Binding Shadows by Jasmine Silvera

Author:Jasmine Silvera
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: No Inside Voice

Chapter Twenty-Five

Tobias tried to get in contact with Barbara for a week after her dismissal to no avail. He’d left messages with both Edita and Honza that she hadn’t returned. He’d tried the shop, but it was still closed, and his voicemail got no response. Feeling guilty, he’d filched her number from the personnel department and left messages at her personal number. Still no answer.

Finally, he put on his running clothes and battered trainers and did what he always did when he felt at loose ends. For once, his mother was not perched on her kitchen stool when he left for his run. Humidity that would become standard as the days wore into summer descended over the evening. The afternoon air had been thicker than usual, the sunlight obscured by a growing layer of clouds. He snugged his laces and raced a storm out of Vysehrad and into the city proper.

Running had always been his refuge. The thing he loved most was the way it shut off his thoughts, especially when circumstances had made it hard for him to change as much as he needed. That was the beginning of his reputation as being difficult.

After regular weekends at the cabin, he understood how much he’d been missing by denying the wolf its due. He was calmer at work and what had once been a maelstrom of overwhelming scent became something he could sift through to identify useful bits of information in social interactions. He hadn’t felt the stammer building in days, but his reflexes had become too sharp and it took effort to manage his strength. Once, he’d entered the lab so quietly he’d startled Jakub enough that younger man dropped the sample tray he’d been carrying. Catching the tray before it hit the ground and spilled its contents had earned Tobias even stranger looks.

Tonight, he let his speed pulse in the growing dark, ignoring a few startled gasps as he raced past.

At the base of the hill into Vinohrady, he tucked his chin and pushed his body until his lungs burned. Still, his legs propelled him effortlessly up the hill.

He slowed before a familiar secessionist building the color of an Easter mint. The shop was closed, and the windows of the first-floor apartment were dark. The top-floor windows were open, and thin strains of music drifted out as the curtains flapped in and out at regular intervals. A fan must have been running: the outside air was still and heavy, as if each molecule held the weight of a coming raindrop.

He stood at the base of the steps, chest heaving, and contemplated his next move.

He pressed the door buzzer.

Barbara’s voice crackled on the intercom. “Yes?”

“I’m sorry to bother you at home,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck guiltily. “It’s Tobias Vogel. From the University.”

A long pause. It felt wrong to be here like this, but he couldn’t have made himself stay away any longer.

Correction, he couldn’t have made the wolf stay away. It yearned for her with a dazzling purity of sensation he could not name.

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