Chapter 34

Hāmweard, ðu londadl hǽðstapa, in 1 day

Homeward, you landsick heath-wanderer, in 1 day

If I’d known more about the realities of criminal court, I wouldn’t have smiled. I’d counted on the absence of any evidence against me, on Thea’s testimony, on my innocence to spring me by midafternoon.

My lawyer said to be patient. Thea had given a strong interview, and more importantly, another suspect seemed to have fled the country. But the law is slow, he said, adding that Conradi really seemed to have taken a dislike to me.

But time is the one thing I don’t have, because in thirty hours, I will no longer be human.

In a windowless holding cell deep underground, surrounded by white walls, two low metal benches, bars, a broken telephone, and a metal divider barely disguising the shit-covered toilet, I wait with a revolving cast of twenty-five men who are not yet guilty.

No one has a phone or a watch in the Tombs. There are no windows, and if there were, there would be no light. I try counting one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, but when I get to 2,759 Mississippi, I realize that my grasp of time has stretched and contorted like Silly Putty.

The corrections officer told us that chow is at seven and noon and six. Lights out at nine thirty.

I ask every CO and every man who comes into our bullpen for the time, excepting only a man with one shoe who curls into a ball on the floor near the toilet. He smells of diabetes and frostbite and barely moves.

A CO passes out sandwiches. I don’t know whether that means it’s noon or six. Several of the men flock to him, calling out their preferences, usually steak and lobster, which, as jokes go, is stale from the beginning. I get a sandwich of processed halal meat. When I tell the CO I am vegetarian, he snorts, and my little corner of hell becomes darker.

Because I’ve been so preoccupied with time, I haven’t been paying attention to the emerging trade in strength and weakness that has been taking place around me. Someone has been made the top dog, the shot-caller. He is a thick man with elaborate tattoos starting at his wrist and creeping up the side of his arm under the ripped sleeves of his sweatshirt and up to his cropped skull. He has a long scar along his jaw and a teardrop tattooed on his face.

He looks at me. I do not look away.

The men are not entirely sure who is the alpha here: I am the bigger man by far, but I have a Kiton jacket and a double-twill Egyptian cotton shirt and am wearing driving shoes. Aside from the faded bear-claw scars at my neck, I have no body art. I wear a braided necklace. The men are more familiar with the signals sent by the man with the teardrop, and most congregate around him. Only the very lowest, like the man with one shoe, stay near me, mostly because there is space.

Teardrop’s eyes get harder, and he nods toward my little pack without shifting his eyes from mine. A man with deep pits in his face yells at the sick man for smelling bad, then kicks his bare foot.

It is meant as a challenge, and as tedious as it is, I know that challenges must be met. I ignore the man with the deep pits. It is never worth interacting with subordinates. Instead, I go to the shot-caller himself, who has reserved one entire bench for himself.

I ask him what time it is.

He asks me if he looks like a fucking clock.

I take his wrist as if to check the watch he doesn’t have, and when I press with my thumb, it bends, then breaks.

And I sit back down. By the time the CO has come to see why the man is screaming, everyone else is seated too, looking at the floor. Now many of them are congregated in my corner. They leave the sick man alone.

At chow time, I easily trade my processed halal meat sandwich for peanut butter.

At nine thirty, the lights go out. Most of the men try to carve out a piece on the floor and get a little sleep. I can’t. I stare at the now-dark lights and try to decide if it is possible to stand with my bare feet on the metal bench, stick my tongue into the light socket, and immolate.

• • •

Hāmweard, ðu londadl hǽðstapa.

Homeward, you landsick heath-wanderer.

It is sometime after the arrival of the corn flakes and tiny cartons of icy milk that the CO finally calls my name. I pick up the thin plastic bag with my driver’s license and follow the police officer to the door, blinking at the sight of the bilious yellow sky. At first, I think it’s the afterburn of exhaustion and all those yellow walls, but then I realize there’s a storm coming.

A hand touches my arm right above my elbow. “Elijah? Hey, I’m—”

“What time is it?” My throat is dry, and my voice is cracked.

“What?”

“What time is it? Please, Thea.”

She hesitates for a moment, then checks her watch. “It’s eleven forty. What’s up? Are you okay?”

I hold on to her wrist and look at her watch myself, like it’s some kind of talisman. “I have to be home in six hours. I’m not sure I can make it.”

“Not the apartment?” she asks, looking alarmed. She raises her hand for a cab.

“No, not the apartment. Home. I have to get to my car. I have to leave now.”

From the cab, I stumble down the ramp toward the garage. Where’s my car? Where are my keys? I slam my fist into a sign that reads MAXIMUM CLEARANCE 6’9”. Thea’s voice bounces around the cement. I can’t pinpoint it.

