Silas arrived hungry.
Daniel saw it before the man said anything: the glance towards the kitchen door, a pause while Ruth passed carrying bread, the almost involuntary lift of the head as the warm smell crossed the room.
He looked well.
That was the worst of it.
No limp. No open cuts on the leg. His shirt sat easily across his chest, and he put a hand on the back of a chair as though he had entered a place where he knew the people.
Leah stood beside Daniel.
Silas smiled at her.
“Good to see you.”
She didn't smile back.
“I'd like to say the same.”
The smile changed, not disappearing so much as becoming something for him to manage.
“Fair.”
Daniel pointed to the table near the window.
“Here.”
He had chosen it because the room was open and Ruth would be working at the desk behind the bar. Jonas was in the kitchen. The side door led onto the terrace; the main door was in plain sight. Daniel had told Ruth the man had entered their house without permission and that he wanted witnesses nearby.
Ruth asked whether she should cancel the meeting.
He said no.
She had looked at him for long enough that he knew she thought this was foolish. Then she said she would be there.
Now Silas sat.
Leah took the chair beside Daniel. Silas looked at the arrangement and seemed about to make a joke, then thought better of it.
Daniel set the phone on the table.
“It's recorded.”
“The night?”
“Yes.”
Silas looked at the phone.
“That must have been difficult.”
Daniel's hand tightened on the chair.
Silas saw.
“I don't mean watching yourself. I mean watching me.”
“I didn't do anything.”
“I know.”
The easy agreement left Daniel with nowhere to put the anger he'd prepared.
Leah said, “We saw all of it.”
Silas looked at her.
“The change.”
“Yes.”
“And afterwards.”
“Yes.”
A bell sounded from the kitchen. Daniel had left soup warming, because the room before service had always been a place where people ate and because he'd refused to let this man make him stand helpless beside a table.
He brought three bowls, then bread. Leah watched him. Silas watched the bowl.
“Parsnip?”
Daniel sat down.
“Eat it or don't.”
Silas took the spoon.
The first mouthful changed his face. Real pleasure, almost childish. He looked up at Daniel.
“That's very good.”
“You're not here for lunch.”
“I can do more than one thing.”
Leah gave a short, unwilling laugh.
Daniel looked at her.
She stopped, annoyed with herself and then with him for noticing.
Silas buttered a piece of bread. His hands were broad across the knuckles, the nails clean and unevenly cut. Daniel had watched those hands become paws, then become the hand which made his body bleed.
“You used my key,” he said.
“Yes.”
“From the drawer.”
“Yes.”
“When we fed you.”
“I came back later.”
“Why?”
Silas set the bread down.
“Because you said you would carry it.”
Leah leaned forward.
“He was trying to get me out of the car.”
“I did get you out.”
“We know that.”
Silas looked at her and seemed hurt, briefly, that the fact hadn't improved his position.
Daniel said, “I didn't know what you meant.”
“You knew hurt.”
“One person's hurt. Once.”
Silas looked towards the window.
A dog passed with a woman pulling its lead. The animal stopped to sniff the terrace steps. Silas watched until they moved on.
“I couldn't explain everything on that bank,” he said.
“You could explain now.”
“Yes.”
Daniel waited.
The man rubbed one thumb across the side of his bowl.
“I have to change. On the moon date. Midnight to sunrise. You've seen that much.”
“You came into my room to do it.”
“I wanted to be close.”
Daniel felt Leah turn towards him, not quite touching.
“You didn't need to,” he said.
“No.”
“You could have been anywhere.”
“Somewhere out of people's way.”
“But you came to me.”
Silas looked at him.
“It was quieter.”
Daniel stared.
His bedroom. His sleeping body. Quieter.
Leah said, “And the wounds?”
Silas picked up the spoon and put it down again.
“When I come back as a man, I can give the night's hurt to him. The new things. Not everything I've ever had.”
He pulled his collar slightly aside. A pale line crossed the upper chest, something old and badly healed.
“This stays. The things from before stay.”
Daniel looked at the man's right leg beneath the table.
“The cuts.”
“Branches. I came through a place too fast.”
“And the cuts on my arms in July?”
“Wire. A fence I tried to get through.”
Daniel remembered the doctor asking what he had caught himself on. He had gone home and searched their garden for an answer.
“What were you doing?”
“Running.”
“From what?”
Silas smiled a little.
“Something which thought it could stop me.”
“Someone?”
“Not that night.”
Leah said, “What night was my partner's hand?”
The spoon stopped moving.
Silas looked at Daniel's left hand.
“A dog.”
Daniel pulled it beneath the table.
“What did you do to it?”
“It went for me.”
“What did you do?”
Silas didn't answer at once.
“I killed it.”
The room seemed very quiet.
From the kitchen Jonas called something to Ruth, asking where she wanted a box.
Silas looked towards the sound.
Daniel said, “Did you have to?”
“It was biting me.”
“That doesn't answer.”
The man's jaw moved once.
“No.”
Daniel looked at his hand in his lap. He had carried that morning for four weeks, worked around it, slept badly because it hurt. Somewhere a dead animal had lain with the body which damaged this one.
“Does a bite make another?” Leah asked.
“No.”
“Then Daniel—”
“Doesn't have to worry about that.”
Daniel looked up.
Silas corrected himself.
“Not about becoming one from a wound. There's only one.”
“Only you?”
“At the moment.”
He said it softly enough that Daniel could have pretended not to hear the last three words.
Leah didn't.
“What does that mean?”
“It can be passed. It can't be multiplied.”
