Jaylin rolled a grain of rice along his tongue, but all he could taste was guilt. Lillabeth had worked all night on a fresh sushi feast, but he had no appetite to challenge her efforts. The chrysalis now swallowed up his entire arm, feeding all the way up to the bone of his shoulder.
It hurt, like Quentin said. It hurt worse than he expected. But it wasn’t the pain that took Jaylin’s eyes from his plate and left each grain of rice a bitter stone in his stomach. It was the video replaying in his head. Every laugh and every smile and every skip of the tape.
His muscles tightened and Jaylin clutched at the pain and gritted down on the grains between his teeth. Eating wouldn’t help him this time. He wondered if it hurt like this for Anna and what it would feel like when his entire body was suffering to the change all at once.
He looked across the table, where Lisa clacked away on her laptop, taking sparse bites in between. Alex gestured along the touchscreen of his phone and Felix destroyed each roll on his plate, ripping out the raw fish and leaving the rest until Lillabeth, tired of seeing her creation slaughtered by the hands of a temperamental meat eater, brought Felix his own special platter of freshly cooked salmon.
It was the first time they’d all eaten together, but no one had really said a word. He wondered if Quentin was the one that held the conversations, or maybe it was always like this. Maybe it had been this way since Anna died.
“Jaylin, are you feeling alright?” Lisa asked from above the flat rims of her reading glasses. “You look pale.”
Jaylin stared at the colors on his plate, the pinks and greens and reds all intermingled, and gave them a shove away. Before he could come up with an excuse for why he hadn’t really worked down a single bite, the front doors pushed open with a gust of October wind and Quentin stepped in, clad in simple jeans and a black t-shirt with a duffel bag strapped over his shoulder.
A man tailed in behind him—the one who looked like Tyler. Bailey, Jaylin recalled. Jaylin couldn’t gather much from the night they’d last spoken; he remembered the pills and the water. The hazy orange glow from a dank old gas station on the way back. Nothing else.
“Thought I smelled a rat,” Felix grunted, popping a chunk of salmon in his mouth. “What’s he doing here?”
Bailey’s dark eyes sawed through to room with a sharp edge of disinterest. “Better a rat than—”
Quentin cut him off, “I invited him here. Do you have a problem with that, Felix?”
Felix turned back to his food, grunting like a churlish old man and waving his hand in the air, as if to say fine, get lost.
Jaylin expected to see a smile from Quentin, a smirk, a glance in his direction. Anything. But there was no connection in Quentin’s eyes. He didn’t even look in Jaylin’s general direction.
Quentin tossed his duffel bag aside and made for the staircase with Bailey at his heels. “Someone go harvest the Jasmine and Pennyroyal,” he called, just as he disappeared around the bend of the hall.
Jaylin didn’t realize he was on his feet, ready to make for the garden. Not until Felix had a hand around his wrist.
“He means the maids, kid.” There was a slight smile twisted on Felix’s face as he lured Jaylin back into his chair. “Ye’ll get used to that.”
Jaylin stared down at his hand, and the patchy scabby patterns on his obsidian flesh. “Get used to what, exactly?”
“Rushing to his beck and call.”
“I didn’t even realize.”
“Aye.” Felix stabbed a bit of salmon with his fork, lifting the meaty chunk to his mouth, bones and all. “He’s yer alpha. It’s reflexive.”
Jaylin tried not to watch as Felix chewed on the salmon. The sound of the bones snapping under his teeth made his stomach clench even tighter.
“Why don’t you like Bailey?” Jaylin asked.
Felix’s neutral face split into the slightest grin and he set his fork down. “‘Cause he’s a bastard.”
Jaylin looked to the others at the table, who had gone quiet, humbly so. Both of them returned to their own little worlds, Lisa on her laptop and Alex on his phone, but their ears never leaving the conversation.
“What do you mean?” Jaylin asked.
“Kid doesn’t know how good he has it. Doesn’t give a shit about the pack, doesn’t give a shit about our efforts. Doesn’t give a shit about anything.”
Jaylin sucked in his bottom lip and watched his mutinous hand flex into a fist. “Why did he save me then?”
“Cause,”—Felix lifted his glass to his lips and sucked down a swig of beer—”those were Quentin’s orders.”
–
Bailey stayed for a long while. Jaylin could hear them talking, but he couldn’t make out a word. So he laid in the bed that wasn’t his, in the room that wasn’t his, in the house that wasn’t his, staring at the crystals in the chandelier that wasn’t his and wondering if they were real. If they held Anna’s energy in them. He felt it all night—a strange kind of warmth around him. Like something was watching, but something barren of evil. A good was lurking in his peripheral vision. Maybe he was only romanticizing the idea of that warmth being Anna. Or maybe it was the curse they shared. Maybe Anna really was imprinted in this place.
He heard a knock on his door and Jaylin flung himself up in time to see the slip of paper slide beneath.
“Jay, here’s that password you wanted,” Alex called from behind the wood.
Jaylin jumped to his feet and rushed to collect it. He dropped himself down on the desk chair where his laptop sat untouched since the day before. With the password in hand, he was connected in moments, so much information at the tips of his fingers and yet not nearly as much as he could squeeze from Quentin alone.
But, more importantly, he had the one thing he’d been lacking all this time at the Sigvards—communication. Maybe if contact lists hadn’t existed, he’d remember their phone numbers, but Facebook was a second best at finding out what had gone on in the lives of his friends since he’d been severed from the outside world. His first glance at Matt’s page didn’t tell him much. He hadn’t posted anything since the picture of the foot-long Salmon he caught over summer. Tisper’s was inactive too.
Sadie’s told him a whole lot more. She wrote about nightmares—posted photos of the dream catcher she’d purchased on her trip to see her grandmother in Forks. She had photos too—photos of Tisper and herself, lounging in a cluttered, cramped little kitchen that looked all too familiar.
