. . .

It horrifies him. He is horrified.

Mr. Gulley becomes a little crazed.

He has a brief, desperate affair with Isabel Strickland from accounting; he comes out of it confident in the knowledge that Helissent is his only love, but Helissent does not see this affair in the same fashion.

She meets him at the door a few days later. She is carrying a handbag.

“I’ve already told Fenris goodbye,” she says.

“And he didn’t eat you?”

“He wasn’t hungry,” Helissent says.

He nods to her and he lets her go.

“I’d take Junior,” she says. She glances at the upstairs window. “But he won’t leave the wolf. So — weekends, I guess. Summers, when he’s older. When he needs me to.”

Mr. Gulley nods again, and she is gone.

<< . . .

. . . >>