“The Elder wanted to keep at it. There was always another wolf he had to find, it seemed like. But eventually he didn’t have the energy anymore. Ilsa said we needed to take care of our own, set up something more like a permanent home. She even sent me off to school.”
I barked out a wry laugh at his disgust. Guess we had something else in common.
“So I was in town more than most of us, and I finally noticed you there. And you’re…” He waved a hand vaguely. “Well, tame enough.”
My “gee, thanks” fell heavily enough that it should have cracked the floor. What he said next, though, brought me up short.
“If what you’re saying about that feral is true, though…we might need your help.” He gave me a significant look. “Tracking is Kane’s job. But you’re the first of us to see this thing, and Kane could use something more to go on.”
“What are you saying? You want me to go hunting with you?”
He shrugged, then dropped the bomb—by speaking straight into my mind. Or we could just get it out of your head.
I fell over with a thud.
He hadn’t said a word out loud. I really hadn’t been imagining that psychic thing a few days ago. “I thought you could hear me,” he said, laughing in triumph.
I probably should have taken his head off for pulling a stunt like that, but I was still too shocked. Besides, this time he actually helped me up. I shouldn’t have been surprised at how warm his hands were—I’ve got a permanent fever myself, by human standards—but I was indeed distracted by the glow. Damn it.
“You’ll get used to it,” he said. “Just come with us.”
I bit my lip. For someone who was normally stuck needing help, not giving it, the idea was bizarre, if not outright terrifying…but it was also strangely exciting. I wasn’t sure which feeling was going to win out. In the meantime, while the internal battle raged, I did my best to steel myself. If they wanted me to get into this mess, there was still something they needed to do for me first. “Before we start…”
“Yeah?”
“I want to talk to the Elder.”
That surprised him. “How come?”
“You owe me,” I said bluntly. “You’ve been asking me to buy all these stories without any proof your mysterious pack leader even exists. If I can talk to him and it all checks out, then yeah, I’ll help you.”
He let me go, leaving me standing without aid. My crutches were still on the floor. I wasn’t about to stoop down to pick them up.
“B, I can’t guarantee anything. He’s not been well.”
“What kind of ‘not well’?”
“He’s old, for one thing,” Brandon said dryly. “I’ll see what I can do. But if this feral’s really out there, none of us can afford to wait.”
He was right, unfortunately. “Then you better get going.”
He almost looked like he approved. Then the school bell rang, startling both of us. I had no idea we’d been talking so long.
“And now,” Brandon drawled, “I’ll have to come up with a story for what we’ve been up to in here.”
He waggled his eyebrows. I shot back by telling him what body parts of his I’d be stringing up the school flagpole if he spread any nasty rumors. He saluted my inventiveness and darted outside.
I was clumsier about my exit. I tripped over the doorjamb, and did a stumbling little dance on the way out—right into the view of a passing teacher.
Brandon, already at a non-incriminating distance, grinned and sauntered off.
Some people, I thought bitterly as I got hauled off to the office again, get all the luck.
*
Grey was about as amused at my detention as I was, which was to say not very. He met me afterward with his mouth set in a glower, and said jack squat for several minutes, which is never good. Grey’s temper tends to build quietly but thoroughly, until someone says one wrong word and the balloon goes bang. So I stayed silent on the way home, then got my one guaranteed pity vote by tripping on the way out of the truck. There’s really nothing better to damage one’s dignity than an inch of September mud.
Grey sighed, helped me inside, and after ordering me to change my clothes, started the laundry to repair the damages. After all that, he was finally willing to talk to me again.
“Did you get my text?” I began.
“Eventually. But I was too busy fuming over Lacey’s bullshit phone call to deal with it.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh. Why didn’t you call me yourself? You do remember the conversation we had about this?”
“Everyone was right on top of me,” I said uncomfortably. “Cee, all her friends…”
“All day long?” I reached for an answer. Grey finally sat down. “B, you’re worrying me. You’re not talking to me, and you’re getting yourself in trouble. First there was the mess last night, and now—detention? Already? Following my footsteps at school is one thing, but you really could have skipped the juvenile delinquent stage.”
I’d heard about that stage. It had been his brief—but creatively dramatic—rebellion against the unfairness of his life before he overcompensated into Perfect Student mode. I’d heard that the principal’s car had been involved, not to mention an improbable number of ferrets.
“I wasn’t that bad,” I muttered.
He didn’t sound convinced. “You ditched class and were found in a shed doing God knows what—”
“Talking to Brandon.”
“You were in a shed with Brandon Rayner?”
I glared at him. “Okay, you remember your find-out-whatever-you-can mandate about this guy, right?”
“I didn’t mean like that!”
I sighed. I may have promised silence about the pack, but I didn’t see any reason I couldn’t pass on Brandon’s explanation about the ferals. So I did. Grey went quiet as I spoke, and when I finished, he reached across the table to tug my collar lower. The bite on my throat, the one that turned me, still burned there in angry red crescents.
Nothing else had scarred me since, for all the good it did me.
Grey looked weary. “So you think…that’s what you saw last night? A feral? Here?”
