by Молли Харпер
“When Cooper talked about that night, he made it sound like he’d done something unforgivable. And that meant what I’d done was unforgivable, too. I’d depended on him to be everything, a brother, a father, and to have him snatch that away . . . well, needless to say, I got pissed. I mean, who did he think he was, being all tortured and selfish when we needed him? He was the alpha. He had a responsibility to us, and he was just pissing it away. I wouldn’t have wasted it. I knew that much. And that little seed of resentment started to grow and take root.
“Cooper decided we were better off without him and moved to Grundy. I went a little crazy. And for years, I kept expecting the hurt to go away, even just a little bit, but it just seemed to get worse.
“My cousin Eli air-quote ‘reluctantly’ stepped in to take over the pack. He’d been a sort of kindred spirit. He always said he was just holding Cooper’s place until Cooper came back. And I started to resent that, too. Without Cooper, I was the strongest in the pack. I was the fastest. Except for Eli, I was probably the smartest . . . which wasn’t saying much. Once we were back on our feet, I didn’t see why Eli should be holding the place at all. I thought I was ready to take Cooper’s place right then. And why shouldn’t I? He didn’t want it, so why shouldn’t I have it?”
Nick lifted his eyebrows.
“I know. But I was eighteen. How level-headed and mature were you at eighteen?”
He shrugged. “Well, I was living on my own and putting myself through school.”
“As a person, I sort of sucked,” I admitted. “For years, I was just horrible to Cooper. Every time he came around, I made it as painful as possible for him. As in, I took parts of him off. It wasn’t enough for him to be run from his home. I didn’t think he was hurting enough. And it helped that Eli was there, pouring poison in my ear. ‘See,’ he said, ‘Cooper’s fine. He’s making a life for himself. He’s not even sorry.’ And then Mo came along. Cooper was the one who saved her from John Teague. Mo figured out what he was, and she didn’t care. She loved him. I saw how happy she made him. And somehow that made it worse.
“I figured, I was hurt, so he should hurt more, you know? Eli fed into it, and I didn’t realize how deeply I’d fallen. He pulled the strings, and I danced. He said all the right things in all the right ways. Turns out Eli was the one who brought Jonas’s pack down on us in the first place. Sort of an ‘I’d rather serve at the right hand of the devil’ thing. When that fell through, he settled for running the pack himself. But he didn’t think Cooper had moved far enough away. He was afraid Cooper would get over his guilt and come back.”
I explained Eli’s reign of terror, the attacks, and how they drove Cooper away from home, family, and the woman he loved. But when Mo was pregnant with Eva, Eli realized that Cooper was never going to leave permanently, that people in the valley would always be waiting for him to come back. He snapped. He went after Mo. He figured Cooper wouldn’t want to go on without her.
“If we hadn’t gotten there in time . . . well, it was Mo. Given that she was swinging a wrench at Eli when we showed up, she might have had a chance,” I admitted.
“Wow.”
“She’s kind of a bad-ass under the apron,” I said, smiling fondly. “You know, this might be the most words I’ve ever strung together in my life. I don’t think I like it much.”
“You should do it more often. You say really interesting stuff,” he said, taking our plates to the sink.
“This is the part where I tell you that your body will never be found.” I walked across the living room and flopped onto the couch. “Werewolves don’t share their secrets with humans often. And if you screw me over, I’ll have to kill you. Not ha-ha, ‘joking around’ kill you. It will mean the actual end of your having a pulse.”
He blanched, as if during all of the information I’d just dumped on him, he’d forgotten that he wasn’t going to be allowed to share it with anyone.
“But this is what I’ve been waiting for my whole life!” he shouted. “Proof of an intelligent species besides humans! Proof that the folk tales, the fairy stories, the things that go bump in the night, they could all be real! This is one of those moments that redefines how we see our history. It’s electricity, the Rosetta Stone, and Darwin’s theory all in one!”
“All of which made the men who discovered them incredibly famous,” I noted dryly.
“That’s why you think—I don’t give a shit about being famous! Hell, I’ve already got more money than I know what to do with. I just want people to know what’s really out there, what’s possible. That there’s more to life than what we’ve been told.”
