“Bless your mother,” he says, pulling me closer. “And bless your Devil.” It’s the first time I’ve ever mentioned his name and haven’t gotten a sideways glance.
“REMEMBER,” ARTHUR WARNS as we step back onto the porch of the big house. “Not a word. We mustn’t raise any suspicion. But keep your eyes and ears aware, my boy. Always aware.”
He shows me to a room at the top of the house, a loft space turned into a wide, low-ceilinged room. There’s another wide, flat television, mounted to the wall. Bigger than anything I’ve ever owned. A long cabinet, covered with various bottles of liquor, dressers full of clothes that are somehow my size. New clothes.
There’s a wide bed, with the softest mattress I’ve ever laid on. There’s even a small en suite bathroom with a sink and a toilet and a shower stall. Every amenity, just like the man said. I can’t help but think of the jail cell Officer Friendly dropped me in, or the hospital room where I first met McQueen. Or the hospital rooms I spent months at a time in, thanks to Doctor Rhodes.
Rhodes. Shit. I haven’t taken my meds in days. I pat at my pockets and realize they’re empty, except for my wallet and the little jade statue. I take them out and set them on top of the dresser, like I’m moving into a motel room for the night. Staking my claim.
I also realize that I haven’t washed in days.
I peel off my clothes and stand in front of the mirror, looking for wounds. Maybe looking for spots where the fur shows through. There’s a huge yellow stain around my ribs, where the pain used to be. By all accounts, I should probably be dead. If not dead, I should be black and blue and barely moving. There’s a pale white line on my leg. When I look at it I feel a twinge of heat, and I smell blood, I taste raw flesh. I taste that raw steak, fresh out of the package, bursting with red juices.
I stare deep into those emerald green eyes in the mirror.
“Are you in there?” I ask them. “What are you? Huh?”
Man? Monster? Láng rén?
Hero?
Say it.
Say it, asshole.
“Werewolf.”
It still sounds like a joke.
THEY ARE ALL sitting at the long wood table when I come into the room. Arthur and Emma on the sides. Magus at the head of the table, a long way down. He waves me into the chair on the opposite end, half-standing as I sit, still playing the gentleman.
“Please, James.” He smirks.
“Finn,” I growl, fingers gripping the arms of the chair. I can feel the wood splintering in my fingers. I can hear it creaking and cracking in my grip.
“Of course. Finn,” he says, setting himself softly on his seat, folding his fingers in front of himself and raising an eyebrow. “I apologize. It took quite a while to find you, and all of the records, all of the information, showed you as having been called James Finn.”
“Jimmy Finn is dead.”
“I completely understand, Finn. I’ve seen many names and many lives in my own time,” Magus replies. “We can’t all be so fortunate as Arthur here and spend our whole lives as master of our own domain.”
I look at Arthur. He’s sitting stoic in his place, fingers tight around the head of his cane, staring straight ahead at Emma, who is staring at her plate. She is lovely, shoulders bare and slender arms at her sides, hands folded out-of-sight under the table. Her dark hair is tucked behind one elfin ear, spilling around her face like a tangle of black tentacles. Lovely, but semi-conscious.
“I trust you found your room satisfactory.” Magus continues, “I’m glad you found the bath. Frankly, you were almost rivalling Mister McQueen’s prodigious musk.”
Magus laughs. No one joins him in his merriment.
I regard him carefully, trying to keep Arthur’s warnings in the front of my mind, but my curiosity gets the better of me.
“So what’s your deal?” I ask him, playing it casual, picking up the wine glass and sniffing deep. “Is it in the wine, or what?”
“I beg your pardon?” he says, in that prim accent. “Is what in the wine?”
“Whatever you’re doping everybody with. Or maybe it’s in the food? The water?”
He snuffs that one off, cracks his fingers into fists.
“I assure you, Finn, there is nothing wrong with the wine.” He says, standing to his full height and pushing his chair back, “It was quite expensive and very difficult to acquire.”
