Silver Kiss (17 page)

My parents had left the room pretty much as
it had been when I left at seventeen. They’d freshened up the
paint, changing it from angsty-teen purple to soothing blossom
pink. And they’d packed away most of my toys and stuffed animals in
the attic. But my shelves were still loaded with beloved childhood
books, including those terrible werewolf novels from the early
nineties. My favorite author back then was Meredith Greening. She’d
written the Katrina Pagan series, about a werewolf assassin, who
took out vampires for the government. I’d read my copies to rags
years ago.

I reached for one now, needing the comfort
of something simple and familiar and was soon lost in a world of
action-packed adventure and kinky sex. It was all so simple for
Katrina, of course. She was always tripping over clues and finding
men willing to risk their lives for her even when she was being a
complete bitch to them. Me, I had a drag queen and a hysterical
girlfriend. It didn’t seem fair.

Around midday I finally fell asleep, head in
the book, and didn’t stir until Dad came to shake me awake a few
hours later. The sky was darkening again outside and the rich smell
of beef stew was drifting up the stairs, making my stomach growl. I
hadn’t eaten since the restaurant last night, I realized and was
immediately ravenous.

“
Your mother thinks you
should eat,” Dad said, in that tone that meant he thought my mother
was interfering. “She seems to think you’re upset about
something.”

And of course, force-feeding me would solve
the problem. I yawned, stretched and followed Dad downstairs. Mum
dished up the most enormous plate of stew and dumplings I’d seen in
my life and then they both sat and watched me eat with the
intensity of vultures waiting for a starving man to die.

After about two minutes of it, I set my fork
down and scowled at them both. “I’m alright.”

“
You’re obviously not,
Ayla,” Mum said. “You looked terrible when you got
here.”

“
Thanks.”

“
And you’re not eating,
either,” she added, nodding to my plate.

“
I don’t like being watched
while I’m eating.” What was it about parents that turned you from
adult back to sulking teenager so quickly?

“
Are you going to tell us
what’s wrong?” Mum persisted.

“
Anna, if she doesn’t want
to talk, you shouldn’t make her,” Dad warned.

“
She does want to talk,
don’t you, Ayla? I can tell.”

“
Fucking hell, Mum!” I
growled. “I came here for a bit of peace and quiet!”

“
Ayla!” Dad barked. “Do not
talk to your mother like that!”

I glowered at him and shoveled a spoonful of
stew into my mouth, buying myself a few seconds of silence. My
parents both continued to watch me. I swallowed and mumbled an
apology to Mum. She patted my hand.

“
So do you want to talk?”
she asked. Dad cleared his throat pointedly and she amended, “you
don’t have to.”

“
I told you, I had a fight
with Shannon,” I said. “I just thought we could do with a break
from each other for a few hours.”

“
Ah,” Mum said knowingly,
shaking her head.

I ignored the spark of irritation that
caused in me. “It’s nothing serious.” No sense telling them about
the graffiti. They’d panic and lock me in my bedroom or something.
“I’ll go home in the morning and everything will be back to
normal.” I hoped. It had been a long time since we’d had a row bad
enough for me to storm out over.

“
Good,” Dad said when Mum
opened her mouth. “That’s good, isn’t it, Anna?”

She closed her mouth and
nodded meekly, some unspoken message passing between them. My
irritation turned into anger. There was a sermon brewing, I sensed.
Something along the lines of, well,
these
are the problems with dating humans, aren’t they? They don’t
understand Pack problems
. I could
practically see the words working their way up Mum’s throat. Only
Dad’s pointed stare kept her from actually speaking. Mum assumed
that every time Shannon and I rowed it was because she was a
human.

It wasn’t something she’d ever said
outright. My parents had made a concerted effort to keep their
mouths shut regarding Shannon since I’d moved home, scared of
driving me away again. And really, their main issue with her was
that she was a woman, not that she was human. But it was there, a
silent undercurrent of vague worry, the silent message that Shannon
and I were just fundamentally too different.

