Nora lived in a perpetual state of stark agitation these days. Josh spent all his time with Aidan, and conversely, Sally spent almost all her time with Nora. Nora told her to hang around with Aidan more, whose condition was steadily worsening, but the former ghost insisted on bringing up milk, cookies, soup, and a number of other treats to the room Nora had once shared with Josh. Nora couldn't bring herself to admit it out loud, but she was desperately grateful for the support and company. When she'd asked Sally if she would regret not getting to see Aidan more in these last few weeks, Sally just shook her head.
"What they really need is to just… be, right now. Be together and be themselves." She quirked her mouth in a soft, sad smile at Nora, as if saying "sorry" without the words. "I love Aidan to death, but I'll get my time with him. For now I just want to let them be alone."
"Yeah," Nora muttered, lacing her fingers together over the steam rolling off her mug of cocoa. "I know what you mean."
Her pain was only part heartache, for as each day dragged on it became painfully more obvious that Aidan wasn't going to pull through and make a miraculous, 180 degree recovery. Josh's magical blood or no, he was only getting worse.
"It's just…" Nora muttered, lying flat on her back in bed and staring at the ceiling, "I haven't even seen Aidan in what feels like days. I don't know what he even looks like anymore."
"Probably like the crypt keeper," Sally said in a flat tone, and Nora gave her a briefly horrified look before she pressed her lips into a hard line and fought back the horrendously inappropriate urge to laugh.
"I'm going to hell, I know," Sally said, giving her a guilty smile back. "What can I say? I joke about the shit that kills me."
"You're not going to hell," Nora said softly. "Besides, even if you did, you know you'd just be back in time for Christmas anyway."
"Damn straight," Sally muttered, biting off a hunk of her strangely underdone kalbi.
The night before the full moon made their house feel like a hospice. Nora and Sally roamed from room to room, setting mugs of tea down only to forget where they'd put them, reclaim and reheat them, and then forget them again. They were distracted and miserable, and about twenty minutes past four Sally threw her hands in the air, apparently fed up.
"Nope," she said.
Nora waited for her to go on, but Sally was bustling around in the kitchen, Nora figured to get something to eat. Her roommate was always hungry these days.
"... Nope?" she gently prompted.
"Nope," Sally agreed. "We are not going to sit around like this for one more day. Fuck it."
Nora frowned slightly, but, liking the general sound of this, put her cold cup of tea down and crossed her arms, watching as Sally moved around in the kitchen. She paused for a moment.
"You're… not going to try to cook, are you?" she asked, trying not to sound worried.
Apparently she'd failed. Sally made a face at her and shook her head. "No. Well, just popcorn. I can't fuck popcorn up."
When Josh poked his head up from the basement four minutes later, wrinkling his nose against the smell of carbon and smoke, it was clear Sally was wrong. "Did someone just fuck popcorn up?"
"Stop!" Sally groaned, her face in her hands as Nora tossed the ruined bag, waved her hands in the air to dispel the smoke, and unwrapped a new plastic package. "I'm just trying to have family time!"
Josh lifted his eyebrows. "Family time?" he asked, and while Sally explained in a huff that she wanted them to sit down together and watch When Harry Met Sally and eat popcorn (or pretend to eat popcorn, in Aidan's case), Josh's and Nora's eyes met.
It was one of the first times they'd seen each other in more than passing over the past many days, and both of them blinked in a flustered, confused way, looking aside for a second before looking back at each other once more, as if unsure if they were allowed. Josh had his puppy face on, one eyebrow slightly lower than the other, as if he were simultaneously puzzled and troubled. He looked tired, a little pale and drawn, but there was some other sort of change that had taken him. She wasn't sure if it was just lack of sleep, but he looked somehow calm, more peaceful and steady than she had ever seen him in his life. Besides the nervousness they shared between them, he seemed solid, sure.
She knew it was something Aidan brought out in him, and instead of causing her a pang of regret, the thought brought a smile to her face.
It brought the sun out on Josh's, too, and a moment later he smiled back at her, almost shy. She rolled her eyes at him and grinned a little more, leading the way, and he followed suit and chuckled, lowering his head and rubbing the back of his neck.
"Hello?" Sally demanded of them. "Is anyone listening to me? I said go get Aidan!"
"So… we're watching chick flicks why?" Josh asked, arms crossed over his flannel shirt while Sally screwed around with their ancient DVD player. The bluray had died recently in some supernatural disaster or other—Nora really couldn't remember which one these days—but it didn't matter since their copy of When Harry Met Sally was on DVD anyway. Nora flipped the empty plastic case over in her hands. It was one of those hastily-produced ones with no book jacket and a blank silver disc with the title embossed on it and nothing else.
"It's not a chick flick," Sally insisted, fiddling with the RCA cables. "It's about friendship."
"And it has Billy Crystal in it," Josh pointed out.
"And that's a bad thing?" Nora asked, putting the case down and lifting an eyebrow at him. "Come on, Josh. You practically are Billy Crystal."
Josh sputtered in protest at that, and for a beautiful moment of clarity life felt normal again.