He struts past Emma, trailing a hand across her shoulders, caressing her, but keeping his eyes locked on mine as he creeps up, leans in close to me, lifts my glass, sniffs, swirls the drink inside, then brings it to his lips and drains it dry.
He puts his long fingers on my shoulder.
“Whatever, I wonder, would give you the notion that I’m poisoning my own family?” He darts a glance at Arthur, then gives me the same look Devil gives me when I’m not catching on fast enough. Except this time, I’m not intimidated by the smartest guy in the room.
“Family?” I ask as he moves back to his own seat, watching him as he seems to float to the other end of the room. “How, exactly, did you come to be Lord of Bensonhall?”
He laughs, sits calmly, chair still away from the table, and flips out a napkin across his folded legs.
“Please,” he says, gesturing to the wine. “Surely you trust me now?”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
“Quel dommage,” he shrugs, lifting his own glass. “To the return of the prodigal son.”
“You were saying?”
“Emma, my love, tell Finn our story.” He smiles, waving that hand full of long fingers in her direction.
She turns and smiles at me, the fog in her eyes lightening, but not entirely lifting.
“Finn,” she says, dreamily. “Have some wine.”
I almost give in. I really could use a fucking drink. It took everything I had not to crack at least one of the thirty bottles lining the cabinet in my room.
I chance a look at Arthur. “The wine is lovely, Finn,” he says, winking and gripping his cane.
I take the bottle in front of me and pour a half cup. I raise it to my host, pretend a sip, and make a little sound of approval.
“How did you two meet?” I ask Emma directly.
She looks confused. She turns to Magus, then Arthur, then back to me, before Magus speaks up.
“You remember, love. We met when you were in Seattle. We shared coffee in the rain.”
“Coffee and rain in Seattle, huh? Sounds like it was meant to be.”
Magus turns his thin smile on me again.
“I do believe I’m sensing some hostility, Cousin Finn.”
“I’m not your fucking cousin.”
Arthur’s eyes widen, just a shade. Warning me off.
Magus strokes at his bottom lip.
“Nonetheless, my friend. If not for me, you would never have found your family. You would, instead, still be locked up in a hospital, taken for a maniac, would you not?”
“I’m not entirely sure it wasn’t your man that put me in there. I smelled him following me for a week.”
Magus laughs, a deep, maniacal laugh.
“He does have quite a stench.”
I keep my eyes on his hands. There’s something I don’t like about those long fingers.
“Well, you know how easy it is to pick up a scent, right?”
The laugh dies in his throat and is replaced with darkness.
“Whatever do you mean?”
“I mean, if you’re part of the family, if you’re one of us . . .”
His teeth come out under those thin lips. The bottom teeth crammed together on one side, crooked and jagged. At least one of them is gold and catches the light from the candle like a glowing ember inside his mouth.
“You mean a loup garou? A Were-wolf,” he says in that maddening accent. “Dressed of fur, and long of tooth?”
It must show in my face. I can see the look reflected in his coal black eyes.
He’s got me. Gambit lost. Arthur hangs his head.
Magus swallows what’s left in his glass, then pats the table.
“Emma, darling, would you mind bringing out our repast? Our guest must be famished.”
Then, to me, “Finn, I trust this will meet with your approval.”
His crooked teeth hiding under that smile.
I watch Emma push herself away from the table and rise silently, stepping out of the room, her bare feet barely making a sound on the wooden floor.
I ask him again.
“So what did you do to her, then? If you’re not drugging the food?”
Magus spins his long fingers out from his hands, the ten rings dancing in the candlelight. He shows me his empty palms, spins the fingers, into his palm, back out again. Now his hands hold two lush red roses. No stems, just the blood red crests, each one a perfect arrangement of endless red lips. He spins the fingers again, crushing the petals in his fists. His fingers spin, in and out. Open, closed. Full, empty. Then he closes the fists once more, shows those crooked teeth, and flicks the long fingers toward me, with bursts of flame exploding from each palm. He catches the balls of fire, rolls them around his hands like they were little foam balls, over, under, spinning and rolling them from hand to hand, top to bottom, fingers to palm. It doesn’t burn, but it looks so real, those blue flames, roiling to orange and reflecting off of his black eyes and his gold teeth. Then he rolls them out to the ends of his fingers, and the two fireballs split into jets of flame, spurting from the ends of each finger, a candelabra of flesh and bone.
