Chapter 11: The Ledger

The healer sat on the edge of the motel desk chair and opened the book on her knees.

Emmett leaned on the doorframe with his arms folded.

Jarrett sat beside me on the bed with a blanket over his shoulders.

I was in his shirt, and neither of us had the strength to be embarrassed.

"Every night since February," the healer said, "I have written down your temperature, your pulse and the width of the black."

"I know," Jarrett said. "You showed me the charts."

"I showed you the charts with the nights left off."

She turned the book around and set it on the bed between us.

Down the left side of every page ran a column of dates.

Down the right ran a second column, in red ink, headed with a single name:

"Willa."

I read the first line.

"February fourteenth, the night of the silver blade. Willa on the ridge with the Alpha until dawn. No fever."

I turned the page.

"February twenty-first. Willa at the mill. Fever, nineteen hours."

"March ninth. Willa at the archive in Seattle. Collapse, twice."

"April. Willa back. Quiet."

My stomach rolled.

I kept turning pages.

Every single flare matched a night I hadn't been in his arms.

Every single quiet matched one I had.

The nine nights in August, when Calla sat with him, were circled twice.

"Willa on the pack's archive trip, by the Elder's order," I read aloud.

"Calla in the Alpha's house wearing Willa's blanket, which she had taken from the records house."

"My blanket," I said.

"She slept in it and laid it over you," the healer said to Jarrett.

"It smelled like her. That was the cure."

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