Shiver Trilogy (Shiver, Linger, Forever) (4 page)

Olivia didn’t end the sentence, just shook her head. I didn’t get it. Did she want me to pretend to like the other photos better than the one of my wolf?

“Hello! Anyone home?” It was John, Olivia’s older brother, sparing me from the consequences of whatever I’d done to irritate Olivia. He grinned at me from the front hall, shutting the door behind him. “Hey, good-looking.”

Olivia looked up from her seat at the kitchen table with a frosty expression. “I
hope
you’re talking about me.”

“Of course,” John said, looking at me. He was handsome in a very conventional way: tall, dark-haired like his sister, but with a face quick to smile and befriend. “It would be in very bad
taste to hit on your sister’s best friend. So. It’s four o’clock. How time flies when you’re” — he paused, looking at Olivia leaning over the table with a pile of photographs and me across from her with another stack — “doing nothing. Can’t you do nothing by yourselves?”

Olivia silently straightened up her pile of photos while I explained, “We’re introverts. We like doing nothing together. All talk, no action.”

“Sounds fascinating. Olive, we’ve got to leave now if you want to make it to your lesson.” He punched my arm lightly. “Hey, why don’t you come with us, Grace? Are your parents home?”

I snorted. “Are you kidding? I’m raising myself. I should get a head of household bonus on my taxes.” John laughed, probably more than my comment warranted, and Olivia shot me a look imbued with enough venom to kill small animals. I shut up.

“Come on, Olive,” said John, seemingly oblivious to the daggers flying from his sister’s eyes. “You pay for the lesson whether you get there or not. You coming, Grace?”

I looked out the window, and for the first time in months, I imagined disappearing into the trees and running until I found my wolf in a summer wood. I shook my head. “Not this time. Rain check?”

John flashed a lopsided smile at me. “Yep. Come on, Olive. Bye, good-looking. You know who to call if you’re looking for some action with your talk.”

Olivia swung her backpack at him; it made a solid
thuk
as it hit his body. But it was me who got the dark look again, like I’d
done anything to encourage John’s flirting. “Go. Just go. Bye, Grace.”

I showed them to the door and then returned aimlessly to the kitchen. A pleasantly neutral voice followed me, an announcer on NPR describing the classical piece I’d just heard and introducing another one; Dad had left the radio on in his study next to the kitchen. Somehow, the sounds of my parents’ presence only highlighted their absence. Knowing that dinner would be canned beans unless I made it, I rummaged in the fridge and put a pot of leftover soup on the stove to simmer until my parents got home.

I stood in the kitchen, illuminated by the slanting cool afternoon light through the deck door, feeling sorry for myself, more because of Olivia’s photo than because of the empty house. I hadn’t seen my wolf in person since that day I’d touched him, nearly a week ago, and even though I knew it shouldn’t, his absence still stabbed. It was stupid, the way I needed his phantom at the edge of the yard to feel complete. Stupid but completely incurable.

I went to the back door and opened it, wanting to smell the woods. I padded out onto the deck in my sock feet and leaned against the railing.

If I hadn’t gone outside, I don’t know if I would have heard the scream.

From the distance beyond the trees, the scream came again. For a second I thought it was a howl, and then the cry resolved itself into words: “Help! Help!”

I
swore
the voice sounded like Jack Culpeper’s.

But that was impossible. I was just imagining it, remembering it from the cafeteria, where it had always seemed to carry over the others around him as he catcalled girls in the hallway.

Still, I followed the sound of the voice, moving impulsively across the yard and through the trees. The ground was damp and prickly through my sock feet; I was clumsier without my shoes. The crashing of my own steps through fallen leaves and tangled brush drowned out any other sounds. I hesitated, listening. The voice was gone, replaced by just a whimper, distinctly animal-sounding, and then by silence.

The relative safety of the backyard was far behind me now. I stood for a long moment, listening for any indication of where the first scream had come from. I knew I hadn’t imagined it.

But there was nothing but silence. And in that silence, the smell of the woods seeped under my skin and reminded me of him. Crushed pine needles and wet earth and wood smoke.

