FIVE
There was something unsettling about watching Maxwell when he was in the house. It was probably to be expected, considering how long it had been since he had bothered to be a human, but expected or not, the end result was the same; Maxwell was rather uncanny.
He didn’t seem to walk so much as he prowled, loose and languid but ready to tense and bolt like a startled hare at the drop of a hat. There was something too calculated hidden behind his eyes, in a way that made it seem like he was always trying to tell if something was an enemy, food, or neutral, as if a friendly middle ground had no chance of existing in his world.
Elizabeth didn’t like spending time around him, considering he made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. He set off her fight or flight instincts, and every time she was in the same room with him, a tiny voice in her hind brain told her she should flee. She was convinced he was going to cause irreparable damage to her blood pressure before he was gone, which made it rather inconvenient that he seemed drawn to her.
If he had seemed drawn to all of them, she could have passed it off as just an unfortunate quirk. But he wasn’t. He ignored Mara and Yusuke unless they specifically spoke to him, and despite the fact that he had ostensibly shown up to seek help from Ambrose, he never really sought out Ambrose’s attention so much as he simply went along with it when Ambrose told him to.
That was the strangest part. If he was truly there for help from Ambrose, then why did he seem so unconcerned with actually getting said help?
She wasn’t sure what he wanted with her. She had never met him before, and she had never had anything to do with shifters before they decided to turn her house into a war zone. It was like he had simply thrown a dart and decided whoever it struck would be his fixation, and she had been the unlucky target. She swore if she looked hard enough, she would find a dart wound hidden somewhere on her back.
She supposed she would just need to get used to his presence, though. After all, he needed Ambrose’s help, and she wasn’t going to try to chase him off simply because he didn’t seem desperate enough. For all she knew, acting like a regular human after so long as a wolf was hard. For all she knew, maybe he would never really seem like a regular human again. Elizabeth wasn’t a horrible person, and she wasn’t going to go out of her way to get rid of him when he was looking for help.
Besides, if she was lucky, it wouldn’t really take all that long. After all, how long could it take to craft one fake identity?
Yes, she was sure that Maxwell would be a distant memory in the rearview mirror in no time, and soon enough she wouldn’t have to worry about a thing other than when she would be able to go home.
Admittedly, that wasn’t helping her discomfort. He had admitted to the fact that he had been part of the fighting group at the house, so how was she supposed to feel about him? True, the entire ordeal had apparently convinced him that he didn’t want anything to do with that way of life anymore, but Elizabeth also had proof that he could be violent and aggressive if he felt suitably pressed to be so.
She was worrying too much, she decided. She would bring up her concerns to Ambrose later, but other than that, she wasn’t getting anything out of lingering over it. She was just going to give herself a stress ulcer.
She found a book that looked interesting and decided that it would make a decent distraction until Ambrose had time to listen to her that night.
*
The plan to tell Ambrose about her discomfort didn’t go quite as eloquently as Elizabeth had initially planned. True, she had never been a playwright, and she had never been amazing at public speaking, but she had at least planned for the discussion to be a serious discussion, where she would outline her issue in a serious way. She mentally ran through ways to start the conversation as she headed up the stairs, so she could sound concerned and sensitive and understanding while still making her point clear. It would be great.
That wasn’t quite what happened.
“He weirds me out.” The words were out of Elizabeth’s mouth before she was even in Ambrose’s room, and she flopped down on his bed, face first with her arms spread out to her sides. Despite the fact that Ambrose could afford as many gaudy accoutrements as he wanted, his room didn’t seem particularly out of the ordinary, though the headboard and footboard were made of wrought iron and looked like they could break a foot if someone stubbed a toe on them, and they always made Elizabeth feel a bit out of place when she decided to roll around on the bed. Either way, it never seemed as if she was intruding, and Ambrose never bothered to tell her to leave.
Instead, he rolled his eyes. “I’m sorry, what? That was just a bit too subtle for me to pick up on it.”