“Nice trick,” I snarl.
He snaps his fingers and the lights go out. Just the long fingers of empty hands.
Emma comes in behind me. I smell the dark chocolate and vanilla of her footsteps. She moves past me, placing Magus’ plate in front of him, for which he thanks her with a wink and a kiss, blown across the table as she drops Arthur’s next to his cup.
“Bon apetit,” Magus says as she slides the plate in front of me.
It’s four fingers, bloody and ragged at the stumps, arranged on the plate in a fan, with a few sprigs of parsley. I stare at them. I hear McQueen in my head.
That must have been a bitch to bring up!
I’m about to scream. About to run. I feel my gorge rise. I hear Magus laughing.
Then my head clears. I feel something against my arm, something cold and calm.
I look at Arthur. He nods and holds up a carrot on his fork. The cane, in his other hand, beneath the table, somehow breaking Simon’s spell.
I look down at my plate—a small breast of chicken in some kind of white sauce, carrots fanned out next to a sprig of parsley, mashed potatoes.
“Nice trick.” I swallow the lump in my throat and reach for the glass of water.
THE REST OF the dinner is more of the same. I am famished, so I eat, despite my instincts, or maybe because of them. I wolf down two plates of the chicken and vegetables. I stay away from the wine.
After we eat, more of Magus’ bullshit, while he tells me some story of how he was just a sailor on leave, never thought he’d meet someone else like him, until he came across Emma, followed her scent through the Pike Place Market, chased her down and begged her to talk to him. It’s all bullshit. Nobody like us could choose a life out on a boat, with so little room to run, so little green around us, no earth under our feet. Even I know that much, and for all of his talk of following scents, I haven’t seen him sniff at the air, even widen a nostril, not even when Emma came into the room. How is that possible?
He tells his story with Emma on his lap, nuzzling at his neck, while Arthur sits silently beside me.
When I finally excuse myself, Magus cuts Arthur loose to show me to my room. Emma stays wrapped around him, oblivious to everything else around her.
“So, what?” I ask Arthur as we crest the stairs, presumably out of earshot. “He’s some kind of magician?”
Arthur whispers, “Some foul sorcerer, yes. He is the player of the harp. Many of us have already fallen prey to them. I’m not entirely sure of his endgame, but you are certainly a part of it. Be wary, Finn. Be strong.”
23
“COME ON, FINN! Run with me!”
Back in the room with no walls. Now I see it. It’s not that there are no walls, it’s that the walls are moving. White flowing from the edges of this place, fluid, shifting. The white curtains flowing in the room full of echoes.
The piano is singing to us, to me and Emma. She’s spinning, twirling. Each time she turns, she becomes something new. Little girl into woman into wolf. The little girl laughs, and it echoes from nowhere, climbing and falling with the notes of the song. She’s singing. Emma is singing, and Little Finn is laughing beside her.
I’m watching them spin together. Spin, and sing, and laugh. I’m me. I’m full-grown Finn. Long and old and confused, but for once, I’m not that scared little boy.
“Emma!” The voice I hear is not my mother’s.
Emma stops spinning in her little girl form. Little Finn is holding her hand. They both stop spinning and stare down the long hall. Two sets of green eyes, different, but the same. Both look terrified.
The children cling to each other. The room changes, white to brown.
“Finn. Hide,” she says.
Little Emma pulls little Finn under a long couch, the world close on top of them, dark and solid.
Out in the light of the room, feet stomp the floor.
“Emma! Finn! EMMA!”
There is something very wrong with that voice.
It’s cracking, full of static, like a radio station not quite tuned in.
