Early the next morning, I was out in the gym, losing to a set of boxing strike pads. Conrad wasn’t hitting me with them. He was holding them up so I could hit them. And I was still losing.

More accurately, he was holding them down, somewhere around the bottom of his ribcage. It was one of the adjustments he had to make living his life as a freaking giant.

“Hey,” Conrad said, “focus.”

“I am focused,” I grumbled.

Without any hair to catch the sweat, it poured down my face and neck, soaking the collar of my shirt. I really needed those workout clothes to show up soon.

The wolfman bopped the side of my head with one of the pads. It was as fast as a snake strike, and even though he was being gentle, it felt like I’d been blindsided by a cranky mattress.

“Hey!” I yelled.

“And don’t lie to me,” Conrad said. “Your hits are weak—”

“My hits are always weak.”

“Weaker than normal. Your strikes are off-center, and you’re moving slow. It’s like you’ve lost all your improvements from the last month.”

A disbelieving smile crept onto my face. “I’ve been improving?”

He bopped me again. “You had been. What’s on your mind?”

I lowered my arms with a groan, put my hands on my thighs, and panted.

The wolfman lowered the pads and waited. Conrad Bauer wasn’t shy around me anymore, but he was still quiet. That quietness was something I treasured. It made such a nice contrast to the random clamor of my own head.

“Conrad,” I said, “do…do you ever get any letters? Like, personal letters?”

“Who gets letters these days?”

“Olivia does.” I pushed myself up and put my hands on my hips. “You’re from Alaska, right?”

Conrad nodded.

“Is there anyone back there—in Alaska, I mean—anyone that…um…”

Geez. It wasn’t a hard concept! Why was I struggling to find the words?

I tried again: “Is there anyone that…thinks about you?”

My stomach squeezed into a cold knot as the silence stretched on. I’d broken one of the sacred unwritten rules that hedged up our friendship: don’t ask about the past. I didn’t know if Conrad would mind me prying, but I didn’t want him to ask me questions, so I was careful to stay a million miles away from the whole subject.

Avoidance. Maybe not the healthiest tactic, but definitely effective. Until now.

One of his shoulders lifted in a shrug. “I guess there’s Basil. We’re pretty close. We don’t talk often, but he’ll call me every few months.”

“Who’s Basil?” I asked.

“He’s my littermate. My brother.”

My voice rose with excitement. “You have a twin?”

Conrad used the edge of a pad to scratch his ear, flattening it. When he moved the pad, his triangle ear sprung back up. “Kind of. We were the only two in the litter, but that’s not a term lycanthropes normally use.”

The idea that there was not one but two fluffy, friendly wolfmen delighted me. I knew that there was an entire species called lycanthropes, so there could’ve been thousands of them, but that fact never fully registered with me since Conrad was the only one I knew.

“Does he look like you?” I asked.

Conrad let out one of his quiet, peculiar laughs—a mix between a huff of air and the chuff noise you might hear a dog make. “Not even close.”

My excitement ebbed when I remembered why I was asking. “And does it matter to you that he thinks about you?”

It was a while before Conrad answered.

“I never thought about it.”

The edges of my mouth ticked down by a micron.

“What is it?” Conrad asked.

I shook my head, then said while gazing at a random spot on the wall, “I always thought it would matter. I thought it would make a difference.” I groaned and turned away. “You know what? No more boxing today. I'm done.”

“Already?”

I walked over to the bench against the wall. “If you’re trying to kill me, there has to be a faster way.”

“Yeah, but it’s not as fun.”

I turned, dropped myself on the bench, and stuck my tongue out at him.

I was so beat, my head pounded in time with my heart. My thoughts came in muted and abrupt bursts. I needed to get my gloves off. Then I could rest. Water would be good. But gloves off first.

The bag gloves were thin, meant far more to protect the skin of my knuckles than the bags or Conrad (my gloves could have been made out of iron and I still probably couldn’t hurt the wolfman). To get them off, I had to undo the straps, unwrap them, and extract each individual finger from the cut-off finger hole. That’s not the easiest process to do when you’re so tired you don’t want to lift your arms.

Conrad took off the strike pads and put them back on the shelf where they belonged. He came and sat beside me while I struggled to get off the second glove.

“Today’s Olivia’s birthday,” I said.