Elizabeth lifted her head up just long enough to blow a raspberry at him before she let her head drop once again, burying her face in the duvet once more.
Ambrose sighed and set his e-reader down on the bedside table. “He’s a bit odd,” he conceded, and at Elizabeth’s incredibly unimpressed silence, he corrected himself with, “Alright, he’s really odd.” He stretched out to prod at her shoulder with the heel of his foot. “So, you should be glad I’m doing this,” he pointed out. “The faster my job gets done, the faster he winds up somewhere else, very far away.”
“But I thought your job usually happened pretty quickly, anyway,” she grumbled, voice muffled by the bedding.
“No,” he returned blandly, “you’ve just only seen the last leg of it. It usually takes a while to get the documentation together, especially in this type of case, where he…doesn’t really seem to have an identity.”
“Which is weird,” Elizabeth pointed out, finally propping herself up on her elbows.
“He did admit that he’s been living as a wolf for a while,” Ambrose pointed out. “So, it’s probably to be expected.”
“Didn’t you say it was bad if they gave up on their humanity?” Elizabeth asked, her tone turning slightly wheedling as she did. “I’m pretty sure you said that was bad.”
“While they’re in the process of doing that, yes,” he agreed. “And I think we should be wary of him, but he hasn’t done anything yet, and evidently he’s thought better of that life choice. So, what? Do you want me to scold him for deciding he would rather be human after all?”
Elizabeth was silent for a moment as she sulked, before she admitted glumly, “No, that would be stupid.” There was a beat of quiet before she decided, “I still don’t like him, though. He kept me out of my house.”
“That’s your prerogative,” Ambrose assured her. “No one is going to insist that you like him. No one here likes him either.”
With that reassurance, Elizabeth heaved a sigh and levered herself up and off of the bed, getting to her feet. She dusted herself off in a manner that was more than a little unnecessary, getting a gentle snort of laughter from Ambrose, and she turned and headed back out into the hallway.
She supposed she would just have to deal with it for the time being. And she was an adult, so that, at least, was something she was very used to doing, whether she wanted to or not.
*
Elizabeth slept in Ambrose’s room a fair amount of the time, but she didn’t actually clear out any of her meager number of things from the guest room. She liked having a place to go that was hers, at least to some degree. She liked having a place to herself that she could use as a hidey-hole from time to time. She liked people and being social just fine, but she had her limits, and she was used to living on her own, relying on herself, and primarily working with non-sapient animals. She czxsDould only socialize for so long before she felt like she needed to go hide in a very dark hole.
The fact that Maxwell was around for a short while nearly every day wasn’t helping matters, but she was determined not to complain about that any more than was absolutely necessary.
She was sitting on the rug in the guest room, her back against the bed and her head tipped back against the mattress so she was watching the ceiling. It was perfectly smooth, so she couldn’t find shapes and patterns in it like she could in the popcorn ceilings at her house—which she had sort of hated at first, but as she hadn’t found the motivation to change them, they had grown on her over time—but the blank whiteness was good for zoning out and letting time pass.
It wasn’t until she nearly dozed off right there that she decided she should perhaps pick herself up off of the floor. Reluctantly, she dragged herself to her feet, changed into her pajamas, and crawled into bed. Of course, once she was lying down and once again staring at the ceiling, sleep seemed like a very far off and distant thing. Groaning, she flailed a hand out from under the blanket to snatch her phone up from the bedside table. She squinted in the blinding light as the screen came to life, until her eyes adjusted enough for her to check the phone’s battery life.
Seeing that it was nearly full, she decided she may as well find a way to entertain herself if sleep was going to elude her like a nervous kitten.
When a message arrived, it was nearly two hours later, even if it hardly felt like it had been thirty minutes. It showed up in a banner across the top of the screen, vanishing a few seconds later when she didn’t immediately acknowledge it.
heading to your house to take a look around the property
The text message arrived at nearly midnight from Yusuke’s phone. It was simple and to the point, and other than briefly glancing at it, it took Elizabeth a few minutes to pry her attention away from the movie on her phone and actually answer it.