“Elijah! The car’s over here.”

“Where are the keys?”

“I’ve got them, love. I’ve got them.”

Love. My mind is swimming. Bleep. Bleep. Door open. Door close. Seat belt. Cell phone in cradle. Homeward. Passenger door opens, then closes.

“You can’t come with me. I have to do this on my own.” I reach across to push her door open again, but she holds it locked.

“I don’t know what’s going on, but I do know you’re in no shape to drive.”

“I can drive jes find,” I say.

There’s a sudden jerk and crunch of metal. Thea falls forward sharply, her hands bracing against the dashboard. I look in the rearview mirror for the jackass idiot driver.

It’s a cement column.

“Let me drive,” Thea says softly.

“I need to go home.”

“I hear you. You’re going home.” She unfastens my seat belt. “Just tell me how to get there.”

We trade places, and I show her the blurred directions toward the Great North that are now on the Homeward app. I rub it against my shirt. “I’ve got it,” she says, disengaging from the column. “Seat belt.”

“Promise me. Promise. Soon’s we get there. You churn around and go back home. Promise me, please?”

“S’okay. I promise.” She takes the belt buckle from my shaking hand and snicks it into place. “I’ll take care of it.”

I wake up with a jerk, my muscles cramping and my mouth like the bottom of a birdcage. The last thing I remember is a sign for the West Side Highway.

It’s dark, and I can’t see anything. Just two red blurs of taillights through the rain-drenched windshield. Thea shakes me again. “It keeps saying something I don’t understand.”

Then the voice of Homeward’s Offland wolf reverberates through the cocoon of the car.

Ond swa gegæþ þin endedogor.

And so passes your final day.

Thea’s hands are tight on the wheel and her eyes on the road. “What was that?”

“Nothing. An alarm.”

She strokes my arm. “Do you feel better?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“We’ll be there in forty-five minutes. Maybe a little less if the rain lets up.”

Doesn’t matter if we fly there. It’s too late. And so ends my final day.

Not quite. There’s one more thing I have to do. Inside the glove compartment, the bag with the WD-40 and the lighter has been shoved to the side to make room for something that wasn’t there before. I feel around, my fingers finding an unfamiliar shape.

“You brought your gun?”

She frowns a little and shrugs. “You were in handcuffs. Wasn’t sure what we were up against.”

We.

I close the glove compartment. I can’t do it. This woman who is so fiercely I has joined herself to me in an even fiercer we. I can’t do this. I can’t jump out of the car, set myself on fire, and leave her to wonder what the hell happened and how she was to blame.

I’d rather have her know exactly what the hell happened. Let her see the truth. Let her fear me. Let her hate me.

Kill me.

And let her feel the relief of knowing she’s rid the world of a monster.

I unzip my jacket and toss it into the back. Then I peel off my shirt, followed by my shoes and socks.

She checks the rearview mirror and then hits the turn signal. “What are you doing?”

Lifting my hips, I tug down my pants. I don’t want my last moments to be sealed inside. “Do you mind if I open the window?” The heat of the change starts to hit, and I peel off my boxers, sitting beside her naked while the rain needles my bare shoulders.

I take out the gun and put it in the cup holder and then slam the glove compartment closed.

“Elijah? What—?”

“I’m sorry, Thea. I really am.” I pull her hand to me. “I didn’t want—” Even as my lips are pressed against her hand, my mouth begins to change, pushing out, the teeth grinding in my jaw. The hand that is holding hers elongates, the fingers shrinking and bending.

There’s a jerk on the steering wheel, a car horn sounds. We swerve, and I don’t hear anything anymore.

My body churns and swerves, and my knees find the floor as I slither out of the seat belt, my elbow banging painfully against the side panel. My eyes see nothing but a pale, opalescent haze and my ears hear nothing but a dull roar interrupted by the thump of my heart.

Then my muzzle bangs awkwardly in the tight space at the foot of the passenger seat. Something bounces against my head. I know what I look like now. Even Pack, for whom the change is revered, normal, still find this midpoint, when we are neither one thing nor the other, grotesque.

I keep waiting for it, wondering what the bullet will feel like. Will it be hot like fire? Or cold like steel?

Or like rain splashing through the window. My senses are starting to return. My sensitive nose smells the tart mineral rain and Thea’s fragrance, more pungent now and thick with salt and old leather, the smell of fear. And my eyes see her, staring straight ahead, her hands clenching the wheel, her knuckles straining against her skin, her gun on her lap.

She refuses to look at me.

She didn’t kill me.

Shit. She didn’t kill me.