Hush, Little Wolf

Sixteen years had passed since Reena Marlowe had been keeping the beast within her silent, but it was not to be silent tonight. The beast paced inside her, under her ribs, as she put away the final return, like a caged creature, with the rain beating against the library’s high windows in October. What she did was as usual. She hummed, a six-note tune that would loop, the only thing her mother had left her. The beast was still a little quiet. But then something hit the book drop. It wasn’t a sound of paperback. It was a soft, heavy, damp thud, followed by a slide down the metal chute into the collection bin behind the desk. Reena remained absolutely motionless. It was already six o'clock and the library had closed for the day. Nobody in Hollow Creek was returning any books on a Tuesday night at eight o'clock, in a storm and with no street lights working on Mill Road. The wolf raised its head. Reena took her steps across the hall very slowly. The smell came to her before she could reach the desk and it caused her hair to stand on end: the blood, fresh and sweet, and beneath it a sour smell of something that had been rotting inside long before it had died. Wolf, she heard with her nose. Wrong Wolf. She lifted the cover of the bin. There was a rabbit sitting on top of the returns. Its belly had been opened neatly and lovingly from the throat to the belly and placed lying sideways just like a book that one wants to be found. Reena did not scream. For sixteen years she learned not to. She placed the cover back and placed her hands flat on the desk as she breathed with her mouth while her wolf fought inside her chest and her fingertips started aching. And then she studied the front doors. The oak was visible in the weak yellow light of the porch. There were four deep grooves that cut into the wood at the level of a man’s head. The grooves were clearly defined and did not have such marks before when she secured everything. A person must have been standing on her porch in the darkness and doing this while she was humming to herself. Headlights flashed past the window panes. Two black trucks drew up to the curb in the quiet confidence of vehicles that never had to rush. Reena found herself at the door before she realized she should stop herself, which was a mistake, because once she remembered to be afraid, there were three men climbing the stairs. She knew who they were. All of Hollow Creek did. They had come three days ago, a convoy of black trucks and quiet men with watchful eyes, and all of Hollow Creek had whispered about them in the grocery store and the diner and the line at the post office. The Hales. Reena had heard every whisper. She had gone home each night and locked her doors twice. The lead man stopped at the top of the stairs, and the rain stopped with him. He was tall, in a black coat that seemed tailor-made for another century, with dark hair dripping down to his collar and a face that could have been handsome if it wasn't completely shuttered. He looked from the door, to the grooves in the oak, and finally, slowly, to her. They were a pale brown-gold color like old whiskey backlit by candlelight. They pierced her as easily as a blade through paper. Hunter, her wolf whispered. Never had it spoken to her using words before. “Step away from the door,” he said. “This is my door.” Her voice was much harsher than she had wanted it to be. The younger of the two men standing behind him recoiled at the harshness. The older one, a bulky fellow with grey streaks in his beard, arched an eyebrow. The man in front did not. He dropped into a crouch, placed two fingers against the rough grain. “Fresh,” he said. “Within the last hour.” He nodded his head toward the bulky fellow. “Garrick.” Garrick had already begun moving, turning around the porch steps, with his nose raised. The younger one, Tobin, hung back behind him at the bottom of the stairs. He could hardly have been older than twenty and he was trembling, while his eyes were a weird, glowing amber in the porchlight. "It's here, Cass," Tobin whispered. "I can smell it. It's here." "Breathe," the man replied without even glancing at him. "Control yourself." "I can't, it's—" "Tobin." He winced and stopped before finishing. He straightened up and reached for her hand. "Cassian Hale." There was something courteous about the way he introduced himself instead of threatening her. "You're the librarian?" "Reena Marlowe." She didn't take his hand; she knew she would feel immediately how close the thing inside her was to breaking free. "I'm in charge of the library. Mrs. Pell retired in spring." "Who did you see do this, Ms. Marlowe?" "No, I saw... I heard something move in the book drop and went to check it out." She breathed deep against the pressure of panic. "There's a rabbit." He made some kind of move with his face, something not quite alarm, but confirmation. "May I?" She moved aside, because she could hardly refuse, and Cassian Hale walked into her library dripping wet from the rain and made a beeline right for the desk without needing directions on where it was. He opened the lid, and