by Krista Walsh
Vera swallowed and ran her fingers over the stack of supplies Ara had brought with her. She didn’t know how much to tell them up front. As soon as she hinted that she intended to leave New Haven — most likely alone — they would fight her, and she didn’t have the time or the mental space to argue right now. The ancient power was still lurking in the corners of her mind, the strange-hatted people were watching, the demons were waiting outside her shop, and her own body was fighting to break down and sleep. She had to get this book done.
There would be time later to have it out with them. Maybe.
“The boots were needed thanks to our quick getaway from the farmhouse,” she told Ara. “And the supplies are to create a fake copy of the book.”
Awareness flooded Ara’s eyes, and she rested her hand over the bag on Gabe’s desk. “That’s why you wanted the castaway pages we salvaged from our repair books. They already look old.”
Vera nodded.
“But won’t these guys know it’s fake once they open it?” Gabe asked. “I’m guessing you don’t intend to copy the words exactly as they are, so won’t they recognize the differences?”
“I’m hoping not,” Vera said. “The language in The Fettered Wolf is barely more than gibberish. With the tracing paper, we can move some of the pictures over and alter them just enough so that if they try to recreate the symbols, they’ll be useless. We’ll copy over the words, but make enough changes to leave them as nonsense.”
A sparkling glee spread across Ara’s face, and she began laying the supplies across Gabe’s desk.
Gabe looked from one woman to the other, his focus lingering on Vera. For a moment, she wished he’d remove his sunglasses so she could guess at the thoughts running through his head, even if she knew that would be a bad idea. Not only because Ara was in the room, but because seeing the depth of his emotions would wreak havoc on her already addled mind. She needed to stay grounded. The back of his neck was bright red, suggesting he’d rubbed it almost raw while they’d waited for Ara to arrive, and that was a clear enough symptom of his state of mind.
As though she’d known him for years instead of a day and a half, she recognized the tingling energy around him, his dissatisfaction with the version of the plan she’d shared. Could he already read her well enough to know what she’d left out? She tried to keep her face neutral, to give none of her confusion away.
After a moment, he turned his attention to the piles of paper on his desk and dropped into his chair. “You’re the boss when it comes to bookbinding, so I’ll follow your lead. Just tell me what needs to be done.”
Relief hugged her that he hadn’t questioned her — yet.
Her stomach growled. “If you don’t mind, you can start by ordering us some food.”
***
Not wanting to draw attention to the building by having their meal delivered, Gabe left Vera and Ara to grab pizza from a place down the street. Despite the early hour, the thought of pizza made Vera’s mouth water.
While he was gone, Vera tried to concentrate only on the project at hand, but Ara’s silent questions were closing in on her. Finally she looked up and met her friend’s curious gaze.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on between you two?” Ara asked. Amusement sparked deep in her expression. “I could feel the tension coming out of this room from three blocks away.”
Vera released a breath and started on the next page. “I wouldn’t know where to begin. I don’t exactly understand it myself.”
“You’re obviously crazy about him,” Ara said, in the colloquial and enthusiastic manner that almost made Vera forget she was speaking to a centuries-old tree spirit.
“I am,” she said. “I won’t bother to deny that. He reminds me of Dad in a lot of ways. Just as stubborn and considerate. It’s bringing up a lot of memories of how he used to treat Mom.”
Ara’s brow furrowed. “But…”
Vera pulled her hair back and looped her shoulders to give them a deep stretch. “But I’m in the middle of a battle against two unknown enemies who want a book that could destroy the world. Even if that weren’t the case, I have a business to run. Where do I have room in my life for a man?”
The dryad raised an eyebrow. “That’s ridiculous. People do it all the time. If humans needed to choose between work and love, they would have died out eons ago, either from a lack of infrastructure or a failure to propagate the species. Give yourself more credit.”
“But my choice isn’t between work and love, is it? It’s between love and a promise I made over twenty years ago, and in this case, I think the answer is obvious. If I choose to follow things through with Gabe, my guard might drop long enough for someone to get their hands on the book. I can’t take that risk.”
Ara leaned back against the desk and drew her knees to her chest. “I think you’re about to say something incredibly stupid.”
“If I want to make sure the book is protected, I need to end things with him before they really start.”
“And there it is. That is the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
“That’s a funny thing to hear coming from a dryad. You must know better than anyone else the trouble love can cause.”
“And how much good it can bring. There’s no reason you can’t have both, Vera. Your parents would have wanted you to have both. I want you to have both, and I know what’s at stake.”
“If that were true, my parents wouldn’t have put me in this position,” Vera snapped. She sucked in a breath and let it out slowly, reminding herself that Ara wasn’t the person she was mad at.
Ara shifted across the carpet and put her arm around Vera’s shoulders. “All I’m saying is don’t rush into any decisions. You’ve been talking about this man for months. Now he’s here, and he seems to really care about you. You should have seen his face when we came into the shop to find you passed out on the floor. I thought he was going to lose it. He’s risking himself to help you —”
“Exactly. The book is not my only responsibility here. I need to keep you and Gabe out of danger. I know you can both take care of yourselves, but that shouldn’t have to include worrying about my troubles on top of your own. I care about him, more than I ever imagined I would, and I don’t want to drag him into a situation that would threaten his life.”
