Mel untied her apron, took it off, and folded it to have something to sit on. Maybe she could try to get some sleep. It might have been sheer denial of the gravity of her situation, but she didn’t feel all that much worse, anxiety-wise, than the average afternoon before work.

Arthur had settled down somewhat. He was still standing, still staring at the door as if willing himself to see beyond it, but no longer muttering under his breath.

Rosa shivered non-stop. She ran cold naturally. Adrenaline had so far kept Mel from noticing, but they were inside of a refrigerator, after all. One of the round thermometers hanging off the edge of the shelf above her read twenty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. The power switch Arthur had installed next to the door did absolutely nothing other than keep the fridge from failing inspections. Its real switch was located on the top of the unit, an old design no longer compliant with safety regulations. 

None of them were dressed to spend eight hours at that temperature. They were looking at risking hypothermia before too long. They had few options available to them, though.

Glass shattered in the lab. The wolf had likely knocked over the new bottles Rosa had so carefully inscribed. One of those basic orders was going to be a warmth potion; Mel couldn’t help thinking that if all this had happened just an hour later, they wouldn’t have needed to worry about the cold at all.

All this, for what? Gus had never hurt anyone. The law was unambiguous— anyone who carried the curse was to turn themselves over to the authorities voluntarily— but she couldn’t blame him for staying hidden. She would have done the same thing.

Gus never worked a rigid schedule. Like Mel, he was only there part time, and it seemed he’d always managed to be home on the night of the full moon. She didn’t know how undercover werewolves usually lived. Sometimes the state distributed informational pamphlets on or around the full moon, but these were meant to scare people into turning in their neighbors, not educate them.

Arthur wasn’t a rare case, that much she knew. 

Common knowledge had it that nearly all werewolves taken into custody were given up by someone who knew them. Mel had once read an account of one such informant who deeply regretted that choice years down the road. The authorities had a way of making it seem as though there were no other moral option. 

How could you live with yourself, the talking point went, if someone you knew to be a werewolf lost track of the time one month, turned, and killed their entire family? Not only would you never be able to forgive yourself, neither would your werewolf friend. It was the best thing for everyone to turn them in.

Mel wondered if Arthur had considered keeping Gus’s secret. Did he fall prey to visions of Gus rampaging through the streets inspired by those awful pamphlets? Or was there no hesitation whatsoever, never even a stray thought of sparing his youngest employee? 

Arthur finally broke away from listening at the door and noticed her staring at him. Mel blinked a few times too many as she averted her gaze.

“We should probably try to stay awake,” he noted. “For one thing, it’s too cold in here to be losing consciousness for long stretches at a time. For another, there’s no telling what that thing might decide to do. Best to stay alert. We’ve got a lot of night to get through. We can try sleeping in shifts if we have to, but let’s face it— you two were going to be up all night, anyway. I’ve already worked a full fourteen hour shift today.”

Before her frustration with this remark could fully manifest, Mel saw an opportunity for relief from his anger. “That’s a really good point, Arthur. You should try to get some sleep.”

He seemed to sense something he didn’t like in her voice, eyeing her with displeasure, but didn’t pursue it. “Fuck knows what I’m going to do tomorrow. Maybe we can push the orders back one day. A lot of people order ahead, so it won’t be a big deal to delay them. We don’t have that many orders- we’ll have to just lump them all together.” Arthur sat down. “You and Rosa will move your shift from overnight to morning.”

“I think you might be in shock or something, Arthur,” Rosa said through chattering teeth.

“Oh?”

“It’s just… I don’t want you to be surprised if we can’t do any brewing tomorrow, is all. There’s a good chance we’ll have to close for a few days, right? Just to do repairs, is all.”

“We can’t afford repairs,” Arthur said.

“No, no, I get that, I just think that maybe we won’t really have a choice?”

As if to make her point, the sound of metal crashing against metal rang from outside. If Mel had to guess, she’d have said the werewolf had thrown one table against the other.

Mel quickly said, “We won’t know anything tonight. Let’s figure it out in the morning, all right?”

“I’m getting some sleep,” Arthur grumbled, turning away from them.

