Shiver Trilogy (Shiver, Linger, Forever) (10 page)

I spent too long after dropping Grace off circling the parking lot, frustrated with Jack, frustrated with the rain, frustrated with the limitations of my human body. I could smell that a wolf had been there — just a faint, musky trace of wolf odor — but I couldn’t pinpoint a direction or even say for sure that it had been Jack. It was like being blind.

I gave up finally and, after sitting in the car for several minutes, decided to give in to the pull of Beck’s house. I couldn’t think of anywhere else in particular to start a search for Jack, but the woods behind the house were a logical place to find wolves in general. So I headed back toward my old summer home.

I didn’t know if Beck had been a human at all this year; I couldn’t even clearly recall my own summer months. Memories blurred into each other until they became a composite of seasons and scents, their origins obscured.

Beck had been shifting for more years than I had, so it seemed unlikely that he’d been human this year when I hadn’t. But it also felt like I should have had more years of changing
back and forth than this. I hadn’t been shifting for that long. Where had my summers gone?

I wanted Beck. I wanted his guidance. I wanted to know why the gunshot had made me human. I wanted to know how long I had with Grace. I wanted to know if this was the end.

“You’re the best of them,” he had told me once, and I still remembered the way his face looked when he said it. Square, trustworthy, solid. An anchor in a churning sea. I had known what he meant: the most human of the pack. That was after they’d pulled Grace from her tire swing.

But when I drove up to the house, it was still empty and dark, and my hopes dissipated. It occurred to me that all of the other wolves must’ve already shifted for the winter; there weren’t many young wolves left. Except for Jack, now. The mailbox was stuffed with envelopes and slips from the post office advising Beck to pick up more at the main office. I took all of it out and put it in Grace’s car. I had a key for his post office box, but I’d get it later.

I refused to think I wouldn’t see Beck again.

But the fact remained that if Beck wasn’t around, Jack hadn’t been shown the ropes. And someone had to get him away from the school and civilization until he stopped the unpredictable shifting that came with being a new wolf. His death had done enough damage to the pack. I wasn’t going to let him expose us, either through shifting in public or through biting someone.

Since Jack had already paid a visit to the school, I decided to operate under the assumption that he had tried going home as
well, and so I headed over toward the Culpepers’ place. It wasn’t any secret where they lived; everybody in town knew the gigantic Tudor mansion that could be just glimpsed from the highway. The only mansion in Mercy Falls. I didn’t think anybody would be home at this time of the day, but I parked Grace’s Bronco about a half mile away just in case and cut through the pine woods on foot.

Sure enough, the house was empty, towering over me like a massive structure out of an old folktale. A quick poking around the doors turned up the unmistakable odor of wolf.

I couldn’t tell whether he’d gotten inside already, or if, like me, he’d come while everyone was away and returned to the woods already. Remembering how vulnerable I was in my human form, I whirled around and sniffed the air, scanning the surrounding pines for signs of life. Nothing. Or at least nothing close enough that my human senses could pick it up.

In the cause of thoroughness, I broke into the house to see whether Jack was there, already sequestered in a locked room reserved for monsters. I wasn’t tidy about my breaking-and-entering job, either; I shattered a window in the back door with a brick and reached through the jagged hole to turn the knob.

Inside, I scented the air again. I thought I smelled wolf, but it was faint and somewhat stale. I wasn’t sure why Jack would smell that way, but I followed the scent through the house. My path led to a massive set of oak doors; I felt sure the trail was leading to the other side.

Carefully I pushed them open, then inhaled sharply.

The massive foyer in front of me was filled with animals. Stuffed ones. And not the cuddly kind. The dim, high-ceilinged room had the feel of a museum exhibit: Animals of North America, or some sort of shrine to death. My mind snatched for song lyrics, but could only settle on a single line:
We bear the grins of the smiling dead
.

I shuddered.

In the half-light that filtered through the round windows high above my head, it seemed as though there were enough animals to populate Noah’s ark. Here was a fox, stiffly holding a stuffed quail in its mouth. There, a black bear, rising above me with claws outstretched. A lynx, creeping eternally along a log. And a polar bear, complete with stuffed fish in his paws. Could you stuff a fish? I hadn’t ever considered it.

And then, amidst a herd of deer of all sizes and shapes, I saw the source of the smell I had detected earlier: A wolf stared over its shoulder at me, teeth bared, glass eyes menacing. I walked toward it, reaching out to touch its brittle fur. Under my fingers, the stale smell blossomed, releasing secrets in my nostrils, and I recognized the unique scent of my woods. I curled my fingers into a fist, stepping back from the wolf with crawling skin. One of us. Maybe not. Maybe just a wolf. Except I’d never met a normal wolf in our woods before.

