I try to sniff back the tears, but they fall anyway.
“Ah, there you are,” Agatha says, coming around the side of the house carrying a couple of leafy branches and a selection of other weedy-looking plants in her arms. “I was wondering when I’d have a moment with you. Come on, I’m making a fresh brew.”
Agatha’s ignorance of my clearly fractured mental state might be intentional, she’s pretty switched on. But either way I can’t quite deal with the whiplash, so I remain where I am, frozen solid.
She stops at the door, looking back.
“You won’t solve anything just standing there.” She waves for me to join her. “Come have a gab.”
In the kitchen I sit at the farmhouse-style table with its chonky legs while Agatha goes about making some sort of tea. Honestly, this woman should have a tea shop on TikTok. The others still aren’t up, and Mal has vanished somewhere upstairs.
“You’ll have to excuse, Mal,” Agatha says. “Her mate’s passing has hit her harder than I think even she knows. She doesn’t mean to be so harsh.”
I snort. “I’m just trying to do what’s best for everyone. But it feels like everyone is refusing to get on the same page.”
Agatha drops some cloves in her pot and continues to stir.
“Packs and rogues have been at each other’s throats since the dawn of time,” she says. “I know your intentions are honorable, but you’re up against generations of distrust and pain. That’s a hard road to tread for any.”
“I’m the blood wolf,” I say, resting my head in my hands. “What is this power for if not to bridge those gaps?”
Slyly, she turns to look at me, then, most likely noticing my despondent expression, she leaves her pot and comes to sit next to me.
“You know, I’ve met a couple of blood wolves in my time.” She pulls a pendant dangling around her neck from beneath layers of clothing and her knitted scarf, a locket I’ve never noticed her wearing before. “My sister was one actually.”
“Oh, what, um, where is she now?”
Agatha takes a big breath. “She’s no longer with us, I’m afraid.”
“That’s horrible, I’m sorry.”
Gently, she unfastens the locket and opens it to look inside. With a tiny sigh she turns it so I can see. In the faded photograph is a woman who looks a lot like Agatha, but with lighter, straighter hair, a little younger, with a slimmer nose and catlike eyes.
“Jenny was her name,” she says.
“How did she ...? If you don’t mind talking about it.”
“I don’t mind.” A happy, faraway look comes over Agatha. “I like to talk about her, keeps her memory alive.” She sits back in her chair and refastens the locket, stashing it beneath the folds of her scarf and clothes. “She was a happy child. Was a little younger than you were when she started hearing the voices. My family, they didn’t know how to deal with her, you see. They were pack wolves, of course, and they only knew the version of the world their pack had taught them.”
“Sounds familiar.”
“All too familiar, sadly. Without the proper guidance, Jenny’s blood-wolf powers overcame her. She thought she was going crazy. My parents did as well. They put her in a hospital where her connection to the Lunar Plane dwindled.”
Agatha twists her lips in different directions.
“I remember the last time I saw her. It was like the life had been sucked out of her. They say she died of a heart defect, but I always knew it was because we’d stuck her in that place, told her to close herself off from her true self.” She lifts her head, shakes out her fierce curls. “After she passed, I left my pack. Couldn’t stand being near them anymore. I left my family and went into the mountains. Devoted my life to learning everything I could to hopefully help the next blood wolf who entered my life.”
Now she looks me directly in the eye and I swear I see a twinkle.
“I’ve been waiting, hoping one day, I could help someone the way I wish my sister had been helped.”
I reach out and place my hand on top of hers.
“You have helped me,” I say. “And not just in the mountains. You helped me realize who I was. And you passed that information to Omar and he’s been with me this whole time. So in a way, so have you.”
“That’s very nice of you to say.” She wipes at her cheeks with the back of a hand. “Gosh, I’m a mess. Anyway, what was my point? Ah, yes. My point is”—she nods in my direction—“people are stubborn, especially when there are things they don’t understand, that they fear, or when they’ve been hurt. And sometimes it can feel like pushing a brick wall up a hill. But when you have the privilege of powers like yours, you have to keep trying.”
I nod along, but inside I can’t help feeling a little disillusioned.
