8. Willow

EIGHT

Willow

“What does that mean?” I asked warily, getting off my seat. “What does more mean?” I looked between them, worry gnawing at my gut. “Are they here for me?”

Royce shook his head, but he didn’t look convinced. “I don’t know,” he said, which I hadn’t been expecting.

He looked like he wanted to deny it, but then he said that, and that was confusing and I decided I needed to sit back down. “Mixed messages, big guy,” I grumbled, perching on my stool. “Did you speak to them? Did you see the big guy? He’s really huge.”

“I didn’t see any of them,” Royce answered me, sharing a look with Doc. “I can smell them.”

“They smell bad?” I asked, confused.

“No, Willow, I can sense they’re shifters,” he explained patiently.

Right, because that was normal. I thought about it. It would be normal for him. “Have they left? Are they coming back? Why would they be here? Did Caleb send them? ”

“You’re getting excited,” Doc warned me, coming to stand beside me and getting his pack of tricks back out.

“You didn’t see this guy. He would break me like a twig,” I snapped.

“They could be here for any reason,” Royce reminded me. “Caleb’s been here, we’re here, Cannon’s been here too. Whispering Pines has seen a lot of shifter traffic recently.”

“And you’re not here for the hiking,” I bit out in agitation. “Are you suggesting they are?”

“Calm down,” Doc said as he stuck the thermometer in my ear again. “Don’t undo all of Lorna’s hard work.”

Chastised, I sat still and willed myself not to overreact. “I thought I could go home tonight,” I told them both dejectedly.

“Willow’s been staying with friends,” Doc explained. He noted my temperature in his book, and tapping it against his hand, he looked me over carefully. “One more night taking advantage of someone who wants you there wouldn’t hurt, would it?”

I wanted to argue, but what was the point? Taking advantage was harsh, but there was no denying it. We knew I was going back, and even if I did protest, I was pretty sure Royce would carry me there himself.

“It beats the bunker,” Royce joked gently, again confirming my belief that shifters were mind readers.

“You could confront them?” I suggested. “Caleb would.”

Royce raised an eyebrow. “Caleb may be why they are here. Let’s not pin the hero badge on him just yet.”

“Royce.” It was Doc’s turn to reprimand. “We don’t know what the circumstances are for him leaving. ”

“Cannon knows,” I blurted, causing both of them to turn their attention to me. “Can’t we ask him?”

“It’s not for us to know,” Royce told me smoothly.

“Which means you know and won’t tell.” My shrewd look didn’t even warrant a flush in his cheeks for his obvious fib.

“We should go,” Doc said, repacking his things. “We bring attention to Willow if they really are here for no other reason than passing through.”

Royce didn’t need to voice his thoughts. They were the same ones that I was having. Passing through for what? They were shifters, they didn’t need to come to town. They could pass right on by running through the woods in their wolf form.

Royce was in my sketchbook. “I’m going to take this with me,” he told me, taking it without me saying yay or nay. “I think Cannon will need to see this one.”

“Fine.” I heard truck doors opening from the street. Voices I recognized. “That’s my friend who’s working on the repairs.”

“We’ll use the back door,” Doc told me. “Go to your friend’s tonight. We’ll take a look into the others who are here, and we’ll let you know. Okay?”

I nodded, because if I spoke, I may have begged them not to leave. As they left, I caught Royce’s arm, halting his progress. “Can you reach out to Caleb?” I pointed at the sketch rolled in his hand. “Ask him if they’re friends of his?”

The look was so full of pity that I almost cried. “He’s lost, Willow. He’s not the man you want him to be.”

I wanted to protest. Fight for Caleb, like Caleb may have fought for me. Instead, I let Royce go, and while the back door closed, I hurried to open the front to Noel and his colleague.

After Noel told me what they had planned for today’s work, I made the excuse of going to get them a treat from the bakery for thanks. I needed a reason to leave and mull over what Doc and Royce were saying about Caleb by not saying.

I sorted out the facts as I knew them.

He came here as he was drawn to the town, to me, and to my weird ability to see him when I had no business knowing about him or his kind. Caleb may not have known who I was, but he knew me when he got here.

How?

I could see him in my dreams; could he see me?

I wasn’t a shifter. A doctor and a spirit guide, or shaman as they called him, had confirmed that I was one hundred percent human. There was no reason why Caleb would be tied to me.

But he was.

How?

