His imagination, maybe.Or the sounds of an old house settling.His and Jem’s house made the strangest sounds at night, all that wood expanding and contracting.
He was sweating, and when he adjusted his grip, the phone almost slid out of his hand.
He swept the light down the hallway first, like he was a soldier clearing the house, and he was aware of the ridiculousness of it but couldn’t stop himself.Still nothing.Because the house was empty.Because nobody could keep watch on a house constantly, and because nobody knew he was going to be here, and because Amy had been gone for days, so nobody would waste their time trying to find her here.All good reasons.All solid.All logical.His breath felt like it was caught behind his breastbone.
Another floorboard creaked as he crossed the kitchen.To his right, a dark pit opened up: the stairway down to the basement.And then, beyond it, the refrigerator, the kind with the freezer at the bottom.He opened the upper doors.White light flooded out around him, and he blinked as his eyes adjusted again.Takeout containers.A sandwich wrapped in butcher’s paper, the dressing leaking through.Jars of pickles.Condiments.A box of baking soda with the words CHANGE DEC 2018 written on it in Sharpie.
He moved the pickles.He shifted the ketchup.
No prescription.
He texted Amy:Can’t find it.Where is it?
And somewhere in the house, a phone dinged.
Tean froze.
Gentle pressure on the refrigerator door made him pull his hand back.The door closed.
A wolf stood there, watching him.
26
In that first instant, Tean was frozen.His eyes were trying to adjust again to the sudden darkness.The wolf was only an impression of fur and muzzle and ears and the smell of the rubber mask.The man was breathing softly but quickly.Panting.
At his side, like ice glowing in the ambient light, he held a knife.
The image came to Tean from earlier that day: Jem with the car keys.
He threw his phone at the wolf’s face.
It connected with a loud crack, and the wolf cried out.Tean lurched back.But the wolf only shook his head, shaking off the pain, and leaped.
The knife flashed.
Tean jumped backward.The air displaced by the knife brushed him, and it carried with it the rubber smell of the mask again.
The wolf leaped again, slashing at Tean.
When Tean sprang back again, he crashed into something—a corner that connected with his spine and sent a flash of pain through him.He stumbled, and one foot came down on empty air.The stairwell.He flailed, trying to catch a railing, a wall, anything.But his momentum from the jump toppled him into the darkness, and he fell.
He hit the stairs first on his butt, rolled onto his back, and enough synapses fired for a single panicked thought to make their way to the surface:My neck.Then he came down hard on his shoulder, flopped onto his stomach, tumbled onto his butt again, and was at the bottom.
Pain from a dozen places roared up.He’d lost his glasses.He’d lost his breath.When he finally managed to suck in air, the smell of rotting meat was overpowering.And for a single moment, he wanted to lie there and be hurt, because anything else seemed like too much effort.
But the scuff of a footstep at the top of the stairs made him roll onto his side.And then, somehow he got to his feet.He swept his hands once over the floor—bare concrete—and gave up on his glasses.The basement was dark, with only the faintest light making its way through the small rectangular windows.He had a sense of looming shapes around him, but his vision was so bad that he couldn’t make out any details.One hand found cardboard—boxes.He took a step, and his ankle sparked like he’d made an electrical connection.Tean would have fallen if he hadn’t shoulder-checked another tower of boxes.Something clinked inside—china, his brain said; pottery; ceramics; as though any of it mattered—but the tower didn’t fall, and a moment later, he was limping forward again.
Steps clipped on the stairs.
His hand, trailing along the boxes, found a void, and he turned down the passageway.It wasn’t a choice so much as an instinct.Prey ran.That was how prey animals stayed alive.The walkway was hemmed in on both sides by more boxes.Tean’s brain ran backward, trying to estimate, trying to plan.Was there only one path?Would the wolf—whoever it was—know immediately where Tean had gone?It was a pointless question because Tean didn’t have any answers.
A break came in the boxes, and then Tean’s fingers brushed plastic, and something soft beneath that moved under his touch.Dresses.Or clothes, anyway.He found the hang rod, the rack, the hangers.He kept moving, and the clothing gave way to boxes again.
“Dr.Leon.”The voice belonged to a man, and it was slightly muffled.That meant he was standing beyond the boxes, not in this narrow passageway with Tean.And that meant Tean had another moment to live.“What are you doing?”
More boxes.And then the smooth finish of wood—or a wood veneer, anyway.It was a piece of furniture almost as tall as Tean, and he ran his hands over it.Maybe he could knock it down and create a barrier.Or push it on top of the wolf.
“You can’t get out.”Tean recognized the voice.It was soft, almost uninflected.“You have to go up to get out.And I’m right here.”
