Chapter 4
Neither of them slept much that night.
As soon as they’d gotten back to the motel room, Toby had fished out his CD player and headphones and said, not once looking at Jake, “I’d like to listen to my music for a while.” Which might as well have been I DON’T WANT TO TALK lit up in fireworks across the night sky.
When Jake had given Toby that CD player for their first Christmas together, it had taken a long campaign before Tobias ever dared to use it with Jake in the room or sitting next to him in the Eldorado.
All of Jake’s urging produced no effect, until they’d actually talked it out (Roger would’ve been so proud).
Tobias didn’t want to block out Jake’s voice; he didn’t want to miss a single attempt Jake might make to catch his attention. It wasn’t that he was afraid to miss something, he emphasized. He just didn’t want to.
So they came up with a system: when Toby was wearing headphones, Jake would tap on the bedspread or dashboard or whatever was in Toby’s field of vision to get his attention.
Then, at last, Toby got to enjoy his CDs.
Like with everything else in their lives, progress came slowly.
The next step was how carefully Toby framed it as a request: “I’d like to listen to my music now.
” Jake had maybe been too adamant that Toby never had to ask permission to use his CD player.
But he knew that it helped if he could offer support each time, and he was more than willing to meet Toby halfway there.
Soon Toby’s words morphed into a genuine statement, not a disguised request, and on that day Jake did a tiny fistpump of victory.
Which brought them now to the present day and Toby’s cold pronouncement without a single check for approval.
Jake was really, really fucking proud of him, even though the cold shoulder today hurt like a bitch.
He opened a beer and turned on the TV, not paying attention to whatever was on the screen. Toby sat hunched at the dinette table, looking down at a book. Jake blinked, peering closer.
Aw, fuck.
The book was A Field Guide of North American Flora, an oversized encyclopedia of trees and plants. It was the text Toby always pulled out after a really bad trigger.
He could just make out Tobias’s lips moving as he recited the details on the page. Location, Latin name, the seasons it grew, any medicinal or culinary uses—on and on. It was how he self-soothed and distanced himself from panic attacks or flashbacks.
Toby was taking care of himself like a badass, which was fucking awesome. It really was. If Jake felt a little stupidly lonely, that wasn’t Toby’s problem. Fuck even the idea of that when all of this was happening to Toby.
Jake just had to figure out the right way to be supportive. And right now, that meant watching TV by himself and letting Toby fight his own battles.
* * *
They finally talked the next morning after their continental breakfast. Toby’s eyes were deeply shadowed, and Jake knew he didn’t look any better.
At least they didn’t get any weird looks from the one family and single business man also eating powdered scrambled eggs and stale bagels in the hotel’s lobby with them.
Back in their motel room with the curtains drawn shut, Toby and Jake sat across the dinette table facing each other.
The silence stretched, and Jake finally asked quietly, “Do you want to stop? We can.”
Tobias shook his head once, sharply. “It’s too late now.” His lips were compressed and his gaze angled to the floor beside Jake.
Jake took another careful breath. “So, back to research. Let’s find out the truth about the Wrights. Could be it had nothing to do with you—”
“Could be that it did.”
Toby was angry, Jake realized with a shock. His face was shadowed by the curtains, but he gripped his chair’s armrests until white knuckles showed.
Moving more slowly than he had in what felt like years, Jake spoke. “So let’s get this done. I’ll give Roger a call to get the ASC records. Let’s go over to the library in Bridgeport to check out their public ones.”
Tobias nodded once and pushed up out of his seat, already moving to pack a bag.
The librarian in Bridgeport was way less cool than Cathy had been, but it turned out that there was a whole stack of news articles about the mysterious deaths in 1988 and 1989. They had gotten a lot of attention.
There hadn’t been any concrete proof of anything supernatural about the deaths.
It could’ve been an ordinary human serial killer, Jake pointed out.
But this was less than five years after the Liberty Wolf Massacre.
Literal witch hunts had become less common than they had been in 1985 and 1986, but they still happened.
In December 1989, the ASC descended onto Bridgeport. There was a flurry of activity including an actual car chase, all raptly reported on, then a quick throwaway mention of freaks apprehended and taken to Freak Camp.
