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an; I'd just like you all to know I cried for 3 hours because I had previously written this entire chapter and it got inexplicably wiped from every folder in my drive and my backup.

Anyway, I tried to replicate it, but the first version was so much better. I am definitely sad about it. It's a good chapter though, so enjoy.

"What on earth have you gotten yourself into?"

Raven's voice couldn't be snuffed. Not by the hard highway wind or the buzzing backdrop of the worn radio speakers. Matt flexed his fingers around the steering wheel, signaled and pulled into the fast lane. Alcohol was really the only thing that shut the dead man up. The sooner he was home, the sooner he could flush raven out.

"Fine, but at least admit it before you drink me away, babydoll."

Shut up.

"You've got a soft spot for the enemy."

Matt gnashed his teeth, boot inclining to the gas pedal. He didn't have a soft spot for anything. He was just a good guy, that's it. He was a good guy and Bailey had lived a fucked life. It didn't mean anything in the end; every puppy-killin' villain had a tragic back story. He could be a sociopath, a narcissist. He could be plannin' every moment of the day, playing Matt like a puppet. Tuggin' him by all his dumb, soft strings.

"I'd know if he was."

You don't know shit.

"I know more than you wish I knew, Darla."

"Don't call me Darla."

Matt felt a stare pin him and realized then that he'd spoken out loud. He turned to Bailey, who mirrored some kinda humorous, half-concerned expression back at him.

"Don't let me interrupt," he said. " You seem to be having a fun conversation with no one."

"It's not—" Matt's knuckles went white around the wheel. He hadn't told anyone about Raven and he hadn't planned to. Not even Jay. But he'd pushed the past out of Bailey—a past he obviously wasn't comfortable sharing. It was only fair Matt return the favor.

That and a small part of him hoped someone might have answers, even if that someone was his literal worst nightmare, personified.

"Listen. I can't turn," Matt admitted. "I'm not a wolf, alright? Can't smell shit like a wolf, can't hear shit like a wolf. The only thing that's changed since I woke up covered in blood is there's this damn voice in my head who thinks he's my fuckin' life coach now. And oh, yeah—I hate sex."

"Sounds like you probably should have just died." Bailey had an arm slung his arm through the open window, the pages of his sketchbook laid open in his lap, pages fluttering in the wind. One slid out further than the rest and something about the portrait caught Matt's gaze. Dark hair, reading glasses, those fuckin' shirts he never buttoned up all the way like he was some kind of irresistible Italian sex symbol, sculpted by the gods themselves. Quentin. Matt knew that face anywhere and Bailey was too good an artist for misunderstandings.

When the hound caught him looking, he slammed the book shut and turned his gaze through the window to the sun that just clipped the crest of Mt. Rainier. "Watch the road, hillbilly. I'm not trying to die tonight."

"Fine," Matt said. "Never wanted it to be my business."

In the silence that followed, Bailey seemed to shift endlessly in his seat. It was his quiet, he'd created it—but for some reason, the silence seemed to irritate him like a bad itch. "It's an old sketch," he said at last.

Matt took his eyes off the road for a fleeting second. "So you're not...y'know. In love with him anymore?"

Bailey didn't answer. He stayed just where he was, cheek in his palm, hair licked back by the wind.

"You know he and Jay are getting married," Matt told him.

There was a dreadful beat of silence after that. Long enough that Matt could count the seconds on his tongue. If it bothered Bailey at all, he didn't seem to react. He stayed just where he'd been, admiring the sinking sun and the distant mountains, and the trees that strobed light through their ever-moving slits. Then quietly, he muttered, "Isn't that cute."

Matt wasn't sure he heard right. Bailey had a habit of speaking like he was never meant to be listened to. "It's a good thing, ain't it?" he asked. "It's all just pheromones or whatever. Bronx said I'd feel it too, but I was only really scared of him. Went away after time."