“Who were you?” I whispered. But the only common feature between a werewolf’s two forms — the eyes — had long since been gouged out in favor of a pair of glass ones. I wondered whether Derek, riddled with bullets the night I was shot,
would join this wolf in this macabre menagerie. The thought twisted my stomach.

I glanced around the hall once more and retreated toward the front door. Every bit of animal still left in me was screaming to get away from the dull odor of death that filled the hall. Jack wasn’t here. I didn’t have any reason to stay.

“Good morning.” Dad glanced at me as he poured coffee into a travel mug. He was very sharply dressed for a Saturday; he must be trying to sell a resort to some rich investor. “I have to meet Ralph at the office at eight-thirty. About the Wyndhaven resort.”

I blinked a few times, eyes bleary. My whole body felt sticky and slow from sleep. “Don’t talk to me yet. I’m not awake.” Through my fog, I felt a twinge of guilt for not being more friendly; I hadn’t really seen him for days, much less properly spoken with him. Sam and I had spent last night talking about the strange room of stuffed animals at the Culpepers’ and wondering, with the constant irritation of a scratchy sweater, where Jack was going to make his next appearance. This ordinary morning with Dad felt like an abrupt return to my pre-Sam life.

Dad gestured at me with the coffeepot. “Want some of this?”

I cupped my hands and held them toward him. “Just pour it in there. I’ll splash some on my face. Where’s Mom?” I didn’t
hear her crashing around upstairs. Mom’s getting ready to leave the house normally required a lot of indiscriminate banging and shoe-scraping noises from the bedroom.

“Some gallery down in Minneapolis.”

“Why’d she leave so early? It’s practically yesterday.” Dad didn’t answer; he was looking over the top of my head at the TV, which was blaring some morning talk show. The show’s guest, dressed in khaki, was surrounded by all sorts of baby animals in boxes and cages. It reminded me vividly of the room of animals that Sam had described. Dad frowned as one of the two hosts gingerly petted a baby possum, who hissed. I cleared my throat. “Dad. Focus. Get me a coffee mug and fill it or I’ll die. And I’m not cleaning up my body if I do.”

Dad, still watching the TV, felt around in the cabinet for a mug. His fingers found my favorite — a robin egg’s blue mug that one of Mom’s friends had made — and pushed it and the coffeepot across the counter to me. The steam rushed into my face as I poured.

“So, Grace, how’s school?” I asked myself.

Dad nodded, eyes on the baby koala now struggling in the guest’s arms.

“Oh, it’s fine,” I continued, and Dad made a mumbling noise of agreement. I added, “Nothing special, aside from the load of pandas they brought in, and the teachers abandoning us to cannibalistic savages —” I paused to see if I’d caught his attention yet, then pressed on. “The whole building caught fire, then I failed drama, and then sex sex sex
sex
.”

Dad’s eyes abruptly focused, and he turned to me and frowned. “What did you say they were teaching you in school?”

Well, at least he’d caught more of the beginning than I’d given him credit for. “Nothing interesting. We’re writing short stories for English. They’re hateful. I have absolutely no talent for writing fiction.”

“Fiction about sex?” he asked doubtfully.

I shook my head. “Go to work, Dad. You’re going to be late.”

Dad scratched his chin; he’d missed a hair shaving. “That reminds me. I need to take that cleaner back to Tom. Have you seen it?”

“You need to take
cleaner
back to who?”

“The gun cleaner. I think I put it on the counter. Or maybe under it —” He crouched and began to rummage in the cabinet under the sink.

I frowned at him. “Why did you have gun cleaner?”

He gestured toward his study. “For the gun.”

Little warning bells were going off in my head. I knew my dad had a rifle; it hung on the wall in his study. But I couldn’t remember him ever cleaning it before. You cleaned guns after you’d used them, right? “Why were you borrowing cleaner?”

“Tom loaned it to me to clean my rifle after we were out. I know I should clean it more, but I just don’t think about it when I’m not using it.”

“Tom Culpeper?” I said.

He withdrew his head from the cabinet, bottle in hand. “Yes.”

“You went shooting with Tom Culpeper? That was you the other day?” My cheeks were beginning to feel hot. I prayed for him to say no.

Dad gave me a look. The sort that was usually followed by him saying something like
Grace, you’re usually so reasonable
. “Something had to be done, Grace.”