“As badly as I scared him, I bet he’s halfway to Pierce County by now. But…yeah.”
“How exactly did you scare him off?”
“Um. I yelled.”
Grey just stared at me.
I managed a pale joke. “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”
He shuddered and drew back. “So all this happened, and then you went to Brandon. I understand why, but I don’t like this.” Grey scrubbed his hands back through his hair, undoing his ponytail in the process. The resulting tangle of dark hair looked a lot like mine, except for the unmistakable discolored streak. “I really don’t like you getting into this by yourself.”
“I…well, last night I wasn’t alone—”
“That’s not what I mean. Dragging normal people into the middle of this? I’m pretty damn sure you don’t want to do that.”
“No. That was an accident. I only meant—”
“We need to stick together in this,” he interrupted. “I’ve dug up enough information already that makes me worry, and I don’t want you facing it without help.”
That, I really didn’t like the sound of. “What did you find?”
He didn’t answer. I leaned closer, my voice trembling. “Listen, it’s one thing if I deal with…with Brandon, and all. But you’ve got no defense against a full-blown werewolf, Grey. I’ve least got claws and fangs when I need them.”
“And you rip yourself to bits to get there!”
“I know. But I’ve been trying to keep you out of this. This is not going to end well. Please, Grey.”
“It’s a little late to keep me out of it. We’re going to come up with a plan, B. That’s all there is to it.”
He got up then, and I was left to helplessly watch him. His voice was brittle when he spoke again. “But for now, I’m stuck with fixing the rest of ou
r problems, like the plumbing repairs and the collection agency that’s been calling me all day, so I would appreciate it if you would get some damn sleep and be prepared to talk like a sensible person tomorrow.”
“Grey, I’m—”
He rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Tomorrow.”
With that, he walked away. I put my head down on my folded arms. How the hell was I going to deal with both the pack and Grey, and not have everything explode?
I left the table hunched over with stress, and hoped Grey didn’t see. For all that he’d told me to rest, I was sure of only one thing: with all this on my head, I wouldn’t be getting any sleep at all.
Chapter Ten
School the next day began as badly as the previous night ended. I was waiting on word from Brandon, for one thing, but he wasn’t even in class.
“Football practice,” Lacey explained, to my disbelief.
“People get out of class free for that? What kind of con is this?”
“Welcome to high school,” she said with a wry smile. With that she returned to her paper, and I was left to fidget about my options. Near as I could tell, I was down to either waiting it out, or crashing proceedings by making my appearance as the world’s clumsiest cheerleader.
The desire to avoid further trouble won out. I hunkered down, trying to pretend everything was normal, and that I’d love to do lunch again with Lacey and her friends. Sure. I’d be fine.
I wasn’t exactly convincing myself, though.
For one thing, I was starving, but nothing tasted right, and everything smelled worse. Besides, I had no idea what I was doing there. Madison sat as far from me as possible, glowering like she knew I was up to no good. She was the only one who had a damn clue. Lacey, though, seemed determined to include me in the conversation, even while I was feeling like the least sensible addition to the cool table in recorded history.
She kept at it until someone walked into the commons behind me. Everyone went quiet, including me. I could feel who it was back there, and it was an even bigger problem than Brandon would have been.
But before I could figure out how to clear everyone out, Lin blurted out our interloper’s name.
“Pandora?”
I turned to see the Amazon and her voodoo doll striding in. Pandora was confident, smirking away. Meanwhile, Ayu was laced up tight by what I admit was the coolest corset I’d ever seen, but she still managed to slant herself into multiple degrees of exasperation.
“Always second place,” she sighed, evaluating herself while she cracked her gum. It was neon pink, and smelled like toxic strawberries. “What’s a girl got to do to get attention around here?”
“You know my reputation,” Pandora said. “You’d have to set fire to the place to outdo me.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
While everyone gaped, Pandora sat beside me and planted her elbows on the table. “I’m early for a homecoming visit, I know, but I had this urge to say hello.”
Her smile was more predatory than friendly. No one dared answer it. Ayu sat on my other side, shoving Lin away. Lin looked furious, but Ayu’s expression overpowered hers, so Lin stormed off. She took the first several steps backwards, like she didn’t want to risk turning her back on those two. Probably wise.
“What are you doing here?” Madison said.
“I just told you,” Pandora said. “I know you’ve got the intellectual capability of a sea slug, but try to keep up.”
“You’ve got no right to insult my friends,” Cee said flatly.
“And a motley crew it still is. Where do you find this bunch?”
Cee looked defensive. “They’re the most interesting, most talented people I know. You used to know that.”
Pandora stuck a thumb in my direction. “What about this one, then?”
Oh, just what I needed. I wasn’t at all ready to hear whatever Cee’s excuse for adopting me might be, especially with the entire school listening.
“Maybe it’s her natural animal magnetism,” Ayu suggested, blowing a giant bubble to hide her smirk. I didn’t watch to see if it would pop.
As it turned out, Cee didn’t get a chance to answer. Lin’s voice carried toward us first.
“They’re right there, Mr. Jones,” she said, and up walked the vice principal, security guard in tow. I buried my face in both hands. Pandora, who was not helping, put a friendly arm around my shoulders.