Again, Bailey was so quiet, it dug at Matt. He rolled up his window so he could hear beyond the wind. "Listen, it—"

Bailey ripped the sketch of Quentin from the sleeve and crumpled it in his fists. One toss through the open window and it was gone as quickly as that—an honest to God piece of art. Probably as fine as the one he'd drawn of Lucy. Probably meant something to him at one point or another. Probably still meant something to him.

"It was never pheromones," Matt heard him say.

He didn't ask Bailey any more questions after that. None about Bronx, none about Danny and none about Ricco.

It was nearly sundown when they pulled into town and a flurry of text messages pulsed through Matt's phone in rapid succession. He caught only a glance of the first, screen dim in a splash of angled sunlight.

Call me, it said. It's Lucy

Matt drove lead-footed all the way back to the farm. The moment they pulled in, he jumped down from the Wrangler and ran for the barn, Bailey's steady footsteps just behind him. From the edge of the doorway, his father's silhouette punched a dark shape into wall in Lucy's calving stall. The closer Matt drew, the more the shadows peeled away. Lucy was nowhere to be seen and a dreadful feeling thrashed in his stomach at the little white lump laying still in the hay.

Bailey pushed past him and hopped over the railing like he'd done it a million times before. He crouched to the ground beside the calf and cleared a string of placenta from her nose. Then he rubbed up her ribs like the friction might spark the life into her again. There was no kindle though. The little calf rocked limp against the hay.

Matt stepped closer and the shadows shifted from his father's eyes. The old man was dark and edged, cut from stone more times than not. The way his clenched jaw feathered made Matt fear to ask. "Is it..."

His dad raised his chin and shoved away from the wall, hands in his jean pockets. "Take note, boys." He said boys but his gaze could separate skin from bone, the way it tore into Matt. "This is what failure looks like."

The dread in his stomach turned to a rotting guilt. "Dad, we—"

"You, Matthew. It's always you. Can't work, can't grow up, can't answer my goddamn phone calls."

Matt couldn't look his father in the eye. He turned to Bailey instead, who had given up on the little calf. He crouched over its corpse now, a shadow of disappointment in his eyes that haunted Matt more than anything else. "I'm sorry. I didn't know."

"None of us knew." Old Jack Richards had a way of straining his voice when he was angry. It was thinner when he yelled—sheer from all his years of smoking. "None of us knew she'd have it today, goddammit. But we were all preparing for it. You know the farmhands don't work on Saturdays. You knew Lucy was—" He went quiet for a moment, lowered his head and shook it. Shook it like it was pointless. So damn pointless. "I have to go to work. I'm running late now. Clean her up." Then he left, every boot step beating against Matt's ears like gunfire.

Bailey stood from the corpse of the calf, his hands bloodied and covered in hay. Matt expected him to go too, to leave him all alone in a dark shed with a dead calf, but instead, Bailey looked to him for an order. What to do next. Where to bury her.

Matt gripped at his hair. Heat burned his face and as much as he tried to keep them back, tears stuck at his eyes. He didn't know if it was the calf he felt bad for or the way he disappointed damn near everyone without even trying, but Matt wanted to sit down in the filthy hay and cry. "I don't understand. I gave her vitamins, molasses. I made sure she ate, even if she didn't have the appetite. I don't get it. We've never had a problem birthing a calf."

"Calm down," Bailey said, giving her a little nudge with his boot. "Her heartbeat was all wrong. Could hear it drag the other day. Probably would've died days after she was born anyway."

If only for a second, Matt sobered of the guilt. "It wasn't a birth complication? She didn't die 'cause we weren't here to help?"

"Heart attack, probably." Bailey crouched and lifted the beast up from the ground, propping the dead calf limp over his shoulder like a bag of feed. He didn't look all that strong, but sometimes Matt forgot this was the same man who carried Jay all those miles through the forest in the dead of night.

"Now get over it and help me bury her," Bailey said.

