Twenty-eight
Down the hall, the door to the auditorium opened and closed. Cedric’s eyes darted toward the sound, annoyed. A voice came floating around the corner, saying, “. . . said she left it in the costume room.” It was Cella.
Cedric clicked his teeth, flicked his knife hand, and threw Mason off of him. In the blink of an eye, he was gone.
Mason landed with a pained cry. The approaching footsteps stopped. “Did you hear that?” asked a second person.
I staggered to my feet and rushed around the corner to intercept them. Cella’s face went through several changes as she looked at me.
“Marcella. Can you come with me for a second?” I asked without pretense, the words sounding frayed.
The friend in all black said, “Cella, isn’t that—?”
“I just remembered,” Cella said to him, staring into me, “Mandy was saying she wanted an opening night photo with the whole tech booth. Go make sure you’re in it; I can get Sonia’s script.”
He looked between us. “Oh . . . kay . . .”
As soon as he was gone, I said, “Cella, whatever you do, please don’t leave, just—just stay right here, okay? I’ll explain, but I have to—I know you don’t have any reason to do anything I say—”
“Okay,” she said. “Go.”
I did. Mason lay on his side, panting. His body began to shrink.
I hauled him by his underarms into the unlit bathroom, feeling his muscles shift and reshape in my hold.
I looked away from the transformation. By the time I plopped down on the tile, I wasn’t holding a werewolf, but I wasn’t holding a human, either.
In my arms was a wolf, just like the pictures in my environmental science textbook, only bigger and with meaner teeth. Teary gold eyes blinked up at me as the wolf let out a low moan, black nose flaring with heavy breaths.
I didn’t see any blood. Mason wasn’t writhing the way he had after the silver trap had grazed his side, but it wasn’t peaceful, either.
I did the only thing I could think to, scratching my hands into brown fur, muttering comforts as I stroked soothing lines around his head.
Mason shut his eyes and dropped his head onto my lap.
He recovered faster than he had before. He twitched and groaned, but he wasn’t panicking. I hated that he was getting used to this.
Eventually, the gold started to creep out of his eyes.
“Can you hold it for just a little longer?” I asked. Mason whined, and I leaned down to kiss the coarse fur above his eye. “I’ll be right back.”
Cella was still in the hallway. She stood a short distance from the boy’s bathroom with her hands behind her back like a tiny, confused bodyguard.
I opened my mouth to say something—to apologize, or explain, or congratulate her on a great show.
I managed one vague, wordless sound before water welled up in my eyes and I clamped my mouth shut, mortified.
Bending over the pile of Mason’s shredded clothing, I grabbed his keys and blinked the tears away.
“Kieran,” Cella said to my back. “What happened?”
“Cedric happened,” I said. Her face furrowed before going slack. “Yeah. Look, I need to run to Mason’s car, just—two seconds—”
“Okay,” she agreed immediately, again.
“Cedric won’t come back as long as you’re here,” I offered as an explanation, unable to wrap my mind around the fact that she hadn’t asked for one.
Cedric was deranged, but he wasn’t stupid. To a vampire, the only things more dangerous than werewolves were humans. The difference in strength meant nothing when there were eight billion of them. Secrecy was what kept us undead.
Cella only nodded.
Cedric didn’t hold any real malice toward humans anyway, just profound distrust and a sense of superiority that made him contemptuous.
I could leave her in good conscience, but I moved as fast as I could anyway.
I was back in seconds with a hoodie and sweatpants bundled in my arms. Mason always kept spare clothing in his trunk.
In the bathroom, I hugged the wolf around his chest and got him into the accessible stall.
He immediately began to shift in my arms. The pop of his joints made my skin crawl, but I held him throughout, rubbing his back as fur smoothed into skin.
Mason’s hands were still clawed when he hugged me back, tearing into my hoodie.
I got him onto the toilet, cradling his cheek until it felt familiar in my palm.
I helped him into the pants, ignoring his attempt to wave me off. Mason’s breathing was still a little hitched, but he didn’t seem badly hurt. I thunked onto my knees in the bathroom stall and checked him over thoroughly regardless.
There was a blistering red ring around the base of his neck. He hissed when I touched it. I didn’t want to think about how much worse it would be if Mason hadn’t been covered in fur.
There was blood after all, from a small, shallow gash on one side of his abdomen that looked hot to the touch. If Cedric had actually stabbed, he would have struck intestines.
The scratch was another warning. I knew he wouldn’t give any more.
