In the Mouth of the Wolf

by Nicole Maggi

  I hugged myself. I understood her desperate need to protect someone she loved. It was how I felt about Jonah. Wasn’t I doing all this to keep him safe? “I won’t say anything.”

  She looked at me from across the room, her hands on her hips.

  I exhaled hard. “You don’t trust me.”

  “It isn’t a matter of trust.” Nerina stepped in front of Alessia, cutting off our eye contact. “It’s a matter of your being found out, and the information getting . . . forced out of you.”

  Whatever. I could withstand torture. I did that every day at school.

  “There’s nothing we can do about it now,” Heath said. “She knows, so that’s that.”

  “Yes, that’s that.” Nerina shot Alessia a pointed look.

  Alessia shook her head slightly and retreated to her chair.

  Nerina walked to the bed and settled next to me. “Tell us how your internship is going.”

  Finally. Back to the good stuff. “The first day was super boring. I had to watch about a hundred videos about how great the Guild is. But then on day two, things got interesting.”

  “How?” Alessia asked, crossing her arms.

  “I got invited to a meeting, but it became obvious—to me, at least—that it was a meeting for the employees who have no idea what the Guild really is, while the real meeting was being held elsewhere.”

  “Any idea what was going on at the real meeting?” Heath asked.

  I shook my head. “But it was big. All the executives were locked in a conference room on the top floor for more than two hours. If we’d had some sarin gas, we could’ve solved our problems in one fell swoop.”

  “So the question is,” Nerina said, “how do we get you into one of those meetings?”

  “I don’t think it’s that simple.” I shifted on the pillows. “The assistants don’t get invited to the meetings. Well, except Perfect Pratt.”

  “Who?” Nerina and Heath asked at the same time.

  “Mr. Wolfe’s assistant,” Alessia said.

  I cocked my head. “Way to be on the ball, Alessia.”

  Alessia stretched a hand out and fingered the grooves in the wood table. “I’ve seen them together. There’s a weird dynamic between them. Have you noticed that?”

  “Yes.” I leaned forward. “They’re attached at the hip.”

  “It’s not just that,” Alessia said. “It’s almost as if your dad—”

  “—is the assistant, and Pratt is the boss.” I nodded, my hair falling into my face. “Yes. I’ve seen it. But I can’t get close enough to figure out what’s really going on.”

  “You can’t get close enough?” Heath asked, his lip curling. “He’s your father.”

  “Not while we’re at work, genius. My dad practically ignores me while I’m there. And Pratt . . .” I toyed with a loose thread in the quilt on the bed. “I think he doesn’t trust me. He keeps me at a distance from my dad. It’s like he knows there’s something more to my sudden interest in the company.”

  Nerina tucked her legs up against her and leaned her chin on her knees. “So forget your dad for now. He’s not the only executive there that you can get information from.”

  “True.” I pushed myself off the bed. “Thanks for the powwow, guys.”

  “That’s it?” Alessia stood up and blocked my path to the door. “That’s all? You call this big meeting, you show up at my house hours early, you learn another Benandante’s identity, and all you give us is that the executives were locked in a room together? Are you kidding?”

  “Hey, you’re getting my services for free, so don’t complain.” I sidestepped her and put a hand on the door. “Although, there is one more thing.”

  “What?”

  I turned and looked past Alessia, right to Nerina. “It might interest you to know there’s a room in the Guild offices that can’t be unlocked.”

  “So get a key,” Alessia snapped.

  I shot her a bored look, then focused on Nerina. “I think you know what I mean.”

  If Alessia’s eyes had been lasers, Nerina would have been blown to bits. “What does she mean?”

  Nerina stood. “She means, no key can unlock that room. It has been bound with magic.”

  I met Alessia’s stunned look with a sweet smile. “It’s nice to know someone’s on the same page as I am,” I said and practically skipped out of the cabin.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Magic Can Suck Me

  Bree

  I had barely gotten ten steps across the pasture when Nerina’s voice came to me in the night air. “Un momento, Bree.”

