by Bree Despain
I opened my desk drawer and pulled out a rubber-banded bundle of photos. I found the snapshot of Jude I’d been working from and put it on top of the painting. Then I flipped through the rest of the pictures until I found the one I was looking for. In it, Daniel, Jude, and I all sat on a boulder by the pond. Our half-eaten lunches sat on our laps, and our arms were wrapped around one another’s shoulders. Jude made a gesture with one of his hands—three fingers extended. I’d almost forgotten about that. It was the sign we made up that spring for our little pack: THREE MUSKETEERS FOREVER.
I pulled that photo out and held it for a while.
Last night I’d decided I couldn’t go to college because of everything that was happening. Last night I thought I hated Jude. But now I knew the real reason I couldn’t go to college, the real reason I couldn’t leave home: because I’d promised myself that when Jude came back, I’d be here to help him the way I’d helped Daniel.
Everyone kept telling me not to go looking for Jude. Like it was the one thing they expected me to do. Maybe that’s because they knew that’s what I should be doing?
I didn’t have enough control over my powers to physically fight anyone yet—what happened yesterday with Pete and his friends proved that—but that didn’t mean I couldn’t try to find Jude. I could still help him. Maybe if I got him to come home. Figured out how to help him get his life back, the way I’d helped Daniel—the way I promised I would—then maybe Dad would stop leaving, and Mom would level out, and maybe my family would be like it had been in my dream. The way we’d all wanted it to be forever.
And then maybe, just maybe, I could even start thinking about going to college. About having a future of my very own.
CHAPTER SEVEN
What April Knows
SATURDAY AFTERNOON
I stood outside the old hardwood door, my hand perched just above the weathered wood, unsure if I had the nerve to go through with this plan. Something that had happened yesterday kept playing out in my mind all morning, pushing me in this direction until I was standing on this doorstep. But I didn’t know if I was ready for the answers I might get if somebody actually answered the door.
I knew I’d promised not to go looking for Jude on my own. But I hadn’t planned on going alone. I’d have Daniel with me. At least, that had been the original plan.
Only Daniel wasn’t answering his phone. I’d called him three times, to no avail. I wondered if his phone had been damaged more than we’d originally thought and had finally petered out, so I decided to go over to his place to tell him my idea.
However, I was halfway there when he finally called me back.
“I’m sick,” he said, his voice sounding distant.
“It’s probably because you wouldn’t let me take you to the hospital. You’ve probably got an infection.”
“I did go to the hospital. I’ve got the stitches to prove it. And I probably picked up some bug while I was there.”
“Oh.” Suddenly, it felt like he was blaming me for his illness. “I can bring you some soup. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“No,” he said a little too abruptly. “Leave me alone.”
“What?” My voice caught a bit in my throat.
Daniel sighed into the phone. “Sorry. I don’t know what … I don’t know if I’m contagious. Just stay away, okay?”
“But there’s no one there to take care of you,” I said. “When was the last time you were even sick anyway?”
That was one of the few benefits of being an Urbat—I hadn’t even had so much as a sniffle in the last ten months. Daniel probably hadn’t been sick a day in his life in the last eighteen years. A common cold might knock him flat.
“I can take care of myself.”
I sighed. “Just tell me you aren’t trying to avoid me on purpose. Are you still mad at me for what happened with Pete?”
“No, Gracie,” he said. “I was never mad at you in the first place. I just feel like sleeping all day. And you know you’re not really supposed to be inside my place. I mean, what could you even do to help me?”
I still felt terrible about last night, and it made me feel worse that he wouldn’t let me help him now. But if that’s the way he wanted it, I wasn’t going to force myself into his apartment.
“Okay. But call me if you need anything.”
“Yeah. Okay. Bye.”
“Oh, and I have something to tell you—” I said, but Daniel hung up before I even finished. I thought about calling him back and telling him my plan, but since he was so sick, I didn’t want him thinking he had to come along.
I might not have been able to stop Daniel from getting hurt, or help him feel better now, but I was tired of standing idly by. I needed to do something before I went crazy. I tucked my phone into my bag, turned the car around at the next light, and headed to the place where I was now.
Trepidation filled me as I stood outside the door, but I wasn’t going to let it stop me from getting answers. I mean, we used to be best friends. What’s the worst she could do anyway: slam the door in my face? I knocked and waited almost a full minute before the door opened.
“Hey,” I said.
April looked at me for a long moment, like she was actually contemplating slamming the door. But then she crossed her arms in front of her chest and said, “Hey.” She waited another few seconds. “What do you want?”
“Jude,” I said. “I need to find him, and I think you know where he is.”
A FEW MINUTES LATER, UP IN APRIL’S BEDROOM
“You know where Jude is, don’t you?” I asked April as soon as she shut her bedroom door behind us.
April glanced sideways at the computer on her desk and then looked back at me. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t know anything about Jude being back.”
“Then how did you know he’s back?”
“Because …” Her gaze shifted toward her computer again.
