3

After dinner, Philip went downstairs to the fitness center for some weight-training. When he worked normal hours, he liked to get his workout in early and get to bed early, wryly admitting that he was getting too old to survive on five hours of sleep per night. For the first month we'd lived together, I'd joined him in his early workouts. It wasn't easy pretending to struggle bench-pressing a hundred pounds when I could do five times that. Then came the day when I was so engrossed in conversation with one of our neighbors that I didn't realize I was doing a sixty-pound lat pulldown one-handed and chatting away as casually as if I were pulling down a window blind. When I noticed the neighbor double-checking my weights, I realized my goof and covered it up with some bullshit about an incorrectly adjusted machine. After that, I restricted my workouts to between midnight and six, when the weight room was empty. I'd told Philip some story about taking advantage of a late-night second wind. He bought that, as he'd readily accepted so many other of my quirks. When he worked late, I went down to the health club afterward with him and did my swimming and running workouts as I'd done when we first met. Otherwise, he went alone.

***

That evening after Philip left, I switched on the TV. I didn't watch it much, but when I did, I wallowed in the dregs of the broadcasting barrel, flicking past educational shows and high-grade dramas to tabloids and talk shows. Why? Because it reassured me that there were people in the world who were worse off than I was. No matter what went wrong with my day, I could turn on the TV, watch some moron telling his wife and the rest of the world that he's sleeping with her daughter and say to myself Well, at least I'm better than that. Trash television as reaffirmation therapy. You gotta love it.

Today Inside Scoop was following up on some psycho who'd escaped from a North Carolina jail several months ago. Pure sensationalism. This guy had broken into the apartment of a total stranger, tied the man up and shot him because he—quote—wanted to know what it felt like. The show's writers had peppered the piece with words like "savage," "wild," and "animalistic." What bullshit. Show me the animal that kills for the thrill of watching something die. Why does the stereotype of the animalistic killer persist? Because humans like it. It neatly explains things for them, moving humans to the top of the evolutionary ladder and putting killers down among mythological man-beast monsters like werewolves.

The truth is, if a werewolf behaved like this psychopath it wouldn't be because he was part animal, but because he was still too human. Only humans kill for sport.

The show was almost over when Philip returned.

"Good workout?" I asked.

"Never good," he said, making a face. "I'm still waiting for the day when they invent a pill to replace exercise. What are you watching?" He leaned over my head. "Any good fights breaking out?"

"That's Jerry Springer. I can't watch Springer. I tried once. Watched for ten minutes, trying to get past the profanity to figure out what they were saying. Finally figured out the profanity was all they were saying—a break between wrestling bouts. The WWF of daytime TV. No, strike that. At least WWF has a story line."

Philip laughed and rumpled my hair. "How about a walk? I'll grab a shower while you finish your show."

"Sounds good."

Philip headed to the bathroom. I sneaked to the fridge and grabbed a hunk of provolone that I'd hidden amongst the vegetables. When the phone rang, I ignored it. Eating was more important, and since Philip already had the water running, he wouldn't hear the ringing, so he wouldn't know I wasn't answering it. Or so I thought. As I heard the water shut off, I shoved the cheese behind the lettuce and jogged for the phone. Philip was the sort who'd answer the phone during dinner rather than subject someone to the answering machine. I tried to live up to his example—at least when he was around. I was halfway across the apartment when the machine clicked on. My recorded voice sang out a nauseatingly cheery greeting and invited the caller to leave a message. This one did.

"Elena? It's Jeremy." I stopped in midstride. "Please call me. It's important."

His voice trailed off. The phone hissed with a sharp intake of breath. I knew he was tempted to say more, to issue a call-me-or-else ultimatum, but he couldn't. We had an agreement. He couldn't come here or send any of the others here. I resisted the urge to stick out my tongue at the answering machine. Nyah-nyah-nyah, you can't get me. Maturity is highly overrated.

"It's urgent, Elena," Jeremy continued. "You know I wouldn't call if it wasn't."

Philip reached for the phone, but Jeremy had already hung up. He lifted the receiver and held it out to me. I averted my gaze and walked to the couch.

"Aren't you going to call back?" he said.

"He didn't leave a number."

"He sounded as if he expected you to have it. Who was it anyway?"

"A—uh—second cousin."

"So my mysterious orphan has family? I'll have to meet this cousin someday."

"You wouldn't want to."