They took her from the barn and carried her to a maple tree at the edge of the farm. Matt had never had to bury a calf before, but the goats out in the far pasture were always dying from coyote attacks so he was well prepared. Three feet deep, two feet to cover the top of her. Quicklime to keep the pests from digging her up. He went to fetch the lime and two shovels from the shed, but when he recalled Bailey's story about Danny, Matt laid one shovel back down. Instead, he dug the hole himself, the setting sun beating down on his back, his button-down shirt tossed aside to the clean grass where Bailey sat.

He tried to ignore the satisfied look on Bailey's face as the hound relaxed against the maple tree, fingers running over the calf's ears as if she were alive. There was no shame in the way he eyed Matt like a fresh cut of prime rib.

"Y'know, you're making me uncomfortable," Matt said, cutting the shovel into the earth and heaving a heavy stone out of the way.

"It's probably just your jeans," Bailey said. "Feel free to toss them over too."

"Jesus," Matt huffed. He was nearly deep enough, but his back ached and sweat tickled at the back of his neck. He wiped his forehead on his arm and scowled at the film of dirt that came off. "Y'know we have like five other farmhands you could be cat callin' instead of me. Theo's got forty pounds of muscle on him."

"They aren't here," said Bailey. "Besides, I like this view. Your dad's not bad either."

The dirt he from his shovel thwapped hard against the ground and Matt paused his digging to wrinkle his nose at Bailey. "He's like fifty."

"I've got my daddy problems, you've got yours."

"Yours an ass too?" Matt asked.

"Wouldn't know. Never met him. Meeting yours makes me kind of glad."

"He's not so bad." Matt dropped the shovel to the dirt and slapped the dust from his hands. "Doesn't mean the shit he says anyway." He stepped out of the hole and crouched to heave the calf up into his arms, but for the briefest moment, Bailey seemed to cling to her, fingers dragging along the fur on her head until she was gone. Then he pulled his hand away like he'd realized he was touching something dead all this time.

"You have a weird appreciation for animals," Matt said as he dragged the calf down into the dirt and reached for the bag of lime. "I mean, for someone who actively eats them alive."

Bailey gave him that clever, wicked grin of his. "I have the greatest appreciation for the ones I eat."

As Matt covered the calf in dirt and packed the pile flat on top, Bailey stood and stretched his arms over his head. The sun was just beginning to clip behind the tips of the evergreens on the hill. A halo of its aura wrapped his tan elbows, leaked through the threads of his hair until it looked more russet than black.

"Hey, Cowboy," he said. "Wanna get out of here?"

Matt stood there atop the grave, confused and caked in dirt. With any breath now, the sun would set and he had work early the next morning—but he didn't say no. Because some part of him, very deep, was begging to be anywhere else.

They washed off with the hose and gathered into Matt's wrangler, still just as filthy as before. Bailey directed him miles out, toward a park with trails that led into forests so dense, Matt couldn't see through the trees to the stars above. He parked the wrangler and Bailey led him down a winding path, toward a hill with a nick in the trees. From there, they climbed, hands catching on rough bark and toes digging into the earth.

Bailey was fast, his slender shape bounding between trees and swinging on branches, and despite Matt's knack for the outdoors, he couldn't keep up. A faint path had been stamped into the ground, but the night was too dark to see much more than his own feet, and he hadn't brought his flashlight or even a phone—so when the hound vanished into the dark, fear turned his bones cold. He'd lose himself if he tried to turn around, so Matt followed the trail until he found himself circling an old elm, fearful that if he left the unique curl of the branches he'd never know his way back to the park.

Then something hard hooked around his neck.

He was crushed back, his air-supply clipped by the forearm crushing into his throat. Matt clawed at the skin, blood beating in his ears. The arm went tighter and his skull strained from the pressure. He tried to call out for Bailey, but managed only a pathetic strangled sound out before he was crushed back into silence. They'd found him. The rats had found him. Jesus, he knew it was too easy. He knew takin' down superhuman bastards like those couldn't be that simple.