“You overheard my conversation with Daniel yesterday morning, didn’t you?”
April looked down at her hands.
That was the thing that had been bugging me all morning. The way April had been acting yesterday, I was pretty sure she’d overheard what Daniel and I had said about Jude’s being back. And she seemed only mildly surprised. Then it seemed like she’d wanted to tell me something important, reconsidered, and now was trying to hide that something from me.
“Jude called me from inside Daniel’s apartment. He was back here in Rose Crest two nights ago, but you already knew that, didn’t you?”
“He called you?” April folded her arms and leaned against her desk, the top of which was littered with beads, what I assumed were fake gems, metal charms, and what looked like fishing line. There were even a pair of little pliers and a large magnifying glass. “I don’t believe that.”
“Why? He’s my brother.”
“Because you’re the reason he left.”
“I know.” I couldn’t help rubbing the scar that hid under my sleeve. I’d always figured Jude left because of what he did to me.
“After what you did to him, I’m surprised he’d ever want to talk to you again.” April put her hands on her hips. “I know I didn’t.”
“Wait, what I did to him?” I asked.
All this time I thought April had been avoiding me because she was still freaked out by all the things she saw in the parish that terrible night, but it was really because she blamed me for Jude’s leaving?
“He told me he left because you betrayed him for Daniel,” April said. “Daniel tried to kill your own brother, and you still sided with that stupid dog boy. You and your dad act like Daniel’s some sort of angel, but he’s really just a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” April picked up a purple bead from her desk and held it between her thumb and forefinger. “I know what Daniel is, Grace. And I know what he did to Jude.”
Dog boy. Wolf in sheep’s clothing.
“How?” I asked. I wondered just how much Jude had told her about what had happen
ed—or at least his version of it.
“Jude always called him a monster. At first, I thought he was being metaphorical. But then I saw Daniel turn from a wolf into a person in the parish, when you pulled that knife from his chest. I’m not completely stupid. It didn’t take a lot to figure out that he’s a werewolf.”
“Was,” I corrected her. “He’s been cured. And I’ve forgiven him for the things he did while he was under the influence of the wolf. If Jude had been capable of that, then he wouldn’t be where he is now.”
April stared at the bead she held in her fingers. She bit her lip.
“Do you know about Jude, then?” I asked tentatively. “What really happened to him?”
“He’s a werewolf now, too. Because of what Daniel did to him. Jude said he was going through changes, and I figured it out on my own. You’ve always treated me like I was dumb or something. You’ve never given me enough credit, but at least Jude does. He trusts me.”
Whoa. Maybe I hadn’t given April enough credit. She knew my family’s secret, and still she was standing here talking to me? And I’d always thought that Jude’s interest in April was based purely on rebounding from his emotions—but if he’d been in contact with her since he left, then maybe I’d been wrong about their relationship. But the most important part of that thought was that April had been in contact with Jude.
“So you have talked to Jude since he’s left?” I asked.
April used her finger to roll the bead around in the palm of her hand.
“I know you care about him, April. I care about him, too. I think he’s in trouble, and all I want to do is bring him home.”
“He has a new home,” April said. “He told me that he found a new home, and a new family who wouldn’t turn their backs on him the way you did. But the way he talked about them … I don’t know, Grace. They sound dangerous. Not like a real family at all. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were involved in what happened at Day’s Market.”
I put my hand over my mouth. What had my brother gotten himself into?
April placed the bead carefully on the table and then looked up at me. “I knew he was in the city, but I honestly didn’t think he’d come here.”
“So you’ve known all along where Jude is, and you haven’t told anyone? Do you know how hard my dad’s been looking for him?”
“I haven’t known all along,” she said. “He sends me emails every once in a while. I can’t respond to them or anything. My messages just bounce right back.”
I nodded. I used to send a daily email to Jude at his school address, asking him to come home, but I gave up after a while when my messages kept bouncing back to me. “And he told you where he is?”
“No, he never said anything about his location. But I think I’ve traced him.”
My eyebrows went up involuntarily. “You know how to trace emails?”
“No. But I do know how to trace blog comments. Check this out.” April sat on her desk chair and wiggled her computer mouse. Her screen came to life and she logged on to the Internet. “In addition to the emails, I started to get some random, anonymous comments on my blog a couple of months ago. After a while I figured out it was Jude.”
“Your blog?” Jude had been hiding from everyone in his family, yet he’d had time to comment on April’s blog? I didn’t even know she had a blog.
“I design jewelry”—April pointed at the stuff on her desk—“and sell it on a blog.” She pointed at her computer. There was a blog pulled up on the screen with pink swirls around a banner that said APRIL SHOWERS JEWELRY and then pictures of rings, necklaces, and bracelets.
“I didn’t know.” But now that I thought about it, whenever I saw April lately, it seemed she had a new necklace or bracelet. They were beautiful. “I guess that kind of happens when somebody stops talking to you.”
