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“Save it,” Dervish snaps. “We need to move — now! I don't want to be the one to try explaining to Ma Spleen that her grandson's a werewolf!”
I smile fleetingly, then put the questions on hold. Dervish carries Bill-E to the van that Meera had been hiding behind. He pulls the rear door open and bundles Bill-E inside, then returns for Meera. I'm too terrified and ashamed to ask if she's alive or dead. Instead I pick up my axe, Bill-E's dropped sword, and the syringe — my right arm tingles fiercely where Dervish hit me, but I can use my hand now — and drop them in the back of the van beside the bodies. Dervish closes the door on the beast and the woman. Then we climb in up front and drive back to the mansion.
For a full minute I say nothing, as if this is an ordinary drive home on a normal night. Dervish concentrates on the road, driving slowly for once in his life. His hands are shaking on the steering wheel. I watch him change gears. Then, unable to hold the questions back any longer, I spit it out.
“You knew Bill-E was a werewolf.”
“Obviously.”
“How long have you known?”
“A few months. Since he started wandering the forest in a daze around the time of a full moon, killing animals.” His head turns briefly. “You know about that?”
“Yes. That's what put us on to you. Bill-E saw you collecting the bodies and getting rid of them in the incinerator.”
Dervish winces. “By disposing of the kills, making sure nobody else found them, I hoped to avoid suspicion and protect him. Guess I was a little too smart for my own good.”
I look back over the seat's headrest. I can see Bill-E and Meera. Meera's chest is rising and falling — she's alive. I study Bill-E's face. No hair. No fangs. But his skin's a darker shade than usual, his fingernails have sprouted, and his cheekbones have definitely changed shape — albeit slightly. And his eyes, if they were open, would be that eerie yellow color. And his mouth … those teeth …
“Why didn't you tell me?” I ask softly.
“That your best friend's a werewolf?” Dervish snorts.
“I'd have believed you if you'd shown me proof. I was ready to believe it about you — I could have believed it about Bill-E too.”
“Perhaps,” Dervish sighs. “But I hoped to spare you, the way I've spared Billy. I didn't know until tonight how damaging the change would be. Sometimes the madness touches us but passes. I was praying that he was merely moon-sick, that the disease was weak in him and wouldn't take hold.”
Dervish drives in silence for a while, gathering his thoughts. I don't say anything, waiting for him to choose how to explain.
“How much of this have you guessed?” he asks eventually. “Tell me what you think you know.”
“The Gradys are cursed,” I answer directly. “Some of us turn into werewolves. It's been happening for centuries.”
“Pretty good,” Dervish commends me. “Only it goes back a lot further than centuries, and it's not just Gradys — it's the entire family line. What else?”
I shrug. “Not much. We thought you had the disease, but that you could control it, or at least lock yourself up when the moon was full.”
“Nobody can control lycanthropy,” Dervish says quietly. “When the disease takes hold — as it has in Billy tonight — you're doomed. The change takes a couple of months, but once the wolf comes to the fore, the human never resurfaces.”
“You mean Bill-E's gone? He's …”
I can't continue. A terrible weight settles upon me.
“Not quite.” Dervish says, and the weight lifts as suddenly as it fell into place.
“We can save him?” I ask, excited. “We can reverse the change?”
“There is a way,” Dervish nods. “But we'll talk more about that later — and whether or not we wish to chance it.”
“What do you mean?” I snap. “Of course we —”
“Your sister had the disease,” Dervish interrupts softly. I stare at him, horrified. “To save Billy, we'll have to deal with Lord Loss, as your parents did. And if we do, we run the very real risk of winding up dead like them — Billy along with us.”
“What does … he … have to do with this?” I croak.
“Later,” Dervish says. “One mystery at a time. We're nearly home. Let's get Billy locked away safe and sound — then I'll tell you all about it.”
We pull up around back of the mansion, close to the tree stumps. Dervish turns off the engine and asks me to remove the sheet of corrugated iron and open the doors leading down to the secret cellar. He bundles the pair of unconscious bodies out of the back of the van while I'm doing that.