“Stop and think. You’re not the first human to know about us. Do you honestly think I would tell you this and just let you run to the nearest wacko tabloid? Do you think I would let you unveil the existence of my species on a whim? This is one of those sacred-trust sorts of things. We let you into our lives, and you keep our secrets . . . or we kill you. It’s not a particularly friendly sacred trust.”
“So, why tell me in the first place?”
“To keep you from wandering around in the woods, getting yourself eaten by random apex predators.” I sighed, scrubbing my hands over my face. “You’re one of those guys who won’t stop until they stumble right into the path of certain death. You want to know everything. Well, I’m willing to share that with you, but you won’t be able to tell anybody about it. You have to decide which is more important, knowing everything or knowing a little and being published . . . and then dying. I can’t emphasize that last part enough.”
“I—you—I can’t possibly decide something like that right now!” he exclaimed.
“Well, you kind of have to.”
“Can I have some time?”
I considered. There was a possibility that he could use that time to run to said tabloid. But he didn’t have photos or recordings, just some scribbled notes that made him sound like a crackpot. I nodded, edging toward the door. “Sure.”
“Is it weird that after all the death threats, I still sort of want to kiss you?”
I nodded again. “A little.”
He chuckled and leaned in anyway. Opening the back door, I pressed my hand against his chest and gave him a gentle shove back. “I can’t.”
“Why? I happen to remember, now that I know I wasn’t having a concussion dream, that we’ve already done this. Several times. And a little more, now that it’s coming back to me.”
I smiled ruefully. “I just can’t. If you decide that you can live with the consequences of knowing about us, I’ll tell you why.”
“That’s sort of cruel.”
I sighed. “Welcome to the wacky world of werewolves.”
CHAPTER 9
Are Eyelash Curlers Banned by the Geneva Convention?
THE NEXT FRIDAY NIGHT, I climbed out of my mother’s SUV, pulling uncomfortably at my skirt and cursing the day I was born with two X chromosomes.
Yes, I was wearing a skirt.
I’d finally made time for another date with Clay, and it just happened to be the biggest social event of the season. Such as it was. Every year, Evie and Buzz hosted the Big Freeze at the Glacier, a sort of big last hootenanny before winter set in. The first heavy frost of year always came pretty early, in what most lower forty-eight residents would still consider fall. And although it would be weeks before the snows truly set in and made travel difficult, the people of Grundy put on their Sunday best and gathered for beer, dancing, and general merriment. For most of the people who lived on the fringes of town, it was the last chance to socialize before winter hit. I rarely went, since it was basically a way for unattached men and women of Grundy to find the person they planned on shacking up with during the cold months.
Normally, Evie scheduled the party right before the almanac forecast the first freeze. But this year, she and Mo had rescheduled at the last minute because some Food Network guy was coming by to film a segment about “Hidden Gems of the Northwest,” and they wanted to hold the party before the cre
ws arrived. Clay had been pretty understanding when I told him that our date was suddenly semiformal and that I would have to meet him there, since I was dropping my mom off at Cooper’s so she could babysit. Which was just one more reason to like Clay.
Mom knocked on Cooper’s door, because she didn’t want to be “that” mother-in-law. I rolled my eyes and opened the door, despite her scolding. Cooper was standing in the living room, eager to hand the baby off before she could spit up on his good shirt.
“Hello, my sugar pie!” Mom cooed at Eva, who was all pink and rosy and recently bathed. That would last all of five minutes. As Mom snuffled and nuzzled her pride and joy, Kara and Mo came out of the bedroom and screeched to a halt. They were staring at me.
“What?” I said, looking down at my sleeveless black knee-length sheath. “You said to dress up. I’m wearing my dress.”
“Is it your designated funeral dress?” Kara asked, adjusting the strap of her own low-cut royal-blue number.
I huffed out an annoyed breath. I caught my mother, my own flesh and blood, standing behind me, nodding.
“Come on, sweetie, we only have an hour or so to make this work,” Kara said, pulling at my elbow.
