Chapter 010 — The Silver Bracelet

Elias woke at dusk.

He was in the passenger seat. The roof above him was dented. The windshield had a crack that ran from the passenger side to the middle. The truck was parked on a dirt track, deep in pine forest.

He had a scrape on his elbow. A bruise on his jaw. A cut on his lip. That was all.

"Evelyn."

She looked up from the map. She was sitting on the running board. The sky was going orange.

"Hey."

"What happened?"

He was frowning, touching his lip, looking at the dent in the roof like he was trying to remember how it got there.

"Two men came after us. We got away."

"Did I —" He stopped. He looked at his hands. "Did I do something? My head hurts. My hands are shaking. I remember the tall one. I remember he said something. And then I remember a sound. A sound I made. And then —"

"You made him kneel. Both of them. They went down on their knees. And then you fainted."

Elias stared at her.

"I did what?"

"You made him kneel. Both of them."

He looked at her for a long time. He looked at his hands.

"Evelyn. What am I?"

She stood up. She leaned in the door. She put her hand on his face.

"You are Elias. That is the only thing you need to know right now. The rest can wait."

"Can it?"

"It has to."

He looked at her. He did not push. He had learned, in three months, that when Evelyn's voice went like that — soft, closed, final — it was better to let it lie.

"Okay."

She handed him a bottle of water. He drank. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Then he turned his wrist, and he saw it.

The silver mark.

It was a thin, winding band around his left wrist, like a delicate bracelet. It caught the orange light of the sunset. It had tiny, intricate patterns in it — swirls, knots, what looked like a line of text in a language she could not read. It was not drawn on. It was under the skin, like a birthmark that had decided to glow.

"Evelyn." He held his wrist up. "When did I get this?"

Her stomach dropped.

She had seen it before. She had read about it in the sheaf of wolf-script pages. The contract tracking mark. The mark a high-ranking wolf put on someone they wanted to find. Once it was on, they could track him across states, across borders, across anything.

"Elias." She took his wrist. Her fingers were cold. "When did the tall one touch you?"

"Touch me?"

"On the wrist. On the arm. Anywhere. When did he have his hands on you?"

Elias thought. He thought hard.

"He grabbed me. When I ran at him. He grabbed my wrist. He held it. For a second. He said something. I didn't hear what. And then —" He frowned. "And then I made that sound."

Gareth had planted the mark while he held Elias's wrist.

Evelyn looked at the silver band. It was faint. It was new. It was going to get brighter.

"Evelyn." Elias's voice was small. "What is it?"

"It is a tracking mark."

"Tracking me?"

"Tracking you."

"Can it come off?"

She thought about the three ways she knew.

"The person who put it on can take it off. Or they have to die. Or — I have to do something very difficult and very dangerous to remove it. And I need books. Old books. Witch books. The kind they keep in a place like a very big library."

"Like the library we were going to?"

"Like the library we were going to."

He nodded. He turned his wrist. He looked at the silver band.

"It is pretty."

"Elias."

"I mean it. It looks like a bracelet. I would wear it if it were a bracelet."

"It is not a bracelet. It is a leash."

He looked at her. He saw her face. He understood.

"Okay. Then we go to the library. We find the book. We take it off."

She believed him. She believed him because he was the kind of man who believed that if you found the right book, the right thing would happen. She believed him because she needed to.

She got in the truck. She turned the key. The engine caught.

"Where are we going?"

"East. Two hundred miles. There is a town there. There is a library in that town. My grandmother told me about it once. It has old books. The kind that can break a tracking mark."

"Will it be open?"

"I hope so."

They drove.

The highway was empty. The sun went down. The stars came out. Elias slept for a while in the passenger seat, his head against the window, Buttons on his lap. Evelyn drove. She watched the road. She watched the rearview mirror.

Nothing followed.

But she knew something was.

On the ridge, half a mile behind them, a black sedan had been following at a distance since the rest area. It did not turn on its lights. It kept two hundred yards back. It matched her speed.

The woman in the driver's seat watched the silver dot on her phone screen. The dot moved east. It moved at the speed of an old pickup truck on a dark highway.

She smiled.

She had been looking for him for three years. She had tracked him across six states. She had lost him three months ago, when he walked out of a storm with no memory.

And then the tall one had found him. And planted the mark. And now she had a dot.

She picked up her phone. She dialed.

"He's here. He's alive. He's with the witch. He's heading east toward the archive."

She listened. She smiled wider.

"No. I am not going to take him. Not yet. I am going to follow."

She hung up. She looked at the silver dot.

"Hello, my king. It has been a long time."

The black sedan followed the old truck east.

Two hundred miles ahead, Evelyn drove, and watched the road, and did not look in the rearview mirror.

And on Elias's wrist, the silver tracking mark glowed, faint and steady, like a beacon, like a chain.