by Hettie Ivers
“I knew it!” I mimicked her gasp. “You do have it. I can’t believe you—”
“Communing with a dangerous spirit got your grandmother and all the other seers killed,” she whisper-shouted. “I won’t let you get dragged into that world. It’s not real. Whatever voices you think you’re hearing, you’re not. Whatever spirits you think you’re seeing, you’re imagining them—because they don’t exist. They don’t exist.”
“Well, maybe if you say it a third time I’ll really be convinced.”
“You are playing with fire if you go down this path. Inviting the very devil into your heart and psyche. I won’t allow it.”
“Is this about the beautiful purple-eyed witch trapped between worlds? Is she the dangerous spirit who got Grandma killed?”
The lights began flickering like mad. At the same time, my mom made a sound like a flock of seagulls taking flight—or maybe getting strangled—before rattling and clanking noises reverberated through the line, followed by total silence once the phone disconnected.
Squinting my eyes against the strobe-light effect happening in my living room, I reached for my wine and downed the remains of the glass. Then I reached for the bottle and refilled it, ignoring the way my hands shook.
“Look, I’m not saying I believe you’re real,” I said to the disco show blinding me. “And this doesn’t mean we’re going to start communicating on a regular basis. But I don’t speak Morse code. So how about you just blink the lights twice for yes and three times for no?”
The lights stopped flickering.
Great. Now what? “Um. Thanks for that.” I took another sip of wine to fortify my nerves. “So, you think I should read that journal, don’t you?”
One blink. Then another. All-righty. That was a yes. I nodded in acknowledgement and murmured an awkward “thanks”—feeling like a complete lunatic. I was working up the insanity to ask Casper whether he’d known my Granny Nina, when my mom called me back.
I answered on the first ring, preferring even my mom’s company to that of the not-completely-departed strobe-light operator in my living room.
“How did you know about the purple-eyed witch caught between worlds?” she asked in one breath the moment I picked up.
“Overheard you talking with Granny Nina about it once or twice.” Talking at was more accurate. In my eavesdropping recollection, Granny Nina hadn’t done much responding.
She made a “hmph” sound and mumbled unintelligibly to herself before replying, “I can’t give you that journal. I’m sorry, but it’s for your own good. I’d never forgive myself if—”
“I’ll go on the date with pre-med.” Once the words left me, I knew there was no turning back. “In exchange for the journal.”
The tense echo of silence that danced across the line told me just how deep my mom’s superstitious fears of the occult ran. Also how great her desire to see me settled with a Jewish doctor was, because it took all of twenty-three seconds for her to agree to my terms.
10
Lauren
After a few more rounds of the yes/no light-blinking game with Casper, I was sufficiently freaked out. I still hadn’t worked up the nerve to ask him whether he’d known Granny Nina. Instead, I’d stuck to easy questions like was I a natural brunette (yes) and had I gotten laid in the past three semesters (no).
Once I’d confirmed that the ghost in my dorm had indeed seen me naked and was keeping track of my sex life, I had to get out for a little while. I couldn’t very well hang there alone drinking wine and processing that shit. So I went to see Kendall at her work.
Wolfsbane Tavern was packed, as usual. There wasn’t much else to do in our little college town. Working behind the bar, Kendall lit up the dive like an angel—her bright smile, light green eyes, and halo of blonde hair catching what little light there was in the dingy place. My suitemate was a knockout. I’d seen guys walk into walls and trip over flat pavement gawking at her tall, shapely physique. But she was far more than her physical attributes. Kendall was smart, she was funny, and she was a great person.
Unfortunately, she was also terribly insecure—emotionally fragile. She’d grown up without a dad and in the shadow of a bombshell mom who had never taken an interest in her. From a young age, she’d been passed between whichever relatives were willing to take her in after her mom had gone off to Hollywood to try and make it as an actress. Although Kendall’s mom had never made anything more than Playboy Playmate of the Month, she’d stayed in California, leaving her daughter behind.