I was normal, the whole psychic thing aside. That wasn’t even right. I wasn’t psychic. If I was, I’d have picked some numbers for the lottery and already been on the beach in the Caribbean by now. No, I wasn’t “gifted.”

So why the heck was I linked to him? Luna? What did she need me for? Because I could draw? I was sure there were plenty of shifters who were just as talented as me.

What did I offer that they couldn’t?

My humanity?

No. Shifters may not be human, but they were not monsters. They didn’t need me for their moral compass.

Caleb had no family left, and neither did I… Was it because we were both orphans? From the little they had told me, his dad died ten years ago, so was that his last familial tie ?

Surely he would “go rogue” then? A person can do extreme things because of grief. Had Caleb?

He called himself a murderer. Who had he killed? Was it figuratively or literally?

My God, I had so many questions. The most important being why me? The next, why him , and the follow-up, bonus round questions, where is he and how do I break this link?

Another follow-up question would be what is wrong with him?

The shaman had called it rogue . To me, a rogue was someone mischievous, perhaps morally gray, a rebel maybe. To shifters, it seemed it was far more dangerous. I remember someone, possibly Royce, telling me that it meant the rogue had turned their back on pack life. That they had embraced the darkness that came from being alone too much. That their anger and hate had morphed them into a shadow of themselves. Which sounded terribly dramatic and kind of far-fetched.

I couldn’t imagine Caleb giving in to that. He was so stoic and strong . He was more likely to be avoiding all their negativity.

Couldn’t we all feel “dark” if left with no social connections or interactions? It didn’t mean we were dangerous. When I asked that, I was told I wouldn’t understand because I wasn’t a shifter.

Patronizing, but maybe it was true. I wasn’t prepared to give up on him though, and while they said they hadn’t, I didn’t believe them. I thought of the sketch from this morning. What had been surrounding him? Wind? It felt more than that…like the manifestations of our thoughts .

“That’s deep, Willow,” I said with a shake of my head as I approached the bakery.

Manifestations …I stopped walking. Like spirits?

Turning in the street, I looked down Main Street, sure that I would somehow see a sign that I was right. Instead, I saw my fellow residents, carrying out their normal day-to-day lives.

Chewing the corner of my bottom lip, I detoured from the bakery and headed to the library instead. I needed a book on spirituality before I started talking about shit I knew nothing about. As I walked, I couldn’t stop thinking about spirits and Caleb. By the time that I got to our small public library, I was convinced I was right.

He wasn’t lying on the ground, watching the elements; he was lying on the ground surrounded by the spirits of those he had lost. No wonder he was miserable.

I needed to help him.

“You’ve been quiet,” Lorna said as she tidied the dinner table. “Are you okay?”

Looking up from my empty plate, I nodded. Pushing my seat back, I got up to help. “Yes, disappointed that the independent woman didn’t happen today,” I told her truthfully.

Reaching over, she rubbed her hand over my arm in a soothing gesture. “You’re an independent woman, honey. Admitting to yourself you needed one more night isn’t a weakness. It’s a strength.”

“You’re too kind.” I started handing her dishes, and thankfully, she’d apparently gotten over the need to do everything for me. I followed her to the dishwasher, and I rinsed as she stacked.

“I’m not kind,” she told me, taking the dirty dishes and putting them into the dishwasher with the care and precision of a heart surgeon carrying out a triple bypass. “The boys rarely helped me, so it’s nice to have a hand.”

Frowning, I looked at her to see if she was serious. “Bad parenting,” I scolded, only semi-joking. “They should have had chores.”

“Oh, they did,” she told me earnestly. “Noel made them work for it. Yard work, they did lots of work in and around the house. They did extra practice with their dad, so they did a lot. But the kitchen chores never stuck.”

I kept my mouth shut because it sounded very much like the housework was deemed not acceptable for the men in the house. Not my business. But still, when Noel came in from the den to ask if Lorna was making more coffee, I had to bite my tongue to tell him to make it himself.

The man had stopped jobs to fix my house and store. I should be making him his coffee.

“Are you feeling better?” he asked me for the second time.

“Yes, sorry about earlier.”

“It’s fine, just had me worried for a couple of minutes there when you didn’t come back.”

I’d left him to go to the bakery. Instead, I went to the library and lost track of time. I had checked out two books, which were stuffed into my tote so they couldn’t see them. Not that I was ashamed, I just didn’t want to explain my sudden interest in the supernatural.

Explain that the two books had taken precedence over the thank-you pastries. I had picked up one on spirituality and the other aptly called How Do You Know If You’re Psychic . I planned to read them both in bed later. Not cover to cover, just skim.

