NINE

I rang the doorbell and a young woman opened the door, holding a shivering Chihuahua. She had long, blond, stringy hair and was thin and serious in an Indian batik skirt.

 

“Yes?”

 

“I'm here to see Piper LeFever.”

 

“She's busy. If you have an animal you can't take care of, you can leave it with me.” Her voice dripped scorn. She must be a real hit with the customers, I thought. Would anyone adopt an animal from this person?

 

“She's my mother.” I tried another approach. “Here, do you want me to look at that dog? I'm a vet.” The shivering Chihuahua had clear fluid dripping from its nose.

 

The young woman stepped to one side. “Oh, you're Abra,” she said, with an emphasis on the second word. I had a sense she'd been expecting someone more impressive. She cuddled the little dog closer to her small breasts. “I'm Grania and this little fellow is Pimpernell and he has a cold. Yes, you do, little sniffle-up-a-kiss.”

 

I walked in and inhaled the familiar tang of cat urine. All the chairs had been thoroughly shredded. There was a bulging bandage of rope covering one leg of the antique French mirrored table, but clearly, no cat had taken to this improvised scratching post. I took off my cotton sweater and stared up at the skylight, which was spotted with bird feces. “God, what a mess.”

 

Grania bristled. “Our funds barely cover the cost of feeding and maintaining our animals,” she began, but I held up my hands.

 

“I'm not criticizing you. This place is vast, and my mother has always been a slob,” I said. “When I was a kid, it took a team of cleaning women to keep her from trashing the house. Here, can I have a look at the little guy?” I held out my hands for Pimpernell the Chihuahua.

 

“It's just a cold,” said Grania.

 

“In this case, I think you're right. But sometimes, with these big foreheads, the nose becomes a pop-off valve for their brains.”

 

The blond girl stared at me. “What do you mean?”

 

“Fluid drains from the brain. Does he act neurologic—you know, inappropriate?”

 

Grania looked down at the shivery little animal with a frown between her eyebrows, apparently considering what the appropriate behavior for a three-pound dog might be. “I'm not sure. He runs in circles sometimes, when he's excited.”

 

“That sounds normal.” I took the little creature in my arms and it fixed its pop-eyed imploring gaze on me, shivered, and licked my nose. “Hey, you are kind of cute.”

 

“Is he all right?” Grania seemed a little jealous as Pimpernell gave me another wet kiss.

 

“I should probably run a test on the fluid, but yes, I think he's all right.” I smiled, realizing that a good four minutes had gone by without my thinking about the fact that my husband had been having sex with another woman. Except that now I had just thought about it again.

 

“Wow, Pimpernell likes you.”

 

I turned. It was my mother, coming down the long staircase with one hand on the heavy wood banister, her purple velvet caftan flowing behind her and her long blond hair three shades brighter than the girl's. On the carved bottom of the banister was a great, rheumy-eyed Persian, one of several cats I could see sprawled around the foyer now that I was paying attention.

 

“Hi, Mom.” She kissed me three times, once near the left cheek, twice near the right, like some sort of Russian noblewoman.

 

“You look bottom-heavy in that. Why do you keep wearing khaki pants? You need something dark below.”

 

“These are comfortable.”

 

My mother pulled back, looking me over more carefully. “You've started plucking your eyebrows. I like that, but you need to get someone to show you how to do the arch better. Your left side is thinner than your right.”

 

“You look good,” I said pointedly, to remind her what good manners were. Actually, she had gained at least ten pounds and her hair was too bright.

 

“I'm fat. But as the French say, there comes an age where one must choose between one's face and one's derriere.”

 

“She thought that Pimpernell might be leaking some kind of brain fluid,” said Grania.

 

“Oh, please, you were always a hypochondriac, and now you have a license to practice it.” My mother took the Chihuahua in her sturdy arms and cradled it. “Have you met Grania? Abra, this is Grania.”

 

“We've met.”

 

“Grania has her BA, but she's taking science courses and applying to vet school. So smart, this girl. Barely even has to study—not like you, holed up with your books for weeks on end. She's a natural student.”

 

Grania snorted and gave me a complicit sort of smile, as if she already knew how my mother's mind worked, and why.

 

“When you're not around,” Grania said, “she tells me about how fantastic you are with the animals, and how you either have practical intelligence or you don't.”

 

“And I do?”

 

“According to your mother.”

 

My mother huffed, her giant purple velvet breasts expanding. “Well, it's true. Abra has practical intelligence. Grania has a better head for facts.”

 

“Mom, just stop.”

 

The lavender-shadowed eyes widened in surprise. “Stop what? I'm just stating what I observe.”

 

“You don't have to state anything. You weren't injected with Sodium Pentothal.” Grania took Pimpernell back to her room, promising to get me a sterile sample of his nasal fluid.

 

I followed my mother to the kitchen, down the elegant Spanish-tiled hallways with their dark wood accents, accompanied by the piercingly strong smell of tomcat piss, a sour and musky smell that no detergent or perfume can conceal.

 

In the corners, cats stretched and yawned, gathered themselves and watched. The dogs were kept outside in the kennel, so long as the weather remained mild.

 

“So,” my mother said, “what can I get you?” The kitchen was the one room that didn't look like an old Spanish grandee's house. It was just your typical unrenovated 1970s kitchen—yellow walls, brown linoleum, avocado stove, about fifty animal-shaped magnets holding up photos, vets' bills, schedules and shopping lists.

 

The only thing it had in common with the rest of the house was the tang of feline urine. “Anything. A sandwich.”

 

“I can make a little curry? Something with tomatoes?”

 

My mother was a terrible, highly experimental cook. “Just peanut butter would be fine.” I watched my mother's plump, be-ringed hands preparing my food. “Grania seems nice. Does she work here often?”

 

“She's my lover,” my mother said, in that par tic u lar blend of matter-of-fact and dramatic that soap opera actors tend to employ.

 

“Ah.”

 

“Does that mean you disapprove?”

 

“It's just an expression of surprise.”

 

“You're surprised I have a woman lover? A young lover?” My mother handed me my sandwich. I looked down at it in surprise.

 

“You forgot the jam.”

 

“There isn't any. Look, Abra, if you have something to say, get it off your chest.”

 

I took a bite of the sandwich, too used to my mother's dramatics to take this seriously. “Do you have any juice?”

 

The refrigerator door slammed open. “I suppose you won't deign to tell me what you're really thinking. Here's your juice.”

 

“Thanks.” I drank and wondered: What was I really thinking? That it always had to be about Piper LeFever, I suppose. Even on my birthday. Even when I was having a bit of a crisis at home. My mother never really noticed what was going on with me.

 

“God, you really have a talent for making things unpleasant, Abra.”

 

I raised my right eyebrow. “I don't think it's me doing it, Mom.”

 

“Well, it may be time for some therapy, then.” She reached into a drawer and pulled out a flat gift box, wrapped in shiny purple paper. “Here. This is for you. You probably won't like it, but I saw it and thought, That would look fantastic on Abra.”

 

I opened the box and pulled out a deep black and purple crushed velvet gown with lots of corset-type laces and hanging sleeves, the kind of thing Morgan le Fay might have worn for a dark faerie's night out. “Wow,” I said. “It's … amazing.”

 

“Handmade. But you'll never wear it.”

 

“It's just—I don't really have anywhere to wear it to, really …”

 

“Try it on.”

 

“Now?”

 

“Go on, Abra, make your mother happy.”

 

I took off my shirt.

 

“And the bra. You can't wear a bra with that.”

 

I took off my bra.

 

“Look at those breasts! Why you wear a bra at all is beyond me.”

 

I slipped the dress on over my khakis and turned around. “What do you think?” I felt ready for Halloween.

 

“Wait a minute.” My mother tugged the dress down until the sleeves exposed half my shoulder and the neckline barely covered my nipples. “There. Take a look at that.”

 

I went into the bathroom just as a cat stalked out of a litter box, and looked in the mirror. White skin, long dark hair, breasts about to fall out: I looked like a gypsy wench. “Thank you so much for my present,” I said, over my shoulder.

 

“Don't expect Hunter to compliment you on it. Your husband prefers you when you look like a little nun, Abra, or hadn't you noticed?”

 

I had forgotten how perceptive my mother could be. Maybe she might have something to say that would help me out.

 

I followed her back into the kitchen, pulling the dress over my head. “Mom. I have something I want to say to you.”

 

“I knew it. You're strung out about this. Listen, Abra, Grania is the best thing that has happened to me in years, and I won't have you waltzing in here and handing down judgments.”

 

“Mom.” Just as the dress came off my head, leaving me naked from the waist up, Grania appeared. She didn't so much as look at me as I yanked the fabric up over my breasts.

 

“Piper, we talked about this.”

 

“I'm not having her insulting our relationship.”

 

Grania turned to me as I pretended to be unself-conscious about putting my brassiere back on. “I'm sorry if this was a bad time. I told her not to do this on your birthday.” She held out a vial. “And I brought the nasal fluid.”

 

“Thanks,” I said, but my mother, a professional scene-stealer, would not be gainsaid.

 

“She's over twenty-one, and if you would just take the time to get to know her, you'd see that—”

 

“Mom. I don't care about Grania. I'm glad you're happy. I wanted to talk with you about something else.”

 

My mother's eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What is it? Is it Hunter?”

 

I glanced over at Grania, who held up her hands as if in surrender. “Hey, I'll leave you guys to it. Just let me know about Pimpernell, okay? I love that little guy.”

 

When we were alone again, my mother said, “So? What's the bastard done now?”

 

“He cheated on me, Mom.”

 

She held out her arms, and I came into them. “How did you find out? Did he lose interest in sex? Or was he suddenly more interested?”

 

“Mo-om,” I said, embarrassed.

 

“More interested, I see.”

 

I pulled back so I could look in my mother's all-too-knowing eyes. “The thing is, I asked if he loves this other woman, and he said … he said, ‘Probably not in the way you mean.' “ I collapsed into my mother's meaty shoulder, sobbing. She smelled of smoke, which reminded me of Hunter.

 

“Typical. He screws another woman, and instantly plays it so you're the one on tenterhooks. Oh, Abra, when are you ever going to take a stand in your marriage?”

 

I sniffled, knowing she was right, knowing I was being weak and pathetic. “I just don't want to lose him,” I admitted. “Do you have a tissue?”

 

“Here.”

 

I blew my nose. “I don't know what to do, Mom.”

 

“Well, Abra, I just hope you're not going to catch some disease from that man. Because in my day, men just fucked you over when they slept around. Now, they can kill you with it.”

 

Trust my mother to find the one thing to make me feel worse. “I'll have to go get tested, I guess.” A great chunk of despair forced its way up my chest and throat, emerging as a sort of broken moan.

 

My mother sighed and lit a cigarette, watching me get myself back under control. “Here. Do you want a cigarette? Don't look at me like that—sometimes it helps.” She shook out the match. “Why you want to keep him with you, I'll never understand. He's a bastard.”

 

I gave a little hiccup of a laugh. “You just think all men are bastards, Mom.”

 

“It's a safe assumption.”

 

“God.” I folded the tissue and blew my nose again. “How my father stayed married with you for ten years, I'll never know.”

 

“You talk like he's such an angel. Remember who left!”

 

“Mom, you were having affairs right and left. And you hounded him all the time. I remember when I was ten you actually had a fight where you said he was personally responsible for the subjugation of women in Spain.”

 

“He was a filmmaker. There's a responsibility there. Besides, he said a lot of shit about me.”

 

“Mom, you gave him an ulcer. He didn't give you an ulcer.”

 

For a long moment, my mother and I just looked at each other. Then she pushed herself off her chair. “Listen. I don't want to tear your father down. You want to believe he was the injured party—”

 

“He had to get a restraining order!” I hesitated. “Whose idea was it to get divorced, Mom? Yours or his?” They had always claimed it was mutual, but suddenly, I wondered whether that was the case.

 

My mother took a deep drag of her cigarette. “I suppose it was me. I couldn't put up with the cheating anymore. And I was tired of playing tit for tat.”

 

“Oh.” I took her hand, touching the amber of one of her big silver rings. “Do you know, I saw one of your movies last night, Mom.”

 

“Which one was it? Blood of Egypt?”

 

Her role in Blood of Egypt was my mother's favorite. I am named for Abra Cadabra, the deceptively mousy librarian. “No, Mom. Lucrezia Cyborgia.“

 

My mother stubbed out her cigarette. “I had an affair with that spaceman, you know. Dan Daimler.” There was a distant cacophony of feline yowls in the background. “So if you're up watching Dan making out with me, then you're not sleeping again.”

 

“Do you think I should leave him, Mom?”

 

I expected her to say, Damn right, but instead, my mother's face softened. “How about I get the cards out?”

 

I took another tissue and wiped my eyes. “You know I don't believe in that stuff, Mom.”

 

“But that stuff believes in you, Abra.”

 

“Not this again.”

 

“You keep saying you don't remember, but I'll never forget it. Standing outside the chteau, insisting you wouldn't set foot inside.”

 

“I was six.”

 

“Pain, you said. Someone in there was in great pain, and they couldn't get out.”

 

“I'd never seen a chteau before. To me, it probably looked haunted.”

 

“And then when we came back the next day, in broad daylight you crouched right down—”

 

“Oh, God, please, not that again …”

 

“And told the landlady her dog was hurt …”

 

I buried my face in my hands. “I was a kid. I must have heard someone talking about the dog.”

 

“You didn't speak French, Abra. And Madame Broussard said, Hurt where? And you put your hand right into that animal's huge mouth …”

 

“Mom, can I change the subject?”

 

“And there was a tumor the size of a lemon. Honey, don't you see that you've closed yourself off from this part of you?”

 

“No I haven't. I stick my hand in dogs' mouths every day.”

 

“But you ignore the instincts that brought you there.” Every time I think my mother might honestly have some advice for me she goes into her psychic phenomena spiel. According to her, this is the big talent I've neglected.

 

“Mom, about Hunter …”

 

“Think about him while I get the cards out.”

 

I sighed and watched her shuffle on the kitchen counter: badger, owl, turkey, squirrel.

 

“What are these?”

 

“Medicine cards. Native American. I did a reading for you last week and I saw magic in your future. And deception.”

 

Her fingers were deft, as if she'd been practicing a lot. “Mom, I've asked you not to do my tarot without permission. It's intrusive.”

 

Ignoring me, she laid the cards out on the Formica, a shield of owl, turkey, coyote, and raven.

 

“Oh, yeah? Which tribe? The crystal-gazing holistic Zuni merchandiser's clan?”

 

“Don't be flip. It's inspired by aboriginal wisdom. Don't snort at me, please.”

 

“Mom, it's just some New Age nonsense.”

 

“Sh. Think about your problem.”

 

“No.”

 

“Okay, here it is again. Owl in your recent past. It's an omen. Magic is coming your way. Deception.”

 

“I don't want to do this, Mother.”

 

“Wait a minute, this one's new. Coyote, the trickster. The universe is about to play some kind of practical joke on you.”

 

“I'm going to leave now.”

 

“No. Wait. Here's the wolf card reversed. Contrary medicine. Something negative. Usually wolf is a guide, but in this position, it could mean—” My mother glanced up at me, then swept the cards up in one swift movement, as if trying to erase what ever message she'd seen there. Despite myself, I felt a little uneasy.

 

“What?”

 

“You need to look beneath the surface of things, Abra. You need to wake up to whatever's really going on between Hunter and you. And you need to be careful.”

 

“Gee, thanks, Mom! What a great birthday treat.” I sounded like a whiny adolescent, a sure sign that I had stayed too long in my mother's presence.

 

My mother reached out a hand and held it on my arm for a long moment. “Baby,” she said, “I'm scared for you. The wolf's not a good character to have as an enemy.”

 

“I thought you New Age types adored wolves.”