It shouldn’t have been an issue at all.
Humans and wolves had been sleeping together for centuries before
humans even knew we existed. For a while after the First World War,
when we were first thrust out of the trenches and into the public
eye, it was something of a taboo, but that didn’t last. The big
deal with werewolf homosexuality was that there was little chance
of naturally conceived children. Human-wolf relationships were no
less fertile than wolf-wolf ones, so the Pack didn’t frown on them
in the same way.

With wolf fertility rates dropping as they
were, some Packs even encouraged interbreeding. Anything to produce
the next generation of cubs. At the other end of the scale, some
Packs forbid it completely, believing that it was our increased
integration with humans that was causing our problems in the first
place.

Of course, human-wolf children could have
serious long-term health problems. The wolf genes were rarely
dominant and the human body wasn’t built to deal with
shapeshifting. There was Coral’s Disease, a degenerative condition
that wore down the bones and muscles over the years, leaving the
children virtual cripples before they even hit their thirties. Then
there was Siodmak Syndrome, where sufferers just physically
couldn’t shift leading to all sorts of psychological problems.

None of that was a problem for me and
Shannon of course. Neither of us wanted children so we’d never even
discussed adoption. And neither of us were about to turn straight
either. Something Mum had come mostly to terms with after Adam’s
death and our reunion. Didn’t mean she thought Shannon and I were
right for each other, but she never said it out loud.

I could almost smell her desire to say it
throughout the rest of the meal. The atmosphere was tense and
charged and I almost wished I’d just stayed at home. Then I
remembered Shannon saying she wished she’d never moved here and
changed my mind. I’d rather deal with my parents.

After dinner, Dad went outside for his
ritual post-meal cigarette and I joined him, leaving Mum to clean
up. I used to offer to help when I was a kid, but she’d always
insisted I just got in the way, so after dinner became my time to
bond with Dad.

The night air was heavy with the threat of
snow again and I hugged myself against the chill, longing for the
hot summer nights that were still months away. Mum and Dad’s small,
carefully-tended garden was lined with pots that would sprout into
basil, thyme and parsley in the spring, but were just dead, dry
earth for now. The light in the kitchen cast a small square of
illumination over the lawn; everything else was lost in shadow. I
wandered around the garden after Dad as he checked on his plants,
feeling a little lost and aimless.

“
Your mother only wants you
to be happy,” Dad told me suddenly, voice soft and low in the dark.
“You shouldn’t get angry with her.”

“
I know, I’m sorry. But I
am happy. I love Shannon. We just…” I shrugged. “Don’t you and Mum
ever fight?”

“
Of course,” he replied.
“We tend not to run home crying to our parents whenever we do
though.”

I bristled indignantly. “I didn’t run home
crying.”

“
More or less, pet.” He
knelt down to poke at a rose bush, dormant for the winter. “What
exactly did you argue about?”

I hesitated. Dad was more pragmatic than
Mum, but the mention of Alpha Humans would set him off nonetheless.
Adam had been his nephew after all and his death was still a raw
wound for the whole family, especially when we were no closer to
justice than we had been when he died. I decided to leave the
graffiti out of it for now. Pack gossip would ensure my parents
found out sooner or later, but I’d prefer later right now.

“
I was out all night with
Glory,” I said finally. “We went for a run and I’d promised Shannon
I’d be home early, but …” Again I halted, mentally censoring
myself. I wanted to tell Eddie about our encounter with the feral
before I told anyone else. I felt obliged to.
God
. It seemed like a lifetime ago
already. “But we lost track of time.”

“
That doesn’t seem such a
big deal to me,” Dad said. “We’re wolves, we run. Shannon must know
that.”

There it was. That wolf-human divide he and
Mum were so careful not to bring up directly. “Of course she does.
But I promised her and I broke my promise. She was worried about
me.”

“
And you fought about that?
It really doesn’t sound worth fighting about, Ayla.”

I bit my lip to contain my frustration. He
was right. If you stripped our row down to its bare bones, it
wasn’t worth fighting about. It was all the other stuff that made
it so complicated. “She said she wished we’d never come here,” I
said. That was what stung me the most. The idea that she was
unhappy here gnawed at me.

