XXV

FIVE YEARS AGO

WRIGHTON PENITENTIARY

“You want more milk?”

It was the first thing Victor Vale ever said to Mitchell Turner. They were sitting in the cafeteria. Mitch had spent three days wondering absently what Victor’s voice would sound like if he ever decided to talk. If he even could talk. Over the course of lunch, Mitch had actually taken to imagining that he couldn’t, that beneath the collar of his prison-issued shirt some ghastly scar carved a smile across his throat, or that behind his curling lips there simply was no tongue. It sounded weird, but prison was boring, and Mitch found his imagination going to strange places more often than not. So when Victor finally opened his mouth and asked with perfect elocution if Mitch wanted another carton of milk, the latter was caught between surprise and disappointment.

He scraped his words together. “Uh. Yeah. Sure.” He hated how stupid he sounded, how slow, but Victor only chuckled, and pushed up from the table.

“Keeps the body strong,” he said before making his way across the cafeteria to the food counter. The moment he was gone, Mitch knew he should have followed. He’d spent three days shadowing his new cellmate, but the question had caught him off-guard, and now in its wake, he had a sinking feeling that he’d just sacrificed his chance to break the curse. He craned his neck in search of Victor only to have someone slam him forward toward the table, and swing an arm around his shoulder. From across the room, the gesture might have looked friendly, but Mitch could see the sharpened metal in Ian Packer’s hand, the edge angled toward his cheek. Mitch was twice the man’s size but he knew the damage Ian could do before he’d be able to wrestle him off. Besides, Packer was one of those people who, despite his size, had power here, sway. Too much in a place this small.

“Hey, hey,” said Packer, his breath foul. “Playing puppy dog?”

“What do you want?” growled Mitch, keeping his eyes on the tray in front of him.

“Been wanting you to play watchdog for my group for a year, been so kind and patient with your pacifistic shit”—Mitch was surprised (and a little impressed) that Packer knew the word pacifistic—“and suddenly this pointy prick shows up and you’re all over the role.” He tutted in Mitch’s ear. “I should fuck him up just for wasting your time and talent, Turner.”

A small carton of milk landed on his tray, and Mitch looked up to find Victor standing there, surveying the situation with mild interest. Packer’s grip tightened on the sharpened metal as his attention flicked to the new man, and Mitch’s heart sank. Another cellmate lost.

But Victor only tilted his head curiously at Packer.

“Is that a shiv?” he asked, bringing his shoe to rest on the bench, his hand to rest on his knee. “We didn’t have those in isolation.” Isolation? thought Mitch. “I’ve always wanted to see one.”

“Oh, I’ll show it to you close, you little fuck.” Packer’s arm vanished from Mitch’s shoulders. He lunged for Victor, who did nothing more than set his foot back on the floor and curl his fingers into a fist, and Packer, halfway to him, buckled to the ground, screaming. Mitch blinked, confused by what had happened... and not happened. Victor had never even touched the guy.

The room broke into motion at the sound of the scream, the inmates on their feet and the guards on their way, as Mitch sat and watched and Victor stood and watched and Packer howled and writhed on the floor, hand bloody from clenching the sharpened sliver of metal as he twisted and screamed. There was a moment, before anyone else reached them, when Mitch saw Victor smile. A wolf’s smile, thin and sharp.

“What’s going on?” shouted a guard as he and another reached the table. Mitch looked to Victor, who only shrugged. The smile was gone, a faint crease of concern between his eyes.

“No idea,” he said. “Guy comes over to talk. One minute he’s fine and the next”—Victor snapped his fingers, and Mitch flinched—“just starts convulsing. Better get him checked out before he hurts himself.”

The guards pinned the writhing Packer to the floor, and pried the blade from his shredded hand as his screams faded into groans and then into nothing. The convict had fainted. Somewhere between Packer attacking Victor, Victor dropping him with a look, and the guards reaching the scene, Mitch had extricated himself from the table bench, and now stood a few feet behind his cellmate, sipping his milk, and watching the events unfold, marveling in part at the scene, and in part at the fact that for once he hadn’t been blamed.

But what the hell had happened?

Mitch must have whispered the question, because Victor honored him with a pale raised brow before turning back toward the cell blocks. Mitch followed.

“Well?” asked Victor as they made their way down the concrete halls. “Do you feel I’m wasting your time and talent?”

Mitch considered the impossible man beside him. Something had changed. The discomfort, the aversion that he’d felt for three straight days had faded. Everyone else still seemed to bend away as they passed, but Mitch felt only wonder and, admittedly, a touch of fear. When they reached their cell, and he still hadn’t answered, Victor stopped, rested his back against the bars, and looked at him. Not at his hulking shoulders or his meaty fists with their scarred knuckles, or the tattoos that ran up his neck, but at his face. He looked him in the eyes, even if he had to look up a bit to do so.

“I don’t need a bodyguard,” said Victor.

“I noticed that,” said Mitch.

Victor let out a cough of a laugh. “Yes, well,” he said, “I don’t want everyone else to notice, too.”

Mitch had been right. Victor Vale was a wolf among sheep. And it took a lot to make 463 hardened criminals look the part of prey.

“So what do you want then?” he asked.

Victor’s lips curled into that same, dangerous smile. “A friend.”

“That’s all?” he asked, disbelieving.

“A good friend, Mr. Turner, is very hard to find.”

Mitch watched Victor push off the bars and head into the cell, lifting a library book from his cot before settling onto it.

Mitch didn’t know what had just happened back in the cafeteria, but a decade in and out of prison had taught him this: There were some people you had to stay away from, people who poisoned everything in reach. Then there were people you wanted to stick with, the ones with silver tongues and golden touches. And then, there were people you stood beside, because it meant you weren’t in their way. And whoever Victor Vale was, whatever he was, and whatever he was up to, the only thing Mitch knew was that he did not want to be in his way.