It had been a good plan, and like most good plans, it went wonky when, instead of skimming them, I read them cover to cover, and when I heard Noel rise for work, I realized I had spent the whole night reading. My ME would not appreciate this, and I hastily shuffled down the bed to catch a couple of hours of sleep before the smell of bacon lured me from slumber.

I fell asleep immediately, but it was not a restful sleep. Almost immediately, image after image of Caleb flooded my mind.

The images had come to me in fragments, pieces that were hazy and unclear at first, but little by little they came into focus. Caleb was alone in the middle of that clearing I now knew as well as I knew my own home. It seemed so empty . The clearing had that huge log cabin in the corner and was surrounded by trees, but there was just the feeling of nothingness . He looked different, even in so short a time. He looked…haunted.

Caleb was tall, six three, and he always seemed taller because he had excellent posture, standing tall with confidence, and never slouched. His whole persona was one of sureness, and in the vision, he looked less than that. Less than him. He looked dull like his light was extinguished.

I felt as though I could see the isolation and loneliness that reached for him, eager to surround him like a blanket that offered no comfort. His head was bowed, his shoulders slumped, and when he turned his head to look my way, I saw the vacant stare, looking right through me as he stood there looking like he had given up.

I wanted to reach for him, comfort him, and tell him that even though he had isolated himself, he was not alone.

But as the fragments joined into a clearer picture, even I couldn’t put a positive spin on how utterly defeated he looked. There was no sign of life around him. He was alone, no pack, no friends, no one beside him.

Only the darkness.

At first, I thought it was shadows from the tall pine trees, but then I realized it was darkness that reached for him while it stretched out impossibly far in front of him.

Image after image flooded my dreams, and as they filled my head, I began to see what I had missed before.

The darkness wasn’t around him; it was inside him. Was it in him and wanting out, or was he taking it into himself the more he stayed away? I didn’t have the answer, but I knew I couldn’t bear to watch him as his strength ebbed away and he embraced the solitude that was crushing his soul.

He was fading.

Despite knowing I wasn’t awake, knowing in my own subconscious that this was a dream, I still called for him. I yelled at him to rally, not to give up, but the more I yelled, the more I saw it tighten around him, almost seeping into his pores, embedding itself under his skin.

I could see it wearing him down, and Caleb—he didn’t fight it. As the images slowed, I saw him weaken. I watched as he sagged further under the weight of misery that clung to him. I saw his body crouch and almost curl in on itself.

Horror gripped my throat as I saw the very ground on which he stood turn black and boggy, ready to pull him under, pulsing in anticipation of claiming its prize.

The ribbons of darkness spun out from him, reaching to the sky and meeting…nothing. What had they said to me…he needed a pack? Is this what happened when you had none? When there were no connections to a pack or another person, effectively cutting yourself off from everyone. And only you remained, cloaked in an isolation of your own making.

The images changed, morphing in front of me, twisting into something more than a man bowing in weakness, changing to slashes of blackness that shimmered with night as they covered his body. Had it been an actual sketch, I would have drawn thick, black, heavy lines across the page, erasing the details of him.

Tingles of fear peppered down my back as I understood the message for the first time. Caleb wouldn’t hold on much longer. He was in a battle for his soul, and he wasn’t even fighting. Once he let the darkness take him, there would be no coming back, because he would be powerless to stop it.

Caleb was slipping away. If he remained there any longer, he would be lost to me forever.

I woke up in tears. I didn’t care where I was, I didn’t care whose bed I was in, I didn’t care that Lorna would be watching the clock for me to come down. The urge to draw, to record what I had witnessed, consumed me. I reached for my sketchbook and pencil tin and began to draw everything I had seen.

My fear at what he would become, and my anger that he was letting it happen, poured out onto the page. When I was done, I sat back and looked at what I had created .

More tears spilled over. I could sense the desolation reaching out of the page for me.

Whether it was real or my brain had been fueled with my nighttime reading, I wasn’t sure. Either way, I knew I was ready to leave.

I didn’t have a car, and I didn’t have a license. Although Lily had her truck back, the fact Caleb had put so much mileage on it hadn’t gone unnoticed. I didn’t have confidence in the fact I would manage to talk Lily into lending me another vehicle, especially when she knew I couldn’t really drive.

But I had to find some method of transport. I knew I had to go and find out where he was and then find him before there was nothing left of Caleb to bring back.