On Fire (7 page)

Faintly, Scott could hear Stiles’s dad questioning the man in the T-shirt, who was Charlie, the manager. Scott focused hard.

“Older guys, you know how it is, when they’re, y’know, having a good time. The ol’ ticker speeds up, they have a heart attack. It wasn’t nothing else.”

“Yeah,”
Stiles’s dad said.
“Well, thanks for your help.”

“I run a clean place,”
Charlie went on.
“Nothing going on here that shouldn’t be.”

“I think we should go now,” Scott said.

Allison started the car and shot away from the curb. Scott craned his neck to look back at the motel, allowing his enhanced vision to take over—risky, he knew, with Allison right beside him. He couldn’t let her see his glowing eyes. He counted off a row of windows, which were almost entirely hidden from his view by a row of dark green bushes. It would be simple for something to creep along those bushes and peek in. There might be footprints—paw prints—beneath the window.

He wanted to follow the ambulance to the hospital, but he wasn’t sure he should do it around Allison. What if the guy said something incriminating?
I saw a monster?
So what if he did? Allison would have no reason to believe him—or to connect that to Scott.

Allison’s phone trilled, signaling a text. He hesitated, torn between reading the message and respecting her privacy.

“Is that Lydia?” she asked.

He looked.
Call me ASAP,
the text said.
L.

“She wants you to call her,” he affirmed.

“She’s on speed dial,” she said. “Press two.”

Scott wondered if he rated being on her speed dial. He didn’t ask, just called Lydia, who answered on the first ring. He put her on speaker.

“What have you two been doing?” Lydia cried. “You were supposed to call me back right away!”

“This man had a heart attack,” Allison said, her voice shrill. “He said he saw something in a window. They thought he was dead.”

“A . . . window?” Lydia sounded odd.

“Yes,” Allison said, trading looks with Scott. He shrugged.

“But he wasn’t dead?” Lydia said.

“No.”

“Were you able to ask about Jackson?”

“No one saw him,” Allison said.

“Well, now he’s in the Beacon Hills Preserve,” Lydia said. “I refreshed the search. That’s why I asked you to contact me.”

“The forest? What’s he doing there?” Allison asked. “Did he call you?”

“No,” Lydia said, her voice low and tense. “I should probably go with you this time.”

Go with us? We are going?
Scott thought, alarmed. He gave a quick shake of his head. He didn’t want Allison anywhere near the woods today. Not after his dream, and the window, and Jackson still missing.

“No, that’s okay,” Allison said, nodding at him to show that she understood what he was trying to say. “We’re closer. If we have to double back to pick you up, we’ll lose time. There’s only so much daylight.”

That’s not what I was going for,
Scott thought. She had completely misread his head shake.

“Allison, that’s really sweet, but Jackson’s my boyfriend. My responsibility,” Lydia said.

“But what if my parents call your house?” Allison said. “We’re supposed to be showing up there soon, after ‘the library.’ You need to be there to intercept their calls.”

“Wow, I’m impressed,” Lydia drawled. “You definitely have a future as a party girl. God knows why your parents would bother mine, but we do still have a landline. It’ll be no problem to patch you in as a conference call and tell them you’re on an extension. But to do all that, I
do
to need to be here.”

“Right,” Allison said. “It’ll work as long as I have good cell phone reception.”

Scott stared at her, torn between being impressed, like Lydia, and worried that he was being a bad influence. He’d never figured Allison for a techie—or someone who would sneak around like that. Him and Stiles, yeah, but they had good reason.

Well, I’m
her
good reason,
he thought, smiling faintly at Allison.

“I’m e-mailing you the page with the Where’s My Phone map,” Lydia said. “That’ll help you find him faster.”

“Okay. Send the WMP map to Scott’s, too.”

The two hung up and Scott turned to Allison. “Whoa,” he said. “An A in butt covering.”

She flushed. “I know what you’re thinking, and no, I have
never
snuck around behind my parents’ backs before. All that call-forwarding stuff actually came up in a class discussion back in San Francisco about government surveillance.”

He held up his hands. “It’s cool. But maybe you should go back to Lydia’s,” he said. “If your parents find out you’re with me, they’ll totally freak.”

“They won’t find out.” But the look on her face revealed her concern. “Look, we know where Jackson is, and we’re pretty close to the preserve. Let’s just go check it out.”

He frowned. “It’s not a good idea.”

She hesitated. “Scott, what? Are you scared? My dad killed the mountain lion. Things are back to normal.”

That sounded so odd, coming from her. Things had not been “normal” since she’d moved there. But as far as he could tell, she didn’t know that her father was a hunter, and she for sure didn’t know that she was dating one of the hunted.

“It’ll be okay,” she told him. “It’s still light out. We’ll only stay as long as the sun’s up.”

He was mortified. She was trying to talk him into going because she thought he was a big chicken. He rolled down the window and mimicked dropping something out of the car.

“Did you just throw something out the window?” she asked him as she stopped at a red light.

“Yeah. My masculinity.” He quirked a smile. “I just didn’t want
you
to go into the woods, Allison. I mean, what if you get hurt or something? Your parents will find out and—”

She brushed her lips against his. “I can take care of myself,” she murmured.

No, you really can’t,
he thought, but he knew that was the last thing he should say to her. Along with the rush of her kiss, a wave of protectiveness washed over him. Maybe it was habit. He looked out for his mom, who was struggling to keep everything going—pay the bills, keep the car going, stop the roof falling in. And now he looked out for Allison, too. The women he . . . loved.

