Then I forgot all about Clarence. Immaterial fingers clenched down on my left arm so hard I could feel bruises forming.
No, they weren’t clenching down on my arm. They were grabbing my pelt. The clock had ticked down to nothing. Bastion was just outside.
Each twitch of my cousin’s thumb jerked me into action. I felt his presence in my gut as he skirted the front door and headed to the back.
Under his own volition? I could only hope so.
I had a duty to protect Clarence, but the urge to assist my family was overwhelming. I spared one last glance at Mr. Smythewhite. If he was a killer, he was a smart one. He wasn’t going to burst into the den while two police officers stood by armed with suspicion and guns.
So I found words with an effort. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to use the bathroom.” Then I fled in the direction of my pack.
I REACHED THE KITCHEN before they did. Found Luke, dressed now and as perfectly groomed as if he’d had an hour to pull himself together rather than a few stolen seconds. He leaned against the door jamb, my cell phone in his hand and his back to the inside of the house.
Still, he spoke the instant I entered. “Clarence?”
I tensed. “He’s with the police. I....”
I expected argument, but my explanation must have passed muster. Or, no, that wasn’t right. Luke was no longer lounging, but rather leaning slightly forward. Like a wolf about to pounce on a rabbit....
Instinct told me to warn my family to scamper back in the opposite direction. But it was too late. They broached the edge of the light and shadows turned them into one being.
Six legs. Three heads. One heart.
Then the monster materialized into Grace and Justice supporting Bastion between them. My pelt was draped across Bastion’s shoulders, but even with its help Bastion stumbled like someone so drunk he could barely stand up under his own volition.
Luke’s nostrils flared. “This is Bastion? He should be in a hospital.”
Justice seemed inclined to shoulder past and lean his twin against a porch post so he could pound out his rage and fear upon Luke’s person. Then he closed his eyes. Reopened them. Once again, he was the cold, hard cousin who refused to meet my gaze even as he ostensibly directed his question at me.
“Who’s the asshole?”
“Luke Acosta, Honor’s partner.” Luke held out his hand, seemingly oblivious to the way “partner” sounded like more than just a work pairing when we stood so close together.
I hadn’t realized our hips were almost touching. It was just because the doorway was so narrow. Still, I couldn’t quite make myself move away.
To everyone’s surprise, Bastion roused himself in response to the tension whirling around him. Heavy-lidded eyes slit open as he looked us over. Then a faint glow of mischief sparked a dimple in one cheek.
“So this is what’s kept Honor so busy?” Bastion leaned in to accept the handshake intended for his twin. “Hubba hubba. I approve. Do you by any chance have a twin?”
Luke’s answer—if he intended to give one—was circumvented by my cousin’s abrupt loss of balance. Bastion had stepped away from his supporters to greet Luke, and now he teetered for one split second before crumpling. He would have ended up face-down on the floor if Luke hadn’t caught him under both arms.
“Whoa, there, buddy.” Luke shifted his grip until one arm circled Bastion’s waist while the other dragged Bastion’s arm across his shoulders. The gesture was an effort to keep my sick cousin upright, but Bastion didn’t take it that way.
“Why yes, you can touch my butt,” Bastion murmured. He twitched his eyebrows up and down, pulling off debonair far better than Clarence had managed.
Then he sagged, faded into unconsciousness again.
Chapter 17
We carried Bastion up the servant staircase, quietly to prevent my employers and the police from noticing. I debriefed my family as best I could while we regrouped in the second-floor hallway. Then, thankfully, Bastion awoke.
Even he understood there was no time left for banter. So he got right down to the job at hand.
“I think, maybe, it’s this way?” His hand waved vaguely right, in the direction of the master suite and Clarence’s bedroom. My pelt slipped off his shoulders in the process and I nabbed it out of the air, expecting to have to wrap my cousin back up tight to keep Bastion lucid.
Whatever energy had been sequestered in the skin was gone, however. Which was good. It meant Bastion’s energy—such as it was—remained despite the lack of a pelt. After a moment of consideration, the fur ended up snuggled warm and reassuring underneath my chin.
