Chapter Five
Caleb
I dreamt of the grizzly. It’s glowing eyes held me in the night, as time after time I tried to get away, only to be swatted down again.
My horse kept his attention. He was only playing with me.
The predator had decided right away that I was no threat.
What weapons did a puny human have against a bear? Stubbed nails and blunt teeth.
The grizzly hadn’t counted on Mira, though. All she had were weapons. Mira’s face came to mind and melded with the face of the bear. Wild black hair, black eyes, and two inch long canines that glistened as she screamed.
I lurched upward and yelped in pain. My skin was slick with sweat, and I huffed as if I had just run a marathon.
Mira had frozen in the chair beside the bed.
It seemed she had been relaxed and unbothered by my unconscious presence.
She lay sideways, one of her legs dangling over the arm and the other pressing bare toes into the railing of the old iron headboard of the bed.
She had a textbook in her lap, and a pencil had stopped mid twirl between her fingers.
Her other hand held a leafy green up to her mouth, and she nibbled at it like a startled rabbit.
My hair had fallen into my face, and I ran my fingers through it to smooth it back.
She leaned forward and handed me a bowl off the floor.
It smelled delicious. Inside were three small pieces of meat over some leaves I didn’t recognize.
Wait. I could identify two wild onions that stuck out of my bowl like a pair of chopsticks. One point for McCreedy.
“Are you a witch?” I asked without thinking, afraid to eat the food after such a disturbing dream.
Mira was quiet for a while before she answered. “Is that what everyone says about me?”
She seemed to take my lack of answer as a “yes,” snorted, and then pulled her hand over her mouth to cover her embarrassment.
And then she squeaked and pealed into a tinkling giggle.
“I’m sorry. I know you’re serious, but it’s just the most ridiculous question.
” She cleared her throat and tried to look severe.
“No, I’m not a witch. But I wish I was so I could conjure some more food. ”
I felt stupid for asking. Wrapping a piece of meat into some of the greens, I took a cautious bite.
It may have been that I was starving, but that small bite of food was one of the better tasting things I’d ever put into my mouth.
I didn’t even ask what kind of meat it was.
I didn’t want to know. “What are you studying?”
“Calculus,” she said. “I hate it, but I have a test over in Mineral Wells in two weeks.”
“Test for what?”
“I’m taking my GED. I’m getting my high school diploma. It’s a little late, I know, but I had trouble finishing school after my uncle took me out.”
“Did your uncle homeschool you?”
“He ordered the books once but never taught me anything. He just did it to get the state off his back in a pinch. For a while, I ordered the books and sent everything in like he was teaching me, but I couldn’t afford it after that first year. In a couple of weeks, I’ll be totally done, though.”
She smiled with pride, and I was captured by it. Such a small gesture. The kind a person did a hundred times a day without realizing it. Mira never did. It made the smiles she gave that much more valuable.
My bowl was empty. My fingers had been feeling around and found nothing but the wild onions. I must have eaten the rest without realizing it.
“We need to figure out a way to get you to a doctor,” she said, her eyes on the heat across my shoulders.
“Do you have a phone?” I asked hopefully.
“Nope.” She made a popping noise at the end of the word. “Generator went out a while back. No power.”
I frowned. Not because of the lack of a phone line, but because she had been living all alone without power. “Cell phone?”
She looked at me dubiously, and I grinned.
I said, “Never hurts to try.”
She tapped her pencil against the side of her cheek and looked off into space. “I have a truck hidden outside of the fence. It was my uncle’s. We’d still have to walk or take a horse over about forty acres to get to it, though.
Leaning back, I linked my hands behind my head.
The movement pulled on sore stitches but my muscles felt good to stretch.
It wasn’t much of a choice, but sooner rather than later, people would start looking for me, and Mira didn’t need any more trouble.
I had to get out of here for the good of both of us.
“Okay,” I said, “let’s do it quick then.”
Mira handed me a full glass of water. “I’ll go get the guns. Bears hunt in pairs.”
She disappeared out of the room, and my veins went cold, freezing me into place.
Mira popped her head back in through the doorway with a mischievous grin. “That was a joke.”
I couldn’t find a smile to encourage such behavior but she didn’t seem to care and flitted off to saddle a horse.
Her teasing wasn’t funny for a full two minutes before I gave a quiet and private laugh.
