Not recycled phones.
I dig until I find a bubblegum pink leather cover with a Mexican sugar skull sticker. I open it to see my phone.
I stare down at the box.
What the hell?
There must be fifteen grand worth of tech here. Dumped into a cardboard box.
I stifle a surge of indignation and turn on my phone. Nothing happens, because it’s been unplugged for the past day, and I’d handed it over with ten percent battery, assured by Tricia that they’d charge them for us.
I dig through the box until I find a plain black leather cover. Logan’s phone. As usual, my brother had the foresight to charge his in Nick’s car, and it’s at eighty-five percent. The facial recognition fails, of course, but I know his code. We’ve always known each other’s codes.
I enter it and wade through the inevitable barrage of text notifications. There's a goodnight one from Mom, who is thrilled that we're having such an excellent time we didn't call.
You have no idea, Mom.
As I look at the texts and messages, I notice the last one came in early yesterday evening. Odd, considering how many notifications he was getting until then. I see one from my ex and flip past, my stomach clenching even without reading it.
The last message—a group text from a schoolmate—came in at eight last night. A little earlier, there’s one from Paige.
Hey, Logan. You’ve probably already had your phone confiscated. Sorry about that. I’ll talk to the counselors when I get there. I understand the basic principle, but you guys need to be in touch with your parents. For now, have fun, and I’ll see you tomorrow!
I hit Reply on her message and type.
It’s Kate. I know Benny is sick (tell him I said hi!) and you’re delayed, but seriously weird stuff is happening here. My phone’s dead. I’m going to recharge it, and then Logan and I might head into the forest to wait for you. Yeah, stuff is THAT weird. Please don’t tell Mom! Just text when you can, and I’ll explain once we’re out of here.
I hit Send. Then I return to the closet unit, where I saw a shoebox filled with cords. As I dig through the box, I listen for a reply from Paige. Sure, she’s caring for her sick six-year-old, but Paige is always plugged in. She’ll see my text pop up on her watch, and even if she’s in the middle of giving Benny medicine, she’ll let me know she’ll reply ASAP.
I find the right cord and then check my text to see the exclamation mark signifying that it wasn’t sent. My gaze rises to the cell service bars. We must have service. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be given phone time every night. Yet there isn’t a single bar.
When I hit a couple of buttons, a message pops up.
SIM card not installed.
I hurry back to the box and pull out a couple of older phones without thumb or facial recognition. After a few tries, I find one that isn’t passcode protected. On the opening screen, it says the same thing. No SIM card.
They removed the SIM cards. Took them out and chucked all the phones into a box. That’s why there’s no message from Mom. They pulled the cards yesterday evening.
I stuff my phone, Logan’s phone and the charge cord into my pockets. Then I start searching for our SIM cards.
I’d spotted a small locked box across the room. It’d been too small for all the cell phones, so I hadn’t bothered snapping the lock. I do now and open it to find prescription bottles. I check a few. Adderall, Tylenol with codeine, Ambien. In other words, the counselors confiscated any medication that other campers might steal for recreational use.
I dig through the box, in case the SIM cards are at the bottom. They aren’t. I see a couple of other small boxes down by the floor. I bend, and as I’m picking up one, air wafts through a vent in the wall. With it comes a very distinctive smell.
Blood.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Logan
The fact that they locked us in the office is troubling, but it isn’t as if I’m trapped here. I’m a werewolf. I snap it easily. I’ll probably regret that, but I really need to find Kate.
I’m heading outside when I spot Holly making her way toward her room. I call a “Hey,” but like me, Holly is one of those people who hear a hail and presume it’s for someone else. By the time I call her name, she’s at her room. She sees me, and I motion her inside, where we can speak in private.
“Do you know where Kate is?” I ask.
“She went looking for you.”
I bite back a growl of frustration. Before I can comment, Holly says, “Paige isn’t coming until tomorrow,” and explains what Kate heard.
“Do you know where Allan is?” I ask.
“Sure, outside with some other sorcerers.”
I pause. “Who’s all outside? Mostly spellcasters?”
She frowns as she thinks. “Actually, yes. Spellcasters and a few minor races.”
“Any necromancers?”
“One, I think. I heard most are still sleeping. Partied hard enough to raise the dead, I guess. Let’s just hope they didn’t really raise any.”
I manage a small smile at the quip, but I’m considering what she’s said. The spellcasters and minor races are hanging out, killing time. The necromancers are all exhausted, like the counselor.
“Can you do me a favor?” I ask. “Find Allan and stick together. Maybe stay in your room.” I raise my hands against her protest. “I know that sounds like an odd request, but whatever’s going on here, I believe it mostly affects the half-demons. I’m still working it out. We can talk once I find Kate.”
Before I can go, she taps my arm. “About Kate. She might be distracted, and just . . . go easy on her. Elijah broke it off. Yes, I know it wasn’t a real relationship, but he was weird about it, made her feel like he was actually dumping her. She really didn’t need that, especially after what happened with her last boyfriend.”
I pause. “Brandon? No, he was definitely on the receiving end of that breakup. Believe me. I’ve been dealing with him ever since, blowing up my phone trying to get back with her.”