Let me know if you need to know where anything is.
I sort of figured Mara would do the trespassing, though.
What with the whole dog sense of smell and all that.
There was no immediate reply, and after a few minutes of staring at her phone expectantly, it finally occurred to Elizabeth that he was probably already cat-shaped and running around her yard, so he wouldn’t be able to respond. She waited a few more minutes just in case before she resumed watching her movie.
*
so your yard stinks like wolf
also cats don’t have a horrible sense of smell
just not as good as a dog’s
so i can say definitively that your yard stinks like wolf
in case you were wondering
The stream of text messages woke Elizabeth up at two in the morning when her phone tried to vibrate its way off the bedside table, and she squinted at her phone in the darkness. She was pretty sure she was going to go blind from the light, and she had to retype her reply three times before she managed to get it coherent.
Did I offend you? Did I poke your pride a bit too hard?
After all, he seemed very adamant about how his senses were still just fine, even if they still couldn’t quite compare to a dog’s.
maybe
maybe not
you’ll never know, now will you?
Elizabeth rolled her eyes, though the exasperation was tinged with fondness.
So that’s a yes, then.
Anything turn up, or just the knowledge that my property is still a No Man’s Land?
There was another delay before an answer came, and Elizabeth could almost perfectly picture Yusuke sulking in her mind’s eye. Not that she would ever actually say that to his face, or else it would probably lead to even more sulking.
(Granted, that was just as much incentive to say it as it was to not say it. Yusuke in a sulk always carried the possibility of being hilarious.)
wolfy got really close to the house and i’m pretty sure it was investigating your doors and windows
but it didn’t leave anything behind or anything like that, if that’s what you’re asking
Elizabeth groaned and mashed her face down against her pillow, though she lifted it back up a moment later, so she could tap out a response.
Lovely. I love being banned from my own house. It’s the best feeling ever.
I’m going to go back to sleep now. Thanks for keeping an eye out.
Or a nose out, I guess.
har har
you’re very funny
With a reluctant snort of laughter, Elizabeth shoved her phone back onto the side table, rolled over, and squeezed her eyes shut. Maybe she was getting used to being in peril, as it was surprisingly easy for her to fall asleep, even if her dreams were plagued by the sounds of claws scratching at her door and eyes like small mirrors in the darkness, and though it never got close, it never went away, no matter how far she walked.
It wasn’t a particularly restful sleep, but it was better than being up all night, at least. She would take it.
*
Elizabeth woke to the smell of coffee but not to the smell of breakfast. That was a little unusual, considering breakfast was the one meal Ambrose was guaranteed to cook on an almost daily basis, unless he actually had to leave the house to go to work. And Elizabeth was fairly sure he would have told her if that was the case the night before, which meant there was some other reason that the house didn’t smell like food.
She scrubbed a hand over her eyes as she sat up and groped for her phone, checking the time. It wasn’t particularly late in the morning, and she didn’t have any new messages after her chat with Yusuke in the middle of the night. So, if anything had happened, it hadn’t happened during the night.
She stretched her arms high over her head, phone still in one hand as she got out of bed, and she didn’t bother to put on actual clothes, instead wandering out of the guest room in her pajamas and heading down the stairs to the kitchen.
Mara was sitting at the table, doing a crossword puzzle and sipping from a mug of coffee. She glanced up as Elizabeth made her way into the room, eyebrows lifting at the faintly befuddled look on Elizabeth’s face.
“There is no food,” Elizabeth observed, not yet entirely awake.
Mara nodded in agreement. “There is no food,” she confirmed. “Horror of horrors, but you’ll have to scrounge up something to eat on your own.”