“Ha,” I chuckled, amazed at the idea that Crazy Mira just told me a joke.
The old ladies at Jake’s would crap their pants if they ever got their hands on that information.
They wouldn’t, though. That joke was only for me, and I’d keep it in my pocket, safe and warm and mine.
Before we left, Mira handed me a shot glass overflowing with whiskey. “No pain killers,” she informed me.
I told her, “Whiskey’ll do,” and downed the liquor neatly. I hissed as the cheap, amber liquid seared down my throat.
Riding a horse in my condition was comparable to getting hit by a mac truck repeatedly.
My body felt like the strips at the bottom of a paper shredder, and I wanted to curse at every bouncy step the old horse took.
The brown horse Mira had brought up to the house was named Blue and was the oldest, most ill-bred horse I’d ever seen in my entire life.
It was no small miracle it could walk, much less carry me.
It followed Mira without prodding, though, and the reins lay slack and manageable in her hands as she led us to the truck.
It was obvious the horse loved Mira and the feeling was mutual.
She talked to the animal as if I weren’t even here.
Whether her chatter was habit from being lonely, or from something more unsettling, I couldn’t tell.
“What can I do to repay you?” I asked, desperate for something other than the painful ride to focus on.
“Live. I don’t want you on my conscience,” she said shortly.
“That’s not enough. What do you need? Just tell me, and I’ll leave you alone about it.”
Mira growled and kicked a rock with the toe of her boot. “Dammit, Caleb. I don’t want anything.”
The saddle horn creaked under my weight. It felt better if I was leaning forward. “Stop being so stubborn, Mira. I have a debt to repay you so let’s just get it over with and then you can be done with me.”
She was quiet for so long, I thought she was refusing to talk to me anymore.
“The house could use some repairs,” she said over her shoulder.
“Done,” I said. “I work the early shift on the rig every day but Sunday. I’ll come over to the house when I have time off.”
“Okay.” She said it like she didn’t expect to ever see me again, and I wondered if anyone had ever followed through with anything in her entire life.
“Caleb?” she asked, pulling Blue to a stop. Her eyes were wide and frightened looking.
“Yeah?”
“You’re going to be different now.”
I leaned back a little and shook my head in bafflement. Sure, I felt different about her. She couldn’t know that, though. “I don’t know what you mean.”
She took a long drag of air and dropped her gaze to my work boot that rested in the stirrup. “The bear that did this to you wasn’t just an animal. He was a man, too.”
I waited for her to tell me she was just kidding, like she’d done earlier, but she just stood there, waiting for…something.
“Mira, that thing wasn’t a man. I think I’d know if I was clawed and bitten and tortured by a man or a bear. I spent all night with the damned thing.”
“He was a shifter. A bear man. He maybe should’ve killed you.”
“What are you saying?” My voice sounded harsh, even to my own ears, but so what? “You wish I was dead? Then why did you just say you wanted me to live? Why did you save me?”
“I don’t wish you were dead.” Her voice dipped to a whisper. “You’ll wish you were dead, and maybe you’ll hate me for bringing you back.”
There it was. That was the sign I’d been looking for.
After all, the entire town couldn’t have been wrong about her.
She was as crazy as her uncle. I wanted to yell at her.
To tell her the things she was saying weren’t real.
That she’d made them up as a coping mechanism for her loneliness or whatever else was going on in that head of hers.
But when I opened my mouth to fling my angry words at her, the only thing that came out was a helpless sound.
I was disappointed. There. I was fucking disappointed, okay? Something in me had reached out for Mira at Jake’s the other day, and I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her since. Then I’d spent some time with her and realized she was a decent person, and I wanted her to be okay.
But she wasn’t.
And no amount of kindness from me was going to fix her.
“Okay, Mira. When I start feeling different, I’ll let you know.”
****
Mira
Today had been one of the best and one of the worst days of my life.
The best because I had actually had a conversation with another human being who didn’t make the devil horns at me, and the worst because Clancy Clayborn, the town sheriff, and one of his deputies I didn’t recognize, pulled up in a patrol car at almost the exact same time we reached the truck.
One look at Caleb, who looked like a murder victim, and they instantaneously decided I was his assassin.
“Hands up in the air where I can see ’em!” Clancy yelled at me, training his firearm directly at my face.