She stares at me.
“What?” I say.
“You’re still talking to him?”
“Why not? It didn’t have anything to do with me. He’s taking it really hard. Kate can be . . . tempestuous.” I smile. “I’d say she gets it from our dad, but it comes from both parents, really.”
Holly’s staring as if I’ve just sprouted hair and fangs, and I almost reach up to be sure I haven’t.
“Tempes—?” She bites the word off. “Are you actually siding with the asshole who screwed around on your sister?”
“What?” I’m sure I’ve misheard. Or she’s misunderstood something Kate said. “By screwed around, are you implying he had sex with another girl?”
“No, I’m implying they built a bookshelf together. Yes, he had sex with another girl because Kate wasn’t ready. Then he told her what he did, thinking that’d make her see the error of her ways. And when she didn’t give him another chance? He told everyone about it, and now she’s dealing with crap from him and from your local cast of Mean Girls.”
Now I’m the one staring. “Who told you this?”
“Who do you think told me? You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed. You guys go to the same school.”
“I . . . ”
“She’s your sister, Logan. Your twin sister. Did you even ask why they broke up? Maybe find out before you decide to play Cupid getting them back together.”
“I didn’t—”
She lifts her hands. “Never mind. This isn’t the time. Now you know, so when you see Kate, try showing a little compassion. I know you didn’t like her with Elijah, but he still hurt her. And she did absolutely nothing to deserve it.” She shakes her head. “Go, Logan. Your sister needs you.”
* * *
I’m trying very hard not to think of what Holly just told me. She’s right—we have more pressing concerns right now. But I keep thinking of Brandon texting me and pestering me at school, and me brushing him off politely,
giving no sign that I had an issue with him, perhaps even showing enough consideration to suggest that I sympathized with his plight.
His plight.
His failure to harangue my sister into having sex with him.
Harangue?
I almost laugh at the word. He did more than pester and plead, which would be bad enough. He screwed around with someone else and then told Kate.
See, other girls will have sex with me. Better get on this now, ’cause I am in demand.
I clench my fists and struggle against the urge to put one through the wall.
A little voice whines that Kate should have told me, and now I feel sick for hanging out with him, but that’s not my fault because I didn’t know what happened.
Bullshit.
I knew Kate was upset. I saw her sinking into what we called her “blue” moods. Not depression, but depressive states, retreating to her room when Mom and Dad weren’t around, because they’d notice.
I’d been there, though. I noticed. It was my responsibility to go to her and say, “What’s wrong?”
I knew she was upset over the breakup, but deep inside, I rolled my eyes and called her dramatic. Just Kate being Kate.
I can say I didn’t know about Brandon, but Nick hinted at it yesterday. I remember his shock on hearing I was in contact with Brandon. I might not have had a chance to pursue it with him, but I could have pursued it with her.
Hey, Kate. Nick seems to know something about Brandon I don’t. Can we talk about that?
Nope, instead, I was busy worrying about my roommate stomping off. A total stranger who didn’t even want my help. It made me feel good to be concerned for him. Virtue signaling. See what a nice guy I am? How considerate? Not the sort of brother who rolls his eyes at his sister’s pain and dismisses it as teenage-girl drama.
I bend at my bedroom door. Kate’s trail is there. I focus on that. It leads me upstairs and down the hall toward the office.
I remember those light footsteps. That careful rap on a door.
Not someone timidly approaching the counselors; Kate staging a break-in. Unable to find me, she’d taken matters into her own hands.
Off on an adventure by herself.
Giving up on me. While this is a small thing, it symbolizes so much more.
Logan isn’t there for me. He’s been hanging out with my ex, not even asking why I broke it off. He’s been hanging out with the girls who are bullying me.
She’d hate that word: bullying. But that’s what it was, and I can say I didn’t know, but I remember catching the odd snarky remark and dismissing it as jealousy. When she refused to join the popular clique at school, they took offense and twisted that into contempt. From “Who does she think she is?” to “Don’t you think she’s kinda weird?”
I thought it’d been a few backbiting comments, just typical stuff that Kate would ignore as she always did.
How much worse had it gotten?
Hint: she shut down her social media accounts.
Faint movement sounds inside the office. Footfalls hurrying to the door. I turn the knob and push, and Kate lets out a soft gasp, her mouth opening with, “I was looking for Tric—” Then she sees it’s me and grins, and it’s the grin I know so well, the grin I don’t get nearly as much these days.
I slide into the office and let the door close. Then I catch her up in a hug so sudden and fierce that she yelps before covering her reaction with a chuckle.
“Nice to see you, too, Lo.”
“Elijah is an asshole,” I say as I back up.
There’s a flicker of consternation that I know. Or maybe because I know and thought she would need that hug. She makes a face, such a Kate face. It’s a Mom face, too, throwing off concern, not wanting to be seen as the type of person who needs it.
She shrugs. “I’m not sure about asshole, but he’s something, that’s for sure.”
“He’s—”
I start to tell her that he’s Logan Jonsen’s half-brother. But this isn’t the time. It’s also not the time to say I know about Brandon, and I’m going to kick his ass. Well, not literally kick his ass. I’d like to—both his and Elijah’s—but Kate wouldn’t want that, and I’m not sure once I started kicking that I’d stop. I’ll tear a verbal strip off them, instead. Not as satisfying, but safer.