Kendall’s insecurities weren’t readily apparent, though. To most, she came across as super-confident and capable. And fun. Always, always fun. Men flocked to her wherever she went. So it wasn’t too surprising when I arrived to find her engaged in what appeared to be a rather intimate conversation with a gorgeous stranger sitting at the opposite side of the big U-shaped bar that dominated the tavern. A blue-eyed, blond-haired stranger who could’ve passed for a gladiator or a battle-ready Viking, from what I was able to see of him. He also looked too old to be a student. Where were all these hot men coming from?
Kendall’s eyes brightened the moment she turned from the stranger and spotted me as I elbowed my way through the crowd to claim the space someone had just vacated at the bar. She shouted something I didn’t catch to Travis, who was working behind the bar with her, and came over to me. “Well, well, look who’s out on a school night.”
“Hey,” I greeted, settling into my stool and leaning across the bar to get closer to her. I let my gaze slide meaningfully in the direction of the hunky stranger seated in the corner behind her and asked, “Who’s the lovechild of Thor and Theo James?”
Her smile grew so wide she looked like she might need a bigger face to contain it. “I know, right?”
“Whoa. Calm your tits, girl.” I said it teasingly, but I sort of meant it, too. Her high beams were on full display beneath her tight white T-shirt. Men seated around the bar were staring, riveted. One guy looked like he’d just begun to drool. I supposed this was how Kendall brought home the big tips.
“No, you don’t understand.” Kendall’s hand, cold and clammy from serving drinks, came down over mine atop the bar. “Wait till you see him standing. He’s like six feet eight inches of pure sex walking. He speaks German and French,” she gushed. “He was talking to me in French earlier—with a German accent.” She bit her lip and let her eyes roll back. “I thought I was going to come right then and there standing behind the bar.”
Oh, boy. Kendall was a double major: history and French language and literature. She was a sucker for any guy with a foreign accent, much less one who resembled a Viking conqueror.
“He’s been blatantly flirting with me. All. Night. Long.” She made a squealing noise in the back of her throat just loud enough for my ears only. “Fair warning: I’m bringing him home tonight if this keeps up. So have earplugs handy.”
“Damn,” I said with an uneasy laugh. “Aren’t you considerate. Thanks for the heads-up.”
“You’re welcome,” she returned with a giggle that was all excitement for the demigod in the corner.
While I was happy for her that she was happy, the ease with which Kendall seemed to bring strangers home for casual sex unnerved me. It was risky enough when it was some fraternity guy, or an older, local divorcee on the rebound. There was a jaded worldliness to the out-of-towner in the corner that didn’t sit well with my gut. And something about him was strangely—not in a good way—familiar, evoking an ominous sense of déjà vu.
Now I definitely needed a drink. “Hey, can I get a—”
“Whiskey neat?” Kendall guessed, giving me a wink. “Already coming up. Compliments of your favorite roommate.”
I started to protest that I would pay for my own drink, but she’d already turned her back to me to attend to the noisy patrons demanding service. Travis set a glass with three fingers of Redbreast in front of me a few moments later. It was the best whiskey they served at Wolfsbane. Who was I to let it
go to waste?
As the whiskey burned down my throat and stung the fresh cut on my lip, I tried to push away thoughts of my crazy interaction with Casper earlier. And with Stranger-Danger.
Easier said than done. My second gulp of the liquid went down smoother than the first. I unzipped my coat, already feeling warmer. And tipsy.
“So, did you bang your head when you fell out of bed last night?” Kendall asked between customers, leaning forward on her elbows across the bar space in front of me.
“Huh?”
“I heard a cracking sound against your nightstand. It wasn’t your head you hit, was it? You woke my ass up with all your crashing around. For a minute I was excited you might be getting properly plowed. Been a while since you brought a guy home.”
“Thanks for that reminder.”
She laughed. “What are friends for?”
“Wait … did I really fall out of bed last night?” Now that she’d mentioned it, I vaguely remembered that happening. Yet if I had fallen out of bed, I bruised far too easily for there not to be evidence of it today. And the only marks I presently had on me were the ones Kai had left on my ass this afternoon.