 

“Abs, I'm not New Age, I'm middle-aged. And you can laugh all you want, but I think that husband of yours is dangerous. Remember when you first brought him home, and I told you he was flirting with me? I knew then he wasn't a moral person.” She flung back her head, tossing her long, dyed blond hair as if she were still the defiant young star of some overwritten drama. I could feel it coming, the big, closing line. “I don't think he really ever loved you, you know. Not as an equal.”

 

I was so mad I could have slapped her. “You never stop, do you? Everything has to have a starring role for Piper LeFever.”

 

“Abra—” She reached out again, and I jumped back.

 

“Don't touch me. I am so damned tired of your theatrics I can't stand it. I'd rather go back to Hunter's brand of abuse than have your poisonous comfort for one more minute. I hope you do a better job of mothering Grania, because you sure are not going to get another chance to get at me.”

 

It took me two hours to get home. When I walked in, Hunter was lying on the couch and smoking a cigarette, a dark cloud of smoke over his head. “How's your mother?” He was still wearing his jeans and his cheeks were dark with stubble. There was a cup of cold coffee half spilled over some papers and on the wood floor.

 

“Fine.” I busied myself pulling off my coat so I wouldn't have to look at him. I never know how to behave after a big fight. Should I be haughty? Conciliatory? I feared that in my indecision, I usually wound up coming across as vaguely schoolmarmish.

 

“Did you ask her advice?” Hunter pulled himself up to gaze at me, his chin resting on the wood back of the couch.

 

“No.” I fought the urge to look at him, fussing instead with the straps on the old backpack I'd been using since my handbag was stolen.

 

“Did she give it anyway?”

 

“Of course.”

 

Hunter continued regarding me. “You do realize that I didn't know you'd taken the day off till someone named Offal called you from work.”

 

“Ofer. Oh, God, you didn't tell him I was out, did you?”

 

“I said you were asleep and not to be disturbed.”

 

“Thanks.” My hand was on the doorknob to the bedroom. I was ready to just have a bath and get into bed, even though it was barely six o'clock.

 

“Anytime.” I went into the bedroom and put my backpack on the dresser along with the paper bag containing my mother's gift. There was a woman's handbag resting on the lace doily where I keep my perfume bottles. Expensive, supple leather, a shape so seductively elegant you knew it had to belong to someone who wore stockings instead of panty hose. I opened the bag up and saw a leather wallet, also expensive. I felt the beginnings of an anger white with fear.

 

“Hunter.” I came out holding the handbag as if it were a bomb. “I just found this in our bedroom.”

 

“Did you?” He was back on the couch, reading something again. A book on medieval wolves.

 

“Yes, Hunter, I did. Now, are you going to tell me whose wallet this is?”

 

“Why don't you just look inside and find out.”

 

I opened the wallet and took out a driver's license. Abra Barrow. Me. Hunter had gone and replaced all my cards. My eyes filling with tears for what felt like the hundredth time that day, I held the wallet to my face and sniffed the distinctive smell of new and expensive leather. Then I saw the designer name on the handbag and realized what it must have cost. This was more than a casual gesture; this was an engagement ring's worth of caring. In that moment, flooded with unexpected hope, I knew that I would do what ever it took to make my marriage work.

 

“I have just one question, Hunter.”

 

“Go ahead.”

 

“Are you sleeping with the owner of this handbag?” Hunter finally put down his book and smiled. “Well, as a matter of fact,” he said, reaching out to me, “yes.”

 

 

TEN

Nobody would eat at the Animal Medical Institute's cafeteria by choice. The room is dark as a basement, the food is greasy, and the long, grim picnic tables look ready for a fresh shipment of cadavers. But we interns work about ninety hours a week, and the residents don't fare much better: It's hard to believe there's an actual city out there with restaurants in it.

 

“I'm starving, but the spaghetti looked like a breeding ground for bacteria,” said Lilliana, carrying two strawberry yogurts and an apple on her tray. “Where do you want to sit?”

 

“You choose.” I had selected two large chocolate chip cookies and a container of skim milk. Looking at my friend's tiny waist in her chic straight black skirt, I wondered whether I should switch to yogurt, too. Not that it would really help; Lilli was the kind of woman who wore heels and matching French-bra-and-pan ties sets, and I was not. As much as I wanted to keep my husband, I knew I wasn't capable of undergoing some dramatic transformation at this late date.

 

“I guess we might as well join the boys,” said Lilliana, searching the crowded room for a free table.

 

I looked around and spotted Sam, who waved us over, winding the spaghetti on his fork with sloppy enthusiasm. Ofer, who had brought his food from home, was using a toothpick to eat meatballs out of a little Tupper-ware container. Sitting a little apart from them, Malachy seemed to be lunching on tea and saltines while reading from a pile of files.

 

“I've heard a rumor,” said Lilliana while we were still out of earshot, “that the board's trying to remove him from the Institute completely.”

 

I didn't ask where she'd heard this; the unlikeliest people tended to confide in Lilliana. It was uncanny. If she'd been standing next to the chief of staff for two minutes at the cafeteria, she probably knew more about the man than his secretary did. Give her half an hour, and she'd know more than his wife. But Lilliana would never expose her sources.

 

“Do they want Mad Mal out because of his health?” I wondered aloud. “Or is his health getting worse because he's on the way out?”

 

Lilliana shrugged. “I don't know. Either way, he looks awful.” Lately, Malachy's cheekbones were so prominent that he looked positively cadaverous.

 

“Shoot,” said Lilliana as we reached the table, “I forgot something. You sit, Abra, and I'll be right back.” I put my tray down as Lilliana returned to the food servers.

 

“Ms. Barrow.” Malachy nodded at me. “Did you get the rads back on that golden retriever yet?”

 

“No, but the bloods are in.” I took a sip of my milk. “I don't know where to go from here, though. The owner's pretty much tapped out.”

 

Malachy tapped his chin thoughtfully. “So chemo's not an option, regardless of the diagnosis?”

 

“Not with us. Maybe the dog's regular vet can work something out.”

 

“You feel up to making the call?” His voice, I thought, was almost kind.

 

“I can do it.”

 

Malachy raised his eyebrows. “You do know it's Mrs. Rosen? The lady who thinks we should give her a discount because we're a teaching hospital?”

 

“I'll explain it to her.”

 

“Well, then,” Malachy said, “I suppose that the only thing left for me to say is …”

 

“Say happy birthday,” said Lilliana, reappearing with a tiny, perfect chocolate cake on her tray. There was just enough room for the big 3 and 0 candles.

 

“Oh, Lilliana, thanks.” I blew out the candles, and Sam said, “What did you wish for?”

 

“What all women wish for—true love, happiness, a pedicure.”

 

“I can help you with part of that,” said Lilliana, handing me a beautiful print of an Impressionist garden, along with a gift certificate for a day spa.

 

“Of course, I'm tagging along,” she said, peeling her apple in the European fashion.

 

“With knife skills like that,” said Malachy, “you are truly wasted in social work.”

 

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, just stab him, Lilli.”

 

Ofer's card featured a wolf wearing a woman's dress, looking at Little Red Riding Hood with a kind of embarrassed smirk. The caption read, Really, Red, it's not about the clothes.

 

“I was a little worried you might be offended by this,” Sam admitted. His card displayed the waxed chest of a muscular young male model, and contained an unfunny joke about older women.

 

“Very cute, Sam. Thanks.” I wondered why I had the reputation for being prim. For some reason, I thought of Red Mallin, Wildlife Removal Operator. He sure hadn't thought of me as prudish.

 

Lilliana took a look at Sam's card. “I'm sorry, but this is not a ladies' man, if you catch my drift.”

 

“Yeah,” said Ofer. “Real men don't wax and pluck and dress up in designer clothes.”

 

“Yeah,” said Sam, his voice dripping sarcasm. “They call those real men ‘bears.' You know, big, lumberjack-style men. Very pop u lar in the gay community.”

 

Malachy handed me his card last. It was very plain, with just a pressed wildflower on the cover, and inside, he had scrawled: We need to discuss something.

 

I closed the card quickly and stared at him, a cold wave of fear hitting me. Was he going to suggest terminating my internship?

 

Then Malachy stood up, nearly dropping his files. I reacted quickly and caught them, but some of the papers still tumbled out. “Thank you, Ms. Barrow,” he said. “I don't suppose I could impose on you to leave this little gathering a bit prematurely?”

 

Swallowing back my fear, I followed him to the elevator banks. We didn't speak as we went down to the basement level, where Malachy had been given a small office when he'd lost his position on one of the major research teams. I hadn't actually been inside his office since my initial interview last spring.

 

The elevator doors slid open and Malachy said, “After you.” I waited for him to precede me down the hall, noticing how unsteady his gait seemed as different scenarios played out in my head. Ms. Barrow, you are the only intern I can trust with the news of my imminent departure. Ms. Barrow, I have come to the realization that you are not really qualified to be on my team. The only thought that I instantly dismissed was that my austere boss might be coming on to me in some fashion.

 

As we walked past a number of offices and turned a corner, I began to realize that Malachy was taking me somewhere I hadn't been before. This section of the corridor was darker, the fluorescent lights flickering over peeling paint and the occasional broken chair left in a corner.

 

“Dr. Knox,” I said, because we never called him Malachy to his face, “where are we going?”

 

“Here.” Malachy stopped in front of a door at the end of the long hallway. Handing me the files he had been carrying, he fumbled with a set of keys.

 

“I don't understand what's going on here,” I said. “Are you letting me go from the group?”

 

Malachy cursed under his breath as his trembling hands prevented him from inserting the key in the lock. Amazed at my boldness, I put my hand over his. His skin felt like ice.

 

“Please,” I said. “Are you kicking me out?”

 

Malachy turned to me with a scowl. “No, I'm not kicking you out, you foolish girl. I'm taking you in here to show you something that could get me kicked out if anyone knew.”

 

“But why me?” I said, almost too surprised to speak. “Why not the others?”

 

“Because they are not in close personal contact with someone who has been exposed to the lycanthropy virus. Damn,” Malachy said, dropping the keys to the dingy concrete floor.

 

Well, Abra, I just hope you're not going to catch some disease from that man. The memory of my mother's voice ringing in my ears, I bent down to retrieve the keys. “Which one is it?” My voice sounded strained and unnatural.

 

“The bronze.”

 

I opened the door, revealing what appeared to be a small, dimly lit laboratory. In one large cage, there was a Dalmatian, in another a German shepherd. Both dogs appeared to be asleep, but the fact that our appearance hadn't wakened them let me know that they had been sedated. A third cage stood empty, and I thought of Pia, the wolf hybrid. A stainless steel table in the middle of the room was equipped with restraints, and I also noticed a small refrigerator, a Bunsen burner, a centrifuge, numerous vials, a microscope, and what appeared to be a kitchen blender.

 

“I thought you were no longer involved in research,” I commented, trying to sound offhand. The truth was, my mother wasn't completely wrong when she called me a hypochondriac, and all of my husband's recent erratic behavior was running through my mind.

 

“Officially, I'm not.” Malachy shambled over to a computer that looked at least ten years old. “But I couldn't just abandon my work to a bunch of incompetent wankers, now could I?” He tapped a few keys and an image came up on the screen: the familiar image of human DNA, a double helix. “Do you know that human chromosome 17 shares linkage with canid chromosome 23?”

 

I shook my head. “Not specifically, no.” I knew we were all mammals, and that we shared a common ancestor if you went back far enough, but I'd never delved too deeply into genetics.

 

Malachy tapped out a key and a segment of DNA removed itself, turned upside down, and then was reinserted. “This suggests that at some point, there was a mutation—an inversion, probably.”

 

Behind me, the Dalmatian growled as it fought off the effects of its sedation. “Dr. Knox,” I said, trying to call his attention to the animal.

 

“But wait. Look what happens when you reshuffle a few more genes.” On screen, the DNA began to shift and recombine. “There you go—the sequence for canid DNA.”

 

“But that's at the genetic level,” I said, suddenly grasping his point.

 

“Exactly,” said Malachy. “I always suspected that the lycanthropy virus could affect cell function, and I surmised that there might even be some shift at the level of the nuclear DNA, so that one cell would start looking and acting like another kind of cell. But it took me a while to understand that the change was taking place in the mitochondrial DNA.”

 

I looked at Malachy, suddenly wondering if, in fact, his illness was muddling his brain. “If you're telling me that my husband could have been infected with this virus, I'd like to know exactly what you think that means.” Because at the moment, every werewolf movie I'd ever seen was running through my head, ending, disconcertingly, with an image of my husband turning into Jack Nicholson.

 

Malachy raised his eyebrows. “My dear girl, that is what I'm trying to find out. No one knows precisely how mitochondrial and nuclear DNA interact, but clearly, it's complex. All I can say is, there's a genetic factor, and then there's an environmental factor. But I do think it would make sense for your husband to pay me a little visit.”

 

I could just imagine how that suggestion would go over. “I don't think—” I began, but we were interrupted by a long moan from the Dalmatian.

 

“Blast. I'd better check on him. What I really need, of course, is a pure wolf specimen.” Malachy knelt down awkwardly to open the cage door, and before I could react, the Dalmatian rushed him, snarling and going for the throat. I tried to reach for the animal's legs, to pull him up off-balance, but I couldn't move fast enough. I could see blood, and Malachy's hands were raised, trying to block the dog's head.

 

“Telazol,” Malachy shouted, “in the fridge.” I opened the small refrigerator, grabbed the syringe, and plunged it into the dog's flank. The Dalmatian lashed its neck to the right, releasing Malachy as it reacted to me, the new threat. Growling, the Dalmatian curled its upper lip as it prepared to pounce.

 

“Oh God,” I said, knowing the sedative was not going to take effect in time. And then the dog was on me, his front paws pressing down on my shoulders, and I couldn't help it: I closed my eyes. There was a sharp crack, and I screamed as the full weight of the dog came down on my chest. I looked up, and there was Malachy looming over me, except that for a confused second he didn't look like Malachy at all. His eyes seemed to glow with an eerie, phosphorescent blue-green light, and he looked bigger, wilder, stronger, his arms grotesquely attenuated, as if he had stretched them out from across the room to break the Dalmatian's neck.

 

But that's impossible, I thought, and then I passed out.

 

 

“Jesus,” someone said.

 

“Is she bleeding?”

 

I was wondering the same thing myself as I came back to consciousness with Lilliana and Ofer and Sam standing around me. It's very disconcerting to be the victim of a medical drama; I think that when we watch this stuff on television, we all tend to identify with the doctors and nurses, the ones standing on their feet with all their clothes on and their skin intact.

 

“Okay, someone help me pick this guy up and get an IV going,” said Ofer.

 

Lilliana knelt down to stroke my hair. “Abra, you okay?”

 

I tried to nod as Ofer and another intern lifted the dead dog off me.

 

Malachy crouched down beside me. “I'm sorry,” he said, his voice softer than I had ever heard it before, filled with regret. “Did he bite you? Did he break the skin?”

 

I looked up at him, remembering that strange, distorted glimpse of him that I'd had before I'd passed out. Shock, I thought, but couldn't help wondering: Had Malachy used himself as a test subject? If so, he certainly hadn't turned into a wolf man.

 

“Your jacket is ripped,” I said, realizing that Malachy's lab coat had been shredded, as if he'd worn it through a cyclone.

 

“Irrelevant. Show me where you're injured,” Malachy said, and I realized I hadn't answered his last question.

 

I met his eyes, understanding why this was his paramount concern. “He didn't bite me.”

 

Malachy looked so relieved that I caught a glimpse of what he must have looked like when he was younger, softer, more capable of emotion. I found myself wondering if he ever had been in a real romantic relationship, or if science was the only passion that had ever moved him. Perhaps this secret underground laboratory was the place where his truest self could emerge. And then I realized: Malachy must have called the rest of the team down to help me. Which meant it wasn't a secret anymore.

