Vision

Late that spring, when Jeremy was called in to deal with Gregory’s sprained ankle, Dominic found excuses to extend our stay for nearly a week. Why? Because Malcolm was at Stonehaven, and had been for a month. Not only that, but Malcolm had invited Wally, Raymond, Stephen and Cliff up to Stonehaven, which turned an uncomfortable visit into sheer torment. Dominic knew we could use a break.

When we returned to Stonehaven, Malcolm was still there. Most times he only stopped by long enough to get money, but occasionally he stayed longer. I had no idea what his excuse was this time. Like Jeremy, I’d stopped caring why he was there, only gritting my teeth and toughing it out until he left. Asking him when he was leaving only invited trouble. I’d done that last year, and he’d extended a planned two-day visit to two weeks.

By the time we got home from New York, only Malcolm remained. He pounced before we could so much as pull off our boots.

“All done playing doctor?” he said.

“Yes,” Jeremy said. “Gregory is fine.”

“No, Gregory is not fine and hasn’t been for years. If you really wanted to do us a favor, you’d give the idiot strychnine instead of aspirin. But I’m sure that wouldn’t help your cause, would it?”

Jeremy only gave a half-shrug and took off his boots, then turned to me. “Go into the kitchen and we’ll fix dinner.” He glanced at his father. “We’re having sandwiches. Can I make you one?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

Jeremy tugged off his coat, hung it on the rack and steered me toward the kitchen.

“How’s that new truck working out for you?” Malcolm said, sticking at our heels.

“It does the job,” Jeremy murmured.

“Dominic must be pretty pleased with you these days. Taming stray pups. Training the boys. Learning emergency medicine. What’d he call it? Initiative. That’s right. Showing initiative. The question is: what do you hope to initiate?”

When Jeremy didn’t answer, Malcolm swung in front of him and brought his face to Jeremy’s.

“You get in my way, boy, and I’ll squash you.”

“I never doubted it,” Jeremy said, and sidestepped into the kitchen.

Malcolm’s next extended stay came in early December, a month away from my eleventh birthday.

That weekend, Antonio and Nick were coming up to take me Christmas shopping for Jeremy. Although the Pack didn’t really celebrate the holiday the way humans did, we would have a Pack Meet and exchange gifts. The original shopping plan had been for me to go to New York and stay with the Sorrentinos, but then Malcolm showed up, and seemed prepared to hang around until the holidays, so Antonio decided they’d come to us, minimizing the time Jeremy would need to spend alone with his father.

On Wednesday night Jeremy woke up from a nightmare. When I heard a muffled cry from his room, I bolted upright and nearly fell out of bed in my haste to get up. As I scurried into the hall, I heard the click of his door handle, and backed into my room.

I listened, heart thumping, almost certain it was just a nightmare, but unable to shake the fear that someone had attacked him in his bed. When I heard his soft footfalls in the corridor I knew it had just been another bad dream. Staying behind my door, I waited until he passed, then slid out after him.

Normally after a nightmare, Jeremy would fix himself a sandwich, or pour a glass of brandy, depending on how bad it had been. This time, though, he walked into the study, passed the brandy decanter and headed for the desk.

He stopped in front of the phone and stared down at it, as if expecting it to ring. For at least five minutes, he stood there. Then he sighed, picked it up, moved it to the table beside his chair and sat down.

He picked up his sketch pad and tried to draw something, but his attention kept wandering, and he’d start to draw those strange symbols he did sometimes. When he noticed, he’d rip off the page and try again. And again, his gaze would go distant, pencil moving across the page, drawing symbols instead of pictures.

Finally he tossed the sketch pad down and took up a paperback mystery novel he’d left by his chair, but after ten minutes of staring at the same page, he put it aside and eased back in his chair. A few minutes later, he started to nod off. His eyes were only half closed when he jerked up, mouth forming a silent O.

From my post outside the door, I swear I could hear his heart pounding triple-time. His gaze shot to the door and I pulled back farther out of sight. He tensed, listening, as if afraid he’d cried out and alerted Malcolm. He listened to the silence for a minute, then looked back at the phone, swore under his breath and rolled his shoulders.

“Call, damn it,” he whispered. “I can’t help if you don’t call.”

The phone didn’t ring. After glaring at it for a few minutes, he sank back into his seat.

Twice more, he began to drift off and twice more a vision startled him awake. It was a vision, not a nightmare. At the time I didn’t understand that, but I do now, looking back.

Jeremy saw things. I don’t know how to explain it any better than that. I can’t explain it any better than that. I’ve never understood much about this side of Jeremy’s life, because I don’t ask.

Wolves like conformity. In the wild, a pack will drive out a member who doesn’t fit the accepted standard of wolf behavior; most animals do. While the Pack wasn’t so heartless, even those less attuned to their wolf side were uncomfortable with change, and with those who were “different.”

I knew Jeremy didn’t like to fight, and I knew that wasn’t normal werewolf behavior. Yet I could accept that, because I knew he could fight. As a wolf, what was important to me was the ability, not the desire.

Not every member of the Pack felt that way. Take Malcolm. To him, a werewolf was a fighter, and a werewolf ’s value was directly related to his martial skills. For Malcolm, having his only son show no interest in fighting was a humiliation beyond bearing.

If Jeremy’s refusal to fight lowered him in the opinion of some Pack members, knowing that he had visions would have only made it worse. Such a thing went beyond the realm of individual difference. Unlike the rest of the Pack, though, I knew that Jeremy sensed—and sometimes saw—threats facing his Pack brothers.

