“No.” I pushed off the wall I’d been leaning on and displayed my knitted skin. “All healed. Anyway, I’ll see you at the house later. I was going to oil the floors today.”
“Eric and I can do that.”
“You’re already doing so much.”
He let out a little snort. “Honey, I’m loving this project.”
I smiled. “I’m glad.”
As I headed for the front door, he asked, “Where are you going?”
“To campus. To pick up books I need for Monday.”
He nodded. “I keep forgetting you’re starting college. For some reason, I feel like you’re so much older.”
I felt way older too.
“Hey, it’s your birthday next week!”
I jumped from the intensity of his voice.
“Eighteen.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “That’s . . . that’s it. You won’t need me anymore.” Sadness mangled my uncle’s tone.
“Aw, Jeb. Just because I’ll no longer be a minor doesn’t mean I won’t need you.”
His lips bent but then fell, and then his eyes became all glossy.
I strode back over and hugged him. “I’m not going anywhere. At least nowhere without you, okay?”
He didn’t speak but squeezed me hard. When he released me, I repeated that I wasn’t leaving, because he wore a look I recognized; it was the look of people who’d been repeatedly abandoned . . . who didn’t believe people stuck around.
“Love you,” he said right before I exited the house. I was pretty certain it was the first time he’d said those words to me.
“Love you too.” I was pretty certain it was the first time I’d said them back.
As I drove down the roads I knew only-too-well, I itched to phone Sarah and find out how her evening had gone, but what if she was hanging out with the Creeks and they saw my name appear on her phone?
Maybe she’d be at the inn.
When I started up the sinuous drive, my heart grew weighty with dread and something else . . . anticipation? Call me crazy, but I was looking forward to speaking with Sandra. Cassandra. I wondered why I hadn’t gone sooner.
I parked in the far corner of the employee lot; then, fully alert, I walked up to the revolving doors. The land had once belonged to my family, but not anymore. Now I was in enemy territory. When I pushed through the glass doors, I expected shifters to pounce on me, but no one pounced. No one was even here. I had to remind myself that this was no longer a public inn.
Nothing had changed. Except the smell.
The air still carried the odor of wood smoke, but it was barely distinguishable under the aroma of damp fur and warm musk. It was as though the Creeks spent more time in fur than in skin. Perhaps they did. I realized I knew more about the Rivers than I did about the wolves in my own town.
Heartbeats pounded behind the wooden walls. I heard them above me, below me, in front of me.
“Hello?” I called out, not wanting to spook anyone.
The shuffle of rubber soles had me jerking my face toward the back office. Emmy, one of the women who worked at the inn before it was annexed, froze on the threshold.
“You’re still here?”
I’d imagined she’d handed in her letter of resignation after the night the Creeks arrived.
She crossed her arms nice and tight. “Are you expected?” Her tone was so sharp that both my eyebrows jolted up.
“You’re mad at me?”
“I’m mad at a lot of people and things right now.” We stared at each other in silence for a long beat. Then, “Are you one, too?”
The desire to shake my head almost won over my desire to confess the truth. “Yes.”
She shuddered, and the row of tiny silver hoops adorning the shell of one of her ears glittered.
I moved toward her, and her body seized. She even took a step back. She was afraid of me?
“Why are you still working here?”
“Because I signed a contract.” Her gaze snapped to the entrance of the living room.
We were still alone.
“Emmy, you’re not trapped, are you?”
Her eyes gleamed with unshed tears.
“Are you?” I repeated a little more insistently.
“Michaels offered me twice what your uncle and aunt were paying, so I signed on the dotted line. Skylar, she said the new management gave her the creeps, so she didn’t renew her contract. After I found out-” Her voice cracked and then tapered off. “After I found out what you all were, I told Mr. Michaels I didn’t feel comfortable working here anymore. I told him I wouldn’t talk, but he said it was too late. He said I should’ve read the fine print better.” She sniffed. “You know what the fine print says? It says that if I leave my place of employment or speak about my new employers’ nature, I would be taken into the woods. And not for a nature hike.”
Without even realizing it, I’d moved closer to the bell desk, closer to her. “They threatened your life?”
She nodded. “Along with the lives of everyone I hold dear.” She snorted. “Serves me right for not listening to my wife.”
“Have they hurt you?”
“No. As long as I make up their rooms and clean their clothes and pick up their dirty dishes, no one bothers me.”
I rounded the bell desk.
She uncrossed her arms and shot out her palm. “Don’t come any closer.”
“Emmy! I’m not like them. You don’t have to be scared of me.”
“You just said you were one of them.”