“Cuz.”

I rolled my eyes back and forth again, but no one was speaking, not the others, not Rafferty. No mouths were moving and it wasn’t my ears that had picked up the word. This was turning out to be the day of playing with my brain as if it were Play-Doh. Grumbling deep in my chest, I closed my eyes again. This time I didn’t see Suyolak. I saw Rafferty. I saw the world around Rafferty. It was from our college senior ski trip. The air wasn’t cold and the snow matted down in my ski boots wasn’t freezing my feet as it had back then, but the vision of it… It was the same as the framed picture on Rafferty’s guest room dresser. Rafferty could’ve stepped out of that picture himself. He was seven or eight years younger with hair that, while it still rivaled a well-worn janitor’s mop, wasn’t as unkempt as it was these days. I held out my hands, gloved and holding ski poles. Hands. I dropped the poles and stripped off the gloves. They were as I remembered: the scar across the back of my right one. Nails chewed short. I’d started gnawing at my paws when I was a cub and never stopped, as a wolf or a human. A plain ring of silver around my right ring finger… just because we Wolves loved to mock that whole silver legend.

“I’m me.” I gave a wide and happy grin. “I’m me and I can talk. No stupid computer, which you skimped on, by the way. You couldn’t fork out the big bucks for a Dell? This one takes an entire century to reboot. And don’t get me started on Windows Vista. That’s what demons pass when they get the Tijuana Trots. And-”

I was silenced as Rafferty tackled me and hugged me so tightly, my imaginary breath whooshed out of my imaginary lungs and I almost slipped and fell down in the equally imaginary snow. It was unexpected, although we Wolves were more touchy- feely than humans tended to be. But Rafferty had been born a grump, not that I didn’t love the hell out of the guy. I did, but it didn’t change the fact this was unexpected. It was even a little bit shocking and it was great. I was me and it was just… great.

“I wish I’d figured this out without copying it from Suyolak,” Rafferty said gruffly at my ear. “We would never have needed a computer. We could’ve talked… even if you talk too much and carry on about the plight of the whales and shit. But we could’ve actually talked and you could’ve been the other part of yourself, if only in your head. I screwed up and I’m sorry.”

I stepped back out of the hug. Since Rafferty was not the hugging type, that meant he felt guilty, he was scared, and he needed some good down- home counsel-pack style. He’d tackled me with the hug. I tackled him to the ground and rubbed snow in his face. “Awww, you’re so sweet. You’re like Lassie or Lady. Maybe we can find Tramp for you and you can share spaghetti and meet in the middle. Very cute.”

Jumping up before he could kick me off, I continued. “We’re here now. We’re Wolves, Rafferty. We might fool ourselves by running around half the time looking like humans and buying houses, cars, going to college, but the bottom line is we’re Wolves. And being only in the here and now is what we were in the beginning. I’m not saying let’s go crazy and join the cult of All Wolf like Delilah, but we can’t forget either that ‘now’ isn’t so bad.” I reached down and grabbed the hand he wasn’t using to wipe snow from his face and pulled him to his feet. “And right here, right now”-I grinned again at the play on words-“is the best.”

“It is pretty good,” he admitted, and nailed me in the hair with the snow he’d scraped from his face and balled up in his other hand.

And it truly was the best. I hadn’t had a better moment since before getting sick, but Rafferty was driving and how he was managing that and this at the same time was anyone’s guess. Then there was Suyolak.

“You can’t take him.” I brushed nonexistent snow from my hair and went on with some trepidation. I didn’t want to make things worse for Rafferty with doubt. “That’s what you said. If that’s true, then we should get out of here. Saving the world is never a bad thing, don’t get me wrong-I had my car bumper covered with stickers that said the same thing-but if you can’t take him, I don’t want you dying for no reason. The world will have to find a different solution.”

“I didn’t say I couldn’t take him.” He scowled automatically at being told there was anything he couldn’t do, the cocky SOB, but he sobered. “I said he was better than me. You’ve played blackjack with me. Football at Thanksgiving in your parents’ yard back in high school. You’ve fought me roughhousing around during hunts. You know me. Being better than me doesn’t mean someone can take me.”

He was right. He… I… we all thought he was the king when it came to healing, but I was smart, in math and physics as well as biology. I could count cards; learned it second semester of college. That didn’t stop him from beating me in games of drunken twenty-one in the dorm laundry room while we waited for our clothes to dry. I was a little bit bigger, faster, and stronger than he was as a wolf too, but he still kicked my tail more often than not.

Stubborn, ruthless, would cheat in a heartbeat, and was sneaky as hell; it usually gave him the advantage over me. It might do the same for him with Suyolak. In my heart, though, I was as tame as Delilah mocked me for being. Rafferty while in human form was a healer, first, last, and always, but as a wolf, he was Wolf. He hunted with no regret and killed enemies with a double helping of glee. He wasn’t ashamed of it either. He was who he was… to the brink and beyond. He simply happened to be two widely different creatures.

As a healer, he healed and he didn’t ask if you deserved to be made whole. As a wolf, he killed and whether you’d deserved it or not, I didn’t ask. Because he was the normal Wolf, the predator. I was the one in the butterfly collar and if I hadn’t been sick and stuck, I might have merited the ridiculous thing regardless.

“Not better than him, but you can take him.” I nodded before having my last look at the trees, the snow, the blue sky that was a different blue to human eyes than wolf ones. I had already studied my hands; now I felt my face. Stubble, lean jaw, thick eyebrows. I’d missed this face. It was only half of the whole of me, but I’d missed it.

“I can take him.”

“Okay, then. You can,” I agreed with the same confidence Rafferty was putting out there, then smiled. It was the moment I never thought we’d get. If he took down that ancient Rom and cured me, it would be good. But if he took Suyolak and couldn’t make me what I was, it would still be good, because I was able to say a real good-bye, one that, at the end of the road, had nothing to do with whether he could take Suyolak or not; one that was for him and me and our past wandering years.

Hope for the best; prepare for the worst.

“By the way, in college? I slept with that girl you were sleeping with junior year.” Good-byes shouldn’t be melancholy. They should be until we meet again. They also shouldn’t include getting the crap knocked out of you on the memory of a snow slope, so I ran the last bit together a little hurriedly. “But you weren’t actually dating, so it didn’t count.” I gave him a quick happy- go-lucky, life-is-good smile, the one my parents had said I’d had since the day I was born-a grinning golden retriever born of Wolves. “Be seeing you.”

I opened my eyes quickly and was back in the car. There was no snow or the smell of pine. There was the smell of old vinyl, the faint scent of ancient baby food and dirty diapers, pot, cedar chips, and a long-gone hamster, and a puck and two humans or semihumans who hadn’t had a chance to bathe in a while. The mummy cat smelled almost like gingerbread cookies, the kind Mom had made at Christmas, and I smelled like fries.

Rafferty just smelled pissed. “Goodfellow, where’s the damn water bottle you spray your cat with? I have some serious behavior modification to do.” To me, he accused, “You slept with Natalya? She was six feet tall, a model, and a Wolf. Orthodox. My mom, if she were alive, would’ve loved her. I might’ve dated her. I thought about dating her. You son of a bitch.”