Chapter 4

Viola

"Sit down at the piano."

His voice was quiet, a stretch of silence between each word.

"I'm going home." I said it while walking toward the door.

He didn't turn around.

On the third step, I stopped.

Not because I wanted to. The air had changed — a feeling I will never forget as long as I live, from three days ago, in another room of this same house. The whole weight of the room came down on me at once, from the top of my head to my knees, like a huge hand pressed flat against my shoulders.

My legs went weak. I grabbed the piano bench so I wouldn't go down on my knees.

"What are you—" My voice came out thin. "Let go of me. I didn't do anything—"

He didn't answer. He didn't even turn around.

The pressure got heavier.

This time it wasn't only holding me down. It was pushing me in a direction. I stood where I was and fought it, fingers dug into the edge of the bench, my nails nearly peeling back.

Three or four seconds, and I knew I couldn't hold.

If I didn't sit down, I was going to end up on the carpet in a worse position than that.

I sat.

The instant my body touched the bench, the weight dropped away. A trade I hadn't been allowed to refuse.

I stared at the keys. My fingers were shaking too badly to hit them cleanly.

The memory from three days ago came back — wood floor, broken glass, a throat that wouldn't produce a sound. I still didn't know what had actually happened that night. I only knew I hadn't been able to fight it at all.

And now I was sitting in front of this man again, needing his permission to stand up.

"Play."

I closed my eyes and took a breath.

I picked the piece I knew best. Chopin, Nocturne, Op. 9 No. 2.

There was a worn-out old edition in my aunt's shop, the one that never made money. I'd worked through it for a whole winter when I was a teenager. The shop leaked air that year and the heat was broken as usual, so I warmed my hands between tries and started over from the top every time I hit a wrong note.

But no matter how cold it was outside, once I sat down at the piano I at least knew what came next.

Same thing now.

I didn't know what was wrong with the man in front of me, or how he could force me into a seat with that unnatural pressure, or whether I'd make it out of this room unhurt.

But I knew this piece.

On the bench, with my hands on the keys, the file didn't matter. It was the only thing left in here that I still got to decide.

My fingers stayed stiff on the first note.

By the second section the rhythm came back to my hands. I didn't dare look up. I kept my eyes on the keys and told myself over and over not to make a mistake.

Then, at some point, I heard his breathing change.

The fast, rough panting evened out. His hands came off the windowsill a little. His shoulders dropped half an inch.

I didn't stop.

But a thought went through me fast.

It's working. This piece does something to him.

I didn't know why, and I had no intention of finding out. If it got him back to himself, I could take my score and leave. I'd already decided how I'd file tonight away later — as a lesson. Never walk into this house alone again.

The music moved through the empty room.

I finished the first section and went into the repeat.

Behind me, a floorboard gave.

He had moved. Not toward the door — toward the piano, three steps, maybe four, and then he stopped close enough that I could hear him over the music. Close enough that the air around me changed temperature.

I didn't turn around. I played the passage that had cost me the review instead. Measures twenty-two through twenty-four, the three bars I'd rebuilt from memory because I couldn't remember how they actually went. The safe version. The one he'd called avoidance in front of the whole class and had been right about.

It sounded wrong in that room. It sounded like what it was — something I'd patched together because I didn't have the real thing.

The anchor slipped.

He pulled in a breath behind me and crushed it.

It didn't sound like breathing. It sounded like something inside him was fighting its way out, and he was using everything he had to shove it back down.

My fingers caught.

A second later, heat landed on the back of my neck.

The music stopped.

I turned around.

His eyes had changed.

A dark red had risen underneath the silver-gray, thin, and it wouldn't go back down. The tips of his canines showed past his lip. His jaw was locked tight, like he was holding off something he couldn't name.

None of it made me feel sorry for him.

It just made him dangerous.

I got up off the bench and moved half a step sideways.

"Professor Crawford." I tried to keep my voice level. "I should go."

