Chapter 88 Time To Skin A Wolf
The porch light was on when they came up the path.
The door opened before Molly reached the step, “Oh, thank the stars. Molly where have you been! It’s so late, you never sent a text.” Mrs. Marsh stood in the frame with an expression of a woman who had spent hours in worry and was now converting that worry into relief in real time. Her eyes went to Molly's face first, checking if she was fine, and then the relief shifted and her smile changed quality when she registered the two figures behind her daughter.
She looked at Enzo, then at Zion. The smile fell away completely.
"Molly." Her voice was careful. "Come inside."
"Good evening, Mrs. Marshley." Enzo stepped forward with ease like he owned the place, his hands relaxed at his sides, his expression arranged into something that was technically polite.
Zion, two steps behind him, said flatly, "Marsh."
Enzo didn't acknowledge the correction.
“Just Erica,” She said and looked at her daughter with eyes that were asking several questions simultaneously without asking any of them out loud. Molly looked back at her with an expression that said she would tell her everything.
"Thank you for walking Molly home," Erica said. Her tone was just polite though it had a layer of defensiveness to it. "It's late. I'm sure your families are expecting you."
She reached out for Molly's arm.
Enzo's hand came up smoothly and redirected hers, not roughly, just with the complete and unambiguous physical fact of not allowing it. He wagged one finger with the expression of someone making a gentle correction.
"I was actually hoping you'd invite us in," he said. "We haven't eaten since this morning. It would be very kind."
Erica's eyes went from his hand to his face and narrowed.
"I'm going to ask you to step back from my daughter," she said, and her voice had dropped the polite register entirely. "And if you're not off my porch in the next thirty seconds I will call the police."
"The same ones you led to the slaughter?" Enzo said. "We know about that, by the way. All of it."
The porch went quiet.
Erica looked at him for a moment, fully looked at him, her mind going through millions of thoughts and calculations per second. Whatever she found confirmed what she'd already suspected because her expression didn't change so much as settle.
Her hand came up, fingers beginning to move.
Enzo closed the distance between them in one step and had her wrist and his palm over her mouth before the first syllable of anything left her lips.
Zion facepalmed and looked up at the sky as if asking for help.
Enzo looked at her over his hand with eyes that were very steady.
"We didn't come here to be difficult," he said quietly. "That's the truth. I have no interest in hurting anyone in this house tonight. But if you want to make this harder than it needs to be I am absolutely prepared for that conversation." He held her eyes. "Your choice."
"Enough."
Molly's voice came out sharp and flat and it cut through the porch with enough force that both of them looked at her. She was standing two feet away with her arms at her sides and an expression that had run out of patience for everyone present including herself.
She looked at Enzo. "Let her go. Now.”
He looked at her, still holding Erica. Molly walked up to them, swiftly took off her sandals, and smacked him upside the head. The sound resounded in the quiet night.
Enzo let go of Erica and immediately turned on Molly, a warning growl emanated from his chest. Zion made a sound then put his hand over his mouth and stared at Enzo with eyes that gave away nothing.
Molly glared back at Enzo, “You cooperate or, I walk inside and you get nothing from either of us."
Enzo held for a moment too long, before taking a step back.
Erica straightened. She looked at her daughter and then at the two boys and then at her daughter again, and Molly looked back at her and said, "Let them in, Mum. I'll explain inside."
Erica stepped back from the door.
They went in.
The living room was dimly lit and had the TV on in the background, the cushions on the sofa slightly displaced, a cold cup of tea on the side table that had been made and forgotten. Erica stood near the window with her arms crossed and watched Enzo look around her living room with the unhurried attention of someone cataloguing a space and said nothing while Molly explained.
Molly kept it direct. They wanted to find Grace. They knew Erica had a locator spell that could work through bloodlines and connections. They needed her to do it again.
Erica listened without interrupting. When Molly finished, Erica looked at Enzo to confirm.
"You're related to Maddox," she said.
"He's my half-brother," Enzo said.
Erica's eyes moved to Zion.
"He's related to Enzo," Molly said. "Cousin."
Erica was quiet for a moment. She looked at her daughter as if trying to say something. Molly met the look, held it, and gave a small nod that said she understood and was asking her to do it anyway.
Erica unfolded her arms.
She went to the cabinet under the bookshelves and opened it, and she took out a paper map and spread it on the coffee table the same way she had before. Then she went to the kitchen. The sound of things being moved and gathered could be heard, and Enzo looked at the map on the table and then at Molly who was sitting on the arm of the sofa with her eyes on the kitchen.
