“I hide it better. But I can show you.”
He stood, moved several paces away, and with his back to me, pulled his shirt over his head.
I ducked, unsure whether I should watch or turn away. At last I peeked through the filter of my hair. He wasn’t particularly muscular, at least in this form. He was pale and slim, with smooth skin, not a single scar. I saw a dash of freckles across his shoulders. Unlike Ayu, he had at least some restraint about this, knowing I was watching. He glanced back over his shoulder, with the shirt tossed into the brambles and his hands at his belt, watching to see what I might do.
What I wanted was to let out the appreciative sound in my throat, because I’m not dead, thanks, but staying speechless was probably the safer option.
“Do you see yet?” he asked.
I saw a whole lot, but I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be noticing. Finally he turned again, holding his arms out toward me. At last I began to get the idea. The skin looked…discolored, somehow. There were odd dark blurs over his veins, almost like bruises. My hands hovered over them, afraid to touch. “What are they?”
“Something that doesn’t belong.”
I turned over my own arms, pulling off one wrist brace to see better. Nothing remotely like it colored my skin. Now that I knew what to look for, I checked the rest of him and focused. I don’t know if I’d have seen it if I hadn’t quirked my eyes all out of shape, but I caught a faint, treacherous shadow pooling over his heart.
“It comes and goes,” he said. “I spend less time with the pack than most. Often I have to fend for myself—food, shelter—so I spend more time alone. This”—he pointed at a long, dark streak that crossed his wrist—”happens after I’m with them. Things improve and worsen in cycles.”
“Like moon cycles?” He shook his head. “Then what…”
I trailed off. The only significant time I’d spent with the pack was the night of the new moon party. For the whole time I’d been there, I’d felt wonderful. The day after? I’d crashed, hard. And when Brandon came by with food…
As if he were sensing the train of my thoughts, Raoul said, “I’ve been suspecting some kind of medicine.” He looked grim. “Or poison.”
“From Ilsa,” I murmured in reply.
“I still don’t know how she does it. I can’t get close enough anymore, not since Kane cast me out. The others…well. I suppose feeling powerful and healthy is enough. They don’t question too much.”
“It must be in the food.”
“It would be the simplest answer. I don’t know what it is, though. Or how she gets it.” His lip twisted. “And if we can’t stop it…”
I hesitated over my next question: why should we stop it, if it works?
But then I stared at Raoul again, seeing the shadows on his skin, and reconsidered. Either the drug—or whatever it was—was causing damage anyway, or the withdrawal was. Either way, leaving Ilsa in charge of it seemed dangerous.
“She can’t be trusted,” Raoul said, echoing my thoughts. “She must be toying with us. Some of us are getting worse, and my father is dying. Which is convenient for her.” His mouth twisted. “But without knowing how she’s doing this, I can’t prove anything.”
“Wait. Your father?”
He just stared at me. I tried again. “You’re talking about the Elder.”
“Yes,” he said quietly.
A long shiver went through me. This time Raoul reached for me. The heat of his hands, even through fabric, made me breathless. “You’re cold,” he said. “I’m sorry, the water…”
I’d forgotten about the water. I’d forgotten about almost everything. My head was boiling over, and my aching back was starting to mutiny. So I hung on, feeling his breaths change pace, go rougher, like he was struggling with something, too. We were standing so close I could feel a spill of thoughts he didn’t seem to mean to share.
Can’t ask her, I heard. It’s too much…
“What do you need?” I whispered.
His arms tightened around me, almost involuntarily, and the press of him against me proved there were easily—oh, God—two separate answers to that question. But he dragged in a breath and held me back, just enough to see my face again.
“Can I see what the Elder showed you?” he said.
I hesitated. Memories pass through the blood, they’d said. I just wasn’t sure how it worked. “How do we do this?” I said unsteadily.
