Beast stopped drinking and looked up at him. I/we nodded once. Deep inside, my thoughts plundered the empty place where Ed had been, a place that was now raw and bleeding and broken. He had been here, inside of us, all this time, bound to me as his mistress. Now he was gone. I needed to help him. I needed to help himnow. And I couldn’t.
Beast will hunt for Ed,she thought.
Ed is far away,I thought back.
“You’re all wet,” Eli said. “What’d you do, fall in the creek?”
Beast snarled.
Eli’s face seemed permanently creased with mixed emotions, complex weavings of fury, despair, anger, grief. He seldom laughed these days, and I was the problem. If he could heal me by shooting something, I’d be healthy and happy, because he was going through ammo as if it grew on trees, in the outdoor shooting range he had set up. But he was helpless in the face of a magical disease that no one knew how to treat. A rare moment of amusement lit his face. “You did,” Eli said. “You fell in.”
Beast snarled at him and thought at me,Do not like water. Hate water. Hatecoldwater. Water helped deer get away. Water stole deer.
I let my thoughts riffle through Beast’s memory and saw her landing in the icy water, plunging beneath. Inside, I laughed but said nothing.
Beast is best hunter. Water stole deer,she insisted.
Okay,I thought.
I hunger. Want to hunt bison in Edmund car.
There were at least three bison ranches within driving distance of Asheville, and we had this conversation multiple times a week. I figured that this time it was to cheer me up, to put my fear for Edmund to the side, but it was more distraction than comfort. I mentally counted to ten.
Ten is more than five. Hunt in Ed’s car,Beast thought, observant and yet cat-adamant all at once.
Ed’s in trouble. Ed’s in danger. So no, that ain’t happening.
Beast hungers. Will Eli give dead cow?
I’m sure he will.
My cell chimed. Beast and I followed Eli to my gobag in the mudroom, the small bag hanging on the rack with other winter gear. He swiped the screen, tapped in my security code, and started back to the office, saying, “Molly, it’s Eli—”
Angie Baby screamed, “My Eddie is in trouble! My Eddie! No! No!”
Beast growled, showing killing teeth. My/our heart did a fearful, arrhythmic bump-and-pause, and then raced too fast. Again, I searched for the connection to Edmund. Gone. Severed. As if it had been cut out with aknife. It was a strange sensation, as if a part of my own body had been instantly amputated and I kept searching for it, feeling something but... not the missing part. Ed was mine. Ed was gone.
Molly’s voice came over the phone and my attention swept to the cell. “Sorry, Jane. Angie woke up screaming from a bad dream about Ed. We’ve been trying to calm her down, but she grabbed my cell and called.” In the background, we heard the sound of Angie Baby’s screams diminish in volume and the crooning of her father’s flute magic, soothing her.
“Eli here. Jane’s big-cat at the moment. Angie may not be having a dream.”
“What’s happening with Ed?” Molly asked, a trace of fear in her tone.
“We don’t know, except that Jane heard Ed through the vamp-binding. Alex is searching for him.”
In the background Angie’s screams crescendoed, the pitch so high it hurt Beast’s ears. She turned her ear tabs down against the noise and thought,Kits... Kits in trouble. Ed in trouble.
“Eli, I—This is... Has Ed been killed? He and Angie have a blood bond. I don’t know what to do if...?” Molly’s voice trailed away, uncertainly.
I/we nodded Beast’s head up and down, then back and forth, an uncertain yes/no gesture. We stared at Eli, snarling and licking our jaw, hoping he would understand that this was really not right.
“Jane and Beast are upset too,” he said.
“I think we’ll come visit,” Molly said.
“We have the room,” Eli said.
“Yeah. I’ve seen the sales brochures,” she said wryly.