He laughed. "Turnabout's fair play. I inflicted my family on you. Now's your chance for revenge. After Betsy's shower you'll want to sic your worst on me. Dig up the mad cousins who've been locked in attics for years. Though, actually, crazy attic-dwelling cousins would probably be the best kind. Definite dinner party interest. Better than the great-aunts who've told you the same story since childhood and fall asleep over dessert."

I rolled my eyes. "Ready for that walk yet?"

"Let me finish my shower. How about giving 411 a call?"

"And get dinged with a service charge whether they find the number or not?"

"It's less than a buck. We can afford it. Call. If you can't find his number, maybe you can get someone else who can give you his number. There must be more of these cousins, right?"

"You think they have phone service in those attics? They're lucky if they get electric lighting."

Call, Elena," he said, giving a mock growl as he disappeared into the bathroom.

Once he was out of the room, I stared at the phone. Philip may have joked about it, but I knew he expected me to call Jeremy back. Why wouldn't he? It was what any decent human being would do. Philip had heard the message, heard the urgency in Jeremy's voice. By refusing to return what seemed to be a very important call, I'd appear callous, uncaring. A human would call back. The kind of woman I wanted to be would call back.

I could pretend I'd made the call. It was tempting, but it wouldn't stop Jeremy from phoning again . . . and again . . . and again. This wasn't the first time he'd tried communicating with me in the past few days. Werewolves share some degree of telepathy. Most werewolves ignored it, preferring less mystical ways of communication. Jeremy had refined the ability to an art, mainly because it gave him one more way to get under our skin and harass us until we did his bidding. While he'd been trying to contact me, I'd been blocking him. So he'd resorted to the phone. Not quite as effective as bombarding someone's brain, but after a few days of filled message tapes, I'd cave in, if only to get rid of him.

I stood next to the phone, closed my eyes, and inhaled. I could do this. I could make the call, find out what Jeremy wanted, politely thank him for letting me know, and refuse to do whatever it was he demanded, knowing full well he was going to demand something of me. Even if Jeremy was the Pack Alpha and I'd been conditioned to obey him, I didn't have to do it anymore. I wasn't Pack. He had no control over me.

I lifted the receiver and punched in the numbers from memory. It rang four times, then the machine picked up. A recorded voice started, not Jeremy's deep tones, but a Southern drawl that made me fumble to hang up before I heard the entire message. Sweat broke out along my forehead. The air in the apartment seemed to have shot up ten degrees and lost half its oxygen. I wiped my hands over my face, gave my head a sharp shake and went to find my shoes for my walk with Philip.

***

Before breakfast the next morning, Philip asked what Jeremy had wanted. I admitted that I hadn't been able to get in touch with him, but promised to keep trying. After we ate, Philip went downstairs to get the newspaper. I called Jeremy and once more got the answering machine.

As much as I hated to admit it, I was starting to worry. It wasn't my fault, really. Being concerned about my former Pack brothers was instinctive, something I couldn't control. Or, at least, that's what I told myself when my heart pounded on the third unanswered call.

Jeremy should have been there. He rarely went far from Stonehaven, preferring to rule from his throne of power and send his minions to do his dirty work. Okay, that wasn't a fair assessment of Jeremy's leadership style, but I was in no mood to be complimentary. He'd told me to call and, goddamn it, he should have been there when I did.

When Philip came back, I was hovering over the phone, glaring down at it as if I could mentally force Jeremy to pick up.

"Still no answer?" Philip said.

I shook my head. He studied my face more closely than I liked. As I turned away, he crossed the room and put his hand on my shoulder.

"You're worried."

"Not really. I just—"

"It's okay, hon. If it were my family, I'd be worried. Maybe you should go there. See what's wrong. It sounded urgent."

I pulled away. "No, that's ridiculous. I'll keep calling—"

"It's family, hon," he said, as if that answered any argument I could come up with. For him, it did. That was one thing I couldn't argue with. When Philip and I first became serious, the lease on his apartment came up and he'd made it clear he wanted to move in with me, but I'd resisted. Then he'd taken me to his family reunion. I'd met his mother and his father and his sister and seen how he interacted with them, how integral they were to his life. The next day I'd told him not to extend his lease.

Now Philip expected me to go to the aid of someone he thought was my family. If I refused, would he think I wasn't the kind of person he wanted? I wouldn't take that chance. I promised to keep trying. I promised if I didn't get hold of Jeremy by noon, I'd fly to New YorkState to see what was wrong.