"If it's all the same, can you be Meg Ryan?"
Aidan had emerged from the stairwell to Sally's and Josh's arguing about the similarities between Josh and Billy Crystal, and Nora's eyes raked over him as if searching for a depleting health bar like in video games. He was paler than ever, his cheekbones just a little more pronounced and dark circles under his eyes, but he was still his usual charming self, calm and understated, perpetually amused, quietly fond of them all.
Nora crossed over to him and wrapped a blanket around his shoulders. When he gave her an uncertain look she shook her head. "We're all getting one, don't worry."
"Yup," Sally said, bounding over to Aidan and looping her arm into his to lead him to the couch. "It's not family movie night without popcorn and blankets to cuddle up in."
"Burned popcorn," Josh pointed out, and Sally chucked a kernel of Nora's more successful batch at his head.
Aidan settled himself down at one end of the couch and Nora moved automatically to the armchair, somehow wanting to let "the big three" share the couch space together. Sally and Josh remained standing, Josh out of seeming indecision about where to sit, and Sally because she had lost the remote control. Nora met Josh's eyes and nodded at the couch next to Aidan.
Sally turned around to see her friends spread out awkwardly across the room. "Goddammit," she grumbled, stalking over to Nora and yanking her up out of the armchair with surprising force for someone so small. "Nope." That was apparently Sally's word of the day, and she plopped Nora down on the other end of the couch, then grabbed Josh and shoved him at Aidan without any real regard for where or how he landed. Aidan caught Josh as they collided in a tumble of limbs and Sally leapt up to sit next to (almost on top of) Nora.
"In no version of reality do we all fit on this couch," Nora insisted, but Sally had punched the "play" button on the DVD player and the happy notes of Harry Connick Jr.'s rendition of "It Had to Be You" filled the apartment. Josh tried to get comfortable from Sally's other side while Aidan laughed at his struggles.
"Shhhh!" Sally insisted, cuddling up against Nora and draping her legs over Josh like he was territory ceded to her after a war.
Sally had fallen asleep somewhere around "I will never want that wagon wheel coffee table" and had been out cold against Nora's shoulder all the way through the "you're trapped under something heavy" voicemail message. Josh looked like he was half-asleep too, head propped up on his hand and elbow resting on Aidan's shoulder. Aidan was slumped low on the couch, one hand curled up under his chin, a small, wry smile on his face.
"Psst," Nora muttered under her breath, and Josh murmured a little in a half-asleep way. She'd meant it for Aidan, and he seemed to know. He shifted slightly to glance at her from behind Josh's head and over Sally's. "You suffering?" Nora mouthed.
"Immensely," Aidan mouthed back.
She had almost no warning.
One minute she was curled up on the couch with her roommates, listening to Billy Crystal trying to convince himself he wanted to spend New Year's Eve with Dick Clark and Mallomars. Then she was flat on her back, one arm pinned under the overturned couch, the wind knocked out of her and her hair plastered over her face. For a moment she couldn't hear anything. Then sound came rushing back and she became aware of Sally shouting, glass crunching underfoot.
Nora twisted herself back, wrenching her arm at a painful angle, trying to get it free. Sally shrieked again, louder, and Nora whipped in her direction, blinking furiously against dust in her eyes. A dark shape was hauling the girl to her feet, and then Nora saw red.
She might not be a wolf on the outside, but more and more, every day, she felt like one down to her marrow, in between her veins where it counted. Her body was slender, soft, not particularly athletic, not especially fast. Nora still slammed into the man holding Sally like she was a small blonde wrecking ball, knocking him off his feet and shoving Sally aside with one arm.
Chaos erupted around them. From her own grapple with the first assailant she became aware of a few things. There were three people here, two large, musclebound men, one of whom she was fighting and one of whom Josh was scrapping with. The third was a smaller man, fairer complected, and—Nora sucked in a deep breath, mainly to get her bearings, and then the smell hit her.
It was Liam.
Nora's insides plunged and she drove a knee deep into the stomach of the man she was fighting, trying to bring him down. It might as well have been fighting her car for all he moved with each hit. Frustration blossomed in her, hot and heavy, as she tried to get him down, get him to budge, get him to get out of her way so she could get to Liam and Aidan.
Aidan was up, eyes black, fangs drawn, circling back while facing Liam, who was not hunched and stalking the way a predator normally should. Instead he was straight-backed, calm, his hands slightly open in almost-claws, but all the ferocity he should be wearing was gone from his stance. It terrified Nora to see a man who had lost both his children look at their supposed murderer that way.
Sally was scrambling away from the second assailant, a shorter but stockier man, and Nora took in another breath—weres, both of them. Josh snarled and leapt between Sally and the man and the two of them locked in a grapple, Josh's peaceful face pulled back into something animalistic and savage. Sally got to her feet and ran for the cupboard, looking for God knew what, but Nora trusted she had a plan. She returned to keeping her opponent at bay the best she could.
She wished she could hear what Aidan was growling low at Liam, but all of her focus snapped back to the man who swung hard for her face. Nora jumped backwards but wasn't able to fend off the full brunt of the hit, and she slammed into a side table before careening off it to the floor a second later. Her head was buzzing and she tasted blood.
