Quinn and I exchanged another look in the light leaking from my flashlight. Maven had only usurped Itachi a couple of weeks ago. “So they visit you,” I said casually. “The other werewolves.”
Tobias’s tongue snaked out, swiping the air in front of his face. Then he seemed to remember himself, his form. “Yes, visit,” he agreed. “Brothers-sisters too.”
“When?” Quinn asked. “When were they here last?”
Still gripping the fence with his fingers, Tobias leaned backward, swaying back and forth. “Moons and suns ago,” he sang.
I rolled my eyes. Of course the idiot had no concept of time. “Who, Tobias?” I asked. “Who comes to visit?”
The werewolf gave me a perfectly human look that clearly suggested I might be daft. “Brothers and sisters,” he said again, more loudly this time.
“Names? You must know their names.”
Tobias nodded. “Mary-Cammie-Ryan-Matt-Alex-Jamie,” he said happily.
“Last names?” Quinn asked. “You know, surnames?”
Tobias shrugged, humming to himself.
Quinn made a frustrated sound at the back of his throat, but I pushed on. I wanted to get this over with and get the hell away from this thing. “Do they all come at once?” I asked. “Many brothers and sisters? Or only one at a time?”
He cocked his head, as if it took him a moment to translate the meaning of my question. “One, two to talk,” he said, his voice maintaining at least an even volume now. “Talk to Tobias, ’cause Tobias won’t talk back.”
“They come to see you when they need someone to talk to?” I translated.
He nodded, looking relieved that I understood.
“Tobias, the last full moon was five nights ago,” Quinn said in a patient voice. “Has anyone visited you since then?”
The werewolf cocked his head again, untangling Quinn’s words, and then he giggled. “Five nights . . . moon lines called. Call me still.” The mirth left his face and he looked almost solemn. Reverent, even. “Call me now.”
I had no idea what that meant, but before either of us could ask, Tobias leaped backward, his makeshift skirt slipping off his waist, and threw himself against the fence in the adjacent corner of his cage. We raced along our side of the fence in time to see Tobias’s body crash into the chain link with a sickening screech of metal. The werewolf stumbled backward, blood streaming from his nose, which must have hit the chain link wrong. As soon as he recovered his footing he ran at the fence again. “Stop!” I cried, but he ignored me. This time he bounced off and fell flat on his back on the ground, writhing with pain. The blood from his nose had already stopped—werewolves could heal even faster than vampires—but he whimpered with pain anyway.
Quinn shot me a horrified look. Maven had warned us that Leine was unstable, but this was way past “a little off” and well into Cuckoo’s Nest territory. I jogged along the fence until I was right in front of Tobias and crouched down. “Tobias, are you okay?”
“Don’t want to we don’t want to,” he moaned.
“Tobias, what happened on the full moon?” I asked desperately.
“Don’t want to we don’t want to,” he sang again, lifting his throat to turn the words into a howl.
The sound of answering howls rose from the dark enclosures all around us. I looked nervously at Quinn. Would other people hear that? Did the sanctuary wolves often howl at night, or was this exceptional? The noise went on for several minutes in long, fluted sounds that rose and fell discordantly. When it finally died down, I tried again. “Tobias? What is it you don’t want to do?”
The look he gave me was filled with desperate frustration, and it struck me as eerily familiar—it was the same expression Charlie had when she was trying to communicate what she wanted, but couldn’t make her mouth form the right words yet. “Don’t. Want. To.” he said blearily, and then he staggered to his feet and ran at the fence a third time.
“Stop it!” I shouted, but he didn’t stop. When he fell to the ground this time he was bleeding from several gashes on his chest. He lifted his throat and howled again, and once again the wolves around us joined in.
“Let’s go,” Quinn urged, tugging at my elbow. “This isn’t getting us anywhere, and someone’s going to hear them.”
I allowed him to pull me to my feet, and we began hurrying along the fence. “The blanket!” I remembered, turning back.
“It’s fine, they’ll assume some tourist threw it in,” Quinn replied, but I’d already paused, my light pointing back at Tobias. Quinn stopped too.
“What is it?” he asked when I didn’t move.
I watched the werewolf, who had crawled to his feet and was now standing inches from that same corner of the fence, letting his body fall against it over and over again. I turned my own body so I was facing the same direction, then squinted toward my right, where the dying sun had disappeared. “Quinn,” I breathed. “The direction.”
“What about it?”
“He’s facing south.” I stopped mimicking Tobias and turned back to my partner. “Toward Colorado.”
Chapter 12
“Moon lines.”
Maven’s voice was thoughtful, like she was sampling the way the words tasted in her mouth. Tonight she was wearing purple leggings and an orange corduroy jumper that didn’t quite match her orange hair. I was pretty sure she’d purchased the whole ensemble in 1995. “That phrase sounds familiar, but I can’t place it. What else did he say?”