Anchor

by Jorrie Spencer

  But her mind was set on this course of action, for better or worse, and she found herself hoping that something was real, somewhere in this town of wolves.

  Chapter Three

  Angus felt like he had a limpet attached to him. Everywhere he turned, he found Caleb next to him. It wasn’t the same as when, years ago, he’d fostered his kids, Jancis and Rory—they’d been five years old and literally liked to hang off him.

  But it was the teenaged equivalent, Caleb slouching in the corner or just happening to saunter into the kitchen after Angus.

  Of course he could have shaken him off. Caleb had a wariness about him that suggested he’d easily be discouraged from anyone’s company. But Angus had no intention whatsoever of doing anything but nurturing this tentative bond between them. He made a point of staying in the house for most of his work over those first few days, so Caleb could get used to normality and the idea he had a guardian who was happy to have him around.

  At some point soon, he wanted Caleb in school, but Angus hadn’t broached the idea of education quite yet. Nor had he seen evidence that the boy could read. There were magazines and books about, none of which Caleb had picked up. Shapeshifters had a depressing tendency to be completely unschooled because of abuse, neglect or a simple lack of parenting ability.

  In this case, Angus would pin it squarely on the terrorizing father. The phone call from Trey came later than expected, but it did yield results.

  As usual, Trey got right down to business.

  “The father is John Davies. He came up through the Midwest to the greater wilds of Canada after some violence involving humans. I’d heard of him in my day, but not often. He was careful and his family small in number, when he got along with them. Antisocial for a wolf.” The irony in Trey’s voice didn’t escape Angus. Trey himself was antisocial for a wolf, yet had somehow been installed as the de facto leader of Ontario werewolves. Not only that, after years of solitude he lived with a lynx shifter these days.

  Clearly antisocial wolves weren’t all the same in quality of character.

  Angus was far from antisocial, and they were utterly different, he and Trey, yet Angus had few werewolves he got along with better.

  “So no greater ties to a pack or a rogue group of wolves?” Angus asked.

  “Not that I know of.” In that answer, Angus could almost hear Trey shrug. “Could be stuff under my radar. God knows there always is.”

  And that was about it. Trey hung up after informing Angus he’d contact him if he heard more.

  Next up was a conversation Angus didn’t particularly look forward to, but he needed some answers and young Caleb was the only source.

  He waited until Jancis went off to work that morning. Caleb was polite to Jancis, even grateful, given that she’d fixed him food and bought him clothes, but she made him anxious in a way Angus didn’t. No doubt because Angus had spent a week as wolf with Caleb. The boy needed time.

  “Caleb.” The boy’s gaze cut to him and Angus was pleased to see more eagerness than fear. Either he was very resilient or there’d been a positive force in Caleb’s life to counter his father’s presence. “I’d like to ask you some questions.”

  The eagerness faded to sullen guardedness. But sullen felt normal for that age, and Angus was happy enough to see it. He remembered teenaged Jancis and her desire to keep all her secrets from him, despite his being adamant she wasn’t going to sneak off at night to have sex with her twenty-year-old boyfriend.

  “Okay,” Caleb finally allowed.

  “Who is your mother?”

  He looked surprised, and he’d probably been bracing himself for a question about his father. He opened his mouth and closed it again.

  “You want to protect her?”

  Caleb nodded.

  “From your father, or someone else?”

  “My dad. Though he has friends who…help him.”

  “I’m not going to give your mother away, Caleb.”

  Caleb swallowed, accepting that. “Her name’s Shanna. She lives in Chicago, but my father doesn’t know that. I don’t think.”

  “Okay,” Angus said encouragingly.

  “It’s the one way she can escape him, living in a big city, but I couldn’t stay there anymore.”

  Teen wolves especially needed places to run. Chicago didn’t supply much of that type of wilderness.

  “So she arranged for me to stay at a few different places. But somehow my dad always found me.”

  “What happened the last time your dad found you?”