I didn’t care how idiotic it was. I’d come into the woods this far. Going a little farther to try to see my wolf again wouldn’t hurt anybody. I retreated to the house, just long enough to get my shoes, and headed back out into the cool autumn day. There was a bite behind the breeze that promised winter, but the sun shone bright, and under the shelter of the trees, the air was warm with the memory of hot days not so long ago.

All around me, leaves were dying gorgeously in red and orange; crows cawed to each other overhead in a vibrant, ugly soundtrack. I hadn’t been this far into these woods since I was eleven, when I’d awoken surrounded by wolves, but strangely, I didn’t feel afraid.

I stepped carefully, avoiding the little streams that snaked through the underbrush. This should have been unfamiliar territory, but I felt confident, assured. Silently guided, as though by a weird sixth sense, I followed the same worn paths that the wolves used over and over again.

Of course I knew it wasn’t really a sixth sense. It was just me, acknowledging that there was more to my senses than I normally let on. I gave in to them and they became efficient, sharpened. As it reached me, the breeze seemed to carry the information of a stack of maps, telling me which animals had traveled where and how long ago. My ears picked up faint
sounds that before had gone unnoticed: the rustling of a twig as a bird built a nest overhead, the soft step of a deer dozens of feet away.

I felt like I was home.

The woods rang with an unfamiliar cry, out of place in this world. I hesitated, listening. The whimper came again, louder than before.

Rounding a pine tree, I came upon the source: three wolves. It was the white wolf and the black pack leader; the sight of the she-wolf made my stomach twist with nerves. The two of them had pounced on a third wolf, a scraggly young male with an almost-blue tint to his gray coat and an ugly, healing wound on his shoulder. The other two wolves were pinning him to the leafy ground in a show of dominance; they all froze when they saw me. The pinned male twisted his head to stare at me, eyes entreating. My heart thudded in my chest. I knew those eyes. I remembered them from school; I remembered them from the local news.

“Jack?” I whispered.

The pinned wolf whistled pitifully through his nostrils. I just kept staring at those eyes. Hazel. Did wolves have hazel eyes? Maybe they did. Why did they look so wrong? As I stared at them, that one word just kept singing through my head:
human, human, human
.

With a snarl in my direction, the she-wolf let him up. She snapped at his side, pushing him away from me. Her eyes were on me the entire time, daring me to stop her, and something in me told me that maybe I should have tried. But by the time my
thoughts stopped spinning and I remembered the pocketknife in my jeans, the three wolves were already dark smudges in the distant trees.

Without the wolf’s eyes before me, I had to wonder if I’d imagined the likeness to Jack’s. After all, it had been two weeks since I’d seen Jack in person, and I’d never really paid close attention to him. I could have been misremembering his eyes. What was I thinking, anyway? That he’d turned into a wolf?

I let out a deep breath. Actually, that
was
what I was thinking. I didn’t think I had forgotten Jack’s eyes. Or his voice. And I hadn’t imagined the human scream or the desperate howl. I just knew it was Jack, in the way I’d known how to find my way through the trees.

There was a knot in my stomach. Nerves. Anticipation. I didn’t think Jack was the only secret these woods held.

That night I lay in bed and stared at the window, my blinds pulled up so I could see the night sky. One thousand brilliant stars punched holes in my consciousness, pricking me with longing. I could stare at the stars for hours, their infinite number and depth pulling me into a part of myself that I ignored during the day.

Outside, deep in the woods, I heard a long, keening wail, and then another, as the wolves began to howl. More voices pitched in, some low and mournful, others high and short, an eerie and beautiful chorus. I knew my wolf’s howl; his rich tone sang out above the others as if begging me to hear it.

My heart ached inside me, torn between wanting them to stop and wishing they would go on forever. I imagined myself there among them in the golden wood, watching them tilt their heads back and howl underneath a sky of endless stars. I blinked a tear away, feeling foolish and miserable, but I didn’t go to sleep until every wolf had fallen silent.

“Do you think we need to take the book home — you know,
Exploring Guts
, or whatever it’s called?” I asked Olivia. “For the reading? Or can I leave it here?”

