Jess dropped the required change in a pay-phone, dialled a familiar number, and waited patiently for someone to answer.
Caitryn did. “Hello.”
“Hiya, Cait. It's Jess.”
“Hi! How's it going?”
“Could be better.” There was an understatement. “How 'bout you?”
“Ah, things are pretty quiet 'round here, you were here for so long last time that we got used to you. Besides, we're all still recovering from that party.”
No kidding. “Is someone from Sundark around?”
“Why on Earth would you want to talk to Sundark? I'm much more fun. Go away, Kev, you can have it when I'm done talking to Jess.”
“Please? This is serious.”
“Oh, all right, if it's something serious. You take care.” She moved the phone, and he heard her say in the background, “It's Jess.”
Kevin took it from her. “Heya, Jess. What's up?”
“Can I ask a favour?” Jesse said quietly.
“Of course you can.”
“Can someone come get me? Like today?” And get me out of here?
“Sure, there has to be someone around who isn't studying for an exam or working on a major assignment, or attempting to recover from all of the above. I'll find someone, watch for either van. Directions?”
Jess described how to reach the apartment from the highway into the city.
“Okay, got it. Somebody will be there as soon as we can manage it. Are you all right?”
“Yeah. Just... there isn't anything here for me anymore. So I may as well come home and get down to learning everything Bane says I need to learn. And find a job.”
“Worry about that when you get here. Something will come up, that's how Haven works. I'll go see who I can round up. Want to talk to Cait again?”
“I'd better go get my stuff together. What there is of it.”
“See you soon, then.”
“Yeah. Bye.”
Two hours after that call, Jess was sitting on the steps that led down to the apartment, the few belongings he cared to keep at his feet; a familiar green van pulled up. He scooped up his backpack, and opened the sliding door.
Flynn was driving, Liam had the other front seat, and Naomi and Gwyn were in the back.
“It would've been boring to come alone,” Flynn explained.
“Well, come on,” Naomi said, as Gwyn got up to greet Jess affectionately. Jess chuckled, still not used to being able to understand canine, and scratched him behind his ears before tossing his things in and settling himself across from Naomi.
“You're upset,” Liam observed quietly.
Damned empathic healers. What had Evaline said? Healer gifts were the only magic wolves had very little resistance to? “I just had a fight with Shaine that I'd rather not talk about. I'd far rather just leave this damned city somewhere far behind and start over.”
“Wish granted,” Flynn said, turning the van around in a nearby driveway. “And that may be the most honest thing you've ever said to any of us.”
Jess leaned back against the carpeted wall; the bewilderment and hurt were fading a little, here with his friends. Gwyn gave him a hopeful look, so Jess smiled and stroked his soft grey fur. I think I like having friends.
“Liam?” Naomi said. “Will you read me the rest of that article?”
“What article?” Jess wondered.
“There's a newspaper that comes out once a month, called the Quicksilver Sphynx,” Liam explained. “Nick and another friend, Brittany, do most of the work, and the last thing written every month is Nick's space to tell everyone the gossip and what's coming up. June's just came out a couple of days ago.”
“How come I've never seen it?”
“Because it covers topics like...” He lifted the paper in his lap. “Historical blacksmithing magic, the origins of the Haven deck of not-really-Tarot cards, the witches' get-together in May, a humorous—hilarious, actually—description of werewolf dominance, uses for magesilk...”
“I get the picture. I take it this stays inside Haven.”
“A few always end up in the other mixed villages, and a few of theirs always reach us, but usually.”
“Uh-huh. So which one were you reading?”
“The Tarot one.”
“Go back to the beginning,” Naomi suggested. “So Jess can hear it. Then you can read the dominance one. We can all use a laugh, I think.”
Liam complied.
Jess listened in fascination, still petting Gwyn, and stopped thinking about hurting and about Shaine.
* * *
Shaine, sitting on the mattress hugging his knees to his chest, listened to the sounds of the van stopping, then driving away. Taking Jess off the streets to somewhere he wouldn't need Shaine to watch out for him anymore, somewhere he had more of a future than living day to day.