  Caleb let out a long, shaky breath and his gaze sheered away. He wasn’t submissive, that’s for sure. He liked to look Angus in the eye, not necessarily challenging, and the openness there gave Angus hope Caleb would get through this all right. But now Caleb stared down at his hands on the table and muttered, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Fine, Angus would circle around and get back to it. “So your dad has been able to find you repeatedly. How?”

  Caleb drew an invisible pattern on the table with his finger. “He’s smart. Between what he knows of my mom and his contacts in the shifter world…” He shrugged. “He figures it out. Though it took him eight months this last time.”

  “So he’ll figure out Wolf Town too,” Angus stated.

  That brought Caleb’s head up, and his startled gaze met Angus’s. He knew what the boy was thinking—Angus would want to get rid of Caleb before that happened.

  “I intend to be prepared for your father’s arrival.” Angus smiled. “You’re not going anywhere, Caleb, if it’s up to me. I hope you want to stay here for a while.”

  “I do,” the boy replied fervently.

  “Good. But you need to tell me about the last time your dad found you.”

  “I can’t.” That hoarse whisper and the strongest fear Angus had felt for days. He controlled his anger, not wanting to have Caleb react to it in any way.

  “Okay, tell me why you can’t speak of it.”

  “It was too weird,” Caleb blurted.

  Angus frowned, wishing he knew what that meant to Caleb.

  “I’ll tell you about the time before,” Caleb offered, a little desperately.

  “Why the time before?”

  The boy paused, and resignation seemed to make his body sag. “I don’t want to lie to you about the last time.”

  That night Rory dropped by after supper. Caleb had already met Angus’s son once, but Rory was one of the most engaging, personable werewolves one could meet, so Angus figured Caleb would do well to meet him again.

  Rory plopped down on the couch beside Caleb, close but not too close. “Hey, Caleb, my dad treating you okay?”

  For a brief instant, Caleb glanced Angus’s way, and his face seemed to shine.

  “You can tell him the truth,” Angus said as Caleb fumbled with actual words, looking for a way to respond to Rory.

  Caleb frowned until he realized he was being teased and his expression lightened. With a slight eye roll, he mumbled a yes at Rory.

  “Not doing too many dishes, I hope?”

  Since Caleb had done zero dishes and the idea probably hadn’t occurred to him, he looked a little puzzled. And concerned.

  “Don’t worry,” Rory added with a sly smile. “Dad’ll tell you when he wants you to do anything. He’s good that way. I know you’re just getting on your feet.” Rory shifted so he leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Did you know there’s a school in town? Small, but definitely functioning.”

  Caleb slouched farther into the couch, although he appeared more tense, not less. With a brittle bravado that was all too telling, he stated, “School and I don’t really get along all that well. I’m better off out of it.”

  Rory glanced at his father, then continued. “You’re fifteen, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Dad has to follow the rules of the government. They’re more than happy for him to be the guardian of a young werewolf like yourself. But he can’t have fifteen-year-olds hanging
out with him when they’re legally supposed to be in school.”

  Caleb’s entire body seized up. “I don’t want to get Angus in trouble.”

  Angus stepped in. “It’s not just about the government, though Rory’s right, that is a concern. We also want to think of your future.”

  The sullenness descended.

  “When did you last go to school?” Rory asked.

  Caleb put his hands together, began knocking his thumbs at each other. “I never did. Mom homeschooled me.”

  “How did that go?” At Rory’s question, Caleb gave Angus a pleading expression, as if he wanted Angus to tell Rory to stop this line of inquiry.

  But Angus stayed silent and Caleb reluctantly answered. “I wasn’t the easiest kid to teach.”

  Blames himself, not his mother. With his brief, sideways glance at Angus, Rory saw it too. “Well, there’s an assessment before you start. We can take you there tomorrow.”

  Caleb’s face turned a deep embarrassed red, and a whiff of desperation came off him. “I’ll flunk.” He jumped up and started pacing, like he was locked in the house. “Look. I just want a place to rest a while, before my dad finds me. Don’t tell the government, okay?”