She shoved her locker shut, her arms full of books. She was wearing reading glasses, complete with a chain on the ear pieces so that she could hang them around her neck. On Olivia, the look kind of worked, in a sort of charming librarian way. “It’s a lot of reading. I’m bringing it.”

I reached back into my locker for the textbook. Behind us, the hall hummed with noise as students packed up and headed home. All day long, I’d tried to work up the nerve to tell Olivia about the wolves. Normally I wouldn’t have had to think about it, but after our almost-fight the day before, the moment hadn’t seemed to come up. And now the day was over. I took a deep breath. “I saw the wolves yesterday.”

Olivia paged idly through the book on top of her stack, not realizing how momentous my confession was. “Which ones?”

“The nasty she-wolf, the black one, and a new one.” I debated again whether or not to tell her. She was way more
interested in the wolves than Rachel was, and I didn’t know who else to talk to. Even inside my head, the words sounded crazy. But since the evening before, the secret had surrounded me, tight around my chest and throat. I let the words spill out, my voice low. “Olivia, this is going to sound stupid. The new wolf — I think something happened when the wolves attacked Jack.”

She just stared at me.

“Jack Culpeper,” I said.

“I know who you meant.” Olivia frowned at the front of her locker.

Her knotted eyebrows were making me regret starting the conversation. I sighed. “I thought I saw him in the woods. Jack. As a …” I hesitated.

“Wolf?” Olivia clicked her heels together — I’d never known anyone to actually do that, outside of
The Wizard of Oz
— and spun on them to face me with a raised eyebrow. “You’re crazy.” I could barely hear her over the students pressed all around us in the hall. “I mean, it’s a nice fantasy, and I can see why you’d want to believe it — but you’re crazy. Sorry.”

I leaned in close, although the hall was so loud that even I had to struggle to hear our conversation. “Olive, I know what I saw. They were Jack’s eyes. It was
his
voice.” Of course, her doubt made me doubt, but I wasn’t about to admit that. “I think the wolves turned him into one of them. Wait — what do you mean? About me wanting to believe it?”

Olivia gave me a long look before setting off toward our homeroom. “Grace, seriously. Don’t think I don’t know what this is about.”

“What is this about?”

She answered with another question. “Are they
all
werewolves then?”

“What? The whole pack? I don’t know. I didn’t think about that.” It hadn’t occurred to me. It should have, but it hadn’t. It was impossible. That those long absences were because my wolf vanished into human form? The idea was immediately unbearable, only because I wanted it to be true so badly that it hurt.

“Yeah, sure you didn’t. Don’t you think this obsession is getting kind of creepy, Grace?”

My reply sounded more defensive than I meant it to. “I’m not obsessed.”

Students shot annoyed looks at us as Olivia stopped in the hall and put a finger on her chin. “Hmm, it’s all you think about, all you talk about, and all you want us to talk about. What in the world would we call something like that? Oh, yeah! An obsession!”

“I’m just interested,” I snapped. “And I thought you were, too.”

“I
am
interested in them. Just not like all-consuming, involving, whatever, interested. I don’t fantasize about being one.” Her eyes were narrowed behind her reading glasses. “We’re not thirteen anymore, but you haven’t seemed to figure that out yet.”

I didn’t say anything. All I could think was that she was being tremendously unfair, but I didn’t feel like telling her that. I didn’t want to say anything to her. I wanted to walk away and leave her standing there in the hallway. But I didn’t. Instead, I
kept my voice super flat and even. “Sorry to have bored you for so long. Must’ve killed you to look entertained.”

Olivia grimaced. “Seriously, Grace. I’m not trying to be a jerk. But you’re being impossible.”

“No, you’re just telling me that I’m creepy obsessed with something that’s important to me. That’s very” — the word I wanted took too long to surface in my head and ruined the effect — “
philanthropic
of you. Thanks for the help.”

“Oh, grow
up
,” snapped Olivia, and pushed around me.

The hallway seemed too quiet after she’d gone, and my cheeks felt hot. Instead of heading home, I trailed back into my empty homeroom, flopped into a chair, and put my head in my hands. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d fought with Olivia. I’d looked at every photograph she’d ever taken. I’d listened to countless rants about her family and the pressure to perform. She owed it to me to at least hear me out.