As everyone knew, every monster in Freak Camp had a life sentence. So, case closed. Neat tidy ending.
Roger sent them the detailed case files from that time period. It had been led by a hunter by the name of Brian Stenton, who had ultimately discovered trace evidence of a shapeshifter. Some local news footage had caught the flash of shapeshifter silver eyes in a woman identified as Gina Wright.
“Shapeshifter pattern, my ass,” Jake muttered. “They don’t work like this.”
Toby’s jaw was locked tight, the way it had been for days. He made a small noise of disbelief, which Jake interpreted to mean that Toby suspected him of bias.
Jake eyed him. “Wanna make a bet?” That got him a furious glare, and he raised his hands in innocence. “This hunt sucks, okay? Just trying to find a way to make it fun.”
“Don’t,” Toby snapped.
* * *
They returned to the library to research Gina Wright, who turned out not to exist, at least not anywhere in West Virginia.
When they widened the search, they hit a promising lead with a Gina Wilde, who had an address outside of town.
After a quick lunch at a sandwich shop, they turned the Eldorado west, following their printed-out map.
Gina Wilde’s cabin was hard to find. Jake and Toby spent more than an hour slowly crisscrossing country roads, peering for street addresses on rundown farmhouses.
For the first time in days, Tobias really saw the deep green, rolling wooded hills that appeared to go on endlessly. More than once they saw deer grazing alongside the road. Wisely, Jake drove a fraction slower than usual.
“It's beautiful," Tobias said finally.
Jake glanced at him, eyebrows quirked up.
Okay, so maybe those were the first words he'd said since his lunch order. He hadn’t felt like there was anything worth saying before, with his stomach in a knot and the hunt eating at his guts.
He shrugged a shoulder. “It's a beautiful state. I think . . . I can imagine being happy, growing up here.” He immediately felt self conscious. “You would've been happy, I mean.”
To his surprise, Jake answered quietly. “You really can't imagine having a life here?”
“No,” Tobias said at once, flatly. There's only one place I was ever supposed to grow up.
He wouldn't say it aloud. He didn't want to upset Jake. But for once, he wondered why he believed that so strongly.
The answer was easy. It was written in the scars over his skin.
It was ground into his bones years before he ever met the Director.
He could have taught the same lessons to his fellow freak inmates, but it wouldn’t have been worthwhile to extend their suffering.
Sometimes he wondered if he’d done right by Kayla, passing those lessons on to her.
The witch named Becca, the closest thing he’d had to a mother, had taught him as well: you are a monster, just the same as everyone around you, and monsters don’t get to want things.
And then, of course, there was the Director and six months of Wednesdays. Why would the Director ever have spent so many painstaking hours with Tobias if he wasn't supposed to be there? The Director did not make mistakes like that.
“Well, I can see you here," Jake said, matter of fact, pulling Tobias back from the memories that made the whole beautiful countryside seem so much darker.
“The resident bookworm in that high school we passed just now.
Winning all the geek awards. Math, English, Econ.
AP classes, probably a theater kid too. Soccer team, maybe. "
Tobias allowed a smile to tug at his mouth. Jake deserved that smile and so much more. He had always believed in Tobias, in defiance of everything and all it had cost him. Tobias should try to believe, even just a little, in return.
But Jake's relentless faith still scared him. What would happen when he was disappointed?
Tobias called himself an idiot and other things he would never voice aloud in Jake’s hearing. How many times did Jake have to prove him wrong before Tobias would trust him? He'd already gone so far beyond what Tobias had ever expected.
He would try to trust Jake. He would try.
"Maybe you're right," he made himself say at last. He caught a flash of Jake's grin, and he added, “Don't get carried away. I hated calculus."
Jake chuckled, and Tobias felt his own shoulders relax a fraction.
* * *
Finally, a long way down a winding dirt road that ran between deep woods on either side—past multiple trees bearing NO TRESPASSING signs they ignored—a small dark cabin emerged.
Jake killed the engine fifty yards from the cabin steps. As they surveyed it, the front door slammed open and a woman strode out holding a shotgun, staring directly at them.
“Shit,” Jake muttered. “Stay here, Toby.”
Toby scoffed, undoing his seat belt and resting one hand on the door handle. He waited, equal parts expectant and defiant.