Dad straightened up and took a long drag of
his cigarette. “People say things they don’t mean when they’re
angry.”

“
I think she did mean it
though.” I stared past him, into the kitchen. Mum was loading the
dishwasher and singing along to the radio. I ached suddenly,
wanting to be at home with my partner, not here dissecting our
relationship with my Dad. “I should probably go home and sort
things out with her.” Just the thought brought tears to my eyes, a
swell of anxiety to my chest. What if she didn’t want to sort
things out? A strange sort of panic filled me, as if I’d already
lost her.

Dad slung his arm round my shoulders and
pulled me into a bear hug. “Not tonight, pet. You stay here
tonight, alright? A hot bath and a good night’s sleep and
everything will seem better.”

I nodded against his chest, exhaling and
trying to release the panic. Everything would be fine in the
morning. Shannon and I would make up and I’d tell Eddie about the
feral. Everything would be fine. It had to be.

***

I didn’t feel much better in the morning. But since I had to be at
work, I forced myself up anyway. All I had to wear was Glory’s
hideous Juicy Couture outfit, which would make me a laughing stock
at Inked, so I raided Mum’s wardrobe. Not that I expected to find
anything much better in there, but at the very least I could find
something that didn’t make me want to vomit every time I looked at
it.

I managed to pull together a respectable
outfit of faded blue jeans—when had Mum ever bought jeans?—and a
blue and white checked shirt. It wasn’t really me, but it wasn’t
lime green either. Mum forced a heaped plate of bacon, egg and
sausage on me and waved me off to work with a worried smile.

I glanced up at the pale sun as I left.
Inked didn’t open until eleven on Sundays and it was just after
nine. If I was fast, I could go home and see Shannon before work.
I’d probably be a little late, but I was sure Calvin wouldn’t mind
once I explained everything to him. And if he did, well…I was going
home first anyway. I took off towards Foxglove, settling into a
steady jog. It felt good to move. It gave me a fake sense that I
was taking action.

My heart twisted in my chest as I approached
our house, apprehension at seeing Shannon again, apprehension at
seeing that horrible graffiti again. I almost choked on my nerves
when I saw Shannon outside, scrubbing the front door with hard,
vicious movements. A bucket of water sat at her feet. She was in
her pajamas and smelled of sweat and misery, a bitter musk that
pricked at me as I walked down the path towards her.

She stiffened, hearing my footsteps on the
stones. I stopped, playing with my shirt cuffs and mentally running
through everything I’d planned to say. They all vanished when
Shannon turned round, cheeks red with exertion.

“
I wasn’t sure you’d come
home,” she said softly.

I shrugged. “I wasn’t sure you’d want me.”
As jokes go, it fell pretty flat. Shannon’s lips quivered and her
eyes gleamed. I plucked the sponge from her hand and squeezed her
fingers. “Shannon—”

“
Don’t, Ayla,” she said,
rubbing her eyes. “I’m still tired.”

“
But I just—”

She held up a hand, silencing me again.
“You’re going to be late for work. And I’ve got a job of my own to
take care of.”

My temper snapped. “Fuck work! This is more
important!”

“
It can wait,” she said,
snatching the sponge back and scrubbing at the paint again. “It
waited all yesterday, didn’t it?”

And as quickly as that, my anger vanished,
replaced by a heavy lethargy. “If you say so.”

“
I spoke to Eddie last
night,” she continued, business-voice on. “We’re meeting him and
Moira tonight at Eddie’s place.”

“
What for?” I asked
dumbly.

“
To talk about the feral.
And I’m going to see Molly this morning, as soon as I’ve cleaned
this mess up. She’s back home again.”

“
Okay.” A numb resignation
settled over me. Shannon had decided we weren’t talking about the
fight, so we weren’t. That was that. Nothing I said was going to
move her so there didn’t seem much point in hanging around. “Okay,”
I said again. “I’m going to work.”