In the Mouth of the Wolf

by Nicole Maggi

  The Lynx’s aura spilled over on itself and encircled his body. The light shifted and moved, a million crystalline beams dancing as one. Buoyed by his aura, the Lynx’s body rose, higher and higher, until it hung above our heads. I stared at it, frozen with wonder. What was happening?

  Something tugged on my heart, gentler than the Call but still with that bittersweet ache of breaking apart. I looked over at Heath. A thread of shimmering blue-white light had separated from his aura and was feeding into the cocoon that surrounded the Lynx. The same thing was happening to Nerina. I twisted my head and saw that my own aura was offering up to the Lynx, gifting a small piece of my essence to him . . .

  Slowly, the Lynx disappeared, swallowed by the brilliant cocoon. Then, like a supernova flaming out at the end of its life, the cocoon of light shattered into a million pieces. They fell like snow around us. When the last particle of light had fallen, the bubble that surrounded us dissipated and blew away on the wind.

  He’s gone, Nerina whispered. His soul has ascended.

  We were silent for a long moment. As small as that thread of my aura had been, I felt its absence, a hole inside me that nothing could fill.

  Nerina turned to me, her eyes gentle. It hurts, doesn’t it?

  Why? My voice wavered, my mind crying where my eyes could not. Why do I feel so lonely?

  Because a piece of you has been lost. All members of a Clan are connected; when one dies, part of you dies. Until we find a replacement for the Lynx, we will not feel whole again.

  I knew it could take months to find a new Benandante; I could not imagine feeling like this for that long.

  Heath trotted over and nudged me with his soft, wet nose. It’s okay, he said softly, speaking to me alone. We have each other.

  It would have to be enough. But as I flew home on the cold wind, icicles on my feathers, I wasn’t sure it was.

  Chapter Nine

  Aw, Crap

  Bree

  I knew it was going to be a bad day when I got downstairs in the morning and found my mother smoking a cigarette in the kitchen. She smoked only under two conditions: my father was out of the house, and she was mad at one of her kids.

  She stubbed the cigarette out in an old, chipped ashtray and blocked my path to the refrigerator. “I got an e-mail from your school.”

  I loved how she called it my school, like it was my decision to go there.

  “They said you skipped your government class yesterday.”

  And my English class, but I guess they’d given that one to me as a freebie. “I had something to do.” I reached around her to open the fridge and pulled out an apple.

  Mom sighed. “What could you possibly have to do, other than be in class?”

  I shrugged. “Save the world?”

  She searched my face, her eyes unreadable. “Is that a joke?”

  “If you want it to be.”

  Mom grabbed my arm, hard. “Bree, you are on warning from Principal Morrissey. And that’s not a joke. I thought things were going to be different here. I thought we had decided to start over here.”

  I yanked my arm out of her grasp. “No, you decided that. Not me. I never wanted to come here.” I slammed out the front door, ignoring her as she called after me, and headed up the driveway.

  Footsteps pounded after me. I spun around, but it was just Jonah. “Guess who’s the bad twin today,” I said, not slowing down.

  He fell into step beside me. “I could use a break.”

  “I didn’t do it as a favor to you.” I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. You owe it to Jonah. I clenched my jaw. I had already decided to say no; why was her stupid voice still in my head?

  “What did you do?”

  “Skipped class.” I smirked. “I know, that’s small-time for you.”

  “Hell, yeah.” Jonah elbowed me. “You hang with the big boys, and I’ll teach you how to skip a whole semester.”

  “And still get a B, right?” I nudged him back. “Jonah?”

  He wasn’t listening; he was squinting down Main Street. I followed his gaze. There was a crowd outside the school, much larger than the normal milling-around-before-the-bell crowd. As we got closer, I could see bright yellow police tape stretched across the front steps. “Whoa.”

  We picked up our pace. When we reached the edge of the crowd, Principal Morrissey came out through the front doors of the school, a police officer and a janitor trailing behind. They bent their heads together for a few minutes while the officer took notes on a little pad in his hands.