Then we set off down the hallway. Bastion had one arm each draped across Luke and Justice’s shoulders. And even though I half expected the air between his two supporters to ignite, they worked so well together they would have won a three-legged race.
Until, that is, Luke put on the brakes. He cocked his head. “They’re done with Clarence.”
I didn’t have to ask how he knew. The ears of the skinless were like mine in wolf form. Luke had either heard a door open, or had been listening to the debriefing ever since I fled the downstairs.
Now, his eyes pierced me, demanding that I remember my promise. Luke was helping hunt Bastion’s pelt. It was time for me to do my part and protect the Smythewhite son.
Luke was right, too. We couldn’t leave Clarence unprotected around his murderous parent. But Bastion....
To my surprise, Grace read my mind. “Come on.”
Twin-speak. We hadn’t used it in almost a decade. But she knew I needed to be in two places at once, and I knew she was offering to swap and make that happen.
I swallowed, nodded a reassurance at Luke, then led Grace to my borrowed bedroom. In silence, we both stripped. My hand rose to my throat to cover the lack of necklace, but Grace didn’t appear to notice. Instead, she turned on the shower and stuck her face underneath the spray.
My cousin was a pro at presenting whatever facade she chose. So I wasn’t surprised to find myself peering back at me once she scrubbed off makeup then rubbed her damp hair with a towel to turn sleek black into a dark frizz ball.
That was just window-dressing, however. I frowned. “It won’t work. Mrs. Smythewhite met you, remember? She thinks she knows your mother.”
“Four words,” my twin countered. “Gym class. Seventh grade.”
FOR HALF A SECOND, I was thrust back into middle school. Hiding in the bathroom the day my period started, knowing our gym teacher wouldn’t give me a pass for the cramps that rolled over me in waves.
“You’ll deal with menstrual difficulties approximately four hundred and forty-four times over the course of your lives, ladies,” Mrs. Bailey told us on our first day. Her red tennis shoes matched her track suit, and I couldn’t help wondering if she’d worn them on purpose to remind us of menstrual blood. “Only losers give in to the pain. I don’t teach losers.”
After that, I’d watched other girls’ grades drop from As to Bs for succumbing to the red tide. Each time, I’d rolled my eyes and agreed with Mrs. Bailey. Those girls needed to suck it up and deal...until it was my own turn to handle the queasy pain.
“Why today?” I moaned. Next class was our annual presidential fitness test. I’d passed with flying colors every year since kindergarten. Grace never tried and never won.
Now, though, my twin knelt beside me on the dirty bathroom tiles. “This is important to you. We’ll swap places.”
I didn’t argue that she couldn’t pass the test for me. We both knew that if she set her mind to it, Grace could do anything. Still—
“Mrs. Bailey will know,” I countered. I pressed one hand against my stomach. Winced and backed off. Nope, that didn’t help.
“She thinks she can tell the difference. I’m onto her though. Just watch.”
Grace’s plan was simple and revolved around the double bluff. We liked to fake-swap some days just to confuse our teachers. What could be more fun than acting like Grace pr
etending to be me?
And that was how it started. We left on the clothes we’d started with. Left on our paw-shaped friendship necklaces, split down the middle with the B and half an F on my side and one and a half Fs on hers.
I pushed down the pain of my cramps long enough to walk in tall and graceful. Honor strode fast and assertive.
“I’m benchwarming today,” I announced when Mrs. Bailey blew the whistle to get us started.
Our teacher’s eyes narrowed. “Honor. Seriously? Today’s the test.” She knew I wouldn’t miss my chance at excelling. She knew Grace tried her darnedest not to mar her complexion with unruly sweat.
I shrugged, smirked. As if we’d been testing Mrs. Bailey and she’d failed at catching us up in the deception. “I’m not Honor.”
What both of us had forgotten was the page-boy haircut I’d chosen a week earlier to keep the nape of my neck from growing so sweaty during sprints in hot sunlight. Grace had rolled her eyes. “I’m not doing that.” She’d been right, too. Wavy, hip-length hair had cropped short into a sea of curls that refused all attempts to tame them. I’d spend years growing my original mane back out.