Dutifully, Elizabeth made her way to the cupboard to find a box of cereal, though with a slightly bewildered look still on her face. As she was pouring cereal into a bowl, Mara finally took pity on her and explained, “Maxwell showed up not long after Ambrose got up without any real warning, and Ambrose didn’t want to just leave him to wander around unattended for however long it would take him to cook, get you up, and eat. So, he decided to skip breakfast today.”
Elizabeth glanced towards the basement door. It was closed, just as it always was, but if she concentrated, she could sort of hear voices from below. Satisfied with that explanation, she nodded slowly and finished pouring herself a bowl of cereal and a mug of coffee. It took until she was nearly done eating and she was halfway through her second mug before she was actually awake enough to carry on a conversation, though.
Leaning her chin in one hand with an elbow on the table to keep herself from melting into a slumped puddle on the wood, she wondered, “Anything to report about the situation at my house?”
Mara shrugged broadly, palms facing the ceiling. “It was Yusuke’s turn last night,” she replied, hands falling back to the table. “We aren’t both going to check in one night. That would be a waste of time. So, you’d need to ask him.”
Elizabeth pouted down at the table for a moment before she picked up her mug, straightened again, and drained the last of the mug’s contents. “Fair enough,” she sighed. “I guess I’m just sort of antsy for all of this to be done with.”
“Makes sense to me,” Mara replied, rolling one shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. “You know we’re not just going to forget to keep you in the loop, though,” she added. “I mean, it’s your house, and we both know we would be tearing our hair out in your situation.”
“And here I was worried I was being melodramatic,” Elizabeth drawled wryly, leaning to the side when Mara flicked a pen at her. The pen clattered to the floor and rolled away, and if Ambrose had owned a cat, then the pen would have been a goner. But in that instance, it just found a new home under the counter.
A few moments passed in silence, and then Mara observed sullenly, “I needed that pen to finish my crossword puzzle.”
Elizabeth shrugged carelessly and resumed eating her cereal. “Not my problem,” she said between bites. “You’re the one who threw it.”
She smiled pleasantly as Mara heaved an exaggerated sigh, rife with aggrieved exasperation, and went to fish her pen out from under the counter.
There were worse ways to start the morning. If nothing else, it was hardly even evident that Maxwell was in the house, and Elizabeth would never consider that a bad thing. So, she enjoyed her breakfast and her coffee in silence, save for the sound of Mara’s pen scratching over paper and her occasional noises of bemused irritation. It was probably strange to think of it, but it was nice to feel like everything was normal, even when she knew that wasn’t necessarily the case.
*
It was wishful thinking to consider that maybe she wouldn’t see Maxwell that day, and Elizabeth knew that. After all, she wasn’t so antisocial that she would just hide in the guest room all day, and frankly that felt uncomfortably like letting him win. She wasn’t sure what he was winning, but that wasn’t important, so much as the fact that Elizabeth didn’t want to let him win anything.
So, she finished breakfast, headed upstairs to shower and get dressed, and then made her way back down the stairs to the couch in the living room to read a book and pretend to watch the television while mostly just using it for background noise.
It was around lunchtime when the basement door finally opened, and Maxwell emerged. He closed the door behind him, and Elizabeth assumed that was a sign that Ambrose wasn’t quite finished for the day, even if he didn’t need Maxwell’s presence for the moment. That meant she had the…dubious honor of Maxwell’s full attention.
He offered her a slightly bemused look and cocked his head to one side. “I expected you to be at work,” he observed. “You seem to work quite frequently, though I don’t actually know where you work.”
“I still have days off,” she replied, not offering a single hint of an answer to his unasked question. “It’s illegal not to.” Elizabeth slid down in her seat and pulled her book closer to her face. She was entirely positive that Maxwell understood the silent hint, but he ignored it, instead taking a few steps closer to the couch.
He huffed out a laugh as he moved. “You don’t say,” he returned flatly. “Are you at least enjoying your day?”
She couldn’t quite help herself, and before she could arrange her thoughts into something politer, they spilled out of her mouth. “I was until my book got interrupted.”
