Hungry Ghost

by Allison Moon

  “Let me in.”

  Lexie knew it was a simple request, but it was too odd to be wrenched from her dreams like this, by a new, strange person, at her house, before the morning’s frail hours.

  “What do you want, Randy?”

  Randy stumbled and whined. “What’s up with you, Lex? What was that all about?” Her language was halting and clumsy. From the grass below, Lexie could smell a queasy mixture of whiskey and bile.

  “It was … just a thing. Just part of who I am.”

  “Part of you,” Randy repeated. “Please let me in. I’m scared.”

  Lexie hesitated and scanned her bedroom floor for a t-shirt. “I’ll come out.”

  She crept down the stairs in a t-shirt and pajama pants, sliding open the back door and meeting Randy on the deck.

  “Randy?” Lexie asked with more than a hint of concern.

  “You scared me tonight, Lex,” Randy said, her brow furrowed. “You were acting so weird. And so mean.”

  “Yeah, I’m—” Lexie wanted to come clean, but Randy was still too new in her life; she didn’t know if she could trust her, though she wanted to. “I have things I should tell you.”

  Randy fell to her knees and wept. “I’m so confused.”

  “Randy, it’s okay.” Lexie patted Randy’s head.

  “No it’s not. There was a dead guy … .”

  Randy clung to Lexie’s legs like a koala. Lexie grew impatient. She wasn’t sure if it was trauma or booze that was making Randy so maudlin.

  “Come on. Stand up, Randy.” She pulled her to standing and Randy shoved her mouth against Lexie’s.

  Lexie pushed her away. “Randy, quit it.”

  “Can I stay here tonight?” she begged.

  Lexie pushed. Not hard, but enough to break the contact with Randy. “No. You need to go home.”

  “I’m scared,” Randy said, reaching for her.

  “You’ll be fine. Come on, let’s go.” Lexie extricated herself from both Randy’s grip and her sleepy misapprehensions. She pressed her palm into Randy’s sternum and forced her to her feet. With another gentle push, Lexie forced Randy backwards down the steps to the grass. “Good night, Randy.” Lexie stepped back into the house, closing and locking the sliding door.

  Randy had no time to react before she was in the dark backyard, alone. She laughed once and then ran to the deck. “Lex, come on. I was just playing.”

  “Go play somewhere else,” Lexie said through the glass.

  “Come on. Lex, this isn’t like you. Be nice.”

  “You don’t know anything about me. Nothing real.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Obviously,” Lexie sighed.

  “Please open the door.”

  “No.”

  “God! Why do you have be such a bitch!” Randy kicked the door with her heavy boot twice. The glass shuddered.

  “If you’re trying to get me to open the door, you’re doing it wrong,” Lexie said.

  Randy sighed hard. “I’m sorry, Lex.” She let her head rest on the door. Lexie felt the glass vibrate with Randy’s breath. “Can’t you just tell me what happened?”

  Lexie shook her head. “No. I really can’t.” The truth of the admission twinged like a toothache.

  “I’m a fuck-up,” Randy said at last, her voice gravelly and shame-filled. “I’m a fuck-up. But with you—you make me feel like less of that. I felt cool tonight. I felt like you liked me. I like you.”

  Lexie sighed and squeezed her eyes shut. “We just met, Randy. I’m not the me you saw tonight. Not really. You like the lie of me.”

  “It’s not a lie. You’re wonderful. You’re so much better than me.” Randy placed her open palm on the glass, begging for Lexie to touch it.

  “That’s not true, Randy. And it’s why this isn’t going to work. Go home.” She turned and ran up the stairs, back to bed.

  The glass door rattled when Randy leaned against it and slid to the ground, where her sighs turned into silent sobs. Lexie curled up and pulled her pillow over her head.

  9

  “Big night?” Renee asked, a steaming cup of coffee in her hand, when Lexie stumbled into the kitchen.

  “What?” Lexie asked, grimacing at the sunshine and Renee both.

  “Why was there a person passed out on our deck this morning?”

  “Oh, fuck,” Lexie said, shuffling for the coffee pot. “Forget it. I can handle it.”