He navigated to his messages, his inbox filled with best wishes from friends and exes and peers from high school—and people who didn’t give the most minuscule pebble of horse shit about him until he’d disappeared.
But at the topmost of the pile sat a message from Tisper, sent only hours ago.
Jay, wherever you are, please come home.
In real time, a second message appeared, pushing the first out of sight.
It says you’re online!!! Are you there?
Is someone on your account??
Jay, she’s getting sick again.
With everything going on, it had been out of mind for Jaylin. He knew his mother was sick, but it was something that sat in the back of his head. Something neither of them tried too hard to think about.
And suddenly, all this talk of werewolves seemed so unimportant. The black that was beginning to eat up the entire right side of his body was unimportant too. Family was important. Family was all he had before the Sigvards and all he’d have after them.
He set the laptop aside and launched to his heavy, aching feet.
He’d get a ride from Alex. Maybe they’d let him see her for the night. Maybe they’d let him stay for a few days, or maybe—
The moment he skidded out into the hall, he found himself rammed into the body of another person.
Bailey stared down at him, an off-replica of Tyler. His dark eyes harder than Tyler’s ever were. His jaw more square, tighter, his cheekbones higher. But otherwise, all the same.
“Take my advice. Don’t go near him.”
Jaylin took a step back to get a look of his face, his fingers feeling along the rough black skin of his arm. “What?”
“Feel that?” Bailey asked, shoving two cold fingers against the side of Jaylin’s neck. He flinched away, but Bailey pressed his fingers in harder. Jaylin could feel it. The rough, hard thump of an overzealous heart. “He’s pissed.” His fingers slipped away and Jaylin clutched the cold spot on his neck.
“That was Quentin’s heartbeat? You can feel it too?”
“You think you were special?” Bailey said. “We all feel it. Any time we’re close. Just another way we’re trapped under his control, stuck in his bullshit.”
“Why do we feel it?” Jaylin asked, his fingers running down his throat to feel the quick tempo of the heart inside his chest. “Why do we share his heartbeat?”
Bailey stared him with with that apathetic, coal-dark gaze. “To know when to stay out of his way.” Then he turned from Jaylin, and as he sauntered down the steps he said, “Now’s a good time.”
Jaylin watched him leave through the front door with an appropriate slam, taking a glance at Quentin’s piano room. He could hear voices behind the doors, voices he wasn’t meant to hear.
“It’s only land, dear. There’ll be more,” Mrs. Sigvard was saying.
“That wasn’t the point. They’re camped in Western Montana. I needed that territory, Lisa. I needed to flush them out and now I can’t touch them.” Jaylin could hear the dingy rattle of ice cubes hitting glass and peaked through the crack of the open door just in time to see Quentin tossing back his last sip of liquor. “I have a meeting with Leo set for next week. If I can’t have that territory, maybe he can at least aid me in protecting it.”
“Leo’s a good man, he’ll listen.”
“I’m not so sure.”
Jaylin couldn’t help it anymore. He was standing in the doorway, fingers curled around the wooden frame. “Who’s in Montana? It’s them, right? The scouts—or whatever they’re called. It’s the people who want me, right?”
“Jaylin,” Quentin rose from his seat, the drinkers mask he often wore, staling his expression. Sucking the smile from his eyes.
“I need to know what’s going on as much as the rest of you do.” It was hard to keep his composure, seeing that look in Quentin, and Jaylin let a sharp swallow sliver down his throat. “Who are Ziya and Qamar?”
“Where did you hear those names?” Quentin’s voice was rough and commanding, the tone striking up a palpitation in Jaylin’s chest.
“Sure as hell not you.”
“I’m handling the situation, Jaylin.”
Jaylin squared his shoulders with resolve. There was something so different about Quentin’s gaze. It was so much darker when he’d been drinking. Jaylin missed the kindness in the sweet molasses. “I’m going home.”
“Wait, Jaylin—”
He started to turn, but he was snagged by the wrist. Held his arm up to show him his own warped flesh.
“Do you not see this?”
“See it?” Jaylin ripped his arm away. “I’ve been staring at it all week, wondering what the hell it’s going to become.”
“The process is different for everyone, Jaylin. We don’t know when you’ll turn. We don’t know if there are more rogues in this state—in this city.”
“You said I could go home.”
“You can.” That edge to Quentin’s voice hardened. “But what will you tell them when you show up with a hand like that? We’re werewolves, Jaylin.“
“You’re a werewolf. I don’t know what the hell I am!”
Quentin wiped his hands up his face and let out a gruff sound. “Tomorrow, alright? We’ll figure it out—”
“Why, so you can disappear again?”
“I’m trying to keep you safe, Jaylin—”
“I’m not Anna,” the words fell sharp from his tongue, so acidic they burned to hold in any longer. Quentin’s expression snapped into something sober and surprised, and he opened his mouth to speak, but Jaylin stole the first word.
“I’m not your dead fucking wife.”
Mrs. Sigvard had frozen too, a brittle hand cupping her mouth. He was sorry for her. He was sorry for them all. But it was true; he wasn’t Anna. They couldn’t save her vicariously through him. She was gone, and if they’d ever understood how important goodbyes were, they’d let him go home.
“I’m not Anna,” he said, softer now. “She’s gone. But my mother’s still here and I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to say that. So let me go.”
He didn’t wait for a reaction—Jaylin knew that if he saw the hurt on their faces he’d feel that guilt come crashing in. He didn’t want it— he didn’t want to feel bad. He just wanted his mother and his friends and a normal life in his slipshod town.
No one stopped him from leaving this time. No one followed him out of the door or shouted for him to turn back. He walked off of the Sigvard’s property, and he kept walking.
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