Of course, she thought grimly as she rolled to the side to avoid a boot-stomp from the man who was still after her. They would come the night before the full moon to avoid dealing with wolves. Liam and his cronies, with years of experience under their belts, knew how to use their pre-moon boosts better than Josh or she would. To attack during the full moon meant possibly going against Josh and Nora in their wolf forms, so it was wiser to strike now and avoid that. For a moment she had really believed that he wouldn't be back. It seemed like a grievous, unforgivable oversight now.
Nora dove between the man's legs, aiming up for a critical blow with her elbow, but he jumped aside and kept his family jewels intact. From the kitchen there was a curse and the sound of things crashing to the ground, and Nora caught sight of Josh grabbing hold of his opponent and actually slamming him down into the ground with upper body strength alone. He always fought better the angrier he was, and so long as they kept targeting Sally, who wasn't actively fighting any of them back, Josh was getting more and more of a strength boost.
Something hit the far wall so hard that the ruined shelves they had only just fixed from the impact Erin had made against them shattered again. Nora rolled aside to avoid her attacker and saw that Liam and Aidan were locked in a death match, moving so quickly she could scarcely keep up. Even on death's door Aidan was not an opponent to be taken lightly, but Liam was a healthy, grown wolf with the moon on his side. Her heart sank as she realized the fight would not last long.
She paid for her moment of distraction. The man grasped a handful of her hair and Nora let out a strangled shout, hands grasping at her scalp as he pulled her straight up and off her feet. The pain was blinding, but Nora managed to keep her wits about her and struck out straight back with a hard, solid kick. This time the man was not so lucky, and she could feel him stagger as her strike hit home. Her feet touched ground and she almost sank to her knees in relief, but he still had a firm grip on her hair.
A gunshot rang out and Nora jerked from the sound of it alone. Then she was dragged swiftly down by what felt like dead weight. Nora's first thought was to wrench her head from side to side to try to free herself, and in a moment of shock she realized the hand that had been clutching at her scalp was loosening its grip.
Sally stood in the nook under the stairs, having shot her assailant in the back at almost point-blank range. Her dark eyes were wide and though she was twitching a little, her hands were steady on the weapon. Nora twisted the rest of the way out from under the dead weight, but before she could approach Sally, Josh let out a yelp of pain.
Nora only got to see him crash straight through their living room window into the street below. Then his attacker was free and he had decided Sally was the next biggest threat. He charged and Nora snarled, leaping to intercept him. For a time she was utterly unaware of everything that was taking place, her only thoughts on keeping the man away from her friends.
At some point Josh had returned to help her, and the two of them ganged up on her assailant, which proved to be too much for him. Sally had disappeared, but when two more gunshots rang out in rapid succession Nora couldn't help but look to the source. Sally had missed Liam both times, and in one motion the elder were threw Aidan to the ground and charged Sally, impossibly fast. Nora's heart stopped and she felt more than saw Josh snap the neck of the man they were fighting, still unaware of what was about to happen.
Nora didn't know if it was intentional or not, but Sally threw the gun, and as it arced in the air Aidan reached up and caught it. He was a mess, one arm clearly broken and pressed against his bleeding side, but he managed to snag it from the air without setting it off in his face. Aidan flipped the gun to hold it the proper way, and Josh, his face unrecognizable with a kind of murderous rage she had never seen on him, turned to face Aidan and Liam as if in slow motion.
Sally was in Liam's grasp, but he seemed to be holding her as collateral, aware she was no longer armed and that he was in a predicament.
"Drop her," Aidan snarled, and as Liam looked over, not at Aidan, but to Josh, Nora knew what card he was going to play next.
"You have him pull that trigger and you're cursed for life," he whispered to Josh, his quiet voice nevertheless perfectly audible to the rest of them.
Almost before he had finished speaking, Josh shouted, "Do it!" to Aidan.
And it was a mark of how they understood one another; if she was being perfectly honest with herself, Nora knew she would have hesitated. She would have been caught up in guilt, fear, worry, doubt, and she would have faltered, unsure how to find the gumption and the strength of will to pull the trigger and sentence Josh to a life as something he hated.
Aidan didn't hesitate; he pulled the trigger.
Later Nora would realize what it meant, in the broader sense, beyond silencing Liam forever and ending his reign of terror against him. Nora loved Josh, and would have faltered at the thought of being responsible for his misery. Aidan loved Josh perhaps more, because he was perfectly willing to take that on, knowing that what Josh really wanted in the end was to see Liam go down, even if it meant he was sentenced to a life with the curse.
Nora didn't even have time to sag in relief, or even comprehend that they were no longer in danger. Liam had barely hit the ground when Aidan did too, his body seized with wracking, violent convulsions. A half-breath half-sob tore from Nora's throat as Josh's face twisted into an expression of abject, horrific dread, and in a second he was beside Aidan, propping him up in his arms, babbling things she couldn't hear.
This is it, she thought, feeling too much and feeling numb at the same time as Sally moved in to pull her into a hug.