by KT Strange
“I’m really sorry,” I heard myself saying, the words echoing in my ears. “But I’m not taking back my resignation letter. I can’t.”
“Is it Tupper? Because he’s a sleaze, but he’s never going to make a move on you without your permission. He likes his record contract. He’ll look and comment, but he won’t touch. I know that’s kinda gross to put up with but...” Willa sighed. “The music industry is still thirty years behind on equality and I fight for it every day, but I’m at the point I need to pick my battles.”
I got it. I really did. There was only so much energy one person had, and you had to choose which people you were going to burn bridges with and piss off.
“It’s not Jake Tupper, but yeah, his taste in office-warming gifts needs work,” I said as I thought back to the cactus he had given me. “No it’s just... I don’t think XOhX is the place for me. I’m really sorry, I know you had high hopes for me and stuff.” I shrugged.
Willa gave me a long, thoughtful look and dipped her chin in a slow nod.
“All right. I can respect that. If you’re not feeling it, you’re not feeling it. But just promise me, Darcy, that if you change your mind—”
“I won’t.”
“You’re sure. Even if I told you the band they’d be opening for was Glory Revolution.” Willa waited for my reaction. Inside I let out a yelp, but outside I kept quiet. GR were huge, that was for sure, on the indie scene? It would only help a band like Phoenixcry. But their big break would have to come another time, from someone else.
“Yup.”
Willa got to her feet and sighed.
“I would have liked working with you,” she said, her tone softening from hard and business-like. Guilt nipped at me but I shoved it away. I had to do what was best for me, and hanging around with a pack of wolves who could melt my defenses like butter in the sun with their music was not best for me. “If you ever want tickets to any of our shows, just shoot me an email.” She gave me a thin smile and went to the door, pausing there. “You’re really sure? It’s thirty dates.”
“Willa,” I said, my exhaustion plain in my voice. “Could you take that plastic bag? It’s got Cash’s hoodie in it.” Thankfully Willa picked it up without a second thought, and didn’t ask me any questions about it.
“I’ll see you around,” she said as she opened the door.
“Maybe,” I replied. The door clicked shut behind her, and I collapsed back on the bed.
Was I fucking my entire life up, or was I saving myself? The pillow that I curled around didn’t have any answers.
Thirteen
Three days passed, and Max came back. She was red-eyed, and looked as exhausted as I felt. As soon as she stumbled in through the door we stared at one another, and we both burst into tears. I had my best friend back, but a hole in my chest the size and shape of five guys who could have possibly offered me a life experience that I’d never find anywhere else. The hole in her chest?
It was Craig Mackenzie-shaped.
“I dumped him,” she whispered in the darkness of our room. She was down on my bunk with me, in a big blanket burrito we had both wrapped ourselves up in. Sometimes you needed a cuddle from a guy. Sometimes what you really needed? Was a good, long, platonic snuggle from your best friend. I tucked my head up under Max’s chin, and she wrapped an arm around my back, holding me tight.
“You must be wrecked, I don’t even know what to say...” Because what was there to say? She and Craig had been in love since he’d first shuffled into her 3rd period history class. And apparently her dad had hated him throughout the whole thing.
“I feel like I’m dying, but at the same time, here I am, still breathing, my blood still pumping... everything physical is working, but my heart is like, wow. Yeah. It hurts so bad, I feel like I shouldn’t be taking in air, but I am.” Max buried her face in the top of my head. “Your hair tickles.” She sounded so sad, like she was surprised that hair would tickle.
“Then don’t stick your nose in it,” I pointed out gently.
“That’s what she said,” Max whispered and burst into tears. “He used to make that stupid joke so many times when we were like, fifteen, that I punched him in the face. I gave him a black eye. God I was a crappy girlfriend.”
“You were fifteen. And if any guy I was dating made that joke—how many times?”
“Like at least three times a day.”
“That’s definitely in the realm of face-punching land.” I shifted and sat up. “Want some water? I’m thirsty.”