  Angus stood up and walked over. “Relax.” He draped an arm over the boy’s shoulders and Caleb leaned into him. “Do you think this is unusual? Lots of shifter kids get the short end of the stick when it comes to education. We’ve had kids who couldn’t read at all. It’s not about intelligence, it’s about opportunity. We want to give you this opportunity.”

  In response, Caleb leaned into Angus more. “I can read,” he mumbled, “but I’m slow.”

  “That’s a start.”

  “I don’t get math.”

  “When have you learned any math?”

  Caleb sighed. “Mom didn’t like teaching math.”

  “Well, there you go.”

  Rory stood too, putting down the empty cup of coffee he’d finished. “Our high school is small and flexible. I promise you, you won’t feel out of place.”

  Caleb eyed him, clearly convinced Rory didn’t know what he was talking about.

  “Night, Caleb. I gotta get home.”

  Caleb nodded and detached himself from Angus, who gave Rory a hug. His son smelled of his boyfriend, Scott, which was all well and good. Scott might be the most skittish man Angus had ever met, but he was right for Rory.

  Once he’d left, Jancis entered the room. “So, how’d it go?” she asked, which made it clear to Caleb that they’d planned the school talk.

  Caleb simply looked at Angus, his big brown eyes filled with resignation.

  “That good, huh?” She smiled. “Hey, if Aileen learned to read at seventeen, you can learn anything at the young age of fifteen, kid.”

  Aileen wasn’t quite the example Angus wanted Caleb to emulate. She’d had one tough row to hoe and refused to accept some aspects of her humanity. But for better or worse, Caleb relaxed at Jancis’s words. As if he believed he might not be out of place, as Rory had claimed.

  There were moments after a nightmare when Mala felt like someone was watching her. It was crazy, given that in the dreams she was the one who climbed into someone else and talked to them—or attacked. Maybe this sensation was psychic payback. First she dreamed of having all this power, of taking control, and then she lost it in real life.

  Never mind that the dreams were always wolves wolves wolves.

  She should have been more shocked last year when the news hit the headlines about werewolves and that they really existed. It had been splashed over the front pages for weeks, making it hard to remain ignorant of them. Work had burbled over with conversation about wolves, until the boss had yelled at everyone to shut it.

  But she hadn’t been surprised by the shocking news, more appalled and unnerved that her dreams had known what no one in her life did. Nevertheless, she’d avoided reading too much about werewolves, when the reading material was everywhere, for fear she’d get obsessed about them in an even more unhealthy way. For fear that her own damaged brain would bring about more nightmares if they overran her waking existence.

  All that said, she had vaguely heard of Wolf Town, of course she had, even if she’d tried to block it out, avoid the front pages and the big news stories. No wonder her subconscious had served up that name in her dream, giving it to Caleb to utter. Despite that logical conclusion, she could not convince herself it was all in her head. A week after she’d last “spoken” to Caleb, it felt like her only choice was to take a bus up north and…

  And what?

  That was the big question. Whatever was she going to accomplish? She could ask around for a Caleb. Would the inhabitants of Wolf Town appreciate that? Maybe not, but they wouldn’t arrest her for the question either. If she got thrown out of town—could they do that?—so be it.

  The bus rolled into the Toronto station, and she glanced around at the people milling near her, half-expecting someone to be bearing down upon her. Her paranoia was too strong, and she forced herself to shrug it off as she mounted the steps of the bus and handed over her ticket to North Bay. She’d overnight there, then catch the regional bus to Wolf Town.

  If she’d had the money for a rental car, it might have been a smarter means of transportation. But she was a nervous driver and money was tight. The nightmares meant she lived alone, and an apartment in Toronto was not cheap, even a one-room basement apartment.

  She walked down the narrow aisle of the bus and settled into a plush seat where she felt more comfortable. She had the double seat to herself and the backs were high enough to hide her from everyone’s view.