 

 

For the rest of the day, people kept coming up to me and making bad Dalmatian jokes. Want a fur coat, Abra? Just say the word. I tried not to think about the wolf card, reversed. Did a Dalmatian attack count? Or was this some divine coyote practical joke? That's the problem with tarot cards: Anything can mean anything.

 

Sam walked by me in the hall. “You okay now? Not seeing spots?” I pretended an exasperation I did not feel. But all of us were pretending, really. Underneath our facade of normalcy, we were wound tight with the tension of not knowing our fates. By the end of the day, we heard the official confirmation: Malachy Knox was no longer employed by the Animal Medical Institute.

 

We hadn't seen our teacher since the EMTs had arrived, crowding into the lab along with Mr. Simcox, the cadaverous head of administrative affairs. We'd managed to convince the emergency medical technicians that I didn't need to go to the emergency room, and then Mr. Simcox had summoned two guards to escort Malachy from the building.

 

Something about Malachy's unruffled demeanor suggested to me that he'd managed to cram some files into his briefcase while Simcox had been distracted.

 

“You'll all be fine,” he said, nonchalantly removing his torn lab coat and pulling a tweed jacket off a hook on the back of the door. His bony arms, I noticed, protruded from the frayed cuffs of his shirt as if the sleeves had shrunk—or his arms had grown.

 

As the guards herded him out, Malachy added, “They'll just assign you all to other teams.”

 

“But Dr. Knox,” said Sam, “what's going to happen to you?”

 

Malachy shocked us all by grinning with real amusement. “To tell you the truth, my boy, I haven't the faintest idea.” And with that, he left us, whistling under his breath and swinging his briefcase with surprising vigor as he walked out of our lives.

 

 

ELEVEN

I am in the AMI cafeteria and Lilliana hands me a straw basket. “You have to bring this to Malachy, Abs. He's not at all well.”

 

“Where is he?”

 

Lilliana points to the basement corridor. “Down there. But just go straight to his laboratory and don't open any of the other doors.”

 

“I promise.” Then I am in my own apartment and I open the door to our bedroom to find Hunter masturbating with what appears to be a piece of liver. Just like in Portnoy's Complaint, I think. At this point, I understand that I am dreaming.

 

“Excellent! You've brought more food,” says Hunter. “Is there any meat in there?”

 

“It's not for you,” I explain. “This is work-related.” I back out the door and I'm in the basement again, walking toward Malachy's laboratory. There's a young woman crouched in a corner, holding her stomach as if she's in pain. She's wearing a red hooded sweatshirt that conceals her face, just like in that sixties movie, what was it called, Don't Look Now. Recalling the film's ending, I immediately suspect the child of being a homicidal dwarf.

 

“Are you all right?” I ask, cautiously.

 

“No, I'm not all right,” says the girl, pulling back her hood. She has a winsome, pointed face, and she seems angry and frightened. “Look at me! Look what he did!”

 

“You look fine to me,” I say, and then I see that the hands peeking out of her sleeves are the hairy paws of a wolf. “Oh, you poor thing.”

 

“No, no, I'm supposed to be a wolf,” said the girl. “He did this to me!” Not knowing what to do for her, I reach into the basket and hand her a sweet roll.

 

“Thanks,” she calls after me, gobbling it up with canine enthusiasm. “Oh! Hey! Don't let him take his clothes off!”

 

Unsure if she means Malachy or someone else, I nod my head. When I reach the door to the lab, it turns into the front door to my mother's house. My husband opens it. He is wearing my mother's purple caftan.

 

“Hunter,” I say. “Where's my mother?”

 

“I am your mother now,” he says.

 

“No, you're just wearing her clothes. What have you done with her?”

 

“I have incorporated her into my being, so I can be everything to you. I don't have a mother, so why should you? You don't need anything or anyone else but me.”

 

“That's a little extreme, isn't it?”

 

“Just hand over the goodies.” I lay the basket on the table, and before I can stop him, Hunter pulls off the caftan. I protest, remembering the wolf girl's warning, but suddenly Hunter is on top of me, and he's a wolf, his fangs inches from my throat. I close my eyes and feel his dead weight collapse on top of me.

 

“You can open them now,” says a familiar, Texas-flavored voice. I look up and see Red Mallin, Wildlife Removal Operator, dressed in a plaid lumberjack shirt and carrying an ax. He looks subtly younger and handsomer in this dream, just like an actor who's gone from a bit part to a starring role.

 

“I think you're getting better lighting,” I say. Then, taking in the lumberjack shirt and remembering Sam's comment, I add, “You're not a bear, are you?”

 

“Different animal entirely. Come on, Doc. Open your eyes now.”

 

“They are open. I'm looking right at you.”

 

Red leans close, and I can smell his breath. It's nice breath. It smells like he's been chewing mint leaves. “You've got to wake up, darlin'.” And then, as if he can't help himself, he puts his nose in my hair and takes a deep, snuffling breath. I pull back when I realize that his nose is cold and wet. Of course it is—he's a wolf, too.

 

I open my eyes and wake up.

 

 

For a moment, I didn't know where I was, and then I realized that I was in my own living room. I must have fallen asleep on the couch. After a long and surprisingly sympathetic talk with my mom, I'd sat down to watch CNN until Hunter returned.

 

It had been comforting to talk to my mother about the Dalmatian's attack and Malachy's dismissal, but the person I really wanted to tell was my husband. Now, barely able to shake off the vividness of my dream, I turned the set off, feeling wide awake and more than a little unsettled.

 

It was one A.M., and Hunter wasn't home yet. He had said that he might go to a late night café to write, and not to wait up for him, so I wasn't even entitled to be mad. I filled the kettle with fresh water and set it on a high flame.

 

There was a good chance my mother was still awake. Better than good. But despite the ease of our earlier conversation, I was reluctant to expose more of my marital problems to her.

 

When she'd first met Hunter seven years ago, she'd flirted with him. I didn't really blame her: She'd never met any of my boyfriends before and had no idea how to behave. When she realized Hunter was laughing at her, she became his sworn enemy.

 

“I suppose you like my daughter because your own mother is somewhat lacking,” she said, chopping kidneys for the cats.

 

“Interesting insight,” said Hunter, looking at my mother in a manner even she could not misinterpret as favorable. “Do you think it's something Abra and I might have in common?”

 

After Hunter graduated college and our weekends together grew more and more infrequent, my mother began to call him my ex-boyfriend. As in, “that ex-boyfriend of yours I never liked.”

 

Most of our friends assume that Hunter and I had been together since college, but the real story was more complicated. After I graduated, we moved in together, but we had stopped sleeping together, and Hunter began calling me his roommate. I think he wanted me as protection in case his landlord decided to evict him while he was away in Anchorage or Pulau Pangkor or Goa. I worked at various animal shelters, saving money and applying to veterinary schools, while Hunter came and went, sometimes for months at a time. My mother asked me what the hell I thought I was doing. I told her we were friends now. What was wrong with sharing an apartment with a friend?

 

So I mailed out the bills while he was away and provided protection from clingy girlfriends when he was in town. His girlfriends always asked me for advice, then never took it. I told them to act as if they were his friends, not his lovers.

 

And then I went off to Tufts for four years. When I graduated, I came back to New York to visit Hunter and we got drunk and wound up having energetic sex all night long. It was so much fun. I'd forgotten how sex could be like that, like a game of Twister—left foot on red, right arm on blue, now you go here and whoa!

 

We got married a year later, on the gray day after Valentine's in City Hall. I tried not to let on how surprised I was; there's really no dignified way to ask a man why he has proposed to you. There were no guests. We asked another couple on line to be our witnesses. I wore a plain light beige silk dress that had looked great in the shop but made me look stern and matronly when I put it on; Hunter wore jeans and a sweater. Our honeymoon was one unbearable weekend in his family's grand Victorian ruin of a house in Northside, New York. His mother had committed suicide when Hunter was a teenager, but his father was there, unexpectedly; he kept saying how funny it was that we had just gotten married. There were a lot of loaded comments about the proud Barrow lineage and a debt owed to future generations, and it took me a whole day to understand that Hunter's father was under the mistaken impression that my parents were rich. Awkwardly, I explained that neither my father nor my mother had the money to help renovate the house. Even if the tower room was in danger of falling into the basement. Even if the 1920s radiators hissed like cats but didn't give off much in the way of heat and the grimly shadowed upper two floors still had gas lighting.

 

Even if it was the heritage of my future children.

 

“Oh, well,” Hunter said. “Maybe we could just kill your mother and move into the El Greco house.”

 

In the end, it was his father who financed us while Hunter wrote and I applied to AMI's internship program. But my mother never got over her conviction that Hunter wasn't to be trusted.

 

Steam was beginning to whistle in the kettle and I removed it from the burner. I had just poured boiling water into my mug of powdered cocoa mix when the phone rang.

 

“Hello, Abs.”

 

Not Hunter. My mother. Stupidly, I'd just taken a sip of cocoa and started choking on my reply.

 

“Hello, hello, are you all right?”

 

“Sorry, Mom. I just burned the tip of my tongue.”

 

“Honey, what is it?”

 

I broke like an eggshell. “Oh, Mom, Hunter's not home yet. I haven't even had a chance to tell him about what happened at work.” Or about the possibility that he had caught the lycanthropy virus; I'd neglected to tell my mother that as well. “I'm worried Hunter's getting ready to leave me.”

 

“Is that all? Baby, I'm more worried he's not.”

 

I thought about hanging up, but instead I told her about my dream.

 

“Are you sure that Texan guy was also a wolf? The cards included a wolf and a coyote.”

 

I thought about that. “I think he was really this man I met. I think it was one of those mental puns—you know, all men are wolves.”

 

“You met a man?” My mother's voice was suddenly bright with interest. It was so easy for her to go off point.

 

“A wildlife removal operator, Mom. As in, kills the squirrels hiding in your basement.” At least I assumed he killed the animals he removed, although, remembering the owlet, I wondered.

 

“Oh. Well. But if he's attractive, at least sleep with him. The big mistake you make is letting Hunter have all the power. I'd just feel so much better about your relationship if I knew you were cheating on him from time to time.”

 

On that note I did hang up.

 

 

TWELVE

I knew I was in trouble as soon as I saw the restaurant. It was the kind of place where one person fills your water glass and another removes your used dishes, and neither is the waiter. The hostess who showed me to my table was slight and gamine in a black evening dress with no bra. She gave Hunter a sympathetic smile as she gestured to my chair with one elegant little hand.

 

“Hunter,” I said, “you didn't warn me that we were going somewhere this nice.” I'd thought we'd have my deferred birthday dinner at one of those casually trendy West Side places where it's chic to be underdressed. Instead, Hunter had managed to book us at one of those East Side places where terrifyingly thin women make a career out of eating squab. My husband, who had dressed up in a pale pink, button-down shirt and black jeans, was the only man not wearing a tie, but on him it looked deliberate and stylish. The other male diners were florid-faced and stout, drinking scotch and lecturing their ash blond, stiletto-shod companions.

 

I, on the other hand, was trying to remember not to touch my hair, which was on that knife's edge between passably clean and suspiciously shiny. I was wearing Lilliana's too-small spare black sweater because a terrified Lhasa apso had defecated on my lavender cardigan right before lunchtime. I'd also borrowed some lipstick, but it hadn't helped matters much. Fatigue was making my contact lenses feel like scouring pads and I was getting a nervous rash on the right side of my forehead, near the scalp. All in all, I wished I were at home, eating tomato soup out of a can. But my husband and I had a date, so there I was, like a boxer struggling to stay in the fight.

 

“You look great.”

 

I raised one eyebrow.

 

“Mm. Just like a Victorian nanny.” Hunter pulled out my chair for me, beating the waiter to the job. Or was it the busboy? Whoever the man was, I thought he glared at us as Hunter sat back down. “Ah, there you are. Gin and tonic for me, champagne cocktail for the lady.” The mystery server gave a polite nod, possibly recognizing Hunter as one of those rare diners who immediately assumes the dominant role.

 

“I look like a Victorian nanny? How is that?”

 

Hunter grinned at me. “The hank of hair barely restrained by a tortoiseshell spear. The flare of nostril. The haughty arch of unplucked eyebrows.”

 

“The furry legs?”

 

“Thankfully, you are not Victorian in all respects.”

 

I put my hand to my chest. “Stop, I'm getting a swelled head.”

 

“Don't fish for it—you know you're beautiful. And, as I was going to say before you interrupted me, it's the air you have of something deliciously repressed.” You know you're beautiful, he'd said, so matter-of-fact. I inhaled a deep lungful of happiness, the inverse of a sigh. The real waiter came with our menus, and Hunter thanked him.

 

“My name is Pascal, and I'll be your server to night.” I noticed that Pascal seemed to approve of Hunter more than he did of me. I couldn't really argue with the guy: Hunter had recently gotten a haircut and it fell in smooth waves around his high cheekbones. He looked expensive and dangerous, like he could drive a Porsche while dismantling a bomb barehanded. Barehanded, as in missing the thin silver wedding ring he usually wore when he wasn't out in the wilderness courting disaster.

 

“You're not wearing your ring.” I'd bought it as a joke at a flea market, sure Hunter would refuse to wear anything other than a watch. To my surprise, he'd taken to it, saying he liked the idea of being branded.

 

“What? Oh, that. Must've got out of the habit of wearing it. I'll put it on when we get back home.” Hunter reached for my hand across the table, but just as I placed my palm over his, Pascal returned with the drinks.

 

“Monsieur. Madame.” My hand was released so abruptly it just sat there for a moment on the table like a dead fish. “I'll be back to tell you the specials.”

 

I sipped my champagne and looked at the menu, which was printed on parchment and vellum, like a wedding announcement. To my surprise, there seemed to be nothing offered that did not contain some dead thing in its ingredients. Salad of fresh greens with goat cheese and crisp apple-cured bacon. Duck and mushroom ravioli. Even the vegetable soup had pork won-tons in it.

 

“Hunter,” I said, “there's nothing I can eat here.”

 

“Hmm.” Hunter looked up at me. “There's salad and stuff. Cheese.”

 

“It all has meat in it.”

 

“For God's sake, Abra, we're not in college anymore. You don't have to be such a purist. Just pick the bits you don't want out.”

 

I stared at him, thinking of the Dalmatian. Drop eye contact now, I thought, to avoid the lunge. But instead I attacked. “I don't think it's very considerate of you to pick a restaurant that doesn't have any vegetarian dishes, Hunter. Especially when you're supposed to be taking me out for my birthday.”

 

There was a pause, and then Hunter reached over the table for my hand. “You're right. I'm sorry, Abs. I just heard about this place from a friend at Vanity Fair, and I thought … But, you're right. Do you want to leave?”

 

Unfair, I thought. He knows how I hate making a scene. And leaving here would entail a little drama worthy of my mother. “No,” I said. Grudgingly.

 

Hunter scanned the menu. “Here, what about the sautéed mixed vegetables and some, ah, julienned potatoes?”

 

Two side dishes. “Fine.”

 

Pascal returned to recite, in a bored, distracted voice, the roasted duck and turnips, parsleyed veal, and braised rabbit with mustard and calvados. He said all the names in French, slowly, and gazed at us challengingly, as if daring us to request a translation.

 

I gestured for Hunter to go first. He considered things for a moment. “Is the Ragout de Lapin good?”

 

“Excellent.”

 

“I'll have it.”

 

“Very good, sir. And for Madame?”

 

I examined my limited options one last time. “I suppose … I guess … I think I'll start with the cream of sorrel soup, and then when my husband is having his main course”—I couldn't bring myself to say “rabbit”—“you can bring me the, um, sautéed baby artichokes.” I closed my menu and handed it to Pascal.

 

“And that will be all, madame?”

 

I met his gaze. “That will be all.”

 

“Perhaps, if I may suggest, the shrimp and eggplant tart?” In case I had been intimidated by the lack of English translation, I suppose.

 

“No.”

 

“The mushroom and prosciutto toast?”

 

“I'm a vegetarian.”

