Shiver Trilogy (Shiver, Linger, Forever)

by Stiefvater Maggie

  “Thank you,” Jack said. He hugged his arms around himself. Isabel looked sick.

  “Just give me the other one,” I said to Isabel. Isabel handed it to me and we turned to Olivia, who was so pale that I could see the vein running over her temple; nerves shook her hands. Isabel took over my duty of swabbing the arm. It was like an unspoken rule that we both had to feel useful to make the hateful task possible.

  “I changed my mind!” Olivia cried. “I don’t want to do it! I’ll take my chances!”

  I took her hand. “Olivia. Olive. Calm down.”

  “I can’t.” Olivia’s eyes were on the dark red of the syringe. “I can’t say that I’d rather die than be this way.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to convince her to do something that could kill her, but I didn’t want her to not do it, out of fear. “But your whole life — Olivia.”

  Olivia shook her head. “No. No, it’s not worth it. Let Jack try it. I’ll take my chances. If it works on him, then I’ll try it. But I … can’t.”

  “You do know it’s nearly November, right?” Isabel demanded. “It’s freezing cold! You’re going to change soon for the winter, and we won’t get another chance until spring.”

  “Just let her wait,” Jack snapped. “There’s no harm. Better her parents think she’s missing for a few months than find out she’s a werewolf.”

  “Please.” Olivia’s eyes were full of tears.

  I shrugged helplessly and put down the syringe. I didn’t know any more than she did. And in my heart, I knew that, in her position, I’d make the same choice — better to live with her beloved wolves than die of meningitis.

  “Fine,” Isabel said. “Jack, take Olivia out to the car. Wait there and keep an eye out. Okay, Grace. Let’s go see what Sam’s done to the exam room while we were gone.”

  Jack and Olivia headed down the hallway, pressed against each other for warmth, trying not to shift, and Isabel and I turned to go to the wolf who already had.

  Standing just outside the exam room where Sam was, Isabel put her hand on my arm, stopping me before I turned the door handle. “Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked. “It could kill him. Probably will kill him.”

  Instead of answering, I pushed open the door.

  In the ugly fluorescent lighting of the room, Sam looked ordinary, doglike, small, crouched beside the exam table. I knelt in front of him, wishing that we’d thought of this possible cure before it was probably too late for him. “Sam.” I don’t want to stand before you like a thing, shrewd, secretive.… I had known that the heat wouldn’t change him back to human. It was nothing but selfishness that had made me bring him to the clinic. Selfishness, and a fallible cure that couldn’t possibly work for him in this form. “Sam, do you still want to do this?”

  I touched his ruff, imagining it as his dark hair. I swallowed unhappily.

  Sam whistled through his nose. I had no idea how much he understood of what I said; only that, in his semi-drugged state, he didn’t flinch under my touch.

  I tried again. “It could kill you. Do you still want to try?”

  Behind me, Isabel coughed meaningfully.

  Sam whined at the noise, eyes jerking to Isabel and the door. I stroked his head and looked into his eyes. God, they were the same. It killed me to look at them now.

  This has to work.

  A tear slid down my face. I didn’t bother to swipe it away as I looked up at Isabel. I wanted this like I’d never wanted anything. “We have to do it.”

  Isabel didn’t move. “Grace, I don’t think he stands a chance unless he’s human. I just don’t think it will work.”

  I ran a finger over the short, smooth hair on the side of his face. If he hadn’t been sedated, he wouldn’t have tolerated it, but the Benadryl had dulled his instincts. He closed his eyes. It was unwolflike enough to give me hope.

  “Grace. Are we doing this or not? Seriously.”

  “Wait,” I said. “I’m trying something.”