“Don’t,” was the first thing Mason said. I held his head to my stomach, scratching the back of his neck. “I know what you’re thinking. Please don’t.”
“What does it feel like?” I asked.
“It’s nothing. It’s fine.”
I left him to wet a paper towel on the sink and crouched to clean around the cut.
Mason grunted at the first dab, his hand flying reflexively to swat mine away.
I looked at him expressionlessly until he got out of the way.
When the wound was clean, I grazed my knuckles once over his cheek, which was damp with cooling sweat, and said, “Come out when you’re ready. ”
Cella was pacing. She worried her lip between her teeth when I appeared, but my face must not have been very inviting, because she didn’t ask any questions.
“I’ve got to find Blake, then I swear I’ll let you go.”
“Why do you need Blake?”
“I don’t want Mason driving home by himself, but I can’t be the one to take him.” My voice broke. Mason would be safer with a human.
“I’ll take him.”
“No, Cella—”
“I’ll make sure he gets home safe. Blake will have too many questions.”
“This is your night,” I said, crushed that I had ruined something for her once again. “You need to go take pictures with your castmates and go over notes and—fuck, I knew I shouldn’t have come.”
Cella stepped forward. “Then leave.”
I started to protest, but Cella crossed her arms and cut me off. “You said it yourself. It’s my night. I deserve to get what I want, and I want you to go home and let me take care of this.”
I heard Mason’s footsteps approaching the bathroom door and made the split-second decision to listen to her.
***
At home, I parked in the driveway but didn’t go inside. If I saw Cedric right now, there would be blood.
After some searching, I found the ancient spruce that had been my favorite tree as a kid.
There was a divot between two of the massive roots that made a perfect seat, the roots like armrests.
I had shown this seat to Cella on her one and only trip into the Whispering Woods, the day we met.
She had told me it looked like a throne, “And you look like a fairy king. How do you do, Your Majesty?”
I sat there now, finding it less comfortable than I remembered, and waited for Mason.
I didn’t call him myself in case he had gone to sleep.
I would have waited all night, but it didn’t take all night.
It didn’t even take an hour. The text was a picture of him snug in his sheets, blanket pulled up to his chin. I called him immediately.
It was odd, the static of the line between us. We never called. I didn’t care who was listening now, though. This was what they all wanted.
Instead of hello, Mason said, “I’m okay. Cella took me home. Wouldn’t take no for an answer. I forgot she’s sturdy for her size. Aside from the brutally awkward car ride, I’m okay. Kieran, I’m okay. We’re okay.”
“Good,” I said. “That’s good. I’ll be honest, I thought there would be a pack of werewolves with pitchforks on my front porch by now.”
Mason hummed. “You won’t have to worry about that. They don’t know. My hood covers the mark pretty well.”
“You didn’t tell them?”
“No? It would only make things harder for us.”
“You don’t have to keep this from your family. They’re there to take care of you.”
Mason asked, “Why are you crying?”
With my face in my elbow, I said, “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. It’s mine for being reckless—no, you know what, fuck that. It’s Cedric’s for being batshit.”
“Was that a vampire pun?”
“Sorry, is that not appropriate?”
My mouth tried to smile, wobbled, and failed. “I’m sorry.”
“Seriously, you don’t need to apologize.”
“Not for that.”
On the other end of the line, I heard a harsh exhale.
“Don’t,” he said.
“I will. You can’t change my mind. I can’t believe you even want to after tonight.”
“I don’t care about tonight. I’d live it a hundred times for you.”
“That’s the problem,” I said. “You shouldn’t have to.”
“I can make decisions for myself,” Mason said angrily. “I know what I want.”
“Fine! So can I! And I don’t want to watch you go through this.”
“A break, then,” Mason said, words coming fast. “A break, until college, and then—”
“And then what, Mason?” I demanded. “He stalked me to the fucking school play. Who knows how far he’ll follow me?
But let’s just say he doesn’t. College ends.
College will end and I’ll be right back here.
We can’t outlast him, Mason. He quite literally has forever.
And it’s not just him. It’s my whole family. It’s what we are. And then what?”
I sobbed. A king curled up in his throne, cowering from monsters.
“What am I supposed to do?” Mason asked, so quiet the phone hardly picked it up.
“Just. Forget about me.”
“That’s impossible.”
I knew. Splitting a two-headed calf down the middle didn’t leave complete halves behind. His blood controlled my heartbeat. I was in his DNA.
He had scars, real scars on his skin, from me. The most painless of them, the bite marks on his neck, were now so faint they were hard to find.