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“Thanks,” she said. “Everything people say about you—Becky said you’d help.”
“I’m happy to,” I said, and I was. It felt like winning, and I didn’t have to fight anyone, and no one had to die.
Over the next few days, we set everything up. In that time, I wouldn’t let her leave the condo, and I wouldn’t leave her alone. Ben or I stayed with her the whole time. Usually me. Ben made her nervous, and I couldn’t blame her. I was constantly looking out the window, checking the streets, jumping whenever the phone rang. I expected Carl to show up any minute. He didn’t.
Ben cleaned a couple of handguns and wore gloves while he loaded them with silver bullets.
I bought Jenny’s plane ticket, gave her some extra clothes, and put her on the phone with Alette so the two could get acquainted. Jenny’s expression was constantly numb, almost shocky, like she’d survived a disaster. She’d given herself over to strangers and had succumbed to fatalism. For my part, I wouldn’t be happy until she was on the plane and away.
The best I could do was walk her to security. We lingered at the end of the line snaking its way to the metal detectors and X-ray machines.
“You have my phone number. Call me if you need anything, anything at all. If it doesn’t work with Alette, we’ll find something else. You have a lot of choices, okay? Everything’ll look better when you get to a new place.”
I wanted her to be happy and excited, but she still looked terrified. “I’ve never been this scared. Not even the first time I shifted.”
“It’s going to be okay.”
“But I think I miss Carl. Is that weird?”
How I could I convince her that she was doing the right thing? “Part of you always will. I still do sometimes.” Though the Carl I missed—the strong, protective Carl, the sex, the feeling of being adored—had faded to a very faint shadow. I mostly remembered Carl the domineering, Carl the angry. “But you have a right to your own life. You don’t belong to him.”
She nodded, her expression still uncertain.
“Call me when you get there, okay?” I said. “Make sure you meet Ahmed. He runs this bar, it’s amazing—”
“I know. You’ve told me about it ten times now.” She flashed a smile. It made her face light up. I could see why Carl had zeroed in on her. It just added fuel to the fire, though, seeing how completely he’d managed to bury her personality.
“Yeah. I have to admit, I think I’m kind of jealous. You get to start out on this great adventure.”
“It feels like stepping off a cliff.”
“Kind of does, doesn’t it? You just have to remember your parachute.”
We hugged. It was a human gesture, not a wolf one. She had to be able to draw on the human side—the side that knew she could live without Carl—if she was going to get through this.
I watched her disappear down the escalator leading to the trains that ran to the concourse. You needed a ticket to go any farther. I took that as a consolation. No one who could hurt her knew she was here. No one could get to her. She was safe now.
“Mission accomplished?” Ben said when I got home.
“Yeah.” He met me at the d
oor, and I folded myself in his arms. “I need a hug.” He obliged.
“What’s Carl going to do when he finds out?”
I mumbled into Ben’s shoulder. “Nothing he can do. Not if he doesn’t know she got help. As far as he’s concerned, she just left. And there’s nothing he can do about it.”
I almost wanted to call him myself and shout the words at him.
There’s nothing you can do about it, you bastard.
chapter 8
Mom had a surgery date: Friday, barring unexpected test results or complications in the meantime. The doctors were calling it a “reexcision” and kept saying it was routine, but that was just to make us feel better. They were still cutting chunks out of my mom. I wanted to stop it if I could. But there were no good solutions, any way you looked at it.
After sending Jenny off, I had a free evening and spent it with Mom, working up the courage to mention lycanthropy. It was a crazy, stupid idea—I couldn’t suggest that my own mother take up this life. I’d have to take care of her the way I’d taken care of Ben when he’d been infected last winter. That had been hard enough, watching him struggle with the changes to his body, what the pain did to him, knowing what he was going through and being unable to make it any easier. I couldn’t imagine Mom in that situation.
But if it was a choice between going through that and losing her entirely, it wasn’t a choice at all. I had to talk to her about it before the surgery.
