Get in the truck and drive. I’m waiting for you. I’m always waiting for you.
A wolf howled in the trees, a long and mournful sound.
“Jesus,” I muttered as I opened my eyes. “I hear you. Idiot.” I pulled on my coat. It did little to warm me.
I went to the house, climbing over the remains of the porch to the door still hanging open. I heard Gavin in the trees pacing back and forth, growling lowly. I ignored him. Either he’d follow me or he wouldn’t.
The house looked different in the daylight. It was… softer, somehow. No less lonely, but it looked more like a home than it’d been at night. It had good bones, though the skin of it had long since rotted away, leaving only a husk.
The photograph that’d been on the wall was in pieces on the floor. I crouched down, brushing away the glass. The bullet from the hunter’s gun had pierced the photo right above the little boy’s head. They were still smiling, of course. All of them were.
I picked it up, the frame collapsing around it and falling to the floor.
Gavin was in front of the house now. He was agitated, huffing out sharp breaths.
I set the photo on the cracked mantel of the fireplace.
The rest of the house was just as dead.
Cabinets in the kitchen were all open, some of the doors hanging on their hinges. The sink was filled with dead leaves, the window above it long since broken.
Three doors lined a long hallway. The first door led to a small bathroom. The shower curtain was plastic with seashells on it. The floor was tiled, and the toilet was green. A framed stitchwork hung above it with the faded legend SMILE THOUGH YOUR HEART IS BREAKING in red yarn.
The second door was a master bedroom. The carpet was dirty and frayed. The bed was moldering, sagging in the middle. A chest of drawers lay on its side, deep claw marks along the back of it. A nightstand lay in pieces below a gouge in the wall, as if it’d been thrown.
The third door led to—
“Don’t.”
I paused with my hand on the doorknob. “Is this you?”
“Leave. Go back to the cabin. Or get in the truck. This isn’t yours.”
I pushed open the door. The hinges squealed.
“Stop,” he said. “Stop, stop, stop.”
I looked back at him. He was nude, his skin rippling with gooseflesh. His hair hung around his face, and his mouth was twisted. His eyes were violet, and I saw the hint of fangs between his lips. “This is where you were sent. After….”
He shook his head furiously. “Fuck you. Fuck this house. Fuck it.”
I stepped into the room even as he snarled behind me.
It was small. The window looked out on the forest behind it. The room was sparse, with only a bed and an overturned chair, a poster on the wall too faded to read. The carpet here was spongy, as if it’d soaked through. I looked up and saw a hole in the ceiling near the bed, the branches of a tree swaying outside.
Gavin was in the doorway, gaze darting around the room, the ever-present scowl on his face. Not for the first time, it struck me how much he looked like his brother in the days before he’d found his way back to my uncle again.
“This is where you grew up.”
He wouldn’t look at me. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Did you know?”
“What?”
“About wolves. About witches. Magic and monsters. About where you’d come from.”
His lips pulled back over his teeth. A drop of blood fell from his right hand, where his claws had dug into his palm. It hit the carpet and spread, a red splotch. He said, “I….” His jaw tensed. “Eventually.”
“Who told you?”
He jerked his head toward me. “Why?”
I shrugged. “Just a question.”
“Always questions. Never stops.”
“You followed me, man. You didn’t have to.”
He grunted. “Making sure you don’t die. You’re stupid. You die easy. Get lost in woods. Freeze to death. Should have let you.”
I almost smiled, but I didn’t want him to think I was mocking him. “I can handle myself.”
“You were shot. Try and handle better.”
“When did you know? How did you know?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Okay.” Then, “Where are they?”
“Who?”
“The people in the photograph. Your parents.”
He stepped into the room, shoulders hunched as if he were trying to make himself small. “Gone. Gone.”
I nodded slowly. “I know what that’s like.”
He glanced at me and then away. He looked like he was struggling with something. I wondered what it was like,