Forever

“Isabel,” I said.

Isabel just sighed.

“I know. What is it like for you there?”

Isabel’s voice was unfamiliar. I thought maybe she’d been crying. “Oh, the usual. I’m grounded for the rest of my life, which is, like, until next week, because after that, they’ll kill me. I’m in my room right now because I’m tired of screaming.”

That explained her voice.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be. I got there a little late, didn’t I?”

“Don’t beat yourself up, Isabel. I know that’s what you like to do, but you didn’t owe the wolves anything, and you came anyway.”

She didn’t say anything for a long time, and I wondered if she believed me. Finally, she said, “And they’re sending me to California to live with Nanna until they can sell the house.”

“What?”

I spoke so sharply that Sam looked over to me, frowning.

Isabel’s voice had no intonation at all. “Yeah. I’m taking my finals and then I’m on a plane with my stuff. Isabel Culpeper. This is her noble end. Back to California with her tail between her legs. Do you think I’m weak for not just taking off?”

Now it was my turn to sigh. “If you can keep your parents, I think you ought to. Your parents love you, even if your dad is a jerk. It doesn’t mean I don’t want you to go.” Isabel in California? “I can’t believe it. Are you sure they won’t change their minds?”

She scoffed. It was a raw sound, a new wound.

“Tell her thank you,” Sam said.

“Sam says to tell you thank you.”

Isabel laughed. Ha. Ha. Ha. “For leaving the state?”

“For saving our lives.”

For a moment, we didn’t say anything. From the direction of the lake, a loon cried. If I hadn’t known, logically, that I had been here this morning, I wouldn’t have remembered it. As a wolf, everything about this place looked different.

Isabel said, “Not everybody’s lives.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, because it was true. It wasn’t really her fault, still, but I couldn’t tell her it wasn’t true. Instead, I said, “We’re in the field. Where was Cole’s — uhh — where did he —”

She interrupted, “There was a bank by the road. There should be my tire tracks. He was a few yards before that. I have to go. I have to —”

The phone went dead.

I sighed and closed my phone, relaying the information. Together we followed the directions, which led us to Shelby’s body. It was surprisingly unmolested, except for her face, which was so destroyed that I couldn’t bring myself to look at it. There was a lot of blood.

I wanted to feel compassion for her, but all I could think was She is the reason Cole is dead.

“She’s finally gone,” Sam said. “She died as a wolf. I think that would please her.”

All around Shelby’s body, the grass was smeared and spattered and stained with red. I didn’t know how far away Cole had died. Was this his blood? Sam was swallowing, looking at her, and I knew that he saw past the monster to something else. I couldn’t.

Koenig muttered something about needing to make a phone call and moved off, giving us some distance.

I touched Sam’s hand. He was standing in so much blood that it looked like he had been wounded himself. “Are you doing okay?”

He rubbed his own arms; it was getting cool again as the sun went down. “I didn’t hate it, Grace.”

He didn’t have to explain. I could still remember that feeling of joy at seeing him bound toward me as a wolf, even if I had no way to remember his name. I remembered exchanging images with him at the head of the pack. They all trusted him, like I did. I said softly, “Because you were better at it.”

He shook his head. “Because I knew it wasn’t forever.”

I touched his hair and he bent his head to kiss me, quiet as a secret. I leaned on his chest and together we stood, buffered from the cold.

After several long minutes, Sam stepped back from me and looked at the woods. For a moment I thought he was listening, but of course, no wolves would howl from Boundary Wood now.

He said, “This is one of the last poems Ulrik had me memorize.

“endlich entschloss sich niemand

und niemand klopfte

und niemand sprang auf

und niemand öffnete

und da stand niemand

und niemand trat ein

und niemand sprach: willkomm

und niemand antwortete: endlich”

“What does it mean?” I asked.

At first, I didn’t think that Sam was going to reply. His eyes were narrowed against the sun, looking out into the woods we’d escaped into an eternity ago, and then, into the woods we used to live in, an eternity before that. He was such a different person than the one that I had first met, bleeding on my back doorstep. That Sam had been shy, naive, gentle, lost in his songs and his words, and I’d always love that version of him. But it was okay, this change. That Sam couldn’t have survived this. For that matter, the Grace I’d been then couldn’t have.

Sam said, looking at Boundary Wood,

“at last no one decided

and no one knocked

and no one jumped up

and no one opened

and there stood no one

and no one entered

and no one said: welcome

and no one answered: at last”

Our shadows were as tall as trees with nothing to block them. It was like we were on another planet, here in this scrubby area, shallow stretches of water suddenly glowing orange and pink, the exact same color of the sunset. I didn’t know where else to look for Cole’s body. There was no sign of it for yards around, other than his blood, dotted on blades of grass and pooled in hollows.

“Maybe he dragged himself to the woods,” Sam said in a flat voice. “Instinct would tell him to hide, even if he was dying.”

My heart sped. “Do you think —”

“There’s too much blood,” Sam replied. He didn’t look at me. “Look at all of it. Think of how I couldn’t even heal myself from a single shot in the neck. He couldn’t have healed himself. I just hope … I just hope he wasn’t afraid when he died.”

I didn’t say what I was thinking: But we’d all been afraid.

Together, we combed the edge of the woods, just in case. Even as it fell dark, we kept looking, because we both knew that scent would help us more than our sight anyway.