Each time I called over the next few hours, I prayed for an answer. The only reply I got was the click of the answering machine.

Philip drove me to the airport after lunch.

Prodigal

The plane landed at Syracuse-Hancock at seven p.m. I tried Jeremy's number, but only got the answering machine. Again. By now I was more annoyed than worried. As the distance between us lessened, my memory improved and I remembered what it was like to live at Stonehaven, Jeremy's country estate. In particular, I recalled the resident phone-answering habits, or lack thereof. Two people lived at Stonehaven, Jeremy and his foster-son-turned-bodyguard, Clayton. There were two phones in the five-bedroom house. The one in Clay's room was connected to the answering machine, but the phone itself had lost the ability to ring four years ago, when Clay whipped it across the room after it dared disturb his sleep two nights in a row. There was also a phone in the study, but if Clay needed to use the line for his laptop, he often neglected to plug the phone back in, sometimes for days. Even if, by chance, there was an operating telephone in the house, both men had been known to sit five feet away and not bother picking it up. And Philip thought my phone habits were bad.

The more I thought about it, the more I fumed. The more I fumed, the more determined I was not to leave the airport until someone answered the damned phone. If they summoned me, they should pick me up. At least, this was my excuse. The truth was that I was loath to leave the bustle of the airport. Yes, that sounds crazy. Most people judge the success of a plane flight by how little time they have to spend in the airport. Normally, I would have felt the same way, but as I sat there, taking in the sights and smells of the nearly empty terminal, I reveled in the humanness of it. Here in the airport I was an anonymous face in a sea of equally anonymous faces. There was comfort in that, the feeling of being part of something larger, but not at the center of it. Things would change the minute I walked out of here and into Stonehaven.

Two hours later, I decided I couldn't put it off any longer. I made my last call to Stonehaven and left a message. Two words. "I'm coming." It would do.

Getting to Stonehaven wasn't easy. It was in remote upstate New York near a small town called BearValley. As my cab pulled away from the airport, it was already night. Syracuse glowed somewhere to the south, but the cab turned north once it reached highway 81. The lights of North Syracuse appeared to my left, faded fast, then vanished into the night. A dozen miles later the driver turned off the highway and the darkness was complete. In the quiet of the country night, I relaxed. Werewolves weren't meant for urban life. There was no place to run, and the sheer crush of people often provided more temptation than anonymity. Sometimes I think I chose to live in downtown Toronto simply because it was against my nature, one more instinct for me to defeat.

As I looked out the window, I ticked off the time with the landmarks. With each passing mark, my stomach danced faster. Trepidation, I told myself. Not anticipation. Even if I'd spent the better part of ten years at Stonehaven, I didn't consider it my home. The concept of home was difficult for me, an ethereal construct emerging from dreams and stories rather than actual experience. Of course, I did have a home once, a good home and a good family, but it didn't last long enough to leave more than the most fleeting impression.

My parents died when I was five. We'd been coming home from the fair, taking a back road because my mother wanted to show me a miniature pony foal she'd seen at a farm along there. I could hear my father laughing, asking my mother how she expected me to see anything in a field at midnight. I remember him turning to look over the seat, grinning at me while he teased my mother beside me. I don't remember what happened next, no squealing tires, no screams, no careering out of control. Just blackness.

I don't know how I got on the side of the road. I'd been seat belted in, but must have crawled out after the accident. All I remember is sitting in the gravel beside my father's bloodied body, shaking him, talking to him, pleading with him to answer and not understanding why he didn't, knowing only that my father always answered, never ignored me, but all he did now was stare at me, eyes wide and unblinking. I remember hearing myself start to whimper, a five-year-old, crouched by the side of the road, staring into my father's eyes, whimpering because it was so dark and there was no one coming to help, whimpering because my mother was back in the crushed car, not moving, and my father was lying here in the dirt, not answering me, not holding me, not comforting me, not helping my mother get out of the car, and there was blood, so much blood, and broken glass everywhere, and it was so dark and so cold and no one was coming to help.

