“It’s natural to have trouble finding your identity. Especially as a twin.” Mrs. Smythewhite took my hand underneath the table, the cool contact somehow warmer than the sun beginning to heat up the brunch space. “It was like a scene out of a movie when they reunited on graduation day. Charity broke into the ceremony halfway through, pushing through the crowd to drag her sister out of line for her diploma. A grand gesture. I ended up walking across the stage alone.”
I had so many questions that it was hard to choose one of them. “Was...?”
Before I could spit it out, a familiar voice interrupted from behind our heads. “I apologize for the intrusion, but your sister needs you immediately.”
Clipboard lady stood behind us, brows drawn together. I was one item on a thousand-item list, but she took the time to provide proof that Grace had indeed sent her.
“She was behind the bathroom door, so I might not have understood her perfectly. I think she said something about a wolfsfell though. Did I get that right?”
THE NAPKIN IN MY LAP fluttered to the ground as I left without excusing myself. Surely Mrs. Smythewhite wouldn’t do anything terrible in the midst of all these people. Surely....
The memory of Serena shrieking as she plummeted from the second-floor landing froze me. I grabbed clipboard lady’s arm before she could turn away.
“I need you to stick to Mrs. Smythewhite like a flea on a dog.”
Her mouth twisted. “Such colorful language.”
“I mean it. This is important.”
She had no reason to trust me. No reason to obey when I was asking her to keep an eye on her employer.
But something in my voice must have relayed the urgency, because she did treat me to a nod after one moment of consideration. “Okay, but....”
The pain in my gut was a pounding throb now. That hadn’t been poison. It was my twin-sense, telling me something was desperately wrong with my sister. Without waiting for further confirmation from clipboard lady, I ran.
I hadn’t taken time to ask which bathroom Grace was in, but I didn’t need to. Because my gut told me she wasn’t inside at all. Instead, it led me around the other side of the house, the part of the lawn that non-guest bedrooms opened onto. There, a dark shape on a balcony materialized into two figures as I raced in the direction my gut led.
I slowed. They were embracing. This wasn’t my twin; it was a tryst to which I had most definitely not been invited.
Then I took one step sideways and the pair materialized into Grace and Clarence. Not kissing. Instead, the dagger I’d given my sister was clenched in his fist and pressed up against her unprotected throat.
Chapter 30
My hand went for my gun. It would be a tough shot, but I could make it. I’d wing Clarence, knowing the bullet would spin him counter-clockwise. The dagger would fly away from Grace rather than toward her. The shot would attract the attention of the brunchers, but that wouldn’t matter as long as my twin made it out alive.
Only...the spot beneath my arm where my gun belonged was empty. There was no holster waiting at my hip.
Right. Slim had my guns and Clarence now held my backup weapon. Which is how I came to be standing empty-handed when the son of the house turned his head and greeted me with a gamine grin.
“So there are two of you. Eggplant city.”
Grace’s eyes met mine then slid to the pelt draped across the teenager’s shoulders. I somehow knew that she’d enjoyed a wild leap of intuition soon after I left her, had realized that Clarence was the killer.
But while hunting for our cousin’s pelt, she’d been caught in the act.
“Eh, eh, eh. Eyes up here.” Clarence twisted the dagger so it scraped the first drop of blood free from my twin’s skin. She didn’t gasp, though. Just stood there waiting for me to come to her aid.
I closed my eyes for one split second, turning off fear for my sister and turning on the persona of a negotiator. “You’re on the wrong track.”
“Oh am I?” Clarence jerked his chin at me, but we all understood he was really pointing at the pelt curled around my shoulders. “So you don’t have one of these Harry Potter furs just like I do? A fresh one that’s not wearing out?”
He was still shivering even though the air had turned hot and Bastion’s pelt should have been heavy on his shoulders. Each twitch dislodged a hair or two from my cousin’s skin, white and silver fibers fluttering away on the hint of a breeze.
The vision proved that the pelt we’d been hunting for so long was nothing like mine. It wasn’t soft; it wasn’t supple. Instead, it resembled a moth-eaten rug left too long in an airless attic. Was there even enough energy left inside to save my cousin’s life?
