After meeting Tricia, my hopes for this conference might be in free fall, but at least we get this forest—endless and empty wilderness, with the Appalachians rising in the distance. Kate and I will have a blast here, exploring new terrain, Changing and running and hunting. Maybe this is what we need, a chance for the two of us to hang out together doing something we both love.
I remember what Nick said about Brandon. Did Kate talk to Nick about the breakup?
No, he must be just taking her side, presuming Brandon did something wrong. If Brandon hurt Kate, she’d tell me. I’d notice, too, right? We’re twins. We can barely stub a toe without the other feeling it. If Kate was hurting . . .
If Kate was hurting, she’d withdraw. She’d go quiet and keep to herself, which is exactly what she’s been—
The crackle of brush stops me midthought. I glance up, expecting to see Kate. Instead, I’m staring at a stranger, a guy who looks like a high-school senior. Roughly my height and my build, athletic and lean muscled. Dark skin. Hair styled in short locs.
He doesn’t see me. He’s poised in the forest, staring straight ahead, and his profile prods a ping of recognition, as if I know him. Except I don’t.
I inhale deeply, but he’s downwind, and the more I look at him, the more certain I am that I’ve never seen him before. It’s just a weird sense of déjà vu.
That crackle I heard was the guy stepping from the forest’s edge. Then he saw my sister and withdrew. Now he’s watching her.
Kate doesn’t notice him. She’s crouched looking at something with her back to the newcomer.
He stands there, staring at Kate. That’s nothing new. In the last few years, Kate has been approached by a half-dozen modeling scouts. She’s tall and slender with blue eyes and long blond hair, the kind of girl who gets attention even as her old T-shirts, faded jeans and ratty sneakers insist she doesn’t want it.
Except the look this guy’s giving her is different. It’s surprise and something like disbelief. I don’t know what this look means, but my hackles rise and a growl tickles my throat. He should say something. Let her know he’s there. You don’t hide in the shadows, watching a girl who’s alone in the forest.
I ease back and creep up behind him. I lose sight of the guy in the thick forest, but I know exactly where he is. I listen, in case he decides to retreat, but the forest stays silent.
As I draw near the spot, I pause and take a deep breath. Then I realize my fists are clenched and give my hands a shake. None of that. I’m just here to show him what it’s like to have a stranger sneak up on you.
I pause, preparing. Then I step through with, “What the hell do you think you’re—?”
I stop.
The guy is gone.
Chapter Four
Kate
A cabin in the woods. Such a perfect setting for a horror movie that there’s even one named exactly that. That was an adequate cabin in the woods. This one is perfection.
No roads or trails run to it. I only spotted it from the road because two storm-felled trees cleared a narrow sightline. Otherwise, it would have been completely hidden. I almost wish it was. I wish I’d come back here to stretch my legs and stumbled over it like a girl in a fairy tale.
This is no candy house, though. It’s wood. Rotting wood. Or that’s what it looks like from a distance, but when I get close, I see the timber is only covered in moss and darkened by time. The roof sags, the windows are boarded up and the porch slants to one side. It’s clearly abandoned, yet when I try the front door, it doesn’t budge. I put a little werewolf strength into it, and the wood protests, telling me that if I huff and puff, I’ll break it down, which is not what I want.
I walk to a window, hoping to pry off a plank enough to see through, but it’s boarded from the inside. I’m circling to the back when someone whispers behind me.
I don’t turn around. I’ve grown up with werewolves, who love to practice their silent prowling. At the risk of bragging, I’m something of a master at the craft myself. One Pack member who doesn’t play the game is Logan—it’s beneath my brother’s dignity—so this must be Nick.
I pretend not to hear him, even as the hairs on my neck rise. The wordless whisper comes again, tickling my ear, and in the middle of it, I spin, my fist spinning with me, to teach Nick a lesson about—
My fist whizzes through empty air.
There’s no one behind me. The hairs on my neck go wild, that chill blasting straight down my spine.