  I grabbed a blonde chick I knew from my Spanish class. “What’s going on?”

  “A teacher died in one of the classrooms,” she said, her eyes wide. “I guess the janitor found him early this morning.”

  “Which one?”

  “I don’t know—down the English hallway.”

  I rolled my eyes heavenward. “Which teacher, genius.”

  She pulled away from me. “You are such a bitch, Bree.” And she flounced away, her ponytail swinging, without telling me who had died.

  I turned to Jonah. His face was pale, his bottom lip bleeding from where he’d evidently bit it. “What’s up?”

  He swallowed and looked over my shoulder.

  I spun around, not surprised to see Alessia standing right behind me. What was surprising was the fact that her face was streaked with tears, her eyes overly bright. My gut squirmed a little. “Wha—?”

  “Get out of my sight,” Alessia growled. I stared at her for a second before I realized she wasn’t talking to me. She was talking to Jonah. “I can’t stand to look at you right now.”

  I expected him to protest, but he must have read something in her face that I couldn’t see. Without a word, he skirted the crowd and went around the side of the school, no doubt to seek refuge under the bleachers. Guess he was taking over the role of Bad Twin after all. I turned back to Alessia. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  She met my eyes and sniffled.

  I felt that squiggle in my gut again. “The teacher who died—he was one of yours, wasn’t he?”

  She nodded. A fresh tear spilled onto her cheek.

  “Who was it?”

  She took a deep breath. “Mr.—Sam. Sam Foster.”

  I felt a punch right through my rib cage, hard and fast. “No.” My feet backed up of their own accord, across the sidewalk and the lawn, until they couldn’t carry me anymore. I sat down on the cold ground. On the opposite end of the lawn, the janitor gestured with his hands while the officer listened. Everything seemed stark and separate, like puzzle pieces that just wouldn’t fit together. “I saw him yesterday. I talked to him. How can he be—?” I shook my head, unable to finish the sentence.

  “It happened last night.” Alessia knelt in front of me. “I was there. He was killed by the Malandanti.”

  The breath left my body.

  I saw again the look on Alessia’s face as she’d told Jonah to get out of her sight.

  “Was it—? Tell me it wasn’t—”

  “He wasn’t there.” She glanced aside, as if she could feel his presence even though he was nowhere to be seen. “But I don’t know that he wasn’t involved.”

  “No.” I shook my head so hard that a hot crick shot up my neck. “He wasn’t. He couldn’t be.”

  “Yes, he could!” Alessia grabbed my arms, her fingers digging deep into my biceps. “Don’t you get it yet? People are dying, Bree!”

  “But it’s not my fight!” I wrenched away. “I don’t want to be involved. I just want to stay—”

  “Stay where?” She leaned forward on her hands to peer into my face. “In the middle, where you could get squashed like a bug? Yeah, that’s a lot safer than choosing sides.”

  “But I could be next,” I whispered. “I could be the next Sam Foster.”

  “Yeah.” Alessia looked straight into my eyes, her gaze unflinching. “Or it could be Jonah.”

  God, I had underestimated her. I had completely overlooked how calculat
ing she could be, knowing the exact thing to say. I hated Jonah more than anything at that moment, hated the random event in nature that had caused us to share a womb. I did owe it to him, for being the other half of myself. And for Fairfield. I had failed him then, and I had felt that failure in my own soul. If I failed him now, I would lose myself.

  “Okay,” I said, fast before I thought of the million other reasons to say no. “What do you need me to do?”

  Alessia glanced at the school. There were still kids and teachers milling around outside. It was well into first period; no way were we having classes today. Alessia rocked back into her feet and stood up. “Come with me.”

  I fell into step with her as we walked quickly away from the school. God, if unassuming Mr. Foster was a Benandante, there were sure to be Malandanti running around the school, too. I stared at the janitor as we passed them on the sidewalk. Was he the asshole who’d killed sweet Sam Foster? Or the policeman taking his statement? I looked around wildly. It could be anyone.