  “I know you can handle it. I’m just wondering why you didn’t.”

  “I didn’t realize she’d passed out.”

  “Regardless,” Renee said, pausing to blow the steam off her mug, “when we got back this morning, I nearly clawed that bitch to death.”

  “Shit,” Lexie said, filling her mug to the brim.

  “If I wanted drunk assholes passed out in my hall, I’d live in a frat house.” Renee said.

  They both flinched as she said those last two words. Since the night it happened, no one had spoken directly about the Phi Kappa Phi brothers Renee killed in service to Blythe’s insanity.

  Now those words seemed to conjure their ghosts, and Renee’s forehead creased with their weight. Lexie wondered if she should say something to try to assuage Renee’s guilt, but she feared saying the wrong thing, and she let that be an excuse to keep her mouth shut. Lexie thought instead of Duane, the one who survived.

  “Just be more careful when you’re bringing home strays,” Renee continued.

  “She’s just a woman.”

  “This isn’t a gender thing. It’s a Pack thing. You can never know where a person’s loyalty lies. You gotta look after your own,” Renee said. “You dig?”

  Lexie scrunched up her mouth, nodding. “I dig.” She took a healthy, burning sip of the sweet and bitter brew, then set the mug down. She grabbed her hair at the nape of her neck and started braiding. “I don’t want her to come back anyway, and I don’t know how to say it.”

  “You just say it. You say it until they hear it.” Renee picked up her phone and started texting.

  “Easier said than done.”

  “Well yeah. Even more important then.”

  Lexie rubbed her still-sleepy eyes and dug through the refrigerator, pulling out a thick stick of salami and block of cheese. She unwrapped them both, holding them stacked one on top of the other in a fist, and bit. She chewed, slow and earnest, looking up, thinking.

  The silence stretched on, broken only by Lexie’s chewing and Renee’s texting.

  “I found Stefan last night. He killed a man,” Lexie said.

  “What?!”

  “He said the dude was a bad guy. He insists it’s the first time he’s killed. Or, remembered killing, at least.”

  “Shit.” Renee slammed her phone on the countertop and rubbed her forehead.

  “And Randy saw the body.”

  “Double shit.”

  “Yeaaaaah,” Lexie said, shoving the rest of the meat into her mouth to shut herself up.

  “We can’t let any more humans know about this.”

  “She doesn’t know about the werewolf bit. I told her a Rare attacked them both.”

  Renee rubbed her lips together. “Regardless, if word gets around that werewolves are Rare wolves and responsible for these deaths … ”

  You’re screwed, Lexie thought.

  And Renee replied to her unspoken curse: “We’re all doomed.”

  “Got it. I’ll take care of it.” Lexie recentered the cheese on the salami. “How about you?” she asked, noting the puffiness around Renee’s eyes and the clear scent that she hadn’t showered since the Pack’s run last night. “Rough night?”

  “Naw. It was all right. I’m just … I’m thinking about Bree. About what the Pack can do.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “Thoughts, none of them solutions.”

  “Can’t we just go after the one full-blood we know exists? The one that attacked me probably took out Bree, too.”

  “That’s the
thing. We’ve never hunted a full-blood before. Only half-bloods like us, only by catching them off guard as humans and forcing changes by beating the living shit out of them. I wouldn’t even know how to go about catching a full-blood,” Renee said. “They’re much bigger, much stronger. Much more…everything.”

  “My dad was in the wolf-hunting business for twenty-some years. Why don’t I ask—” Her sentence was interrupted by a beep and a buzz. Renee grabbed her phone from the kitchen counter. She read, smiling, and began typing a response.

  Lexie sighed.

  “What?” Renee said.

  “Fucking phones,” Lexie grumbled.

  “You’re no Luddite. You’ve got a cell.”

  “Archer doesn’t,” Lexie growled. “All day, every day, I watch people texting their friends or getting voicemail from their friends or fucking their fucking friends! And my girlfriend doesn’t even have a fucking phone. Ex. Ex-girlfriend.” She sighed. “I don’t even know where she is, and I’m listening to everyone get laid around me all the fucking time. And I’m here dealing with drunken bullies on my back porch and a werewolf gone all feral and murder-y.”