His voice went softer, but also, somehow, a little more present. “It’s about focus. Sharing thoughts is one thing—it’s just talking—but memories are more private. The blood’s what makes it possible to step in. But you still have to show me the way, or I’ll get lost.” He gave me a humorless smile. “Which is probably why the Elder’s memories made no sense to you. He’s not in any shape to give directions.”
I really hoped that this meant they couldn’t just bite memories out of people, but I didn’t get the chance to ask. Raoul had raised his hand, his thumb hovering near my lip. Earlier, in a moment of nerves, I’d bitten that lip hard enough to draw blood.
“I know him,” he reminded me softly. “I can help decode what he gave you. Just show me what you know.”
My head was already filling with borrowed darkness. I braced myself, nodded once, and waited.
I just wasn’t expecting Raoul to bend closer and kiss it right out of my mouth.
For a few delirious seconds, all I could think about was the touch of his lips, and the way he teased my mouth open just enough to feel me gasp. It was like he wanted that for himself before anything else happened. I had no idea what I was doing and I was terrified I was about to fall over any second, and yet everything in me suddenly glowed, head to toe, like the sweet shock had every nerve in accord. For once, absolutely nothing hurt.
Nothing, that is, except for a deep-down sort of ache that was more about wanting than anything else, and that, I thought I could live with.
I didn’t get the chance to go anywhere with it, though, because by then he’d withdrawn. I went woozy, then almost too alert. A strange sort of focused pressure centered in my head. As soon as I acknowledged it, up rose the memory that the Elder had given me. I had to live it through with Raoul, all over again.
I was afraid he was getting a little bit extra, too. It was hard to separate out my own thoughts about it, my fears and confusion and tangled mental associations. Every time I heard that feral’s victims scream, I heard myself in it, too. My own, terrified, eight-year-old voice.
I didn’t want Raoul to know how scared I still was. From the way he reached out again to support me, though, I had the feeling he’d guessed.
Hang on, he said. I tried to, but I wavered underneath the memory of the feral’s roar. I could almost, almost see the man’s face. In that instant, Raoul gasped, and the blackness in my head exploded with the force of his shock. I staggered back a step, the connection breaking.
“I know him,” he whispered.
I wanted to ask what he meant, but the words wouldn’t come. Between the kiss, the memory and the strangeness of this night, I was finally just overwhelmed, and I tipped into an awkward seat at the base of the nearest tree. Raoul knelt beside me while the world did a few more dizzying, nauseating spins. He was too warm, even compared to the ordinary werewolf fever, and he was shaking almost as much as I was.
“What’s wrong with us?” I whispered. “How do we fix this?”
I didn’t hear his answer. By then I’d hit complete overload, and finally passed out.
*
It must have been a long while before I came to, because I woke up on my own bed. I was still dressed, with my wet clothes getting the bedsheets damp. That at least proved everything. I’d been outside. And somehow, Raoul had carried me home.
I pushed myself up, crumpling paper in the process. There shouldn’t have been paper on my bed at all. I picked it up, confused, and found I was holding a scrap of my biology homework—with someone else’s handwriting in the margins, added in a
hasty, unpracticed scrawl.
I know the man the Elder showed you. The pack won’t believe me if I tell them—we’ve all been told he’s dead. Don’t say a word to them. And be careful. If he’s evaded us this long, he’s dangerous. It’s more than you should face alone. Stay safe. I’ll be back.
There was nothing else.
Oddly enough, that focused me—and it was because I was furious. After all we’d just done, Raoul stopped short of the real answer and was telling me to stay home like a good little girl? I tried to go to the still-open window, to holler after him, leap outside again, who knew. I didn’t get that far, though, because my back gave out and I fell right back down on the bed where I’d started.
“Damn you,” I whispered. I hated that he was right.
I also, with embarrassing intensity, hated that he was gone. We’d just barely gotten started, and then…
I found my fingertips reaching up to my mouth.
Even in the middle of all this mess, Raoul had managed to give me something worth remembering. He’d kissed me out there. And he did say he’d return.