“I never want to drink anything again. I want to fade away, waste into nothing,” Max said morosely. I sighed.
“That’s not happening. I’ll get you a drink.” I padded out into the hallway, stealing her slippers so I wouldn’t have to find mine, and filled our water bottles. When I returned, she had curled up into as tight a ball as a tall girl could, and was crying.
“Oh Max,” I said, stroking her cheek and pulling out a packet of tissues. “I’m so sorry.”
“And I know shit went down with you,” she said between hiccups. “And I can’t... I haven’t even asked. You haven’t talked... I’m the worst friend, worst girlfriend, worst daughter, just bad, bad—”
“That’s a pack of lies, you’re not the worst anything,” I said gently and wiped her tears, offering her a sip of water. She blinked at me, eyes bleary.
“Can I sleep in your bunk?”
My eyebrows rose.
“You hate my bunk.”
“But it’s got you in it, and I don’t want, I don’t want to be alone...” Her face crumpled and more tears sheeted down her cheeks.
“Okay, but if you kick me, I’m sleeping up top,” I said. “You’re like Bambi when you nap sometimes.” It said a lot for how distressed she was that she didn’t even laugh at my Disney reference. Max adored Disney movies. I settled in beside her as she made room for me.
“This is good,” she said, sounding sleepy. “Chicks before dicks.”
“Craig wasn’t a dick though.”
“Yeah but my dad is, so it makes sense in my head, please don’t argue with me.” She was fading fast, and I felt her body go loose and limp as she fell asleep. I pulled up the covers to her chin and snuggled in close. If she hadn’t smelled like her lilac moisturizer and salty tears it was almost like what sleeping next to a guy would have been like. A very curvy, very snuggly guy.
I smiled as she burrowed against me in her sleep, and let the night take me.
I woke up alone in bed, to Max stretching and going through her morning yoga. I stretched my arms up in time with her downward dog and sighed.
“Good sleep?” she asked as she pulled herself back into a sitting position.
“Better than I’ve had in a few days,” I admitted.
“So you wanna talk about it?”
“Not really.”
“Alright.” She got to her feet with a sigh. “Cause your phone has been going non-stop crazy for the last thirty minutes and while it wasn’t exactly disturbing my zen because I don’t have much inner peace to begin with right now, it was sort of annoying.”
“Oh, shit, sorry.” I grabbed it off the floor.
I had ten text messages, which might not have been unusual for someone else, but I didn’t have a load of friends texting me all the time.
My heart dropped when I saw they were all from Cash. I’d deleted his first one without looking at it the other day.
“Is it that thing you don’t wanna talk about?” Max mused sagely from across the room. “I’m right, aren’t I? You’re making the I-hate-you face.”
“Good to know you’re back to normal,” I shot at her, and immediately felt bad. I glanced at her. Her eyes were wet around the edges. “Shit, Max, I’m sorry.”
She shook her head and held up her hand to stop me from talking.
“It’s okay. I’m okay. I’m really okay. Just... it’s hard. Every moment feels like I’ve got a knife twisting in my heart. But honestly, I don’t want to talk
about it anymore. You need to talk, or if we aren’t gonna talk, you need to deal with that phone buzzing stuff and tell whoever’s texting you to stop.” While she was babbling at me, I’d unlocked my phone and scrolled through the messages.
I’m sorry.
I never meant to hurt you.
But I did.
I hurt you. I scared you. I just wanted you, and I thought you wanted me.
Willa says you won’t come back, and I get it. I know it’s my fault.
So when I ask you to reconsider, I want you to know that *I* know I don’t deserve it.
But I’m asking you to reconsider.
Not for me. I don’t deserve it.
But for the rest of the guys, especially Ace.
Message me back. I’d like to talk in person, if that’s okay with you.
“You look freaked out,” Max commented.
