This is the thing he has waited to say, the angel he wanted more, even than her in this bed. It’s a con, she knows, but also it’s true. All this pursuit, since the start, has been in service of something, not just this, in a rented bed: something else, something bigger, wilder. Every night, sleepless next to her husband, she cannot remember what color eyes this other man has, and when Reynard looks at her she still can’t tell what they are. “What?” she asks him finally.

“Let me tell you a story,” he soothes, but it is a strange one, not soothing at all by the time it is done. It is a wedding story, or at least it begins there, when the bride demands that a fox be roasted and served at the feast, and the vengeful spirit of the wronged mate flies into the bride’s body and tricks her into suicide in the trees. It snatches bodies to this day, wrecking lives and loves, and it cannot be defeated, not really, never shamed or killed. Not in this town. It can only be bought off, and now, here in a stranger’s house, Rachel Nickels knows she will pay. Her skin feels loud and wrong on her body, as Reynard’s mouth offers a small smile, hardly a slit, his face aglow in the leaving day. So many creatures, she thinks, all in pursuit, yet still she runs, yet still they are bounding after her. “So,” he asks, when the story is over, “how much money can you raise?”

Chapter Seven

CHAPTER 7

Safe in bed, Rachel blinks boltily at the open window. Her husband does not snore. He does not fart or smell or do anything that could irritate her and justify the evening’s plan. But in fact his kindness, his ordinary consideration even while sleeping, is irritating enough, and she stands up. The clock says it’s time. Ben doesn’t turn over. He’ll forgive her, she thinks, she hopes, she thinks she hopes.

There are two bags in the closet in her office, a room that every day is less of an office and more of a mess. Nicky’s arrival pushed things like her wedding dress, and a small square bookcase full of an abandoned master’s thesis on gender in Laos, into the room. Laos seems farther and farther off. When they have another kid, this room too will vanish along with, let’s face it, Rachel’s job.

In one bag are clothes she can change into quickly, and she quickly changes into them. Her shirt is her own, something she’s owned forever that fits like thin skin. In the other bag is, conservatively, about ten thousand dollars in cash.