I had to wonder what it said about me that even with all these mysteries left to solve, the first thing I hoped he’d do when he got back was kiss me again.
Chapter Fifteen
The next week passed in a daze. I was distracted, and Grey too sidelined with an emergency roof repair even to notice his little sister going wonkier than usual. It took another crisis to bring everything to a head. And of all things, it was Antonella holding court in the Gilman High lunch room.
I was prepared to pass her by until I heard what she was saying. She’d found a dead man in her driveway.
“I didn’t even know who it was,” she said to the growing crowd as I warily approached. “Turns out he lived down the street. Alec Johnson, I think the police said his name was…”
“Oh, God,” Lin murmured. She’d stopped beside me, having just walked out of the orchestra classroom. “That’s Kelly’s stepdad. No wonder she’s not here.”
“He was just out for a morning jog.” Antonella sounded appalled, like exercise was some sort of inviolable, sacred activity. Or maybe, I thought guiltily a second later, she’s actually freaked out. “God knows what got him. It was…”
The look in her eyes spoke of true horror. Brandon, standing beside her, put an arm around her shoulders and hung on.
As much as I’d been avoiding him, it was unnerving to watch him this closely, but I felt like I had to. I just wasn’t sure what to make of his expression. He seemed stronger again, but he was trembling, like the energy under his skin was too much to hold in. I wasn’t sure I would have found that comforting, if I were Antonella.
“It looked like he’d been mauled, and there was…blood everywhere,” she went on, going white. “We’ve had cleaners out there with scrub brushes and chemicals and we still can’t get it to come off.”
Emily—little, fragile Emily—put a hand to her mouth and nearly gagged.
“What the hell did that to him?” someone asked.
“Excellent question,” I muttered, so low that only Brandon could hear me. He shot me a look, his eyes dark. I heard his vehement answer: It wasn’t us.
The worst thing was, I believed it. The obvious answer was right in front of me, and I felt a surge of helplessness and anger: Raoul hadn’t found the feral, even after what I showed him. He should have done better. I should have been out there with him, not just staying safe at home. Should have, should have, should have.
All around me, theories flew.
“I heard it was coyotes,” someone said.
Jake said, “If the guy was that torn up, I’d say a bear.”
A third guy obviously wasn’t taking it seriously: “It’s the bogeyman! Run for your lives!”
Then there was Madison, pitching her voice to carry over the crowd: “I heard we’ve got wolves.”
Everyone went quiet.
I could feel Brandon’s breathing speed up. As many dangerous vibes as he was emitting, I half expected to hear a call for evacuation at any second. It was Antonella, though, who went stiff and cold, her eyes sparking as she declared, “It was not wolves.”
She let that hang in the air, until it was obvious no one would question her. Then she flipped her hair back, stood free of Brandon, and fixed us all with a dire look. “I need time alone,” she said, and stalked off.
Brandon left in a different direction.
I wished in that moment I could follow people quietly. Subterfuge is hard when you have to thump along through echoing corridors. I got one crutch stuck in the door on the way outside, and Brandon heard my efforts to get it loose. We were, for better or worse, the only people there to hear him speak. “The Elder said we’re not supposed to talk to you,” he said over one shoulder.
“Oh, and you make a real habit of obeying authority.” He snorted and looked aside, while I shook myself free and stood more or less straight. “Besides, what happened to keeping an eye on me?”
“We should have been watching closer,” he muttered.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He dropped his bag and raked his hands back through his hair. When he let go his eyes were blazing. “Think about it. I know where everyone in the pack was last night. So there’s only two real choices for who offed that guy last night. Aren’t there?”
He spat the words out with such force that I staggered back. Of all the things, I didn’t expect this. “Hang on,” I said raggedly. “You think I did this?”
He looked unsteady. “It’s just that—Kane said—”
I felt sick. “Jesus, Brandon. He could make you believe anything he wanted.”
“So could you.”