Then a hot breath brushed his hairline. "Didn't anyone ever teach you to tap out?"

At the sound of Bailey's voice, he smacked against the arm around his throat until it loosened and he broke free, slamming back against the elm and choking in air. "What the fuck is your problem?"

"Thought it'd bring the wolf out," Bailey said, grin flashing. He was all shadows except for those teeth—long and sharp and all straight, but for the crooked left canine. Something about the wayward tooth only made his grin more cunning. "Thought you wanted to work for the fuzz, Woody?"

"I do."

"And you don't know how to break out of a choke hold? Do you know any self-defense at all?"

Matt hesitated. He'd read about defensive fighting and he knew how to block a punch for the most part. Jaylin had taught him things back in high school, but Matt had never been much of a fighter. He was good at bouncing back from a hit and that was all that ever mattered to him.

"I'll teach you. Take out your knife," Bailey said. "You've got one, right? A guy like you wouldn't go out at night with a guy like me unless you had a knife."

Matt patted at his pockets but knives were for hunting and cooking. He never left the house with one. "I don't..."

Bailey's head jerked to the side like an attentive parrot. He eyed Matt for a quiet moment, then he reached into his own pocket and dropped something cold into his palm. "Use mine."

The blade was heavy in his hand, the wooden grip so worn from over-use that the brand symbol was nearly rubbed off altogether. Matt pressed the button and a spring-loaded blade popped from the top, glinting with a string of tungsten moonlight. "Why do I need this?"

Again, Bailey grinned. Matt couldn't remember a time he saw a smile from the hound that hadn't been bloomed from sarcasm or anger, or summoned to add a suggestive nature to the situation. Bailey always had a reason for smilin' on the rare occasion he did. Except this time. It bared the sharp ends of his teeth and the moon caught in the edges of his crow eyes. But it was a strangely earnest smile. Not much wicked about it.

"Cause, Cowboy." He moved a step closer and the earth sunk beneath Matt's boots. " I'm gonna teach you how to kill a man."

Of course. They couldn't just go on a nice hike after a long day. There had to be some kinda murder involved.

Matt scoffed and stepped away toward the trail. "I don't need to know—"

He was shoved back against the elm and the palm that splayed over his chest could have been coals the way it burned through his shirt. "I think you do," Bailey said. Twigs snapped beneath his shoes as he shifted one step closer. He didn't lower his head to look at Matt—he just watched with low, calculative eyes. It made Matt feel so small. Bailey was hardly as built—not as thick as himself, not as muscled, but just the way he towered. The way he stared. Matt hated it. He hated that he wasn't tall enough to look him in the eye. That those few inches made him feel so intimidated.

There were rainclouds on the horizon and Matt felt it—not in the sky, but in the the way Bailey watched him, like young game. Baby elk, barely strong enough to stand on his own two feet, but not to be eaten. Game to be played with—to be trapped between the wolfish jaws, toyed with until fright did him in itself. Who was Bailey Walters and what in the hell kinda storm was he bringing in his shadow?

A hand wrapped around his wrist and Matt jerked away from his gaze, to the glinting silver blade in his grip.

"It's my job to make sure the rats don't eat you alive, so pay attention," Bailey said. " Wolves are a little different than humans." He brought Matt's grip up until the blade pressed to his own side, laid flat between the bones of his ribs. "Attack the lungs, but only if you want them to live. It'll take them down. They can't breath or speak. Eventually, they'll start to drown on their own blood. The were-body heals organs faster than anything else, so you can expect an hour of down time. After that they'll be fine." As the blade rose up, the slightest drumbeat of a pulse echoed down the metal of the knife.

