Chapter 5: Thirst

"You're green," my grandfather said.

"I'm fine."

"You're the color of a pond."

He was making eggs in my mother's kitchen.

For fourteen months at his cabin on the inland lake he had taught me to hold fire.

In all that time I had never once seen him cook.

"You can't make eggs," I said.

"I've made eggs since before your country had a flag."

He put a plate in front of me.

I looked at it and my mouth watered, and not for the eggs.

The guard on the porch had shifted his weight.

I heard the creak, and then I heard his heartbeat.

Slow. Steady. Sweet.

I could hear the blood moving in him through two walls.

"Grandfather."

"I know."

"Grandfather, I'm going to be sick."

"No, you're hungry." He set the steel flask next to my plate. "Drink."

I unscrewed the cap with a trembling hand.

It smelled like copper and cold, and the fangs came down in my mouth without asking.

I drank.

It was thick and bitter, and it hit my stomach.

The shaking slowed.

My vision cleared, and so did the sound of the guard's heartbeat, which dropped back to an ordinary noise outside the wall.

"Where does this come from?" I asked.

"A butcher in Marquette who owes me forty years of favors."

"That's disgusting."

"Yes. It's also why you haven't bitten that boy through the door."

I put the flask down.

"Today I turned into a wolf for the first time."

"I saw. You did it beautifully."

"I put a man on the ground with my teeth in front of eighty people."

"He had his hand around your arm."

"I'm a hybrid."

"You're a Quill and a Hedlund," Ambrose said.

"Your mother was the strongest woman I ever knew, and I am not a modest man."

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