She glanced up over the top edge of her book as casually as she could, and she had to fight very hard not to start snickering at the look on Maxwell’s face. He looked somewhat affronted, while at the same time trying desperately hard to pretend that wasn’t what he was feeling, and his placid smile had gone somewhat stiff and plastic around the edges.
There was a tense pause, presumably as Maxwell waited to see if Elizabeth was going to take her statement back, or at least soften it somewhat. She did no such thing—in fact, she just lifted her eyebrows somewhat expectantly and drummed the fingers of one hand against the back cover of the book—and after a moment, Maxwell stuttered back into motion. His smile softened again, even if it looked like it took a force of will for him to manage it, and he finally turned to head towards the door.
“I’ll leave you to your reading, then,” he offered as his hand landed on the knob.
He paused again, looking at Elizabeth with something like expectation, as if he was waiting for her to ask him to hang around just a little bit longer. She had no intentions of doing that, though, and instead she shifted her book to a one-handed hold, freeing up a hand to wave him towards the door as she offered in a tone tinged with careless impatience, “Right, okay. Bye. See you next time.”
With that said, she adjusted her hold on her book again and lifted it back up to fully hide her face behind it as she focused intently on the page.
It wasn’t until she heard the door open and close again that she was able to actually focus on the words at all.
As much as she enjoyed spending time with Ambrose and his friends and as comfortable and welcome as she felt in his house, she couldn’t wait until she could go back to her own house, where Maxwell had no excuse to show up, and where Elizabeth would be able to happily report him for trespassing if he tried to.
It took a little while before she could begin to fully appreciate her book again, but the rest of the day was calm after that.
*
Elizabeth was just getting ready for bed, tugging down the blankets on the side of Ambrose’s bed that she had decided to claim as her own, when her phone started buzzing to alert her to a flood of messages. She waited until she was comfortable beneath the covers and resting against a pillow before she actually checked the influx. It would be a little while before Ambrose headed to bed himself, so there was no worry of the light from the screen disrupting anyone, even if it was just as blinding as it ever was.
Unsurprisingly, the messages were from Mara
so I’m at your house.
and there’s definitely been some activity, but it seems sort of old?
not super old but at least a few hours old.
so someone is definitely still scouting your house out on a regular basis, but I’m pretty sure it’s only happening at night.
There was a pause then as Elizabeth contemplated how to reply, before another flurry of messages arrived.
so it’s probably safe to head to your house in the day if you need to get anything.
but I wouldn’t recommend showing up at night or staying for longer than you have to just yet.
no reason to invite trouble before we have to, after all.
Elizabeth paused to make sure nothing else was forthcoming, but the stream of messages finally seemed to be done for the time being, and she started tapping out a reply. She had to erase it and start over a few times, just to make sure she didn’t sound too sullen or too ungrateful. After all, she was grateful. But that didn’t miraculously do away with the fact that she was rather fed up with the entire situation.
(Was a reverse hostage situation a real thing? That was what it felt like. Maybe she would look it up later, though she already knew even as she pondered it that she would forget it by morning.)
I guess that makes sense. Not quite the result I was hoping for, but thanks for staying on top of it.
I appreciate it.
There was a pause before another message arrived, and Elizabeth couldn’t help but to picture Mara just sitting on her porch while she texted without wearing anything. The next message just solidified the fact that it was probably that exact situation.
not a problem. and hey, I’m a dog. I love to be helpful.
but if it’s all the same to you, I’m going to make like an egg and beat it before your unwanted houseguest decides to show up for the night.
I mean, I really doubt we would be lucky enough for this to be the one night he decides not to stop by.
Talk to you later.
With that simple farewell, Elizabeth set her phone down on the bedside table and stared upwards at the ceiling, allowing her eyes to gradually adjust to the darkness until she could actually see the ceiling.
Everything seemed so complicated, but at the same time, she supposed she was terribly lucky. She didn’t even want to know what sort of situation she would be in if she didn’t have Ambrose and his friends.