HIS WOLF TOLD ME EVERYTHING

Chapter 18: She Was So Red

Rory Rourke came out of the elevator like a confetti cannon that had been left in the sun.

"Brother!" He flung his arms wide, champagne bottle and all, and Hollis caught the bottle by its neck a split second before it hit the stone floor. "My big, cold, beautiful brother. I've come to stay. Forever. I've brought my own drink."

"You've brought *my* drink." Hollis peered at the label. "This was in my office."

"Was it? Then I've brought it home. You're welcome." Rory spun, and his eyes landed on Edena, standing by the terrace door with her coffee. His whole face lit up like a slot machine. "*Oh.* Oh, the tryst *continues*."

"It's not a tryst," Edena and Hollis said together.

"It's *two* trysts." Rory pointed at Hollis's soaking trouser hems, then at the glowing pool. "He's wet. You're flushed. There's coffee. That's how trysts begin, Gala Girl. I host a podcast. I know these things."

*I like him again,* Fiendh announced. *I've decided. He's an i***t, but he's an observant idiot.*

*You hated him earlier,* Zikal pointed out.

*I contain multitudes.*

Rory wandered into the center of the vast room, turning in a slow, wobbly circle, taking it in.

"God, I hate this place. It looks like a dentist's office for vampires." He pointed at the bar. "He arranges the bottles by height. Did you know that? By *height*. When we were kids, he lined up his toy soldiers by height and I knocked them all over and he didn't speak to me for—" He waved a hand, losing the end of the sentence. "Ages. Forever. A very long time."

"You were a menace," Hollis said.

"I was *charming*." Rory spotted the sofa, fell backwards onto it with his arms outstretched, and sank into its perfect cushions with a sigh. "Oh. Oh, nobody's ever sat on this. I can tell. It's like sitting on a cloud that's never had a visitor."

"Where have you been?" Hollis asked.

"Work." Rory pointed at the ceiling. "Show. Live. Half a million people. I was brilliant. I did a whole segment on being the second son." He sat up suddenly. "Did you listen?"

"No."

"You never listen." Rory flopped back again, but the grin had slipped, just slightly. "Nobody in this family ever listens. I could announce I'm a werewolf on that show and Dad would ask if it affects the share price."

Edena's coffee cup froze an inch from her mouth.

Across the room, Hollis didn't move a single muscle. Not one.

*Breathe,* Fiendh hissed. *Breathe, Cage. It's a joke. It's a drunk man's joke. Breathe like a normal person who has never been a werewolf.*

Edena breathed like a normal person who had never been a werewolf. It took everything she had.

Rory didn't notice. He'd already spotted the terrace. His face lit up all over again.

"*Pool.*"

"No," said Hollis.

"I'm going in the pool."

"You're not going in the pool."

"I'm a grown man, I can go in a pool." Rory was already on his feet, already weaving toward the glass door, pulling off one shoe while hopping. "I'm going to swim to the edge and look at the city and think about my life—"

Hollis crossed the room in three strides, caught his brother around the waist, and lifted him clean off his feet like a sack of flour.

"Put me DOWN!"

"No."

"I'm not a CHILD—"

"You're drunk, it's dark, and you're not going near that water." Hollis's voice was flat, but something underneath it had changed. Gone hard as iron. "Not tonight. Not ever, like this. Do you understand?"

Rory went limp in his arms, and laughed, and then, horribly, the laugh turned into something else, something wet and broken, and he pressed his face into his brother's shoulder.

"Yeah," he mumbled. "Yeah, Hol. I know."

Edena looked away. It felt like she'd walked in on someone praying.

---

Getting Rory to bed took both of them and a great deal of negotiation.

He wanted water. Then he didn't want water. Then he wanted toast. Then he wanted "the toast Gala Girl made," which he'd smelled from the elevator, and was outraged to learn there was no more egg in the building. Then he wanted to tell Edena a story about the llama, and Hollis said "No" so firmly that Rory saluted him.

The guest room was the only room in the penthouse that looked lived in. A rumpled throw. A phone charger already plugged in by the bed. A framed photograph on the bedside table, the only photograph Edena had seen anywhere in the whole apartment: two boys on a beach, squinting into the sun, the smaller one riding on the bigger one's shoulders, both of them laughing at something outside the frame.

Rory, before.

His face in that picture was smooth. No scars.

Hollis eased him down onto the bed, pulled off his other shoe, and drew the throw over him. Then he did something that Edena would remember for a very long time. He sat on the edge of the bed, and put one hand flat on his brother's chest, the way you'd check that a child was still breathing, and left it there.

"He used to have nightmares." Hollis didn't look up. "After. He'd wake up screaming about the water. I used to sit like this until he fell asleep."

"After what?"

The question was out before she could stop it.

Hollis didn't answer at first. Rory's breathing was slowing, deepening, his mouth falling open, his fingers still curled loosely in the throw.

"I was there," Hollis said at last. "That night. I was supposed to be watching him." He looked down at his own hand on his brother's chest. "I should have been faster."

Edena's mouth was dry. "What happened?"

The pause was so long she thought he wasn't going to answer.

"A boat." His voice was very even. "A bad night. It doesn't matter now."

*A boat.*

She looked at the scars on Rory's sleeping face. Three pale lines, neat and parallel, from temple to jaw. Lines she had seen once before, fresh and bleeding, in black water under dock lights.

No boat had made those.

And Hollis knew it. She could see it in the stillness of his shoulders, in the careful flatness of his voice. He was lying to her. Just as she had been lying to him, all night, with her hand on his door.

*Cage,* Fiendh whispered. *Cage, ask him. Ask him what he saw.*

She couldn't. If she asked what he'd seen, she'd have to tell him what she'd seen. And what she'd done.

So she turned inward instead, silently, carefully, to the only one in this apartment who couldn't lie to her.

*Zikal.* The thought felt like stepping onto ice. *Were you at the lake that night?*

The silence stretched.

Hollis sat on the edge of the bed with his hand on his brother's chest. Outside, the pool glowed. The city murmured.

*Ask me something else,* Zikal said.

Very quietly. Not cheerful. Not chatty. Nothing like him at all.

Edena's stomach dropped like a lift with its cable cut.

He hadn't said no.

He couldn't lie to her. So if the answer were *no*, he would simply have said *no*. He'd have said it in a heartbeat, the way he said everything, in a rush of words.

He hadn't said no.

---

Hollis stood at last and switched off the bedside lamp. "Coffee," he said. "I need another coffee. Then I'll get Leang to drive you home."

"I can get a taxi."

"Leang will drive you home." He was already walking out toward the kitchen, rolling down his wet sleeves. "I'm not having you in a taxi at this hour with someone sending you photographs."

He disappeared down the hall. Edena heard the big coffee machine grinding into life.

She stood alone in the dim guest room, by the door, looking at the boy on the beach in the photograph and the man asleep on the bed.

She should go. She knew she should go.

She turned to leave.

Behind her, Rory shifted in his sleep. The throw rustled. His lips moved, mumbling something, slurred and soft.

She almost didn't hear it.

"...red..."

Edena stopped in the doorway.

In the kitchen, the coffee machine roared. Hollis couldn't hear a thing.

Rory turned his face into the pillow. His voice was barely a breath, but in the silence it was perfectly, terribly clear.

"...she was so red..."