Every time he was faced with a plate of meat, he just wanted to puke his living guts out. He had become a bona fide vegetarian.
So when Mark slid the brown paper bag across the table, its contents struck Ré with a horror that seemed designed just for him.
“What the fuck is this?” he yelped, shoving it away.
Mark hissed, glancing around the dining room. The Olympia crowd had thinned since three o’clock, but there were still more people hanging around than either of them would have liked. “It’s the cure,” he said, leaning in. “Do you know how hard it was to get this?” He touched the bag protectively.
“Ostie d’câlisse de sacrament!”
Even if you didn’t know French, it sounded pretty vicious.
Réal pressed himself back against the booth, leveraging his hands on the table edge and staring at the bag like it might lunge at him. That familiar green sickness washed through his gut. He swallowed it back with effort. “What kind of fucking cure is that?”
Mark shook his head. “Look, you asked me to help you, and this is what I got. I mean, cut me some slack—I don’t even know northern medicine. My family’s Cayuga.”
Ré took a long, deep breath and blew it out slow. “I know,” he said. “I’m sorry. It just doesn’t seem like this is what it should be. A cure, I mean. For this.”
“I swear, I read through everything my mom had, dude.” Mark shrugged, but it wasn’t dismissive, just a little disbelieving. “All the stories said you need to eat meat. Lots of greasy, red”—he lowered his voice to a hush—“nonhuman meat.”
Ré shuddered. His fingers went to the mouth of the bag again, tipping it open. He peered in. His bottom lip pulled down, like he was afraid to know, but he asked anyway. “What’s in the jar?”
Nestled in beside the biggest, bloodiest slab of meat he’d ever seen was a large mason jar, half full of a waxy, yellow substance that slid down the glass and pooled in gelatinous lumps.
“Bear fat,” Mark said. “You have to drink it.”
“Oh fuck,” Ré moaned. “You gotta be kidding me!”
“I’m not,” Mark said, but not without sympathy. “You have to heat it up and drink it.”
The horror was all over Ré’s face. “All at once?” he asked.
“Shit. I don’t know,” Mark said. “Yes?”
Ré went blank, the thought just too awful to process. Then he said, “So it’s bear too, obviously.”
“Yeah,” Mark said, wrinkling his nose. “Sorry.”
The thing must have weighed ten pounds, oozing red into the wrinkles of the cling film it was wrapped in. Réal couldn’t help picturing the poor creature it had been taken from. The thought of eating it made him feel utterly worthless. “Well,” he said. “Thanks, I guess.”
Mark held out his hand for Ré to take—not in a handshake, more like they might arm-wrestle. Ré took it, gripping hard. “Hey, man,” Mark said. “Good luck.”
Black Chuck ate his only daughter.
When she was just small, they said. The size that you are now.
It was deep in winter, there was no meat but hers.
Just snow and snow for miles. Eyes, scared and wild.
He knew this story well, but there were others just like it. Fathers feeding on blood when the food ran out. Burying starved-to-death children under frozen lakes to kill the temptation to suck their little bones. Windigo spirit passed down from one on to the next until it got to him, Black Ré.
He thought of Evie’s eyes today, red and glassy. He wasn’t just no good like this—he was dangerous. How was he supposed to be there for her, for the baby, with his dreams so full of teeth?
The cure sat on the Buick’s passenger seat, staring up from its brown paper bag. Ten pounds of bear meat and a liter of fat. How in hell was that gonna kill a demon?
Mark had said something about tricking his mind, leading it away from dark desires. But seriously. The last time meat had passed Ré’s lips, it had been going in the wrong direction. He had no idea how this horror show was supposed to stay down.
Just as he turned the key in the ignition, his passenger door flew open.
His heart jumped out the window and ran away.
“Hi, Réal,” Sunny said. She ducked in the open door, giving him a look that blinded like bright lights.
“What do you want?” he asked, angry, panic rising. He reached for the bag.
“I want to talk,” she said, “and I don’t want your bullshit answers.” She shoved the bag over and got in the car, slamming the door behind her.
“Where’s Alex?” He looked past her out the window.
“Home,” she told him. “His dad picked him up.”
“Does he know you’re with me?” She rolled her eyes and flashed him a look that said, Don’t be stupid. He shook his head. “Okay. So talk.”
“Not here, Ré,” she snapped. “The entire school is watching.” She gestured toward the park with a bangled arm, but she was exaggerating. No one seemed to have even noticed them.
“Okay, Sunny,” he said, giving up. “Where do you think we should talk?”
“My parents are out tonight,” she said. “My place is empty.”
“Fine.”
That familiar, crowded feeling he got when she was too close started to bloom inside his chest. Like she couldn’t be reasoned with or resisted, and it was easier to just let the storm blow him down than to fight it. It was exactly what had got him into this mess with her in the first place.
He threw the Buick into reverse and stomped on the gas, jarring her so she had to brace herself against the dash. It was childish, he knew, but she didn’t exactly bring out the best in him.
Sunny’s place was a little north of downtown, on the west side of the river, in a pretty nice neighborhood. Réal didn’t know what her parents did for a living, but they had a big house and a car with a pearly gold paint job and real leather