  Renee held her breath for a moment, waiting for the end of Lexie’s rant. “Um, A: Were you or were you not at a BDSM dungeon last night?”

  Lexie rolled her eyes.

  “And B: Did you not lose your virginity five fucking months ago?”

  Lexie tried to protest, but Renee shook her finger in her face.

  “With, C: One of the hottest women this town has ever seen, by the way. But whatever, you’re magical or something. So instead I’ll just mention that, D: You were the one who told her to straight-up get.”

  “Yeah, well, you all seemed pretty glad for it.”

  Renee raised her hands in mock defense. “And we didn’t tell her to leave. But since you brought it up, she would have led us into battle headlong. Archer’s a fighter, not a strategist. That’s, if you don’t mind me saying so, what got your mom killed.”

  “You’re saying Archer killed my mom that night?”

  “No,” Renee said, “she’s no more responsible than anyone, regardless of what Blythe said. But Archer let a lot of people make bad choices that night.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “It means strategy, Lex. Archer is a pureblood which means bigger and stronger than full-bloods like the Morloc, than half-bloods like us, than anyone. That’s great for the big and strong, great for the lone wolves defending themselves and hunting, but for the rest of us, we just can’t take what she can.”

  “So you’ll be more careful than Archer?” Lexie asked.

  Renee’s eyes darkened. “I have to. We all do. Especially now.”

  Lexie cocked her head.

  “I don’t see an easy end to these attacks. The Rare that killed Bree needed a motive.”

  “It did?”

  “There’s no good reason to attack a lone woman in the woods.”

  “Why not food?” Lexie asked, cramming another wedge of cheese into her mouth.

  “Duh. You should know,” Renee said.

  “People taste like soap.”

  “Exactly.” Renee reached across the counter and took the salami/cheddar horror show from Lexie for her own hearty bite. “A Rare killed Bree and didn’t eat her. What does that sound like to you?”

  “A human killer, not an animal predator,” Lexie said. “But she wasn’t raped either.”

  Renee shrugged. “The reports said they aren’t releasing the full details of the autopsy out of ‘respect for the family’, whatever that means.”

  “But nothing explains why Bree was alone in the woods at night in the first place.”

  “How do we know she was alone?” Renee asked.

  Lexie nodded and chewed, hiding her thoughts behind a confused expression. She had waited too long to tell Renee about finding Bree, and to say something now would unravel the tentative trust that was forming between her and the Pack.

  “Good point,” Lexie said. “So then, an affair?”

  “Why meet in the woods?” Renee asked.

  “Maybe she was seeing a half-blood,” Lexie offered.

  “Bree Curtis was dating one of the most popular guys on campus, but she was slumming with a half-blood werewolf?”

  “Well, apparently they aren’t all trash. I mean, hello?” Lexie said, gesturing at the Den. “What else?”

  “I don’t know. But that seems pretty sordid for our town. Maybe a fight. Or she was set up.”

  Lexie shook her head. She unscrewed the top of the orange juice and tossed it back. She wiped her mouth with her bare forearm.

  Renee took the orange juice from Lexie and finished the carton. “We should figure out who she was when she was alive. I’ll start poking around, see if there’s a link between Bree and the other girl. You go talk to Stefan. See what he knows. Just keep your head down. We don’t need the cops sniffing up on us. All these attacks out of the blue, and they’re gonna start paying attention to new things.”

  10

  Lexie lay awake in bed, listening to the faraway howls of gray wolves and clutching her knife to her breast. The wolf inside her was anxious, wanting to sniff out the strangers and run or fight with them all. She let the howls lull her to sleep, pushing out thoughts of packs and conspiracies and desperation.

  Above her, Lexie saw crisp stars break through the clouds. The sky was a deep blue, shadowed by looming pines. A breeze kicked up and the clouds began to travel and separate. In a moment, the sky was clear and broken only by clods of purple clouds.

  She admired the winter sky for its clarity. Something about the cold made the night lights shine brighter. Just as she thought this, she felt teeth on her neck, sinking slowly, testing. Lexie froze. If she flinched, the wolf’s jaw would tighten and tear. His musk made her eyes water, or maybe she was crying.