  I wrapped my arms around myself and followed Alessia all the way to her farm. It wasn’t until we reached the top of her driveway that I stopped and broke the silence. “Um, no.”

  Alessia squinted at me. “No, what?”

  “No way am I going back to that creepy cheese cave with you.” I crossed my arms. “I’m not going to fall for that twice.”

  “We’re not going to the Cave.” Alessia started down the driveway, breaking into a slow jog. After a moment, I followed.

  When we came around the side of the house, I halted. I had only seen the ruins of her barn at night. In broad daylight, it was a hundred times more depressing. “Jeez. I didn’t realize how destroyed it was.”

  Alessia touched one of the charred posts that stuck up out of the ground. “The Malandanti did this.”

  I cocked my head. “Are you sure?”

  She kicked the post. “I chased one of them away from here right before the fire started. I’m sure.” She jerked her head toward the hillside. “Come on. We’re going to the woods.”

  As we hiked over the hillside, I tried not to think about all the fairy tales in which young maidens were lured into creepy, dark woods to have their hearts cut out. I glanced at Alessia. She had seemed sincere the other day when she’d apologized for the Cave incident. And she did love Jonah. That much I could see all over her face.

  The ground was hard with patches of old snow as we passed under the tall trees. Bare branches clacked overhead in the chilly wind. A little ways into the woods, we came to a crumbling stone wall.

  Alessia stopped and ran a hand lightly over the moss-covered stones. “You might want to move to your right.”

  “Why?” I asked but did it anyway.

  Alessia pushed on the wall. A trapdoor opened in the ground at the exact spot where I had been standing.

  My jaw dropped as a staircase appeared, spiraling into the earth. “What the hell?”

  Alessia grinned. “Pretty cool, huh? Not even my mom knows about this.” She started down the staircase. I looked all around. Not a soul in sight, not even a squirrel. This was a thousand times worse than the Cave. At least someone else knew about that place. I could disappear down this staircase and never come up, and no one would ever know. What was Alessia smoking that she thought I’d just follow her down the rabbit hole?

  She peeked up from the bottom of the stairs. “Are you coming?”

  “Uh—” I pulled my scarf off and flung it over the stone that Alessia had pushed to open the trapdoor. A crumb for the search posse. “Yeah.”

  The air warmed and thickened with each step down. When I got to the bottom, I was in one of the coolest rooms I’d ever seen. The walls were deep and shockingly red, and the roots of some ancient tree spanned one of them. Modern furniture was tastefully arranged, with splashes of color on a throw pillow or a rug here and there. The whole room beckoned, inviting me to stay for a long time. And the air smelled like coffee and cinnamon. It didn’t feel like a murder room . . .

  A tall, curvy woman who looked like she modeled for Botticelli rose from the velvet couch. “Alessia,” she said in a delicately accented voice, “who is this?”

  “Nerina,” Alessia said, bouncing on the balls of her feet, “I’ve found us a spy.”

  Chapter Ten

  The Bad Idea

  Alessia

  I stood under the tree on the school’s lawn, staring at the front doors. Was there anything more pointless than school right now? The thought of sitting at those little desks made me want to scream. There was no way I would make it through the whole day . . .

  “Hey.” Jenny nudged me. “Coming in?”

  I sighed. “Yeah.” Nerina had told me yesterday that it was important to keep up appearances, and unfortunately, going to school fell under that heading. She’d said this to both me and Bree. I shook my head a little, prompting a strange glance from Jenny. It was bizarre to think of Bree in the same breath as Nerina.

  At the top of the steps, I turned to look back at Main Street. Half a block away, Bree walked toward the school, a cigarette dangling from her mouth. My gut hollowed out; Jonah was just behind her, his collar turned up against the cold. I watched as Bree took the cigarette away from her lips and said something to her brother. My fingers tapped fast against my thigh. I still had no idea whether I could trust her, whether she was telling Jonah right now how I’d asked her to betray him . . .