“Yes,” Kendall confirmed. “You fell and you knocked shit over. I heard your water bottle clanking and rolling across the floor.”
I winced. “Sorry.”
“Whatever. No big. Just glad you’re all right. Besides, I’m used to it. If I were a better friend, I’d have installed a guardrail on your bed by now. Or maybe started strapping you in at night.”
“Pshh—I don’t fall out of bed that often.”
“You fall out enough.” Her smile faded. “Hey, did you hear about Dustin?
“Yeah. I did. Just awful, isn’t it?”
“Terrifying. Everyone’s been talking about it.” She leaned closer. “And about you.”
I nodded. “Got that memo from Jana today. Meet the new black widow of campus.”
She rolled her eyes. “Jana’s an idiot. Forget her. That label doesn’t even apply.”
“Doesn’t matter. Only matters if it sticks.”
“The part that’s really odd is that people are saying Ryan, Noah, and Dustin all claim to have been attacked by a huge, lone white wolf.”
As Kendall said it, my mind went straight to the awful vision I’d had of the little white wolf pup being attacked. “Huh,” I managed to respond nonchalantly. “Hadn’t heard that.” I felt a hum of energy at the back of my neck, at the top of my spine. As I raised my whiskey glass to my lips, my hands began tingling with the same rush of magic I’d felt in the hallway earlier with Kai.
“I mean, everyone knows we don’t see white wolves out here,” Kendall continued. “But that’s not the only thing that’s got the local forest rangers and the state’s department of fish and wildlife freaked out. You know how they tag and track the wolf packs in the Blue Mountains?”
I nodded.
“Well, three weeks ago, the very same night Ryan was attacked, someone removed all of the collars—both the radio collars and GPS tags—from every wolf in the Blue Mountain tri-state program and dumped them, smashed into unsalvageable pieces, outside the department director’s front door.”
“What?”
“Yup.” Her green eyes covertly scanned the bar-goers on either side of me. “That’s classified, by the way.”
“Got it.” I pantomimed zipping my lips. Ours was a small town. Kendall’s exalted position as the town’s supermodel bartender with the friendly girl-next-door demeanor meant she was privy to more local gossip, town scandals, and politicking than the mayor’s office.
“Now get ready for the creepy part,” she said with a dramatic raised brow. “On the same morning that the broken collars were dumped, the fish and wildlife director woke up with a GPS collar around his neck.”
My mouth fell open. “You’re shitting me?”
“Uh-uh. So did several Blue Mountain park rangers and the head of every well-intentioned wolf conservation group involved in the collaring program.”
I slapped my palm over my mouth to quell the instantaneous church-giggle reflex that hit me when I imagined grown men and women waking up to find GPS collars around their throats.
It wasn’t funny. Not funny, Lauren.
“Kenndaaall!” drunken male students hollered from across the bar. “Kendall, we miss you. Come do a shot with us!”
“Ugh. Duty calls. Be back in a sec.” Kendall leveled her pointer finger at me and smirked. “I saw that, by the way. If only people knew how twisted you were behind those innocent honey-brown eyes.”
“What?” I protested. “I am innocent.”
While Kendall went to cater to drunken frat guys, I shook off my inappropriate glee at the wildlife conservationists’ expense. I knew that the collaring they did was with good intentions—to help control poaching and protect local endangered wolves. But those GPS collars had always looked damned uncomfortable to me—not to mention weird and unnatural. What’s more, there were those who argued the program put the wolves in greater danger, because hunters had been known to successfully hack the GPS and radio collars, making it easier for them to prey upon the wolves.
I knocked the rest of my whiskey back. As I was lowering the glass, my eyes connected with Kendall’s hulking stranger across the bar. He was staring straight at me. I looked away—although not quickly enough to avoid being thoroughly unsettled by his gaze. I wasn’t sure what it had been. His stare had felt intense, yet not necessarily in a sexual way. Still, something in his eyes had seemed to silently declare me his prey.