  No one is watching you, she reminded herself. The only person watching is yourself. She sometimes thought she was slowly driving herself crazy.

  The closer Mala got to Wolf Town, the sillier she felt. She needed therapy, not a visit to the latest phenomenon in Ontario, if not all of North America. Gaping tourists were not encouraged, and after the first crush of them, there’d apparently been some beef up in town security. She’d been catching up on her reading about wolves during her week of unemployment. It had felt strangely thrilling to be reading about something she’d avoided this past year.

  Her secret, unhappy dreamlike obsession—wolves. Lucky her. Why couldn’t she obsess about…shoes or something? But no, wolves it was, in her dreams and in her nightmares.

  She got off the bus, hiked her pack up on her back and walked out of the small station. They had more snow on the ground here than in Toronto, no surprise. She glanced up and down the main road to see it looked like every other small town in northern Ontario she’d just bussed through on the milk run. There were no wolves in sight. She wondered if she gave off an I’m not a werewolf vibe that would alienate everyone she talked to. But from what she’d read, the town had plenty of non-wolf inhabitants. Wolf Town attracted wolves and those with wolves in the family.

  Two blocks down she identified a friendly looking restaurant and walked in. The waitress and all five customers turned to stare at her, and she had the impression one of them sniffed.

  Courage. She pasted on a smile and marched up to the counter to drop her bag at her feet.

  “Hi.”

  The woman nodded, and Mala had the same feeling she’d had on occasion when she realized she was the only dark-skinned person in a room full of whites and the whites all noticed. That wasn’t the case here, but she felt out of place, an outsider. Well, for goodness’ sake, she was an outsider. Focus, Mala.

  “What would you like?” the waitress asked.

  “Um.” Oh yeah, she’d do well to look at the menu posted on the chalkboard. She seized upon the first appealing item listed. “Tuna melt, please, and a coffee. Thanks very much.”

  “Coming up.” The waitress didn’t soften exactly, but Mala had the impression politeness had gone some way to ease the wariness in the restaurant. Which had Mala wondering if people here got tourists who came in saying rude things and asking stupid questions.

&n
bsp; That said, she had her question to ask. But the waitress made it easy. As she delivered Mala’s plate, she said, “Visiting someone in town?”

  Shaking her head, Mala watched the waitress’s mouth tighten. She was about to withdraw from Mala, and she didn’t want to miss the opportunity. Go for it. Take the plunge. “But I am looking for a Caleb. A teenage boy.”

  She could feel her face burn. She knew what her blush looked like, a deep, unattractive red. It made her look awkward. In her embarrassment, it took Mala a moment to realize that although the waitress’s eyes had narrowed, she hadn’t answered, hadn’t said something to the effect that she didn’t know any such Caleb.

  Good God, could the boy in her dreams somehow be real?

  The waitress glanced sideways, meeting the gaze of a tall, dark woman who had risen from her table.

  Grim-faced, the woman swept past Mala and out the glass door. Mala glanced from the door back to the waitress, unsure what was going on.

  “Want some dessert with that?” the woman asked, her tone frosty. Her pale eyes held a flat expression.

  “Um, no thanks.” Mala was having trouble interpreting what had just happened. It wasn’t that awful a question, surely? But the atmosphere had turned creepy, with the waitress looking at her like she was something to wipe off the bottom of her shoe and the customers who remained burning holes in her back. Or so she imagined. Mala’s imagination liked to go into overdrive. The source of all her problems, her father used to tell her with some regularity.

  She went with a perky, vacant tone. “I’ll pay up now.” She handed over her credit card.

  “Why thank you,” said the waitress with an excess of sarcasm, and took the card, leaving for the kitchen instead of going to the cash register.

  Mala snuck a glance at the customers who all suddenly found something to talk about. She really wanted to leave, right away. There’d been stories, of course, stories she’d disregarded, where people claimed Wolf Town was a dangerous place to visit with out-of-control wolves ready to attack at any moment.