My thoughts were cut short by the sound of cork heels
squelching
into the room. The scent of expensive perfume hit me a second before I lifted my eyes to Isabel Culpeper standing over my desk.

“I heard that you guys were talking about the wolves yesterday with that cop.” Isabel’s voice was pleasant, but the expression in her eyes belied her tone. The sympathy conjured up by her presence vanished at her words. “I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming you’re innocently misinformed and not out-and-out retarded. I heard you’re telling people the wolves aren’t a problem. You must not have heard the newsflash: Those animals killed my brother.”

“I’m sorry about Jack,” I said, automatically wanting to jump to my wolf’s defense. For a second, I thought about Jack’s eyes and what a revelation like that might mean to Isabel, but I discounted the idea almost immediately. If Olivia thought I was crazy for believing in werewolves, Isabel would probably be on the phone to the local mental institution before I could even finish a sentence.

“Shut. Up,” Isabel interrupted my thoughts. “I know you’re about to tell me the wolves aren’t dangerous. Well, obviously they are. And obviously, someone’s going to have to do something about that.”

My mind flicked to the conversation in the classroom: Tom Culpeper and his stuffed animals. I imagined my wolf, stuffed and glassy-eyed. “You don’t know that the wolves did it. He could’ve been —” I stopped. I knew the wolves had done it. “Look, something went really wrong. But it could’ve been just one wolf. The odds are that the rest of the pack had nothing to do with —”

“How beautiful objectivity is,” Isabel snapped. She just looked at me for a long moment. Long enough for me to wonder what it was she was thinking. And then she said, “Seriously. Just get the last of your Greenpeace wolf-love done soon, because they won’t be around much longer, whether you like it or not.”

My voice was tight. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I’m sick of you telling people they’re harmless. They killed him. But you know what? It’s over now. Today.” Isabel tapped my desk. “Ta.”

I grabbed her wrist before she could go; I had a handful of fat bracelets. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Isabel stared at my hand on her wrist but didn’t pull it away. She’d wanted me to ask. “What happened to Jack is never happening again. They’re killing the wolves. Today. Now.”

She slipped out of my now-slack grip and glided through the door.

For a single moment, I sat at the desk, my cheeks burning, pulling her words apart and putting them back together again.

And then I jumped from my chair, my notes fluttering to the floor like listless birds. I left them where they fell and ran for my car.

I was breathless by the time I slid behind the wheel of my car, Isabel’s words playing over and over again in my head. I’d never thought of the wolves as vulnerable, but once I started imagining what a small-town attorney and big-time egomaniac like Tom Culpeper was capable of — fueled by pent-up anger and grief, helped along by wealth and influence — they suddenly seemed terribly fragile.

I shoved my key in the ignition, feeling the car rattle reluctantly to life as I did. My eyes were on the yellow line of school buses waiting at the curb and the knots of loud students still milling on the sidewalk, but my brain was picturing the chalk-white lines of the birches behind my house. Was a hunting party going after the wolves? Hunting them now?

I had to get home.

My car stalled, my foot uncertain on the dodgy clutch.

“God,” I said, glancing around to see how many people had seen my car gasp to a halt. It wasn’t as if it were difficult to stall my car these days, now that the heat sensor was crapping out,
but usually I could finesse the clutch and get on the road without too much humiliation. I bit my lip, pulled myself together, and managed to restart.

There were two ways to get home from the school. One was shorter but involved stoplights and stop signs — impossible today, when I was too distracted to baby my car. I didn’t have time to sit by the side of the road. The other route was slightly longer, but with only two stop signs. Plus, it ran along the edge of Boundary Wood, where the wolves lived.

As I drove, pushing my car as hard as I dared, my stomach twisted, sick with nerves. The engine gave an unhealthy shudder. I checked the dials; the engine was starting to overheat. Stupid car. If only my father had taken me to the dealership like he kept promising he would.

