Sinner

I turned on the shower, and then I sat on the edge of the toilet, syringe in one hand, phone in the other. I dialed Isabel’s number. I didn’t know what I was going to say if she picked up.

I knew she wasn’t picking up anyway.

Trust you?

It rang through to voicemail. For a few minutes, I watched the shower pour gallons of water down the drain. I thought about how outside it was a desert. Then I stabbed the needle into myself.

Pain reminded me it was working.

I leaned my forehead on the wall and waited for it to change me or kill me, and I didn’t really care which. I did care which. I hoped it did both.

The thing I’d put in my veins scrabbled through my bloodstream to my brain. When it got there, it clawed and beat and gnawed at my hypothalamus, screaming the same message over and over:

Wolf

Pain snatched my thoughts away. My mind was a chemical fire, burning itself out. I crashed to the tile, shaking and sweating and retching. My thoughts immolated.

And then

It was light. Shining overhead, reflected in the ever-shifting, never-growing puddle. It was sound. Hissing water splattering the ground, soft and continuous. Scent: acid and fruit, sweet and rotten.

Wolf.

Chapter Thirty-Five

· isabel ·

I drove.

Part of me wanted to keep driving for the rest of my life.

Part of me wanted to go to Cole.

I didn’t know which was worse.

In the end, I found myself way up the coast, past Malibu.

The road here was dark and snaky, on one side the rocky coastline and the wild sea and on the other the steep, scrubby mountain cliffs. The palm trees were gone, the people, the houses. As I drove up a random canyon road, I felt like I was driving straight up into the black night sky, or into the black night ocean. I had no idea what time it was. It was the end of the world.

I finally parked the SUV at one of the scenic pullovers.

Down below, the crash of the surf made an uneven white line parallel to the shore. Everything else was dark.

I got out. Outside, the air was freezing. My knees were shaking, and so were my hands. I stood there with my arms wrapped around myself for a long minute, feeling myself tremble and wondering if an emotional shock reaction was possible when you had no emotions.

Probably it was time to admit to myself that I had emotions, and they’d betrayed me.

Then I opened up the back of the SUV, got out the tire iron, and closed the hatch again. I thought of that sick feeling in my stomach when I’d first seen Cole at the party. It was exactly the same, in retrospect, as the feeling that had crept inside me when my father’s voice had gotten strange earlier. When I’d known he was about to tell me something I didn’t want to hear.

I looked at the moon-white surface of the SUV. I tightened my grip on the tire iron.

And then I beat the hell out of the SUV.

The first dent wasn’t the best. There wasn’t anything surprising about swinging a tire iron at a vehicle and leaving a dent.

That’s what happens when you hit something metal with something else metal.

But the second hit. That was the one that sent a rush of feeling through me. It surprised me. I hadn’t known there was going to be a second swing until it happened, or a third, or a fourth. Then I realized I was never going to stop hitting this car. I smashed the doors and the hood, and I cracked the big plastic safety bumpers.

There was nothing in my head except for the knowledge that I had to drive this thing tomorrow, so I didn’t smash out the windows or the headlights or anything that might keep it off the road. I didn’t want it broken.

I wanted it ugly.

The tire iron dug down through the white paint, straight to the bare metal. Its guts were dull and utilitarian under all the gloss.

Finally, when my palm was hot from the effort of clutching the tire iron, I realized how tired I was.

I felt empty. Like I didn’t give a damn.

Which meant I was ready to go back home.

Chapter Thirty-Six

· cole ·

“Mr. St. Clair?”

I didn’t open my eyes, but I knew where I was. Well, I knew the kind of place I was. I recognized the feel of tile on my skin and the smell of bleach millimeters from my nose. The grit between my hipbone and the floor. I was on a bathroom floor.

My ears hissed.

“Cole? Do you mind if I come in?”

It took me a moment longer to realize which bathroom in particular it was. I had to backtrack, narrowing my thoughts.

Earth. North America. U.S. California. Los Angeles. Venice.

Apartment. Hell.

“Cole?” The voice seemed to consider. “I’m coming in.”

Over the hiss of my ears, I heard a doorknob jiggle. I opened my eyes, barely. The action took a lot of thought and seemed unimportant. The door was still closed. I wondered if I’d imagined the voice. I wondered if I’d imagined my own body. As difficult as the concept of opening my eyes had been, the idea of moving any of the rest of me was impossible. My mouth was the driest part of me, like my face had climbed in and coated it.

The door jumped. I was too dead to flinch.

It jumped again.

Then it burst open, its progress halted by my legs. A pair of men’s black shoes stepped in front of me, accompanied by the scent of coffee. They were not new, but they were very clean.

The door shoved shut. The shoes were still in front of me.

I closed my eyes. I heard a rustle, then felt someone push fingers into my wrist, felt my breath hitting something close. A hand, checking for respirations. I could smell aftershave.

Leon let out a relieved sigh.

A moment later, the hiss stopped. It had never been my ears.

It had always been the shower. I heard Leon’s shoes squelching on the damp floor.

“Can you sit up?” he asked me. Then, without waiting for my reply, he answered, “Let’s do that.”

A towel wrapped around me and then my armpits jerked and then, just like that, I was painfully dragged and propped into the corner by the sink.

I closed my eyes again.

In the filmy background, I heard Leon moving and running water in the sink and stepping back and forth. He put a cup to my lips and carefully tipped. There was a kind pause as I sputtered and breathed the liquid instead of swallowing it, and then he gave me some more. I felt more alive at once.

I said, “What is that? What are you giving me?”

“It’s water,” Leon replied. “You were lying in it, but you weren’t drinking it.”

“How did you get here?” I asked. My voice sounded like paper looked. “Are you real?”