“But —”
“That’s the end of it, Ara,” Vera said, as gently as she could manage. “I can’t argue about this right now. Staying focused on this replica is the only thing keeping me sane while an ancient power keeps trying to crawl into my head. I need to concentrate and move forward. There is no time for distractions.”
Ara’s eyes were filled with everything else she wanted to say, but she kept silent. With a nod, she slid back toward the desk and resumed her task of trimming down the salvaged pages from their other books to fit the trim size of the octavo. Vera picked up the page she was working on and once more began copying over the unreadable scrawl.
In the silence that filled the room, Vera could almost imagine their debate was still going on. She tried to drown it out, but could only do so by repeating her own arguments in her mind, clinging to them like a life preserver.
Going it alone, leaving Gabe, would keep him safe and allow her to fulfill the vow she’d made at twelve years old. How could Ara deny that?
When Gabe returned with the pizza, the presence of a third person created a much needed buffer between the two women, but Vera wished it didn’t have to be the person they’d been discussing.
Before she removed the old pages from the cover, Vera slid the book over to where Ara sat on the floor. “What do you make of this?” she asked. “Have you ever noticed it before?”
Ara picked up the book and flipped through the pages. “What do you mean?”
“The binding doesn’t look right to me. More modern than it should be.” Vera forced out a breath and tucked her hair behind her ear. “Or maybe I’m just too exhausted to think straight.”
“No
, I think you’re right.” Ara tilted the book closer to the light that spilled across Gabe’s desk, then handed it back to Vera. “What do you think it means?”
Vera leaned forward on her knees. “I can’t begin to guess.” She curled her fingers and rested her chin on top. “I just wish I knew for sure that this will work.”
“Why would you think it wouldn’t?” Gabe asked.
“The book has been hidden for so long that no one but us should know what it looks like,” Vera said, “but what if the binding has been changed and there’s a history to this book we know nothing about? It could mean that someone out there could recognize the fake when they saw it.”
The tools Ara had picked up clattered in her hands, and she set them down on the floor beside her. Her shoulders trembled as she drew in a deep breath. Vera eyed her with concern. After a moment, Ara turned toward her, her eyes downcast and her mouth screwed into a grimace.
“I think I might know,” she said, and finally raised her gaze to meet Vera’s. Vera spotted the uncertainty in Ara’s moss-green eyes and held her breath.
“Before I tell you this, please know that I’m not supposed to be saying anything at all, and that everything we decided was with your best interests in mind.”
In Vera’s experience, no confession that started with those words ever boded well. Who was ‘we’? Where was this coming from? Her chest tightened with the number of questions filling her mind, but she held them back, settling into the silence that had become a protective mantle around her shoulders.
Ara cleared her throat and glanced at Gabe. For a moment, Vera thought she was going to ask him to leave, but then she dropped her gaze down to her hands.
“A few years after your mother died, your father asked to speak with me.”
At the mention of her parents, the muscles between Vera’s shoulders tightened. She squeezed one hand over the other until her knuckles turned white.
“Greg was alone in his study. He asked me to close the door, and I remember feeling confused and nervous. As silly as it seems now, I thought he was going to turn me out of the house.” Ara picked at her fingernails. “He had The Fettered Wolf on his desk. It was the first time I’d actually seen it. I sensed the power radiating off of it from across the room. For a while your father just sat there, staring at me. Finally, he told me he wanted to tell me the truth about the book.”
Vera wanted to demand she get to the point, but at the same time she dreaded where this was going. Why would the two people she cared about the most be talking about the book without her?
“He asked me if I recognized it. I told him no, that Susan had never revealed it, although she’d told me about it and her promise to keep it safe. Greg told me that’s what they had agreed upon. That as far as you needed to know, the book came from your mother’s side of the family, and the responsibility was hers. Only…”
Ara sucked in a breath and twisted her fingers together in her lap. Vera watched her brown skin shift, the pale green veins bubbling under the ceiling light, and wanted to scream at her to stop fidgeting. But she jammed the words in her throat and remained quiet, wishing she had some tea to wash down the bitterness seeping over her tongue.
When Ara spoke again, the words came out in a rush, stumbling over each other. “The book actually comes from your father’s side, and it’s much older than seven hundred years. From what he knew of the history, the book could be as much as two thousand years old. It was transcribed at one time from loose parchment into the octavo to preserve the knowledge in a longer-lasting vessel.” The confession out, Ara shrank in on herself. “He didn’t tell me anything more than that. I got the impression that he wanted to, but something held him back.”
Vera barely heard Ara’s last words, too focused on the revelation she had shared. Her father’s book? That made no sense. Her mother had told her the story of how her grandmother had smuggled The Fettered Wolf under her dress when she’d left Europe, and how one branch of the family had once buried it in a peat bog for five generations to safeguard the secret and the quality of the ancient pages. Had those all been lies? Or were they stories from her father’s side?
