Chapter 12: The Walk Without a Cane

I knew that walk before I saw her face.

It was light and quick and perfectly sure of the ground.

My sister crossed the yard in the starlight with Bram's coat hanging off her shoulders and the sleeves rolled to her wrists.

She did not tap a cane.

She did not feel for the gate.

She lifted the latch without looking down at it.

Across the fields, the greenhouse pump alarm was bleating.

It was what had pulled Bram out of my bed, and he had not come back yet.

I snatched my phone off the nightstand, slipped through the door, and pulled it softly closed behind me.

I opened the camera with a thumb that would not stop shaking.

I stepped off the porch in my bare feet, crossed the cold boards without a creak, and crouched behind the woodpile at the corner of the cabin.

The recording light was a tiny red dot.

I covered it with my thumb until I could trust myself to hold the phone steady.

Dahlia came up the path.

There were no dark glasses on her face.

Her eyes were wide and clear and bright, and they moved fast, left and right, taking in the whole dark yard.

She stopped at the foot of my porch.

She listened.

In the coat's right hand she carried something long and coiled.

A belt.

Brown leather, tightly braided, with a tarnished brass buckle.

Another one.

My wolf rose in my chest and tried to bare her teeth through my skin.

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