Chapter Ten

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When I’d finished drying off and dressing, I walked out of my bedroom to an empty room.  Cougar’s American Fool CD was still playing, now on “Thundering Hearts.”

     But Gail was nowhere to be seen.

     The mystery writer in me, of course, immediately suspected foul play.  But I hadn’t heard anything amiss while in the shower.  And there was none of the sour sweet smell of sweat or angst in the room to indicate that something foul had occurred here.

     She was just gone.

     I looked around.  No note, nothing.

     Gone.  Just like before.

     I quickly rushed to the door, looked out into the hallway.  Her scent was still lingering there, both the scent of her earlier arrival and the more recent scent of her departure.  My own scent was there too, but I’ve long since learned to block that out.  And there was no other scent in the hallway -- meaning, to me, that she wasn’t abducted or dragged out of my apartment unwillingly.  No, she’d left of her own volition.  I considered following the easy trail she’d left.  But, if she’d wanted me to, she’d have left a note, wouldn’t she?

     I tried to figure out her unexpected departure.  Why would she leave when there was no threat, when we hadn’t finished our conversation?  It’s not like I’d cornered her.  No, she’d actually come to me, wanting to talk to me, about the fact that she knew I was a wolf, that she’d seen me last night.

     I couldn’t make sense of it.

     I went back into the apartment, rushed to the window, opened it and looked down.  The street was busy, the one-way traffic moving steadily East, evidence of the city’s lifeblood flowing.  There was no sign of her on the street below, however.

     I pulled my head back inside, and, although her scent was still strong in the air, I still buried my face in the cushion of the chair where she sat.

     There are some things from my pre-werewolf days that I do just out of habit.  And this just felt good.

     When I’d finished my little school-boy crush routine, I stood up and looked at the clock.  It was a few minutes after nine thirty. 

     Maxwell’s voice drifted into my head, like he was one of those cartoon heads you see floating in the air beside a person.  Need I remind you that you’re under contract and two months behind schedule?

     That was enough for me.  As good as a kick in the pants from the man himself.  I thought about pissing Maxwell off further, and immediately walked over to my desk, cracked open my laptop and started typing.

     Maxwell Bronte Novel - Untitled

     I stared at the title line for several minutes, drumming my fingers on the desk.  This wasn’t working out so well.  I couldn’t stop thinking about Gail.

     So put that to use, a part of my mind suggested.  This was the part of my mind that I often took for granted, but which I had a rather soft spot for.  It’s the part that often got me out of a pinch because of the simple yet straightforward reasoning.  I mean, if there were a part of my mind that I couldn’t do without, that would certainly be it, wouldn’t it?

  I realized that I was stalling again -- now what part of my mind was responsible for that?  And, more importantly, could I get rid of it?

  Stop it.  There it was again, that first part of my mind, the no-nonsense part, stepping in and taking over.  Gotta love it.

I gently bit my bottom lip, cracked my knuckles and started typing.

     Bronte stepped out of the shower, reached for a towel and buried his face in it, enjoying the simple pleasure of the soft texture on his face, the clean scent of the fabric softener, a moment of simple bliss.

     He tried to tell himself he wasn’t stalling, that he wasn’t nervous about going back out there and facing Gwendolyn.  It’d been ten years since he’d last seen her, after all.  Ten years since she’d broken his heart by marrying that Wall Street business executive.

     But now she was back.

     A phone call just hours ago, in the early pre-dawn hours, her whispered voice, begging him to help her, telling him that she was just around the corner from his apartment.

     He’d rushed down to meet her, to bring her back to his place.  Without exchanging many words, he’d put on some coffee and told her he was going to first grab a quick shower so she could calm herself down enough to tell him what the problem was.

     And of course, his own motivation was to calm himself down, stop the frantic race through his heart because the only woman he’d ever loved needed him again.

     But when he toweled off, got dressed, and went back downstairs to the kitchen, Gwendolyn was gone.  Bronte focused on the overturned mug on the kitchen table, the coffee spread out over the surface of the table, and dripping in thick black drops to the floor.

     This was bad.

  The phone rang, breaking me from what I thought was a good start.  A good start, to me, is setting something up immediately, regardless of whether or not I, as the writer, actually know what the outcome will be.  Part of the joy of writing, I’d found, was setting a scene with some sort of unknown mystery in play, and letting the characters work themselves through it, uncovering things along the way that could be just as much a shock to me as it is to them.

  So I had the opening scene, knew it was the right thing to do, and had started to get on a roll.

  But the phone interrupted me.

  I’d forgotten to turn the ringer off before I’d started writing.

  Damn.  I couldn’t ignore it now.

  So I answered it.  “Hello?”

  “Michael.”  The voice was a whisper.  But I knew immediately that it was Gail.  “I need your help.”

  For a moment I marveled at the scene I had just written.  Sure, I’d based it on Gail’s return into my life, but I’d already given it an additional twist, with the ex-girlfriend needing help.  So this time, reality seemed to be following the fiction.

  In an obscure moment, I wondered if there was something in that special part of my mind I was so endeared to, that was psychic.  I mean, maybe there’s more to the werewolf legend than just lycanthropy and these special heightened senses.  Maybe there’s also an element of psychic ability.

  Or psychotic ability?

  Snap out of it, that special part of my mind piped in again.  Man, I had to really watch it once I got into a “writing state of mind” -- my mind could easily take dozens of quick little tangents in the space of a few seconds.

  “Gail, where are you?”

  “I’m at Grand Central.  In the lobby.  Michael, I’m sorry that I took off on you so suddenly.  I can explain.  But can you get down here quickly?”

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