The realization made my voice rougher than I meant it to be. “Is that what you want? This useless thing?”
I ripped my pelt from my shoulders, let it dangle from one hand like a soiled dish rag. Unfortunately, Clarence was no idiot.
“Yes,” he answered. “That’s exactly what I want.”
GIVE IT TO HIM. I read the plea in Grace’s eyes as easily as if she’d shouted. We’d retreat, lick our wounds, and return to fight another day.
But I shook my head in response to both of them. I couldn’t let that happen. Bastion didn’t have enough time left to take it slow.
“Are you sure?” Clarence wasn’t fazed by my refusal. Instead, he pushed Grace up against the railing, bending her down so only his grip prevented her from plummeting to hard stones beneath them. “Toss what I want up here and maybe I’ll let your sister go rather than letting her go.”
He wiggled his eyebrows, just in case I hadn’t caught the thinly veiled ultimatum. And as he stood there, threatening my sister with gravity, I took in the familiarity of his gesture, the ease of a task repeated.
That was exactly how he’d done away with Serena. Jimmy English might really have been an accident, but the young prostitute had been killed on purpose. The child in the woods? Her death by strangulation suggested Clarence was ready and willing to take his murders up a notch.
Plus, I now realized the obvious. If Clarence had been drawn to each person who’d touched my pelt the same way I’d been drawn to the child in the woods—through woelfin instinct—then my connection to Grace was likely ten times stronger. After all, we shared a twin-sense. Our furs were genetically identical. No wonder tears glimmered on my sister’s eyelids.
She needed out from under the murderer’s thumb, and quickly. But trading away my pelt wasn’t the way to release our family from Clarence’s grasp. He’d just keep killing everyone I came in contact with. I couldn’t take the easy way out.
So I took a step forward, heels echoing on the hard stone patio as I gauged the perfect spot to break my sister’s fall just in case I failed her.
Plan for the worst, prepare for the best, Uncle Reason had told us. I took a deep breath and did my best to reel Clarence in.
“You realize this fur will only grant you a few days of health, a week if you’re lucky.” I shook my pelt feeling my own teeth rattle. “The kills you’ve made are stopgap measures. You’ve felt how fast the strength fades each time, haven’t you?”
I didn’t give him time to agree or argue. Instead, I shifted my gaze away from Grace, who was trying to tell me something with her eyes that I didn’t have the time to decipher. Then I cast my net.
“Each of these furs matches a specific person.” This was the honest truth. Even Grace was nodding along at this point. “You’re borrowing the energy of the person yours is bound to. What you need to do is take it all.”
Grace gasped as she was pushed further over the edge. But Clarence wasn’t intentionally threatening her. Instead, he was interested. I could tell when he licked his lips and demanded, “How?”
I had no idea, but Bastion once told me there were no new stories, only old stories twisted around unexpected kernels of truth. So I grabbed onto an explanation that felt gruesome enough to keep Clarence’s interest and I ran with it. “You have to rip
out his throat and drink his blood.”
Vampires. The fictitious monsters seemed like a good choice to appeal to an already twisted teenager. But Grace’s reaction came before Clarence’s did.
“Honor! What are you doing?” My twin sounded like she’d put a lollipop in her mouth expecting cherry and instead found herself sucking on blood-imbued sugar.
“Telling the truth,” I lied. “You’re more important to me than our cousin.”
And that part, I realized—despite the cherished partnership I had with Bastion—was the honest truth.
“Your cousin?” Clarence interrupted before whatever Grace was about to say could derail this conversation. “The one who matches this fur. You’ll bring him to me?”
I nodded. “And then you’ll let my sister go.”
IT WAS HARD TO HASH out a bargain with Grace’s tearful recriminations spluttering over the distant DAR chatter. “Honor. Stop it.”
I didn’t stop. Instead, I accepted Clarence’s one-hour deadline. Informed him that, no, I couldn’t come alone. I’d have to bring at least one friend to help carry my cousin. Bastion wasn’t precisely well.