Conrad didn’t answer. He was inspecting the pads that made up the palms and undersides of his fingers.

“Did you know that?” I asked.

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“Nope.”

Despite the lackluster response, I went on. “Do you think Igor knows?”

“I doubt it.”

“I think I might ask him to make a cake.”

Conrad looked up from his hands. “Why?”

There was a lot of suspicion in his voice—unwarranted suspicion, I might add. It wasn’t like I was going to poison it.

“Lots of people have birthday cakes.”

The statement came out more defensive than I intended.

“But why would you bring it up?” Conrad asked. “It’s not like Olivia’s ever gone out of her way to be nice to you.”

“She doesn’t go out of her way to be nice to anyone. And it’s cake. Can we all agree that cake, in general, is a good thing?”

“Mera, you’re not trying to make her like you, are you?”

The needle on my annoyance-meter jumped into the red zone.

“No! That’s not—that’s not why I’m doing this.” I fidgeted with the cut-off fingers of my gloves. “If she doesn’t like me, she doesn’t like me. I’m not going to try to make people like me if they don’t.”

That was a valuable principle that two of my therapists had worked hard to drill into my brain. They called it a “necessary perspective.” The idea was supposed to be a companion to self-respect, but every time I said it, it felt more delicate than proud, and serious in a sad, gentle way.

“Then why do you smell nervous?” Conrad asked.

The surprise from his comment froze me for a second. I thawed with a laugh.

“I’m nervous?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“That’s what I’m asking you.”

I leaned against his burly arm. “Maybe your nose is broken.”

“I doubt it.”

“Yeah, well, trying to do something nice for people who don’t like you always feels kind of dangerous.”

“But you’re still going to do it?”

“Everyone should have cake on their birthday.” I looked up at him. “Do you think she’ll be mad?”

“If she is, we can cry the whole time we’re eating her slice.”

As I laughed, I caught sight of the pads of Conrad’s hands.

I leaned over and grabbed one of his wrists. “What happened to your paws?”

“First of all, they’re hands.”

He would keep insisting that, but I think that anything surrounded by fur and made of a bunch of thick pads that squish really good when you push on them is worthy of being called a paw. I don’t care what they’re shaped like.

He wasn’t offended enough to stop me from pulling his enormous paw close to inspect it.

“They’re chapped!” I said.

I pushed his claws up to get a better look at the tips of his finger pads. The cracks there were almost as bad as the cracks on his palm. I ran my finger over the stiff ridge of the deepest split and let out a noise of sympathy.

“What the hell noise was that?” he asked with a laugh. “You sound like a puppy.”

“Conrad, this looks really painful!”

I pulled my leg up onto the bench, turned toward him, and picked up his other hand. It was another horror story.

“It’s winter,” he said. “They get like this sometimes.”

“Why aren’t you taking care of them?” said me, everybody’s mother.

“It’s more of an annoyance than anything.”

“If it’s bothering you, you should use some balm or ointment or something.”

“You mean for dog paws?”

“Look at this!” I pointed to a web of fissures. “If I brought you into a vet like this, they’d tell me I wasn’t taking care of you!”

“Mera, go back to your puppy noises.”

“Lotion isn’t going to cut it, wolf-boy. Those paw ointments might help. Are you really going to tell me that it doesn’t hurt?”

Conrad lowered his muzzle so he could bump his forehead on mine. “Not enough to worry about. And nowhere near enough to put up with you threatening to take me to a vet.”

He pulled back and puffed a breath of air right up my nose, letting out a chuckle when I made a face and shook my head.

“Come on, zombie-girl.” He dropped his hand on top of my head and pressed down hard enough to make me bow. “We’d better get inside so you can talk to Igor.”

He stood up. I rushed to put the gloves away and join him.

“But I wasn’t done harassing you!” I said.

Conrad opened the door. A whip of cold air flew by us. “Emerra, I pulled you out of your casket, and I can put you back.”

As we stepped outside, I grumbled (while trying not to smile), “Jacky pulled me out of my casket. You just dug it up.”

“Yeah. I did the hard part. And this is the thanks I get.”

I allowed myself a smile and looked around at the scenery. The first light of the sunrise was glaring off the snow, making everything shine and sparkle. The nearly black tree trunks stood out against the background of icy light.

“Thank you for digging me up, Conrad,” I said. “It’s a nice day. And I probably would've been really bored down there.”