“I am a little freaked out,” I admitted, my voice distant and feeling like it was coming from somewhere out of my body. Cash’s text messages had raised the hair on the back of my neck, and it felt like so much more than a request to reconsider only because of a tour opportunity. Maybe I was giving him too much benefit of the doubt, but it felt like he was asking for more serious reasons.
I needed to trust my gut. I was done acting on impulse, but this felt like the right decision, the first right decision, that I’d made in a long time. I tapped out a response and waited not even thirty seconds when he replied.
You name the place and the time.
I closed my eyes, bit my lip, and opened them to give him the details. I hit send, and looked up at Max, before pleading,
“Can you help me do my makeup? I’ve been looking like death for the last few days...”
“And this is some guy you don’t want to look like crap in front of? I got you girl. Get your makeup and we’ll fix you right up.”
He was waiting right where I’d told him to.
“Is this some kind of joke?” he asked me. I glanced up at the letters on the building. CITY POUND. I tried not to smile.
“No, I’m not turning you in. We’re gonna go walk a dog and talk. My roommate and I volunteered here last year when they got overwhelmed with kittens.” I said. “I figure maybe a furry animal would diffuse the tension between us.”
I felt it as soon as I saw him, the flickering of desire in my stomach. Electricity ran up my back, and told me that what had happened between us the night of Candy’s house show may not have felt consensual, but it definitely had been. Cash Legend was a five-alarm fire, and he was setting me alight. I was grateful that Max had let me borrow one of her low-cut, emerald green sweaters that showed off my curves, because Cash’s eyes followed the neckline before he yanked his gaze back to my face with a red flush in his cheeks. He knew he shouldn’t be looking, but he couldn’t even help himself. That made me glad in a small, evil way.
I was flirting with danger, and it felt stupid, and the last thing I should be doing when I’d questioned him and his motives only days before but….
I couldn’t help it. I wanted him to look, so badly, and worse than that, I wanted him to touch. What was wrong with me? I wasn’t guy-crazy, not by a long shot.
“I like dogs,” Cash said, and bit his lip. “Don’t say I am one, because I already know I am.”
“Can we not mention it? You said you wanted to talk, and I’m okay with talking as long as it’s not about... that night.”
“Maybe let’s go get our dog first?” He opened the front door for me. A few signatures on release forms later, and we had an excitable mixed-breed pup on a leash. I’d offered Cash to take him first, and witnessed the transformation as Cash’s normally broody attitude melt at the tail wagging of a new four-legged friend.
We ambled out, and across the street to a large park dotted with towering firs.
“So talk,” I said. The dog tugged at his leash but Cash kept his grip firm.
“This tour means everything to us, but not for reasons you think. This tour means safety, it means freedom. How much do you know about the werewolf population?”
His question came out of left-field, even if the first thing he’d said hadn’t surprised me all that much.
“Um... well, we didn’t study it a lot or anything, just how werewolves were forbidden and to stay away from them, but we did learn that werewolf population has been declining over the last two centuries.” The fresh air was crisp on my face, and I was grateful for Max’s sweater. It was thick enough to be snuggly in the fall air.
“Did they ever tell you that werewolves are dying out because we’re being hunted?” Cash’s words were icy and I stopped still to look up at him.
“Hunted?”
“Yeah, as in human hunters. They’re tracking us, killing us. Destroying pack after pack, systematically.” His expression was serious enough that I didn’t laugh at him even though I wanted to.
“Uh, human hunters? There haven’t been human hunters in well over a century,” I said. “Humans, mundanes, don’t know anything about werewolves, or witches for that matter.”
“Or vampires?” he asked, expression turning dark. The dog whined, and tugged at his leash, wanting the walk to continue. Cash gave in and moved, and I followed him.
