Winter Lost

I jogged up the stairs and opened the front door to a living room filled with upended furniture. Unusually for a fight involving werewolves, nothing was broken. I gave the fainting couch a frown. Sadly, even upside down, it seemed to be fine. Before I had time to wonder where everyone was, Adam called out from the basement.

“Down here, Mercy.” He didn’t sound particularly stressed, but I didn’t like the solemn note in his voice.

Downstairs I found Jesse and Tad, our neighborhood half-blood fae, seated near the cage we used to lock up dangerous wolves. Adam was standing beside the cage, looking at me with worried eyes.

Behind the silver bars of the cage, a man was curled in a fetal position, his back to the room. He reeked of sweat and fear. His hair had been French braided at one time, but the braid was disheveled, with hair sticking out every which way, as if he’d slept on it more than one night. Or maybe just engaged in a battle with a werewolf. He did not, I noticed with relief, smell like fresh blood. He wore jeans and a ripped and wet winter coat he hadn’t taken off. Huddled up like that, my brother looked smaller than I remembered.

Adam gave me a quick hug, which I returned before dropping to my knees next to the cage.

“Gary?” I said. He didn’t respond to my voice at all.

“I don’t know what’s wrong,” Adam told me, his hand warm on my shoulder. “He wouldn’t talk to us. It felt like he couldn’t talk.” He glanced at Jesse, who nodded.

Sometime since this morning, when I’d last seen her, Jesse had dyed her hair bright purple. I thought she’d given up on outrageous colors when she started college a couple of months ago. When Gary was sorted out, I’d ask her why she’d gone back to dying her hair.

“Who had the fight in the front yard?” I asked, just in case there had been a scent I hadn’t detected.

“Gary and I did,” Adam said. “I don’t think he’s hurt—beyond bruises. Nothing seems broken.”

He sounded defensive.

“The fight wasn’t Dad’s fault,” Jesse said.

“I could have stopped it,” he told her.

“What happened?” I asked. “From the top, please?”

“He knocked,” Jesse said. “Dad was in his office and I answered the door. He didn’t look right at me—not at my face. Mumbled something and took a seat on the porch. I didn’t realize he was your brother, Mercy. He didn’t look like who I remembered. I thought he was a lone wolf. He’s not the first of those who has shown up here. I got Dad because I thought he was going to freeze to death on our porch.”

“Werewolves don’t freeze to death,” observed Tad, who’d been silent up to this point. He sounded a little upset.

“He was shivering and sort of hunched.” She nodded toward Gary, but there was a bite in her voice directed at Tad. “He looked like he was going to freeze to death. I’m not equipped to tell werewolves from not-werewolves.” She gave Tad a look and said, “But I’m also not stupid.”

“You opened the door,” Tad said. “Your father wouldn’t have heard him tear your throat out.”

“When I got out here”—Adam said, evidently deciding that argument had gone on long enough, though I thought Tad had a point; maybe Adam had already had it out with Jesse—“he was sitting at the top of the steps.”

He wasn’t happy about the danger Jesse had been in, either; I knew Adam. But unlike Tad, he knew better than to rebuke Jesse as if she were a child. I foresaw more cameras around the house so Adam could better monitor things when he was in his office.

“He didn’t respond when I talked to him,” Adam continued. “He didn’t appear to hear me at all. I put a hand on his shoulder and he reacted as if I were an enemy. That’s when we fought.”

I looked up at him, and he flushed a little. “Too close to the full moon. He’s lucky I didn’t kill him.”

“Dad just pinned him,” Jesse jumped in, as if I’d already gotten mad at Adam.

I figured if Gary was still alive, it was because Adam hadn’t wanted to kill him—wolf in charge or not. Gary had a knack for making people want to kill him. That’s how he’d ended up in jail in the first place.

“I was putting my trash in the bins outside and I saw the two of them come over the roof,” said Tad.

Despite my concern for my brother, I could feel my eyebrows rise and I looked up at Adam. “Over the roof? I thought you just pinned him.”

He rubbed his face with the hand that wasn’t holding on to me and gave me a sheepish look. “I don’t remember that part. You know what a fight is like. And the moon is just past full.”

“He pinned him five or six times,” Jesse said. “But Gary kept escaping. He just wiggled out until Dad really landed on him.”

Adam winced at the last few words, maybe because of the enthusiasm Jesse used.

“He sort of gave up then,” she told me. “Or we thought he did. Dad checked him out and carried him into the house.”

“Unconscious?” I asked.

“No,” Adam said.

“Catatonic,” said Jesse.

“I’m sure you don’t have the medical qualifications to assess that,” Tad said dryly.

“Unresponsive,” Adam said, stepping into the argument.