Autumn (16 page)

“You know how crazy this sounds?” she asked before he could begin.

“About as crazy as it was to hear the first time. But probably not as crazy as waking up one morning expecting to see your brother and finding a wild animal instead.” He didn’t mean to sound cold, but she had to understand the reality he’d been living for over a year.

It was hard to believe, yes. But it was true.

“What was your grandmother’s theory?”

“She told us that years ago…like hundreds of years ago, when settlers were first finding their way to Texas, there was a small settlement here. Apparently even back then the people in my family gravitated towards careers in law, because my, like…great, great, great, great to the power of whatever grandfather was the sheriff. And back then it was probably a much harder job than it is now, because people were constantly committing crimes and killing each other.

“Anyway, a little boy was killed. According to my grandmother it was no accident, it was murder without a doubt, but no one could figure out who killed him. His mother was devastated. She blamed my uber-great-grandfather, claiming it was his responsibility to keep her son safe, and now it was his responsibility to bring the child’s killer to justice. I guess my ancestor had a wife who was a bit feisty…kind of like the Reynolds women are now. She told this boy’s mother if she’d taken better care of her son, he wouldn’t have been killed.”

“Oh…” Lou said. To Cooper it looked as if she was playing the scene out in her mind as he told the story. But something on her face perplexed him. She seemed to…recognize what he was talking about, as if she’d heard the tale before.

Cooper went on, trying not to read too much into it. “The dead boy’s mom was a local healer—she had a bit of reputation as a witch, I guess—and according to my grandma that reputation was well deserved. She lashed out at my ancestor’s wife and said that until a Reynolds brought the guilty party to justice, they would be cursed to lose their sons the same as she had. Cursed to
never see them reach adulthood
.”

“Their eighteenth birthday…”

“Yeah.”

Lou looked lost in thought, her focus now far away.

“I know it sounds pretty crazy, but—”

“I need to show you something,” she said. “It’s not crazy. Well, I mean, it
is
crazy. But I think your grandmother knew something. I think she was right.”

Cooper hadn’t been expecting her to accept the tale so readily, if at all. He wasn’t even sure he believed it himself, in spite of having no other options available to him.

“You do.” Then he asked, “
Why
?”

She gnawed on her lips, clearly debating whether or not she wanted to say what was on her mind.

“Lou, I just told you my
biggest
secret.”

“I’ve been having dreams. Really weird, vivid dreams since I got here. And…I thought they were just dreams until you told me that story.”

“What kind of dreams?”

“I…I dreamed I was that woman. The witch. I saw her. Heard her make that curse. I felt her pain when she lost her son. I saw it all, exactly as you described it. And more.”

“More?”

“It wasn’t just the time she cursed. In my dreams she says,
If you behave as dogs, you will lay with dogs, and your sons will lay with you, but you’ll never see them reach adulthood.
They tried to tell her coyotes killed her son, but she knew it was a man. She was so broken…”

Cooper stared at her, shocked by the empathy she felt towards a woman who might very well be
fictional
. But if this woman was real, she was the reason he only had ten months left to live among the civilized world.

“You dreamed her?”

“And I don’t think I was the only one.”

“What are you talking about?”

She sighed and looked him right in the eyes. “I think my father saw it too. And I think it’s why he left Poisonfoot.”

Chapter Twenty

It was Lou’s turn to guide Cooper through the darkness.

To avoid any unnecessary drama, she sent Marnie a quick text saying she wasn’t feeling well and she was going to walk home. She promised to text again when she arrived safely. Lou was pretty sure Marnie would be secretly grateful she’d left, giving Marnie a chance to monopolize Archer.

She was welcome to him. Lou had bigger things on her mind now than worrying about which football player she wanted to date. It turned out the boy she liked was going to become a coyote by next summer, if she believed what he was saying. Trouble was, Lou
did
believe. She believed every weird, impossible word of it.