studied it for a while. "That's a marker," he informed her. "A calling card of a kind. Something that makes sure it comes back, even after it decides where." "For what?" "Well, the point is, isn't it?" He lowered the lid. "The things like that aren't supposed to have any use for a place like this. Or the woman who runs it. And yet here it chose this door, tonight, when you were in it." He turned to her and moved much closer than she expected. And then he stopped. It was the slightest gesture. He tipped his head slightly. His nostrils twitched. Reena held her breath. She knew what he was smelling. She knew how long she had trained herself to smell like nothing, the kind of blank nothing that comes from days and years spent surrounded by paper and dust, standing over hot pots of pine-bark tea all day, and living in the one building in the whole town where even a werewolf would be confused by her scent. It had worked, and it always would. "Is there something?" she asked, and admired her own calmness. He furrowed his brow, not with suspicion, but with something more sinister. Confusion. "Nothing," he replied softly. "I don't recognize your scent. You must smell of nothing." "That's right. You're in a library." "No." He studied her, truly studying her, and it felt like he was gripping her by the neck. "Not nothing. There is something beneath the nothing, but I cannot tell what." Tell him something. Anything. "Hale, sir, you're soaking my rug." For an instant, just an instant, she wondered if she had pushed things too far. But then the corner of his mouth twitched, and he turned his gaze away. "So I am." Garrick stepped back into the room from the porch and whispered, "The trail ends at the doors. This is where it ended up. Then it went under water." "The river?" "No, quarry road." Cassian nodded thoughtfully. "It didn't run away from something. It was delivering something." He turned his eyes back to her. "I require access to your archives." She halted. "I'm sorry?" "The town records, Ms. Marlowe. The deeds, the bloodlines, the founding families. Anything that predates the county's digital recordkeeping systems." He recited as if it were a checklist. "The archive in the basement. Mrs. Pell mentioned it to my men." Mrs. Pell had said too much, and now she couldn't say anything at all. "The archive is a historic collection. It is not available to the public." "And I am not the public." "Then you will wish to submit a request to the town council—" "The Hale Trust holds the land upon which this building sits, Ms. Marlowe," said Garrick mildly from the doorway. "And half its budget." "Garrick," Cassian said without looking around. "Only saying” Cassian's golden eyes looked into her own and glittered under the green light. "It would be better for me not to have to say anything." He spoke softly. "There is a killer in your town, and it just left a message at your doorstep. It wasn't a request." She shouldn't have agreed. All her instincts were screaming that she shouldn't have done this. The vault was the only place inside Hollow Creek Town House where she could feel the slightest thing akin to safety. And apart from this, it contained everything which she managed to hide from everyone during sixteen years. But now the Hunter was sitting inside her library, holding all money which the whole town had in its pockets, and there was nothing worse than letting Cassian Hale enter the basement without any suspicion. "Tomorrow," she said. "After closing time. I will be there all the time." "Good," said Cassian. "It will be better for me." And she didn't like it one bit. Even though it was raining, Tobin was still standing on the steps, trembling. Garrick had a hand on the boy's shoulder and said something Reena could not make out, but whatever it was, it clearly did not help him. The amber in Tobin's eyes spread. His breathing became rapid and shallow and he let out a weak whining noise. Reena looked at him from behind the doorway and felt the same old pain welling inside her. Not wolfish. Older. A fragment of memory about an empty room and a hand in her hair. Reena did not intend to do it. She hummed. Six notes, folding back on themselves, soft and quiet like nothing but a whisper. She was just trying to help. But now Tobin stood still on the steps. His shoulders relaxed and amber color receded from his eyes like the tide from the shore and he looked dazed as he tried to clear his head from the nightmare. Garrick looked stunned; his hand slipped from the boy's shoulder. And Reena realized what she had done. The humming stopped but she could hear the echo lingering in the air like smoke. She looked up. Cassian Hale had been standing by the door. His back was towards her, with one hand resting against the doorframe. He did not say a word, nor did he make any movement. But she could tell from how he froze that his shoulders had frozen in response to hearing his name being called out in a language that he had never learned. Gently, he turned his head around. He no longer looked at her the way a man would look at a librarian. He looked at her like a hunter after hearing a twig snap.