“You were part of that hunting party? The one that went after the wolves?” I demanded. “I can’t believe that you —” The image of Dad creeping through the trees, rifle in hand, the wolves fleeing before him, was suddenly too strong, and I had to stop.

“Grace, I did it for you, too,” he said.

My voice came out very low. “Did you shoot any of them?”

Dad seemed to realize that the question was important. “Warning shots,” he said.

I didn’t know if it was true or not, but I didn’t want to talk to him anymore. I shook my head and turned away.

“Don’t sulk,” Dad said. He kissed my cheek — I remained motionless as he did — and gathered up his coffee and briefcase. “Be good. See you later.”

Standing in the kitchen, hands cupped around the blue mug, I listened as Dad’s Taurus rumbled to life in the driveway and then faded slowly away. After he’d gone, the house settled into its familiar silence, both comforting and depressing. It could’ve been any other morning, just the quiet and the coffee in my hands — but it wasn’t. Dad’s voice —
warning shots
— still hung in the air.

He knew how I felt about the wolves, and he’d gone behind my back and made plans with Tom Culpeper, anyway.

The betrayal stung.

A soft noise from the doorway caught my attention. Sam stood in the hallway, his hair wet and spiky from a shower, his eyes on me. There was a question written on his face, but I didn’t say anything. I was wondering what Dad would do if he knew about Sam.

I spent the better part of the morning and afternoon slogging through my English homework while Sam stretched on the couch, a novel in hand. It was a vague sort of torture to be in the same room with him but separated quite effectively by an English textbook. After several hours only punctuated by a brief lunch break, I couldn’t take it anymore.

“I feel like I’m wasting our time together,” I confessed.

Sam didn’t answer, and I realized he hadn’t heard me. I repeated my statement, and he blinked, eyes slowly focusing on me as he returned from whatever world he’d been in. He said, “I’m happy just to be here with you. That’s enough.”

I studied his face for a long moment, trying to decide if he really meant it.

Noting his page number, Sam folded the novel shut with careful fingers and said, “Do you want to go somewhere? If you’ve gotten enough done, we can go poke around Beck’s house, to see if Jack’s made his way back over there.”

I liked the idea. Ever since Jack’s appearance at school, I’d felt uneasy about where and how he might turn up next. “Do you think he’ll be there?”

“I don’t know. The new wolves always seemed to find their way there, and that’s where the pack tends to live, in that stretch of Boundary Wood behind the house,” Sam said. “It’d be nice to think he’d finally found his way to the pack.” His face looked worried then, but he stopped short of saying why. I knew why I wanted Jack to fit in with the pack — I didn’t want anyone exposing the wolves for what they were. But Sam seemed to be concerned about something more, something bigger and more nameless.

In the golden afternoon light, I drove the Bronco to Beck’s house while Sam navigated. We had to follow the winding road around Boundary Wood for a good thirty-five minutes to get to the house. I hadn’t realized how far the wood stretched until we drove all the way around it. I guess it made sense; how could you hide an entire pack of wolves without hundreds of unpopulated acres to help? I pulled the Bronco into the driveway, squinting up at the brick facade. The dark windows looked like closed eyes; the house was overwhelmingly empty. When Sam cracked his door open, the sweet smell of the pines that stood guard around the yard filled my nostrils.

“Nice house.” I stared at the tall windows glinting in the afternoon sun. A brick house of this size could easily look imposing, but there was an atmosphere about the property that seemed disarming — maybe the sprawling, unevenly cut hedges out front or the weathered bird feeder that looked as if it had grown
out of the lawn. It was a
comfortable
sort of place. It looked like the sort of place that would create a boy like Sam. I asked, “How did Beck get it?”

He frowned. “The house? He used to be a lawyer for rich old guys, so he’s got money. He bought it for the pack.”

“That’s awfully generous of him,” I said. I shut the car door.
“Crap.”

Sam leaned over the hood of the Bronco toward me. “What?”

“I just locked the keys in the car. My brain was on autopilot.”

Sam shrugged dismissively. “Beck’s got a slim-jim in the house. We can get it when we get back from the woods.”

“A slim-jim? How intriguing,” I said, grinning at him. “I like a man with hidden depths.”

“Well, you’ve got one,” Sam replied. He jerked his head toward the trees in the backyard. “Are you ready to head in?”

The idea was both compelling and terrifying. I hadn’t been in the woods since the night of the hunt, and before that, the evening I’d seen Jack pinned by the other wolves. It seemed like my only memories of these woods were of violence.

I realized Sam was holding his hand out toward me. “Are you afraid?”