Kendall returned and picked up right where she’d left off as she went to work pouring another round of shots. “So, you can understand why they’ve wanted to keep this hush and out of the press. I mean, whoever did it is obviously a psycho—probably some extreme liberal environmentalist who isn’t on board with the collaring program or something. Funds for programs like that are hard-won as it is. Bad publicity over a failure of this magnitude could devastate the entire initiative.”
I nodded. “Makes sense.”
“Here.” She set a shot of absinthe in front of me.
“Wow.” I shook my head. “No way. The whiskey was it for me. I’m done for the night.”
“But you’re already out on a school night. You might as well make the most of it.”
“That green fairy stuff is like seventy percent alcohol.”
“Yeah, but I added water to it.”
I rolled my eyes. “Uh-uh. I just came out for some air and to see you. I gotta head back in a few and get to the studying I didn’t do tonight.”
The group of guys on the other side of the bar began hollering for Kendall to bring them their shots.
“Oh, come on. Live a little. You never know, that big bad white wolf in the woods might be coming for you next.”
“Too soon, bitch,” I scolded as she snickered and made off with the tray of shots, leaving the one behind for me. “Way too soon!” I laughingly projected at her retreating form as the frat guys cheered the arrival of their poison, drowning me out.
Making eye contact with Travis, I mouthed the word “water” and clasped my hands together in the “please” gesture. He nodded and gestured back to give him a minute.
I’d been studiously avoiding eyeing the corner where Kendall’s multilingual crush was seated, but when Travis went to the back register to close out someone’s tab, my eyes followed him, my gaze inadvertently sweeping over Theo James’s doppelganger in the process. But this time, it wasn’t the fact that I once again caught him staring straight at me that caused me to nearly topple from my barstool. It was the ghostly sight of my Granny Nina looking over his shoulder at me.
11
Lauren
She was gone in the next blink.
I’m not crazy.
I’m not crazy.
“You, my friend, are crazy if you let that Jacques Senaux go to waste.” Kendall’s voice made me jump. “Emil’s pretty damn fine, huh?”
> “Mm—what?” I forced my eyes away from the vacant space over the stranger’s shoulder to meet Kendall’s smiling eyes and wagging brows.
“Emil. That’s his name—the hottie you were just staring at. With your mouth open.”
“I wasn’t—it was …” I shook my head. “I thought I saw someone I knew walk behind him. But I didn’t.”
“Riiight. Hey, tell you what, I’ll drink half. Deal?”
“Yeah, sure.” It didn’t register what I’d just agreed to until Kendall downed half the absinthe shot and offered the remaining glass of green liquid to me. Aw, hell, I was already hallucinating. Why not? I threw it back in one gulp, and immediately regretted it. “Ugh!”
“It’s a little terrible going down the first time.”
“You think?” I clutched my throat and made gagging faces. “Pretty sure I just grew chest hair.”
Travis, bless his timing, came and set a chilled bottle of water in front of me.
“Thank you; you’re an angel,” I croaked. After I’d chugged half the water bottle, I told Kendall, “And you’re the devil’s spawn.”
“Just wait. You’ll thank me in about seven minutes,” she assured me before going to assist others around the bar in need of re-inebriation.
It took only four minutes before I began to feel the effects. “No wonder this stuff was banned for a century,” I told Kendall when she came back to check on me. Already, I was speaking at half my normal pace as I focused on enunciating through my cottonmouth. “That wormwood’s no joke. I’m feeling crazy photosensitive right now. I think I might be seeing moving balls of light that aren’t really there.”
“Right? I mean, the experts”—Kendall made air quotes—“say the hallucinogenic properties from the wormwood are only myth, but don’t you agree that the lighting in Van Gogh’s paintings makes so much more sense now, knowing he was drinking this stuff on the reg?”
“Actually, I was just thinking the fact he cut off his own ear made more sense.” And speaking of weirdos, I tipped my head in the direction of Kendall’s foreign crush sitting at the corner of the bar. I’d caught him staring a few more times, but he seemed a lot less menacing with the floating balls of light around him. “So how long is your German- and French-speaking hottie in town for?”