“Well...” I tried to think it over. Back in the ‘days of yore’, things had been even less friendly between witches and werewolves, and I knew there’d been a bit of bloody war between them and that humans had been roped in to mop up some rogue werewolf packs here and there, by the witches. “I mean, I’ve never heard anything about hunters in recent years at all. I’m sorta out of the loop and all, but there wasn’t any talk about it in anything other than the very past tense.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure they don’t tell their kids that human hunters are still out there, murdering werewolves. It goes against the whole ‘benevolent to society’ image that witches want to project to one another.” Cash scratched the top of the dog’s head when it came in close for a snuggle, his touch gentle despite the harshness of his words.
Maybe someone else wouldn’t have agreed with him. But there was a reason I’d run from my family and the witching world, and it wasn’t because they were fun and happy people who never did anything wrong.
“Well, okay, so there’s hunters... like modern day mundanes hunting werewolves. That’s terrible, but I’m not sure what that has to do—”
“They’re hunting us, Darcy,” Cash turned to me as he dropped his voice down. “They don’t know who we are, but they do know we’re in the city, and they’re coming for us. They got most of our pack almost thirty years ago. Ace was just a puppy, a kid, and me and the guys, we grabbed him and ran for it. We survived, raised him, and now we’re all that’s left. Now these bastards, they want us too.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, the enormity of what he was explaining overwhelming me. “How do they know?”
“I don’t know the answer to that, I just know they know, because we’ve got our own ears out on the street,” he said. The dog at our feet thumped his tail once, and nuzzled Cash’s hand for more pets, shameless little beggar that he was. “They’re tracking us, and for the most part we’ve been able to stay on the move, but that’s getting harder to do.”
“If you don’t want to be found,” I said because I had to point it out, “then why the hell are you guys in a band? Isn’t getting up on stage and putting yourselves in the spotlight, literally, a bad idea if you’re trying to avoid attention?”
Cash’s mouth flattened into a thin line.
“They don’t know what we look like, because honestly, this is probably the next generation of the hunters, offspring of the people who got our pack the first and second times.”
“First and second? I thought you said—”
“Me and Eli, and Finn, were overseas when they hit us the first time,” Cash said, and he looked so haunted, his eyes shadowed, that I didn’t want to press for more information. “But this tour? It’s safe. It’s safe for us, and saf
e for Ace, especially Ace. We’ll be moving around a lot, and from what I’ve heard, if we’re not in any one place for more than a few days, they’re going to have a hell of a time tracking us down. This is our chance to take the heat off, and get out of dodge fast.” He measured my reaction, and huffed out a breath. He must’ve seen that I was bending.
“Really? It’s that easy? Just take off in a tour bus?”
“We’ve done it before, just a lot lower budget, and we ran through our cash stores, what our pack had saved when they, well, were murdered. We don’t have anything left of it to keep ourselves on the road. XOhX is advancing the costs of the tour, because they think it’ll pay off big for them down the road, and that means we can go for almost a month and a half. Put some distance between us and the people who want us dead.” He was serious. Completely serious. And if I was honest, my every instinct, witch and mundane alike, was shouting at me to trust him.
“It’s a lot to think about,” I said, stalling for time, even though I could feel the winds of fate stirring around me, preparing to pick me up and drag me along whether I wanted to go or not. Maybe it was time I stopped fighting the path I was on, and start running along it instead.
“Is it? I’m telling you that this is a life or death situation, and you have to think about it?” his voice was harsh, his blue eyes narrowed.
“No,” I answered without hesitation, “you’re right. I don’t have to think about it.” I swallowed hard. “Just one question. Why aren’t you, like, fighting them? These hunters?”
Cash gave a humorless laugh.
“They really don’t teach you shit about werewolves, do they?” He closed his eyes and let out a gusty breath. “We aren’t fighting them because we can’t. They wiped out our pack, almost entirely, and destroyed what makes us whole, so that we could never be strong enough again to recover.”
“What?”
“Our heartstone," he said, “they stole it. They stole it and then they destroyed it. Without it, we’re wolves... but, well, we can’t shift anymore. We can’t shift, and over time, we’re getting weaker. One day we’re going to be as strong as mundane, human men and when that happens, well you can pretty much just sign our death warrants then.”