“I wouldn’t. Brandon, please, think. The Elder wanted me to help, and you need the help. Obviously. You’re a wreck right now and you know it.”
He didn’t deny the obvious. He was still pale, and if I looked close enough, I could see discoloration under his skin, just like I had with Raoul. Something was just plain off.
“Brandon. I was home all weekend. And I wouldn’t do this. Seriously, there’s no way. I want to know who did. Couldn’t we—”
He turned away. Without a single acknowledgment of what I’d said, he walked off. I started to shout after him. Then I looked closer. He wasn’t just walking. He was limping. I stared in disbelief.
He’d also left his bag behind. Awkwardly, I knelt down and opened the zipper. I knew he always brought his lunch, so there should be…
“B?” I heard behind me. I turned suddenly, which was not good for my back, to find Lacey and Lin standing there, confused. I guess they had reason. I shrugged it off and grabbed the incongruous Tupperware.
“Uh,” Lin said. “Are you hungry or something?”
I gave the stew a skeptical look, then stashed it away. “Science experiment,” I said sharply. “Come on.”
I walked off so quickly that time that for once, they had to hurry up to follow me.
*
That night, I slipped on the stairs on the way to my room. I hadn’t done anything that uncoordinated in ages. I fell hard and snapped my ankle, and hollered so loud it was fit to wake the dead. But Grey didn’t come after me. I guess he really was pissed off. Worse, he had reason.
He’d heard about the werewolf attack, too. And not from me.
“It’s all anyone’s talking about,” he said over the dinner table. He’d driven me home without saying a word, which I knew was a bad sign, and he was so distracted while cooking—he wouldn’t let me help—that the meat was burned. Both that smell and my nerves made my stomach turn.
“Three people at the station today pulled me aside to talk about it. Three. Do you have any idea how infrequently anyone there wants to speak to me at all?”
He sounded unusually bitter about that. He also shoved my uneaten food away and slammed down a newspaper. I took one look and groaned. Man found fatally mauled in Gilman, it said, above a picture of people hugging i
n Antonella’s driveway. She was in the picture, actually. It figured that she was looking photogenically tearful, and had managed not to smudge her why-was-she-wearing-it-at-eight-on-Sunday-morning mascara.
The inset portrait of the victim, meanwhile, looked strangely familiar. But Grey didn’t give me any time to think about it before continuing.
“You can’t not have a theory,” Grey said. “Brandon? Someone in his…extended family? Haven’t you asked about things like that?”
I hesitated. “There’s nothing I can tell you.”
“I’m not stupid, B. That means there is something, and why you think you can’t say is scaring the hell out of me.”
I twisted my hands. The best I could do was pull out Brandon’s stolen lunch and present it like some sort of peace offering. “Listen, I got this from him, at least. I think we need to test it. If we could figure out if there’s anything in this that might be making Brandon sick…”
“B,” he said flatly. “Don’t dodge the issue.”
I put down the container, then wearily told him, “I don’t know what to say.”
Grey apparently didn’t either, because he sat there silent until my nerves cracked.
“God, Grey, what is this? Brandon’s acting like he thought I did this, you’re acting like I’m protecting him—”
“Who are you protecting?”
“You!” It came out in a desperate burst. All I could think of was Ilsa, telling me what I must not do, and then the Elder, telling me what I must, and I shut my eyes and put my head in my hands.
“I can take care of myself,” he said.
“Not against that,” I said—or burbled, really, because I was all teary-eyed and I’m not Antonella.
“Do you know what did it, B? Can’t you tell me anything?”
When I shook my head, Grey growled out his reply. “Fine. You’re good with watching people get ripped to death for no good goddamned reason? That’s just great.”
I’d had enough of being accused of appalling things. My temper broke, too. “Oh, and you’re being so brave, aren’t you? Throwing your little sister after whatever monster did this?” I hurled the newspaper at him. For once I didn’t miss. “Me, as messed up as I am, you want me to—”
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