I must have imagined the second whisper. It would have been Nick the first time, sneaking up to whisper and then creeping away. I stride to the corner of the house, and when I don’t see him there, I race around to the next corner and . . .
I’m alone.
I rub the back of my neck.
There is such a thing as ghosts in our world. Only necromancers can hear and see them, though.
I straighten and march around the cabin in a full one-eighty. There’s clearly no one out here, and when I listen hard, Nick and Logan’s distant voices drift over from the road.
I turn back to the house. Then I take a slow, careful step toward it, barely breathing, straining to catch—
Something moves inside. A scratching sound, like nails against wood. Coming from inside the cabin.
Even as I shiver, I shake my head. Abandoned cabin with the sound of tiny claws? Mice, voles, rats, rabbits, squirrels . . . The list of potential culprits extends to half the creatures in this forest.
I put my ear to the wall. As I do, I glance down at the concrete foundation. I’m not sure why it catches my attention. Then it clicks. This is a wooden cabin, a very simple structure, one that should not have a concrete foundation.
Something else caught my eye, though. A pattern in the concrete. Ivy snakes up, obscuring the design. I crouch to tug the plant, but it holds fast. I pull harder and the vines bite into my fingers, like I’m trying to snap wires.
When I was younger, I’d have gotten frustrated and yanked . . . and then cursed and snarled because I cut my hands. Now I detangle the ivy bit by bit.
“What the hell do you think you’re—?”
I jump, not at the voice but at the words. The voice I recognize in a heartbeat. Yet the tone and the language make me think I’m mistaken. I must be.
Logan stands behind me, glowering.
He isn’t glowering not at me, though. He’s glowering at . . . nothing. At empty space.
That shiver runs through me.
“Lo?” I say.
He spins.
“What do you think you’re doing, wandering off—?” He blinks and rubs a hand over his eyes.
“Lo?” I walk over. “Are you okay?”
He nods, still eye-rubbing. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap. I’m just tired. Tired and cranky obviously.” A glimmer of a sheepish smile, my old Logan peeking through. “Sorry for yelling. I just . . .” He looks around. “Did you see someone back here?”
That chill again. “No. Did you?”
“Logan! Kate!” Nick shouts. “Time to go!”
Logan jerks his head in Nick’s direction. “The head counselor showed up, and there’s something I need to explain before you meet her.”
* * *
After saying goodbye to Nick, we head into the forest for the mile-long hike to camp. As we walk, Tricia explains more about the conference. Five counselors, and the other four are college students. Two dozen attendees between the ages of sixteen and eighteen from all across the country. She launches into a description of the supernatural races we’ll encounter, as if we haven’t grown up in this world.
Over half the campers are half demons, like Tricia. That’s no surprise. They’re the most common race. Lots of demons out there, making lots of babies with lots of human women. A half-demon friend of ours calls them the X-Men of the supernatural world. Accurate. They all inherit one main power from their demon daddy—ice, fire, teleportation, telekinesis, and so on—and that’s their half-demon type. Oh, and they look hum
an. All supernaturals do. That’s how we’ve remained hidden for so long.
Next comes the spellcasters. Witches and sorcerers are two separate sex-specific races. If you’re a witch, you have only daughters who are also witches. If you’re a sorcerer, you have only sons who are also sorcerers. They have different magical specialties but can cast each other’s spells. There’s a lot of friction between the faces, a very old grudge dating back to when the sorcerers threw the witches to the inquisition, and then positioned themselves as the more powerful race. Guys, right? While there’s still tension, it’s better now. Paige herself is married to a sorcerer, and they have a son. Yep, that’s the exception to the rule—if a witch and a sorcerer have a baby, it can be either a girl or a boy, and technically, dual-race, which is very cool.
The camp also has a few necromancers. Like I said, they have the ability to see and communicate with the dead. They can also raise and control zombies, though most don’t except as a last resort. Raising a zombie means dragging its ghost back into its rotting corpse, and that’s just nasty. In a pinch, though, it’s a helluva power.
While there are also minor races—like shamans and druids—this camp is just the major races. Or, before we came, four of the six major ones, which isn’t exactly an all-race conference. For most supernaturals, those are the four that count.