  I spun around. “My parents are expecting me home.”

  Nerina came closer, her face lit by stark moonlight. Her eyes gleamed. “There’s no need to lie to me, Bree. I’m not your enemy.”

  I opened my mouth, then closed it again. Nerina put an arm around my shoulder. I stiffened a little before realizing that I didn’t want to shove her away. She turned me gently toward the woods, and we walked slowly, her arm still around me. Like the way Alessia’s mom had her arm around Alessia’s waist earlier. The way my own mother would never put an arm around me.

  Nerina leaned her head toward mine. “I was like you once. Angry at the world for what I saw as its offenses against me personally.”

  I hated it when adults said stuff like that to me: I know exactly how you feel.

  Actually, you don’t.

  But coming from Nerina, who looked my age, it was easier to stomach. Still . . . “When was that? Back when you were a mere teenager of a hundred seventy-five?”

  Shadows slashed across her face, fragmenting her features. “I was a real teenager once, you know, before I was immortal.” Something flickered deep in her eyes, something dark that disappeared too quickly for me to read. “Back then, I made many mistakes. Some I am still atoning for.”

  “Well, you have all of eternity,” I said, but my gut twisted a little. I’d made mistakes too, but I didn’t have all of eternity to make up for them.

  Nerina sighed. “Eternity, yes. A concept that is very different in practice than it is in theory.”

  “Yeah, the world must get super boring after a couple hundred years.”

  “Boring? No. But an immortal life sometimes feels too long.” She glanced at me. “But it’s not exactly a gift you can give back.”

  “You could’ve gotten yourself killed in battle.”

  Nerina stopped and stood in front of me. “Ah, but you see, I may be tired of immortality, but I am not ready to die.”

  We walked in silence for a minute while I digested that conundrum. When Alessia had first told me Nerina was immortal, I had thought how cool it must be, to see the world change century after century, to not only be a witness to all that history but also be a part of it. Then I started to really think about what it meant to live that long. Watching people you love die while you never age a day . . . That was freaking depressing. And after four hundred fiftysomething years, I would be exhausted.

  The shadows deepened as we passed into the forest. I looked up at the trees that hid the moon. With practiced ease, Nerina tapped the stone and opened the door to her lair. When we got to the bottom, I settled into the leather chair while Nerina worked the shiny espresso machine. I pulled a luxe cashmere throw onto my lap and smoothed a hand over its soft cable-knit. “This place wasn’t like this when you got here, was it?”

  “Of course not. Someone who didn’t care about thread count stayed here before me.” The espresso machine hissed and steamed. Nerina turned the knobs and lowered the pitcher of milk with the deftness of a trained barista. Seriously, it was as if she’d worked at Starbucks for twenty years. The one time I had tried to use an espresso machine, I’d wound up with steam burns on my wrists.

  Nerina made a tray with two lattes and a plate of biscotti and carried it into the living room.

  I picked up one of the lattes. I hadn’t had a decent one since we’d moved here. “So, uh, what’s this all about?”

&nb
sp; “I want to hear more about this room at the Guild.”

  She didn’t waste time. I reached for one of the biscotti. “Did Lidia make these?”

  “No, they’re store-bought.”

  Ugh. I pulled my hand back and took a sip of latte. It was way better than the excuse-for-coffee they sold at Joe’s. Over the rims of our cups, Nerina’s gaze fixed on my face. I let her stare at me while I drank half my coffee and leaned back into the plush leather of the armchair. Finally, I lowered my cup. “I don’t know what else to tell you. It was a room. With a door. That was locked.”

  “By magic.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “How did you know?” Her voice was soft and slightly sweet, as if she were trying to coax a shy kitten out a closet. “That the door was locked with magic?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just knew.” I squirmed in my seat and went for a biscotti even though I knew it was going to be bad.

  “But how did you know, Bree?” Nerina tilted her head. “The door wasn’t glowing, was it? There wasn’t a distinct, telltale sign of magic, was there?”