  I settled on the floor and whispered to Sam, “I want you to listen to me, if you can.” I leaned the side of my face against his ruff and remembered the golden wood he had shown me so long ago. I remembered the way the yellow leaves, the color of Sam’s eyes, fluttered and twisted, crashing butterflies, on their way to the ground. The slender white trunks of the birches, creamy and smooth as human skin. I remembered Sam standing in the middle of the wood, his arms stretched out, a dark, solid form in the dream of the trees. His coming to me, me punching his chest, the soft kiss. I remembered every kiss we’d ever had, and I remembered every time I’d curled in his human arms. I remembered the soft warmth of his breath on the back of my neck while we slept.

  I remembered Sam.

  I remembered him forcing himself out of wolf form for me. To save me.

  Sam jerked away from me. His head was lowered, tail between his legs, and he was shaking.

  “What’s happening?” Isabel’s hand was on the doorknob.

  Sam backed away farther, crashing into the cabinet behind him, curling into a ball, uncurling. He was peeling free. He was shaking out of his fur. He was wolf and he was Sam, and then

  he

  was

  just

  Sam.

  “Hurry,” Sam whispered. He was jerking, hard, against the cabinet. His fingers were claws on the tile. “Hurry. Do it now.”

  Isabel was frozen by the door.

  “Isabel! Come on!”

  She snapped out of her spell and came over to us. She crouched beside Sam, next to the bare expanse of his back. He was biting his lip so hard that it was bleeding. I knelt, took his hand.

  His voice was strained. “Grace — hurry. I’m almost gone.”

  Isabel didn’t ask any more questions. She just grabbed his arm, turned it, and jabbed the needle in. She depressed the syringe halfway, but it jerked out of his arm as he seized violently. Sam backed away from me, tugging his hand from mine, and threw up.

  “Sam —”

  But he was gone. In half the time it had taken him to become human, he was a wolf. Shaking, staggering, nails scratching on the tiles, falling to the floor.

  “I’m sorry, Grace,” Isabel said. That was all she said. She laid the syringe on the counter. “Crap. I hear Jack. I’ll be right back.”

  The door opened and closed. I knelt next to Sam’s body and buried my face in his fur. His breaths were ragged and exhausted. And all I could think was — I killed him. This is going to kill him.

  Jack was the one who opened the exam room door. “Grace, come on. We have to go — Olivia’s not doing so good.”

  I stood, embarrassed to be found with tear-stained cheeks. I turned to tip the used syringe into the hazardous waste container by the counter. “I need help carrying him.”

  He scowled at me. “That’s why Isabel sent me in here.”

  I looked down, and my heart stopped. Empty floor. I spun, ducking my head to look under the table. “Sam?”

  Jack had left the door open. The room was empty.

  “Help me find him!” I shouted at Jack, pushing past him into the hallway. There was no sign of Sam. As I pelted down the hall, I could see the door wide-open at the end of it, black night staring in. It was the first place a wolf would’ve run to, once his drugs wore off. Escape. The night. The cold.

  I spun in the parking lot, looking for any sign of Sam in the slender finger of Boundary Wood that stretched behind the clinic. But it was darker than dark. No lights. No sound. No Sam.

  “Sam!”

  I knew he wouldn’t come, even if he heard me. Sam was strong, but instincts were stronger.

  It was intolerable to imagine him out there somewhere, half a vial of infected blood mixing slowly with his.

  “Sam!” My voice was a wail, a howl, a cry in the night. He was gone.

  Headlights blinded me: Isabel’s SUV, tearing up beside me and shuddering to a stop. Isabel leaned over from the driver’s side and shoved open the passenger-side door, he
r face a ghost in the lights of the dashboard.

  “Get in, Grace. Hurry the hell up! Olivia is changing and we’ve been here way too long already.”

  I couldn’t leave him.

  “Grace!”

  Jack climbed into the backseat, shuddering; his eyes pleaded with me. They were the same eyes I’d seen at the very beginning, back when he’d first been turned. Back before I’d known anything at all.

  I got in and slammed the door shut, looking out the window just in time to see a white wolf standing by the edge of the parking lot. Shelby. Alive, just like Sam had thought. I stared in the rearview mirror at her; the wolf stood in the parking lot and gazed after us. I thought I saw triumph in her eyes as she turned and disappeared into the darkness.

