A week had passed. A week since the wolves and the tea and Alexander. A week since he wished to never see Quentin Bronx's devilishly handsome face again. And for every day he made that wish, Jaylin had found himself in the exact opposite situation.
Quentin came in night after night to borrow the herbal recipe book, but instead of taking it home, he'd take a seat at the nearest table and leave his own notes on the empty pages. An hour. Exactly an hour, he'd stay. From nine PM to ten, Jaylinwas stuck to his seat, trying much too hard not to spare a glance at Quentin Bronx.
He never approached Jaylin, never said a word. He just sat, with the book in one hand, a pencil in the other, eraser tapping against his lips. When the clock struck ten, Quentin would gather his things and leave without a word.
Sometimes Alex would stop by, too. Usually with some kind of pastry Quentin had cooked up. On Tuesday, it was rhubarb pie. On Thursday, pumpkin pecan bread. Today, maple butter cookies. And Jaylin always waited until the both of them had left before he took a single bite.
It didn't alleviate the frustrations of having to exist within a thirty-foot radius of Quentin Bronx. No. Even now he was at it, pencil sprawling against paper, the noise like a conductor for the volatile frustrations burning up every last of Jaylin's nerves.
"Jaylin, are you serious. Are you serious?" Tisper was flinging herself back in her chair, biting at her closed fist. "Oh my God, he's so hot."
"Tisper, shut up," Jaylin whispered back.
Across the room, he could recognize a slight smirk on Quentin's face. A small, knowing tilt to his lips while he studied the pages in front of him.
"He took you back to his place and you somehow managed to leave with your pants around your waist? What is wrong with you, Jaylin?"
"Shut up."
"Maybe there's an explanation for the werewolf thing. Like maybe it's one of those gay slang words—like a bear, you know. But harrier."
Quentin was biting his pencil now, his grin too wide for misunderstanding.
"He can hear you."
"Oh god," Tisper covered her face and sunk down in her chair, peeking sheepishly through her fingers. When Quentin returned to his work, she straightened and turned her wrist to take a peek at her watch, gathered her things together and flung her bag over her shoulder. "I have Saturday classes anyway. I should go home, get some sleep. Four hours a night isn't cutting it."
She promised to call him in the morning, bid him good night with a kiss on the cheek and threw the large library doors open—both of them, not just the one. Even with the weary exterior of a starving zombie, Tisper had a thing for dramatic exits.
With her comfort gone, Jaylin watched the clock tick on. As the minutes passed and Quentin still hadn't left, he grew increasingly impatient. He couldn't focus like this. With that tick, tick, tick of his pen against the table. With his deliberate gazes to the window on the far wall, mulling over the words on his head before he put them to paper.
The problem wasn't that Quentin was here. It was that Jaylin had never seen him here before now. As if his thoughts weren't already so full of "werewolves" and the sight of blood bespattered headstones, this man—this sure reminder of those things—was haunting him in plain sight. He needed to say something. He needed to draw his line in the sand and he needed to do it now. But Quentin didn't flinch when Jaylin brought a palm down at the table where he sat. He didn't acknowledge him at all.
"Hey, asshole," Jaylin presented himself.
But Quentin was focused on the pages in his book, reading until the end and then flipping to the next one over.
"Did you know nutmeg is a psychotropic?" he said, finally. "A high enough dosage can cause hallucinations."
"Hey," Jaylin hissed again. "You need to go. You're not even technically supposed to be here this late."
"Nutmeg," Quentin said, baffled. "Huh. Amazing what you can learn when you open your mind to it." Finally, he looked up to Jaylin, and the book clapped closed in his hands. "Did you know that apple seeds contain cyanogenic glysosides? Or that the smoke of an oleander could kill a grown man? A simple everyday garden staple... a flower weeding its way into most every elementary school playground in America. One bite. That's all it takes, one bite." He was standing now, his long fingers following the edge of the table as he moved around it, drawing imminently closer to Jaylin. "Foxglove, larkspur, monkshood, snakeroot..." That friendly smile Quentin usually wore was gone. Now he was prowling forward, head tilted, brown hooded eyes fixed to every movement Jaylin made. "...nightshade, rosary pea..."
The scent of Quentin rushed him like a storm—whiskey, and something mint. A sheen of metal glinted from the breast pocket of his jacket. A flask, Jaylin thought. A shudder scurried up his spine and he retreated a step back until the table dug into his tail bone.
Then Quentin's eyes swept down, flickered back up to pin Jaylin's gaze. "... dolls eye," he added, and the depth of his voice crawled into Jaylin, settled somewhere deep in his stomach.
