Of Wings and Wolves (3 page)

“I would tell you that it’s not possible for someone who isn’t human to be here. There’s only three people like us left in the whole world, and they live in this cottage. That’s what I would tell you.” But Gran looked worried. “What did he smell like?”

“Forest fires. Sunshine. Ash.”

“Any chance you were confused?”

Summer remembered the way the world had vanished at his touch, and her cheeks heated. “Maybe a little. I was…distracted.”

“Hmm.” Gran went back to digging. “It’s worth investigating. If someone—or
something
—is here that’s not human, we need to be real careful.” Her voice took on a hard edge. “And if worse comes to worse, we might need to do something about it.”

“Like what?”

Gran removed her gloves and reached out to stroke Summer’s curls. When her grandma touched her like that, it always made her feel like a little girl again, tiny and safe and warm.

The next words to come from her mouth were matter-of-fact, and not nearly as comforting. “Like getting rid of him.”

Gwyn waited until Summer and
Abram fell asleep, Sir Lumpy gave up yowling, and the weight of night silenced the crickets. It wasn’t hard to stay awake; she hadn’t slept in over twenty years, and she was used to spending her evenings in pensive silence.

But she wasn’t planning on spending this night meditating, as she usually did. She put on boots, wrapped herself in a jacket, and borrowed Abram’s keys.

She drove with the windows rolled down, unaccompanied except for the breeze and starlight. The headlights barely seemed to cut through the gloom.

Nights were always so much darker here than they had been back home. There was no moon to light her way, and what passed for civilization was sparse; long weeks of exploration had yielded nothing more than a dozen towns, each the size of Hazel Cove—hardly large enough to create light pollution.

Gwyn headed north, deeper into darkness and away from the town. Within a few miles, pavement turned to packed dirt, and then the bushes grew too thick to keep driving. She parked.

It was a long hike into the hills. Cerulean hints of false dawn traced the horizon by the time Gwyn found a slope covered in creepers and mint, both of which she had planted to help her find her way.

She followed the line of herbs, and found that the tunnel waited for her, just as it always had. Gwyn had allowed bushes to grow over the entrance, but not too thick; she pruned them twice a year to keep the path clear. But not a soul besides Gwyn had passed through since Scott had died.

Pushing through the branches, she slid down the tunnel. Gwyn kept a hand on the wall until her eyes adjusted enough to make out shapes in the darkness. She had left Scott’s chalk message, just in case, but time had faded it to an illegible blur.

The back wall of the cave was the same way it had been for two decades: covered in petroglyphs, smooth, and unbroken.

Still no door.

Gwyn closed her eyes and tried to imagine everything that she had left behind. It was more than just her ranch, the moon, and everyone she knew. Her niece, Rylie—the mother of Summer and Abram—had been in a bad situation when Gwyn carried the twins to safety.

She could only imagine one reason that Rylie hadn’t immediately followed. It was a likelihood that Gwyn had desperately struggled not to think about.

Twenty years.

“Where are you?” she asked, pressing her hand against the cool stone where a door should have been.

She wasn’t disappointed by the responding silence anymore, although it had cut deep for the first few years. Watching Summer and Abram learn and grow was an experience that she would never regret—and she hoped that she could do the same for their children someday, and the children of their children.

But Rylie should have been there to see Summer and Abram grow. Not Gwyn.

It was always heartbreaking to see that empty wall, but tonight, it also left Gwyn with a new layer of mystery. Summer’s sense of smell was perfect. She knew a storm was brewing a week before the first raindrop fell. If she said that she had smelled someone that wasn’t human, then something had happened—something bad.

Nothing should have been able to follow Gwyn to this side of the wall.

Worry weighed heavily on her as she returned to the surface, twice as confused as she had been when she went under.

Dawn broke over hills. As always, the sun rose in the north.

three

Summer rested her head on
Gran’s knee, hugged her calf, and watched the sleet fall outside the window. It was a stormy day, and Uncle Scott had said that she couldn’t play outside until the sky cleared, leaving her bored and restless—a dangerous combination for a six year old.