“Make what work?” I demanded.
Mo and Kara hooked their arms through mine and dragged me toward the bedroom. Mo wasn’t playing fair. She knew I wouldn’t do anything in front of Kara. She knew I couldn’t just shake her off, phase, and run. Cooper came ambling out of the bedroom, looping his tie around his collar.
“Cooper! Help!”
The coward turned on his heel and walked into the kitchen as if he hadn’t seen me getting frogmarched by the estrogen squad. “Hey! Don’t act like you don’t hear me! Seriously! Remember that time I hid a salmon in your truck and it stank for a month? Child’s play! My revenge will be swift and terrible. Damn it, Cooper!” I yelled as they dragged me into their den of girliness.
They threw me into a chair near Mo’s bathroom and spread out torture devices on the bathroom counter. They glared down at me like supervillians trying to pry information out of James Bond.
“She’s got such beautiful skin,” Kara said, lifting my chin and talking about my face as if I wasn’t even in the room. “No sense in covering it up. We just need to play up the eyes, tame the brows, and gloss the lips. A good, strong blood-red, I think.”
I snorted and muttered something about a quick hunt on the way to the dance, and Mo gave me the stink-eye. Without warning, they pounced. My dress was whipped over my head, and my hair was pulled out of its ponytail. The next half-hour was a haze of stuff rubbed on my face, my hair yanked, and my body pushed and pulled at as if it wasn’t even mine. I was tweezed. A lot.
“Can’t do much about the painfully sensible shoes,” Mo muttered as she safety-pinned the sides of my dress to give it a “silhouette.”
“It’s too cold out for sexy shoes.”
“Tell me about it. The one thing I miss about home is being able to wear peep-toes year-round,” Kara griped, giving my hair a gentle yank to remind me to keep my head up. She was arranging my hair into some weird cinnamon-bun shape on top of my head. I only hoped I wouldn’t walk out of there looking like Princess Leia . . . then again, Nick might dig that.
But I didn’t care what Nick liked, I reminded myself. Clay was my date. Nick was the guy who was currently considering whether he could be a silent witness to my family’s wolfy weirdness.
I hadn’t heard from the good doctor in a few days, and given the fact that the valley hadn’t been overrun with teams of commando scientists, I took that to mean that he was still considering my proposal. I’d had twinges of panic that first day after the “big reveal,” wondering if I’d made a huge mistake in trusting him. But the silence of the last few days had been a sort of balm. Surely, the first twenty-four hours after hearing something like that were the hardest to keep it a secret. But I couldn’t go looking for him to ask him what he decided. Every time I did that, I ended up naked in some way.
This might be harder than I thought. I frowned.
Kara stepped back to look at her handiwork. “She looks like a grumpy ballerina.”
“It’s a little too . . .” Mo took out the pins and shook my hair out, slicking it back with some citrusy goo. “That’s better. More tousle, less froufrou. She needs a smoky eye.”
“That sounds painful,” I said, and was ignored. I shied away when Kara came at me with what looked like a cross between pliers and a speculum. “What the hell is that thing?”
“It’s an eyelash curler.”
“How are you going to curl my eyelashes when that thing rips them all out?” I demanded, jerking my head away when she moved toward me with the sinister-looking device.
“Hold still, and it won’t hurt,” she said, clamping it down on my lashes.
“Owowowow!” I yelled, my eye watering as she pulled the lid away from my eyeball and crimped the hairs. “You’re a damned liar, Kara Reynolds.”
“Beauty is pain, babe,” Mo advised me. I snaked my hand around Kara and took a swipe at my sister-in-law. Since she could freaking move, she just danced out of the way.
“Well, just focus on your breathing, and you should be fine,” Kara said wryly as she went for the other eye.
“You stay away from me, you psycho.”
“You can’t just walk around with one set curled. It looks weird,” Mo protested.
“It can’t make that much of a difference,” I shot back. Mo rolled her eyes and thrust a hand mirror in front of my face. “Oh, I guess it does.”
