“He hurt you,” Powell said.

Chey looked up at him with bird-fast eyes. “What?” she chirped. She was about to go into hysterics. She was about to cry. She couldn’t talk to him at that moment, couldn’t play the game. “What?” she demanded again. “Who hurt me?”

“He hurt you pretty badly. ‘He’ meaning, well, my wolf.” His face was set like stone. She supposed he’d had plenty of time to get used to this. “I try to think of him as another being, someone different from myself. It helps… sometimes. He hurt you, I think. He bit you or something. I want to say I’m sorry. I never remember what happened until later, until I’m clean again and warm and I can think straight.”

“I think I’d rather not remember,” Chey said.

“Fair enough.”

She rubbed at her eyes with her palms. “It’s going to happen again, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“It’s going to happen over and over. For as long as I live.”

Powell finally did look away from her. It helped not to be pinned by those green eyes. “Whenever the moon rises. They made up that guff about the full moon for the movies. Whenever even a sliver of moon is over the horizon, even when it’s new, even if we can’t see it, we change. There’s no way to stop it. I’ve been trying to find a cure for—”

“No,” she said. “Please, no more. I can’t talk about the rules right now,” Chey insisted. “I can’t hear about this.”

Powell didn’t say another word for the rest of the trip.

Afternoon was well on them by the time they got back to the cabin. Inside Powell tried to make up a bed for her but she wouldn’t let him come near her. He tried to touch her arm and she recoiled as if he were a snake trying to bite her. He got the point and retired to his smokehouse. Dzo busied himself outside with refueling the truck from an enormous plastic jerry can. It was yellow with age and translucent and she could see the shadow of the liquid sloshing back and forth inside.

A day earlier when she had been lost in the woods she had been certain she was going to die. It was the worst feeling she’d ever known. Now she was certain she was going to live and it was even worse.

There was no way back, no cure except death. That’s what Powell had been trying to tell her. She was stuck with the wolf for the rest of her life.

What did she do next? Did she give up? There had been no room in her plans for this, for becoming a monster. How could she adjust her life to make room for a giant wolf? How could she hold a job if every twelve hours she transformed into an animal? She’d had a few boyfriends back in Edmonton. Mostly they’d been cowboy types, guys with ponytails and motorcycles. The kind of guys who might keep a wolf for a pet. None of them would have understood what she’d become. They might have even thought it was cool. She could not agree.

Chey knew she needed to think in the moment, to ignore the future. It was so hard, though.

She rose from her chair and walked out onto the porch. As much as she didn’t want to face her new circumstance, she did need answers.

The snow between the trees caught what little sunlight made it through the branches and glowed an unearthly blue. Frigid tendrils of mist snaked around the feet of the bushes. In the back of the house Dzo was busy washing out the bed of his truck with buckets of stream water.

When he saw her coming around the corner of the house he pushed up his mask and smiled at her.

“Am I a prisoner here?” she asked.

He frowned. “No,” he said. “Of course not.”

“So I’m free to go at any time,” she tried.

He shook his head and smiled at her again. “No, sorry. We’d just have to come after you and drag you back. You might hurt somebody.”

She squinted at him. “I think I have a little more self control than that.”

Dzo sighed. “A wolf—your kind of wolf—can’t look at a human being but something comes over him. He gets that taste of blood on the back of his tongue. You see a human being when you’re in that state, you won’t have any choice. You’ll go right from zero to kill.”

“No,” she said. “That’s—that can’t be right. What about—what about you, then? Why hasn’t he killed you yet?”

“I’m special,” he said. “I’m safe. Everybody else is fair game.”

“Everybody…” Her breath came faster. Her ankle pulsed with phantom pain.

“It’s the main reason Monty lives up here.” He spread his arms wide. “No people. It ain’t for the warm weather. You were the first human being he’d seen in three years. He attacked you without a thought, right?”

Chey folded her arms across her stomach. She felt suddenly quite queasy. She thought back to when she’d been up in the paper birch. She’d seen the hatred in the wolf’s eyes, the need to kill. She’d seen what that madness was like, up close and personal, in a way she never wanted to repeat. “I didn’t… I didn’t know that. My god—how does something like this happen? What kind of virus does that to a person?”

Dzo threw his hands up. “You think it’s some kind of disease, huh?” She nodded. “That’s where you got it wrong, see. It’s not any kind of virus, it’s a curse. And when I say curse I don’t mean a germ that got explained away by some old Indian story. I mean a curse, a magic spell. About the biggest and baddest one ever.” He hopped up onto the open bed of the truck and sat down on the tailgate. His eyes looked off into the middle distance as if he were lost in a bad memory.

“I don’t want to kill anyone,” she breathed. She thought she might be sick. “I’d rather die myself. I’d kill myself first—but is that even possible, now?”

“Sure,” he said, smiling again. “Yeah, any kind of silver will do for you. ‘Course, we don’t keep much on hand for the obvious reason. I suppose you could ask Monty. Listen, if that’s what you want, we can make it happen.” He put a gloved hand on her shoulder. “Promise.”

She shook her head. Had she been serious? Maybe. But no—that wasn’t the answer. At least not yet.