“Get away from me.” Jack took a step toward me, then back, before stumbling to one knee. The knife fell onto the tile; I winced before it landed, but its landing was surprisingly muffled. Jack made almost no sound at all when he followed the knife to the floor. His fingers were claws, curling and uncurling on the black-and-white squares. He was saying something, but it was unintelligible. Lyrics formed in my head. They were supposed to be for him, but they were really about me. World of words lost on the living / I take my place with the walking dead / Robbed of my voice I’m always giving / thousands of words to this nameless dread.
I crouched next to him, pushing the knife away from his body so that he wouldn’t hurt himself on it. There was no point asking him anything now. I sighed and listened to him groan, wail, scream. We were equals now, me and Jack. For all his privilege and nice hair and confident shoulders, he was no better than me.
Jack whimpered.
“You should be happy,” I told the panting wolf. “You didn’t throw up this time.”
Jack regarded me for a long moment with unblinking hazel eyes before leaping up and bolting for the door.
I wanted to just leave, but I didn’t have any choice. Any possibility of leaving him behind had disappeared as soon as he’d said Grace’s name.
I jumped after him. We scrambled through the house, his nails slipping on the hardwood floor and my shoes squeaking behind him. I pelted into the hall of grinning animals close behind him; the stench of their dead skins filled my nostrils. Jack had two advantages: He knew the house and he was a wolf. I was betting on him using the well-known surroundings to hide instead of relying on his unfamiliar animal strength.
I bet wrong.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT • GRACE
49°F
Sam had never been late before. He had always been waiting in the Bronco by the time I got out of class, so I’d never had to wonder where he might be or what to do while I waited.
But today I waited.
Today I waited until the students loaded onto the buses. I waited until the lingering students headed out to their cars and disappeared in ones and twos. I waited until the teachers emerged from the school and climbed into their cars. I thought about taking my homework out. I thought about the sun creeping down toward the tree line and I wondered how cold it was in the shade.
“Your ride late, Grace?” Mr. Rink asked kindly, on his way out. He had changed shirts since class and smelled vaguely like cologne.
I must’ve looked lost, sitting on the brick edge of the little mulched area in front of the school, hugging my backpack in my lap. “A little.”
“Do you need me to call someone?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the Bronco pull into the lot, and I allowed myself a long breath. I smiled at Mr. Rink. “Nope. They just showed up.”
“Good thing, too,” he said. “It’s supposed to get really cold later. Snow!”
“Yippee,” I said sourly, and he laughed and waved as he walked out to his car. I yanked my backpack onto my shoulder and hurried out to the Bronco. Pulling open the passenger-side door, I jumped in.
It was only a second after I’d shut the door that I realized that the smell was all wrong. I lifted my eyes to the driver and crossed my arms over my chest, trembling.
“Where’s Sam?”
“You mean the guy who’s supposed to be sitting here,” Jack said.
Even though I’d seen his eyes peering out of a wolf’s body, even though I’d heard Isabel say she’d seen him, even though we’d known he was alive for weeks, I wasn’t prepared for seeing Jack in the flesh. His curly black hair, longer than when I’d last seen him in the halls, his darting hazel eyes, his hands clinging to the steering wheel. Real. Alive. My heart kicked in my chest.
Jack’s eyes were on the road as he tore out of the parking lot. I imagined he thought I wouldn’t try to get away if the Bronco was moving, but he didn’t have to worry. I was fixed in place by the unknown: Where was Sam?
“Yes, I mean the guy who’s supposed to be sitting there.” My voice came out as a snarl. “Where is he?”
Jack glanced over at me; he was nervy, shaking. What was the word Sam had used to describe new wolves? Unstable? “I’m not trying to be the bad guy here, Grace. But I need answers, and soon, or I’m going to get bad really fast.”
“You’re driving like an idiot. If you don’t want to get pulled over by the cops, you’d better slow down. Where are we going?”
“I don’t know. You tell me. I want to know how to stop this and I want to know now because it’s getting worse.”
I didn’t know whether he meant it was getting worse as the weather got colder, or worse right this second. “I’m not telling you anything until you take me to wherever Sam is.” Jack didn’t answer. I said, “I’m not playing around. Where is he?”
Jack jerked his head toward me. “I don’t think you get it. I’m the one driving and I’m the one who knows where he is and I’m the one who can rip your head off if I change, so it seems to me you’re the one who ought to start pissing herself and telling me what I want to know.”
His hands were clamped on the steering wheel, bracing arms that were shuddering. God, he was going to change soon. I had to think of something to get him off the road.
“What do you want to know?”
“How to stop it. I know you know the cure. I know you were bitten.”
“Jack, I don’t know how to stop it. I can’t cure you.”