This wasn't what Jaylinhad come to understand of Quentin Bronx. What he had expected was a peaceful exit. A self-assured comment and a polite "Okay, see you tomorrow," But this was different.
There was a dark cloud around Quentin Bronx, and Jaylin couldn't take his eyes off the storm.
"Deadly things don't come with cautionary cross-bone signs or a consumer warning taped to the side, Jaylin. They're fragrant and vibrant and beautiful. They lure you with songs and smells and innocence."
Quentin had his hands pressed to the table top on either side of Jaylin. He was leaning away, as far as he could from Quentin Bronx, but if Jaylin truly wanted to, he would have made his escape. He would have ducked and ran. He would have thrown a punch or kneed him between the legs. But nothing like that even came to mind. Quentin was like the moon, luring the ocean waves, pulling them closer and closer. And Jaylin was trapped in the white caps, swimming willingly from the sharp jutted stones, but clinging to the reefs beneath his toes so he wouldn't lose sight of the shore.
"And you," Quentin's breath blew against the strays of Jaylin's hair, fallen disheveled over his eyes. He was pulledhalf way onto the tabletop to avoid the force of his gaze. The hungry power in his wolfish stare. And it wasn't only that he could feel Quentin's breath, but taste the perfume of liquor that followed his words. "You seem so set on eating the oleander."
Then Quentin pushed off of the table. He was walking away, giving Jaylin the air to breathe again. And for some reason, Jaylin wanted to stop him from going.
Quentin swept his book from the table and shook it in the air, that friendly smile of his back in play. "Mind if I take this with me?"
Jaylin felt like his face was on fire, his feet frozen. Like he was standing on the Himalayans and peeking into the gates of hell. He slid down from the edge of the table and it took a good moment to find purchase on the ground. It was almost like he had to remind himself that his body had bones.
"Just... bring it back," he managed.
Quentin looked him in the eye so easily, like none of it had ever happened. "Thanks," he told him. Then he made his way towards the doors, stopping only for a moment to look back at Jaylin, to take in the empty library with a slow analytical sweep of his eyes. His gaze traveled to the cookies on the counter and he nodded.
"Careful," he said. "Nutmeg."
And with nothing more, Quentin walked out through the library doors.
-
Jaylin wasn't necessarily surprised to see Eduardo sitting on the sofa when he arrived home that morning. He'd been visiting once or twice a week, bringing Jaylin pamphlets, going over his admission, discussing classes and tuition.
Flora taught morning kindergarten and wasn't able to attend their meetings, but so far Jaylin had managed to talk himself into mild excitement over returning to school. It took weeks but a small part of him—a tiny minuscule part of him was actually looking forward to it.
He'd put in his application to a hand full of community colleges, as well as the University of Washington—though his chances were slim, sneaking his way into the Seattle UW would mean going to school with Tisper again and spending half of the next four years at the most beautiful campus in the North West.
It meant leaving this place.
"You seem distracted today," Eduardo was saying. When Jaylin looked up he was leaning halfway across the table, brows askew but a smile on his face.
"Sorry, it's just..."
Olivia. Just Olivia, drunk or high or both, probably, setting Jaylin's phone on fire like it was her obligation. Like he was a simple superman for hire. Like he could possibly help her any more than she could help herself.
"If you have something you need to do, feel free," Eduardo offered. "We can finish your essay tomorrow."
"I'm fine."
His eyes set back on the screen of Eduardo's laptop. Then Jaylinwas lost again in the wall of words he'd written.
He was back in the library, back against the desk, back in the epicenter of Quentin's stare. What Jaylin couldn't shake was the look in his eyes. There was a kind of power, a control in them. Anger and something else. Fear, Jaylin thought. But that didn't make sense to him. What did Quentin have to be afraid of?
"Jaylin?" Eduardo's voice breached his thoughts and Jaylin snapped a glance at him.
"I'm, um, tired." He saved the file, shut the laptop screen. "I haven't slept yet. We'll try again tomorrow."
"Sure," Eduardo returned. Jaylin could sense a kind of edge in his words. It was inconvenient, Jaylin knew that, but it was nearing ten AM and he hadn't gotten a blink of sleep. Eduardo gathered his things and knocked his chair back as he stood. "Maybe you should come visit our home sometime, it's probably easier to focus there."
Jaylin didn't quite understand what he meant until he took a gander at the clutter around him. He'd been too tired from work to do his chores. Dishes were spilling out of the sink, his college information pamphlets scattered across the counter—some splashed with coffee, others wet with water and one splattered in some strange jelly substance he just couldn't identify.