  “I guess not.” I was right; the biscotti was tasteless. I dipped it into my latte to at least give it a coffee flavor. “I mean, that would be pretty stupid, with all those non-Malandanti assistants running around.”

  “My point exactly.” Nerina set her cup down on the coffee table. “The magic isn’t obvious. It’s only obvious to you.”

  I stilled, the coffee-drenched biscotti halfway to my mouth. That was true. No one gave that office a second glance—no one except me. And it wasn’t as though there was a big Do Not Enter sign on the door. There was nothing unusual about it. I just knew that every time I passed it, I got a feeling up my spine. And when I’d reached for the doorknob . . .

  “It repelled me,” I said. “I couldn’t even touch the knob.” I dropped my half-eaten biscotti into my coffee and put it on the table. “Why? Why did it do that to me and no one else?”

  “My guess is the door is masked,” Nerina said. “A non-magical person probably doesn’t even know it’s there, or if they do, the spell subtly directs them away. But a magical person—”

  I leaned forward, away from the comfy pillows. “Um, I’m not magical.”

  “Yes, you are, Bree.” Nerina smiled, her eyes soft. “You were born with the caul. You were Called by the Malandanti. You have more magic in you than the average person does. That’s how you can sense the door.”

  “But I refused the Malandanti.” I picked at an imaginary pill on the chair’s arm. “Shouldn’t the magic go away once I refuse the Call?”

  “No.” Nerina took a sip of her coffee. “That magic never goes away. You were born with it. It’s like an innate talent for a musical instrument or languages. It’s part of you. Though I do believe it has manifested in you more strongly than in any other Refuser I have ever seen.” She shook her head slightly. “Maybe because you’re younger or because of your connection with your twin brother.”

  When Jonah and I were kids, we used to have a made-up language we spoke only to each other. It pissed off my mother something fierce. She was always convinced we were talking about her. (Half the time we were.) As we got older and realized we were two separate people and not two halves of the same being, we stopped using our language. But even now, every once in a while, I found myself thinking in that language. It never left me. And even though we never spoke those words to each other anymore, I knew Jonah remembered it too. We didn’t need to speak it out loud; we only had to look at each other to know what the other one was thinking.

  “Do you mean,” I said slowly, “that somehow I’m feeding off the magic he has, because he’s a Malandante?”

  Nerina tucked an invisible stray hair behind her ear. “That could be part of it. I’ve never seen a case like this before. So it is new territory for me, too.”

  “Did you know this before? When Alessia first brought me in?”

  “No, but I did suspect once she told me you were Jonah’s sister.” A little clock next to the sofa chimed, like fairy princess bells. Nerina glanced at it. “Oh, cara, it is getting late. You should be getting home.”

  “Are you kidding me?” I resisted as she came over and pulled me to my feet. “You tell me I’m magical, and you want to send me home? No way—I need to know more.”

  “And you will. Just not tonight.” She propelled me to the stairway leading back to the world. “Come back tomorrow. You and I will be meeting regularly from now on.”

  The second I emerged aboveground, the door closed, leaving me alone next to the ancient wall. What the hell was I supposed to do now? Go home? I leaned against the stones and wound my scarf back around my neck. Even though the ground was solid again, with no sign of the world beneath it, I felt as if the earth were still shifting under my feet, ready to knock me onto my ass at any moment.

  I hated that. I needed to be back in control. I dug into my coat pocket and pulled out my phone. “Hey, Josh,” I said when he answered. “You busy?”

  The good thing about Josh was that he was never busy. He’d never been confronted with a girl like me, someone who booty-called him. This town was filled with too many girls who’d had The Rules drilled into them by their prudish mothers. Fortunately, my mother was too busy throwing fits in grocery stores to do that. So I had fun instead of sitting by the phone wondering why the hottest guy in school wasn’t calling me.

  “Pick me up at the corner of Walnut and Main Street,” I told Josh.

