“Where is he?” Isabel asked.
“Checking out the woods behind Beck’s house. He should’ve come with us.” I could already picture the curve of his eyebrows, close over his eyes, as he saw the mosaic and the statue for the first time. This was the sort of thing Sam lived for.
An object beneath the bench before me caught my attention, however, pulling me back to the real world. A slender, dull white…bone. I reached out and picked it up, looking at the gnaw marks on it. As I did, I realized there were more scattered around the bench, half buried in the leaves. Pushed partway underneath the bench was a glass bowl, stained and chipped, but obviously no antique. It took me only half a moment to realize what it was.
I stood up and faced Isabel. “You’ve been feeding them, haven’t you?”
Isabel glowered at me, looking petulant, and didn’t answer.
I retrieved the bowl and shook out the two leaves that lay curled in the bottom of it. “What have you been feeding them?”
“Babies,” Isabel said.
I gave her a look.
“Meat. I’m not an idiot. And only when it was really cold. For all I know, the stupid raccoons have been eating it.” She sounded defiant—angry, almost. I had been planning to goad her about her hidden compassion, but the raw edge to her voice made me stop.
Instead I said, “Or carnivorous deer. Looking to add some protein to their diet.”
Isabel smiled a small smile; it always looked a bit more like a smirk. “I thought Bigfoot, perhaps.”
We both jumped as a high-pitched cry, like an eerie laugh, came from the lake, followed by a splash.
“Christ,” Isabel said, her hand on her stomach.
I took a deep breath. “A loon. We scared it.”
“Wildlife is overrated. Anyway, I don’t think Olivia’s near here if we scared the loon. I think a wolf changing into a girl would be a little louder than we’re being.”
I had to admit her theory made sense. And the fact was that I still wasn’t sure how we were going to handle Olivia’s sudden return to Mercy Falls, so a tiny part of me was relieved.
“So we can go get coffee now?”
“Yeah,” I replied, but I moved across the hidden patio toward the lake. Once you knew the mosaic was underneath your feet, it was easy to feel how unforgiving the surface was; how unlike the natural forest floor. I walked over to stand by the statue of the woman and pressed my fingers to my lips when I saw the view. It wasn’t until after I’d taken in the still lake framed by naked trees and the black-headed loon floating on its surface that I realized I was unconsciously mimicking the statue’s look of eternal wonder. “Have you seen this?”
Isabel joined me. “Nature,” she said dismissively. “Buy the postcard. Let’s go.”
But my gaze had drifted downward to the forest floor. My heart sped. “Isabel,” I whispered, frozen.
On the other side of the statue, a wolf was lying in the leaves, its gray pelt nearly the same color as the dead foliage. I could just see the edge of its black nose and the curve of one of its ears rising out of the leaves.
“It’s dead,” Isabel said, not bothering to whisper. “Look, there’s a leaf sitting on it. It’s been there awhile.”
My heart was still thumping; I had to remind myself that Olivia had become a white wolf, not gray. And that Sam was a boy, safely trapped in his human body. This wolf couldn’t be either of them.
But it could be Beck. Olivia and Sam were the only ones that mattered to me, but Beck would matter to Sam. He was a gray wolf.
Please don’t be Beck.
Swallowing, I knelt next to it while Isabel stood beside me and shuffled in the leaves. Carefully plucking the leaf that covered part of the wolf’s face, I felt the coarse fur brush the side of my hand, even through my gloves. I watched the banded gray, black, and white hairs keep moving for a second after I lifted my palm. Then I gently opened the half-lidded eye on the side closest to me. A dull gray eye, very unwolflike, stared at some place far beyond me. Not Beck’s eye. Relieved, I rocked back on my heels and looked at Isabel.
At the same time that I said, “I wonder who it was,” Isabel said, “I wonder what killed it.”
I ran my hands over the length of its body—the wolf lay on its side, front legs crossed, back legs crossed, tail spread out behind it like a flag at half-mast. I bit my lip, then said, “I don’t see any blood.”
“Turn it over,” Isabel suggested.
Gently, I took the wolf’s legs and flipped it onto its other side; the body was only a little stiff—despite the leaf that had dropped onto its face, the wolf hadn’t been dead long. I winced in anticipation of a gruesome discovery. But there was no visible injury on the other side, either.
“Maybe it was old age,” I said. My friend Rachel had had a dog when we first met: a grizzled old golden retriever with a muzzle painted snowy white by age.
“The wolf doesn’t look old,” Isabel said.
“Sam said that the wolves die after about fifteen years of not shifting back and forth,” I said. “Maybe that’s what happened.”
I lifted the wolf’s muzzle to see if I could spot any telltale gray or white hairs on it. I heard Isabel’s disgusted noise before I saw the reason for it. Dried red blood stained the wolf’s muzzle—I thought it might be from a previous kill, until I realized that the side of the wolf’s jaw that had been resting on the ground was caked with blood, too. It was the wolf’s blood.
I swallowed again, feeling a little sick. I didn’t really want Isabel thinking I was queasy, though, so I said, “Hit by a car and came here?”
Isabel made a noise in the back of her throat, either disgust or contempt. “No. Look at the nose.”
She was right; there were twin trails of blood coming from the wolf’s nostrils, running down to join the old smear across the lips.
I couldn’t seem to stop looking at it. If Isabel hadn’t been there, I don’t know how long I would’ve crouched there, its muzzle in my hands, looking at this wolf—this person—who had died with his own blood crusted on his face.
But Isabel was there. So I laid the wolf’s face carefully back onto the ground. With one gloved finger, I stroked the smooth hair on the side of the wolf’s face. Morbidly, I wanted to look at the other side again, the bloody one.
“Do you think there was something wrong with it?” I asked.
“Ya think?” Isabel replied. Then she shrugged. “Could just be a nosebleed. Do wolves get nosebleeds? They can make you yak if you look up when you have one.”
My stomach was tight with misgiving.
“Grace. Come on. Head trauma could do that, too. Or animals picking at it after it died. Or any number of disgusting things to think about before lunch. Point is, it’s dead. The end.”
I looked at the lifeless gray eye. “Maybe we should bury it.”
“Maybe we can have coffee first,” Isabel said.
I stood up, brushing the dirt off my knees. I had the nagging feeling you get when you leave something undone, a prickling anxiety. Maybe Sam would know more. I kept my voice light and said, “Okay. Let’s go get warmed up and I’ll call Sam. He can come look at it afterward.”