by Anita Oh
She narrowed her eyes at me. "There is something strange about you. I've been receiving unwelcome reports concerning your behavior recently, and I can see now that they aren't completely false. Are you ill?"
"No, Mother."
She continued to scrutinize me, then seemed to come to a decision. "I'm busy for the next six hours, but clearly something is not right. I shall make the trip to see you once my work is finished tonight. Expect me in the morning."
Without waiting for my reply, she ended the call.
Tennyson and I stared at other in shock. This was the worst possible outcome.
Chapter 14
"Don't panic," Tennyson said, pacing the room and pulling at his hair. I was reasonably sure he was talking to himself.
"What will she do?" I asked.
He looked at me with huge eyes. I could feel how terrified he was.
"What won't she do?" he said. "If she suspects that you're not me…" He shook his head, as if the thought was too horrible to speak aloud.
Being left to my own imagination wasn't a good thing.
"But she's your mother. The mother of this body," I said. "Surely she wouldn't do anything to hurt it."
"I need to eat," Tennyson said with a sigh. "Why do you need to eat so much?"
Without another word, he left the room.
I didn't know what he was complaining about. His body hardly needed to eat at all; eating wasn't enjoyable, and he filled up super easy. What was the point in being alive if you didn't enjoy food? Still, I didn't want to wallow around by myself for the whole night, imagining the weird werewolf tortures I'd be suffering the next day, so I followed him down the stairs to get dinner.
The dining hall was deserted. Dinner for students finished at 8 p.m., but the Golden could eat at any time they wanted. Tennyson didn't speak to me as we ate, but at the rate he was shoveling food into his mouth, he wouldn't have been able to even if he had been the chatty sort.
I nibbled on some paleo toast and tried to make sense of what had happened. I had stuck to the script. I hadn't fidgeted or done anything un-Tennyson-like. It had been an award-winning performance, I thought, but apparently still not good enough.
"She said she'd heard things," I said, thinking aloud. "Do you think she knows about the attack on the full moon? About the transformation?"
He shrugged and kept eating.
We were both so freaked out, I shouldn't have been surprised that the other three found us. They didn't sit at the table with us, but hung back, watching.
"Sit down," I told them. "There's no point keeping anything from you now."
Tennyson glared at me over a massive bowl of pasta but didn't stop eating to say anything.
"Your mother is coming to visit," I told Althea.
The three of them drew in a shocked breath.
"What?" said Sam.
"Why?" said Nikolai.
"When?" said Althea.
"In the morning," I told them. "We called her for info on Hannah's dad, but she knew something was weird about me."
"Of course she knew," said Althea, glaring at Tennyson. "How could you do something so stupid? Do you not want to be alpha? You were on thin ice with her as it was. You'd better not mess this up. You know I'm next in line, and I don't want it. And there's no way we're letting Cousin Henry become alpha."
I'd always thought of Althea as easygoing and friendly, but she'd turned to steel talking to Tennyson about this. It made me think she'd make an awesome alpha, but no way was I going to tell her that.
"Well, it's too late now," said Sam. "We're just going to have to be honest with her."
The others nodded.
"There'll be no fooling her if she's in the same room as you," Nikolai said, looking me over. "You're just not Tennyson. Anyone could tell that."
But I was feeling more and more like Tennyson all the time.
None of us slept that night. We sat up together, going over and over how we could break the truth to Tennyson's mother in a way that wouldn't end up with both Tennyson and me in dire trouble. None of the others mentioned what they thought would actually happen; they just cast worried glances at each other in a way that was more terrifying than if they'd told me outright.
Maybe there were werewolf police. Werewolf prison. Man, I was not cut out for the big house, especially not when I was all Tennyson Wilde and pretty.
Finally morning came, and with it came the sound of a helicopter getting closer and closer. I knew the school was in a secret location, but I wondered if that was different for the Golden. Most things were.
"You need to go greet her," said Tennyson. "I'll remain concealed until the appropriate time."
If I were him, I'd have figured the appropriate time was never and cut my losses. The island was big; you could hide out in that forest for years and nobody would find you. It seemed like a better option than what was in front of us.
I didn't want to go out into the frosty spring morning at all, let alone to meet a woman who would bring about my doom, but I didn't have much choice, so I let Althea forcibly drag me out to the clearing where the helicopter was circling to land.
The sense of doom only got stronger as the helicopter touched down, and with a shock I realized that I could remember other moments such as these, waiting for this woman with a sense of apprehension. How much longer would it be until I was completely lost to myself? It was almost funny that I was in trouble for not being Tennyson Wilde when I didn't feel as if I was Lucy anymore either.
Tennyson's mother approached us disdainfully and barely glanced at us as she swept past. She was tall and thin, with the same dark hair and pale skin as her children. Only she was so cold. I'd thought Tennyson Wilde was a cold guy, but he had nothing on his mother. She made him seem like a snuggle bear.
"We will talk inside," she said, heading toward the house.
We gathered in the living area nervously as she sat at the head of the table. She glanced around as if the room was contemptibly shabby, even though it was probably the fanciest room I'd ever been in.