  That was the nature of spies, I was learning. You had to trust them even though their entire job was based on lying.

  I followed Jenny through the double doors. “See you in French.” That was another punch to my gut; I’d have to see Jonah in French, too, and I didn’t yet know how to be in the same room with him.

  The mood in the office was strained and sad, with everyone trying desperately to act normal even though they were all upset about Sam. I exiled myself to the corner with the shredder and a stack of papers almost as tall as me. Half an hour later, I was clearing a jam when a voice muttered in my ear, “We’re in business.”

  My hand slipped and hit the Shred button. I jerked back as the machine rumbled back to life, spitting out bits of paper onto the floor. “Jesus!” I punched the Stop button and looked up.

  Bree stood over me, her hand splayed over the stack of unshredded paper.

  “I could’ve lost a finger.”

  Bree shrugged. “But you didn’t.” She glanced around. “Can we talk?”

  I motioned for her to sit next to me and positioned the shredder in front of her so she was blocked from the secretaries’ views. I turned the shredder on and fed it continuously, the noise covering our voices.

  “My dad practically did cartwheels when I told him I wanted an internship at the Guild,” she said. “I think I actually saw a tear in his eye.”

  “Okay. Is he setting it up?”

  She nodded. “He said he’d get me in next week. I’ll have an ID badge and everything. All-access pass, baby.”

  “Awesome.” At least one thing was going right. “I’m sure Nerina will have instructions once you’re in.”

  Bree traced the edge of the papers waiting to be shredded. “What’s her deal, anyway?”

  I paused and looked at her. Nerina had told her about the Concilio and the hierarchy of the Clans, but I didn’t know how much I should tell her beyond that. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, she’s, like, our age. How did she get on the Council thingy?”

  “Concilio.”

  “Whatever. I mean, how much experience can she have? Unless she got on the Council by . . . you know.” Bree made an incredibly crude gesture with her hands.

  I glared at her. “Actually, she has quite a lot of experience.”

  Bree snorted. “What, did she get Called when she was like five?”

  “She looks pretty good for her age, doesn’t she?”

  “What do you mean?”

  I leaned across the shredder so that I was an inch away from her. “She was born in 1557.”<
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  It was with a great sense of pleasure that I watched the blood drain from Bree’s face. I sent the last papers through the shredder as she sat stock-still. The bell rang, and I grabbed my bag. “See you later,” I said cheerily.

  She was still sitting there when I crossed in front of the office windows.

  My sense of satisfaction slipped away with each step I took toward French. Maybe he wouldn’t be there. Maybe he didn’t want to see me as much as I didn’t want to see him . . .

  But when I rounded the corner into the classroom, he was already sitting in his usual seat, right behind my usual seat. I looked around wildly; maybe someone would switch seats with me. People bustled around me, filling up the chairs that were my only salvation. Finally, I swallowed hard and walked to my seat.

  The moment I sat down, a note landed on my desk. I slammed my palm on top of it and crumpled it into a tiny ball. Under the cover of the bell, I twisted around and dropped it on the floor next to Jonah’s feet.

  “Oh, come on, Alessia,” Jonah whispered.

  I stared straight ahead. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jenny shoot me a glance, but I didn’t look at her. The words on the blackboard blurred until I couldn’t read them. Behind me, I heard Jonah sigh. My shoulders relaxed a little, and I actually started to pay attention to Madame Dubois.

  “Please translate the sentences on page one-sixty-five,” she said. “Then pass your work to the student in front of you for review.”

  I nearly banged my head on my desk. Why couldn’t she have told us to pass to our right or our left? Why was my luck so crappy? I rushed through my own sentences and passed them to Carly, who sat in front of me. Remembering what Jenny had told me, I gave her a shy smile, which she returned. “Sorry,” she mouthed with a nod toward Jonah. I shrugged as if to say, What can I do? Like the sight of his handwriting didn’t make me want to cry.

  After a moment, Jonah’s work landed on my desk. I picked up my pen, ready to correct the crap out of it.