When he’d started telling her the story of the curse, it had been like someone taking a page out of her diary and reading it back to her. Everything he described was exactly as she’d dreamt it, only his version was like a charcoal sketch, and she’d seen the Technicolor movie.

She didn’t know how to explain those dreams to Cooper, how every moment had felt like something she’d experienced firsthand. But hearing him tell her his grandma’s theories, she knew there was truth in the story, no matter how crazy it seemed.

Curses?

A month ago Lou would have sworn up and down there was no such thing as a curse, unless dropping an f-bomb counted. But now she wasn’t so sure. Things like magic and the supernatural had once seemed like premises for good TV shows and little else.

If she wasn’t living in a world of madness herself, she would think Cooper was off-the-wall crazy.

But she’d been seeing ghosts, hadn’t she?

And she’d been having visceral dreams about memories that weren’t hers.

How farfetched was it to believe Cooper might be living under a curse?

As they moved through the woods in the direction of Granny Elle’s house, she couldn’t help but notice the coyote—or should she start thinking of him as Jeremy?—was leading the way like he’d memorized it. Of course, she’d seen him in her yard, staring up at the house. And Granny Elle had cursed at him,
You shouldn’t be here
.

Her grandmother knew something.

There was more to this story than either of their families was letting on.

They spent a good twenty minutes stumbling blindly through the dark with a coyote and Lou’s questionable sense of direction as their guides. When Lou finally saw the dim lights coming from Granny Elle’s porch, she let out a sigh of relief.

It was one thing to
think
you were going the right way, quite another to actually get there.

When they reached the edge of the tree line, Lou hesitated. She looked at Jeremy, and for the first time since Cooper had confessed the truth, she addressed the coyote directly. “Look, you can’t come in. I know it sucks, but you have to stay here. I think Granny Elle has a shotgun.”

Jeremy sat down, still obscured by the trees, and yawned. She didn’t know how he managed to make the gesture sarcastic, but she got that distinct sense from him. A coyote was giving her attitude.

She stuck out her tongue at him, and he raised one side of his lip to show her his formidable teeth.

“You win,” she acquiesced, taking a step away from him.

Cooper stuck to her side like a conjoined twin, so close he bumped into her when she stopped at the corner of the house. His shoes skinned the bare backs of her heels, making her wince.

“Cripes, Cooper, watch the feet.” Under normal circumstances she wouldn’t have said anything, but she was prone to worry about her feet more than the rest of her. For a diabetic, foot injuries could be bad news. Like…amputation bad.

“Sorry,” he replied, sounding guilty.

Lou could live without a lot of things, but she didn’t think she’d do too well without her feet.

They edged around the rear of the house, up the rickety back steps and through the screen door outside the kitchen.

“You need to be
so
quiet. Like a scream-in-space quiet, okay? My grandma sleeps so lightly a mouse fart could wake her up.” Lou held a finger to her lips, driving home the point they couldn’t be heard.

Cooper snorted, then covered his mouth.

“
Cooper
.”

“Sorry. Soooorry. But…mouse fart?”

“
Not the point,
” she whispered.

“
Sorry.
”

Lou opened the inner kitchen door, grateful for the silent hinges. The inside of the house was dark, and all the noise inside was dulled. Somewhere upstairs was the hushed sound of Granny Elle’s snoring. This time Cooper stayed a half step behind, so when she stopped walking, he had a chance to avoid slamming into her.

As it turned out, Cooper wasn’t what she had to worry about.

Her phone vibrated once, then started playing James Brown’s “Get Up Offa That Thing”. She fumbled for her purse and managed to get the phone answered before the chorus could begin.

“
Bitch
, are you
alllliiiive
?” Marnie shouted with the din of the party loud in the background.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Lou stage whispered into the mouthpiece.

“
WHAT?
”

“I’m
fine
.” She was trying desperately to get her point across without being heard. She felt a pang of guilt for being so noisy, especially since she’d just been lecturing Cooper to stay quiet. At least if Granny Elle heard Lou talking in the kitchen, it wouldn’t seem as strange as a young man’s voice. Male voices were distinctly out of place in the Whittaker house, so Cooper’s warm rumble was likely to cause trouble.