Now, Mrs. Bailey tapped her own head, raising both eyebrows. I had short hair. Grace had long hair. We’d been caught in our fake switch.
Only, Grace had the gift of the gab. “I got hair extensions.” She tugged on her very real hair. “Do you like them?”
My voice coming out of Grace’s mouth was disconcerting. How earnest I sounded. How eager to please.
“And I guess you expect me to believe Grace cut all her hair off?”
There was the rub. To make this swap work, my twin would have to show up tomorrow without the perfect mane she so carefully cultivated.
But we were sisters. Twin-speak trumped vanity. Grace didn’t hesitate.
“Yeah. Grace was going to really try to pass the test today. She thought short hair might help.” My twin leaned in closer, whispered so none of the boys could hear her. “But she’s on her period....”
No one would throw herself under the bus, inviting Mrs. Bailey’s disdain in that manner. Bright green sneakers—matching today’s outfit—tapped against scuffed floor tiles. Grace and I froze, awaiting the verdict.
Then our gym teacher fell for it. “Good luck, Honor,” she told my sister. She pursed her lips in my direction then dismissed me with a head shake before raising her voice to speak to the entire class.
“Pushups are first!”
Grace passed the test with flying colors. I still had the seventh-grade certificate in my room at home.
NOW, I NODDED AT MY sister. She’d duped our eagle-eyed gym teacher, so Mrs. Smythewhite should be no problem. Never mind that we were out of practice. We were still twins.
So we swapped. Grace pulled on my dress, wrinkled on the bum and damp under the armpits from recent exertions. Rather than dressing in Grace’s clothes, however, I swirled my pelt around my nakedness. Inhaled deeply for the first time in hours. Then stretched the kinks out of my four-legged form.
We split in the hall, Grace heading for the main stairs while I sniffed for our absent cousins. All of the doors were closed. No one was visible. Good thing I had a lupine nose to point me to where they’d gone.
I expected the scent trail to lead to Mr. Smythewhite’s office. After all, that locked filing cabinet had been niggling at the back of my mind ever since I decided he was the likely culprit. But that’s not where my cousins—and Bastion’s pelt—had disappeared to.
Instead, a minute later I found myself scratching on the outside of Clarence’s door.
Luke let me in so quickly he must have been waiting just inside for me. “Your cousin collapsed.” His eyes were worried. Still, Luke had apparently dealt with the situation just right.
Because Bastion lay on the teenager’s bed, Luke’s coat protecting him from sheets that reeked of teenager grime even from a distance. Justice sat beside Bastion, lost in worry over his twin’s fading health.
I padded closer. The scent of misplaced fur had been strong in the hall, but it choked me up here. Justice and Luke hadn’t just dropped Bastion on the first soft spot after he faded. No, my favorite cousin had been tracking his pelt. Instinct had brought him to the one room I’d previously lacked the opportunity to search within....
Now it was my turn to hunt.
It was hard to pinpoint the source of the odor, though, when stolen fur permeated the space like sweaty socks in a high-school locker room. I nosed at the bureau, was pleasantly surprised when Luke opened drawer after drawer for me without requiring a single nudge.
The clothes inside stank of fabric softener. I sneezed. Turned my head aside.
The closet was similarly unhelpful. The cleaning crew hadn’t been in here—perhaps a parental tactic to try to train a responsible teenager? The result was moldy pizza crusts in one corner and plastic wrappers sticking to my paw pads. The scent of fur, however, was so weak I doubted Bastion’s pelt had ever been inside.
Backing out, I closed my eyes to give my nose a little extra vigor. Luke’s hand on my shoulder guided me around debris, then stopped me when I was so close to the smell that I felt fur sticking between my teeth.
“The bed?” he asked.
I opened my eyes. I’d returned to the exact same spot where my cousins huddled. I put my forepaws on the side of the bed...and the scent weakened. Crouching and creeping underneath, I found a pair of boxers, two textbooks, and a fur odor so strong it made me growl.
