Not that I got all of this for free. I paid a fair sum for what I hope is finally the cure.
I need to fix this soon. Now.
The witch bandages are degrading faster each day. They itch almost from the moment that Madeline applies them to my skin. The weirdest part is, I can feel the blood in my body, trying to drain out of an opening it expects to still exist. Because it does.
“I knew she would find something. I knew there had to be an answer,” Carl says as he turns into Griffith’s driveway.
This isn’t the first time he’s repeated something similar. At this point, I think the words are more for him than they arefor me. But I guess that’s how our relationship has been. Him always caring for my safety more than I have. At least, that was how it was when I was younger.
I do care about myself though. I want to be healed. I want to be safe. But I also have a lingering despondency, a fog of distress, a shadowy voice in the back of my mind that constantly tells me this will go wrong.
Things always go wrong. Don’t get too comfortable because your life will eventually be upended. Probably when you least expect it.
That’s the pattern anyway.
“I’m glad she found the cure too,” I say, keeping my worries inside, where they can’t hurt my brother.
Carl smiles over at me, relief in his gaze. And I feel sick because I don’t want to see all that hope drain away if this doesn’t work.
Please let this work—if not for me, then at least for him. He deserves to be happy.
I hate how my pain becomes his.
Before we reach the front door, it’s already opening for us. Griffith stands on the threshold. The wolf’s eyes track over me, as if he is searching for new injuries. I try to figure out when the shift happened. When he went from aggravated to protective. I wonder why he started caring.
And I try not to panic at the thought of another person being disappointed if this doesn’t work.
“I have the bath running,” Griffith says. “Scalding hot water. That’s what Bo said the spell needs.”
Mor told me she was going to send her mate to inform Griffith about their discovery. Apparently, Bo and Griffith are close, even though Bo is a monster and Griffith is a werewolf. Even though I grew up with Carl and Griffith being best friends, the divides in the town between different mythic types wereundeniable. But since I’ve been back, I can’t help thinking that those lines are blurring. That there’s more crossover.
The witches who run the library live in the Of the Wing section of Folk Haven.
Griffith co-owns a bar with a witch.
When I’m in town, I spot different mythic types sitting at tables together, walking together, laughing together. A melding is happening that’s taken almost a century since the town was first founded.
I’m glad to see the growth. It gives me hope that people can change. Become better versions of themselves.
“Gotta say, this is the perfect potion for me. One that lets me soak in a bathtub.”
I affect a confident grin, trying to hide my nerves about the situation. I don’t know if I’m successful with the men, but Shrimp must pick up on some level of anxiety because he sticks close to my side, pressing his large body against my thigh in a comforting manner. I reach down to scratch his ears and try not to consider what his life will be like if, in the end, this doesn’t work.
Try not to think about him having to live with Carl, just the two of them.
I guess Griffith would be there as well.
Would he miss me too?
The thought threatens to steal the rest of my faint confidence, so I hurry into the house and head toward the stairs.
After my first night staying here, Griffith offered that I could move to one of the guest bedrooms on the second floor if using the stairs wasn’t irritating my injury. He claimed that was the reason he put me in the ground-floor bedroom in the first place. But I liked how the space he set me up in was slightly separate from the rest of the house. Was far from his bedroom upstairs. I wanted to keep my distance.
Now though … I’m rethinking that choice.
As I ascend to the second floor for the first time, I take in the framed pictures he has hung on the walls. A lot are of him and Carl. Hiking. At Local Brew. I search for any sign of his parents, sure that once I see them, I’ll recognize the pair and recall encounters with them.
But there’s nothing. No slightly older versions of Griffith. Just him with his pack mates and coworkers and friends.