If I had any extended family, I never heard of them. After my parents died, the only person who tried to claim me was my mother's best friend and she was refused on the grounds that she was unmarried. However, I only spent a couple of weeks in the children's home before I was snatched up by the first couple who saw me. I can still see them, kneeling before me, oooing and ahhhing about what a beautiful child I was. So tiny, so perfect with my white-blond hair and my blue eyes. A porcelain doll, they called me. They took their doll home and started their perfect life. But it didn't work out quite that way. Their precious doll sat in a chair all day and never opened her mouth, then at night—every night—she screamed until dawn. After three weeks they returned me. So I went from one foster family to the next, always taken by the ones utterly charmed by my face and utterly incapable of handling my scarred psyche.

As I grew into adolescence, the couples who picked me from the home changed. It was no longer the wife who chose me but the husband, picking up on my childish beauty and my fear. I became the favored choice of male predators who were looking for a very special kind of child. Ironically, it was through these monsters that I first found my strength. As I grew older, I began to see them for what they were, not all-powerful bogeymen who slipped into my room at night, but weak creatures terrified of rejection and exposure. With that realization, the fear slipped away. They could touch me, but they couldn't touch me, not the me who lay beyond my body. As the fear subsided, so did the rage. I despised them and their equally weak, blind wives, but they weren't worthy of my anger. I wouldn't let myself be angry at them, wouldn't let myself waste time and effort better spent elsewhere. If I wanted to escape this life, I had to do it myself. That didn't mean running away. It meant staying and surviving. It meant studying hard and making the honors list even if I rarely went a full year without switching schools. Succeeding at school would mean acceptance into university, which would mean a degree, which would mean a career, which would mean the kind of life my social workers and foster families assumed was beyond me. At the same time, I discovered another source of power—the strength of my own body. I grew tall and rangy. A teacher signed me up for track-and-field, hoping it would help me get close to other children. Instead I learned to run, discovering the absolute bliss, the unparalleled pleasure of the physical, feeling my strength and my speed for the first time. By the time I was midway through high school I was lifting weights and working out daily. My foster father wasn't touching me by then. I wasn't anyone's idea of a victim by then.

***

"Is this it, miss?" the driver asked.

I hadn't felt the car stop, but when I looked out the window I could see we were at the front gates of Stonehaven. A figure sat on the grass, ankles crossed as he leaned against the stone wall. Clayton.

The driver squinted, trying to make out the house in the dark, as blind to the brass nameplate as to the man waiting by the gate. The moon had gone behind a cloud and the coach lamps at the end of the drive were unlit.

"I'll get out here," I said.

"Uh-uh. No can do, miss. It's not safe. There's something out there."

I thought he was referring to Clay. "Something" was an apt description. I was about to say, unfortunately, that I knew that "something" when the driver continued.

"We've been having ourselves some trouble in these woods, miss. Wild dogs by the looks of it. One of our girls from town was found not too far from here. Butchered by these dogs. Buddy of mine found her and he said—well, it wasn't nice, miss. You just sit back and I'll unlatch that gate and drive you up."

"Wild dogs?" I repeated, certain I'd heard wrong.

"That's right. My buddy found tracks. Huge ones. Some guy from some college said all the tracks came from one animal, but that can't be right. It's gotta be a pack. You don't see—" The driver's eyes went to the side window and he jumped in his seat. "Jesus!"

Clay had left his post at the gate and materialized at my window. He stood there, watching me, a slow grin lighting his eyes. He reached for the door handle. The driver put the car in gear.

"It's okay," I said, with deep regret. "He's with me."

The door opened. Clay ducked his head inside.

"You getting out or just thinking about it?" he asked.

"She's not getting out here," the driver said, twisting back to look over the seat. "If you're fool enough to be wandering around these woods at night, that's your problem, but I'm not letting this young lady walk god-knows-how-far to that house back there. If you want a ride up, unlock the gate for me and get in. Otherwise, close my door."

Clay turned to the driver, as if noticing him for the first time. His lip curled and his mouth opened. Whatever he planned to say, it wasn't going to be nice. Before Clay could cause a scene, I opened the opposite door and slid out. As the cab driver rolled down his window to stop me, I dropped a fifty on his lap and skirted around the back of the cab. Clay slammed the other door and headed for the front walk. The driver hesitated, then sped off, kicking up a hail of gravel as a parting shot of disgust at our youthful foolishness.

As I approached, Clay stepped back to watch me. Despite the cold night air, he wore only faded jeans and a black T-shirt, displaying slim hips, a broad chest, and sculpted biceps. In the decade I'd known him, he hadn't changed. I was always hoping for a difference—a few wrinkles, a star, anything that would mar his model-perfect looks and bring him down to mortality with the rest of us, but I was always disappointed.