  “Which wolf is that?” Isabel demanded.

  But I couldn’t answer. All I could think was Sam, Sam, Sam.

  “I don’t think Jack’s doing well,” Olivia said. She sat in the passenger seat of my new car, a little Mazda that smelled like carpet cleaner and loneliness. Even though she wore two of my sweaters and a stocking cap, she was still shaking, her hands wrapped around her stomach. “If he was doing well, Isabel would’ve called us.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Isabel isn’t the calling sort.” But I couldn’t help but think she was right. This was day three, and the last we’d heard from Isabel was eight hours ago.

  Day one: Jack had a splitting head ache and a stiff neck.

  Day two: Headache worse. Running a temperature.

  Day three: Isabel’s voicemail.

  I pulled the Mazda into Beck’s driveway and parked behind Isabel’s giant SUV. “Ready?”

  Olivia didn’t look like she was, but she got out of the car and bolted for the front door. I followed her in and shut the door behind us. “Isabel?”

  “In here.”

  We followed her voice into one of the downstairs bedrooms. It was a cheery yellow little bedroom that seemed at odds with the decomposing odor of sick that filled the space.

  Isabel sat cross-legged on a chair at the foot of the bed. Deep circles, like purple thumbprints, were pressed beneath her eyes.

  I handed her the coffee we’d brought. “Why didn’t you call us?”

  Isabel looked at me. “His fingers are dying.”

  I’d been avoiding looking at him, but I did, finally, where he lay on the bed, curled like a half-done butterfly. The ends of his fingertips were a disconcerting shade of blue. His face was shiny with sweat, his eyes closed. My throat felt too full.

  “I looked it up online,” Isabel told me. She held up her phone, as if that explained everything. “His head ache is because the lining of his brain is inflamed. The fingers and toes are blue because his brain isn’t telling his body to send blood there anymore. I took his temperature. It was one hundred and five.”

  Olivia said, “I have to throw up.”

  She left me in the room with Isabel and Jack.

  I didn’t know what to say. If Sam had been here, he would’ve known the right thing to say. “I’m sorry.”

  Isabel shrugged, eyes dull. “It worked the way it was supposed to. The first day, he almost changed into a wolf when the temperature dropped overnight. That was the last time, even when the power went down last night. I thought it was working. He hasn’t changed since his fever got going.” She made a little gesture toward the bed. “Did you make an excuse for me at school?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fantastic.”

  I gestured for her to follow me. She stood up from her chair as if it was difficult for her and trailed me into the hall.

  I pulled the bedroom door almost shut so that Jack, if he was listening, wouldn’t overhear. In a low voice, I said, “We have to take him to the hospital, Isabel.”

  Isabel laughed — a weird, ugly sound. “And tell them what? He’s supposed to be dead. You think I haven’t been thinking about this? Even if we give a fake name, his face has been all over the news for two months.”

  “Then we just take our chances, right? We’ll come up with some story. I mean, we have to at least try, right?”

  She looked up at me with her red-rimmed eyes for a long moment. When she finally spoke, her voice was hollow. “Do you think I want him to die? Don’t you think I want to save him? It’s too late, Grace! It’s hard for people to survive this kind of meningitis even if they’ve gotten treatment from the very beginning. Right now, for him, after three days? I don’t even have painkillers to give him, much less anything that might do something for this. I thought the wolf part might save him, like it saved you. But he doesn’t have a chance. Not a chance.”

  I took the coffee cup out of her hands. “We can’t just watch him die. We’ll take him to a hospital that won’t know him right away. We’ll drive to Duluth if we have to. They won’t recognize him there, at least not right away, and by then, we’ll have thought of something to tell them. Go clean up your face and get whatever of his stuff you want to bring. Come on, Isabel. Move.”

  Isabel still didn’t answer, but she headed for the stairs. After she’d gone, I went into the downstairs bathroom and opened up the cupboard, thinking there might be something useful in there. A houseful of people tended to accumulate a lot of meds. There was some acetaminophen and some prescription pain pills from three years previously. I took all of it and went back to Jack’s room.