I just said I loved her. To myself, yeah, but still, I said it.
He
felt . . . different. Happy. Maybe a little scared. And like he’d just found out something very important that would change his life as much as becoming a werewolf had changed it.

He felt both as if he had more power, and less.

Floating, and falling.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

I
didn’t know there was a road here,” Scott said as he and Allison wound through woods so dense the sun was all but blotted out. He carefully turned his head away from her and searched the shadows with his werewolf vision, watching a deer back away and turn tail as the car approached. Birds scattered from the trees. He thought of the cats in the vet clinic, how they had yowled and hissed the afternoon after he’d been bitten. They knew the wolf lurked inside him. It was probably a good thing his mom had given up on having pets because of his asthma. How would he have explained his own cat or dog flipping out every time he came into a room?

Allison cast him a sidelong glance, as if she still thought he was afraid to go this far into the preserve. Mostly, he was trying to figure out if the road could serve as a shortcut to the Hale house. He wanted to keep Derek as far away from Allison as possible.

Then they reached a length of chain strung across the road. A No Trespassing sign dangled from the middle. Scott wondered if it marked the beginning of Hale land. He
didn’t really know very much about the Hales. He dimly remembered hearing about the fire. He would have been ten years old when it had happened.

He checked the map on his phone. Jackson—or his phone—was located well past the chain. Allison leaned over and studied it, too; then she looked from the chain to the woods and back again.

“I guess we go on foot from here,” she said. “Let me check in again with Lydia first.”

He approved of her caution, and texted Stiles while he waited.

Guy at motel had heart attack. Think he saw. Go to hospital and try to find out, kk?

Saw what?
Stiles texted back.

Think u know,
Scott replied. He could tell by Allison’s conversation that Lydia still hadn’t heard from Jackson, and she was getting pretty worried. Allison was trying to comfort her by reminding her,
“You know how guys are,”
and Scott was insulted. Maybe some guys would go all silent like Jackson had, but he would never worry Allison like that.

I’d just lie to her about where I’d been, like I’ve been doing ever since I met her.

Except . . . he had never lied, exactly. Not yet, anyway.

Allison hung up. She had the world’s longest eyelashes. There was real worry in those dark brown eyes.

“I just don’t get why he hasn’t checked in with her, if he’s okay,” she said.

“Because he’s Jackson?” Scott blurted, then glanced down at his phone as it dinged, indicating the arrival of a message.

Got motel guy’s name off Dad’s police scanner. Alan Seber. Going to hospital.

KK, thanks,
Scott texted back.

“You’d just think he’d let her know,” Allison said. She reached behind to the passenger seat and grabbed a warm coat. The gray one. Scott had on a sweatshirt, but he didn’t really need it. The cold didn’t bother him anymore. That wasn’t a big enough plus to make him glad he’d been bitten, unlike what Derek had promised. He’d claimed Scott would grow to love being a werewolf. So far?

No love to be had.

•  •  •

Either Danny had been taking advanced goalie lessons, or he had had a side dish of irritation along with his Gatorade because Jackson hadn’t told him where he was. Either way, he exceeded his four seconds. Then they ran out of hot water in the showers and by then, Stiles had been very happy to be in his room, at home, checking up on the ever-growing mob of zombie sheep in his MMORPG. He kept one ear open for good stuff on his dad’s police scanner.

Then Scott e-mailed him a map featuring a very narrow, one-lane road leading into Beacon Hills Preserve. It looked like you could use it as a back way to get to the preserve from the Hale house.

Chalk one up for technology.

And one for the Hales.

He read Scott’s text about the heart attack. “ ‘Saw,’” he murmured. He listened to the scanner and got the motel
guy’s name. He texted back, muttering, “So, Scott, saw what? Saw Derek?”

“Yes?” Derek said from behind him.

“Yeaooww!” Stiles shouted. He turned around to find Derek leaning against the wall. He did that on an irritatingly frequent basis, both at Scott’s house and Casa Stilinksi. He was wearing his black leather jacket and he looked especially pouty and broody. “Could you not do that anymore? It is so not cool.”

Derek leaned over Stiles’s shoulder and picked up his phone. “What motel guy? What’s Scott doing? Where is he?”

“Doin’ stuff,” Stiles said.

Derek looked disgusted and held out Stiles’s phone to him. “Tell him to meet me.”

“He’s kinda busy,” Stiles said.

“Stiles?” Stiles jerked at the sound of his father’s voice from the hallway.

“Gotta get that.” Stiles pointedly shut down his desktop—Derek actually growled—and slid his phone into the pocket of his jeans. “Don’t touch anything,” he ordered the werewolf.

Then he left his room, shutting the door, and went to see what his father wanted. His dad was leaning against the kitchen counter drinking a glass of milk.

“How was lacrosse practice?” he asked.

“Fine,” Stiles said. He waited for his dad to get to the point.

“Good.” He paused with his glass against his chest. “What’s your homework like for the weekend?”

“It’s there,” Stiles said, then realized this conversation
was fallout from the very suckish parent-teacher conference. Then he threw caution to the winds and said, “Okay, I admit it, I was listening to the scanner. Some guy at a motel had a heart attack?”

His father narrowed his eyes. “Stiles, how many times . . .” he began, then nodded. “Yes.”

“Just . . . keeled over?”

His dad finished his glass of milk, rinsed it out, and put it into the dish drainer. For some reason, that made Stiles think of his mother, and that made him miss her a little more than usual. Life in his head was accompanied by the soundtrack of a small, eternal, dull ache, but word was that would go away after a few decades.