 

“Ah. Aha. I understand.” His tone implied that, in his opinion, I was suffering from a self-inflicted disease. “Do you wish the soufflé for dessert?”

 

I wished to leave as quickly as possible. “No, thanks.” Pascal looked at me as if he were planning to spit in my soup. Then he gave Hunter a sympathetic little nod, and went off to tell the chef to stick a little bunny corpse in the skillet.

 

And then we were alone together, Hunter and I, and I realized that the evening had acquired a kind of portentous heaviness. The low murmur of the other diners seemed to fade away. The clink and chime of glasses and cutlery was replaced with the pounding of my heart.

 

“Abra,” Hunter said, making a helpless little gesture with his hands. A how-can-I-put-this gesture.

 

I wanted to stop this. What ever this was. “You're not going to propose, are you?”

 

Hunter dipped his head and then looked up at me, a rueful light in his dark eyes. “In a manner of speaking, yes. Propose something. Ah, Christ, Abs.” Hunter took a swallow of his gin and tonic. “You must have noticed I'm not very happy.”

 

Striving for composure, I found my professional you-have-several-treatment-options voice. “Is it the writing?”

 

“It's work, in part. I haven't figured out the exact story I'm going to do, but Christ, Abs, I found something back there, in the Transylvanian Alps.”

 

“Not a werewolf, I assume.” Ha, ha.

 

Hunter did not smile. “If you feel you have to make a joke out of everything—”

 

“No, no, I was just teasing. Start again. You said you found something …”

 

“Well, you know the woman I was working with, Magdalena Ionescu. The wolf researcher. Born right near the forest, totally untraveled outside of Eastern Europe, but so smart about the wolves—Abs, the time I spent tracking with her was like nothing I've known. She was like—she was almost animal in her instincts. Uncanny.”

 

My mouth went dry. Why had I thought Magda too old to interest Hunter? “She's the one. Oh, God, why are you telling me this here? So I won't make a scene?”

 

Hunter took in the look on my face. “Oh, Christ, Abs, it's not that. Yes, I slept with her. Yes, she made a big impression on me. Changed me. But I'm married to you. I love you.”

 

“Tell me what you have to say.” I was holding on to my diamond wedding band as if it might be pulled off by a sudden howling tornado. By what ever Hunter would say next.

 

Hunter leaned forward. “Abra, when I say she changed me … Christ, I don't know how to explain this so it doesn't sound like I'm mad.”

 

“It's the lycanthropy virus, isn't it? She infected you.”

 

I'd surprised him. Maybe even shocked him. “How did you—”

 

“Malachy Knox. My former teacher. He was doing research, and he knew about your trip. But Hunter, I'm not sure I really understand what this means.”

 

Hunter was silent for a moment, as if mentally rewriting a prepared speech. When he finally spoke, his voice was low and a little urgent. “Here's the thing. You have to have a genetic marker, passed down on your mother's side. There's no reliable test, but one thing Magda said was a likely indicator was schizophrenia in the mother's line. When the virus is introduced into an individual with the right genetic makeup, it can create a complete realignment on the cellular level.” Hunter gripped my hands. “Do you understand what that means, Abs? I don't have to worry about developing my mother's illness anymore.” He took a breath. “I don't have to worry about going mad.”

 

The mitochondrial DNA, I thought, passed down the mother's line. But Malachy hadn't suggested that inoculation with the lycanthropy virus might be a cure for anything, let alone schizophrenia. Striving for composure, I extracted my hands from his and took a sip of my champagne cocktail. “So what happens now?”

 

Hunter tossed back the rest of his drink, then signaled the waiter to bring another. “I don't know yet. It varies from individual to individual. Most people just develop a few lupine characteristics—improved hearing, a keener sense of smell, some muscular and skeletal rearrangement.”

 

“Copious body hair?”

 

Hunter ignored my feeble attempt at humor. “Magda says that full body morphing is very rare. In her family, she's the only one who can do it. But I can already feel the difference in me, Abs.” He leaned backward, his arms along the back of the chair. I could see a businessman staring, and I thought: I can see the difference, too. You've lost your mind.

 

“So you think there's a possibility that you'll be able to change into another shape?” I used my best professional voice, the one that revealed absolutely nothing of what I was thinking or feeling. “A wolf shape?”

 

Hunter seemed so excited I half-expected him to jump out of his seat. “It's a slim chance, but yes, that's what I think—hope—might be happening to me.”

 

I drank down the rest of my champagne cocktail too quickly, swallowed the wrong way, and started coughing.

 

“You all right, Abs?”

 

I nodded, still coughing. As I used the corner of my linen napkin to wipe my streaming eyes, I sorted through possible responses to Hunter's pronouncement. My first instinct was to find a politic way to suggest seeing a psychiatrist. Assuming that there was a politic way to suggest seeing a psychiatrist. Maybe I could ask Lilliana for a referral. But then I thought about what Malachy had told me in his lab. I wasn't going to buy the idea that a human could shapeshift until I'd observed it in a controlled experiment, and then had someone else repeat the experiment to verify results. But still, the whole idea of recombinant DNA had sounded pretty far-fetched until someone had succeeded in getting human genes into bacteria and producing insulin in a petri dish. What ever else might prove to be true, I had to accept that my husband had caught a rare virus, and that its effects were not fully understood.

 

And then another, more disturbing possibility intruded.

 

“Can I catch it? What happens if you don't have the right genetic makeup and you're exposed?”

 

“Oh, baby.” Hunter reached out and took my hand in his. “Nothing happens. Nothing happens to ninety-nine percent of the people who are exposed to the virus. And it's not contagious unless it's active in your system, and you're in wolf form. I don't even know yet if anything will happen to me.”

 

The waiter brought Hunter's second drink, and Hunter gulped it down as if it were water. “Ah, Abs, I wish you could have seen the Carpathian Mountains. But I don't have the words. Here, it sounds ridiculous. Too sentimental. There, it seemed—it was all right to use words like ‘timeless' and ‘primal.' It wasn't forced. It wasn't false. There was a beauty to the landscape that made the heart lift. There was something almost supernatural about it—a magic of place. I would walk up a rise and see the world falling away. I would put my hand on a tree so old it felt like it had a soul.”

 

“It sounds wonderful.” To my credit, my voice didn't crack.

 

“It was.”

 

There was a lull in the conversation, one big enough to drown in. I said nothing. Fear returned, raising the small hairs on the back of my neck. Someone, not Pascal the waiter, brought me a tray with my soup on it.

 

“Hey. Wait! Bring us this wine, will you?” Hunter pointed to a selection from the wine list. He'd already finished his second gin and tonic, and I thought: He's not just charged up. He's manic.

 

“So you want to go right back there? Is that it?”

 

Hunter tore off a piece of bread. I thought of that ridiculous commercial for a candy bar that suggested sticking the chocolate in your mouth whenever you needed time to come up with a story. Hunter crammed the bread in his mouth but spoke anyway. “I want to be in a place where I can fulfill what ever potential there is in me.”

 

I cleared my throat. “And exactly where do you find this kind of a place?”

 

“Magda says that wherever there are remnants of old forests, wherever there are still legends of beast men and magic, that's where I will have the best chance of becoming … complete. It has to be an old forest, and there has to have been a long history of humans interacting with the wild. She calls them borderline places … crossroads between more than one reality.”

 

Now my credulity was stretched past the breaking point. “I'm sorry, are you saying that magic is a catalyst for this virus?”

 

“Magda showed me that a belief in science and a belief in magic don't have to be mutually exclusive. There are just different kinds of truths, Abs. Old places—wild places—she says they can unlock things inside of us, just like art can. Or poetry.”

 

According to this version of reality, I understood, I was the passionless, literal geek, while Magda was the lyrical sorceress. I didn't bother trying to argue my case. Instead, I thought of Hunter hunched over the computer, passionately frustrated, and realized what his sudden sexual hunger had been. A tantrum. A venting of pent-up emotions that had nothing to do with me. My soup was growing cold; I stirred it, but couldn't force myself to taste it. “So you're leaving me for that woman. Magda.”

 

“No, Abs.” Hunter smiled, and for the first time in our relationship, I thought about his mother's mental illness, and how much of it she might have passed down to her son. “Right in Northside, where my family's house is, there's old-growth woods. And legends about werewolves dating back to the early settlers. Hell, some stories probably come down from the Indian tribes who lived there.” Hunter tore off another hunk of bread as Pascal the waiter arrived with the wine. Hunter continued his discourse, oblivious as Pascal went through the ritual of uncorking.

 

Visibly irritated by Hunter's disregard of him, Pascal poured the wine into my glass first. “Madame?”

 

“It's fine,” I said, barely tasting it.

 

“Great, thanks,” Hunter told Pascal, not looking up at him. Then he threw back half the goblet in one huge swallow. “Anyway, that's where I need to be.” Hunter leaned forward, fingers drumming on the table, longing, no doubt, for a cigarette to hold.

 

“In Northside? You want to live in that big old house in Northside?” I was still trying to get to the buried body in this conversation. He had given me the name of the other woman; he had told me he longed to be back in Transylvania. I couldn't quite believe that Northside and myself were anything but a poor substitute.

 

Hunter drank his glass of water down, audibly swallowing. I had never seen him display such poor table manners. As he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, I wondered how drunk he was.

 

“I don't want to work for Magdalena. In her territory, she's boss. I want to make my own way, Abra. And Northside is as good a place as any to start. Ever since he remarried and moved to Arizona, my dad hasn't spent any time there, and he says he'd rather have me looking after it than the caretaker he's got now. I can write there, and do research. I'll have space, and nature around me. And it's only two hours from you. We can visit each other.”

 

This, at least, made sense. I didn't entirely believe he loved me more than he loved this other woman who had so captured his imagination. But I did believe that he would not choose to be a follower, not even for love. I drank some wine, slowly. I wanted to slow Hunter down, slow everything down. The hum of other people's meals and lives and celebrations seemed to be growing louder. I took a deep breath. “When are you leaving?”

 

“I'd like to leave in a week.” Hunter paused, as if he'd just noticed that we were having different conversations. And that only his was happy. “Abs? Abs, why are you crying?”

 

“Because I thought you were leaving me.”

 

“Oh, sweetheart, no,” said Hunter, misunderstanding. “I'm not leaving you. This is just like one of my research trips. Except I'll be able to see you more often. Oh, Abs, come on, cheer up. I love you, woman.” He leaned across the table and kissed me on the lips. “Now, cheer up! I command you.”

 

“Oh, God, I'm sorry.” I started to laugh, tears still running down my cheeks. I never make scenes in restaurants. Well, except for that day. At first, the relief was so great that I felt a great surge of appetite and began to eat my cold soup, started tearing great chunks out of the bread and stuffing them in my mouth. It was only afterward, when we began to discuss the details of his move over his rabbit and my artichokes, that I realized what had happened.

 

I'd been so braced for news of an affair, of some final break, that I'd felt relieved when Hunter had said that all he wanted was to move to Northside. And he, misinterpreting my tears of relief for tears of sadness, had tried to reassure me that we weren't really separating.

 

But the truth was, we were, because we would not be living together for some time. When a marriage is as generous with distance as ours had always been, it can be hard to distinguish a real parting of ways. But as Hunter and I went over the details of relocation—how much money was to be allocated for city expenses, how much for Hunter to purchase a car, and so on—it hit me that we were, in effect, negotiating a breakup.

 

I looked at Hunter, who had finished amputating the rabbit's leg and was now happily chewing on a chunk of its thigh. “I suppose we won't be seeing too much of each other over Christmas this year.”

 

“You'll get time off for good behavior, won't you? And we'll see each other most weekends.”

 

I didn't have most weekends free, though; I had only one day, at best. And I didn't have a car. The nearest train stopped forty minutes from Hunter's family's house. That made it an almost three-hour commute. One way.

 

Hunter reached for my hand. “You could always come with me.”

 

I felt as though I were having an operation and people were pretending my internal organs weren't hanging outside. “But I can't.”

 

“So we'll see each other whenever we can. Don't worry.” Hunter signaled Pascal the waiter for our check without asking if I wanted dessert. When we got home, I discovered that my mascara had smeared from crying, giving me raccoon eyes. Liquored up and elated over his new future, Hunter went straight to bed for a change and fell asleep almost instantly, facing the window, probably dreaming of escape.

 

At three A.M. I stopped watching him.

 

 

THIRTEEN

Once I admitted it to myself, it was all I could think about. My marriage was being restructured and relocated. My husband was letting me go. And while my moods were swinging wildly between depression and anxiety, I tried to act as though I were at peace with Hunter's decision.

 

I didn't want to drive him away any faster than he was already going.

 

Maybe it would have been better if I'd let myself rage at him, but I was too frightened. I don't fall in love easily. I don't even fall in like very often. And I'd given so much of myself to Hunter that I didn't know how much of me would be left when he was gone. I wouldn't even be able to console myself with sleep, the way other depressed people do. I would sit up with the furniture, watching my familiar things become shadowy and strange the way things do when you pass the witching hours of fatigue and solitude and are still awake.

 

And there was nobody to tell this to. My father, who remembered Hunter as a cocky twenty-one-year-old with a goatee and a lot of unexamined ideas about American cinema, wholly disapproved of my husband. It was the one thing he and my mother agreed on, although my father believed it was in poor taste to say anything more than, “Well, you know how I feel on that subject.” The way he said this, however, implied a loathing so deep and pervasive that it defied language. For a while, my mother tried imitating him, but then she couldn't stop herself from going on. And on.

 

As for female friends, well, I couldn't see turning to Lilliana. We had only been friends for a few months, but I could already tell that in Lilli's version of reality, men were easier to come by than career opportunities. My situation was a bit different. During my college and postgrad years, when most women meet more eligible partners than they will at any other time, I had encountered only three men who were interested in me: a brilliant math and music major with poor people skills, a good friend going through a bad time, and Hunter.

 

I couldn't confide in Malachy or Sam or Ofer, and Malachy, while he knew about my husband's exposure to the lycanthropy virus, was of questionable sanity himself. Too much time had passed to call my small crowd of high school friends.

 

I began trying to find a way out: There had to be a cure. Hunter had said, “You can always come with me.” But that wasn't a real option, not unless I wanted to give up AMI and everything that gave my life meaning.

 

Except for Hunter, of course.

 

The next day I called in sick and went to the bookstore. I was looking for An Answer, but of course there were lots of Answers: Letting Loose, Holding On, The Leap of Faith, Making Him Want to Change, Making Change Work, Changing the Way You Love, Understanding the Alpha Male.

 

I picked up this last, figuring it had been misfiled: Surely Alpha Males belonged in the animal category? Could there be a special self-help section for Women Who Loved Lycanthropes? According to this author, though, we were all animals.

Is your mate an Alpha Male? Take this test.

1. Would your mate describe himself as

 

A) team player

 

B) One of the guys

 

C) A highly autonomous individual with leadership capabilities

 

D) Your lapdog

 

 

2. When confronted with a major life choice, does your man

 

A) Ask your advice

 

B) Ask an expert's opinion

 

C) Tell you and the expert what's wrong with both of you

 

D) Pant and whine

 

 

3. When driving, if cut off by another car, does your mate

 

A) Curse and yell

 

B) Pursue the offending vehicle very closely and then swerve off at the last possible moment before impact

 

C) Physically assault the small dog sitting in the other driver's lap

 

D) Shake uncontrollably, often losing control of his bladder

 

 

I assumed that anyone who answered D) was probably a shih tzu. There were a few more multiple-choice questions designed to ascertain if the woman reader was an Alpha, Beta, or Gamma Female. I was an Alpha, just barely, because of a high score of autonomy (willing to see a movie alone, does not need mate's advice to select clothes). As an Alpha Female, however, I needed to work on “asserting my right to submit.”

