Page 72 of Blood & Ash

Marcus set his kit down on the step. He picked up the cloth he’d just tucked away. He wiped his hands again. His palms were clean. He wiped them anyway.

He pressed his fingers into the tension along his shoulder. The muscle was hard. It had been hard for days.

He looked at the emissary. The man’s face was open and expectant, with nothing hidden in it. He’d delivered the invitation like he delivered all messages: clean, complete, without decoration.

Marcus opened his mouth. “I don’t...”

He stopped. The words weren’t there. Or they were there, and he couldn’t find the shape of them. He adjusted the cuff of his gauntlet. The leather was stiff. He’d worn it during the cleanup as protection against the glass. He worked the buckle with his thumb. Loosened it. Tightened it again.

The emissary waited without filling the silence or explaining. He stood at the bottom of the steps and let Marcus work through it.

Marcus cleared his throat.

“What time does it start?” he asked.

“Seven,” the emissary said. “The hall on Maple Street. The big Victorian with the green shutters.”

Marcus nodded. He picked up his kit and slung it over his shoulder. The weight settled against his hip, familiar, something he knew how to carry.

“I’ll be there,” he said.

The words came out flat, a commitment to something he had no idea how to prepare for, with no enthusiasm in it and no reluctance either.

The emissary nodded once. He turned and walked back across the yard. His boots left prints in the dirt. The lantern light caught the silver in his beard and turned it gold.

Marcus stood alone on the porch steps. The gauntlet on his right wrist was still half-adjusted. The buckle hung loose. He didn’t fix it.

From somewhere east of the packhouse, beyond the tree line, music drifted from a distant piano, someone practicing. The notes carried on the cooling air, reached the porch, and found Marcus where he stood. He listened with his jaw tight and his hand on the gauntlet buckle. He didn’t move to fasten it.

The lanterns burned. The music kept coming, soft and incomplete, stopping and starting again. Someone was getting ready for the ball three nights from now, tuning an instrument, testing the acoustics of a room Marcus had never been invited into until today.

He stood on the steps until the music stopped. Then he picked up his kit and walked inside.

The next morning, Marcus returned to the packhouse to check the wounds left by Arrow’s sabotage. The yard had been cleared, but black scars remained along the fence posts where the runes had burned. Wolves and vampires moved around one another with the wary care of strangers carrying sharp tools.

Ramsey sat on the porch while Marcus examined the cut along his forearm. The wound was healing now that Lucien had removed the magical residue, although the older wolf watched Marcus wrap it as if the bandage might conceal a second attack.

“You can say it,” Marcus told him.

“Say what?”

“That you don’t want a vampire treating you.”

Ramsey’s mouth tightened. “I don’t want to owe one.”

Marcus tied the bandage and returned the remaining gauze to his kit. “Then consider the treatment payment for the wolves who carried our dead after Sable attacked the nest.”

Ramsey looked toward the eastern fence. Two vampires worked beside Galen there, removing the last pieces of cursed iron from the dirt. “I heard you lost three.”

“We did.”

“I heard one of them died while you were trying to save him.”

Marcus closed the kit. “Also, true.”

Ramsey flexed his hand and tested the wrap. “Bandage is too tight.”

“It’s not.”