"Yeah," he gathered the laptop cord and handed the machine over to Eduardo. "Your place is probably better."
Eduardo gathered his papers and said his farewell and Jaylin crawled off to his room and slept until well into evening. Come sundown, he dragged himself from bed to pick up around the house and sift through the movies he'd rented for something decent to watch. Tisper had planned a movie night, and between work and college applications, he'd forgotten all about it. Luckily, they never needed much to have a good time. Sadie showed up first with enough popcorn to feed a theater and a six pack of beer, then Matthew with a gas station pizza and a bag of the spiciest potato chips on the market.
Tisper was late, as usual. She brought nothing but the VHS tape of the 1941 classic The Wolfman she'd purchased from a yard sale over the summer. No one liked classic horror movies quite as much as Tisper, but everyone was happy to oblige and the four of them managed to fit comfortably in his much too tiny living room.
Jaylin sat on the floor between Sadie's legs, nipping on chips while she brushed through his hair with a flip-comb. Tisper sat in the middle, Matthew on the side, trying to sneak an arm around her shoulders a good portion of the time. The picture was fuzzy, but Jaylin loved the way classic movies rested on the ears, so he didn't mind the bleary storm of black-and-white grains. The four of them wasted away the first half, laughing at the golden age of acting and the cardboard-quality set production, then the time had arrived when Larry first found himself beginning to change into a wolf. Long, wispy hairs grew from his legs, longer and longer and longer—and thus began the Wolfman.
"Do you really think it happens like that?" Jaylin asked. "You think when they change, it starts with one part of them? Could they stop changing halfway through? You know, like a mermaid but wolf. A wolfmaid."
"Merwolf," Matt corrected him—though he was probably just as wrong.
Sadie tossed back the last of her beer. "'They?' I can't believe you're buying into this werewolf crap. Would you believe anything Quentin tells you?"
"I would," Tisper confessed, peeling a slice of pepperoni from her pizza and popping it in her mouth. "He could tell me he was God and I'd believe him."
"You're an atheist," said Jaylin.
"He could make me his disciple."
"Oh my god," Sadie groaned. "Please."
Matt laughed and his dozens of freckles danced alive on his cheeks. "Why can't we ever talk about sex around you?"
"Because I didn't bring enough beer for this shit," Sadie replied.
Tisper snorted into her pizza and said with a mouthful, "And what if it was women we were talking about?"
"Then I might just have enough beer," said Sadie.
Matt reached for the bag of chips and dug out a noisy fistful. "Come on, we aren't that bad."
"You aren't that good either. You're like the hummus of genders." Sadie cracked open a fresh bottle of beer and the cap went airborne. "No one ever really craves hummus. They just eat it cause it's there." Then she hunched forward, coiled her arms around Jaylin's neck and squeezed until their cheeks smashed together. "Except Jaylin. He's too sweet to be hummus."
Jaylin laughed and veered away from her affections. "Thanks."
"So, what if he was a werewolf?" Matt asked. "Why would he come to you about it?"
"To appease him with his sexual prowess," Tisper teased.
Sadie cleared her throat and announced in a deep, movie-trailer-narrator kind of voice, "Quentin Bronx, gay werewolf. A man with raw primal instincts and an insatiable hunger for—"
"For ass," Tisper said
And while the three of them squirmed and laughed and spoke over one another, Jaylin yearned to escape the cramped space of the living room. He jumped to his feet and wandered into the kitchen, cracking open the window to relinquish the heat of the fireplace.
But this time, when Jaylin forced the window open, a yellow glint in the darkness sent a chill up his spine. At the edge of the brier was the black wolf, sitting as patiently as he had a week ago. He didn't move, save for the twitch of his sharp, nicked ear. He just sat and watched Jaylin with those eyes, two yellow flecks in the dark night.
Then, almost like he knew Jaylin would call for witness, the wolf rose up on his large padded paws and escaped behind the bushes, his long bristly tail the last of him to sweep behind the honeysuckles.
Jaylin looked back at Sadie, who was still tipped over in blissful laughter with the others.
"Jaylin, come on! You're missing it!"
She didn't remember what happened that night. She would have mentioned it by now if she had. Everything she saw—the wolf that had nearly had her in its jaws, the one that had saved them, the fact that Quentin was somehow connected to them both. Sadie didn't remember any of it.
Jaylin stepped away from the window, nearly expecting those yellow eyes to show themselves again, but there was only darkness where the wolf had been.
Darkness and the howl of the hounds.