As for the sixth, I cannot resist an innocent, “Any vamps?” Tricia only gives a nervous titter, as if the answer is too obvious for comment. Yep, no vampires. They might be the most famous race, but they’re also the rarest and most . . . I’d say “feared,” but I’m not sure that’s the right word. Fear and discomfort mixed. They might look human, but they’re still undead, semi-immortal, living for hundreds of years without aging, healing upon injury. They’re even more “the other” than werewolves.
Also, with vampires, there’s the blood sucking, which understandably makes people squeamish. Werewolves are predators, and some are man-eaters, but most have never tasted human flesh in their lives. Feeding on people is gross and unnecessary. For vampires, it is necessary, and while they can drink without killing, they must kill one person a year to maintain their own immortality.
As for how vampires get their powers, like werewolves, most are hereditary. Like necromancers, it’s selective—every so often, someone in that bloodline dies and rises again. You can also become a vampire, but again, like werewolves, it’s both tricky and rare.
Tricia prattles on about the races we’ll meet, and I tune her out as soon as I realize she’s not going to say anything I don’t already know. Instead, I strain for my first glimpse of the camp. I’ve never been to summer camp, for obvious reasons. Well, they’re obvious to werewolves, being the same reasons that had us scrambling to avoid the draft in every war. It’s not that we didn’t want to fight. Come on, we’re werewolves; we’re the first to jump into a fight. The problem is that we can’t spend months living in close quarters with humans while lacking an easy way to Change. Add in the tensions of war, and you’ve got a horror movie right there.
For Logan and me, summer camp as kids would have been the same thing. We hadn’t been in full control of our Changes yet, and we—okay, I—would have been tense and anxious, separated from my Pack.
There’d been a time, though, when I desperately wanted to go to camp. Days of horseback riding and lakefront swimming and archery lessons. Nights of bonfires, s’mores and ghost stories . . . That was my idea of heaven. Then Mom explained that she and Dad couldn’t tag along, and it’d be me and Logan with total strangers. At that, my vision of heaven flipped to sheer hell.
So, Mom gave us our own summer camp. Rented a cabin on a lake for swimming. Brought Jeremy along for archery and art lessons. Assigned Dad fire-building and s’more construction. Mom supplied the ghost stories. The only thing missing was horseback riding lessons. Werewolves smell like predators, and we confuse and frighten animals. Atalanta had been an experiment in raising a puppy to see whether early exposure helped. Thankfully, it did.
As much as I dread this conference, I can’t deny a glimmer of excitement. I envision tiny cabins ringing a bonfire pit. Sure, I’m hoping for indoor plumbing—and please have indoor showers—but I’d like to rough it. Sleep with only thin timbers between me and the forest, the smell of trees perfuming my dreams.
Yes, this could actually be a really good week.
Then I see the camp.
“What the—?” I manage to clamp my mouth shut before I swear. Sure, I’m going to, eventually, but supernaturals expect werewolves to be illiterate brutes, and I’m not handing them ammunition quite so soon.
The cursing is understandable, though, because I have no idea what the hell I’m looking at. It doesn’t belong in a forest, that’s for sure. It’s a huge white rectangle, as if someone dropped a giant shipping container in the middle of the forest. It squats there like a scar in the landscape, making me want to cover my eyes and turn around to refresh my retinas with trees and mountains and proper wilderness elements.
“Isn’t it amazing?” Tricia gushes. “It’s so . . .” She waves her hand, searching for a word.
“Unexpected?” Logan says, and I stifle a laugh.
She spins on him, saying, “Yes! Exactly! Art in the forest.”
I bite my tongue before I say the forest doesn’t need art. It is art.
“Is the camp nearby?” my brother says, in his most unruffled tone.
“This is the camp,” she says. “You get to stay here. In this . . .” She waves, once again at a loss for words. I could supply a few. Like ugly mother-fucking crime against nature.
Logan’s look warns me not to say anything, but his eye-roll acknowledges I’m not the only one thinking it.