“You know we could take them all out,” she whispered. When I flung a desperate look at her, she smiled. “Just kidding.”
I knew she wasn’t.
“Pandora Reyes,” said the vice principal, using her full name as if he were trying to sound authoritative. Mostly he ended up sounding horrified. “You’re not permitted on this campus. I have to ask you to leave.”
She swung around to stretch her long legs off the bench. It reminded me of Brandon—that look of complete, careless ownership of everything she surveyed. “You can ask all you like,” she said sweetly.
Mr. Jones’ face clouded. “You’ll either leave of your own volition or we’ll escort you. The same goes for Miss Kimura.”
Ayu positively beamed. “Oh, look. He remembers me!”
Something in her expression made Mr. Jones blush. I abruptly decided that I really, really didn’t want to know.
“Miss Reyes. Please.”
She waited, like she was thinking about it. “I came to deliver a message to my friend. I’ll do that, and then I’ll go.”
“You can see Miss Hilliard after school—”
He stopped as Pandora smiled again, showing her teeth. Then she turned to me instead. From inside one pocket she drew out an envelope, addressed with a single, elaborately curved B.
“Read it once the mongrels have gone,” she said.
When she pushed herself to her feet, the unfolding took forever. Ayu joined her without a word. She was the one to say goodbye, though, with a big blown kiss that ended with her middle finger extended at the entire room. When they strode out the door, I could hear her giggling.
Mr. Jones, who hadn’t moved, was breathing heavily and had started to sweat. There was no question who’d been the predator and the prey in this room. The worst part was, something deep and despicable in me wanted to finish the game.
So I left. I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting me around after that sideshow. Cee didn’t stop me, and I’m not sure why it hurt that she didn’t say anything, but it did.
I was left alone with that on my mind when I finally opened Pandora’s note, and discovered that what the message said was this:
Meet us at the house tonight.
*
The Pandora and Ayu Show rendered me useless for hours. I was still worrying over it while I waited for my brother to pick me up from school.
I was dependent on getting rides for one simple reason. I never did learn how to drive. Grey tried to teach me once, in a fit of Thou Shalt Become Independent, but all he had to teach me on was the truck. If we’d had something that actually functioned without the help of ritual prayer, stinky incense and three sacrificed chickens, I might have made better headway. As it was, my first day out, I managed to pull the thing out of gear and grind the engine practically to bits. That was the end of my lesson. After that, Grey got twitchy if I even let my hand rest too close to the gearshift.
So if I was supposed to meet the pack after school, I was screwed. I couldn’t get there by myself. Brandon was nowhere to be found—practice again, apparently. The buses went nowhere near the place. I couldn’t pay for a taxi. And, any which way, I’d have to give some believable excuse to Grey. I still hadn’t thought of one by the time Lacey found me outside, getting drizzled on.
“What are you still doing here?” she asked, surprised to see me.
I shrugged and gestured at the empty driveway. Lacey figured it out.
“Sorry.” She fidgeted with her umbrella, then sat beside me and held it over my head, too. My personal-space radar protested, but I gritted my teeth a
nd went with it. “I wanted to say sorry about that whole mess today, too…”
I shrugged uncomfortably. “Whatever.”
“No, I should have said something before you left. Nobody blames you. When Pandora shows up, everyone knows she does whatever she wants.”
I doubted that no one blamed me. Madison seemed in the mood to blame me for everything, including the weather, the barista who screwed up her morning coffee, and that day’s case of bed head. But I just sighed and said, “Yeah, Pandora’s kind of…”
“Crazy, these days.” Cee looked sidelong at me. “What did she say in that note?”
“I think she just wanted to make a spectacle of me.”
“Yeah, but she wouldn’t barge in just for kicks. She must have said something.”
I flailed for an answer. In the process, a perfectly terrible idea crossed my mind. “Cee,” I said slowly. “Could I ask you a favor?”
Of course, right then I heard a familiar engine. I spoke in a hurry, because Grey’s truck was turning into the school parking lot. “Cee, I need to go somewhere tonight, but I can’t tell Grey what it’s about.”
“Something to do with that note, you mean? And you can’t tell him, but you’ll tell me?”
“Uh…sort of.”
Her eyes gleamed. Secrets. It figured. “Where do you need to go?”
Grey stopped beside us, and I looked desperately at Lacey. She grinned. “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.” She handed me the umbrella and went for the truck before I could start to stand up. “Hey, Grey.”
He stared in mute surprise. Naturally, she took the opportunity to get the upper hand.
“I was just talking to B,” she said brightly. “I know you came to pick her up, but the two of us have a big test tomorrow, and I was going to invite her over to cram for it over dinner. Figured I’d make up for all the fuss from last time.” She smiled so shyly, so winsomely, that I’m pretty sure most every boy alive would have fallen for it. Even Grey wavered. “Besides, she left some clothes at my house.”
“I—” He blinked. Then he turned to me. It was difficult to communicate much around Lacey, but I could read a whole lot of we had plans in that expression. I shrugged helplessly. That at least was me being perfectly honest.
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