 

 

Do not think of submission as surrender. Instead, think of it as a choice—an assertive female knows she is strong enough to submit when it serves her needs. Traditionally, women have understood that their greater emotional intelligence, often called intuition, actually makes them stronger than men—strong enough to back down. In any pack, you will see that the Alpha Male is dominant over the Alpha Female, with the exception of the period of intense initial sexual courtship and the postpartum period. At these times, the male caters to his mate; otherwise, the female uses her enhanced social abilities to hold the family unit together.

 

 

It was pseudo-scientific bull. It was absurdly atavistic. And I couldn't put it down.

 

If you, as a woman, decide that you desire to hold on to your mate with the long-term goal of producing viable offspring, you should understand that you will need to know when, and how, to submit. If during moments of key pack decision-making (when to move to a new hunting ground, for example) you assert your will, you will be setting yourself up as rival, not mate. Be aware of your enhanced capacity for emotional compromise, and remember that there will also be times (postpartum, for example, or during enhanced periods of sexual connection) when you can expect your man to submit to your will.

 

 

I finished reading the book at home. Hunter was out, buying a secondhand car. He came back in the late afternoon, and threw his keys and briefcase on the table.

 

“Success?”

 

“Success.”

 

“What kind?”

 

“Ford Explorer, three years old.” He pulled out the purchase agreement to show me the particulars: CD player, front air bags, enough miles on it to qualify it for early retirement.

 

“It's been driven a lot.”

 

“Yeah, but it's in great shape, and it has a sunroof.”

 

“That won't mean much if it's in the shop all the time. Did you look at a Consumer Reports? And didn't those cars have something wrong with the tires?”

 

“Christ, you sure know how to take the fun out of things. It's a fucking car. Don't make a doctoral project out of it.”

 

I picked up my book. “Fine. It's going to be your car, you're going to be the one driving it. It won't really affect me at all.”

 

“Oh, so that's what this is all about. You're going to start laying some guilt trip on me about going. Look, I've already said you can come with me if you want—”

 

I put the book down to glare at him. “Which you know I can't do!”

 

Hunter turned away from me and began looking over the purchase papers. “Well, that's not my fault. I don't see you giving up your work to be with me, so don't ask me to do it for you.”

 

We talked again, at seven-thirty, to decide what to order for dinner, and ate separated by walls of paperwork. At twelve Hunter went in to bed without saying good night, and I took the opportunity to cry, shave my legs, and apply a facial mask. In all the women's magazines it says to pamper yourself when you feel low. It worked only in the sense that I felt I was doing something. My face had dried into a brittle shell and I was scrubbing the dead skin off my heel when I became aware of Hunter, standing in the bathroom doorway wearing nothing but faded plaid pajama bottoms.

 

“Do you know it's almost four in the morning?”

 

I nodded, trying to hide the pile of my callused skin.

 

“Hey, what is this shit you're reading?” The book. Which I had been carrying around all evening. “Alpha Males are notorious for ambition, energy, drive, and promiscuity. Does your man sound like an Alpha male? Do you want to know how to hold him?” Hunter looked at me, absolutely gleaming with mischief. “I'll show you how to hold me, darling. You use your right hand. No, seriously, what do you need this crap for? Smart girl like you. By the way, do you know your face is beginning to crack?” He came forward, hitching up the waistband of his pajamas. He stopped an inch away, his chest broader and hairier than it had been in college. I felt as if all this were already part of the past.

 

I leaned forward into him, and his hands came up to stroke the back of my head. “Is this the end, Hunter?”

 

His hand lifted my chin. “It's the end of this phase of our lives.”

 

“Is it the end of us?”

 

He didn't answer right away. In his silence, I thought about the fact that I had old friends and work friends, but no friend close enough to cry on. No friend other than Hunter.

 

“I hope it's not the end. I don't mean for it to be, Abs. So come with me.”

 

I wrapped my arms around his waist. “What if I said yes?”

 

Hunter looked down at me. “Is that what you want?”

 

I couldn't tell if he wanted me to say yes or not. I thought of my mother, histrionically holding my father responsible for the subjugation of all women. In the middle of the night, at the top of her voice. I thought of the emptiness of having nothing but my work and the city, no one to care if I was in the apartment when it was burgled. Having no one to touch me anymore. Somehow I knew that if I let Hunter go, it would be a very, very long time before anyone would be touching me again. I would become a highly qualified veterinarian and eventually go into a successful Manhattan practice, and there would be nothing much to go home to, not even a dog.

 

Or one of us could sacrifice something. Like me, the one with all the emotional intelligence.

 

“It's what I want, yes. I want to go with you, Hunter. If you want me to.” Relief flooded me. Oh sweet surrender. No more fighting to stay afloat; just cut the anchor and let Hunter pull me along.

 

Hunter leaned forward, examining me closely, taking in the glow of my happiness, which was threatening to become tears. “Hmm. I'd kiss you right now, you know, but you're likely to flake off on me.” He looked down at the pile of dead skin in the bathtub. “Yes. Quite a lot of flaking going on here.”

 

“I'll wash my face.”

 

“I'll dispose of the corpse.” He gathered up the disgusting waxy bits of skin in his hands and dropped them into the toilet. “You see that? With my bare hands, too. True love, darling. Nothing less.”

 

There were no more jokes after that. We made love slowly, carefully, like two people made of glass. I fell asleep wrapped in his embrace.

 

When I told the board that I was leaving, they were very polite. They seemed to feel that I was having some wild overreaction to Malachy's departure, and warned me that they could not guarantee a place if I decided to reapply. Sam was sweetly befuddled at my decision, while Ofer, predictably, dripped scorn.

 

“I can't believe you're going out into the sticks to watch some old guy castrate bulls with his bare hands,” he said.

 

“I'll miss you, too, Ofer.”

 

Lilliana, of course, knew just the right thing to say. “You know I've got your back,” she said. “And if this is what you want, then I'm happy for you. I'm just going to miss you like hell.” She came with me when I used the day spa voucher she'd given me as a birthday present, and we gossiped about Malachy.

 

“Actually,” she said as we sat side by side, having our feet scrubbed, “I e-mailed him.”

 

“You're kidding! What did you say?” I pressed a button to stop my chair from vibrating so I could hear her better.

 

“I asked him if he knew what he was doing next. He said he was looking into renting facilities upstate, where it's cheaper.” Lilliana leaned back as her pedicurist told her to put her feet back in the mini-Jacuzzi. “Mm, if I ever get rich, I think I'll buy one of these chairs for home. Hey, maybe Mad Mal will move near you and you can go into business together.”

 

“Assuming I'd want to. Besides, Lilli, the man was not exactly the picture of health,” I pointed out. “For all we know, he could be on his deathbed.” But then I remembered that distorted glimpse I'd had of him just before passing out. Maybe he was fighting off his ailment. Or maybe it was mutating into something else.

 

“Somehow, I think Malachy's got a lot of fight left,” Lilliana said as her pedicurist removed her right foot from the water. Mine followed suit.

 

“I don't suppose you'd ever leave Manhattan, Lilli.”

 

Lilliana grinned. “If I did, where would you stay when you came to visit? Do you know what hotels cost in this city?”

 

“Hey, nice color,” said my pedicurist as she began to paint my toenails. I had brought polish from home: All things considered, I figured Wolf Whistle Red was appropriate.

 

After that, I was at loose ends for a few days. For the first time in my adult life, I didn't have a plan, a schedule, a place to be. It felt as though the laws of nature had been suspended. On my last day of work, I walked out of the Animal Medical Institute into the uncomfortable heat of late September. “Indian summer,” the weather report had called it this morning.

 

I had walked half a block before I realized I was still wearing my white coat. Folding it and draping it over my arm, I turned around one last time toward the East River. There I saw the ghost of a half-moon still hanging low in the sky, like some Shakespearean portent of wild spirits and mad kings.

 

Or like a low-bud get movie warning that lunacy is waxing near.

 

 

 

 

FOURTEEN

On the day we moved, with two weeks still left to go on our lease, I already felt nostalgic for the city. This condition had been building steadily, and on D-day I woke up and actually started to cry when I heard a jackhammer start up on the sidewalk below.

 

When you've lived in Manhattan, no other place feels quite as real: It's the solid, looming presence of all those high stone buildings, not the aristocratic skyscrapers but the solid middle-class structures of fifteen stories or so. They make all those two-story suburban houses look like flimsy stick-and-straw affairs, something a wolf could blow down. And then there's the fame factor, which makes Manhattan seem so oddly familiar, even to Belgian factory workers and Lancastrian sheepherders. You see this one narrow island everywhere you go—in print ads, on television, on multiplex screens—the quintessential city: noisy and glamorous and dirty, a village packed tight with avant-garde toddlers, mentally unstable artists, businesslike Europeans, marginal actors, hopeful immigrants from Haiti and Ohio, drug dealers, cat collectors, the unapologetically successful and the walking wounded—one layer overlapping the other, the uncivilized center of the civilized world.

 

And I didn't want to join the ranks of the deserters, claiming to still love the city's energy and culture but frightened off by muggings or wildings or blackouts or terrorist bandits. Like there's safety somewhere out there in a small town, like no child ever disappeared on a cricket-filled summer night, on a bike ride home from church. At least in New York, hearing the worst about human nature is never a complete surprise.

 

Think of your favorite urban myth. Stolen kidney? Crispy fried rat? Radioactive subway? Chances are, when you imagined it happening, you imagined it happening in Manhattan, with smoke billowing from manhole covers, and rude pedestrians yelling across broad avenues, and gray and brown pigeons teetering along as yellow taxis shot past.

 

In those final days, I went to museums, the Empire State Building, Bloomingdale's. Halfway through the Planetarium space show, when my seat began to vibrate like a rocket ship and the whole Milky Way galaxy receded until it was no more than a distant spot in an alien sky, I began to choke back tears. My home, I thought. The known universe.

 

Of course, you don't think about these sorts of things unless you've just arrived, or are on your way out. With my job already gone, leaving a gaping, empty wound in my days, I had time to sit around and notice things. I realized that in the country I would need a car to get a tube of toothpaste and began to miss being able to walk everywhere even though I hadn't left yet. I began to feel as if Manhattan were a lover I was giving up to save my marriage.

 

As if to torment me, Manhattan pulled out all the stops as I prepared to depart.

 

A few sidewalk maples had begun to turn yellow and there was a briskness to the air that made you want to look at all the new clothes in the shop windows, lovely deep purples and oranges and deep wine shades, like a dark glass of rich burgundy after a summer of acidic whites. The grinning faces of death had already been put out on display in all the stationery and drugstores along Broadway, and as I walked down the aisles of my local supermarket I watched as child after child pressed the button on the snarling zombie display.

 

While a small army of Israelis moved our belongings into one of their huge Samson Movers trucks, I had a last breakfast at Barney Greengrass, sitting alone at a table for two while a pair of old men argued politics over platters of sturgeon and belly lox. I had promised my doctor that I would eat fish from time to time to keep from becoming anemic, and so I sat there with my whitefish salad, feeling a little drunk from all the salt and protein. My father, born in Barcelona, loved fish. Especially the skinny oily ones with heads and tails.

 

“Don't become a vegetarian,” he'd told me the summer I stopped eating meat. “Vegetarians are boring.”

 

“I just don't want to eat corpses anymore, okay?”

 

“This is your mother's fault. In Europe, children grow up seeing that chickens have feathers. You pluck them, you cook them, you eat them. Here everything's stripped and cleaned and wrapped up like a piece of candy, and by the time you kids figure out that what you're chewing used to have teeth of its own, you're shocked.”

 

“I'm not eating these shrimp, Dad.”

 

“Crayfish.”

 

“What ever. I just feel it's hypocritical to eat something that used to be alive, unless you're willing to kill it yourself, like aboriginal peoples do.”

 

I still remember my father's smile. “So kill it yourself. You need a bit of killer instinct to get along in this world.”

 

Fourteen years older and less sure of my reasons for not eating meat, I spread a last schmear of eyeless, toothless fish salad onto my bagel and checked my watch. It was time to go change my entire life.

 

Hunter, who disdained anything with scales, had said he would meet me outside. He arrived only two minutes late, looking wonderful in faded jeans and a white fisherman's sweater. The haunted look had left his face, and he had begun to shave and shower regularly again. In fact, he seemed ebullient these days, energized by the prospect of our move.

 

“Ready?”

 

I folded up my grease-stained copy of The New York Times and hooked my arm in his. “Ready,” I said.

 

As we made our way toward our car, I felt the first, faint stirrings of excitement. This would be a new beginning for us. An adventure. Couples who had adventures together lasted. I would join a country practice and become a partner within a few years. I would know everyone in town by name and my children would go to kindergarten in winter along a snowy path marked by deer prints.

 

Hunter squeezed my hand with his bicep. “You're quiet, Abs.”

 

“Thinking happy thoughts.” At Eighty-third and Amsterdam, a skinny, dark-haired woman strode past walking an aristocratically anorectic borzoi, a husky, a standard poodle, and two shih tzus. She hailed a man in a knit hat, who was walking a rottweiler, a golden retriever, a Yorkie, a wrinkly sharpei, and a lamblike Bedlington terrier.

 

Jut as we passed, the rottweiler and the poodle started barking, followed by the Yorkie and the shih tzus. The Bedlington terrier wrapped itself around the man's legs, cringing, while the retriever and the husky joined in, the former yodeling low, like a hound, the latter giving a long, low wolflike howl.

 

“Je-suz, Candy, pull them back,” said the male dog walker, struggling with the tanklike rotty. “Your monsters want to eat my babies.”

 

“They're usually so calm, even the pood—argh, down, boy! Poodle,” said Candy, hauling with all her famine-thin, gym-toned might. But the aggressiveness of the big French dog seemed to have inflamed the husky and borzoi as well. They yanked and leaned their full body weights against their leashes, struggling to break free.

 

“Well, that was a Manhattan moment,” Hunter said, laughing and guiding me along the sidewalk, away from the dogs.

 

“Maybe I should stay, in case they need help,” I said, looking over my shoulder.

 

“Not our fight, Abra.”

 

As Hunter led me gently but firmly away, I realized that the dogs had already begun to calm down. Only the husky and the little Yorkie still barked, and they didn't seem to be warning each other off.

 

Perhaps it was my own guilty urban conscience working overtime, but they seemed to be directing all their canine territorial rage at Hunter's departing back.

 

 

FIFTEEN

In most of Jane Austen's novels, it is the flighty, shallow, venal people who long for town amusements; thoughtful, feelingful people possess the internal resources to enjoy the quiet pleasures of the countryside.

 

I have to admit that I'm thinking more of the films than the actual novels, as I haven't read a Jane Austen novel since I was sixteen. But I always mean to, especially right after I see some great BBC production with a firm-chinned actress charging resolutely through muddy vales in a soggy Empire-waisted gown.

 

But it's one thing to admire the rolling green English downs while somebody photogenic stomps across them and another thing altogether to be confronted with the reality of being stuck in a house in the middle of the woods.

 

Of course, like most things you suspect you'll grow to regret, it didn't seem so bad at first.

 

“Well, what do you think, Abra?” Hunter threw an arm around my shoulders as we looked at our new home. Nestled between yellow and red maples, its path carpeted with a fragrant windfall of pine needles, the Barrow family house appeared suddenly as you turned the corner of the path, just like something out of a fairy tale. Ivy covered one wall. The rest of the house revealed itself in sections: the flaking dragon-scale ripple of roof; the lonely, steepled tower; the twin slitted attic windows that gazed down at the grim, willow-shrouded entrance. All along the north side of the house, which never got much sun, you could see damp, spongy sections of wood and the larger holes that announced the presence of small armies of vermin.

 

In bright October sunlight, it appeared to be no more than a ramshackle old mansion. But as I recalled from my previous visit, when winter arrived and shadows claimed it before four o'clock, it was a house straight out of one of my mother's films.

 

“I guess it needs some work,” I said.

 

“Want me to carry you over?” Hunter indicated the threshold.