I wondered if there was a way to take his hand without admitting my fear. Not fear, really. Just some emotion that crawled along my skin and lifted the hairs on my arms. It was cool weather, not the barren dead of winter. Plenty of food for the wolves without them having to attack us.
Wolves are shy creatures.

Sam took my hand; his grip was firm and his skin warm against mine in the cool autumn air. His eyes studied me, large and luminescent in the afternoon glow, and for a moment I was caught in his gaze, remembering those eyes studying me from a wolf’s face. “We don’t have to look for him now,” he said.

“I want to go.” It was true. Part of me wanted to see where Sam lived in these cold months, when he wasn’t lingering at the edge of our yard. And part of me, the part that ached with loss when the pack howled at night, was begging to follow that faint scent of the pack into the woods. All of that outweighed any bit of me that was anxious. To prove my willingness, I headed toward the backyard, nearing the edge of the woods, still holding Sam’s hand.

“They’ll stay away from us,” Sam said, as if he still had to convince me. “Jack’s the only one who would approach us.”

I looked over to him with a crooked eyebrow. “Yeah, about that. He’s not going to come at us all slathering and horror movie, is he?”

“It doesn’t make you a monster. It just takes away your inhibitions,” Sam said. “Did he slather a lot when he was in school?”

Like the rest of the school, I had heard the story about how Jack had put some kid in the hospital after a party; I had dismissed it as gossip until I’d seen the guy for myself, walking the halls with half his face still swollen. Jack didn’t need a transformation to become a monster.

I made a face. “He slathered a bit, yeah.”

“If it makes you feel any better,” Sam said, “I don’t think he’s here. But I still hope he is.”

So we went into the woods. This was a different sort of forest from the one that bordered my parents’ yard. These trees were pressed tightly together, the underbrush crammed between the trunks as if holding them upright. Brambles caught on my jeans, and Sam kept stopping to pick burrs off our ankles. We saw no sign of Jack, or any of the wolves, during our slow progress. In truth, I didn’t think Sam was doing a very good job of scanning the woods around us. I made a big show of looking around so I could pretend I didn’t notice him glancing at me every few seconds.

It didn’t take me long to get a headful of burrs, tugging my hairs painfully as they worked their way into knots.

Sam stopped me to pick at the burrs. “It gets better,” he promised. It was sweet that he thought I would get put out enough to go back to the car. As if I had anything better to do than feel him carefully worry the barbs of the burrs out of my hair.

“I’m not worried about that,” I assured him. “I’m just thinking we’d never know if there was anyone else here. The woods go on forever.”

Sam ran his fingers through my hair as if he were checking for more burrs, though I knew they were all gone, and he probably did, too. He paused, smiling at me, and then inhaled deeply. “Doesn’t smell like we’re alone.”

He looked at me, and I knew he was waiting for me to verify — to admit that if I tried, I could smell the scent of the
pack’s hidden life all around us. Instead, I reached for his hand again. “Lead the way, bloodhound.”

Sam’s expression turned a bit wistful, but he led me through the underbrush, up a gradual hill. As he promised, it got better. The thorns thinned out and the trees grew taller and straighter, their branches not beginning until a few feet over our heads. The white, peeled bark of the birches looked buttery in the long, slanting afternoon light, and their leaves were a delicate gold. I turned to Sam, and his eyes reflected the same brilliant yellow back at me.

I stopped in my tracks. It was my woods. The golden woods I’d always imagined running away to. Sam, watching my face, dropped his hand out of mine and stepped back to look at me.

“Home,” he said. I think he was waiting for me to say something. Or maybe he wasn’t waiting for me to say something. Maybe he saw it on my face. I didn’t have anything to say — I just looked around at the shimmering light and the leaves hanging on the branches like feathers.

“Hey.” Sam caught my arm, looking at my face sideways, as if searching for tears. “You look sad.”

I turned in a slow circle; the air seemed dappled and vibrant around me. I said, “I used to always imagine coming here, when I was younger. I just can’t figure out how I would’ve seen it.” I probably wasn’t making any sense, but I kept talking, trying to reason it out. “The woods behind my house don’t look like this. No birches. No yellow leaves. I don’t know how I would recognize it.”

“Maybe someone told you about it.”

“I think I would remember someone telling me every little detail about this part of the woods, down to the color of the glittering air. I don’t even know how someone could’ve told me all that.”

Sam said, “I told you. Wolves have funny ways of communicating. Showing each other pictures when they’re close to one another.”

I turned back to where he was standing, a dark blot against the light, and gave him a look. “You aren’t going to stop, are you?”

