Chapter 5
After a hard day of being a tourist, Anna slept deeply in the bed on the other side of the bathroom wall. Charles put his forehead against his side of that wall for a long moment before he worked up his..."Courage" was not the right word. Fortitude.
After a deep breath, Charles stepped in front of the bathroom mirror. It was one of those full-length things that women used to use to make sure their ankles weren't showing below their skirts and now used to make sure, he assumed, that their underwear showed only when they wanted it to.
And he was trying to distract himself by looking at the mirror rather than looking at the image it held.
Charles couldn't see them if he turned his head to look behind himself, but in the mirror the spirits who haunted him were as clear, as three-dimensional, as they were when they were still alive. They had stayed away all day while he and Anna did the tourist thing, this evening when Anna took him on the silly haunted tour that had been a surprising amount of fun, and tonight when he had held her as she fell asleep.
As soon as she slept, they returned.
We see her, they said. Does she see you? Does she know what you are? Murderer, killer, death bringer. We will show her and she'll run from you. But she can't run far enough to be safe.
Hollow-eyed and cadaverously thin, they stared at him, meeting his eyes in a way that no one except Anna, his father, or his brother had dared to do in a very long time. The oldest ones morphed into something they had not been in life - their eyes black, their faces distorted until they hardly looked human. The three newest ones looked as they had the moment before he'd ended their lives. They stood so close to him that it was strange that he could not feel the heat of them - or the chill - at his back. Even so, it wasn't only his eyes that told him they were there.
Charles could smell them. Not the odor of rotting meat precisely, but something close, the sweet, sickly smell that some flowers produce to attract flies and other carrion-feeding bugs. The smell penetrated his skin. Like the ghosts in the mirror, the scent was a reflection, not the real thing.
And he heard them.
Why? they asked. Why did you kill us? He knew they weren't interested in the answers, not really.
The first time he'd seen them, when he'd first started this job for his father, he'd tried answering them, though he'd known better. He'd been certain that if he hit upon just the right thing to say, they would go away. But explaining things to the dead never works. They don't hear the way the living do and words have little effect. The questions were for him, but not for him to answer - and talking to them just gave them more strength.
Guilt attracted them. His guilt - it kept them from moving on to where they belonged. There should have been something else that could have been done for them. That there had not been didn't make him feel any differently about it.
They had been protecting a child and lost control of their anger. Charles knew, as any werewolf did, all about losing control. There had been a pedophile stalking children in the pack's territory, and they'd been sent out to hunt him down. That was exactly what they had done. Then they botched the job beyond repair. In another time, they'd have been punished, but not killed.
And now they haunted him. That Charles could not release them was a second burden to bear, a second debt he owed to them.
His grandfather - his mother's father - had taught him it was so, and his very long life had given him no reason to doubt it.
Dave Mason, the dead man nearest Charles, the last of the Minnesota wolves Charles had killed, opened his mouth and darted forward. Dave had been a good man. Not the brightest or the kindest, but a good man, a man of his word. He'd understood that Charles was only doing what was necessary. Dave wouldn't have wanted his ghost to torment anyone.
In the mirror Dave's cold, eager eyes met Charles's as his lamprey mouth attached to Charles's neck, cold and sharp, feeding on guilt. He disappeared from sight after a few minutes, but not from Charles's senses as, one by one, the ghosts behind him did the same, until Charles stood apparently alone in front of the mirror and felt his ghosts gain strength from him while they weakened him. They didn't touch him physically, not yet. But he knew that he wasn't thinking as clearly, wasn't able to trust his judgment anymore.
On the other side of the wall, Anna moved restlessly. Not awake, but aware.
He should close down his bond with her, again. He didn't think any of his ghosts could cross it and touch her, but he wasn't certain. He couldn't bear it if he caused her harm.
Equally, Charles couldn't bear to be separated from her again.
Anna's cell phone rang and she grumbled as she fumbled around the unfamiliar nightstand for it.
"Hello, this is Anna," she said, her voice husky with sleep.
He was too distracted to pay attention to the words of the person on the other end of the conversation. He listened to Anna, let her voice remind him that he hadn't driven her away, hadn't hurt her irreparably. Not yet.
