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do.”
    She didn’t even hesitate. “Roll him on his side so he doesn’t drown in his own spit.”
    â€œHe’s a wolf.”
    In front of me, Cole was still seizing, at war with himself. Flecks of blood had appeared in his saliva. I thought he’d bitten his tongue.
    â€œOf course he is,” she said. She sounded pissed, which I was beginning to realize meant that she actually cared. “Where are you?”
    â€œIn the house.”
    â€œWell then, I’ll see you in a second.”
    â€œYou —?”
    â€œI told you,” Isabel said. “I was thinking of calling you.”
    It only took two minutes for her SUV to pull into the driveway.
    Twenty seconds later, I realized Cole wasn’t breathing.

• SAM •
    Isabel was on the phone when she came into the living room. She threw her purse on the couch, barely looking at me and Cole. To the phone, she said, “Like I said, my dog is having a seizure. I don’t have a car. What can I do for him here? No, this isn’t for Chloe.”
    As she listened to their answer, she looked at me. For a moment, we both stared at each other. It had been two months and Isabel had changed — her hair, too, was longer, but like me, the difference was in her eyes. She was a stranger. I wondered if she thought the same thing about me.
    On the phone, they’d asked her a question. She relayed it to me. “How long has it been?”
    I looked away, to my watch. My hands felt cold. “Uh — six minutes since I found him. He’s not breathing.”
    Isabel licked her bubblegum-colored lips. She looked past me to where Cole still jerked, his chest still, a reanimated corpse. When she saw the syringe beside him, her eyes shuttered. She held the phone away from her mouth. “They say to try an ice pack. In the small of his back.”
    I retrieved two bags of frozen french fries from the freezer. By the time I returned, Isabel was off her phone and crouching in front of Cole, a precarious pose in her stacked heels. There was something striking about her posture; something about the tilt to her head. She was like a beautiful and lonely piece of art, lovely but unreachable.
    I knelt on the other side of Cole and pressed the bags behind his shoulder blades, feeling vaguely impotent. I was battling death and these were all the weapons I had.
    â€œNow,” Isabel said, “with thirty percent less sodium.”
    It took me a moment to realize that she was reading the side of the bag of french fries.
    Cole’s voice came out of the speakers near us, sexy and sarcastic: “I am expendable.”
    â€œWhat was he doing?” she asked. She didn’t look at the syringe.
    â€œI don’t know,” I said. “I wasn’t here.”
    Isabel reached out to help steady one of the bags. “Dumb shit.”
    I became aware that the shaking had slowed.
    â€œIt’s stopping,” I said. Then, because I felt like being too optimistic would somehow tempt fate into punishing me: “Or he’s dead.”
    â€œHe’s not dead,” Isabel said. But she didn’t sound certain.
    The wolf was still, head lolled back at a grotesque angle. My fingers were bright red from the cold of the frozen fries. We were totally silent. By now, Grace would be far away from where she had called from. It seemed like a silly plan, now, no more logical than saving Cole’s life with a bag of french fries.
    The wolf’s chest stayed motionless; I didn’t know how long it had been since he’d taken a breath.
    â€œWell,” I said, quietly. “Damn.”
    Isabel fisted her hands in her lap.
    Suddenly the wolf’s body bucked again in another violent movement. His legs scissored and flailed.
    â€œThe ice,” Isabel snapped. “Sam, wake up!”
    But I didn’t move. I was surprised by the ferocity of my relief as Cole’s body buckled and twitched. This new pain I