Chapter 5: I Knew Your Hands

I was already at the door with the deadbolt turned.

"Who?" I said.

"I don't know. One of the patrol saw a wolf peel off the road behind her and go down the valley. Gray, big. Nobody's claiming it."

"Ket dropped me twelve hours ago."

"It waited for dark." He was breathing hard. "I'm coming."

"Your father exiled me this morning. If he finds you down here..."

"I'm already in the truck."

The line went dead.

I stood in the middle of my new room and listened.

Then, under the window, something scraped.

I went to the glass and looked down.

The bulb over my stair threw a yellow cone onto the gravel and the dumpster.

At the edge of it, something moved.

It stepped into the light and stopped.

A wolf.

Gray and huge, bigger than any dog, with its head low and its nose working the air.

It was smelling my stair.

It couldn't find me.

It knew I was here, and it couldn't find me.

The wolf put one paw on the bottom step.

I looked at the bulb.

That bulb was the only light in the alley.

It was lighting the wolf's way up.

I'd seen the switch box when I signed the lease: a gray metal panel inside my door, with a breaker for the stair.

I opened the panel and flipped the breaker.

The bulb went out.

The alley dropped into black.

Below me, the wolf snarled at the sudden dark.

But it couldn't smell me, and now it couldn't see the door either.

I crouched beside the bed and dialed the sheriff's line with shaking thumbs.

"There's a big animal in the alley behind the hardware store," I said, very quietly. "It's trying to come up my stairs."

The dispatcher asked me to stay on the line.

Something heavy came up two steps and stopped.

The wolf was right outside my door, sniffing at the crack.

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