“Forget about Elijah,” I say.
“I have,” she says. “For now, at least. I was just coming to find you.”
“I know. I heard about Paige.”
“And it seems that’s the least of our worries.” Kate holds up my cell phone and shows a text she sent Paige, undelivered. My gaze shoots to the signal-strength indicators. There aren’t any.
“They’re blocking the signal,” I say. “I’m not surprised. That’s Draconian, but if they really want us offline this week, they need to do that. Someone’s bound to have smuggled in a cell-ready device.”
“It’s not a blocker,” she says. “They’ve removed the SIM card.” She walks over and picks up a printer paper carton. Inside is a jumble of cell phones. “They removed all the SIM cards and dumped the phones in here.”
Okay, this is different. This is worse.
“We need to find those SIM cards,” I say.
“Agreed, and I was doing that, before . . .” She tugs me to the far wall and motions for me to crouch and inhale. It takes a moment. Then I detect the unmistakable odor of blood.
Kate’s already heading for the door. I follow. She checks the hall. It’s still silent, so we creep to the next door. Kate tries the handle. Then she snaps it and pushes open the door.
Inside is a dorm room like ours except this one is brightly lit from that windowed ceiling. Despite the light, though, someone is still in bed, and Kate draws back, as if to retreat. Then she inhales and audibly swallows. I know why. I tap her hip, saying I’ll go first, but of course she ignores me. She slips forward. I step into the room and shut the door behind me.
Kate continues to the bed. Despite the stifling heat, the covers are pulled up to the sleeper’s face. Kate stops, her nose wrinkling as she rubs it, banishing a smell.
She stands there, looking down, and I know she’s fighting the urge to check for vital signs. There’s no need. She realizes that from the smell. Not the blood—that only signifies injury. It’s the other smell, that one from a corpse left in a sweltering hot room.
Kate draws back the comforter. It’s a female counselor, one I remember seeing at the counselors’ dining table yesterday. She’d sat near the end, focused on her meal, quiet as I spoke to the others. I’d presumed it was my presence making her uncomfortable. Perhaps not.
As Kate pulls off the comforter, the smell of decomp rises, freed from the sheets. Kate exhales, as if expunging it from her nose.
The bloodied top sheet sticks to the young woman’s body. Kate peels it back as I pad forward to see no signs of injury. There’s blood on the counselor’s T-shirt, but when Kate discreetly tugs that up, the young woman’s torso is nearly clean. I’m reminded of Mason’s fast-healing wound, but the real answer is the blood drying under from her nose. That’s the only sign of injury.
Like Mason yesterday when he’d been attacked in the forest. Dead, his only injury a bleeding nose.
Just like Mason.
Except, no one was here to revive her.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Kate
The counselor is dead. I don’t even know her name, don’t remember speaking to her, and now she’s dead.
As Logan watches, I check her torso and arms more carefully, and then lift her hands, turning them this way and that. I’m looking for defensive wounds and seeing none. Then I finger the woman’s wrist, and I see bruises there. More bruises on one shoulder and her opposite side. Scratches on her arm.
Signs she’d either been restrained and beaten or beaten and then restrained.
I think of what Logan said had happened to Mason. His bloodied nose. His heart stopping. Did something similar happen here? Had an otherworld
ly whatever killed the counselor? Then her roomie—not being a werewolf—hadn’t noticed the smell and just let her sleep?
That’s what I want to believe. An outside force killed this counselor. Not anyone here.
Logan moves forward and checks the young woman’s shirt. Through the blood, I read “Team Witch.”
Logan murmurs, “One witch, one necro, five half-demons.”
“Hmm?”
He opens his mouth, but before he can get out a word, footfalls thunder down the hall. I freeze, but they’re at the far end, where the meeting had been. They only sound loud because there are so many of them.
The meeting is out, campers charging from the room as if they’re thundering from last class. Logan moves to the door to listen. I look for a hiding place. When steps come our way, I yank the sheets over the dead girl again, and we both duck and roll under the beds.
The steps continue past the door. More follow, and the doorknob turns. I hold my breath. Across the way, Logan’s gaze follows the sound. He’s tensed and ready for trouble. But the door only opens a moment as someone reaches in and grabs an item from the dresser top. Then it shuts again, and the footsteps retreat.
When I start to slide out, Logan motions for me to wait. Seconds tick past. Then the other footsteps pass, as if they’d only gone to a room temporarily. Now they head over to the other hall. I catch the click of a door.
“’Bout time,” a voice growls. It’s Mason. “The pup went to lift his leg on a tree somewhere.”
“He’s outside?” Tricia says.
Mason snorts. “Maybe. You can’t tell with werewolves. I think he planned to just use the regular facilities, though.”
“José?” Tricia says. “Go get Logan. Has anyone found his sister?”
“Still looking,” José says. “She’s around. She’s been hanging out with that witch and that guy with dreads.” A pause. “I didn’t see him with the other HDs.”
Wolf's Bane Page 17