"Explain," she said, her cold eyes seeming to draw out all my secret fears.
"Please understand, Mother —"
She raised a hand to cut me off. "You are not my son, so you will address me in an appropriate manner. You may call me Duchess."
I stared at her in disbelief, but she was clearly not joking.
"Who are you, and where is my son?"
I opened my mouth, but before I could try to explain, Tennyson Wilde stepped forward out of the corner of the room.
"I'm here, Mother."
She looked between the two of us for a moment and then nodded. At her nod, Tennyson approached the table and sat down.
"And is this the commoner you requested information about?"
Tennyson shook his head. "No. Hannah Morgan is the one who cast this spell on us."
"And you requested the information to try to coax her into reversing it?" The duchess shook her head. "Will you never cease with this irrationality? If you hope to become a leader, you must act decisively." She narrowed her eyes at me. "So, who is this, then?"
It really bothered me how she kept talking about me rather than to me.
"My name is Lucy O'Connor," I told her.
My answer did not please her. I didn't know whether that was because she hadn't been addressing me, or I hadn't used her title, or maybe she just didn't like my name. It didn't seem to take much to get her to make that sour-lemon face.
She pursed her lips as she watched me. I felt as if she were extracting all the darkest secrets of my soul.
"I see," she said, and abruptly got to her feet.
I wasn't sure what she could see, but it didn't seem like anything good.
"Am I correct in assuming this spell took place before the full moon?" she asked Tennyson, pacing the length of the table.
"Yes, Mother."
"It was Lucy O'Connor who completed the full transformation? Of course it was." She sighed and turn
ed to face us.
I probably shouldn't have been surprised that it was the transformation she cared about, not the fact that I'd almost eaten Milo.
"If you cannot resolve this matter on your own before the end of term, I shall have to rethink your position within the pack," she told Tennyson. "The Morgan girl will also need to be dealt with. Consider this your final chance."
She swept out of the room without another word, leaving the rest of us sitting there stunned.
"We need to fix this," said Althea.
But there were only two weeks left until the end of term, and our last chance had just walked out the door.
Chapter 15
Each day that passed brought us one day closer to the deadline, and each day I felt a little bit less like myself. It was like dying in increments. Another full moon passed, which I spent locked inside the Golden House so that I couldn’t hurt anyone. The end of term got closer but a solution to our problems did not. I could hardly concentrate on studying for my exams, but I figured I was sitting them as Tennyson Wilde, so no matter how badly I did, I'd still pass. Tennyson Wilde seemed to be devoting his full attention to studying, which I appreciated, though it did seem as if he was doing it because he felt doomed to being stuck in my body forever. Well, maybe a bit to distract himself, too.
Although Tennyson and I had given up hope, Althea threw herself into finding a cure to the spell with renewed passion. She really did not want to be alpha. After meeting her mother, I could well understand that. Althea tried every single thing possible to break the curse. Any scrap of information, no matter how small, she tried, all the things we'd passed over as being too unlikely, too bogus. She collected hair and nails, and various bodily fluids, until Tennyson told her to stop so he could concentrate on studying. Then she practiced the counter-curses on Nikolai, though he was sure none of them would work without Althea being a witch herself.
At least he was trying to help. Unlike Sam. Sam had been making himself scarce. I could feel that he was really confused about what was happening, his feelings for me and Tennyson getting all mixed up, but that wasn't what was keeping him away. I knew that shifty-eyed look he kept wearing, and it meant that he was up to something.
I let myself be distracted by exam week, but the end of term hung over my head like a black cloud. I hardly slept. I hardly ate. I was tormented by bad dreams when I did finally sleep.
"You look like death," Nikolai told me on the Friday just before our final exam.
"What do you expect? There's only one week left until my life is over."
"Don't be so melodramatic. Every other time, it's all worked out okay. Surely you'll come up with some last-minute trick to fix everything."
But I wasn't myself, and Tennyson Wilde wasn't really me, either, so I didn't know who was going to come up with a plan.
After I finished my history exam, I found Sam waiting for me by the fountain. It was strange, seeing him there and not feeling the usual jump in my belly. Tennyson's feelings for him had completely taken over from my own, and I knew that when Sam looked at me, he was starting to see me more as Tennyson than Lucy as well.
"I think I have a way to fix everything," he said. "But you're going to hate me for it."
I couldn't imagine ever really hating Sam, no matter what he did, no matter who I was.
"Do it," I told him.
He gave me a half-smile. "It's already done. Take Tennyson to the bamboo forest tonight, right at dusk, to the statue of Professor Amaris."
I looked at him questioningly. "Haven't we done this already?"
He smiled, and I tried to will myself to feel something, but it was no good.
"You'll understand when you get there."
I could feel that he was too nervous to explain, that he really thought I'd hate him for whatever it was.
"It'll be fine," I told him. "No matter what happens, it'll be fine."
I tried to believe that, because I knew he'd sense it if I felt otherwise.