  The alpha’s teeth sank deeper, breaking flesh. Her blood cooled in the night air.

  She nearly howled with the tension, but didn’t have a chance. With a faint whimper and snuffle, the wolf freed her throat.

  Lexie looked overhead, seeing the curve of the waning gibbous moon glint through the pine needles. A moment of shifting paws, then Lexie heard the wolf shuffle away. Lexie breathed slowly at the calm quiet before a hint of the foreign crept its way into her brain. She eased up on her elbows to see a shadow at the edge of the clearing. Her eyes strained into the darkness. The being moved into focus. It was a Rare wolf, gray and brindled, standing stoic in the shadows. She pushed herself to standing, frost cracking beneath her footsteps. A white plain expanded in all directions. Lexie stopped, listening to the wind. The sun joined the moon; the blinding landscape turned blue with a sudden solar eclipse.

  The Rare didn’t move, still, save for the breeze dancing across its fur. Lexie kept its eyes trained in hers, and in the periphery she saw her knife glint in the space between her body and the Rare’s. Lexie looked at her knife and found she was no longer standing on frost but dried mud. The desert landscape was cracked like the skin of a long-dead corpse. Her toes dug at the dust.

  The Rare stepped into the sunlight and its form receded, giving way to the lithe naked form of a woman. Archer. She stepped forward, her bare feet making no noise as they broke the caked mud into dust. Her skin glowed golden, radiating warmth into this cold, dark place. Her breath drew clouds though she didn’t shiver as the breeze glanced off her naked flesh. She stepped toward the knife and placed her palm atop it. With that motion, her body returned to her true wolf form. She held her paw on the blade and beckoned Lexie over with a sweep of her heavy skull. Lexie felt chilly tears roll down her cheeks and the need for a thousand words she couldn’t find. Archer silently gestured to the knife, encouraging Lexie to take it. Lexie placed her hand upon the hilt and felt the tears flow freely.

  “I miss you,” Lexie whispered through tear-stained throat. “So much.”

  She pulled the knife from beneath Archer’s paw, and Archer shifted once more,
back into her human body.

  Archer stood, leaned to her, and pressed her lips, russet and hot, against Lexie’s. The moisture of her skin made Lexie wince. Then Archer stepped away. The knife thrummed in Lexie’s hands.

  * * *

  Lexie woke when a cello suite started playing—Jenna’s alarm—and Jenna began rustling in her bed.

  No one in the Pack could sleep far past the earliest riser, so Jenna’s tendency for perkiness at dawn pissed everyone off before they were even vertical. Lexie buried her face in her pillows, knowing her efforts were futile. Maybe she should just give in. Go out. Experience what a dining hall breakfast tasted like.

  Lexie hadn’t even reached the sidewalk when she heard a car slow to meet her pace. She turned to see Randy, leaning into the passenger’s seat to speak out the window.

  “Lexie, can we talk?”

  “I’m going to class.”

  “I’ll drive you.”

  “It’s less than a quarter mile away. It’ll take you longer to drive.” Lexie hurried down the sidewalk, but Randy kept pace.

  “Please? I want to apologize.”

  Lexie sighed and stopped.

  “I’ve been texting you like crazy for two weeks,” Randy said.

  “I’m not interested in manic drunkards right now.”

  “Is that what you think I am?”

  “Is it?”

  Randy threw the car in park and looked Lexie dead in the eyes. “That night was … crazy. Before that, I was sober for eight and a half years.”

  Lexie gave her a look.

  “I’m not an alcoholic in the traditional sense.”

  “No, just in the modernist one,” Lexie said.

  Randy laughed. “That’s funny. You’re sharp.”

  Lexie rolled her eyes.

  “Please?” Randy asked.

  Lexie tugged at her braid and threw her backpack through the window, climbing into the passenger’s seat.

  Randy sighed and drove them toward campus.

  “Okay, I just … you really freaked me out the other night, all right? I’ve never … seen a corpse before.”

  Lexie sighed. “You get used to it.”

  Randy laughed bitterly and shook her head. “What are you into?” Randy asked.