He didn't speak.

"Your housekeeper is outside. There are other people in the hall." I didn't know why I was saying it — maybe just to remind him this wasn't a place where he could do as he liked. "Let me walk out of here now and we'll say tonight never happened."

The moment it was out of my mouth, I regretted it.

Because I realized I was still trying to reason with him.

He took a step forward.

I took two back, until the piano stopped me.

The pressure that had pinned me in place was gone this time. I would rather it had stayed. At least then I'd known what I was dealing with. Now he was standing in front of me, breathing hot, eyes red, the whole of him like a wire about to snap, and there was nothing between us but the space I kept giving up.

I didn't know what he would do.

Not knowing was worse than the pressure had been.

"Don't come closer."

I put my hand up, palm out.

It was shaking badly. I didn't lower it.

He paused.

Just once.

Then he had my wrist.

My other hand came down on the keys and a bad, ugly noise tore through the quiet. I shoved at his chest with everything I had. He didn't move.

"Let go of me."

He didn't let go. He turned me by the wrist — one hand, no effort in it at all — and walked me back until the piano stopped me again, and this time it stopped me lower, at the hip, at the small of my back.

The study sat at the end of the east wing, past the gallery. The walls were a foot thick. Whatever staff had been in the house had been sent somewhere else long before I arrived, and upstairs there was nobody left to hear a piano being hit wrong.

Nobody was coming. I understood that in the same second I understood I couldn't get past him.

"Professor Crawford, let go of me—"

He did something with his grip and my whole arm went numb, and after that I couldn't do anything but fight with a body that counts for very little against a wolf.

His scent was so thick it was almost hard to breathe — burnt wood, and a fire that had gone out with the embers still burning underneath.

"Please."

That was the last full sentence I got out.

After that the memory comes in pieces, and the pieces don't line up.

I remember the lid. The wood was cold through my clothes and the row of keys dug into my hip. I remember the pedals giving under my heel, once, twice. I remember getting a hand free and hitting him somewhere and it making no difference at all. I remember shouting — one word, loud — and the house not answering.

I remember saying no, over and over, and it never once made him stop.

I even remember a moment when I saw his face above mine. Eyes shut, brow pulled tight, looking like a man in pain, like he was wrestling with something.

So what.

I was in pain. I was afraid. I was asking him to stop.

He didn't.

I don't know how long it was. I don't know whether I went under or whether the time simply wasn't there to remember. When I opened my eyes again the room was quiet.

The chair by the piano had been knocked crooked. Sheet music lay scattered on the floor. It took me several seconds to work out where I was, and then the pain and the memory arrived together and I sat up fast, breathing badly.

Crawford was already dressed.

He stood a few steps away with his head down, fastening his cuff. He got the button through on the second try, not the first. His shoulders were still moving too fast for a man standing still.

He didn't look up.

I shrank back without meaning to. It was a small movement.

He saw it.

I didn't know whether he would come close again, or whether I could outrun him now. So I pulled my clothes straight first and covered as much of myself as I could, then reached for my bag where it had fallen beside me.

My fingers wouldn't do what I asked.

It took two tries to get the zipper open.

I clenched my teeth so I wouldn't make any sound at all.

Then he spoke.

"Don't think you can threaten me with this accident."

My hands stopped.

I lifted my head.

He had finished the button. He stood at an angle, chin slightly raised, eyes on the wall behind me, and he wouldn't look at me directly.

"A defective who can't even wake her wolf soul — beyond that body, you're worthless."

Defective.

I looked at him and for a second my head was empty.

I hadn't even got as far as being angry.

Because up until that point I'd been busy working out how to get out of the room, how to get my clothes straight, whether I'd left anything behind. I hadn't had time for anything else.

Only when that sentence landed did it come through to me that he had no intention of explaining what had just happened — that it hadn't even crossed his mind that he owed anyone an explanation.

My hands closed slowly. My nails dug into my palms hard enough to hurt.