  “I, uh, have someone with me.”

  Well, well, well. I walked toward the edge of the woods, the hard ground crackling under my feet. “I’m not into three-ways.”

  “But I can’t just—”

  “That’s fine.” I lowered my voice to a husk above a whisper. “I’m sure she’ll be able to give you everything I do. Just like I can find someone else to give me everything you do.”

  There was a short pause, so short I actually felt a little bad for the girl he was with. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  That was more like it. I climbed over the fence that lined the Jacobs farm and broke into a run until I reached the road. Solid ground was much easier to deal with.

  Josh had a hulking SUV with a back row of seats that conveniently folded down. Seriously, how clueless were his parents? It screamed sex car. But despite its comfortable roominess, the windows steamed up remarkably fast. I sat up and pushed my sweat-soaked hair off my forehead.

  “Where you going?” Josh murmured, his hand creeping up my naked back. “I’m not done.”

  “I am.” I slid out of his reach—another convenient feature of the big car—and dug for my phone in the pile of clothing shoved against the folded-down seats. I thought I’d heard it go off before, but I’d been too preoccupied to check.

  Sure enough, there was a missed call—a number I didn’t recognize—and a text from the same number. Come to the lair after school.

  I didn’t need ten guesses who sent it. I hadn’t heard from her since the other night at Alessia’s, and now she calls me? How did she know this was my afternoon off from my Guild internship? And I had chosen to spend it doing . . . I glanced over my shoulder at Josh.

  The phone buzzed in my hand. School let out over an hour ago. Where are you?

  “Come on, babe.” His murmur had turned into a whine. “My turn . . .”

  I’m on my way. I hit Send and held the phone up. “Sorry. Gotta go.” I sorted out my clothing from Josh’s—I’d become an expert in getting dressed in the back of a car—and climbed over the middle row to let myself out.

  Nerina was waiting by the wall. She had on a long plaid shawl, artfully arranged over her shoulders. Her arms were crossed, and she tapped a to-die-for boot against the bottom stones. “I didn’t think you’d remember which stone to push.”

  “Good thinking.”

  She made no move to open the door. “What took you so long to get here?”

  Did she really think she could pull a
ttitude with me? “I had things to do.”

  “Apparently.” Her gaze swept over my rumpled skirt and skewed sweater.

  I looked down. Damn. It was on backwards.

  “Apparently you had someone to do,” Nerina muttered.

  Oh, no, she didn’t. “Hey,” I said, louder than was necessary since we were the only two people here in the middle of the woods, “I don’t have to be here. I am under no obligation whatsoever to help you. So if you’re going to stand there and judge me, you can go to hell.”

  Nerina caught my arm as I twisted away. “I’m not judging you.” Her voice had a bite to it that I hadn’t heard before. It made me face her. “I’m trying to understand you.” She shook her head. “I don’t understand why you want to waste your time, energy, and talent on boys who aren’t half as smart as you are.”

  I tossed my hair. “How do you know I’m not screwing the captain of the mathletes? He could be a genius for all you know.”

  Nerina raised an eyebrow. “But he’s not, is he? He plays sports and drives a big car. Am I right?”

  Eerily so. But I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction. I pressed my lips together.

  Nerina snorted. “I thought so.” She punched the trick stone, and the doorway creaked open. “I’ve seen your type before,” she said as we waited for the ground to stop moving. “Sex is the only thing you can control, and you control it with a vengeance.”

  I watched her descend the stairs, fighting the urge to hightail it out of the forest. People had tried to peg me before—and a few school counselors probably had—but no one had had the guts to say it out loud. No one wanted to talk about the fact that I was having sex and had been for a number of years. No one wanted to have that talk with me. They just wanted to hand me a couple of condoms and be able to say they did their jobs.

  They only wanted to cover the how and ignore the why.

  I took a deep breath and followed Nerina down into her lair. “Is this why you called me here? To lecture me on how I should be saving myself for marriage?”