As the sky began to burn brilliantly red on the horizon, turning the thin clouds to streaks of blood above the trees, my heart thumped in my ears, and my skin felt tingly, electric. Everything inside me screamed that something was wrong. I didn’t know what bothered me most — the nerves that shook my hands or the urge to curl my lips and fight.

Up ahead, I spotted a line of pickup trucks parked by the side of the road. Their four-ways blinked in the failing light, sporadically illuminating the woods next to the road. A figure leaned over the truck at the back of the line, holding something I couldn’t quite make out at this distance. My stomach turned over again, and as I eased off the gas, my car gasped and stalled, leaving me coasting in an eerie quiet.

I turned the key, but between my jittery hands and the redlining heat sensor, the engine just shuddered under the hood
without turning over. I wished I’d just gone to the dealership myself. I had Dad’s checkbook.

Growling under my breath, I braked and let the car drift to a stop behind the pickup trucks. I called Mom’s studio on my cell, but there was no answer — she must have been at her gallery opening already. I wasn’t really worried about getting home; it was close enough to walk. What I was worried about was those trucks. Because they meant that Isabel had been telling the truth.

As I climbed out onto the shoulder of the road, I recognized the guy standing next to the pickup ahead. It was Officer Koenig, out of uniform, drumming his fingers on the hood. When I got closer, my stomach still churning, he looked up and his fingers stilled. He was wearing a bright orange cap and held a shotgun in the crook of his arm.

“Car problems?” he asked.

I turned abruptly at the sound of a car door slamming behind me. Another truck had pulled up, and two orange-capped hunters were making their way down the side of the road. I looked past them, to where they were heading, and my breath caught in my throat. Dozens of hunters were knotted on the shoulder, all carrying rifles, visibly restless, voices muffled. Squinting into the dim trees beyond a shallow ditch, I could see more orange caps dotting the woods, infesting them.

The hunt had already begun.

I turned back to Koenig and pointed at the gun he held. “Is that for the wolves?”

Koenig looked at it as if he’d somehow forgotten it was there. “It’s —”

There was a loud
crack
from the woods behind him; both of us jerked at the sound. Cheers rose from the group down the road.

“What was that?” I demanded. But I knew what it was. It was a gunshot. In Boundary Wood. My voice was steady, which surprised me. “They’re hunting the wolves, aren’t they?”

“With all due respect, miss,” Koenig said, “I think you should wait in your car. I can give you a ride home, but you’ll have to wait a little bit.”

There were shouts in the woods, distant, and another popping sound, farther away. God. The wolves. My wolf. I grabbed Koenig’s arm. “You have to tell them to stop! They can’t shoot back there!”

Koenig stepped back, pulling his arm from my grip. “Miss —”

There was another distant
pop
, small and insignificant sounding. In my head, I saw a perfect image of a wolf rolling, rolling, a gaping hole in its side, eyes dead. I didn’t think. The words just came out. “Your phone. You have to call them and tell them to stop. I have a friend in there! She was going to take photos this afternoon. In the woods. Please, you have to call them!”

“What?” Koenig froze. “There’s someone in there? Are you sure?”

“Yes,” I said, because I was sure. “Please. Call them!”

God bless humorless Officer Koenig, because he didn’t ask me for any more details. Pulling his cell phone from his pocket, he punched a quick number and held the phone to his ear. His eyebrows made a straight, hard line, and after a second, he
pulled the phone away and stared at the screen. “Reception,” he muttered, and tried again. I stood by the pickup truck, my arms crossed over my chest as cold seeped into me, watching the gray dusk take over the road as the sun disappeared behind the trees. Surely they had to stop when it got dark. But something told me that just because they had a cop standing watch by the road didn’t make what they were doing legal.

Staring at his phone again, Koenig shook his head. “It’s not working. Hold on. You know, it’ll be fine — they’re being careful — I’m sure they wouldn’t shoot a person. But I’ll go and warn them. Let me lock my gun up. It will only take a second.”

As he started to put his shotgun in the pickup truck, there was another gunshot from the woods and something buckled inside me. I just couldn’t wait anymore. I jumped the ditch and scrambled up into the trees, leaving Koenig behind. I heard him calling after me, but I was already well into the woods. I had to stop them — warn my wolf — do something.