Release Me (Stark Trilogy, #1)(42)
“Used to be.”
“We’re about the same.” Miriam motions to the bureau and closet. “Try on whatever.”
Weekends, back in Wisconsin, Claire used to sleep ten-, twelve-hour stretches. Around noon her father would knock gently on her door and say, “Claire? That’s enough, don’t you think?” But it never seemed to be—she could never get her fill—a yawn stretching her face as she stumbled down the hall for a cup of coffee, a bowl of Apple Jacks.
Her first few days at the cabin, tired as she is, she cannot fall asleep, and once she does, she cannot stay asleep, so that her days and nights are hazily threaded with dreaming and waking, her eyes shuttering closed when flipping through a novel and then snapping open again at the dinner table with a cold plate of spaghetti before her and her aunt studying her. She is hiking along the shoulder of the road, staring at a dark bank of clouds that might carry rain. She is standing in a gas station restroom, letting the dryer blast her hands just to get warm. She is struggling against the weight of a man in a clown mask, and when she rips it away, a red skull grins back at her. The whole world seems a threat; the whole world wears a mask.
As much as she wants to, she can’t allow herself to relax, can’t feel safe, the weapons arranged throughout the cabin and the plywood planks shielding the windows making her feel as if she has stumbled into an uncertain fortress.
When Claire asks Miriam why—why the stronghold defenses?—she says, “Because there are people hunting me.”
“The same people who came for my parents?”
“Different people. But just as dangerous.”
*
The dinette runs up against the living room and Augustus sits at the table, spooning into a bowl of cottage cheese, while Chase weakly attempts to exercise. For the past few weeks he has done nothing but sleep and stumble back and forth to the bathroom. He needs to get the blood flowing again, he says, or he might rot away into a husk.
“You understand the way this works, I assume?” Augustus says.
Chase is wearing a pair of gray sweatpants and nothing else except for the bandages that patch his arm and torso. He dips up and down, his face red and wet with sweat. “You get bit by a rabid dog, you get rabies—isn’t that the gist of it?”
“Not exactly. Saliva isn’t enough—thank God—or every sneeze on a subway would infect a dozen people.” The spoon clicks against the bowl and then his teeth. “We’re fortunate that lobos is more like HIV, a blood-borne contagion. A bite doesn’t guarantee infection, but it’s quite possible. A lycan’s gums bleed after they transform, and it’s a great way for the prion to propagate itself.”
“I’m f*cked.”
“If by that you mean, ‘Am I infected?’ Yes, I think we can assume as much. But if by that you mean, ‘Am I finished as a politician?’ Not necessarily. Three people know what happened in that room. One of them is dead.”
Chase dips down and tries to hold his position but wobbles and loses his balance. “You think we can hide this?”
“It will require lifestyle changes.” Augustus shoves another spoon of cottage cheese into his mouth and speaks through his chewing, his voice thick and mucousy. “I’m going to look into getting you a prescription for medicinal marijuana. And it looks like I can get Volpexx delivered from Canada—maybe we can try that in low doses. But right now you need to stay calm, stay in control, stay human. That means no more women. No more binges. No more temper tantrums.”
Chase gives up on the squats and walks to the window and stares out into the day. Clouds hang like a dark, low ceiling. A maple sapling, stripped of its leaves, shakes against the wind. “That’s not really my style, is it?”
“No,” Augustus says. “No, it is not.”
*
Miriam is handsome more than pretty. Claire can see her father in her. The muscular jaw and squared shoulders. Eyes as blue as an acetylene torch. But while her father always had a smile flashing beneath his beard, Miriam seems incapable of humor, her expression stony, her mouth a lipless black slit. She never stops moving and wears a black tank top that shows off arms roped with muscle.
The idea of family has, up to this point, evaded Claire. When she complained about visiting her nana at the nursing home, or about attending a barbecue with her cousins, her mother would always say, “They’re family,” as if that explained everything. Now Claire finally understands it, the importance of blood. That someone like Miriam, who is otherwise a stranger, would take her in without question.
Their conversations, rushed and interrogative, are broken up by long silences. They sit on opposite ends of the couch. Claire has her legs tucked under her and her aunt leans forward with her forearms on her knees. At first Miriam has only questions—“And then what happened?” is one of her favorites—about the home invasion, her father’s note, the seemingly endless passage from Wisconsin. Claire expects more of a reaction when she describes the gunfire erupting downstairs, but Miriam only lowers her head and says, in a muted voice, that she knew, from the moment she spotted Claire on her doorstep, that her brother must be dead.
Then her voice is sharp once more. “Who was that boy? The one in the Jeep.”
“He was nobody.” Claire explains what happened—everything about the night, including the truck driver, whom up to this point she has kept secret. She braces herself, expecting Miriam to pull her into a hug and tell her how sorry she is. Instead her aunt rises from the couch and disappears from the living room. Claire can hear her aunt down the hall, in the kitchen, a cupboard closing, glasses rattling. A moment later she appears with two tumblers of whiskey. Without a word she hands one to Claire. They raise the glasses in a grim toast and drain them. Claire coughs into her fist. Her chest blazes as though she has swallowed a coal.