After nearly two hours, Jeremy fell into a semidoze, disturbed only by the twitches and moans of a fitful sleep. When I was sure he wasn’t going to wake up again, I crept into the room and fell asleep on the sofa.

The next day, Jeremy stayed close to the phone. Malcolm noticed. Malcolm always noticed Jeremy’s moods. He hated the thought that something might be bothering his son and he couldn’t claim the credit for it.

The phone rang twice that day. Both times Jeremy bolted for it, which didn’t escape Malcolm’s notice either. The first time it was Pearl, the woman who cooked our dinners, confirming our menu for the next week. The second time it was one of Jeremy’s translation business clients asking whether he’d received a delivery.

Late that afternoon, Malcolm went out. Jeremy tried to curb his restlessness by painting, one hobby he never dared practice in front of his father. At least marksmanship was a sport. Painting would open him up to a whole new arena of mockery. So when Malcolm was home, the sketch pads and canvases stayed in a basement storage box.

Today, though, even art couldn’t distract Jeremy from whatever bothered him. Instead, he threw himself into physical activity, playing two hours of touch football with me before dinner. While we played, he kept the study window open, despite the bitter December cold. Every now and then he’d stop in midplay, motion for me to wait as he looked toward the window, as though he’d heard the phone ring. When no sound came, he’d shake it off and resume the game.

After dinner I reminded Jeremy that it was our hunt night. We had one joint Change night per week. As well, Jeremy encouraged me to run by myself once a week, and he did the same.

One advantage to Changing so often was that if anything interrupted our schedule, we could miss a run with no ill effects. Given Jeremy’s mood, I figured he planned to skip our hunt, but I wasn’t going to let that happen without a fight.

When I reminded him, I braced for battle, but Jeremy told me to grab our coats and boots. Like playing touch football, a hunt was action; it was something to do.

If someone phoned, he’d miss the call, but I think in some ways Jeremy was even less comfortable with his psychic abilities than I was. At that age, he hadn’t yet learned to trust them and, when the phone hadn’t rung all day, he’d decided it wasn’t going to ring at all.

We caught a fawn that night. Normally young deer aren’t on our menu, but it was a fall fawn, born out of season and abandoned by its mother. Better to kill it quickly and let its death serve some purpose, rather than leave it to starve.

We were still feeding when the phone rang. Jeremy had left the study window open again, so the distant ring cut through the stillness of the forest. Jeremy tore off to Change.

The phone rang only three times, then stopped. Jeremy was fast with his Changes, but he wasn’t that fast.

By the time I finished my Change, Jeremy was already in the house. I ran inside to find him striding down the hall, peering into each room. One sniff and I knew what he was looking for. We found Malcolm in the kitchen, pouring a beer.

“Did you—?” Jeremy started, then stopped and made his voice casual. “I thought I heard the phone. Was it for you?”

“No idea. Strangest thing. I picked it up, said hello and no one answered.” He fixed Jeremy with a look. “Very strange, don’t you think?”

I didn’t think it was strange at all that someone wouldn’t want to speak to Malcolm, but he wasn’t asking me, so I kept my mouth shut.

Jeremy shrugged. “Probably a wrong number.”

“I’m sure it was.”

Jeremy poured me a glass of milk, then grabbed a bag of cookies and led me to the study. Malcolm followed. He walked to the sofa and dropped onto it, beer sloshing to the floor. I looked at the frothy puddle and bit back a snarl. Of course he ignored it. He wasn’t the one responsible for cleaning the floors. I wasn’t wiping it up with him looking on, though. I’d let it dry and scrub the spot off tomorrow.

Jeremy stood in the doorway, looking at Malcolm and struggling to hide his dismay. “I have work to do,” he said finally.

“That’s fine. You do it. I’ll just sit here and keep quiet.” Malcolm’s gaze traveled to the phone—the only one in the house.

Jeremy poured himself a brandy, took a sheaf of his work papers and sat down. I grabbed my book and plopped onto the throw rug to read.

Twenty minutes later, the phone rang. After a furtive glance toward his father, Jeremy answered it.

“Hello?”

Relief flooded Jeremy’s eyes as I heard a man’s voice reply. Malcolm put down his newspaper and perked up. Jeremy gripped the receiver tighter to his ear, muffling the voice on the other end.

“Slow down…no, slow—Wait. Stop. You can tell me when I get there. Let me grab a pen.”

He took a pen and paper from the desk. Malcolm sauntered over and leaned around Jeremy, trying to see the paper. Jeremy covered his notes, then ripped the page from the pad and stuffed it into his pocket.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

When he hung up, he turned to Malcolm and tensed. But Malcolm just yawned as if the whole affair had proved disappointingly dull, and strolled to the door. He took one step into the hall, then leaned back inside.

“Oh, if you need someone to look after the boy while you’re gone, just ask.” He looked at me with a teeth-baring grin. “I’ll take good care of him.”

When Malcolm was gone, Jeremy glanced at me.

“I’m going with you,” I said.

“No, Clay, not this time.”

He picked up the phone and dialed.

“Jorge? It’s Jeremy. How are you?” A short pause. “Is Antonio there?” A longer pause, then Jeremy winced. “That’s right. And he’s flying straight here Saturday afterward, isn’t he? Can’t believe I forgot that.” Pause. “No, no. It’s not important. I was just calling to discuss our plans for the weekend.”

Jeremy chatted for another minute with Jorge, then hung up. After a moment’s pause, he sighed, shook his head and looked at me.

“I’m going with you,” I said.

“Yes, I suppose you are.”