Blood leaked from beneath the body; the skin bulged and ripped across the bridge of her nose. Photographer and examiner, chatting, stepped back. With a steamy pop, the wolf within burst through the dead woman’s skin.
Caelan slipped into the driver's seat. I couldn't take my eyes off her, off the stretched, torn skin and fabric covering her fur in pale patches. “Death tells the truth,” he said. “Wolves for the first breath and the last.”
I stared across the cracked windshield at the dead wolf, at the living, and beyond the flashing lights into a night as vast and peaceful as any other.
???
Wedged on a narrow road between an orchard and public high school, the drive to the sheriff’s home couldn't have been prettier. We passed rows of flowering peach and apple trees, out to reclaimed farmland where stars hugged the horizon. Woods kept the nearest homes from learning each other’s business.
To Caelan, home was a two-bedroom ranch of flaking turquoise paint, a large garage and shrubs that hadn’t felt a gardener’s glove in years. Ugly, if I was being honest, and we had arrived past midnight.
The sheriff must’ve noticed my distaste as he said, “Hoping to be out within the year. Wanted a place cheap with room to roam.”
Land he had. His yard was flat; the back lawn stretched a good quarter mile before transitioning to forest.
Whatever hopes I'd had for the interior died at the art deco screen door. Garish wallpaper and shag painted a dated picture about as lived in as the day he'd arrived, judging from the stacks of cardboard boxes.
I ran a finger along his dusty fireplace mantle. “See you're going for a spread straight out of good housekeeping.”
“As stated, Miss Davins, I’ll know if you snoop. This is where I sleep. It's not where I live,” he replied, making me clean my feet with a damp rag before narrating the journey.
Kitchen, bathroom, living room, finished porch. Nothing spectacular, nothing special.
“Made a mistake inviting you,” he continued, pushing the door to the master. “Second bedroom, yes. Second bed, no.”
I grinned. “And they call foxes sly.”
“Got spare sheets and I ain’t staying so you should survive fine.”
The bedroom, at least, he cared about. The walls were a sapphire made richer by blackout curtains. The hardwood was refinished, the area rug soft, the bed a roomy queen, and the attached bathroom clean.
