Forever

But at least I could tell Cole that I’d tried. Then, maybe, I wouldn’t feel so sick.



I hated it. I hated this. I hated feeling so terrible because of someone else. I pressed my hand to my right eye, but the tear there stayed safely inside.



The house was dark. I had to flip light switches on as I went down staircases. There was no one in the kitchen. No one in the living room. Finally I found my mother in the library, reclining easily on the leather sofa, a glass of white wine in her hand. She was watching a hospital reality show. Normally the irony of such a thing would have amused me, but right now, all I could think about was the last thing I told Cole.



“Mom,” I said. I tried to sound casual. “Where’s Dad?”



“Hm?” Something about her hm focused me, made me feel more solid. The world was not collapsing. My mother still said hm when I asked her questions.



“My father. The creature that mated with you to make me. Where is he?”



“I wish you wouldn’t talk like that,” my mother said. “He’s gone to the helicopter.”



“The. Helicopter.”



My mother barely looked up from the television. There was nothing new in my tone to alarm her. “Marshall got him a seat. Said because he was such a good shot, it wouldn’t be wasted. God, I’ll be glad when this whole thing is over.”



“Dad is riding in the helicopter that is shooting the wolves,” I said. Slowly. I felt like an idiot. Of course my father would want to ride on the front lines with an elephant gun. Of course Marshall would make that happen for him.



“It takes off at some terrible hour,” Mom said. “So he headed out now to meet Marshall for coffee. So I get the TV.”



I was too late. I had spent too long debating with myself and now I was too late.



There was nothing I could do.



Cole had said, You owe it to me to try.



I still didn’t think I owed him anything. But, taking care not to signal my clawing distress to my mother, I slid out of the library and back through the house. I got my white jacket and my car keys and my cell phone and I pushed the back door open. Not that long ago, Cole had stood there as a wolf, his green eyes on mine. I’d told him that my brother was dead. That I wasn’t a nice person. He’d just watched me, unflinching, trapped in that body he’d chosen for himself.



Everything had changed.



When I left, I hit the gas pedal so hard that the wheels spun in the gravel.



CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE



SAM



I am Sam Roth. I am finding Grace. Finding the wolves. Bringing them to the lake. I am Sam Roth. I am finding Grace. Finding the wolves. Bringing them to the lake.



I burst into the woods at a gallop. My paws pounded the rocks; my strides ate the ground. Every nerve inside me was on fire. I was holding my thoughts like an armful of paper cranes. Tight enough to keep them. Not tight enough to crush them.



I am Sam Roth. I am finding Grace. Finding the wolves. Bringing them to the lake. I am Sam Roth. I am finding Grace. Finding the wolves. Bringing them to the lake.



There were one thousand things to hear. Ten thousand things to scent. One hundred million clues to countless forms of life in these woods. But I didn’t need countless. I needed one.



She was leaning back against me, breathing in the scent of a candy shop. Every color that I couldn’t see now was painted on the walls and labels around us.



I am Sam. I am finding Grace. Finding the wolves. Bringing them to the lake.



The night was bright underneath a half-moon; the light reflected off a few low clouds and ragged strands of mist. I could see endlessly ahead of me. But it wasn’t sight that would help me. Every so often I slowed, listening. Her howl. It was for me, I was certain.



The wolves howled; I stood at her window, looking out. We were strangers and we knew each other like a path we walked every day. Don’t sleep on the floor, she said.



I am Sam. I am finding Grace. Finding the wolves. Bringing them.



There were other voices now, responding to her calls. It wasn’t difficult to pick them apart. It was difficult to remember why I needed to pick them apart.



Her eyes, brown and complicated, with a wolf’s face.



I am Sam. I am finding Grace. Finding the wolves.



I faltered as my paws slid on wet clay, sending me slithering. I heard something drop into water, close by.



A voice hissed at me in the back of my head. Something about this was dangerous. I slowed, cautious, and there it was — a massive pit, water for drowning at its base. I minced around it before listening. The woods had fallen silent. My mind tripped and stumbled, aching for — I tipped my head back and howled, a long, trembling bay that helped ease the ache inside me. A few moments later, I heard her voice, and I set off again.



I am finding Grace. Finding the wolves.



A flock of birds exploded in front of me, startled from their roost by my progress. They burst into the air, white against the black, and something about the multitude of their forms, the identical stretch of their wings, the way they suspended above me, fluttering in the wind, stars lit behind them, reminded me of something.



I struggled and struggled to grasp it, but it slid away from me. The loss seemed crushing, though I could not think of what I’d lost.



I am finding Grace.



I would not lose that. I would not lose that.



finding Grace.



There were some things you could not take from me. Some things that I just could not bear to give up.



Grace



CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX



COLE



Two thirty-four A.M.



I was alone.