“You’re welcome.”

“How do you think Igor will react if I ask him to make a cake?”

“It’s Igor, Mera.”

“Yeah,” I let out a quiet sigh. “It’s Igor.”

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Igor stared at me with the larger of his two mismatched eyes. “You want me to make a cake?”

I nodded.

“For Olivia?”

I nodded again.

The smaller of his two eyes narrowed until all I could see was the hint of a slit. “Why?”

I repeated, “Because it’s her birthday.”

“But why are you the one asking? It’s not like you’re friends.”

I threw up my hands. “You caught me! My nefarious plot is to poison the thing. Death by birthday—what a way to go.”

Igor shook his head and said in the most imperious drawl I’d ever heard, “I can’t allow that kind of thing.”

That surprised me. Igor always talked as if the world would be a better place if at least half of the human race would up and die. Preferably the half that lived closest to him.

He sniffed. “No one’s allowed to change my recipes.”

I laid my crossed arms on the island counter and gazed at Igor with perfect adoration. “Have I told you lately how much I love you?”

I’ll be the first to admit, my relationship to Igor, especially when compared to my relationship with Olivia, didn’t make a lot of sense. Both of them seemed to live in a permanent bad mood, and neither of them could ever be accused of friendliness, but Igor’s grumpiness was more generalized and blunt, as opposed to acidic, and he was always willing to joke with me. He never laughed, mind you, but he never sneered at me either, and sometimes he’d say the most outrageous things, and I’d wonder, just for a second, if he was joking too.

“Yesterday,” he reminded me, “when I handed you dessert.”

And he did cook for me every day. Being a master chef inspires a lot of affection.

“As long as you’re getting your due,” I said. “Now, if I promise not to poison the cake, will you make one?”

“Cakes are a bother.”

“You made one for my birthday.”

“And it was a bother.”

“It was the most delicious bother I’ve ever eaten. When you bother, Igor, we get perfect bother. And the frosting?” I gave him two thumbs up. “Fantastic.”

“I see the schmoozer is at it again.”

“What’s a schmoozer?”

“Someone who flatters to gain favors.”

“It’s not flattery if it’s true!”

“Uh-huh. Schmooze harder. Maybe that’ll work. Anyway, I don’t see why I should bother on Olivia’s account.”

“She didn’t schmooze enough?”

“The little ingrate is more interested in giving grief than any thanks.” He stopped peeling the carrot long enough to point at me with the peeler. “And she won’t thank you either.”

My irritation, already in the red zone, jumped to critical levels.

“You think I’m stupid, don’t you?” I said.

Igor stopped what he was doing, put down the carrot and peeler, and looked at me with both eyes. It was the first time I’d ever seen him give his full attention to anything other than cooking, but I was too angry to appreciate it.

I continued, “I’m not doing this because I’m all flowers and singing in the woods and I think that all she needs is some kindness, then she’ll see what a nice person I am, and we’ll become best friends. That’s not how the world works, Igor. I know that. And if someone did change their mind that fast, I wouldn’t trust them. People don’t always get along. She thinks I’m annoying, and I think she’s mean, but that doesn’t matter because it’s her birthday, and everyone deserves to have cake on their birthday.”

Igor crossed his arms. “Why?”

“Because people matter. Even if I don’t like her, Olivia still matters. Is that a good enough reason?”

Igor stared at me for a second, then shrugged. The hunch on his back shifted with his shoulders. He picked up his peeler and the carrot.

I sat there and stewed in the ugly silence I’d created with my outburst and wished I could take it all back.

I opened my mouth to apologize, but Igor spoke first.

“Do you know what kind of cake the little ingrate likes?”

A weight lifted from my heart. “No.”

His larger eye turned to me while the smaller one watched the peeler. “You’d better go ask her.”

I smiled and stood up from my stool as I pointed at him. “You, sir, are a scholar and a gentleman.”

He let out an offended scoff.

I skipped toward the door. “And I promise I will personally make you a cake on your birthday!”

As I crossed into the hall, I thought I heard him grumble, “That would be impressive.”

Ha! I’d show him. I’d go to YouTube for a couple dozen videos on how to make homemade cake and some frosting…

Crap! I forgot to ask when his birthday was. But I could do that later. First I needed to find Olivia.