April shrugged. “Anyway, like I said, I started getting these anonymous comments on my blog, and they all seemed like they were from the same person. Like when I posted a pic of this necklace.” She clicked on a picture of a tree-shaped pendant. It was the same necklace she wore now. “I got this comment.” She scrolled down a bit and hovered the cursor over the comment. “I don’t know how this could be from anyone other than Jude. It’s the last thing I’ve heard from him.”
I leaned over her shoulder and read the comment.
Anonymous said:
Beautiful. This looks just like the walnut tree outside my old house. Sometimes I wish I could see it again from the porch swing where we used to sit together. But that won’t ever happen again, will it? Not after what they did to me.
My heart tightened in my chest, and I looked away from the words. The first two lines had sounded so much like the old Jude, but the rest stung too much to read again.
“I don’t know if you noticed, but that comment had a time stamp of three a.m. on September twenty-fifth. Three weeks ago.” I heard the click of a mouse and when I looked back at the screen, she was on a new website. “This is my stat counter. It shows where my blog visitors come from.” She clicked on something else, and it pulled up a list of times and dates and locations. “You can see from this that the only person who visited my blog at three a.m. on September twenty-fifth was located in the city.”
“Wow, that’s really possible to see?” I fingered my moonstone necklace. It always pulsed with a warm vibration. To me, it meant hope. But then I let go of the pendant and sighed. “But Jude could still be anywhere. The city’s a big place.”
“Ah, but it gets better than that. I can drill it down even more and actually see the IP address of the visitor and the server he’s using.”
“Seriously?” Apparently, there was a lot I didn’t know about April these days. She used to have zero interest in computers, and now she was talking about tracing IP addresses and servers? “How did you learn to do all this?”
“You know Avery Nagamatsu—Miya’s older brother? The one who’s studying to be a software programmer?”
I nodded.
“I went with him to a couple of frat parties over the summer to make it look like he had a girlfriend. And in exchange, he helped me set up a blog for my jewelry business and showed me how to do all this so I could see where my customers were coming from. But it has its added benefits for tracking down rogue boyfriends.”
“Huh.” Well, I’d always known the girl had gumption.
April made a few more clicks with her mouse. “Usually, the server name is too vague to really tell me anything, but Jude’s just happens to belong to a business.”
April pointed at a name on the screen. I almost gasped when I saw it.
“ ‘The Depot,’ ” I read out loud. “Do you know what that is?”
“I’ve been asking around,” she said. “I couldn’t find out anything at first. Not even anything on the Internet that wasn’t in a locked forum. But then I was at that old movie theater in Apple Valley with Miya and Claire the other night. And you know that stoner-looking guy who works at the concessions stand—the one who always wears those gamer hats?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I was buying some popcorn when I heard that kid going on about some new club he was dying to play at—a place called The Depot.”
My mouth popped open. “Did you find out anything else?”
“Yeah. I had to give him ten bucks, but he finally told me that The Depot is like this superexclusive emogamers’ nightclub in the city. And for another twenty bucks he gave me the address.”
She opened her drawer and pulled out a folded-up piece of paper.
“What … really?” I reached for it.
April pulled it away. “I don’t know if I should tell you where Jude is.”
“Why?”
“Because if I tell you, then you’ll go tell Daniel or your dad, and they’ll go down there and just scare him off. If he wanted them to find him, then he would have contacted them … not me.”
“Not us. Jude contacted me, too.”
April looked down a
t the folded piece of paper. She turned it over in her hand a couple of times and sighed. “I don’t know if this will even do you any good. You can’t just walk into The Depot. I told you, it’s, like, superexclusive. Not even the kid who gave me the address had actually even been inside yet. You have to have a special keycard or you can’t even get in the door.”
Keycard? I stuck my hand in my jacket pocket and pulled out the plastic card I’d found at the market yesterday. “You mean like this one?”
April’s jaw dropped. “How did—?”
“You’ve got the address. I’ve got the card. We can do this together, or not at all.” I took a step toward her. “What do you say?”
“Okay.” April stood up. She shook in that excited-nervous way of hers. “But we’re going to need makeovers.”
I almost dropped the keycard. “We’re going to need … what?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Depot
THAT NIGHT
Yeah, so this is pretty much the dumbest thing I’ve ever done, I thought as I listened to the weird vroom-vroom noise the borrowed pair of vinyl pants I wore made as I walked. The sound was so distracting that I didn’t see the crack in the sidewalk, and stumbled in the high-heeled red leather boots April had insisted that I wear.
April caught me by the arm before I fell. “Those are hard to walk in, huh?”
“The pants or the boots?” I grumbled. “Seriously, why do you even have vinyl pants?”
“They’re for my Halloween costume. I’m going as Lady Gaga.” She pointed to the pink sequined top she wore with a denim jacket and a black miniskirt. “This goes with it.”
Great, I was headed to a nightclub for the very first time in half a Halloween costume. I wrapped my arms around my waist, trying to cover up my bare midriff. This lacy red top was far too short for my taste, but April had forbidden me to wear my wool jacket over it because she said it would ruin the “ensemble.”