  Kneeling by his head, I said, “Jack, are you awake?” I smelled puke on his breath and wondered at the hell he and Isabel had been living in for the past three days; it twisted my stomach. I tried to convince myself that he somehow deserved this for making me lose Sam, but I couldn’t.

  It took a very long time for him to answer. “No.”

  “Can I do anything for you? To make you any more comfortable?”

  His voice was very small. “My head’s killing me.”

  “I have some pain pills. Do you think you can keep them down?”

  He made a vaguely affirmative noise, so I took the glass of water from beside the bed and helped him swallow a couple of capsules. He mumbled something that might’ve been “thank you.” I waited fifteen minutes, until the meds started to kick in, and watched his body relax a little.

  Somewhere, Sam had this. I imagined him lying somewhere, brain exploding with pain, fever ravaging, dying. It seemed like, if something happened to Sam, I ought to know it, in some way: feel a tiny prick of anguish the moment he died. On the bed, Jack made a small noise, an unintentional sound of pain, a little whimper in his fitful sleep. All I could think of was injecting Sam with the same blood. In my head, I kept seeing Isabel pushing it into his veins, a deadly cocktail.

  “I’ll be right back,” I told Jack, even though I thought he was sleeping. I went out into the kitchen and found Olivia leaning on the island, folding up a piece of paper.

  “How is he doing?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “We have to take him to the hospital. Can you come?”

  Olivia looked at me in a way that I couldn’t interpret. “I think I’m ready.” She pushed the piece of folded paper toward me. “I need you to find a way to give that to my parents.”

  I started to open it and she shook her head. I raised an eyebrow. “What is this?”

  “It’s the note telling them I’m running away and not to try to find me. They’ll still try, of course, but at least they won’t think I was kidnapped or something.”

  “You’re going to change.” It wasn’t a question.

  She nodded and made another weird little face. “It’s getting really hard not to. And — maybe it’s just because it’s so unpleasant, trying not to change — but I want to. I’m actually looking forward to it. I know that sounds backward.”

  It didn’t sound backward to me. I would’ve given anything to be in her place, to be with my wolves and with Sam. But I didn’t want to tell her that, so I just asked the obvious question. “Are you going to change here?”

  Olivia gestured for me to follow her into the kitchen and together we
stood by the windows to the backyard. “I want you to see something. Look. You have to wait a second. But look.”

  We stood at the window, looking out at the dead winter world, into the tangled underbrush of the woods. For a long moment I saw nothing but a small, colorless bird that fluttered from naked branch to naked branch. Then another slight movement caught my eye, lower to the ground, and I saw a big, dark wolf in the woods. His light, nearly colorless eyes were on the house.

  “I don’t know how they know,” Olivia said, “but I feel like they’re waiting for me.” I suddenly realized that the expression on her face was excitement. It made me feel oddly alone.

  “You want to go now, don’t you?”

  Olivia nodded. “I can’t stand waiting anymore. I can’t wait to let go.”

  I sighed and looked at her eyes, very green and bright. I had to memorize them now so that I could recognize them later. I thought I ought to say something to her, but I couldn’t think of what. “I’ll give your letter to your parents. Be careful. I’ll miss you, Olive.”

  I slid open the glass door; cold air blasted us.

  She actually laughed as the wind ripped a shiver from her. She was a strange, light creature that I didn’t recognize. “See you in the spring, Grace.”

  And she ran out into the yard, stripping sweaters as she did, and before she got to the tree line, she was a light, light wolf, joyful and leaping. There was none of the pain of Jack’s or Sam’s change — it was as if she had been meant for it. Something in my stomach twisted at the sight of her. Sadness, or envy, or happiness.

  It was just the three of us then, the three of us who didn’t change.

  I started the car’s engine to warm it, but in the end it didn’t matter. Fifteen minutes later, Jack died. Now it was just the two of us.