The safe cage of his arms loosened around me.
‘Should you be telling me that?’
‘You’re the one who can’t share secrets,’ I replied, tightening my grip on him. ‘I can’t think of one single reason why I need to keep anything from you.’
Gently, Wyn broke free of my grip, grasped my forearms and held me out at arm’s length. The loss of his body pressed against mine felt like someone had cut off a limb.
‘We should tempt fate,’ he said, his thumb rubbing against the inside of my wrist. ‘All I’m asking is for you to protect yourself.’
‘Protect myself from who?’
He didn’t answer.
‘Are you lying to me?’ I asked and when he looked down at the floor, my stomach clenched. ‘I know there are things you can’t tell me, but I need to know you aren’t lying to me. About anything.’
‘There’s a difference between lying to someone and only telling them what they need to know.’
‘And I thought I’d made it very clear that I don’t think that difference is worth much. Where were you last night? What happened exactly?’
‘I drove back to the house, I looked for the wolf but I didn’t find her,’ he replied mechanically. ‘Like I already told you.’
‘Then why couldn’t I find you?’ I asked, stabbing at my chest with my finger. ‘You’re always here, I can always feel you, but last night it was like you’d turned off your signal or something.’
‘You’re asking me why you couldn’t use your magic to hunt me down like a dog?’
I took a step back, stung.
‘That came out wrong, that’s not what I meant,’ he said, mouth puckered up as though he were about to curse himself out. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know why you couldn’t find me, Em, I couldn’t feel you either, but there’s no reason I can think of that would explain any of this. How she’s phasing, how she’s hiding, what that might mean. I don’t have any more answers than you do.’
‘What about your grandpa?’ I asked. ‘What about the rest of your pack?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Don’t know or can’t tell me?’
‘Emily, please!’ he exclaimed, raking his hands through his hair. ‘I’m doing the best I can.’
I clasped my hands, one on top of the other, over my heart, as if I could somehow protect it from the outside in, but it was much too late for that. The mid-morning heat swept over me and all at once, I was so tired I could barely stand. My sleepless nights, the attack at the beach, Virginia’s truth, Alex’s reaction, it all hit me at the same time. When I looked up at the house, the sun shone directly on the large picture windowon the second floor. Catherine’s room. It seemed to shimmer with an iridescence, like the glass had been replaced by moonstone.
‘You need to rest,’ Wyn said, catching me as I swooned against the table, my legs wobbling under my own weight. ‘It’s been a rough twenty-four hours.’
‘It’s been a rough year,’ I corrected, confused and exhausted and, above all else, unreasonably sad. ‘Maybe you should go too. We can talk later.’
‘Later today? If the world doesn’t end?’
Pinching my shoulders together in a shrug, I nodded and made my way carefully through the garden, calling on the strength of the hollyhocks and hawthorn bush.
‘Now who’s tempting fate?’ I replied, climbing up the kitchen stairs and leaving him in the garden.
The door to Catherine’s room opened with a long, loud creaking sound, as if to ask whether or not I really wanted to be in there. I did. I couldn’t say why but ever since I stepped back in the house, there was nothing I wanted more than a long soak in the copper clawfoot tub that sat in front of her bedroom window. The weather was too warm, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d taken a bath, but the compulsion was irresistible.
It took a little effort to turn the taps, stuck closed from weeks of disuse, but once they were open, the water ran clean and clear. I let it run until it was scalding hot, holding my hand under the stream until my skin turned pink, then red. I needed to wash the last twenty-four hours away. The hotter the water, the better. Without thinking, I tossed in a handful of bath salts from a collection of jars by the brass towel rack, some dried lavender, mugwort, lemon balm and yarrow, then took some of the crystals from the windowsill where they had been bathing in moonlight for a month – tiger’s eye, hematite, obsidian, jadeand lapis lazuli – and placed them on the wooden tray that lay across the tub.
When the water was almost to the top, I peeled off my sticky clothes and stepped in, barely even flinching at the scorching temperature. My hair floated on the surface as I looked around Catherine’s untouched room. The bed was made, her clothes put away. On the antique dresser, I saw a handful of silver framed photographs, one of Catherine and her husband on their wedding day, a baby dressed in blue and then another, dressed in pink. My dad wearing a mortar board and a scowling picture of Ashley that could’ve been taken at any point between her sixteenth birthday and two months prior. Then, at the very front, there was a photo of me and Catherine, kneeling in the back garden, examining plants. Ashley must’ve shot it, unless there was a friendly ghost lurking in the house with a Polaroid, but she had never shown it to me. Most likely because we were far from the best of friends when she shot it and yet, she took it anyway. The other photos were all posed and formal, wedding clothes and smiling babies, graduations, birthdays, but this one was more natural. Catherine smiled at me with what looked like genuine affection and I was delighted by whatever praise she was lavishing upon me. It really had been like that, if only for a moment, but those days had truly existed.
I sank down into the water, letting my hair float until it soaked through and sank around my shoulders, only my face breaking the surface. Around the outside of the tub, a circle of white candles flamed into life and even though it was still early in the day and the sun rode high in the sky, the light in Catherine’s room dimmed until they were the only source of illumination. The panes of glass in the window turned black and a wave of exhaustion came over me. I closed my eyes and inch by steady inch, slipped under the surface of the water.
When I opened them, I was in Bonaventure Cemetery. Wynlay on the floor before me, cut open, his blood blooming in the dirt. Seven figures surrounded us in a circle, the same as before, Catherine, Ashley, Lydia, Jackson, Alex Powell, Wyn’s mother and brother, the still unknown man all took one step closer, passing something between themselves. It was the branch-like sword, its silver blade and gold hilt hungry and rusty with blood. Each beheld it with reverence as it passed from person to person, Lydia to Ashley, Ashley to Catherine, Catherine to Jackson, Jackson to Wyn’s mother, Wyn’s mother to Alex Powell and Alex to the man I had never met. Somewhere in the distance, I heard wolves howling, in victory or anguish, I wasn’t quite sure.
