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I took a step back. “From what?”
He shrugged, looking more awkward than I’d ever seen him. “From… like. You know. Bad guys. And stuff.”
“Bad guys,” I repeated.
“And stuff.”
“Oh my god, you are so weird.”
“Yeah, I know. I just said that.”
“There are no bad guys here.”
“You don’t know that. There could be murderers. Or whatever. Burglars.”
I would never understand werewolves. “You don’t need to protect me.”
“Yes, I do,” he said quietly, looking down at his feet as he shuffled his sneakers.
But before I could ask him what the hell that meant, I heard the most creative curse ever uttered burst from the auto shop’s open garage door.
“Goddamn motherfucking son of a bitch whore. Bastard cunt, aren’t you? That’s all you are, you bastard cunt.”
MY GRANDPAP would let me hand him tools as he worked on his 1942 Pontiac Streamliner. He’d have oil under his fingernails and a handkerchief hanging out of the back pocket of his overalls. He muttered a lot while he worked, saying things I probably wasn’t supposed to hear. The Pontiac was a dumb broad who sometimes wouldn’t put out, no matter how much he lubed her up. Or so he said.
I didn’t know what any of that meant.
I thought he was wonderful.
“Torque wrench,” he would say.
“Torque wrench,” I would reply, handing it over. I was moving stiffly, the latest session under my father’s needles only a few days past.
Grandpap knew. He wasn’t magic, but he knew. Father had gotten it from his mother, a woman I’d never met. She’d died before I was born.
There’d be more cursing. And then, “Dead blow mallet.”
“Dead blow mallet,” I said, slapping the hammer into his hand.
More often than not, the Pontiac would be purring again before the day was over. Grandpap would be standing next to me, a blackened hand on my shoulder. “Listen to her,” he would say. “You hear that? That, my boy, is the sound of a happy woman. You gotta listen to ’em, okay? That’s how you know what’s wrong. You just listen, and they’ll tell you.” He snorted and shook his head. “Probably something you should know, too, about the fairer sex. Listen, and they’ll tell you.”
I adored him.
He died before he could see me become the witch of what remained of the Bennett pack.
She killed him, in the end. His lady.
He swerved to miss something on a darkened road. Went into a tree. Father said it was an accident. Probably a deer.
He didn’t know I’d heard Grandpap and Mother whispering about taking me away just days before.
ABEL BENNETT said, “The moon gave birth to wolves. Did you know that?”
We walked through the trees. Thomas was at my side, my father next to Abel. “No,” I said. People were scared of Abel. They would stand in front of him and sputter nervously. He’d flash his eyes and they’d calm almost immediately, like the red brought them peace.
I’d never been scared of him. Not even when he held me down for my father.
Thomas’s hand brushed against my shoulder. Father said wolves were