Since the lift and curve of my newly pressed eyelashes really did make them look bigger, I dutifully sat still while they put three shades of gray eye shadow on my eyelids, followed by eyeliner . . . then they wiped the whole thing off and started from scratch because it was “too much.”
“What’s that called?” I asked as Mo painted a bright, bold red across my lips.
She checked the little label on the end of the lip-gloss tube. “Cabaret.” I frowned, so Mo added, “As in, ‘life is a’?”
“When you wonder why we don’t always understand each other, it’s because of jokes like that,” I told her. Mo huffed and slicked my lips with gloss.
I wasn’t allowed to see a mirror. Kara kept muttering under her breath about killer cheekbones and “lucky bitch who doesn’t even appreciate her teeny-tiny pores.” Finally, they stood staring at me, trying to figure out what to do next.
“Maybe we could. . .” Kara trailed off.
“No, she’s perfect,” Mo said, stopping Kara’s hand as she reached toward me with the powder brush. “Doing anything else would make her overdone.”
“I think I hate her,” Kara said. Mo shrugged.
They turned me around to face the mirror.
I was me but different. My hair looked as if I actually planned for it to fall around my face in dark waves, instead of all messy and wind-blown. My eyelashes felt all stiff and goopy, but they looked damn good. The cinched-up dress showed off the few curves I had, and the satiny red scarf Mo had tied around my dress made my waist look tiny. Don’t get me wrong, I like me. But seeing this hotter, femme incarnation of myself was very cool.
“Let me get this straight. You guys spend an hour scrubbing and polishing your faces, putting on three layers of makeup, and fiddling with your hair so you can like me after I take most of the makeup off ?” I asked, grinning at them.
“Yep, definitely hate her,” Kara decided.
Mom gasped and scrambled for a camera when I emerged from Barbieville, USA.
“Mom,” I moaned.
“Oh, hush, you’re gorgeous. And it’s not like you went to your senior prom. Give me a chance to fuss.”
“This is why I didn’t go to my senior prom!”
Mom snapped picture after picture, from every angle conceivable. Only Eva’s spitting up in my mother’s hair persuaded her to stop. I mentally doubled the amount I’d budgeted for Eva’s first Christmas present.
; “Mom, it’s just a party. There’s no reason to make a big deal out of it,” I told her. “It’s just another Friday night at the Glacier.”
* * * AND I THOUGHT so, right until we got to the edge of town and I lost my nerve. I wasn’t about to change for some stupid guy. Even if he was hot and available and a werewolf, I didn’t want Clay to think he had that kind of power over me. Screw this; the minute Mo was in the door, I was going to phase and run home.
Eyeing the way I was gripping the truck door, Mo warned, “You do that, and I’m telling Samson you were too chicken-shit to go to a silly dance.”
I grunted, growling at her and shoving a couple of warm, cheesy mini-quiches into my mouth.
“I hate you,” I muttered as Cooper parked his truck in front of the Glacier. “I hate the both of you.”
“And me, too?” Kara asked.
“You, too,” I muttered. “Welcome to the family.”
“I’m so touched.” Kara sighed, with her hand over her heart.
“Well, hate me while you’re carrying in that tray of mini-egg rolls, OK?” Mo asked, handing me one of a dozen carefully wrapped parcels of appetizers for the party. “But eventually, you will agree that you look hot and I am right, I have always been right, and I always will be right.”
“It’s best not to argue with her when she’s like this,” Kara told me. “She literally remembers every single occasion she was right. She still brags about warning me against fluffy bangs in tenth grade.”
“But you went ahead and did it anyway,” Mo snickered. “And now, who hides her sophomore yearbook like it’s homemade porn?”
“I’ll pay you ten bucks to see the yearbook,” I offered Mo.
“Done,” Mo said, grinning. Kara scowled at us both. And it struck me that, other than the facial torture devices and hair shellac, hanging out with girls wasn’t that different from hanging out with the boys. They didn’t care if I cursed at them. We called each other names and threatened each other regularly. That was pretty much my top three activities with my male packmates. I wasn’t ready to let them paint my toenails, but maybe I wouldn’t respond quite so rudely the next time Mo asked me over for a movie night or something.