There was no pelt present, however. It had to be between the mattress and the box spring.
“Okay, everybody up.”
We weren’t twins, but Luke could read my mind as easily as if I’d spoken to him. The bed creaked as Justice helped move his twin to a bean-bag chair in one corner. Then, between them, Luke and Justice tilted up the mattress...
...to display a handful of wolf hairs with no pelt in sight.
Chapter 18
My nose provided no further evidence of the fur’s location. It was as if the pelt had been everywhere and nowhere. I nudged Bastion, but he was too deep in his pain to give us the direction only he could offer. His twin, on the other hand, was painfully alert.
Justice grabbed my ruff, shaking me as if he intended to knock the fur right off my back. “Shift.”
I struggled for only a second before I obeyed him, Justice’s body shielding my discarded pelt from Luke’s view. Huddling in naked humanity, an air-conditioning vent blew a frigid breeze up one leg. Then I warmed as Luke stepped around my cousin to block the flow of air.
“Leave her alone,” Luke growled, even though Justice had gotten what he wanted and was no longer shaking me. In that moment, Luke was all skinless. Wolf fangs and claws were barely hidden beneath smooth human skin.
For his part, Justice snorted while snatching my pelt. Had Luke noticed its abrupt reappearance? I didn’t think so.
The flutter of my stomach drew my attention away from misdirection. My pelt landed atop Bastion. I braced for pain, hating the fact that I felt none.
Either the few minutes in wolf form hadn’t been enough to charge my fur, or Bastion was failing so rapidly that the pelt no longer helped him. I squeezed my eyes shut, rubbing my face with one hand.
And Luke must have decided I needed clothes more than protection. Because a t-shirt slid over my head as my eyes opened. I fingered the alligator at the breast.
“This is Clarence’s.”
Luke’s eyes crinkled. “He has dozens. Do you really think he’ll notice?”
I wanted to answer, but it was all I could do to remain upright. My legs had turned strangely liquid. Not because my pelt cradled my favorite cousin. That would have been too much to ask for. No, my body was rebelling due to exhaustion and lack of sleep.
My butt hit the floor—sticky, gross—just as Justice swore and kicked the bed. “It’s not working. You need to get your lazy ass up and....”
I only realized my eyes had drifted shut when my cousin
went silent. I struggled free of exhaustion, turned...and found Luke and Justice facing each other like posturing wolves.
“DON’T SPEAK TO HER that way,” Luke growled.
“Don’t stick your nose in where it doesn’t belong.”
Any second now, someone would reach out and shove the other. Any second now, this would descend into a no-holds-barred brawl.
I tried to rise, but my muscles refused to tighten. I must have squeaked or whined or something. Because Luke was beside me. Kneeling, his eyes both soothed and warmed me.
“When was the last time you slept?”
“Yesterday?” I shook my head. No, it was now long after midnight. “Day before yesterday.”
For a split second, Luke’s anger was so hot it seared my body. Then he pulled the rage inward. Covered his anger with strengthening ice as he returned to his feet and focused on my cousin instead.
“You need to let her rest.”
“Bastion will die....”
I found enough energy to grunt out a protest. Now wasn’t the time to share our identities with one of the skinless. Thankfully, Justice fell silent before more was revealed.
Luke was no idiot, but he let the opening pass. “Whatever you’re hiding, Honor has nothing to give now. She’s empty. She has to rest.”
Justice’s snort indicated reluctant acceptance. “Sure, I’ll leave her here in the lap of luxury while I take my twin away to vomit and shiver in a parking lot.”
“You have nowhere to sleep?” The thread of anger in Luke’s voice was no longer aimed at Justice. It appeared to be aimed at the universe. Still, I didn’t like the way he clenched both fists.
“It’s fine.” I pulled myself up, using the bureau to steady myself. “If I cuddle up with Bastion lupine, I can rest and he might get some strength out of it. I can run in an hour. Two at the most.”
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