What would her father be doing with a book of such great power, anyway? He was human. He used to laugh about his supernatural family, how his wife and child left him in the dust. How he’d better make sure he remained a master investment broker so he had something to offer his superhero family. He’d met her mother while out walking his dog, for goodness’ sake.
“He said the book was his by rights, but your mother was the one with the physical strength to keep it safest. He said…” Ara trailed her fingers over the silver-leaf chain pressed into the leather cover. “He said your mother called it fate that he should have a book imprinted with the fettered wolf. That the universe must have meant for her to claim it, considering her heritage.”
A sharp pain stabbed behind Vera’s right eye. At first she feared the ancient power was making another attack, but she quickly understood that it was just confusion. She had always associated the fettered wolf with her mother, with her goddess bloodline. Now she was being told the wolf was just a coincidence? A random design chosen to keep any potential thieves uninterested?
“I know it’s hard to wrap your head around,” Ara said. “I never really understood the whole story either, but he told me as though a lot depended on my knowing, so I never questioned it.”
“Why didn’t he tell me?” Vera asked, and was gratified that she’d managed to avoid sounding hostile. Then she ruined it by adding, “Why did you never tell me? Especially after all of these threats started?”
“Greg made me promise. He was adamant that I keep it from you. He told me someone had to know so the truth wouldn’t be lost, but he believed the knowledge might put you in danger.” She frowned. “He kept repeating that, but he never told me what kind of danger. He had papers on his desk I had never seen before, and I wondered if they had something to do with it. One of them was some kind of letter on this unusual gold-leaf letterhead, and I thought I saw your mother’s name on it. But he never explained what they were, and I didn’t ask.” She raised her gaze again to Vera’s, and this time the guilt and uncertainty were gone. “He was desperate, Vera. I remember how pale he looked, how tightly he held my hand when he made me promise that I would never tell you.”
Ara reached out to rest one hand over Vera’s, but Vera made no move to return the gesture. She was holding on to herself so tightly she was afraid she might snap.
Ara cast another glance at Gabe, who hadn’t moved since she’d started speaking, then returned her attention to Vera.
“I know this can’t be easy to hear, but I really believe that everything he did was to protect you. I’ve done my best to do the same. I’m telling you now because I think the situation has changed. Maybe knowing the truth will help you piece together some of these questions. I know you’re upset, but please believe me, Vera — with everything I’ve done, my only goal has been to protect you. We’re family, and I’ve never forgotten that you did the same for me twenty years ago.”
She stared at Vera with such earnestness that Vera didn’t have the heart to voice the thoughts churning through her mind. After everything else she’d suffered tonight, this revelation was taking hold of her, flooding her blood with the bitterness of betrayal. A desire for vengeance rose inside her, but since there was no one she could take that desire out on, she quashed it, stuffing it back into her subconscious.
Keeping her anger silent, she rose from the floor. Her legs shook with her weight, but she held herself together.
“Vera,” Ara stood up in front of her, a note of concern in her voice. “I know you’re hurt, but we can talk this out and come up with a way to use the knowledge to hold off the thieves. If Rega’s gang gets the book first, it won’t matter. If the ancient power does…who says it needs to see the pages right away? If we made the changes subtle enough, it could take a while for it to realize the book’s not real.”
<
br /> Vera knew Ara was right. She should stay focused on what needed to be done.
But the room was closing in on her and she needed some space to think before the ancient power took advantage of her distraction.
“I need a minute,” she said, the words creeping out through the tightness in her throat.
Unable to offer anything else, she slipped out of the office and closed the door behind her.
She headed straight for the stairs, prepared to head out into the early morning air, but the thought of running into the ancients’ associates on her own, and in her current state of mind, was enough to make her stay put.
Instead, she paced the length of the hallway, the corner of her eye twitching in time with the flickering light overhead.
“Are you all right?” Gabe asked.
She jumped, not having realized he’d come into the hall. Once her heartbeat slowed, she slumped against the wall next to the darkened door of Gabe’s neighbor. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m sure I will be, but at the moment I just can’t believe she didn’t tell me before this. I’m so angry I could scream.”
“Then scream.”
She grimaced. “I’d hate to disturb the rats.”
Gabe chuckled. “At least she told you now,” he said, and slipped his arms around her. She wished he hadn’t. The way she melted against him only made her situation that much more complicated. “And by the sounds of it, she and your father had their reasons.”
“I’m not convinced they were good ones,” she grumbled. “This could change everything.”
“So do you want to call it quits?” Gabe asked. “Stop your plan right now and think of something else?”
Vera buried her forehead into his chest and groaned. “I don’t know. My anger aside, if the ancient power knows what the true book looks like, is it worth it?”
“It could be,” he said. “We don’t know what either Rega or the voice in your head knows about the real history. It is still possible they won’t know the difference.”
