Chapter 46: The Point of No Return

I got to the door before anyone else did.

Erik was standing in the yard in the snow with his green truck behind him and his hands at his sides. He was old. He was older than Clara Renn by twenty years and he did not look it. His hair was white and thin and his face was brown and lined and his eyes were a pale gray that had no color in them at all, and he was wearing a canvas coat and a pair of leather gloves and a scarf around his neck.

“Miss Halloran,” he said. “I have been expecting you to come and find me. I thought it would be sooner.”

“You killed my brother,” I said.

“I did,” Erik said. “May I come in? It is cold and I am old and I would like to sit down before we do the rest of it.”

Nobody stopped him. He came up the steps and into the kitchen and sat down in the chair by the stove and took off his gloves and put them on his knee.

Harlan stood up.

“You are Erik Renn,” he said.

“I am Erik Renn. I came here in 1891 with eleven wolves and a forged deed. I am the last one.” He looked around the kitchen at all of us. “I have been the last one for twenty-two years. The others died. The founders died and their children died and their grandchildren died and I kept on going, because the Council had work for me and the work kept me alive.” He put his gloves on the table. “I have been the Council’s maintenance man since 1954. Before that I was the Council’s hand. I have been the hand for eighty-eight years.”

Silas had gone very still.

“The hand,” he said. “You are the one who signs the checks.”

“I am the one who cashes the checks. Your father signed them. His father signed them. The first Silas signed them, and he signed them in the same room where he watched me write the boundary deed in 1891.” Erik looked at the fire. “We were young men together, the first Silas and I. He was a clerk and I was a wolf, and we did what we were told, and we have been doing it ever since.”

I sat down across from him.

“Tell me about my brother,” I said.

Erik looked at me.

“He was a good wolf,” he said. “That is the worst of it. He was a good wolf and he was going to tell the Alpha and the Alpha would have gone to the Council and the Council would have had to answer for the boundary and the Luna and the whole of it.” He put his hands on his knees. “I was in the trees that night because the Beta was going to meet him and I did not trust the Beta to do what needed to be done. I had been watching the Beta for a week. I had been watching him since he found the box in the tack room and read the letters and did not burn them.” He looked at me. “The Beta was soft. He was soft and he was greedy and he was going to keep the coat in a box and the knife in a shed and he was going to be found out. So I followed him.”

“And you watched him put a knife in my brother,” I said.

“I watched him do it badly,” Erik said. “The Beta put a knife in him and left him alive. I came out of the trees and finished it.” He said it the way a man says he mended a fence. “It was quick. He did not suffer long.”

June made a sound behind me.

“Why?” I said. “Why did you not just let him live? He would have told Harlan and Harlan would have gone to the Council and the Council would have answered for it and you would have been finished. That is what you were afraid of. So why not let him live and leave the county?”

Erik looked at me for a long moment.

“Because the Luna is coming home,” he said. “And I have been waiting eighty-eight years for her.”

The kitchen went silent.

“What?” I said.

“The old Alpha cursed the founders and the founders spent eighty-five years trying to keep it quiet,” Erik said. “But I was there when the Luna was pulled out of the pond. I was there when Mary took her into the cellar. I was the man who came to the mill door with the wagon on the third night.” He looked at me. “I took her east. I took her to Walla Walla. I put her in a wagon with a farmer and his wife and I gave them money and I told them to take her to a place where nobody would know her name. And I went back to the Council and I told them she was dead.”

I could not move.

“You saved her,” I said.

“I saved her and then I spent eighty-eight years looking for her,” Erik said. “I found the daughter in 1902. I found the granddaughter in 1932. I found the great-granddaughter in 1948 and she was a girl in this pack with a green scarf and a temper and a brother who died in a car on the Walla Walla road.” He looked at me. “And then I found you.”

“My mother,” I said.

“Your mother,” Erik said. “I came to her in 1954 and I told her what she was. I told her she was the Luna’s line and the curse would come to her children, and I told her the only way to end it was for her to stand in the circle and take the curse. And she looked at me and she said, I have a son and a daughter and I will not put a curse on them, and she told me to get off her land.” He put his gloves back on. “So I went away. And I watched. And when her son died in 1975 I knew the curse had gone to him and I knew that when he died it would go to the next wolf in the line, and it did. It went to the wolf in the field.”

“And my brother?” I said. “What did he have to do with the Luna?”

“Your brother found the box,” Erik said. “He found the letters and the coat and the page, and he wrote to the Council and he asked a question. He asked who Erik Renn was. And the Council wrote back to him and told him to come to Boise and he was going to come to Boise, and if he had come to Boise he would have found out what I am and what I did in 1891.” He looked at me. “I could not have that. Not with the Luna coming home.”

“The Luna is coming home,” I said. “That is what the page says. That is what the whole thing says. What does it mean?”

Erik looked at me.

“It means you,” he said. “It has always meant you. The Luna is the woman of the old blood who stands in the circle at the new moon and takes the curse off the wolf and puts it on herself. That is what the old Alpha meant. That is what my mother told me when I was a boy in 1891.” He put his gloves on the table. “And I have been waiting eighty-eight years for you to be old enough to do it.”

The room was so quiet I could hear the snow on the roof.

“You killed my brother,” I said, “because you were waiting for me to become the Luna.”

“I killed your brother because he was going to ruin it,” Erik said. “I have spent my life keeping the Council’s paper in order and the founders’ crime quiet and the Luna’s line alive, and your brother was going to take it all apart with a letter to Boise.” He looked at me. “I am not sorry. I have not been sorry for eighty-eight years and I am not going to start now. But I am tired. I am the last of the eleven and I have been the Council’s hand for longer than you have been alive and I would like to put it down.”

Harlan stood up.

“You are under arrest,” he said. “For the murder of Owen Halloran and for the abduction of the Luna in 1891 and for eighty-eight years of fraud against this pack and the Council.”

Erik looked at him.

“You cannot arrest me, Alpha,” he said. “I am not a wolf of your pack. I am a Council employee. Only the Council can arrest me and the Council has been paying me since 1954.” He stood up. “But I will go with you. I will go to the pack square tonight and I will stand in front of your pack and I will say what I did. And then I will go to Boise with you in October and I will say it in front of the Alphas.”

“Why?” I said.

Erik looked at me.

“Because the Luna is coming home,” he said. “And when she does, the curse ends, and when the curse ends I will finally be able to die.”