 

“I'm too heavy.”

 

“Hey, I'm not going to beg you.”

 

I lifted my arms and he bent and grasped me below the knees, pausing once to adjust his grip.

 

“Can you get the door open like this?”

 

“Possibly.” Hunter struggled with the old lock for a long moment before putting his back into it. After a moment, he put me down. Lifting and turning the key simultaneously, he managed to get the rusty mechanism to work.

 

“Needs some oil.”

 

“All right, Abs, get back here. We'll do it right.” He lifted me again and held me against his chest for a moment. The inside of the house was musty and dark and for a moment Hunter was in shadow as he bent his head to kiss me.

 

I wrapped my arms around him and kissed him back, more deeply, inhaling the nicotine and wool scent of him as he released my legs so I was standing in front of him.

 

“We have a lot to do, Abra.” His hands slid mine down, away from his neck.

 

“Of course we do. Right.” I took a deep breath and looked around at the vast, dim foyer, where a stained-glass window cast a weak greenish light on the heavy oak grandfather clock and worn Turkish rug. That was it in the way of furnishings, except for a low wicker couch, which boasted a selection of 1970s paperbacks, including A Man's Guide to Fishing and Nurse Angelica's Dilemma. Nurse Angelica was clasping her head in one sharply manicured hand, as if her head were hurting her badly. I knew how she felt.

 

I could sense the vastness of the house around me, the rambling maze of rooms and back staircases and strangely outfitted cold pantries unrenovated since the days when women worse corsets through pregnancy. In my previous visits, I had gotten lost exploring and found myself thinking of things I usually associate with my mother—mysterious cold spots, strange breezes in airless rooms, sinister sounds from behind the walls.

 

“This house has a lot of history,” Hunter once had told me, pointing out where a Barrow grandmother had died in a cedar closet and rotted, undiscovered, for two months.

 

Now this was my home.

 

And Hunter had disappeared.

 

Heart thumping, I made my way out of the foyer and through the blood red walls of the dining room. From there, I creaked over rotting floorboards into the sadly derelict kitchen, where heavy old clawfooted furniture gave way to bad ‘70s linoleum and rusted beige appliances.

 

“Hunter. I wondered where you were.” I tried to lower my voice and sound collected.

 

“Just checking the food situation.” Hunter closed the refrigerator door. “There isn't any.”

 

“I could do a shopping run …”

 

“In a little while. The movers should be here pretty soon, so maybe we should do it after they're gone?” Hunter didn't bother to wait for my answer. He seemed restless and oddly energized, rummaging through cabinets, opening and closing drawers, as I hovered nearby. Glancing over his shoulder, he said, “Do you think you could get started on straightening things out down here while I check out the rest of the house? You wouldn't want to cook on that range till you've had a chance to clear it off.”

 

Of course, I wanted to look our new home over with him; but I had seen it all before, hadn't I, and we would want to be eating here this evening.

 

“No problem.”

 

“That's my girl.” Hunter planted a kiss on my forehead and walked away. Halfway to the curving back stairs, he paused and turned. “You okay with this?”

 

I lifted a cut-crystal bottle of olive oil off the counter. The cork stopper was half chewed through, and in the largest part of the bottle a dead mouse lay curled, its little mouth opened in a bucktoothed frown. “Fine.”

 

“I'll be right back to help you, Abs.”

 

After I disposed of the mouse outside, I tried to get rid of some of the dust with an ancient mop and an equally aged can of pine cleaner. Despite my best efforts, I seemed merely to be stirring the dirt around, creating a dazzling display of dust motes in the still air, so I tried to crank open one of the old-fashioned windows, breaking off the handle in the pro cess.

 

After an hour spent sorting out the kitchen utensils, I had found a few usable plates and cups (which all, oddly enough, had Peter Max ‘60s psychedelic patterns on them), two flimsy frying pans with peeling no-stick, and an extremely heavy enameled cooking pot. The only silverware I had discovered was a fine Edwardian bone-handled set.

 

There was a hibernating frog in the dishwasher.

 

Hunter still hadn't come back down by three, and the movers were nowhere in sight. I paused at the foot of the stairs. “Hunter?”

 

No reply.

 

“Hunter?”

 

I made my way up the stairs to the second floor, where there were four small bedrooms, two on each side. “Hunter? Are you up here?” Even though it was still full daylight, I found it hard to see. There were no overhead lights, as Hunter's mother had not wired for electricity here. According to Hunter, she had believed the Edwardian gas lighting on this level to be charming. Unfortunately, I could not hear the slight sizzling sound of the jets without worrying about the possibility of asphyxiation, fire, and explosion. Not necessarily in that order.

 

In the first bedroom, which was furnished sparsely with a single bed, a small table, and a picture of fruit, I heard the sound of wheels on the pebbled driveway. Looking out the small eyebrow window, I could just make out the front end of the small yellow movers' truck.

 

I walked up the last flight of stairs to the attic, which was half finished and stretched from one end of the house to the other. It was drafty and dark, and I could see parts of the kitchen from an unfinished section of floor. Hunter was tapping away at his laptop, one navy and yellow striped leather sneaker braced on a beam, worn jeans stretched tight over the long muscles of his thigh. As I came up behind him I could make out the words A steep and hilly silence before he looked up and caught my eye.

 

“You know, Abra,” he said, his voice filled with excitement and plea sure, “I kept thinking that I was stuck working on this article. But I wasn't really stuck at all. I think the real problem was that this isn't just an article. I think what I have here is enough material for a book.”

 

Well, I thought, what had I been expecting—a declaration of his love and gratitude? Swallowing back my disappointment, I said, “The movers are here.”

 

“Be right down.” He turned back to his computer.

 

Mentally counting to ten, I managed not to sound as irritated as I was feeling. “I didn't mean to disturb you, but maybe you could finish that a little—”

 

“Of course. Just give me a moment to save what I'm working on.”

 

I walked down the stairs and felt his eyes on my back for a moment, and then I heard the soft tapping of his fingers on the keyboard, typing faster than before. The sound of my feet on the stairs made an odd, rhythmic counterpoint.

 

When I opened the front door I could see the movers arguing in front of their truck.

 

“What I tell you? ‘Skunk Misery Lane,' “ said the taller mover, who had a large, bald head and a tattoo of the Egyptian eye of Horus on the back of his neck.

 

The smaller mover, who wore old-fashioned glasses and a lank blond ponytail, said something in a language that sounded like bad French. Hebrew, I assumed.

 

“Hello,” I said.

 

“It's his fault we are late,” said the bigger man. “He was reading the map.”

 

The slender, intellectual-looking mover looked completely unapologetic. “You say to us one hour on Taconic, yes?”

 

“My husband was the one who talked with you.”

 

“But this is not one hour. I say to Ronen, if we keep on, we're going to need a passport for Canada.”

 

“Itzik,” said the larger mover. “Shut up.”

 

Itzik walked around to the back of the truck. “It gets pretty cold up here in winter? Minus ten degrees? Minus twenty?”

 

The bald mover shook his head and said something in Hebrew. For a few moments the men concentrated on wrestling the couch out of the truck. From time to time they barked commands at each other while I watched, feeling helplessly protective of my furniture.

 

“Can I help you?”

 

“Just get the door for us.”

 

Ronen and Itzik were finished and gulping water out of chipped porcelain cups by the time Hunter came downstairs.

 

“How's it going?” He stood and looked at the movers and then at me, running his hands through his hair, which, for some reason, was damp with sweat.

 

“It's all done,” I said.

 

“Except for you pay us,” added Ronen.

 

“Right. I'll get my checkbook.”

 

I came up behind Hunter. “You need to give them a big tip. What have you been doing up there?”

 

Hunter continued writing out the check for the movers. “I had to finish something before I lost it.” He walked around me in order to hand the check to the larger mover. “There you go.”

 

Ronen looked the amount over and then tucked it into his back pocket. “Great, thanks, Itzik, yallah, put down the cell phone.”

 

“I'm trying to reach Ari at the office.”

 

We all waited.

 

“There's no signal,” said Itzik, staring down at the phone and then punching a few buttons. “No, nothing.” He looked up at us. “Can I use your house phone?”

 

Hunter shook his head. “It's not turned on yet.”

 

Itzik looked up at Ronen and they conversed briefly.

 

“Okay, nu, yallah, we have to go,” Ronen concluded, and shook my hand. “I wish you luck here,” he said to me. “Goodbye,” he said to Hunter.

 

It had somehow gotten to be almost six and the shadows of the trees were lengthening as I walked the movers back to their truck. The trees here were not like the neat little trees of my suburban childhood. Here the pines and maples and silver beech grew into one another, tangled at their roots, encircled by thorny hedgerows, cluttering the sky with their interlocking branches.

 

“You need to get someone to garden this place,” Ronen observed, heaving himself up into the driver's seat.

 

“Yeah, there's too many trees here. Better watch out for that tick disease,” added Itzik, polishing his glasses on his shirt. “Limb disease.”

 

“Lyme disease,” I said. “It's the wrong season, though. You're kind of afraid of the country, aren't you, boys?”

 

“Hey.” Itzik smiled. “If you like ticks and skunks, good for you. I'm a city boy.”

 

Ronen was trying the cell phone. “Still out of range,” he said. “Ari's going to have a fit.”

 

As they began to pull away I could hear them arguing over whether to order from a kebab house or a Mexican restaurant when they got back.

 

I turned to face the house, and it seemed to have gotten darker in the few moments I'd been standing outside. In the city, this was rush hour in the subways: Out here I could feel an intangible shift, a kind of ratcheting up of tension, as all the twilight hunters began to grow more alert.

 

I entered the house, which was still dark. “Hunter?” I flipped a light switch and nothing happened. “Hunter, where are you? Haven't you contacted the utilities guys? We don't seem to have electricity.” I felt stupid for not checking earlier. Hunter was so irresponsible about these things, and I hadn't even seen to the bedrooms upstairs to figure out where we would sleep. “Hunter?”

 

I found him staring out on the back porch, watching the yard grow dark.

 

I wrapped my arms around his waist and he seemed startled, but then turned his attention back outside.

 

“We don't have any electricity. No light, no heat. Did you bring a flashlight?”

 

“In the car.”

 

I thought about lodging a complaint or ten about how he'd gone about this move, but something about the vast stillness of the encroaching night stopped me. We were all alone out here. I didn't want to fight with Hunter now. “Well, don't you think we should head out and see about getting some dinner? Or do you just want to stand here for another hour?”

 

“Dinner?” Hunter turned to me and smiled, so happy and excited I could see the whites of his eyes and his teeth gleaming. “Sure. Oh, Abra, wait till you see what I'm working on. This place is bringing something different out of me.”

 

“That's great.”

 

Hunter put his arm around me and inhaled the darkening air, and I tried to stand quietly beside him so that he wouldn't notice that I was just tired and apprehensive and not excited at all.

 

 

SIXTEEN

The problem with moving to a new place is, you lose your antennae for trouble. In New York, I could immediately pick up on the kind of places where I was not welcome. I knew which cheerfully homey midtown Irish bars were unreceptive to orders of white wine and where newly trendy neighborhoods bled into no-man's-land. No matter how distracted I got walking across the park in springtime, I never forgot that a few blocks north the Upper West Side turned into a place where you could get yourself exorcised by a voodoo priest.

 

But in Northside I was a babe in the woods.

 

Moondoggie's was a flat, one-story building set in a parking lot in the middle of nowhere. On three sides of the restaurant there were hulking dark mountains, rustling trees, and a clear and starry sky that seemed much higher and colder than the one that curved over Manhattan. Directly in front of Moondoggie's Bar and Grill, however, floodlights on the roof picked up the presence of three Ford trucks, a jeep, some teenager's broken-down Camaro, and a gleamingly new Land Rover.

 

“This looks good,” said Hunter, and I pulled my cardigan over my shoulders and tried to believe him.

 

Inside Moondoggie's we found ourselves in a little foyer, which separated two distinct kingdoms. To our right, dim pink lighting, round checker-clothed tables, and pictures of tropical sunsets laminated on wood; to our left, a dark and shadowy bar and a huge fireplace, the kind medieval barons might have used to roast whole pigs and unruly peasants.

 

Hunter turned to me. “Where do you want to sit?”

 

I looked to my right, where an old couple sat in a corner, cutting up something white and creamy. I looked to my left, where a big man in a flannel shirt glowered at me from his heavily bearded face. “I think the dining room, don't you?”

 

Hunter looked at that menu, which was chalked on a blackboard propped on a chair. The white stuff was probably fettuccine Alfredo. “Are you sure? We could just have some burgers at the bar.”

 

“Um …”

 

“Soy burgers, what ever.” He sounded exasperated.

 

I glanced at the bearded man, who was inhaling his beer. A barmaid worked the taps under the sad-eyed aegis of a decapitated deer. “I don't think they serve soy here. It doesn't bleed enough.”

 

But Hunter was already walking over to the bar. The barmaid, the bearded man, and about a dozen shadowy shapes watched him as he sat down on a stool by the counter with the studied unself-consciousness of a journalist on location.

 

The barmaid, a strawberry blond in her twenties, continued filling a mug of beer. “Drinking or eating?”

 

Hunter looked at me, pointedly. I walked over to him, feeling like an obedient dog—heel, girl—and he turned back to the barmaid.

 

“Both.”

 

She handed us menus. “Don't worry, ma'am. We have veggie burgers. Right here.” One sharp pink fingernail pointed it out. I blushed a little, realizing she'd been listening in on our disagreement.

 

Hunter smiled at her, and then at me. I could tell he thought she was attractive. She had the bright, hard prettiness of a beauty contestant. “See, Abs, what'd I tell you. Now, uh—What's your name?”

 

“Kayla.”

 

“Well, Kayla, we'd like two beers. Was that a Guinness you were pouring? A Guinness, then. And something light for her.”

 

Kayla slanted a look at me, thinking things over. “Amstel okay?”

 

I agreed that it was. She served it with an afterthought of lemon. Hunter's Guinness was much more of a production and involved a lot of angling of the mug beneath the tap, bringing the foaming head to the point of disaster, letting it settle, bringing it back to the tap again. In order to serve it without spilling, Kayla leaned way over, her breasts brushing the counter.

 

Hunter ordered a bacon burger, “so rare it's still got some moo,” and I ordered a veggie burger and fries. We looked around us before settling on watching the fire in the elaborately casual way of couples who have nothing to say to each other that will not start an argument. The bearded man beside me hunched himself over a little clay bowl and spooned chili into the general vicinity of his mouth.

 

“Dr. Barrow? Abra?”

 

I turned, so surprised at hearing my name spoken that I forgot the usual reflexive smile you give to people you're not sure you know.

 

It was Red the Wildlife Removal Operator, standing in what appeared to be the same dingy white T-shirt and jeans, holding a bottle of Budweiser by the neck and looking at me with more open warmth than I would have expected from a good old boy in a bar.

 

“What're you doing here? Hold on, now, you remember Jackie. Jackie, this here's the doctor that helped me out with Pia.” He indicated the frowsy dyed blonde just behind him. I did not really remember her and understood from her smile that the feeling was mutual. She was wearing a pink airbrushed deer sweatshirt and smoking a cigarette between stiff fingers.

 

“Hi, Jackie.”

 

“Hi.”

 

“I'm Hunter. Abra's husband.”

 

“Glad to meet you.” We all shook hands with extreme awkwardness. Hunter and Red looked at each other, smiling in a way that didn't reach their eyes. I felt a prickle of tension at the back of my neck, the way I sometimes did when I put the wrong two dogs together at work.

 

“So, what're you doing in Northside?” Handshake over, Red hooked his left thumb into his belt loop. He was still facing Hunter, but I got the feeling he was speaking to me.

 

“Actually, what we're doing here is moving—we've just moved into Hunter's family's house.”

 

“No kidding. Whereabouts?”

 

“It's the old farm house set back on Skunk's Misery Road.”

