"Is he looking at me?"
Evelyn wasn't sure. The man slid into the car without another glance and pulled away, leaving her standing on the pavement with a strange prickling at the back of her neck. She knew that feeling. It was the same one she'd had in the forest, and she didn't like it any more now than she had then.
She shook her head and turned away. "What was that? Did he actually hear me from that far?" She muttered under her breath, half to herself and half to no one in particular. "What is he, some kind of dog?"
The thought sparked a fresh wave of irritation.
"Manners are optional when you can buy your way out of everything," she said, scanning the road for a taxi. Her tailbone still ached from the fall.
She was still muttering when the ambulance came.
The siren cut through the street noise before she saw it, growing louder until the vehicle swung hard into the hospital entrance and shuddered to a stop. Paramedics poured out with the kind of speed that made bystanders go quiet. Evelyn went quiet too.
The man on the stretcher was in bad shape. His clothes were torn, his skin mottled with bruising that had already darkened into deep purples and reds, blood soaked through the fabric in patches. One of the paramedics said something she couldn't fully catch, but two words reached her clearly.
"Wild animal attack."
Her stomach dropped.
She didn't make the connection right away, But she had overheard the nurses a while ago and now again and she could not shake this guilt off completely. She pushed the thought down and watched the stretcher disappear through the hospital doors.
What if the plant did something to it? What if I'm the reason that man is on that stretcher? If the animal had lost its mind becuase of her and now people were getting hurt?
The guilt came fast and she knew it wasn't entirely rational, but that didn't make it sit any lighter. She pressed her fingers to her sternum as if that would help and followed the stretcher inside without quite deciding to.
The intensive care unit was a different kind of quiet, the kind that felt held. Evelyn stood near the corner and watched a woman trail behind the medical team, her hands wrapped around her own elbows like she was trying to hold herself together. When the doors swung shut between her and the man on the stretcher, the woman stopped walking. She just stood there.
Evelyn wanted to say something but couldn't find the words that wouldn't make it about herself.
She didn't have to wait long. A set of measured footsteps came down the hallway and the woman, Silvia, turned at the sound of her name.
"Are you Silvia Delaros?"
The man who asked was broad-shouldered and professionally composed, though his tone carried enough warmth not to feel cold. The woman beside him wore a forest ranger's uniform.
"I'm Inspector Spark. This is Forest Ranger Jolly." He let Silvia nod before he continued. "We received a report of an animal attack on your husband. I know this isn't easy, but anything you can tell us will help us track the animal down before someone else gets hurt."
They moved to the hospital canteen. Evelyn found a table close enough and sat down with a paper napkin she had no intention of using, turning it over in her fingers as she listened.
Silvia had a glass of warm water in front of her and a blanket around her shoulders that she kept pulling tighter. She looked like someone who had been crying for a while and was trying very hard not to start again.
"We were hiking," she said. Her voice was low and unsteady. "Just a normal trail, one we'd done before. And then it was just there, out of nowhere. A huge dog-like animal, light gray fur, bigger than anything I've ever seen on a trail." She stopped and pressed her lips together. "It went for me first. My husband stepped in front of it."
Ranger Jolly leaned forward slightly. "Did you notice anything specific about it? The way it moved, its size, anything unusual?"
Silvia thought for a moment. "Its paws," she said. "They were strange. Not like a normal animal's. I don't know how to explain it exactly, just wrong somehow."
Evelyn turned the napkin over again.
Gray fur. Strange paws.
It wasn't the same animal. She was almost certain of it now. The one she'd seen had been darker, Big, and it hadn't moved like something that hunted. Still, almost certain wasn't certain, and the guilt didn't fully let go just because the description didn't match.
She set the napkin down and stared at the table, trying to decide what that meant.