“You’re missing a great paaaarty. Archer was—”

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow. I gotta go.” Lou hung up before she could hear the rest of what Marnie was going to say. Her friend was talking so loud there was no doubt Cooper could hear every word, and the last thing she needed was him thinking something was up with her and Archer.

Okay…well, maybe that was pretty low on the
worst-case scenario
list now. Worrying if the boy she liked was threatened by someone else didn’t hold a candle to finding out Cooper’s brother was a
coyote
. Or that she’d had vivid dreams about the curse that was responsible for his transformation.

Worst of all was the looming knowledge that Cooper himself might end up like Jeremy had.

Lou was still trying to wrap her head around Jeremy
being
a coyote. It didn’t seem possible. Cooper obviously hadn’t expected her to accept the story so readily, and normally she wouldn’t have. Except those dreams. They’d been too real to ignore. Cooper would have needed to be inside her head to describe them so identically. Lou didn’t think she had much choice but to believe.

But that didn’t make it
easy
.

Accepting that Jeremy was a coyote and accepting that Cooper might become one were as far removed from one another as she could get. She wouldn’t let it happen.

Once the phone was crammed back in her purse, she and Cooper stood side by side in the kitchen, holding their breaths, trying to hear if there were any signs of Granny Elle or Lou’s mother stirring.

Silence reigned, and Lou released a sigh of relief. She eased open the door to the attic and led Cooper upstairs slowly, not risking turning on the stairwell light. It was easier to creep up now without a big box in her hands, and she got to the top without another knee-skinning incident.

When Cooper joined her, Lou flicked on a small lamp in one corner next to the dress mannequin. The light was dim and didn’t cast its glow on the entirety of the space, but it was still better than fumbling around in the dark.

The small pile of goodies she’d been planning to claim from her father’s trunk was still stacked at its side. She hadn’t taken them with her when she abandoned the drawing. She’d simply put as much as she could back in the trunk in case Granny Elle came up, and left everything else easily accessible.

Lou plopped down beside the trunk and beckoned for Cooper to join her. He shuffled over, seemingly concerned about making too much noise with his shoes, and settled in next to her. Their thighs touched, a line of warm from knee to hip, reminding Lou the evening hadn’t been entirely unpleasant.

She tried to push the memory of their kiss out of her mind, but the second she started thinking about it she couldn’t stop. It wasn’t her fault, really. It had been the kind of kiss to knock anyone in their right mind a little senseless.

“I found this in with my dad’s stuff. These are things from when he was a kid, our age, or maybe younger. I’m not sure, he didn’t date it.” She held out the paper, its frayed edges tickling the inside of her palm.

Cooper took the paper from her and stared at the drawing. Lou leaned closer, trying to see it as he might. The woman was dark and fierce, her hair braided like a crown around her head. Since the sketch wasn’t in color it was hard to tell what the woman was meant to look like, but Lou filled in the blanks from her memory.

The woman’s hair was dark brown, her eyes amber, like rich honey. She knew the way the woman’s voice sounded, and even knew her name.

“That’s Morena.”

“How do you know that?” Judging by his expression he wasn’t looking at the woman anymore, his attention now on the coyote trembling at her feet. It was amazing how much fear was evident in a mere drawing. Knowing now the coyote was once a man, and the woman looming over him was responsible for his furry enslavement, well…the look made a lot more sense.

Lou explained her dream in detail, filling in the gaps from his narrative. By the time she finished she felt physically drained, and Cooper was white as a sheet.

He held the paper out like it might burn him, and she reclaimed the page, placing it facedown on the trunk. For a long time they sat quietly, nothing but the sound of their breathing filling the space between them.

“What does this mean?” Cooper asked, finding a voice for the question they were both contemplating. “I feel like this is supposed to be our answer, but I…I don’t know. All we know is maybe my grandma’s version was right, but I don’t know what to
do
with that information.”