As I walked toward him, he tilted his head, his eyes never leaving mine. White teeth flashed as he grinned.

"Welcome home, darling." His Deep South drawl mangled the endearment into a "dah-lin" straight out of a country-and-western song. I hated country music.

"Are you the welcoming committee? Or has Jeremy finally chained you up to the front gate where you belong?"

"I missed you, too."

He reached out for me, but I sidestepped back onto the road, then started down the quarter-mile lane to the house. Clay followed. A breeze of cool, dry night air lifted a tendril of hair from my neck, and with it came a dusting of scents—the sharp tang of cedar, the faint perfume of apple blossoms, and the teasing smell of long-devoured dinner. Each smell loosened my tense muscles. I shook myself, throwing off the feeling and forced myself to keep my eyes on the road, concentrating on doing nothing, not talking to Clay, not smelling anything, not looking left or right. I didn't dare ask Clay what was going on. That would mean engaging him in conversation, which would imply that I wanted to talk to him. With Clay, even the simplest overtures were dangerous. As much as I wanted to know what was happening, I'd have to hear it from Jeremy.

When I reached the house, I paused at the door and looked up. The two-story stone house seemed not to loom over me, but to lean back, expectant. The welcome was there, but muted, waiting for me to make the first move. So very much like its owner. I touched one of the cool stones and felt a rush of memory leap out to greet me. Pulling away, I flung open the door, threw my overnight bag to the floor and headed for the study, expecting to find Jeremy reading by the fireplace. He was always there when I came home, not waiting at the gate like Clay, but waiting nonetheless.

The room was empty. A folded copy of Milan's daily paper Corrieredella Sera lay beside Jeremy's chair. Stacks of Clay's anthropology magazines and research publications covered the couch and desk. The main phone rested on the desk and appeared to be intact and plugged in.

"I called," I said. "Why wasn't anyone here?"

"We were here," Clay said. "Around, anyway. You should have left a message."

"I did. Two hours ago."

"Well, that explains it. I've been out by the gate all day waiting for you, and you know Jer never checks the machine."

I didn't ask how Clay knew I was coming back today when I hadn't left a message. Nor did I question why he'd spent the entire day sitting at the gate. Clay's behavior couldn't be measured by human standards of normalcy. . . or by any standards of normalcy at all.

"So where is he?" I asked.

"Dunno. I haven't seen him since he brought out my dinner a few hours ago. He must have gone out."

I didn't need to check the garage for Jeremy's car to know Clay didn't mean he'd gone out in the usual sense. Common human phrases took on new meanings at Stonehaven. Going out meant he'd gone for a run—and that didn't mean he'd gone jogging.

Did Jeremy expect me to fly all the way here, then wait on his convenience? Of course he did. Was it punishment for ignoring his summons? Part of me wished I could accuse him of that, but Jeremy was never petty. If he'd planned a run for tonight, he'd have gone, regardless of whether I was coming or not. A sliver of hurt ran through my anger, but I tried to disown it. Did I expect Jeremy to be waiting for me like Clay? Of course not. Didn't expect it and didn't care about it. Really. I was pissed off, nothing more. Two could play this game. Jeremy valued his privacy when he ran. So what was I going to do? Invade that privacy, of course. Jeremy may never be petty, but I sure as hell could be.

"Out?" I said. "Well then, I'll just have to find him."

I swerved to pass Clay, heading for the door. He stepped in front of me.

"He'll be back soon. Sit down and we'll—"

I sidestepped Clay on my way to the rear hall and the half-open back door. Clay followed at my heels, keeping pace a step behind. I walked through the walled garden to the path leading into the forest. The wood-chip path crunched underfoot. From beyond, the night smells began to sift in: burning leaves, distant cattle, wet soil—myriad inviting scents. Somewhere in the distance a mouse shrieked as an owl snatched it from the forest floor.

I kept walking. Within fifty feet the trail dwindled to a thin path of trodden grass, then disappeared into the undergrowth. I paused and sniffed the air. Nothing—No scent, no sound, no sign of Jeremy. At that moment, I realized I heard no sound at all, not even the clomp of Clay's footsteps behind me. I turned and saw only trees.

"Clayton!" I shouted.