The Thing About Weres

“You said I’d never pass five feet.” I grinned back. “You were wrong.”

“How so?”

“I’m five two. Three, if I wear shoes.”

“And you consider that grown?” My brother’s smile faded, and his voice grew serious. “Hell, how old are you?”

“I turned twenty-two in August.” I said softly.

That was … a blow. A long, dead interval passed before Lexi’d collected himself enough to speak. “Eleven years? That’s all it’s been?”

Ten and a half, I thought, resisting the urge to correct him. “We don’t look like twins anymore,” I whispered. You look so old, Lexi.

A muscle flexed in his jaw. With a rough nod, “No, not anymore.”

“How long have you been gone?”

“The Fae don’t count years,” he said tonelessly. “But it seems time passes faster there than here.” He looked over to the Stronghold ridge, and asked, “Mum and Dad?”

“They both died the night the Fae took you across the portal. Dad first.”

He nodded as if he’d known, and I reached for him, but that made him abruptly lift his arm as if to cast a spell or maybe to ward off something—a blow? A curse? “Sorry,” he bit out. “I don’t like being touched anymore.”

Were you ever that keen on it?

My brother bent his head and raked the ground until he turned up a twig. This he turned into a tool to draw a furrow in the hard earth. “Tell me. All of it.”

“The portal came—no one called it from this side of the gates—but Mum could feel it coming. ‘It’s on my skin,’ she said to Dad. He took his gun down to the pond and was waiting for the wolf when it leaped through.”

“What type of wolf?” Lexi drew another line parallel to the first he’d scored.

“One of ours. A Creemore wolf named Mannus. Do you remember him? He was Trowbridge’s uncle?” He didn’t. So I told him about Mannus, and how he’d feigned love for our Fae aunt, and how she’d made the mistake of bringing him over into the Fae realm.

“Dad held the shotgun on him, and said that he’d have to bring him to the Alpha. But the wolf turned on him, they fought, right near our pirate rock.” In the mud, while I watched. “Mannus got away, but he’d wounded Dad so badly—”

“How?”

“Dad’s stomach was torn open. His throat mangled.”

Lexi drew a horizontal line across the two lines he’d already made in the earth. “Where was Mum?”

“Still in the house. Trying to cast protection wards on the windows and doors.”

His hand stilled. “She knew the Fae were coming.”

“Yes, she knew, and she was desperate to get the protection up before they arrived.” I worried my lip, watching him rework the lines. Slash, slash, slash. Now the diagram looked like the setup for a game of tic-tac- toe. “We got Daddy into the house, and she had a moment to seal the doors against them, but…” Her face had been white with fear. “They broke through her wards like they were … tissue paper. It took two kicks to break down the door, and then … they were in the kitchen.”

“Mum had time to put you in our hidey-hole.”

That’s what we’d called it back then. Not a hole, but an old kitchen cupboard—the type you hung on a wall and put soup tureens in. Cream paint worn off near the handles and the hinges to expose the pine beneath it. Double doors. A side for each twin. But yes, our mother had pushed me into it first. “I was handy. She was going for you next. She was calling for you—screaming your name.”

“Back then I was a sound sleeper,” he said, spinning the stick to drill a hole in the earth to make a jagged hole in the center of one of the boxes he’d drawn.

And I’d been a light one.

His stick moved to the next hole. “The pack didn’t come in time to save the house?”

“Only Trowbridge came.”

The twig broke and he cursed in Merenwynian. Sharp. Hard.

“Don’t,” I said. “It was my fault.”

His gaze jerked to mine.

“She told me, ‘Go get your brother.’ But I didn’t. I followed Dad down to the pond instead.” I lifted my hands helplessly, unable to tear my eyes off that single pitted hole in the middle of the hashwork of lines. “I didn’t understand, I didn’t think. I was curious and … It’s my fault that you weren’t warned. All mine.” I swallowed, miserable. “I’m sorry, Lexi. I’m so sorry. If I could take it back…”

He searched my face before he shifted to extract a silver flask from his pocket. Expression shuttered, he uncapped it, and brought its mouth to his. His throat flexed as he swallowed.

“I missed you, Lexi.” I whispered. Did you miss me?

He took another swig from his flask.

“Is that the stuff that healed me?” I asked in a little voice.

He nodded.

My hands throbbed. “What magic is in it?”

He slanted his gaze toward my blistering mitts, then gave the flask a thoughtful look. A sharp, short inhale through his nose, before he poured a small measure into the cap of the flask and gave it to me. “Only a sip,” he said. “It’s too easy to start liking it too much.”

“And that would be a problem?”

He gave me wink. “For some.” Then my twin tucked the flask back into his satchel and stood. The corner of his mouth pulled downward as he stared at the pond below. “That boulder there—is that where it happened?”

“Yes.”

“And the apparition,” he said, with a nod to the cemetery. “Does she have a story?”

“Casperella’s not much for conversation,” I replied. “Mostly, she shadows—” I stumbled, and chose a better word. “Watches me from the cliff while I stand by the pond.”

A finger rubbed the corner of my twin’s mouth, before he nodded to himself. “She was probably there all the time when we were kids. We were just too young to see her.”

“I guess.” Seeing spooks started around puberty—around when my magic came in.

I hunched my shoulders against a sudden chill. Now what? I wondered. I didn’t want to go back to the Trowbridge house. There were memories there that I didn’t have sufficient courage to face. Especially after tonight, when my nerves felt flayed. And I didn’t want to stay there sitting Apache style on the same damp ground on which I’d lost and gained and lost again. New memories were attached to this field, some of which I wasn’t sure if I’d ever reconcile myself to.

Biggs let out a look-at-me whine, which the little brown bitch ignored.

“I wonder what Harry’s searching for?” I asked, my tone wonderfully indifferent. The old wolf limped across the field, favoring his paw, nose snuffling the turf.

“Not looking, hunting,” Lexi corrected, his eyes narrowed. “Never forget that they are animals and are driven by the instinct to hunt.”

It worried me, the way Harry hobbled, and suddenly my heart hurt almost as much as my fingers and head. I whispered, “Who’s the mutt Trowbridge brought back?”

Lexi’s gaze flicked to the she-bitch, and then to the ground. He toed aside a clump of sheep sorrel. “A servant in the Great Hall.”

“No, I mean who is she to him?”

“How would I know? The Son of Lukynae is not fond of conversation.” He adjusted his satchel more comfortably on his shoulder.

“Why do you call him that?”

But he’d turned to eye the Trowbridge property with an expression of dismissal. “Look at the size of the trees … they’re saplings compared to those in Merenwyn.” Then, with deceptive laziness, “Tell me, what is Robson