“Do I have a daddy?” Summer asked as she began unlacing Gran’s shoe. They sat in front of the stifling heat of the living room woodstove, which was the only source of warmth in the house.

“Everyone has a daddy,” her grandma replied, licking her finger and turning a page in her paperback. “And a mama, too.”

“Even Abram?”

“He has the same ones you do. Why do you ask?”

“We found a nest yesterday,” Summer said, tugging the lace free of the holes in Gran’s right shoe. “We followed the mommy bird back to the tree. There were three eggs and another bird watching. Mommy, daddy, babies.”

“You better put that string back before I whip you with it,” Gran said. Summer knew she didn’t mean it, so she kept tugging. “You don’t think you came from an egg, do you?”

Summer rolled her eyes. “
No
, Granny. We’re
mammals
.”

“Right, sorry. I almost forgot.”

“Mammals suckle their young,” Summer said, yanking the lacing free and turning her attention to the other shoe. “Was I suckled?”

“Only once.” Gran shook her foot free.

“Why?”

Gran sighed and set down her book to give Summer her full attention. “Your mama wasn’t around when you were still little enough to want it. You know, if you’re bored, I can find something for you to do.”

That was the worst threat possible. Gran
did
mean that one. Summer gave up trying to get her other shoe and stood, twisting the shoelace around her first finger. “So where are they?”

Gran cupped her cheek in a hand. “They’re busy saving the world, but they love you very much, and they’ll be here just as soon as they can. All right? Do you want a cookie?”

Even at six years old, Summer knew an attempted redirection when she heard one. But Gran hadn’t looked sad until Summer started talking, and now she looked like she might cry. If a cookie would make Gran happy, then she would have a cookie.

She wrapped her arms around Gran’s neck, silently requesting to be picked up, even though Uncle Scott said that she was much too big to be carried now.

“Yes, please.”

The sound of sleet on the window faded, replaced by the rumble of thunder. The living room dimmed.

Summer woke up. Her eyelids peeled open, and a furry nose jammed into hers. Sir Lumpy chirped.

So it hadn’t been thunder. Just a purring puma.

“What time is it?” she whispered.

He licked her cheek. Summer grimaced, pushed him away, and wiped the skin dry. It was damper than she expected—she had been crying in her sleep.

The clock said it was almost midnight, so her alarm was due to go off in five minutes. Sir Lumpy’s timing was perfect.

Summer slipped out of bed and bent over her desk, which was backed by a huge poster of an island resort. Her head was filled with the cottony confusion of sleep, and she had to blink at her monitor for a few seconds before she could actually read anything.

She had used her bedroom computer to look up the address Adamson Industries’s men had given her before dozing off, and she wanted to double check the location before leaving. It wasn’t far from Marut University—about five kilometers down the coast of Lake Ast, and well within running distance.

Almost a week had passed since her strange encounter in Hanlon Hall, and Summer had been debating whether or not she should take the internship the entire time. The problem had kept her up every night, long after Sir Lumpy was finished with his midnight yowling ritual.

Her sense of decency said that she should refuse the offer. Even if the circumstances hadn’t been so weird, it felt like a betrayal to Abram. She hadn’t even told him about the offer yet. On the other hand, Gran said that it was worth investigating, and Summer would have investigated herself off a tall bridge if her grandma told her to do it.

Summer sighed as she wiggled out of her shorts and kicked them onto the bed. If she was going to be honest with herself, the urge to put on her nicest skirt, abandon her cell phone, and show up at the door of Adamson Industries had nothing to do with Gran’s suggestion, and everything to do with Mr. Adamson’s deep, endless eyes.

Whether it was her brain making decisions, or a slightly less rational part of her body, Summer wasn’t going to walk into that building without knowing what she was getting into.

She was going to go spy on Adamson Industries.

About two years before he died, Uncle Scott had added glass doors that opened straight into the forest from her bedroom, and she opened them now to stand naked in the doorway. The breeze ruffled through her curls and whispered down the curves of her back. She closed her eyes to savor the moist spring air on her breasts, her stomach, her thighs.

