She waited, then continued. “I have a magic living inside me that I don’t want there. It’s my father’s magic, and he gave it to me when I was very little. I didn’t know it for a long time. I found out when I was fourteen. This magic is a ghost wolf called Wraith. Wraith is very big and scary. When I was little, he followed me everywhere, watching over me. Now he lives inside me. I don’t really know how it happened…”
She trailed off, not liking how it made her feel to think about Wraith and magic. Flashes of Seattle and her battle with the demon who was trying to subvert John Ross roiled through her mind. It was her confrontation with the demon that had brought Wraith out of her, had revealed his presence. In her memories she felt him rise anew, taking who and what she was with him, sealing them together, so that she felt a part of his dark rage, his terrible power.
He had appeared again, unbidden and unwelcome, at the last race she had ever run…
She closed her eyes for a moment and then opened them to the window-framed night. “If you could tell me about your magic, Little John, maybe we could help each other. Maybe we could make each other understand something about what’s happened to us. I don’t like living with myself like this. Do you?” She placed her hand gently on his thin wrist, feeling his warmth and the beat of his pulse beneath her fingertips. “Maybe we could make each other feel a little better if we talked about it.”
But the gypsy morph did not answer, and although she stayed next to him talking for a long time afterward, there was no response, and at last she went to bed, leading him down the hall to his own room. She was tired and dejected, her perceived failures magnified by the lateness of the hour and her inability to make even the smallest progress in unlocking his voice.
-=O=-***-=O=-
She was running smoothly now, the roadway straight and open ahead, leading her on toward Moonlight Bay and the river. Her worries disappeared into the rhythm of her pace, fading away as she ran, left behind as surely as the place she had started from. When she returned, of course, they would be waiting. But they wouldn’t seem so bad then; they would be more manageable. That was how running worked.
At the five-mile mark, she turned around and started back again, feeling loose and easy and clearheaded. Her breath clouded the air before her, and her arms and legs pumped smoothly in the cold. She ran almost every day the weather allowed her to, ran because running was what she had done all her life to make herself feel better. It was what had given her strength when she needed it as a girl. It was what had led her to the Olympics and her eight-year professional career as a runner. It was what had, on more than one occasion, saved her life.
Sometimes, she wondered what she would have done without it. It was hard to imagine; running defined who she was, defined her approach to life. It wasn’t that she ran from life, but all through it and around it to gain perspective and to find the answers she needed to deal with it. Mostly, she believed, she ran toward it. She was direct in her approach to things, a lesson she had learned from Gran years ago. Nest didn’t mind. She thought, on balance, that Gran’s way was probably best.
But, at the moment, she was having trouble making that approach to life work.
As she turned up the drive, she saw a fresh set of footprints in the snow. Bennett had returned. She came in the back door quietly, not knowing if anyone was awake yet, and heard voices from the living room. Shucking off her cap, scarf, gloves, and running shoes, she eased quietly down the hallway and peeked around the corner.
“So Little Bear went home to his mother and never, ever went out into the woods again without asking first. The end.” Bennett Scott closed the book she was reading to Harper and put it aside. “That’s a good lesson for little girls, too. Never go out of your home without asking your mother first. You remember that, sweetie. Okay?”