 

“That so?” Red shook his head in a very cowboy way, and if he'd had a hat, I got the feeling he would have tipped it back. “Well, small world. That just about makes us neighbors.”

 

Kayla arrived with Hunter's food and I tried not to watch her serve him, breasts flat against the counter. She handed Hunter his bacon cheeseburger, which was dripping blood onto his plate just as he had ordered.

 

“Ketchup?”

 

“Nah, just hides the flavor.” He smiled at her. She smiled back.

 

“I'll get your veggie burger right away,” she reassured me. I didn't ask why it had taken longer to cook than meat. Of course, Hunter's meat was almost raw.

 

Red put a hand on his girlfriend's shoulder. “Come on, Jackie,” he said. “We should leave these nice folks to eat in peace.”

 

“Hang on a second. Didn't you just say you're my neighbor?” Hunter sounded casual as he took a bite of his hamburger, but his eyes narrowed. “As far as I'm aware, though, there aren't any houses near ours.”

 

Jackie cleared her throat, her eyes darting back and forth between the two men. “Red's been building a house up in the woods by your house. Been working on it all summer.”

 

“You're building your own house?” I suppose it made sense: Red had the look of the kind of man who wouldn't be able to tell you what the House Judiciary Committee was or who wrote The Portrait of a Lady, but who knew how to build a house from scratch, wire it for electricity, and install a septic system.

 

“Just a bit of a cabin.”

 

Kayla the barmaid finally brought me my veggie burger, which was cold. She asked Hunter how he liked his hamburger and he gave her a thumbs-up. Then he turned back to Red, all trace of friendliness gone. “And just exactly where is your land?”

 

Red sketched a map with his finger in the air. “Here's you, here's Old Scolder Mountain. Up to the north here, behind your barn—”

 

“There isn't any barn.”

 

“Yes there is, it's just gotten a bit swallowed up by the woods back there. You walk due north up your hill and back beyond the barbed wire, you'll see it—too run-down to fix now, though. Anyway, you go on up the hill—”

 

“In the forest?”

 

“Yup, you can walk it or if you've got a four-wheel drive you can use the road I've been clearing up till about here.” Red wiggled a finger and then walked his pointer and index past the point of no return. “From there, you walk about a half a mile to the building site.”

 

Hunter pushed his plate away and leaned back on his stool. “I thought that was still our land, all the way to the Murdock farm over on Oak Ridge.”

 

“Well, now, when old man Murdock died last winter his kids sold me a parcel. Here, you got a pen? I'll show you on a napkin.”

 

“You don't happen to have a survey map showing exactly what bit?”

 

I put my hand on my husband's shoulder. “Hunter—”

 

“I'm just curious. I thought there was three-acre zoning around here.”

 

Red looked up from his napkin. “There is.”

 

“Then I don't exactly understand where my land ends and yours begins.”

 

I laughed, weakly. “God, Hunter, we've only just arrived here. There's no need to get so—so—”

 

“Territorial?” Hunter gave me a very unfriendly smile. An I'm-going-to-yell-at-you-in-private smile.

 

“Man's got a right to know which side of the fence to piss on.” Red gestured with his chin, something between a nod and a bow. “I'll get you a map. I'll even walk you around the boundaries.” He paused. “Tell you a little about the town, if you like. Some interesting folklore about Northside.” This last seemed directed at me, but Hunter intercepted it.

 

“I'm not exactly a stranger, you know. My family and I spent summers here while I was growing up.”

 

Red hooked his fingers into his belt loops. “Know where it got its name?”

 

Hunter made a dismissive gesture. “It was the north side of some settler's property, I guess.”

 

“Nope.” Red was clearly enjoying himself. “You know the old stone church at the edge of town? Well, the graveyard out back was getting awful crowded, ‘cause all the townsfolk wanted to be buried out front, where the sun kept things bright. The poor and the evildoers got stuck on the north side—that used to be called the devil's side, you know. In fact, the church even has a door in the north wall, and they open it at baptisms and communions, to get rid of troublesome spirits.”

 

Was I ever a long way out of Manhattan. “So you're saying that the town got named after the bad end of the graveyard?”

 

“I guess it was kind of a bad town to begin with. I know for a fact that a bunch of so-called witches escaped here during the ruckus in Salem. Seems North-side has a long history of being desirable to the undesirables.”

 

“It's true, you know,” said Jackie. “My great-great-great-grandmother was accused in Ipswich, and she managed to get herself here.” She smiled a little crookedly. “Seems the Ipswich witches never got quite the reputation the Salem ones did.”

 

“Probably too hard to pronounce,” I said, and Jackie laughed, an attractive, deep, smoky sound.

 

“Funny I never heard about all this before,” said Hunter, patting his breast pocket for cigarettes.

 

“Well,” said Red equably, “even some full-time residents don't know the history. But even nowadays, the town gets its share of unusual characters. Take the sheriff, for example—”

 

“Actually, I'd rather not.” Hunter shook a cigarette out of its pack. “Small-town gossip doesn't interest me.”

 

Red's mouth tightened fractionally, but he nodded with better grace than I could have mustered. “Sorry, friend, but you can't smoke in here. Used to be we got away with it, but nowadays we're health-code-compliant.”

 

Jackie started to say something, but Hunter wasn't paying attention, and he spoke over her. “You sure do volunteer a lot of information—friend.” He stuck his cigarette behind one ear, but his tone was borderline offensive.

 

“Which is just what we need,” I cut in. “I feel completely at sea here, and I, for one, know nothing about the town.” I gave Hunter a warning look. He was acting so boorish that I felt implicated: Oh, look, there's one of those wives who get browbeaten by their overbearing husbands. On an impulse, I turned back to Red and said, “Why don't we make it dinner. You can both come over”—I dipped my head to include Jackie—”and, uh, fill us in on the neighborhood.” I didn't expect them to accept, but I figured the offer might make up for Hunter's belligerence.

 

There was a half-beat of silence. “Well,” Jackie said. “That's nice of you to say, but …” She looked at Red for guidance. Red looked at Hunter.

 

“How's Friday sit with you?”

 

Hunter, who hated it when I invited people over without checking with him first, smiled with all his teeth. “Friday's fine by me. Abra's going to be doing all the work, anyway.” He finished his Guinness and instantly Kayla was there, asking what else he needed. “Thanks, honey. Can I get another? Great.”

 

I looked up and Red glanced away from me, as if he hadn't meant to be caught looking. “So it's a date? Friday?”

 

Again, his gaze danced away from mine. “If it's all right with Jackie.”

 

“Fine by me.” She sounded miserable. “But it really should be me inviting you. I sure owe you one. Seeing as how you helped sneak Pia out and all.”

 

“How is she doing?” I thought about my glimpse of Malachy's laboratory, and my crazy dream of a wolf girl.

 

“She's acting kind of funny, actually. Scratching at herself. Her fur's coming off in clumps.”

 

“I'd be happy to take a look at her,” I offered, thinking with relief that it sounded like something I could treat with a shot of cortisone. “Just bring her over. I'm not working yet.”

 

Red put his hand on my shoulder. “Now we're going to owe you two favors, Doc.”

 

To my surprise, I didn't want to shrug off his hand. “Well, given the state of our house, I may just call on your ser vices.”

 

“Hey, Texas,” said Hunter, abruptly shifting to a falsely hearty tone. “Quit flirting with my wife and have a beer.” Hunter handed a bottle over to Red.

 

“Well, thanks.” Red drank his beer as a bright tide of color washed over his cheeks and neck.

 

“Tell me something, Texas.” Hunter took another swallow of beer, making Red wait. “Do I know you from someplace?” I wondered if my husband might be getting drunk, or if something else might account for this sudden shift in mood.

 

“Don't think so. No.”

 

“Your eyes—there's something familiar about you. Hey, you don't have any relatives in Romania, by any chance?” Hunter took another bite of his burger, a thin trickle of juice escaping from the corner of his mouth. “I was just in Romania for three months, and you remind me of someone I met there.”

 

“Family's pretty much all Irish, with a bit of Mohican and Mohawk thrown in on my mother's side.” Those were New York tribes; I wondered how he'd come by his Texas accent.

 

Hunter shook his head. “It's the damnedest thing. You just remind me so strongly of—” He inhaled once, sharply. “Maybe it's just your cologne.”

 

Red took a swallow of beer, set the bottle down. “Or maybe I just stink. You said you been in Romania lately?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Studying wolves?”

 

Now it was Hunter's turn to frown. “How'd you know that?”

 

Red tipped his head back to give Hunter a considering look. “Let's just say you have a certain—air about you. And what else is there to do in Romania? Adopt orphans or study wolves.”

 

A little of the tension left Hunter's shoulders. “I guess.”

 

“Not so many wolves around these parts. Coyotes, though. And bear.”

 

“Do you trap them?”

 

Red nodded. “Sometimes.”

 

“Kill them?” There was something aggressive in the question. I watched Jackie regarding my husband with trepidation.

 

“If I have to. Listen, Jackie, I think maybe you and I should be moving on.” Red put his arm around Jackie's shoulders, and I felt an odd twinge of jealousy. It wasn't that I was jealous of Jackie for having Red, but rather that I wished I were the one whose man was being reasonable and protective.

 

“When do you have to kill wild animals, Red? When they wander into someone's backyard?”

 

“Hunter!”

 

My husband didn't look at me. “You ever kill a wolf, Red?”

 

“Once. Up in Canada.”

 

“For any particular reason?”

 

“Yes, he was fixing to attack me.” Red dropped his hand from Jackie's back and addressed Hunter in a flat, reasonable voice. “Listen, I understand that you being a wolf … researcher and all, you might have some prejudices against my profession. But I am not some deranged old Wild West trapper. My grandfather taught me the Mohawk way. I respect the wolf. I respect nature.”

 

“Do you?” I watched Hunter and didn't understand what he might be feeling. His question seemed loaded. I had never seen him take such an active dislike to anyone.

 

“Do you doubt it?” The two men held each other's gaze for a long moment, and then Red broke away to shake my hand. “Goodbye, Doc. Hunter. See you Friday.”

 

Jackie smiled at me unhappily. Like me, she was probably wondering why Red had accepted the invitation. Doubtless, he viewed it as some sort of challenge. “You want me to bring anything, hon?”

 

“No, no, just yourselves.”

 

I watched them walk away through the crowded bar, stopping once or twice to talk to people they knew on the way out. “Why were you acting like such an asshole, Hunter?”

 

Hunter took a long swallow of beer. “I thought he was interesting. That was a good idea, inviting them over for dinner.” As Hunter put down the money for our meal, I felt another strange prickle of tension, the way I had when he and Red had first confronted each other. I looked up to see Hunter smiling at Kayla the barmaid. He'd left her a large tip.

 

Outside, I could smell the remnants of a light rain. Wisps of fog clung to the headlights of cars.

 

“Wow, look at that.”

 

“Look at what?”

 

“The moon.”

 

I squinted. “You can't see the moon to night.”

 

“Can't you?” Hunter unlocked the car and shrugged himself into the driver's seat. “Maybe I just feel it, then.”

 

“So what's it feel like to you?”

 

“Feels like it's growing.” I laughed, thinking he'd made a joke. But when I looked at him he wasn't smiling.

 

On the way home, the fog thickened until all we could see was the stretch of road directly in front of us. Hunter honked the horn an instant before I saw the doe leaping from the side of the road, ears pricked, eyes red marbles in the glare of our headlights. If it had been me driving, I probably would have hit it.

 

Hunter swerved around it as if he had known it was there all the time.

 

 

SEVENTEEN

There were small raccoons in the walls. Or enormous mice. Of course, the proper term for enormous mice is “rats,” but I felt better not thinking about rats a few feet from my head while I slept. Not that I was sleeping much, as I lay in bed listening to the frantic skittering of busy rodents. The pitter-patter of little feet, I thought, but Hunter wasn't around to make the joke to: He was up in the attic, thinking deeply about wild Romania.

 

In the mornings I sometimes found little corpses near our porch: mice with long, thin noses. Voles? Moles? A squashed frog, one eyeball popped out. A tiny lump of heart, a threadlike trail of viscera attached. I cleaned them up, because my husband had always been the more squeamish of us.

 

“Hunter, did your family used to have a cat that got loose?”

 

“Not that I recall.”

 

It was probably a feral cat. Or a neighbor's dog. I remembered hearing there were foxes around, even coyotes. But a wild creature wouldn't leave all the remains so close to human habitation, would it?

 

“A little project for you, Abs,” Hunter said, pouring himself a cup of coffee. “Solve the mystery.”

 

But it didn't bother me enough to want to set traps, so I did nothing. I figured I could ask Red if there was anything painless I could do when he came to dinner. Like lay down a barrier of salt, or get a dog. I quite liked the idea of a dog, maybe even a puppy.

 

Hunter did not. “You'll be out working, and I don't want to be stuck here all day with some bulbous-headed, lop-eared, obsequious mutt for company.”

 

That week I spent most of my time in the car, trying to get my bearings. It seemed to take me an hour to get anywhere on the winding, nameless back roads that meandered through endless cornfields and cow pastures. On a search for an electrician to wire the upstairs, I found a good used-book store and spent the next few days rereading books from late childhood: James and the Giant Peach; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; Julie of the Wolves.

 

But the nights seemed endless. We didn't have a TV in the bedroom. There was a small, old black-and-white console downstairs, but it didn't get anything other than one grainy station in Poughkeepsie. I found I missed the friendly blond newscasters and the weather maps, and I felt a little lost without even the possibility of stumbling onto an old movie at four in the morning.

 

Something about the size of the house intimidated me into staying in the bedroom, anyhow. I couldn't even bring myself to go downstairs to the kitchen to fix myself a bowl of cereal. On our sixth night, I made it halfway down the staircase before the creaking floors and ringing silence did me in. I went back up, then past the bedroom to the attic, where Hunter had been holed away for hours.

 

“Hunter?”

 

He looked up with a false smile. “Abra. How're you doing?” His gaze had returned to his computer.

 

“I'm … getting used to things. You coming down?” I tried to make it sound like an invitation.

 

“In a while.” Hunter sighed and met my eyes again. “I am busy, Abs. You knew I would be when you agreed to this. I mean, I came here to work …”

 

“No problem,” I said, already moving away. “I understand.”

 

“In another week or so, when I've gotten into this project—”

 

“Sure, of course.” I almost yelled the words at him, then went to our familiar bed in its alien setting and cried. There were other people's things in here: someone else's ugly oak dresser, someone else's fragile wicker chair. On the wall, a tattered sampler attested to some luckless child's skill with a needle. I sat up, drying my eyes, and the windowpanes rattled twice, hard. Storm coming. Growing up in Pleasantvale, I had looked forward to storms. They gave you an excuse to huddle inside with a book, free from the responsibility of having to play outside with others. Living in the city seemed to blunt the impact of most storms; Lilliana, who'd grown up in Manhattan, said she'd never been frightened of lightning, even as a child.

 

I pressed myself closer to the window and saw that the wind was whipping through the leaves, ripping some off their branches before they'd even had a chance to change.

 

I could hear the howl of it, because there were no cars, no voices, nothing else to drown out the wind. This was nothing like the suburbs. This was nature, raw and unsentimental, liable to reach down from the sky and zap you. I suddenly felt very vulnerable in my cotton nightgown with my bare feet cold on the wood floor.

 

Oh, now that was self-pity at its excruciating worst. That was the kind of melodramatic, whiny complaint that I would expect to hear from my mother. What was happening to me here? Opening up my closet, I slipped my feet into the furry Dalmatian slippers Lilliana had bought me as a leaving present and grabbed my baby blue terry-cloth robe off the door hook. I was not going to turn into some neo-Victorian neurasthenic. I was going to go down those stairs—creak, creak, creak; I pounded my feet down extra hard—and through that kitchen, and I was going to open that back door and walk the hell out into that dark and stormy night. Because I was not afraid of a little wind and rain. And then I was going to walk back into the kitchen, make myself a bowl of Corn Pops and milk, and I was going to eat it while watching the black-and-white weather in the living room. Because I was not afraid of some heavy old furniture.