“Are there . . . windows?” Logan asks, staring at what seems to be a solid building.
“No,” she says. “That’s the genius of it. The lower floor contains the window-less bedrooms to keep them dark for sleeping. Then you go up to the second-floor common areas where the ceiling is solid glass. The symbolism is . . . intense.”
So is the heat, I bet. With the sun beating down on a solid glass roof.
She continues. “You are going to love it. We’re so lucky to be the first people ever to stay here.”
“It’s a new building?” Logan asks.
“Completely new.” She opens a metal door, and I realize I was only slightly off base thinking this thing looked like a giant shipping container. It’s made from shipping containers. When I comment, Tricia trills, “Isn’t that an amazing idea?”
It would be . . . in the city. In the forest, it’s an unholy altar to the god of transcontinental commercialism. Also, it’ll rust.
Tricia opens one solid steel door and ushers us into a dimly lit hall.
“It’s awfully dark,” I say, and refrain from adding due to the lack of fucking windows.
“We keep the lights low to add to the ambiance,” she says. “Also, we’re running on generators.”
“Wouldn’t you use solar?” I say. “Oh, wait, you’d need the roof for that, which you’ve used for a giant skylight, instead.”
Logan gives me a look, but Tricia misses the sarcasm and says, “We do have solar, but the panels aren’t working as well as expected.” Because they’re on the damned ground, surrounded by trees.
“So our conference is the first event here?” Logan says, my darling brother trying valiantly to steer the conversation back on track.
“Isn’t it amazing?” She leads us toward a side hall. Well, no, after a moment of leading, she follows, because it really is dark, and we have werewolf night vision. “This whole valley was once owned by a single family who kept trying to sell the land, but they couldn’t because of the legend.”
I perk up so fast Logan chuckles. Before I can speak, he says, “I think my sister would like to hear that legend.”
Tricia’s lips moue in distaste. “Oh, I don’t know it. It’s a human legend.”
“Human legends are very important,” I
say. “They give us insight into the myriad ways supernaturals unintentionally reveal themselves, forcing humans to invent personal folklore to explain those encounters while also revealing themselves through their fears and desires.”
She stares at me as if I’m a talking parrot.
“Our Dad’s an anthropologist,” Logan says. “Kate caught the bug.”
“Oh, that’s so sweet. Are you hoping to go to college for anthropology, Kate?”
She emphasizes “hoping,” imbued with what seems like genuine sympathy for this poor kid who dreams of college, a fantasy her bestial IQ will never permit.
“No,” I say. “I want to be a doctor.”
She looks over quickly, as if to see whether I’m joking.
“That’s . . . a lofty goal,” she says. “My brother had straight As, and he barely got into med school.”
I solder my mouth shut, clamping down the words—
“Kate has a ninety percent average,” Logan says. “It’ll be higher next year, when she actually applies herself.”
“Hey, for me, ninety is applying myself. Not like some people who can goof off and still get better grades than me.”
“I didn’t goof off this year. I just tried to find a better life-school balance.”
Tricia stares at us, certain this is a joke.
“About this legend,” I say. “Please tell me the camp wasn’t built on an ancient burial ground. Because that shit’s just old.”
“Language, Kate,” Logan says, and his lips quirk again, the two of us falling into rhythms so comfortable that my eyes prickle with grief for what we’ve lost.
“No, it isn’t a burial ground,” Tricia says. “The local tribes called the place by a word that means ‘The Valley of the Disappeared.’ People vanished. Leaving only signs that they’d been dragged off by wild beasts. I’ve heard the Pack used to live here, which may explain it.”
“Oh, what a load of—” I begin.
“The Pack has never lived in West Virginia,” Logan cuts in. “They settled in New York state and stayed there. They couldn’t be responsible for an Indigenous name anyway, not when it would have originated hundreds of years before the Pack arrived. Though I would be surprised if there was such a name. That sort of thing tends to be apocryphal, lending what white culture perceives as an air of authority to a legend when, in fact, it trivializes Indigenous culture.”
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