There was an infinite moment where the brown water was perfectly still.
In those seconds that it took for her to fight her way back to the surface, I made up my mind.
I stripped off my jacket, stood at the edge of the sinkhole, and, before I could think of the countless horrific consequences, I went in.
I heard Cole say my name, too late.
I half slid, half fell into the water. My foot touched something slick, and before I had a chance to determine whether it was the bottom of the pit or merely a submerged root, I was swallowed.
The grit of the water stung my eyes for a second before I closed them. In the moment of that blackness, time disappeared, became an arbitrary concept, and then I found my footing and lifted my head above the surface.
“Sam Roth, you bastard,” Cole said. There was admiration in his voice, which probably meant I’d made a poor decision.
The water came just to my collarbone. It was slimy as mucus and bitterly, bitterly cold. I felt like I had no skin, standing in this pit. It was just my bones and this frigid water passing around them.
Grace pressed against the opposite wall, her head against the mud, her expression torn between wariness and something her lupine face couldn’t convey. Now that I knew the depth of the sinkhole, I realized that she must be on her back legs, leaning against the wall to save her strength.
“Grace,” I said, and, at the sound of my voice, her eyes hardened into fear. I tried not to take it personally; wolf instincts took precedence, no matter what humanity I thought I’d seen in them earlier. Still, I had to rethink my plan of trying to lift her toward the edge of the hole. It was hard to concentrate; I was so cold that my goose bumps hurt. Every old instinct I had was telling me to get out of the cold before I shifted.
It was so cold.
Above me, Cole was crouched at the edge of the pit. I could feel his restlessness, hear the unasked question, but I didn’t know how to answer him.
I moved toward her, just to see how she reacted. She jerked back, defensively, and lost her footing. She vanished into the water, and this time, she was gone for the space of several breaths. When she emerged, she tried unsuccessfully to find her previous resting place, but the wall wouldn’t hold her. She paddled feebly, nostrils huffing above the water. We didn’t have much time.
“Should I come down there?” Cole asked.
I shook my head. I was so cold that my words were more breath than voice. “Too — cold. You’ll — shift.”
Near me, the wolf whistled, very quietly, anxious.
Grace, I thought, closing my eyes. Please remember who I am. I opened my eyes.
She was gone. There was just a slow, thick ripple moving toward me from where she’d sank.
I lunged forward, my shoes sinking into the soft floor of the pit, and scooped my arms through the water. Agonizing seconds went by where all I felt was silt on arms, roots on my fingertips. The pool that had seemed small from above now felt vast and depthless.
All I could think was: She’s going to die before I can find her. She’s going to die inches from my fingertips, sucking water into her nose and breathing mud. I will live this moment again and again every day of my life.
Then, finally, my fingers touched something more substantial. I felt the solidness of her wet fur. I wrapped my arms underneath to lift her up and get her head above water.
I needn’t have worried about her snapping. In my arms, she was a limp thing, lightweight with the water buoying her up, pathetic and broken. She was a golem of twigs and mud, cold as a corpse already from her hours in the water. Brown water bubbled from her nostrils.
My arms wouldn’t stop shaking. I leaned my forehead against her muddy cheek; she didn’t flinch. I felt her ribs pressing against my skin. She breathed another sticky, dirty-water breath.
“Grace,” I whispered. “This isn’t how it ends.”
Each of her exhalations was wet and raspy. My mind was a jostle of ideas and plans — if I could get her farther out of the water, if I could keep her warmer, if I could keep her above water until she got some strength back, if Cole could get the ladder — but I couldn’t focus on any one of them. Keeping her face above the liquid mud, I moved around slowly, feeling with my feet for whatever she’d stood on earlier.
I looked up to the edge of the hole. Cole was gone.
I didn’t know what to feel.
Moving slowly, I found a slick, fat root that supported my weight, and I braced myself against the wall, Grace’s wolf body in my arms. I hugged her to me until I felt her strange fast heartbeat against my chest. She was shivering now, whether from fear or exhaustion, I didn’t know. I didn’t know, either, how I was going to get us out of here.
I knew this, though: I wasn’t letting go.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
COLE
Running as a wolf was effortless. Every muscle was built for it. Every part of a wolf body worked together for seamless, constant motion, and the wolf mind just wouldn’t hold on to the concept of tiring at some point in the future. So there was only running like you would never stop, and then: stopping.
As a human, I felt clumsy and slow. My feet were useless in this mud, collecting so much crap on the bottom that I had to knock it off to continue. By the time I reached my destination, the shed, I was out of breath and my knees ached from running uphill. No time to stop, though. I already had half an idea of what to retrieve from the shed, unless a better idea presented itself. I pushed open the door and peered inside. Stuff that had seemed infinitely practical when I’d seen it before now seemed useless and fanciful. Bins of clothing. Boxes of food. Bottled water. A television. Blankets.
I tore the lids off the bins marked SUPPLIES, looking for what I really wanted: some kind of cable, bungee cord, rope, ball python. Anything I could fasten around the mouth of a bin to turn it into a sort of dumbwaiter for wolves. But there was nothing. This was like kindergarten for werewolves. Snack time and nap supplies.
I swore into the empty room.
Maybe I should have risked the extra time to go back to the house for the ladder.
I thought about Sam, shivering down in that hole with Grace in his arms.
I had a sudden flash of memory: Victor’s cold body at the bottom of a hole, dirt flung over him. It was only a trick of my thoughts, and an untrue one at that — Victor had been wrapped up when we buried him — but it was enough. I wasn’t burying another wolf with Sam. Especially not Grace.
The thing I was beginning to figure out about Sam and Grace, the thing about Sam not being able to function without her, was that that sort of love only worked when you were sure both people would always be around for each other. If one half of the equation left, or died, or was slightly less perfect in their love, it became the most tragic, pathetic story invented, laughable in its absurdity. Without Grace, Sam was a joke without a punch line.