“Will his sickness dilute the magic?” Clarence was so intent upon me that Grace could have wiggled out of his grasp now. But there was no way to overtly tell her that, and she seemed to have lost the ability to understand twin-speak.
“No, it won’t matter.” I clenched my jaw, sending instructions to my twin. Twist away. Now!
Unfortunately, her answer had nothing to do with saving herself. “Are you so desperate to be the only one of us with a wolfsfell that you’ll sacrifice Bastion to save your uniqueness?”
Her recrimination struck me hard and low, right where my twin-sense had been informing me of danger earlier. I flinched back and Clarence laughed.
“If only I had popcorn.” Then he tightened his grip on Grace, allowing the dagger to nip deeper into the soft skin above her jugular. “Clock’s ticking. Better run.”
And I did. I ignored the pain and horror in Grace’s eyes. Ignored the knowledge that something unfixable had broken between us. Instead of meeting her gaze and trying to communicate the honorableness of my intensions, I fled to the neighbor’s bush, shed my clothes, and donned my fur-lined skin.
The pelt settled around me like a smothering cocoon of betrayal. Clung tight and taut, repeating the recriminations Grace had flung at my back.
“If you do this, it’s over between us!” she’d warned as I turned away from her.
Sprinting across town without regard for traffic, the only reason I could see where I was going was because wolves are unable to cry.
Chapter 31
Only when pavement tore into my pads and the metallic bite of blood wafted upward did I return to reality. I was on a deadline, not running for the sake of running. Rather than fleeing the hate in my twin’s eyes, I should have found a phone, called Justice, and drawn the threads of our tattered family in.
Too late now. Or was it? The alley I passed through smelled of a familiar blend of pine needles and spilled oil. If I wasn’t much mistaken, I’d traveled this way while fleeing from Slim the previous night. Which meant....
A one-minute detour led me to that same empty doghouse inside which Slim’s cell phone waited. I slid out of my pelt, powered up the device, then placed a call.
The connection rang and rang and rang without answer. I was soaked in sweat, yet still I shivered. Justice wouldn’t ignore me. He knew my mission.
“Bastion is worse. Much worse,” Grace had told me when I came out of Clarence’s room that morning. Had Bastion’s health deteriorated so rapidly that Justice couldn’t even answer his phone?
There was no way of knowing other than continuing my journey. So I curled back into my pelt, licked my bleeding paws once, then returned to the marathon. Running, running, running. At least I’d arrive with a fully charged skin.
Except...that didn’t turn out to be the case. Halfway there, electricity infused my body. Three-quarters of the way, exhaustion began sucking the electricity back into my muscles to fuel limping steps.
By the time I turned onto Luke’s street, only the image of a tall, calm werewolf was keeping me going. Luke wouldn’t be here, but I’d smell him as soon as I reached his doorstep. His home would open up to me, more den-like than the motel we’d moved out of. His strength would infuse me as I raced against the clock.
Only, I was wrong about that also. Luke was here. His back was straight, tall, easy as he walked down the sidewalk away from me. His motions were smooth as he stopped to tap on the window of a familiar car.
I froze, lupine throat unable to yell out a warning. If Luke stepped away from Slim’s vehicle now, we could sneak around the back together and ditch the tenacious investigator. With Luke on our side, maybe my thread of a plan to take down Clarence would turn into a proper noose.
But it was too late. The window cranked down slowly, words flowing easily into my perked ear tufts. “This is public property,” Slim blustered, like a pint-sized poodle menacing a werewolf. “I can stay out here as long as I like.”
Luke shrugged. The werewolf had no reason to emphasize his obvious superiority. “Sure. It just seems inefficient. I watch you watching my house. How about you come inside and we drink a beer together? Might be smarter for the two of us to talk.”
For a split second, my aching paws eased. Luke was doing the job I’d left for him.
The trouble was, protecting Slim from a murderer was no longer an important matter. And...I couldn’t tell Luke that in wolf form. Didn’t have time to do anything other than energize Bastion and scurry back to my twin’s side.
Slinking along the fence separating Luke’s house from the neighbor’s, I leapt through the open kitchen window in the form of my wolf.
