was a slight man with permanently lowered eyes. I counted out bills. I didn’t look at John. I prayed that he didn’t recognize Cole. I eyed the security camera, watching all of us.
“Did you know that this is Sam Roth?” John asked. There was silence until the clerk realized that John was talking to him.
The clerk darted a glance up at my damning yellow eyes and then back down to the bills I’d placed on the counter, before replying politely, “No, I didn’t.”
He knew who I was. Everyone knew. I felt a surge of friendliness toward the clerk.
“Thanks,” I told him as I took my change, grateful for more than the coins. Cole pushed off the counter next to me. Time to go.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” John asked me. I heard misery in his voice.
My heart jerked inside me as I turned toward him. “I’m sorry about Olivia.”
“Tell me why she died,” John said. He took a step toward me, unsteady. A breath laced with some kind of alcohol — hard, neat, and recent, by the odor — gusted toward me. “Tell me why she was there.”
I held a hand out, palm toward the ground. A sort of That close is good. No closer. “John, I don’t kn —”
John swatted my hand away, and at that gesture, I saw Cole move restlessly. “Don’t lie to me. I know it’s you. I know it is.”
This was a little easier. I couldn’t lie, but this didn’t require one. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t have anything to do with her being there.”
The clerk said, “Good conversation to take outside!”
Cole opened the door. Night air rushed in.
John seized a mighty handful of my T-shirt at the shoulder. “Where’s Grace? Why out of everyone in the world, why my sister, why Grace? Why them, you sick —”
And I saw in his face or heard in his voice or felt in that grip on my shirt what he was going to do next, so when he swung at me, I lifted an arm and deflected his blow. I couldn’t do any more than that. I wasn’t going to fight him, not over this. Not when he’d swallowed so much sadness that his words slurred.
“Okay, outside,” the clerk said. “Conversation outside. Bye! Have a nice night!”
“John,” I said, my arm throbbing where his fist had landed. Adrenaline pumped through me: John’s anxiety, Cole’s tension, my own readiness feeding it. “I’m sorry. But this isn’t going to help.”
“Damn straight,” John said, and lunged for me.
Cole was suddenly between us.
“We’re all done here,” he said. He was no taller than either me or John, but he towered. He was looking at my face, judging my reaction. “Let’s not make things ugly in this man’s store.”
John, an arm’s length away, on the other side of Cole, stared at me, eyes hollowed out like a statue’s. “I liked you, when I first met you,” he said. “Can you imagine that?”
I felt sick.
“Let’s go,” I told Cole. I said to the clerk, “Thanks again.”
Cole turned away from John, his movements wound tight.
Just as the door swung shut, John’s voice slid after us. “Everybody knows what you did, Sam Roth.”
The night air smelled like gasoline and wood smoke. Somewhere, there was a fire. I felt like I could feel the wolf inside me burning in my gut.
“People just love to hit you,” Cole said, still all energy. My mood fed off Cole’s and vice versa, and we were wolves, both of us. I was buzzing and weightless. The Volkswagen wasn’t parked far away, just at the end of the parking spaces. There was a long, pale key scratch on the driver’s side. At least I knew running into John was no coincidence. A fluorescent reflection of the convenience store glowed in its paint. Neither of us got in.
“It has to be you,” Cole said. He’d opened the passenger door and stood on the running board, leaning over the roof at me. “The one who leads the wolves out. I’ve tried; I can’t hold a thought while I’m a wolf.”
I looked at him. My fingers tingled. I’d forgotten the milk inside the store. I kept thinking of John swinging at me, Cole charging between us, the night living inside me. Feeling like I did, right now, I couldn’t say, No, I can’t do it, because anything felt possible.
I said, “I don’t want to go back. I can’t do that.”
Cole laughed, just a single ha. “You’re gonna shift eventually, Ringo. You’re not totally