The Wolves of Midwinter

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Authors: Anne Rice
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sat in the window seat before. I always meant to do it, you know, curl up on that red velvet cushion, but I never did it.”
    “She did that all the time when she was growing up,” said Felix.“That was her place. I’d be working in here for hours, and she’d be in that window seat reading. She kept a little stack of books right there, hidden behind the drapery.”
    “Where? On the left side? Did she sit with her back to the left side of the window?”
    “She did, as a matter of fact. The left-hand corner was her corner. I used to tease her about straining her eyes as the sun went down. She’d read there until there was almost no light at all. Even in the coldest winter she liked to read there. She’d come down here in her robe with her heavy socks on and curl up there. And she didn’t want a floor lamp. She said she could see well enough by the light from the desk. She liked it that way.”
    “That’s just what I did,” Reuben said in a small voice.
    There was a silence. The fire had died to embers.
    Finally Reuben stood up. “I’m exhausted. I feel like I’ve been running for miles. All my muscles are aching. I’ve never felt such a need for sleep.”
    Felix rose slowly, reluctantly.
    “Well, tomorrow,” he said, “I’ll make some calls. I’ll talk to her man friend in Buenos Aires. It ought to be easy enough to confirm that she was buried as she wanted to be.”
    He and Felix moved towards the stairs together.
    “There’s something I have to ask,” said Reuben as they went up. “Whatever made you come down when you did? Did you hear a noise, or sense something?”
    “I don’t know,” said Felix. “I woke up. I experienced a kind of frisson, as the French call it. Something was wrong. And then of course I saw you, and I saw that the wolf hair was rising on you. We do signal each other in some impalpable way when we go into the change, you’re aware of that.”
    They paused in the dark upstairs hallway before Felix’s door.
    “You aren’t uneasy being alone now, are you?” Felix asked.
    “No. Not at all,” said Reuben. “It wasn’t that kind of fear. I wasn’t afraid of her or that she’d harm me. It was something else altogether.”
    Felix didn’t move or reach for the doorknob. Then he said, “I wish I’d seen her.”
    Reuben nodded. Of course Felix wished for that. Of course Felix wondered why she would come to Reuben. How could he not wonder about that?
    “But ghosts come to those who can see them, don’t they?” Reuben asked. “That’s what you said. Seems my dad said the same thing once, when my mother was scoffing at the very idea.”
    “Yes, they do,” said Felix.
    “Felix, we have to consider, don’t we, that she wants this house restored to you?”
    “Do we have to consider that?” Felix asked in a dejected voice. He seemed broken, his usual spirit utterly gone. “Why should she want me to have anything, Reuben, after the way I abandoned her?” he asked.
    Reuben didn’t speak. He thought of her vividly, of her face, of the anguished expression, of the way that she had reached towards the window. He shuddered. He murmured, “She’s in pain.”
    He looked at Felix again, vaguely aware that the expression on Felix’s face reminded him horribly of Marchent.

5
    T HE PHONE WOKE HIM EARLY ; when he saw Celeste’s name flashing on the screen, he didn’t pick up. In a half sleep he heard her leaving her message. “… and I suppose this is good news for somebody,” she was saying, her voice uncharacteristically flat, “but not for me. I talked to Grace about it, and well, I’m considering Grace’s feelings too. Anyway, I need to see you, because I can’t make a decision here without you.”
    What in the world could she be talking about? He had little interest and little patience. And the strangest most unexpected feeling came over him: he could not remember why he had ever claimed to love Celeste. How had he ever become engaged to her? Why had he ever

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