Zion hadn't sat down. He was leaning on the wall near the entrance to the room with his hands in his pockets and the bruising from earlier was almost not visible on the side of his face, and he looked at the back of Enzo's head with an empty expression.
Erica came back with a bowl and several small things arranged around it on a tray. She set it on the coffee table beside the map and looked at Enzo.
"I need blood," she said. "From the bloodline closest to the person being tracked."
"That's me," Enzo said.
Erica picked up the small knife from the tray and held it out. Enzo took it without hesitation, drew a clean cut across the heel of his palm, and held his hand over the bowl. The blood ran into it dark and swiftly.
Erica watched the amount with the assessment of someone who knew exactly how much she needed, and then she said, "That's enough."
Enzo straightened and declined the cloth she produced from the tray while showing her his palm as if to show off his healing abilities. Erica looked at him and didn’t hide her disgust.
Molly watched her mother begin to work and noticed the differences from last time. When Erica had tracked Maddox through Grace, the process had been relatively contained, working through a single tether between two people. This was different in small ways that Molly couldn't understand yet, but she could feel the difference. Her mother was doing more. The arrangement of the things on the tray was more complex and the preparation was more deliberate.
Erica began to chant.
The language was the same one Molly had heard in the kitchen days ago, the syllables with their specific rhythm and weight, and the room responded to them. The light didn't change. Nothing moved that wasn't supposed to move. But something in the air shifted, a quality of attention, as though the room itself had oriented toward what was happening at the coffee table.
The blood in the bowl changed.
It happened gradually and then all at once, the liquid darkening and thickening and then, over the course of perhaps a minute of continuous chanting, converting into something that was no longer liquid. It became powder. Fine, dark red dust, sitting in the bowl.
Enzo looked at the bowl. He looked at the map beside it. He looked at Erica's hands moving over the bowl and then at the bowl again, his impatience betraying him.
"This is different from the locator spell I've seen before," he said.
Erica didn't look up from the bowl. Her hands moved over it, fingers extended, and she reached in and scooped up a handful of the red dust with focused calm.
Enzo opened his mouth.
Erica turned and blew the handful of dust directly onto his face.
“What?” Zion pushed off the wall taking two steps forward and Erica blew the remaining dust that sat on her palm onto his face too.
The powder was fine enough to be inhaled before either of them had time to react and the reaction, when it came, was not a reaction at all.
Enzo's legs went from under him. He went down without catching himself, without a sound, and the floor received him with a solidity that made Molly flinch.
Zion dropped a half second later. Same result. Same finality. Both of them were on the living room floor unconscious.
Molly stared at them.
Then she looked at her mother, who was standing beside the coffee table brushing the remaining dust from her hands with the unhurried composure of someone who had done what she'd intended to do and was satisfied with the result.
"Mum." Molly heard her own voice come out stripped of everything except the shock underneath it. "What did you do?"
Erica didn’t look at her, rather, she acknowledged the unconscious bodies on her living room floor. "Never threaten a witch." She said simply.
Molly looked at Enzo on the floor. At Zion, a few feet away from him. At the complete stillness of both of them.
"Are they—"
"They're alive, unfortunately," Erica said. "The spell wears off in twenty-four hours. They'll wake up with headaches and nothing more." She set the bowl back on the tray with the matter-of-fact efficiency of someone cleaning up after a completed task. "Go and pack your things."
Molly looked at her. "Pack."
"We're leaving this town," Erica said. She was already moving toward the stairs, practical and directed, the manner of someone who had made a decision before this conversation started. "Tonight. I'll explain everything when we're on the road but we're not staying here after this."
"What do you mean we're leaving? What about school, what about catching Maddox—"
"Molly." Her mother stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked at her with the eyes of a woman who was not going to be argued with on this particular point. "Pack what matters. We leave tonight."
Molly stood in the middle of the living room between two unconscious werewolves and her mother's retreating footsteps on the stairs and said, "What happens to them?"
"I'll dispose of them before we go," Erica said from halfway up. "The spell gives us twenty-four hours. Enough time to skin a wolf."
Her footsteps continued up the stairs and then a door opened and closed and she was gone, she’d known this day was coming for longer than tonight.
Molly stood very still.
She looked at Enzo's face, slack and unguarded in unconsciousness in a way it never was when he was awake. She looked at Zion, who had come to the restaurant with a cover story and a compulsion attempt and had also, when it came to it, taken a considerable amount of physical damage rather than give Enzo what he wanted without Molly's consent.
She looked at the stairs.
Dispose of them.
Her mother had said that with a very casual, logistical tone.
Molly's eyes went wide. ‘Zion…’