The afternoon seemed long and pointless. Exams were over. I didn't want to start doing anything that I'd have to leave unfinished if whatever Sam had planned was successful. Not that I really thought I would; it was just an excuse to be lethargic. I was too nervous to sleep or eat, too edgy to talk to anyone. I sat in the garden and watched the spring breeze ripple through the flowers.
Eventually Tennyson came and sat silently beside me. I was pleased for his company, and that more than anything made me aware of how wrong this whole situation was. Tennyson was the one person I couldn't stand above all others, and he was the only comfort to me now. As the shadows began to lengthen across the garden, we stood up as one and began to walk toward the bamboo garden.
As we walked, the strangest sensation came over us. My consciousness kept flickering between the two of us. Not just between our bodies, but from Tennyson to Lucy, with all our thoughts, memories, likes and dislikes, everything that made us who we were. It was nauseating. Hannah had said that we had one hundred days, which would end at the end of term, which meant we had another week, another full moon to get through, but it felt like the two of us were merging more and more every minute. Maybe she felt as if the end of exams was close enough, because I didn't see how this could go on much longer.
We stumbled our way through the bamboo forest, never sure from one footstep to the next which body we would be inhabiting. Finally, we made it to the statue.
We looked at each other, not sure what to do next.
"If this doesn't work, I'll take care of your brothers," he told me.
I nodded. "I'll become alpha and protect Althea from your mother. I'll keep the pack safe."
"Don't let me get fat," he said.
I rolled my eyes. "Try not to be a jerk to everyone."
He reached out for my hand, and I took it.
At the same time, we both sensed another presence in the forest and turned toward it. It was Hannah. She looked at us expectantly.
"You said we had one hundred days," I told her.
She shrugged. "From the beginning of the spell, not from when I said it," she said. "So, that makes it… today?" She looked all wide-eyed and innocent, but I knew now that it was just an act. "I assume you aren't returning my father to me."
"We tried," said Tennyson.
She waved her hand vaguely in the air. "And I tried to reverse the spell. Oh, oops, it didn't work." She narrowed her eyes at him. "If I don't have my father, you don't have yourselves. Another week wouldn't change anything, anyway. The spell may as well be completed now."
My heart clenched, and I started to panic. I didn't want to be Tennyson Wilde. I wanted to be Lucy. I wanted my own life, my own identity. We stared at each other, and I saw the same fear reflected in his eyes. I knew that part of my panic was his own and part of his was mine.
Hannah raised her hand, the swirling ball of blue light cupped within it. That light had brought me nothing but trouble, and I wanted to put it out for good, but I didn't know how.
"It's for the best," she told me. "You had nothing. You were nobody. Now there's nothing in this world you can't have. Really, I'm doing you a favor. You should be thanking me."
She pulled back her arm and pitched the light toward us like a baseball.
I clutched Tennyson's hand, screwing my eyes shut so I couldn't see the moment that the light hit us. I thought I would feel something. Maybe not pain, but something at least to signify the end of being Lucy.
But there was nothing.
After a moment, I cracked my eyes open.
There was someone standing in front of us, shielding us. He was holding the ball of blue light in his hand, and I knew that we were safe.
I recognized that back. It had shielded me from things my whole life, until it hadn't anymore. It was the last person in the world I had expected to see there.
It was my father.
Chapter 16
"Lucy, are you all right?" my father asked.
I felt more Lucy than I had in ages,
so I figured he was speaking to me.
"What are you doing here?" It was literally the only thing I could think. Why was he here? Why now? Maybe also a little bit of, "Where have you been?"
Hannah was cowering behind the statue of Professor Amaris, looking shocked at this unexpected turn of events. And to be fair, it was pretty shocking.
"I can't reverse the spell completely, but I can pull it back a bit," he said, which wasn't an answer to my question. "Are you still yourself?"
I was still in Tennyson's body, so Hannah must not have been able to complete the spell, or I'd have felt completely one or the other.
"I'm myself enough to be super mad at you," I told him. Then something awful occurred to me. "Sam contacted you? He knew where you were? All this time?"
"That's not the issue at the moment," he said. "We need this girl to reverse the spell. I can slow it, but if it's not undone, it will continue to progress. I need you to focus and tell me how far the spell has advanced."
It seemed to me like it was totally the issue, and he was trying to weasel out of answering.
"Lucy!" my dad yelled.
"What?" I yelled back.
"She's getting away," said Tennyson. "Look, there she goes. Good job, both of you." He rolled his eyes. He was definitely feeling more himself.
He wasn't wrong though. Hannah had vanished into the bamboo forest, leaving the three of us standing there awkwardly. My dad turned toward me and Tennyson, did something with the blue light to make it dim and then tucked it into his jacket pocket, out of sight.
"Where will she go?" he asked.
"Are you kidding me?" I asked in return. "You show up out of nowhere for the first time in years, and that's all you have to say for yourself?"
I was furious at him. I wished that he hadn't shown up, even if that would have meant Hannah finishing the spell. I wanted to scream in his face. How dare he, after everything, after deserting us? It felt as if the feelings inside me were too big to contain, as if they'd just come bursting out.
Tennyson squeezed my hand, and I felt some of those feelings being leached away. He was taking them for me, sharing them.