Theo called at seven fifteen in the morning.
I was at the stove.
The house was beginning its slow surface into wakefulness above me, the pipes moving in the walls when someone turned on a tap in the upper floor bathroom, the specific creak of the third step from the bottom of the back staircase under a weight that wasn't mine, the low murmur of the morning kitchen coming to life around the edges of my own occupation of it. I had been up since before four. I had not slept much. I did not think anyone in the pack house had slept much, though for different reasons and with different things turning over in the dark behind their eyes.
I heard Damon's phone from the corridor outside the kitchen.
One ring. Answered immediately, which told me he had been awake and waiting for it, which told me