"Right now?" A pause. "Sure. We're glad to be of assistance. Can you give me the address? No. Not necessary. There's Wi-Fi here so I have the Internet. Just wait for me to find a sheet of paper." She pulled something else off the table next to the bed - her purse, he thought from the sound of it. Charles looked away from the mirror.
"Okay. Have pen and paper. Shoot."
He couldn't go out and perform for the feds. Not like this. He would hurt someone, someone who didn't deserve it.
Use me, said Brother Wolf. If I stay with Anna, it will be safe for everyone. I will not harm any of the people. I will keep her safe from them.
Which "them"? Charles asked.
FBI, killers, the dead. All of them and any of them. She will be safe - and so will the others. I will not hurt them unless I have to. Can you say the same?
Charles almost smiled at the thought that Brother Wolf would be less dangerous than he, but at the moment it seemed to be true enough. Without another look in the mirror, he let the change take him: he would trust the wolf to keep her safe.
"HOW LONG WILL it take you to get here?" Leslie Fisher's voice was cool and professional, but her question had just a hint of urgency.
A young woman was missing from her condo, though she hadn't been gone long. Luckily, the policeman who'd gone to check it out had been briefed on their serial killer and thought it was a close enough match to the way other people had been taken to call in the FBI.
There was something wrong with Charles. It had been nagging at Anna since she woke, but she'd already answered the phone. It didn't feel urgent, just not good - so she decided to take care of the truly urgent matter first to get it out of the way. If it was their serial killer, they had a chance of getting to the girl before anything happened.
"How far is the apartment from the hotel we were at" - it was two in the morning - "yesterday morning?" Charles hadn't been in bed beside her, though she knew he was in the condo. She could feel him.
"Ten-or fifteen-minute walk. Something like that. The victim's apartment isn't too far from the Commons." Then Fisher clearly remembered that Anna and Charles weren't from Boston. "The Boston Common. The big park a couple of blocks from the hotel."
After a day of sightseeing, Anna could have told Fisher how big the Common was and approximately how many people were buried in it and all about the ducks that inspired a famous children's book.
Their condo was less than a five-minute run from the hotel, and she and Charles could always take a taxi if the place they needed to get to was too far.
"Less than fifteen minutes, then," Anna told her.
"Good," said Fisher. "We'd appreciate anything you can do. Assuming this is our UNSUB, based on previous cases, she's still alive and will be for a few more days."
"We'll do our best."
Anna hung up the phone and began dragging on her clothes. "Charles? Did you hear? There's a girl missing. Is Lizzie Beauclaire one of our werewolves? I don't remember her name from the Olde Towne Pack roster."
Not that I know of. It wasn't Charles who answered.
Anna paused, one foot off the ground as she'd been shoving it into a pant leg. Brother Wolf padded out of the bathroom, all three hundred pounds of fox-red fur, fangs, and claws. There were bigger werewolves, but not many. Her own wolf was closer to the two-hundred-pound mark - so was Bran's, for that matter.
"Well," she said slowly. The wrongness in their bond was fading, leaving behind the cool, thoughtful presence that was Brother Wolf. "I suppose it'll help save time if one of us is already wolf when we get there."
Charles is worried that he will do something bad, Brother Wolf told her. We decided that it would be best if I take point tonight. Brother Wolf had gotten better about speaking to her in words rather than images. She got the distinct impression that he looked upon it as baby talk, but it amused him anyway.
She resumed dressing while she considered his words. Of all the wolves she'd known over the past few years, none but Charles could let the wolf rule without disaster. The wolf part of a werewolf was...a ravaging beast, born to hunt and kill, protect the pack at all costs, and not much else. Brother Wolf was different from other werewolves' wolf spirits because Charles, born a werewolf, was different from other werewolves.
Different because of you, too, Brother Wolf told her.
"I suppose if you - both of you - think it's wise. You know better than I do. Let me know if there's some way I can help. But it does mean we aren't getting a taxi."
It no longer felt odd to talk to Charles and his wolf as if they were two separate people who shared the same skin, both of them beloved. She and her wolf nature were much more entwined, though she had the impression that they were still not as integrated as most werewolves were.
Brother Wolf butted up against her, knocking her over, and licked her face thoroughly. Yes. No taxis for werewolves. Charles doesn't like driving in cars. The werewolf stepped away and tilted his head, gold eyes gleaming with humor - whatever had Charles upset, it must not be too bad because his wolf wasn't worried.