Page 5 of A Wolfe in the Woods
The candle illuminated said bookcase, glinting off the gold foil decorating the spines of some of my leather-bound tomes. Books that had once belonged to my grandmother. Books that I remembered from my childhood. They were some of the last pieces I had of her, and so they were prominently displayed, alongside old framed pictures, a few seashells from Stargazer Cove, and a little jar of ashes containing my first and only cat, Penny.
My apartment was small, but it suited me perfectly. My safe haven from the hungry beckoning of Graymore. I lived on a tree-lined street of brownstone buildings—one of the only streets that could boast such a feature so close to the Vault. It might’ve been old and a little run-down, but it was charming, with crown moldings and exposed-brick walls in the bedroom. I’d strung fairy lights across the windows, and they bathed my living room in glowing light.
And then there was Megan sitting next to me, who looked like she belonged behind a shatterproof glass case at a museum or gracing the glossy thick pages of a fashion magazine rather than on my frayed—but cozy—couch.
“You almost die and you don’t evencall me?” she said, a tone of accusation slicing through the words. Megan’s pink lips were pursed, her pretty features morphed into an expression of disbelief.
“My battery died,” I said, feeling the weight of the day settle heavy on my shoulders.
“That’s no excuse. It took them two hours to find you. What the hell, Bee?” she exclaimed, her spine snapping straight. Disbelief had long morphed into cold anger.“Do you even realize how screwed up that is? No—howfuckedthat is?”
Shoulders sagging with my sigh, I mumbled, “Yeah, it was a long time.”
As if to give weight to my words, my neck cracked loudly when I rolled it—the knotted aftermath of me lying crumpled on the boardroom floor for too long. My back was killing me, a dull ache that made me feel vaguely nauseous. My sinuses throbbed, pressure settling behind my eyes like it always did in the city—dry air, dust, whatever Graymore pumped into its lungs. Between that and the recycled office air, I hadn’t breathed properly in months. I felt decades older than my mere twenty-seven years.
I wouldn’t lie—after my day, I was feeling pretty sorry for myself, but I hadn’t had the heart to cancel on Meg. Just last night over the phone, she’d sounded so excited at the prospect of celebrating after my presentation. She grasped any excuse to make something ordinary special…and she’d never said no to throwing a party, which was why I’d been initially wary. Her idea of a celebration and mine were completely different, after all.
As the youngest daughter of a multimillionaire real estate tycoon who owned nearly half of Willowmere, Megan Banks was my polar opposite. Unlike me, she was more comfortable in a glitzy nightclub, filled to the brim with half-naked fae and beefy orcs, than sprawled out on my sagging couch, sharing a tub of lavender ice cream and watching reruns ofSteamy Island. I’d held back her golden hair one too many times in bar bathrooms and watched her dance on tables and flirt her way into impulsive adventures with handsome strangers—adventures I would, inevitably, have to rescue her from later.
But she just so happened to be my best friend, despite all odds. We’d been roommates at Graymore University, a lucky twist of fate. Though we were unlikely friends on paper, she felt comforting and familiar like a sister.
And we bickered like sisters too.
“Why are you being so calm about this? You shouldn’t have even gone into work today. Especially in your condition!” Megan chided before nibbling on her lip in worry. “Twohours. You could have died.”
“But I didn’t,” I mumbled, my tone exasperated, feeling another stab at my temple, the remnants of my migraine from earlier. Another wave of dizziness washed over me. My fever had broken sometime when I’d been passed out, but I still felt like shit. Rundown and spread too thinly, like scraped butter over burnt toast. “And you’re being dramatic.”
“Look, I’m not trying to lecture you. I’m just worried. Mortals are weak.” She took my hands in hers as if to soften the words. My bitten-down nails against her professionally manicured ones looked jarring. “And I say this with love, but you’re one of the weakest I know.”
“Thanks,” I sighed.
“Have you been taking the medicine I gave you?” Meg asked, her violet eyes narrowing.
The crystal vial. Right. I’d forgotten about it.
“I took it this morning.”
“How much?” she asked. “Because it should’ve made you feel better.”
“I don’t know. A swig?”
Meg went eerily still. “What do you mean aswig? Blanche, that’s an elven medicine! It’s not for humans. There’s a reason I gave you such a tiny vial withveryspecific directions. You were only meant to take a drop!”
Her voice rose with every word as my cheeks burned. I hadn’t remembered the “drop” part. I’d been laid up in bed, delirious with a fever, when my friend had burst into my apartment a couple nights ago. “Then I guess I took too much.”
“Youguess? That’s why you passed out,” Meg snapped. She groaned. “Gods, what am I going to do with you?” She paused, then mumbled, “What am I going to do without you?” She waved her hand like a knife cutting through the air. “No, no, no, this is all wrong.You’rethe responsible one, not me. If you start acting like me, we’re both doomed.”
Her pointed ears were twitching, which was how I knew she was truly upset. And because I couldn’t stay annoyed at her for long, my ire softened.
“Okay, okay. I got it. I’m sorry,” I murmured, squeezing her hand. “It’s just this presentation. I didn’t get any sleep lastnight…and the migraine certainly didn’t help. Or being sick. In the future, one drop. Got it.”
“Health is wealth,” Meg muttered, still eyeing me like I might keel over at any moment.
“Well,” I said dryly, leaning back into the couch, “I don’t have either.”
The fairy lights made her golden hair shimmer like a halo around her head. Elves possessed an ethereal kind of beauty, a beauty that nearly made it painful to look at them at all.
“Two hours,” she scoffed, slumping back into the couch.