The lake stretched out beside the parking area, the still water reflecting a mirror-perfect image of the imperfect moon. Somewhere on the other side of the water was the Culpeper property.



I wasn’t going to think about that.



Two thirty-five A.M.



I was alone.



It was possible that Sam wasn’t coming.



ISABEL



It was three twenty-one A.M. and there was no one at Beck’s house. I found a pile of clothing and an abandoned syringe by the back door, and inside, Sam’s cell phone sitting on the kitchen island — no wonder my call hadn’t been picked up. They were gone. They’d done just what I said to do — gone through with Cole’s plan without any of my help. I walked through the rooms downstairs, my boots clicking on the hardwood floor, though if there was anyone there, I was sure they would’ve answered me.



At the end of the hall was the room Jack had died in. I reached in and turned on the bedroom light. Instantly the room turned the same abusive shade of yellow I remembered from before. It was clear that this was Cole’s room now. A pair of sweatpants walked across the floor unattended. Glasses and bowls and pens and papers covered every available horizontal surface. The bed was unmade, and riding on the crest of rumpled bedspread was a bound leather book, like a journal or diary.



I climbed into the bed — it smelled like Cole that day he’d come over and had been trying to smell nice — and lay on my back, thinking of Jack dying right here. It was a hard memory to conjure, and it wasn’t strong enough to bring emotion with it. That made me feel simultaneously relieved and sad; I was losing him.



After a few moments, I reached over and picked up the journal. A pen was put in it to hold the page. The idea that Cole might have his private thoughts written down was strange to me; I didn’t think he could really be honest, even on paper.



I opened it up and scanned the pages. It was at the same time nothing that I expected and everything. Honesty, but no emotions. A bland chronology of Cole’s life for the past month. Words jumped out at me.



Seizure. Chills. Moderate success. Uncontrollable shaking of hands, approx. two hours. Shifted for twenty-seven minutes. Vomiting extensive; suggest fasting?



It was what was unwritten that I wanted from this journal. Not what I needed, but what I wanted. I paged through, looking to see if his entries became wordier, but they didn’t. I did find what I needed, however, on the last page: Meet at Two Island parking area, then up 169 then north on Knife Lake.



It would take me awhile to find where they meant on Two Island Lake; it was massive. But now I knew where to start.



CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN



GRACE



And now, finally, here he was, as I remembered him, after all this time.



I was standing in a woods made out of white-barked trees when he found me. My howls to him had gathered two other pack members by the time that we got within sight of each other. The closer we got, the more anxious I became; it was difficult to howl instead of whimper. The others tried to console me, but I kept showing them images of his eyes, trying to convey — something. I couldn’t believe it was really his voice. Not until I saw his eyes.



And then, there he was, panting, uncertain. He trotted into the clearing and hesitated when he saw the other two wolves flanking me. But his scent apparently identified him to them, and a flurry of images passed between us, him playing, him hunting, him among the pack.



I bounded to him, my tail up, ears pricked, ecstatic and quivering. He threw me an image so strong that it brought me up short. It was the trees around us, the white tree trunks with the black weals up the side, the leaves falling, humans standing among them.



I threw one back, me galloping here to find him, using his voice to guide me ever closer.



But again, he threw me the image.



I didn’t understand. Was this a warning — were these humans coming? Was it a memory? Had he seen them?



The image shifted, twisted: a boy and a girl, leaves in hands, the image soaked in wanting, longing. The boy had my wolf’s eyes. Something inside me hurt.



Grace.



I whined softly.



I didn’t understand, and now I felt that familiar pang of loss and hollowness inside me.



Grace.



It was a sound that meant nothing and everything. My wolf stepped carefully toward me, waiting for my ears to prick before he licked my chin and nosed my ears and muzzle. I felt like I had been waiting for a lifetime for him to be here; I was trembling with it. I couldn’t stop pressing against him, pushing my nose against his cheek, but it was okay, because he was just as insistent. Affection required touching and jostling.



Now, finally, he sent me an image that I could comprehend: us, our heads thrown back, singing together, calling the other wolves from all over the woods. It was toned with urgency, with danger. Those were both things that I was familiar with.



He tipped his head back and howled. It was a long, keening wail, sad and clear, and it went further toward making me understand that word Grace than his images had. After a moment, I opened my mouth and howled as well.



Together, our voices were louder. The other wolves pressed in against us, nosing, whimpering, and, finally, howling.



There wasn’t a place in the woods you wouldn’t hear us.



CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT



COLE



It was five fifteen A.M.



I was so tired that I couldn’t imagine sleeping. I was that tired that made your hands shake and your eyes see lights at the corners of your vision, movement where there was none.



Sam was not here.



What a strange world this was, that I could come here to lose everything about myself, and instead lose everything but me. It was possible that I’d thrown one too many Molotov cocktails over God’s fence. It would be, after all, a divinely ironic punishment to watch me learn to care and then destroy the things I cared about.