THE HOUSE FELT ABANDONED, empty. Gathering clouds plunged the afternoon interior into dimness. Somewhere, a faucet dripped.
I dashed up the stairs before shifting on the landing. The pelt that landed on the carpet before me wasn’t vibrating with energy, but it was still charged. Still useful. Grabbing the fur tight, I burst into Luke’s bedroom and wasted one second checking the clock on the wall.
It had taken me twenty minutes to get here. Minor setback with Slim aside, my plan to energize my cousin and use him as a secret weapon was feasible. I just needed to get Justice to help me carry Bastion downstairs....
“I found it,” I started. But before I could explain further, the deep bend in Justice’s back struck me. There were tear tracks on his cheeks. The rank scent of sweat turned foul was decipherable even to my human nose.
Justice swallowed, then offered two words that opened up a black hole in my stomach. “Too late.”
I expected him to stand, to kick over a trash can, to punch through the drywall. Instead, he continued cradling the hand of his twin, gently caressing the palm with his forefinger. He didn’t move even when I joined them, fumbling at Bastion’s throat for a pulse.
Nothing. Not even the butterfly wingbeat of a fading heartbeat. I might as well have been handling a corpse.
I was the one who swore then, refusing to believe my own senses. I ripped back the covers, tore the buttons on Bastion’s silk nightshirt in my haste to bare his chest.
My pelt resisted as I pressed it skin-down against my cousin. It swiveled in my hands, landing fur-soft against Bastion’s face instead.
“There’s no point in smothering him.” Justice’s voice was a monotone. “He’s dead already.”
I refused to believe that. “He isn’t.”
Never mind that Bastion’s pulse still refused to materialize. I massaged the supple leather in the center of my pelt. Found the spot I was looking for. Squeezed.
I gasped as my own heart hiccuped. My fingers pressed once more against Bastion’s throat. Testing. Imploring.
Still no pulse.
Then Justice was there beside me. His fingers replaced mine on his twin. There was a glimmer of hope in his question. “You thi
nk this will work?”
“I think it’s worth trying.” I squeezed again and again, forcing my heart rate to increase past the easy drumbeat of rest and into the cadence of running. Past running into sprinting, into the mad dash of adrenaline-laden terror as I fled from a fate worse than death.
Bastion couldn’t fade away. I wouldn’t let him. I would chase his soul to the ends of the earth if that’s what it took to drag him back to us.
I was gasping now, pain radiating through my body. But I didn’t ease up the pressure. Just kept clenching my fist into my pelt over and over and over until a hand pushed mine aside.
“It can’t be too late.” My chin was wet, but I didn’t bother swiping at it. Instead, I turned to Justice, ready to fight him if that’s what it took to continue my supernatural CPR.
But Justice was smiling. Two fingers rested beneath Bastion’s chin. His other hand had slid beneath my pelt. Which meant...
It was a third hand that had brushed mine off the pelt I’d been massaging. That hand didn’t belong to Justice.
Bastion was awake.
TOGETHER, JUSTICE AND I flipped my pelt over. Curled the fur around Bastion’s body so my skin touched his skin.
The tingles of energy withdrawing from my torso were joyful agony. I squeezed Bastion’s hand as hard as I’d squeezed our shared heart.
I wanted to stay there forever, but the clock hadn’t stopped ticking while we were working. “We have to go.” There wasn’t time to explain everything. Still, I did my best to hit the highlights while I dragged myself away from the cousin I didn’t want to stop touching and pulled on yet another set of clothing.
“You think that’ll work? Using him as, what, a Trojan horse?” A minute ago, Justice and I had been united in our shared goal of saving Bastion. Now, he eyed me askance. “My brother is too weak to stand.”
“I can do it.” Bastion’s voice wobbled, the timbre so scratchy we could barely understand him. He tried to push himself up into a seated position, and I knew the moment he realized he’d fail and instead turned the aborted gesture into a straightening of his collar. “I’ll be stronger in a minute,” he added, letting his eyes droop shut as he slid back down into the bed.
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