Something furry and vibrating bumped into her ankles, leaving behind a streak of drool.

“I haven’t forgotten you,” she said, kneeling to run her hand down Sir Lumpy’s spine. He arched into her touch. That was the kind of happy purr that could shatter glass.

Not only was he the only animal in the world that didn’t fear Summer, he was also the only living creature that kept her company on the long nights she spent on the wild. But Sir Lumpy couldn’t go where she was going. Not tonight.

Gently nudging the cat back into her bedroom, Summer stepped outside and closed the doors. His mouth opened in a silent meow on the other side.

“Sorry, hot stuff,” she said, tickling her finger over the glass where his black nose had left a smear. “Maybe tomorrow.”

Summer faced the forest. The night was dark, but she didn’t feel even the slightest nudge of fear. There was nothing in the darkness that could hurt her when she was in her second skin.

The breeze picked up, and Summer smelled a herd of deer that had passed through earlier. She could taste the fur and pheromones that had been rubbed on the trees. There were fawns among them, at least two does, and a buck. He might be good hunting later. For now, she only cared that she couldn’t smell humans in her forest.

After twenty years of living with dual natures, shapeshifting was as natural to Summer as walking. All she had to do was step from one skin into the other.

She dropped to a crouch and began to change.

Her bones expanded, contracted, reconfigured. The fingers and toes digging into the grass became paws. Her skin blossomed with fur. Her nose elongated into a muzzle at the same time that the world’s colors became duller and her hearing improved.

It only took a few minutes for Summer to finish and stand on all four legs. She was a wolf the size of a small horse, and for the first time in days, she felt truly relaxed.

Summer took off and left the dream’s haze behind, giving her muscles time to warm up before hitting top speed. Her stamina was endless. She could run a hundred kilometers a day at an easy lope. But she didn’t have all day—she needed to be home in time to dress for her meeting with Mr. Adamson, if she decided to go at all.

She rushed through the trees, splashed across a river flush with melted snow, leaped down small cliffs, and never lost a beat.

The trees vanished, opening into a field of long grass. Her passage made lightning bugs erupt into the air, dance between her flying legs, and swirl around her ears.

The constellations had crept halfway across the sky by the time that forest gave way to dorms and paved roads. Summer could mark the time by following the archer’s march toward the hills, so she knew that it took her almost an hour to reach the university. Plenty of time left in the night for spying.

The south edge of MU blended into the town, which hummed with activity. People were enjoying their Friday nights at downtown coffee shops and clubs, although many of them had spilled onto the streets to enjoy the warm night.

For a moment, Summer paused in the shadows behind The Cracked Teacup to watch the crowd.

Everyone looked content. They were in little clusters or big groups, but nobody was alone. They talked, laughed, and danced to a live band at the pavilion down the street.

The couple at a nearby table was oblivious to all of this activity. They bowed their heads together, and the man rubbed his fingers over the woman’s knuckles while she spoke. The look he gave her almost took Summer’s breath away.

No man had ever looked at her like that—like there was nobody else in the entire world.

Summer tore herself away and angled for the beach, which was devoid of campers and bonfires this time of year. She pounded sand toward Adamson Industries.

When she passed the peninsula shielding the south end of the lake, she was surprised to find that the address she had been given didn’t belong to an Adamson Industries office at all. It was a private residence—although that was an awfully modest way to describe the castle that confronted her at the end of the road.

Mr. Adamson’s home was a vast collection of towers and wings barely clinging to the side of a steep hill, as if it could tear free of its moorings and plummet into the black depths of the lake at any moment.

Summer stopped short, poised atop a cluster of half-submerged rocks. Cold water sloshed over her paws.

This
was where she was expected to spend the first day of her internship without a cell phone?

Hello, creepy murder house
.

The manor was dark, but a large garden at the base of the hill was brightened by white fairy lights and torches ringing a lattice gazebo. That wasn’t quite as terrifying. Summer could deal with that.