Fated to My Mate's Uncle novel · Chapter 9 of 32

Chapter 9: The Keeping

On the night of July second, I crossed the ford alone.

That was the plan, anyway.

I got halfway across the rope before I heard the splash behind me.

I turned around.

Fraser was coming through the water in a black T-shirt, with a backpack held over his head.

"No," I said.

"Keep walking. You're making noise."

"You promised."

"I didn't, actually. You told me to promise. I said nothing. It's a thing I do."

"Fraser, they'll kill you."

"They'll have to catch me first." He caught up and put his free hand on the rope next to mine. "And I'm not sending a pregnant woman down a coal chute by herself. Patsy would kill me first, and she's meaner."

I couldn't argue with that.

We went up through the cottonwoods in the dark.

The pack hall stood black against the stars, all logs and stone, with the July supper banners already strung across the porch.

Tomorrow night four hundred wolves would eat under those banners, and the elders would burn a jacket in the fire pit out front.

The coal chute was on the river side, behind a lilac bush.

A square iron hatch, about two feet across.

I went first, feet first, and slid down into the dark.

I landed on a heap of old coal dust and sneezed.

Fraser stuck his head in after me.

Then his shoulders.

Then he stopped.

"Huh," he said.

"Are you stuck?"

"I'm considering my options."

"You're stuck."

"I'm a tall man in a small hole, Carys. I'm assessing."

I grabbed his wrists and pulled.

He came down all at once in a landslide of coal dust and landed on top of me.

We lay there in the dark.

His weight pinned me. His breath was warm on my face. Every inch of him was pressed along every inch of me.

Neither of us moved.

"Hi," he said.

"Get off me, you giant."

He did, slowly.

The boiler room smelled like oil and mice.

At the far end was the inside door to the Keeping, old oak with iron straps.

Patsy's brass key turned in the lock like it had been oiled yesterday.

She'd probably oiled it yesterday.

Inside, the Keeping was a long stone room, cool and dry, with steel shelves to the ceiling.

Evidence boxes, labeled by year in Patsy's square handwriting, then in someone else's sloppier hand.

I knew this room.

I'd spent every Saturday of my teens down here learning to read.

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