He fell silent. Relieved, Mel relaxed her shoulders and nodded reassuringly to Rosa. Rosa repositioned herself to rest her head on her knees and closed her eyes.

They fell into silence, Arthur seemingly asleep, Mel thinking through the events of the evening in an uncontrollable loop, and Rosa doing everything she could to warm herself. Mel scooted off of her apron and wrapped it around Rosa’s shoulders. Rosa almost protested, but couldn’t bring herself to refuse. 

Following a volley of breaking glass, the werewolf went quiet, too.

Mel tried to estimate how much time had passed as she moved closer to Rosa, putting an arm around her, trying to offer body heat she no longer had to give. She guessed anywhere from one to two hours.

Arthur was going to get them killed. He already had in Gus’s case. Her eyes landed on his left arm. He had an old scar there from when his father used to put out cigarettes on him, too obscure to make out at the moment, but there nonetheless. Mel often looked at it when she needed to remind herself that he’d had it hard.

Mel risked whispering to Rosa, “How are you feeling?” Arthur didn’t stir.

“I’m tired. But I’m okay. I wanted to tell you something.” Lowering her voice further and eyeing Arthur, Rosa said, “You were wrong about him. He was never different.”

Mel didn’t know what to say.

“I think I’ll try to get some sleep,” Rosa changed the subject.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea, sweetheart. I’m a little worried about you.”

“It’s not that cold in here,” Rosa struggled to protest.

“Yeah, but we’re in t-shirts. We’ve got a long way to go before sunrise. I’d tell you to do some jumping jacks, but there’s not exactly room to move around.”

“Isn’t there some way to shut this thing off?”

Arthur snapped to attention. “Don’t even think about it. Do you have any idea how much product is in here? It would cost a fortune just to replace it all, let alone the orders getting even more delayed.”

“You might need to widen your perspective here,” Mel said. “We’re not just talking about the lab or the shop. We’re talking about our lives.”

“I know you don’t get this, but the shop is my life. It’s my livelihood, and the livelihood of the people who work here. I have to think about all of them, Melody. I can’t be selfish.”

She wished she hadn’t been forced to put her full legal name on her job application. Arthur used it like a bludgeon. The only other person who’d ever called her that was her sweet grandmother. He was ruining the sound of it.

“Whether or not we have jobs in the morning won’t matter if we die of hypothermia tonight,” Mel explained, trying to keep as much emotion out of her voice as possible.

Arthur leaned toward her. “If you’re not worried about having a job, then good. You don’t. I’m sick of your bad attitude. You’re impossible to please, you’re pessimistic, and you drag everybody else down. You’re fired.”

“Fired from what? There’s not going to be a shop left! The lab is ruined and we’re all going to freeze to death!”

Again Mel felt a swell of panic, and again it subsided when a sense of peace rushed over her. Mel didn’t speak to people this way. She didn’t enjoy it, she didn’t want to keep doing it, but gritting her teeth and pretending nothing was wrong with the way he treated her felt a thousand times worse. She wasn’t going to let him get away with it anymore.

Arthur slapped her full across the face.

Mel had never been hit before— she’d led a fairly charmed life in some ways— and it hurt worse than she’d have imagined. The cold played no small part in this. Mel gasped, holding her face with both hands, cowering as far from Arthur as the cramped space would allow. Though he did frighten her, it was her own fury that caused her to draw back. She wanted to attack him. To break his hand. To rip out his smart-ass tongue. To bash his head against the wall until she’d beaten the lies out of him. He deserved it. She deserved to do it. 

Rosa, looking around in confusion and shaking uncontrollably next to her, didn’t deserve any of this. It was difficult to tell in the dim light, but her pupils seemed too dilated. The power switch on the top of the freezer– Mel could reach it if she climbed the racks. The werewolf hadn’t made a sound in ages. It might’ve moved to another part of the shop; it might have left altogether. Odds were she was wrong and would die in the process, but she believed she could make it to the power switch first.

Mel lunged forward and grabbed Arthur’s arm. She pulled hard and fast, knocking him off his balance, and he tumbled away from the door. Mel burst out of the walk-in and slammed the door shut behind her.