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Veti closed her eyes as she lay there on the ground, years-old autumn leaves and pine needles the only cushion to her naked skin, prickling softly along her back and buttocks, the soles of her feet. Sapphire eyes studied the cave's ceiling some feet above her head, her gaze following the whorls of the pale grey granite. The werewolf's lair was a small treasure found in one of the few old growth forests left in New England, where she could let the wolf run free the one night of the month Veti couldn't keep her from emerging. But that night had passed, and the woman had found herself once more. Her very human hand now lay over the ivory skin of her belly, a small, smooth and shiny something flipped over and over between thumb and long, slender finger like a talisman. A touchstone.

[i]A year and a day... [/i]

Veti had no idea when those five words first entered her thoughts these past months, but they reverberated over and over in her thoughts now, the strangest mantra. 'A year and a day,' the time required by English law to legally separate cause and effect, an act and a death, and there'd be no blame to lay anywhere.

Slowly, languorously, she lifted her hand some inches above her face, entranced by the perfect little object suspended between finger and thumb, lightly glowing in the pale light that filtered feebly through the branches barring the outside world from her small lair. 

A bullet. A single silver bullet, .357 caliber. The symptom and the cure for everything that ailed her. Veti would have been heartbroken to know she hadn’t been near as clever as she’d thought, nor inscrutable to Siya, or even to Daisy – much less Artie. But the relentless pain of living had finally worn even the werewolf’s stamina thin, frail and treacherous as a Spring ice floe with only the slimmest veneer to mask how little was still left inside after Max was swallowed back into Death, his life and his fingers mere inches from her own…

Veti winced, a single tear sliding down her cheek to disappear into her blood-red hair and the pillow of dead leaves beneath her head. A year and a day then, and she’d have to endure no more - and no one could be blamed. Eleven aching, empty months already slipped past, and she was tempted – sorely tempted – to steal the solace now, her bare toes raking against the hard plastic of the gun case where the .357 revolver lay nestled, waiting like a promise. Veti knew well what a burden she’d become to the people she cared for most. She could see it in Siya’s dark, grace-filled eyes, that endless worry, and feel it in every desperate embrace and it made her sick to be the cause of any misery to the little lady who’d already suffered so much in her too-short life. 

And Daisy too. Quiet, pink-haired Daisy the Reaper who never once said a word of what went on behind those solemn eyes and the thin veneer of never-give-a-damn, though her presence alone screamed otherwise. She shared what warmth she had in Artie, letting Veti find what laughter she could in endless squeaky toys for the hellhound, and what sleep she could find beside his warm, doggy-smelling body in her bed.

The werewolf never minded the shedding, of course.

Veti heard the whirring while the incoming missive was still some quarter-mile away, hurtling toward her lair like a determined little gadfly. Her gaze never turned from the silver bullet, snatching the ball out of the air as it arrived with a preternatural swiftness. She blinked slowly, and her eyes turned toward the missive she unfolded with the fingers of her one hand.

[i]Atticus… [/i]

The months of silence by the incubus had weighed heavily on Siya, and the knowledge of his demonic nature could only ever be cold comfort. The zinnias had been beautiful, but not nearly as lovely as the glow that followed Siya’s wake for days after their arrival. But not another word from him was forthcoming, not a single word more in all these weeks - and the flowers? Veti did everything in her power to keep those things alive as long as she could, to keep that brightness, that [i]lightness[/i] in her tiny friend – but they were only cut flowers after all, bound to wither and finish their magnificent dying. There had [i]never[/i] been healing or life in Veti's touch.

Max could have done something though, Veti was sure. If he could transmute woman to wolf in a single brilliant, flaming moment of consummation? Surely white flower petals to pearls, or even ivory, with stems of jade, delicate leaves of emerald - oh yes, he could do that in a moment. A rare, soft smile emerged at the thought, knowing full well that was [i]just[/i] the thing Thad might have done to see Siya's lovely fanged smile…

Veti grimaced as she read the words once, twice, her stomach twisting into painful knots as she read the plea at the end. She had no idea that a glimmer of hope could hurt so damn bad. But it was nothing compared to the pain of living without any at all.

A year and a day - but that day hadn't come. Not yet. Thad's face hovered in her mind's eye, fading to the mask of Max - and then morphing silently into the ancient, age-carved visage of Reginald Hoyle, eternally kind, and patient. And sad. So very sad, only an inkling of his own ancient pain shared quietly very near a year ago. Veti sat up in the small cave, the silver bullet in one hand and Atticus' letter in the other, thoughtfully, grimly weighing the choice in each, and decided.

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Siya was already gone from their apartment when she finally arrived home, as were Daisy and Artie. Veti hadn't been back to the Boston Branch Office of Bain & Hoyle in nearly a year now, and she was only vaguely surprised to discover her ID card still worked, that she still had access. She shouldn't have been - she was still [i]technically[/i] an employee after all, though Veti hadn't stepped foot in this place since Thad's memorial service. 

Veti pulled the hood of her dark sweat jacket over her head, shrugging the shoulders of her leather jacket up to her ears, shivering at the preternatural cold of the portals in the company's basement. It would have been a damned lie to claim there hadn't been some small thrill of a hope in her heart as she stepped through the shade-gate, that maybe this time it would be tampered with once more, sabotaged to send her into yet another deadly trap, sending her to... Oh, she knew not where, but the call of oblivion still whispered seductively to her weary soul.

But there was only a whiff of disappointment in Veti's thoughts as she stepped into the cool darkness of an Irish night, the heels of her leather boots crunching lightly on the soil beneath. The dizzying array of scents and sounds and sights buffeted her ever-heightened senses, and she was glad the shade-gate had spat her out some distance from the stones and the gathering of all the Veiled World's denizens answering Atticus' summons this night. Instinctively her eyes sought out Siya, proud, graceful, beautiful Siya who always believed herself a shade, not much more than another shadow in Veti's own. The amusing irony had always been that the vampiress actually [i]glowed[/i], and always had in her sight, shimmering and cool like the moon - just as she did now as she approached Atticus, all poise and breathtaking dignity.

From beneath the confines of her hood, Veti's eyes traveled over the rest of the assembly, her heart skipping several beats when she found Henry's face, and then Nestor in... The werewolf blinked, and her heart ached that her lover could not be here now beside her, laughing that loud guffaw of his at the sight of 'proper Nestor' arrived [i]in a hospital gown!?[/i] Veti laughed so softly, and then silent tears slid down her cheeks as she crouched quietly and alone in the shadow of one of the great stones.