Chapter 183

Malachi

I heard the truck long before I saw it.

It came grinding up the track from the eastern road with no lights, slowly, in low gear, the way you drive when you don’t want to be seen and know you will be anyway. I was at the door of the hut before it was halfway up the hill, with the knife in my hand and Ash up in me, all the way, every hair on end.

Behind me, Sloane said, “It’s them. Liam said. It’s all right.”

I didn’t put the knife away.

The truck stopped at the bottom of the slope, by the wall of the sheepfold. The engine died. In the silence afterward, I heard the doors open, and two people get out, and their boots in the snow. One of them I knew. Juniper, and wormwood, and old smoke. The witch.

The other was a stranger. A man. Not Moonhaven. A wolf I had never smelled, cool and green and far off, like rain on pine.

He came up the slope ahead of her, slowly, with his hands out from his sides where I could see them. Tall. Dark-