“How?”
“Not with teeth.”
Daniel watched him.
“We're not doing that now,” Silas said.
“Then don't offer it.”
“I haven't offered.”
The man took another mouthful of soup. Daniel wanted to knock the bowl onto the floor.
Instead he said, “Why didn't it happen in June?”
Silas swallowed.
“You weren't at home.”
“I was at the hospital.”
“I know.”
“So?”
“I couldn't get to you.”
“You mean it isn't something which happens wherever I am.”
“No. I have to come back. I have to put my hand on you.”
Daniel remembered the chest rising under the palm.
“Like that.”
“Yes.”
“Through a shirt?”
“No.”
“While I sleep.”
“You don't have to be asleep.”
The words made the room change around him. He had been looking at the bed as the dangerous place. Now Silas was sitting across a table, within the distance one person could cover by standing.
He moved his chair back a little.
Silas watched without appearing surprised.
“The offer you made,” he said, “was enough. I don't need you to say it again.”
“I can say no now.”
“Yes.”
“But you'll still do it.”
“If I can.”
Leah's face hardened.
Silas looked towards her.
“I won't pretend it's nice because you asked me in a room with people.”
“No,” she said. “You waited until he was asleep for that.”
A flush rose across his cheekbones.
For the first time Daniel enjoyed seeing him uncomfortable.
Silas put the spoon down.
“It has to be before sunrise. After that, whatever happened is mine. It stays.”
“So the locked door—”
“Is a locked door.”
“You can't come through.”
“No.”
“And if I leave?”
“I'd have to find you.”
“How?”
Silas looked at him.
“The way people find people.”
Daniel breathed more easily for one moment, then remembered how much the man already knew. The inn, the workshop, the house, their names and numbers. Things given without imagining they might need taking back.
Leah said, “Can you stop changing?”
“Not while I have it.”
“If you die?”
Silas looked at her for so long Daniel began to hear it as a threat she hadn't made.
“Then it ends.”
“The wolf?”
“Yes.”
“And what you did to him?”
“The connection ends.”
Daniel felt his damaged fingers against his thigh.
“This goes away?”
“No.”
The man looked at the hand again.
“That has to heal the way anything heals.”
“And if I died?” Daniel asked.
Leah turned sharply.
“If you died,” Silas said, “I'd need someone else.”
Daniel stared.
The man didn't soften it.
“You'd still have the wolf.”
“Yes.”
“You'd find another person.”
“If they agreed to carry.”
“Like I agreed.”
Silas looked down.
Daniel had been making a picture of himself as the thing which kept the monster alive. His death ending a problem, his distance stopping more than a hand reaching. The man across the table had a life which could continue after his.
Leah touched his wrist.
He was glad she did. He was angry that Silas could see how glad.
“How long have you had it?” she asked.
“A long time.”
“That isn't—”
“I'll tell you. Not today.”
Daniel let out a short laugh.
“You've got appointments?”
Silas looked at him, and then, absurdly, smiled.
“No. I have limits too.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
He leaned back. The daylight from the window caught the lines beside his mouth.
“You've seen a bad part. I know it's a very bad part. But you haven't seen what it feels like out there.”
Daniel said nothing.
“The first breath. Everything comes into it. Things you'd never know were near you. Water upstream, blood beneath a skin, something small hiding so still it thinks the world has stopped.”
Leah was listening.
Daniel wished the description hadn't been beautiful.
“The ground moves under you,” Silas said. “You don't move on it the way you do now. You take it. You can go from one place to another without all the little fears in between.”
His voice had changed. Not a salesman's warmth now. Something remembered so strongly it had taken him away from the room.
Daniel knew that feeling from less impossible pleasures: the first taste of a thing cooked exactly right, Leah's hand finding him in the dark, a knife going through food with no resistance he hadn't expected.
He didn't want to have something in common with this man.
“You put the fears here,” he said.
Silas looked at him again.
“Yes.”
Ruth came over with a jug of water. She set it on the table and stayed standing.
“Everything all right?”
Daniel knew what she was asking.
“We're nearly finished.”
She looked at Silas.
“The room's needed before twelve.”
He nodded politely.
“Thank you.”
When she had gone, he took out something small and metal and put it beside the phone.
The spare key.
Daniel looked at it.
“You've changed it.”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“You don't get to say good.”
Silas closed his mouth.
Leah didn't reach for the key.
Daniel took it, held it with his bad hand until the edge hurt, then put it in his pocket.
Silas stood.
For a moment the man looked uncertain what farewell was allowed. No hand on a shoulder. No easy touch.
He looked at Daniel's bowl, still almost full.
“You ought to eat.”
Daniel nearly laughed.
“You can go.”
Silas nodded.
At the door he paused and turned towards Leah.
“You were very brave afterwards.”
She looked at him.
“I don't remember afterwards.”
“At dinner. Telling it.”
“Don't.”
The man nodded once and went out.
Daniel watched him cross the terrace and walk towards the road. Narrow shoulders beneath a creased jacket. He was limping slightly now, perhaps from some old hurt he'd kept. Daniel couldn't tell.
Jonas came through carrying a tray.
“Who's that?”
Daniel looked at Leah.
“The man who got her out.”
Jonas glanced towards the window.
“Not how I pictured him.”
“No.”
After he went back into the kitchen, Leah picked up her spoon. Her soup was cold.
Daniel reached for his own.
The parsnip tasted sweet. The garlic had rounded in the oven exactly as he'd wanted. He could still take pleasure in it.
He swallowed, looked at the door and took another mouthful.