Sam just gazed at me steadily, the silent lupine stare that I knew so well, sad and intent.

“Why do you keep bringing it back up?”

“You were bitten.” He walked in a slow circle around me, scuffing up leaves with his foot, glancing at me underneath his dark eyebrows.

“So?”

“So it’s about who you are. It’s about you being one of us. You couldn’t have recognized this place if you weren’t a wolf, too, Grace. Only one of us would’ve been able to see what I showed you.” His voice was so serious, his eyes so intense. “I couldn’t — I couldn’t even talk to you right now if you weren’t like us. We aren’t supposed to talk about who we are with regular people. It’s not as if we have a ton of rules to live by, but Beck told me that’s one rule we just don’t break.”

That didn’t make sense to me. “Why not?”

Sam didn’t say anything, but his fingers touched his neck where he’d been shot; as he did, I saw the pale, shiny scars on his wrist. It seemed wrong for someone as gentle as Sam to have
to always wear evidence of human violence. I shivered in the growing chill of the afternoon. Sam’s voice was soft. “Beck’s told me stories. People kill us in all kinds of awful ways. We die in labs and we get shot and we get poisoned. It might be science that changes us, Grace, but all people see is magic. I believe Beck. We can’t tell people who aren’t like us.”

I said, “I don’t change, Sam. I’m not really like you.” Disappointment stuck a lump in my throat that I couldn’t swallow.

He didn’t answer. We stood together in the wood for a long moment before he sighed and spoke again.

“After you were bitten, I knew what would happen. I waited for you to change, every night, so I could bring you back and keep you from getting hurt.” A chilly gust of wind lifted his hair and sent a shower of golden leaves glimmering down around him. He spread out his arms, letting them fall into his hands. He looked like a dark angel in an eternal autumn wood. “Did you know you get one happy day for every one you catch?”

I didn’t know what he meant, even after he opened his fist to show me the quivering leaves crumpled in his palm.

“One happy day for every falling leaf you catch.” Sam’s voice was low.

I watched the edges of the leaves slowly unfold, fluttering in the breeze. “How long did you wait?”

It would’ve been unbearably romantic if he’d had the courage to look into my face and say it, but instead, he dropped his eyes to the ground and scuffed his boot in the leaves — countless possibilities for happy days — on the ground. “I haven’t stopped.”

And I should’ve said something romantic, too, but I didn’t have the courage, either. So instead, I watched the shy way he was chewing his lip and studying the leaves, and said, “That must’ve been very boring.”

Sam laughed, a funny, self-deprecating laugh. “You did read a lot. And spent too much time just inside the kitchen window, where I couldn’t see you very well.”

“And not enough time mostly naked in front of my bedroom window?” I teased.

Sam turned bright red. “That,” he said, “is so not the point of this conversation.”

I smiled sweetly at his embarrassment, beginning to walk again, kicking up golden leaves. I heard him scuffing leaves behind me. “And what was the point of it again?”

“Forget it!” Sam said. “Do you like this place or not?”

I stopped in my tracks, spinning to face him. “Hey.” I pointed at him; he raised his eyebrows and stopped in his tracks. “You didn’t think Jack would be here at all, did you?”

His thick dark eyebrows went up even farther.

“Did you really intend to look for him at all?”

He held his hands up as if in surrender. “What do you want me to say?”

“You were trying to see if I would recognize it, weren’t you?” I took another step, closing the distance between us. I could feel the heat of his body, even without touching him, in the increasing cold of the day. “
You
told me about this wood somehow. How did you show it to me?”

“I keep trying to tell you. You won’t listen. Because you’re stubborn. It’s how we speak — it’s the only words we have.
Just pictures. Just simple little pictures. You
have
changed, Grace. Just not your skin. I want you to believe me.” His hands were still raised, but he was starting to grin at me in the failing light.

“So you only brought me here to see this.” I stepped forward again, and he stepped back.

“Do you like it?”

“Under false pretenses.” Another step forward; another back. The grin widened.

“So do you like it?”

“When you knew we wouldn’t come across anybody else.”

His teeth flashed in his grin. “Do you like it?”

I punched my hands into his chest. “You know I love it. You knew I would.” I went to punch him again, and he grabbed my wrists. For a moment we stood there like that, him looking down at me with the grin half-caught on his face, and me looking up at him: Still Life with Boy and Girl. It would’ve been the perfect moment to kiss me, but he didn’t. He just looked at me and looked at me, and by the time I realized I could just as easily kiss him, I noticed that his grin was slipping away.

Sam slowly lowered my wrists and released them. “I’m glad,” he said, very quietly.