The Upper Pool

The card by the kettle says never go to the upper pool on a full moon. I mean it. Six weeks alone as winter caretaker of a shut hot-springs lodge, Addie Laurent puts on lipstick and goes. She is naked in the steaming water at minus eighteen when a wolf walks out of the trees, then a man with the same notch in his ear. Hollis orders her inside. Then the wind turns, and he tells her why: she's his. She can go in and lock her door. Or she can stay in the water.