"Heart," Bailey said. Again, the knife pulsed as it brushed the center of his chest. A thump, thump, thump that crawled down to the bones of Matt's wrist. "Deadly, but it's not like it is on TV. Gotta be good to hit the heart..."

But Matt wasn't listening. He found Bailey's eyes in the dark—stone cold, dark as they were, he searched them and searched them. For that green, maybe. For anything that made sense. There had to be something behind the black. There had to be a reason Bailey was the way he was—why he did the things he did.

There had to be a reason why he wasn't that boy in the photo anymore.

His voice broke through like water draining from the ears. "...is the organ that takes the longest to recover, but don't expect to reach it with a blade like this."

When he realized he hadn't been listening, a strange feeling twisted through Matt he was washed down with a sudden panic. He was too close—this was too much.

"I get it," Matt said. And once more, as he tried to slip away, Bailey caught him, slammed him back against the bark of the tree. Same burning palm. Same burning chest. The hound hunched forward, his forearm rested against the wood above Matt's head, too close now to see properly. So close, Matt held the air in his lungs for fear of sharing his breath.

"One more," Bailey said, taking his hand again. "The most important one." He brought Matt's arm up over his shoulder to rest the blade on the back of his neck. "The quickest way to kill a wolf is through the spine." His hand moved up, adjusting his finger-position on the grip and Matt's heart staggered when the blade pressed to Bailey's skin—not hard enough to cut, but hard enough to remind him that the one person in this world he couldn't trust was holding a knife to the most vital part of him, just for demonstration.

Maybe Bailey trusted him more than he deserved. Or maybe the hound just wasn't afraid to die.

"Like this," Bailey was telling him, changing the angle of the blade. "Through the disc, clean to the spine. Then jerk up. Hard, like you're splitting wood, yeah?"

Matt nodded, though he hardly realized it.

"Good. It takes precision, but it's the only killing blow we have. Our coupe de grace," Bailey said. Then the warmth of his hand left Matt's wrist.

Helpless to himself, it rested there still. Over his shoulder, at the back of his neck, blade relaxed away from his skin.

Every time he thought he knew who Bailey Walters was, something changed. His face or his smile or the way he spoke—he was always turning into something else. Molding with the days and movin' with the wind. Matt wanted to know what was left when you peel apart all the faces. Was he like a Russian nesting doll? Did he get smaller and smaller with every shell?

What the hell made up the core of him?

Matt didn't want to give up his search through those night-sky eyes, but now they were looking back. Bailey was staring into him with a strange focus—a dash of curiosity, but just a dash. When he didn't move his arm himself, Bailey unhooked it from around his neck and stepped back into the soft ground. Cold air wrapped Matt like a blizzard, but his chest still burned where that hand had been.

"Keep the knife," Bailey said, turning ahead toward the faint trail in the forest. "I have a dozen."

As he gained distance, Matt rubbed the spot on his chest, praying the heat away. And when he felt his legs could take him, he caught up to Bailey—but not too quickly. Slow enough to linger behind. To savor the space that had been gouged between them.

"You know, you have a fun way of making things weird," laughed the dead man in his head.

Matt refused to acknowledge him with a reply. He followed in silence through the jet of the forest until Bailey stopped at the edge of a bluff, where a lake of stars freckled the spaces around the slender shape of him. They crowded the curves of his skinny waist and the relaxed arms that hung by his side. Lit up all his strange, sharp edges like a halo. It wasn't until Matt moved closer that he realized the stars weren't stars at all, but the glinting lights of the city beneath them, glittering like wet glass in the night.

"Welcome to heaven, Cowboy," Bailey said.

This time, Matt did stand beside him. The world opened up below—every diner and movie theater and shopping strip Matt had ever been to could be picked apart from where they stood. In the distance, a train crooned and a car radio boomed into the night. "How did you find this place?"

"I'm a hound." Bailey lowered himself to the ground, legs hanging off the ledge at the knees. "I find everything."