The tears inside were frozen in ice. When was the last time he'd cried? Sometime before he found Jess roaming the streets alone at fifteen and knew he could at least make amends in a small way.
No more Jess rambling on about street gossip, no more curling up together to sleep... things were going to be so lonely and cold.
Didn't matter. Jess would be safe, surely they'd never find him now, he'd have a home and a family and be happy. That mattered.
Did he really have any right to ask for more? Even to ask that it not hurt so bad?
There were things to do. The rent wouldn't appear out of nowhere, and if he was going to eat he had to go find it himself.
He rested his head on his knees, searching inside for some reserve of strength to take him through this. It wasn't altogether surprising that he found none. Maybe he'd just stay right here until he felt like he could face the world again...
* * *
Intent on trailing a hare, Rebecca wriggled under a cedar-rail fence into a woodlot, and followed the scent-trail across the rusty-red needles blanketing the ground. Right through the woodlot, and to another fence. More wriggling.
The wind brought her familiar scents; hidden by the brush along the fence, she paused and crouched flat.
Bane, furform, stalked a hare grazing peacefully on the lush June clover—quite likely the one she'd been tracking. Watching intently, a little to one side, was a smaller wolf, midnight-black.
So. Jesse had healed after all, had he? And been accepted as part of Bane and Evaline's pack. Poor whelp, he had no idea what frustration lay ahead, knowing that he had the potential to live wild and must make choices that would bind him. Either live here, strangled by too many wolves, or go somewhere else and have to hide always...
Jesse gathered himself, and pounced mischievously at Bane just before the alpha wolf attacked. Bane growled softly as the hare bolted, bit him lightly over his muzzle in reproof, then licked his ear. The larger wolf bounded a few yards away, looked expectantly at Jesse, and heartbeats later they were chasing each other around the pasture, hunting lessons forgotten. Jesse yelped and stumbled—a rock, a groundhog hole, any of a number of traps that lay in wait—and Bane circled back to check that he was all right. He was; he began to dig energetically. Groundhog hole, then. He'd certainly never catch it by digging.
Then again, given the high spirits both were in, he might not be at all serious about it.
Bane watched, plainly amused, while his black shadow turned black-and-brown; Jesse glanced up at him, tail thrashing at the air, then went back to his digging. Hopefully no one would be putting horses or cattle in this pasture soon.
Jesse tired of that, and frisked away, with Bane right on his heels. Halfway across the pasture, Bane stopped, and howled to the blue sky, to the sun just beginning to throw long shadows.
Uncertainly, Jesse paced back and forth a couple of times, then added his voice. It wavered, then steadied, though Rebecca thought he might consider pitching it differently. From farther away, other voices answered; what wolf could resist joining in on a howling session if at all possible?
She could, at the moment, though briefly she entertained thoughts of yielding to the temptation. But it would be better if they never knew she was here.
All right, so her last desperate attempt at reclaiming Kevin had failed so spectacularly that she could no longer deny the truth: she'd lost him forever and nothing was going to get him back. The whole situation was infuriating, yet it was so utterly absurd she couldn't help but see the irony in it.
It would, by now, be pointless and stupid and pathetic to do anything but accept that, let go of the hurt and the dreams and get on with her life.
Let the little black wolf-cub learn for himself what it meant to be wolf in this age.
Let Kevin keep pretending, if that was what he was so determined to do. If the approval of his current coven-mates mattered so much to him that he was willing to be less than he was, then he was no better than Moira. Less, in fact, since the wariness of the rest of Haven still made him feel bad enough that he tied himself into knots in the attempt to reassure them. Tragic, when he had the potential to be so much more, but there was nothing further she could do. He'd chosen, and he hadn't chosen her.
The song trailed off, one thread at a time, down into silence. Brown wolf and black trotted towards the lane that led out of the pasture.
Rebecca retraced her path there, back to the far side of the woodlot, and began to search for other potential prey.