 

There was a clap of thunder and the Victorian lights flickered in their sconces, but I just kept going, one furry slipper in front of the other.

 

The moment I opened the back porch door a gust of wet wind slapped me in the face. The next gust went in a slightly different direction. I stepped out under the overhang and lifted my chin so that I could feel the rain. And then I heard it, a howl above the howl of the wind and the crackle of electricity in the air. It was a high, clear, undoglike sound, and I realized, with a leap of excitement, that I was probably hearing a coyote.

 

And then I heard another howl, lower, stronger. No, not stronger. Closer. I looked up, back at the house, and realized that Hunter had stuck his head out the tiny attic window. It was a good wolf howl. That Magdalena woman had taught him well.

 

I went back inside and picked up the old black rotary phone to call my mother, but this was not Manhattan: The line was dead.

 

 

EIGHTEEN

“Hope we're not too early, Doc,” Red said the minute he walked in the door. His gaze flickered over me so quickly I almost thought I'd imagined it: down to green-sweatered breasts, back to eyes. I'd left my hair loose down my back and worn mascara. I could tell he approved.

 

“No, you're right on time.” He kept his eyes on mine while I spoke, but it looked like he was making an effort. He was wearing an old sheepskin jacket that still had a lot of sheep left in it.

 

“Wanted to get going before the sun was down so I could walk you around the boundaries in a bit of light.” As Red spoke, he kept glancing away, and I realized with some surprise that I could see a bright splotchy flush like a crude handprint on his cheek.

 

I'd made him blush.

 

“That sounds great. How are you, Jackie?” Red was helping his girlfriend out of her hideous horse-printed jacket. They had brought the cool fall air in with them, along with a strong smell of cigarettes.

 

“Doing fine. Here—for house warming.” She handed me a small package of guest soaps shaped like little lambs.

 

“Oh, thank you so much for thinking of that. Here, I'll take your coat.” The cigarette smell had soaked into the wool; I moved it as far from my face as possible.

 

“Wow.” Jackie looked around at the dark Victorian foyer with its green-and-yellow stained-glass window and whistled. “Always wondered what it looked like in here. Used to know Harvey, the old caretaker.”

 

“So you were aware that this place is a mausoleum. Red? Can I take your coat?” He was sniffing the air distractedly. I wondered if something had gone wrong with the chili.

 

“Oh. Sure. I was just—do you have a dog?”

 

“No. Why do you ask?” I hung Jackie's coat up in the hall closet, wondering if he was going to tell me I needed one for protection.

 

“Because some people keep their animals penned up, you know, when guests come, but Jackie and I are really dog people, so there's no problem with us.” Red removed his coat, revealing a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up over the bulge of his small, hard biceps. I could see only half of his coyote tattoo.

 

“Nope, no dog here,” I said, hanging his coat on a hanger. “I haven't really had time to take care of one. Until now, of course. In fact, I've been thinking about getting one.” I turned to Jackie. “You never brought Pia over,” I said. “Is she getting better about not scratching?”

 

Jackie shook her head. “No, she's still itchy. And she can't seem to settle down at night. I thought about bringing her along today, but she gets so weird about new places and people, I figured I'd better leave her at home.”

 

“Would you like me to come over and check her out?”

 

Jackie smiled, revealing a smear of lipstick on her front tooth. “I'd really appreciate it.”

 

“Well, my veterinary skills are a bit more advanced than my cooking. I hope you guys like chili.”

 

“Oh, no, it smells great. Just great. You know us Texans, we like our chili.”

 

“I'm sorry if it's not quite right. I'm not used to cooking with meat. There's also one without.”

 

“Oh, meat for me.” Jackie smiled even more broadly, and there were deep lines in the leathery skin of her face. I found that I liked Red all the better for not caring that his girlfriend was not perfect or young.

 

“Another carnivore,” I said. “Hunter will be thrilled. I'll go upstairs and tell him you're here.”

 

“Anything else I can do while you're up there, Doc? Chili need stirring?”

 

“No, thanks, Red. Everything's taken care of.”

 

Jackie pulled a pack of Marlboros out of her pocket-book. “Jeez, I can't quite recall the last time you offered to help me in the kitchen.”

 

Red looked at the cigarette Jackie was lighting. “Maybe we should go on outside a moment with that, Jackie.”

 

Jackie lifted her eyebrows. “All right, mind telling me what's got you turning into Mr. Manners?”

 

“Oh, listen,” I said, “it's getting cold out: If you want to smoke in here, that's okay.”

 

Red was looking at Jackie. “We don't want to impose.”

 

“No, it's no—”

 

But Jackie wasn't looking at me, either. “No, no, I wouldn't dream of insulting our hosts.” She slammed out the door. Red looked at me for a moment in silent apology before following her.

 

Well, this was going to be an interesting evening.

 

I hurried upstairs with the lamb-shaped soaps. I'd left Hunter in the clawfoot bathtub, but when I looked, he was gone, and a damp towel was flung over the toilet seat.

 

“Hunter? Hunter, they're here.” He'd been so surly about having Red and Jackie over that I half-wondered if he'd gone back up to the attic to write. If so, I wasn't going to argue with him. But when I came downstairs, ready to make an excuse, Hunter was already out on the porch, smoking a cigarette with Jackie. He was standing with one hand braced against a support beam, looking muscular as he loomed over both our guests. He must have gone down the back stairs. He waved when he saw me, and I realized he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt.

 

“Hi, I was just checking to see where you—aren't you freezing in that?”

 

Hunter laughed, and I realized that Red had taken off his flannel shirt and was wearing short sleeves, too. Maybe it was a macho thing. “Tell you what, Abs,” he said, taking another drag on the cigarette. “What we need is a drink to warm us up.”

 

“Of course. Um, Jackie, what would you like? We have vodka, gin, um, I think there's some beer, red wine …”

 

“A Bloody Mary would be great.”

 

I said I'd check if we had tomato juice. I started walking back into the kitchen.

 

“Abra.”

 

I turned back to Hunter, who was smiling as if he'd just won a bet.

 

“Yes?”

 

“You forgot to ask Red what he wanted. And I'll have a gin and tonic.”

 

“I'm sorry, Red. What can I get you?”

 

“Any old beer you have is fine for me, Doc. Can I help you bring stuff out?”

 

“If you like.” I went into the kitchen feeling somehow diminished, as if I were a little girl pretending to be a hostess and I'd just been found out.

 

Red stood with a kind of muscular stillness and watched while I found the gin and vodka. “Can I help get the glasses?”

 

“Over there.” I pointed and he opened a cabinet door, revealing nothing but plates. “I'm sorry. Maybe there. I'm still getting used to it here.”

 

“Shh.” He came up next to me, as if he were going to take me in his arms. I could feel the deep frown between my eyebrows turning into a headache.

 

“I'm just—it's all a little overwhelming. Moving. Don't worry, I'm not going to cry.”

 

“All right.”

 

I took a deep, sharp breath and Red moved and then checked himself. I could feel his yearning toward me like a magnetic field drawing me in. So this is what it's like, I thought, to see yourself larger than life in somebody else's eyes. What my mother had always known. What Hunter knew. I took another breath. “I'm okay.”

 

A muscle flexed high in his jaw. “I can't. Touch you. He'll know.”

 

“What do you—”

 

“I'd like to help you.”

 

“I'm fine now,” I said, turning my back to him. “I think the drinks stuff is over here …”

 

“Don't pretend. It's dangerous to pretend.” Then he did touch me, taking my shoulders in his hands and gently turning me to face him. We stood there in silence. His hands were warm, almost hot. I felt a reluctance to move away, which was odd, because in general I'm not a touchy-feely sort of person. But he had a reassuring air of quiet calm: Despite the heat of him, I felt as if I could just sink into him, like a lake. I cleared my throat.

 

“I think you're imagining something that isn't—I'm not pretending anything.”

 

“Aren't you? Things are exactly how they've always been between you and your—Hunter.”

 

“That isn't really any of your business.” The worst possible response: I might as well have said, Well, actually he's beating me and shackling me in the basement at night. “Look, I didn't mean that to sound the way it probably did. Hunter and I are fine.”

 

“Good.” His hazel eyes were set deep and almost triangular in their sockets, so that he looked pained even when he was smiling. “Glad to hear it. And you're right—it's none of my business. But you helped me. Back in the city.”

 

“I didn't do much of anything.”

 

“Still, I'm beholden to you. Pia is a very special animal.” His hands were still on my shoulders. “And I think you're in a bit of trouble yourself, now.”

 

“Look, we've just made a major life change and maybe I seem a little tense because of it. I'm sorry if my husband seemed a little edgy the other night, but he's probably feeling the tension, too.” As I said this, something inside my temples pulled taut and began to throb.

 

“You think maybe I'm not seeing things as they are?” Red's fingers slid down my arms, and he shook his head. “Maybe.”

 

“It's not that you're not an attractive man, Red, it's just that—well, you know. I'm married, and you're—you have Jackie.” This was purely to spare his feelings: It seemed unfair not to make some noise about him being appealing on some level, after he'd made his own feelings for me so painfully apparent.

 

“Jackie's not my girlfriend. Hasn't been for a while.”

 

I wonder if she knows that, I thought. “Oh. Well, good. So you're friends. Which is what I hope we can be—friends.”

 

Red's chin snapped up. “You think I'm trying to say I've got some kind of crush on you?”

 

Now I could feel myself blushing, a burning on the back of my neck, my cheeks. “I'm sorry, I thought …”

 

Red laughed. “Hey, don't go all schoolgirl on me, Doc. I'm not saying I'm not attracted to you. ‘Course I am. Just like you're attracted to me. But that's not what I've been trying to get at here …”

 

“I am not attracted to you!”

 

He raised one eyebrow.

 

“I don't mean to hurt your feelings, but I am not attracted to you.”

 

Red stepped in, dipped his head, and breathed in once, hard. “Yep,” he said. “You are.”

 

The mounting tension in my head made it hard to concentrate. “Listen, I don't know what has given you the impression that I like you in that way, but I don't. You're a nice man, but—”

 

“Your head hurt?” Before I could move away, his hands had slipped up into my hair. The touch of his fingers against my scalp was perfect and precise as he located what must have been acupressure points. Suddenly I felt a burst of heat at the crown of my head, and then the pain was gone, and the flush swept down from my temples to my breasts, to my belly and groin. Without thinking, I leaned against him. His voice was no more than a whisper beside my ear.

 

“We have to stop this. Before he smells us.”

 

What was he saying? It made no sense. But I no longer wanted to stop. It was as if Red were two steps ahead of me, knowing my reactions before I was aware of them myself. Was I attracted to him? I couldn't bring myself to pull away. I felt the fine tremble of his fingers. “Smells us?”

 

His fingers contracted in my hair.

 

“Are you expecting your period?”

 

“What? No!” I stepped away from him abruptly.

 

“You get these headaches often?”

 

What was he now, a doctor? “Not usually, no.”

 

“Your husband getting headaches, too?”

 

“I don't think so. No.” But would I know if he were? “Listen, thank you for the, ah, head rub, but I don't really need medical advice. If I do, I'll go to a doctor.”

 

“If you've got what I think you've got, I don't think the doctor's gonna be much help to you.”

 

I put my hands on my hips, suddenly angry. “And what do you think I have?”

 

“Well, for starters, an unfaithful husband.”

 

My heart gave an uncomfortable little flip. There was no way he could know that. “He was just flirting with that barmaid.” I turned away from him, opened the cabinet, and took down four glasses. “That doesn't mean anything.”

 

“Okay, fine, have it your way,” Red said. “But in about two weeks, you'll be calling me in for help.”

 

I took the unopened bottle of tomato juice and a bottle of tonic out of the cupboard. “I have no idea what you're talking about.”

 

“Only thing is, by then it won't be so easy to deal with.”

 

I fixed Red with a look that would have stopped even my mother. “What won't be?”

 

“Your little wildlife removal problem.”

 

It took me a moment to make the connection. Then I remembered that I had planned on asking Red what could be done about the visits from the local fox or what ever it was that was leaving little gifts of viscera on my doorstep. “How did you know I have a problem?”

 

Red looked at me carefully. “What's it been? Small stuff? Mice? Voles?”

 

“Yesterday there was a baby rabbit.”

 

“Anything inside the house?” His voice was sharp, almost angry.

 

“No, but I wanted to ask you if there was anything I could do. Short of laying traps. I don't want to kill anything.”

 

Red rubbed his jaw. “Christ.” He sounded frustrated.

 

“Well, I'm sorry, but I don't.”

 

“Look, if you want my help, you can't set conditions. You have to let me decide what has to be done.”

 

“Then forget it,” I said, pouring a measure of gin into a glass. I wasn't giving up any more control. “It's no big deal, anyway.”

 

“Maybe.” Red moved so that his arms were braced on the wall, trapping me between them. “And maybe it's bigger than you think, Doc. Sometimes small prey are just the beginning. Like if it's a—a young bobcat or coyote, just learning how to hunt.” Held captive, I stared up into Red's face and felt an unfamiliar sense of power. I could let him kiss me, I thought. I could let him touch me, press himself against me, I could let him do anything and everything and I would still remain the one in control.

 

Acting on impulse, I bent and took a nip of his hard bicep. He sucked in a sharp breath. “I don't like traps and poison, Red.” I ducked under his left arm and reached for the red wine. “If we have a predator around, I'll get a dog.” I struggled with the cork and it got stuck with the corkscrew halfway in. So much for my woman-of-the-world act. But my hands were still shaking. I couldn't believe that I'd just bitten the man.

 

“Here, let me do that.” Red took the bottle and uncorked it with three twists of his wrist. He poured it for me as well, with a waiter's precision. I wondered if he'd worked tables at some point in his life. “Listen, Doc, don't think adopting some cute little puppy is going to solve anything. One morning you'll wake up and instead of dead squirrels and mice, you'll find Fido belly up and missing a few organs.”

 

For a moment, as I sliced a lemon for the Bloody Mary, I thought of telling Red about Hunter's condition. But even if, theoretically, some people infected with the lycanthropy virus could change into wolf form—something I found hard to swallow—and even if my husband proved to be one of the rare cases, he was still my husband. I'd known Hunter since we were just on the cusp of adulthood. I'd known him drunk and sober, elated and morose, at his best and at his worst. I knew that no matter how disinhibited by alcohol or illness, he wouldn't do anything to hurt me.

 

Keeping my voice very even, I said, “And why are you so sure that it's not just a fox or some neighbor's cat?” I added a dash of Tabasco to Jackie's drink.

 

“Because it doesn't smell like fox or cat, that's why.”

 

Jesus, him and the smells again. I'm not a great nose, myself. To me, the wine in my glass smelled of fruit and old socks, as all wine does to me, no matter what they say about a faint aroma of plums and wood smoke and an aftertang of vanilla.

 

“So I won't get a dog,” I said, stirring Hunter's gin and tonic. “And if the baby rabbits start turning into lambs and fawns, I'll call you.”

 

Red shook his head, opened his mouth, then closed it. “Fine. Have it your way. But do me a favor: Contact me before the bodies start piling up.”

 

I took a sharp breath, then, because it seemed to me that Red knew exactly what he was talking about. Or rather, whom he was talking about. “Until then, it's not your problem, okay?”

 

“Maybe not,” he said, “but things are about to change.” I emptied a jar of nuts into a bowl and handed Red a bottle of beer from the fridge, along with Jackie's Bloody Mary. He walked out of the kitchen, so skinny in his stiff new jeans that I felt a moment's distaste: What had I been thinking, and why had I bitten him like that?

 

It wasn't until I followed him out onto the porch that I recognized the tune he was whistling under his breath: Peter and the Wolf.