Matt feared heights like he feared most things, but something about the view was just intoxicating enough that he didn't think about the drop below. He sat down on the ledge beside Bailey and watched the city dance. Watched all the shimmering lights and glowing billboards kiss the dark sky like a star-crossed lovers' rendezvous. This city really was made for the night.

"Ask me," Bailey said.

Matt looked to him, the night breeze curling back through his dark hair like he was a severed part of it. A boy, born between man and shadows. "Ask what?"

"Anything."

"Thought you didn't want me to ask you questions," Matt said.

"I don't. And when we get back, I'll punch you in the throat if you ask me another."

"So why now?" Matt asked.

"I was the one who wanted to stop so often on the way back," Bailey said. "Was my fault we got back late. So consider us even after this."

Matt raked his mind for a good question—one that would tell him everything about the hound that he felt he needed to know. But for some reason, his mind reeled back to the foster papers. The little dark-eyed boy and his toothy grin.

"You said you never met your dad, but what happened to your mom?"

Bailey rolled his head back with a sigh, fell back in the dirt like the burden of his question was too heavy on the shoulders. But as simply as if he'd asked the time, Bailey said, "Someone killed her."

His lashes shadowed his eyes too much to tell what he was thinking, but Bailey looked comfortable sprawled on the ground, gaze on the sky above. So Matt fell back too, into the dirt and the leaves and the bugs. And the city of stars became a sea of them, peering through the webs of the mottled tree tops. "Is there a story there?"

"Not much of one," Bailey said. "We were poor. She was a sex-worker. Paid the bills, put food in our stomach. Came home from school one day and she was dead at the kitchen table. Never found the guy who did it."

Matt didn't want to look at him. He feared if he did, he might see something there that would compromise everything. He couldn't afford anymore guilt. So when he felt Bailey's eyes on him, he ignored them. Watched the stars instead.

"Your mom dead too?" Bailey asked.

"Just gone," Matt said. "I wasn't the life she wanted."

Bailey let out a breath of laughter and just as he did, a shooting star cut the sky. Matt could've wished for a million things, but they all eluded him. He didn't want anything but to stay there, nested beneath the galaxies. He belonged here.

"The life we have is never the life we want," Bailey said. "The rich hate money, but they can't stop stuffing their fucking maws with it. The poor hate the rich. And everyone hates the poor. There's a cure for cancer, you know. But dying people are worth so much more. The world's a vampire and it'll suck you dry if you let it."

"Are you philosophical," Matt asked, "or just a stoner?"

Bailey laughed into the night. It was a strange thunder. An alien sound, not meant for ears. A language Matt knew he'd probably never hear again. When he looked to the hound, it was like he was staring into that photo. The way he grinned could'a shown every tooth.

"It's this place," Bailey said. He lifted his palm to the sky, and from the cuticles of this fingers, dark, thorny things grew. They slid from his flesh and curled his fingers like talons, and Bailey flexed his claws against the light of the moon. Matt noticed one missing. There was no claw at the tip of his ring finger. "It's a different world when you feed the wolf."

The claws sheathed back in and Bailey dropped his hand to his chest with a thump, but Matt burned the image of them to mind. Dark like the lead-black hooks of a hawk. "What's it like to turn?" he asked.

"Like the living all over again in a different world. It's freedom. If I could go wolf forever and never turn back, I would."

"How come?"

"Same reason I love it up here," Bailey said. "It's that much farther away from this shitty world."

"But the whole city's right there."

"Exactly. Distanced. Right where I can see it and not an inch closer. This place is my home. It's where I come to shake the demons."

Maybe it was the thought of Raven or maybe it was just the way he said it. But something about the phrasing made Matt turn to look at him. "How do you do that?" he asked. "How do you shake the demons?"

Bailey folded an arm beneath his head and laid there still against the leafy earth. In the reflection of his eyes, a second shooting burned across the night. "Find your wolf and I'll show you sometime."