It fills with gravel and rage.
“Finn!”
Another pair of feet. Two people. Naked. A man and a woman. She is beautiful. Like the little girl, dark hair and olive eyes. He is tall and thick with muscle, covered with thick hair.
She claws at his face as he grips her arms, both drawing crimson trails beneath their fingertips. Their faces are twisting, breaking, falling apart in front of me, faces falling away to reveal gnashing fangs beneath. Nothing but teeth. So many teeth.
And then the people are gone.
Two dogs—two wolves—are tearing each other to pieces. Blood and fur and terrible noises.
I hear screaming. Loud and piercing. Like a thousand crows calling in unison, screeching with all their might. It’s coming from inside me. I feel a touch against my hand. I don’t recoil. I don’t start. It’s warm, comforting. Tiny fingers wrapping around mine. She is beside me. I turn and look into those olive eyes, so deep and calm. There are vast forests inside the green of those eyes.
“It’s okay, Finn,” she says. “We can go home.”
I WAKE UP wet. I’ve sweat through my clothes, through the sheets. The window is open to the night, and a cold autumn wind has laid icy fingers on the room.
I’m up shutting the window and into the bathroom on instinct, stripping off cold, wet clothes, firing up a hot shower. I wipe the steam from the mirror and look into a haggard face, new beard peppered with grey, dark caves hiding my eyes. I stare into those eyes trying to see what everyone else sees. Some strange birthright, some familiarity. I wonder if my father’s eyes were the same.
I need some air.
THE NIGHT AIR is cool and crisp and clean. I can hear the water running its course down the stream, mumbling to itself as it goes. I hear more water, rushing fast and hard, somewhere behind the curtain of trees. I take a deep breath and let it tingle out to my hands and my feet, curling the grass up under my bare toes.
The sky is obsidian bright, a thousand pinpoints of light, alive and dancing, a million miles away. The moon glows silver and wide, nearly-full. It pulls at me, deep inside, so hard that I expect to fold in on myself and turn inside-out, flip-turning into some new, better, version of myself. There’s nothing but potential in that moon, in the clear black sky, waiting to be filled.
I smell smoke off in the direction of the smaller cabins. Smoke, and so
mething else. I strain to hear it, but there are voices, one deeper, rougher—McQueen, grunting. Swearing under his breath, whispering.
The other voice is muffled, not much more than a sleepy whine. Judging by how they left in the afternoon, and how Jules had acted earlier, I’m imagining any number of situations, none of them comforting.
My suppositions are interrupted by a rustle from behind me, something moving in the trees.
I turn to face two small wolves, seemingly identical, brown and grey. They stand on thin-looking ankles and stare past me with their green eyes, watching where I had been listening. Looking from the cabin to me, then back to the cabin, almost expectantly. It doesn’t even seem strange to me, there’s no question in my mind. Two twelve-year-old boys, blood of my blood. They just happen to be wolves right now.
“The fuck do you want me to do? Go fight some psycho with a crossbow? She’s your sister. Besides, it doesn’t sound like she minds.” I’m already averting my eyes as the words come out of my mouth. I know it’s not true.
They keep staring at me, turning their heads in synch, slightly to one side, regarding me with curiosity. They are silent and still, judging me from the safety of the treeline.
“What? I don’t know what to do. I don’t even understand what the hell is going on around here. What do you want from me?”
The two little wolves keep their eyes locked on me, but swing their heads in unison toward the trees.
They want me to go with them.
“I can’t,” I finally admit, as much to myself as to them. “I don’t know how.”
McQueen’s voice echoes through the little valley, howling. It’s not the sound of an animal, it’s the sound of a party. There’s a crash and the crack of wood as he steps out into the night, slamming the door open in front of him. I turn to see him stumble out in front of the cabin, naked except for the natural scrub of thick, black, and wiry hair that covers almost every inch of his body. He leans, drunk, against the logs of the cabin wall and pisses a hot stream into the grass. Marking his territory, I guess. The smell of it turns my stomach.
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