by Kasi Blake
Her eyes softened. “I feel the same way about you.”
He touched her cheek. “I have missed you so much, you have no idea.”
“Me too.” Her gaze drifted to the door. “I told my mom and dad I was going to bed. Will you stay and talk to me for a while?”
He nodded. There were so many things he needed to tell her. He wanted her to know everything that had happened to him since they’d split up. It felt like a lifetime since they’d spoken. In a short time she had become very important to him, a best friend. Yet she was more than that. Much, much more.
They rested comfortably next to each other on her bed, talking softly and laughing for over an hour. At some point she had lifted her hand for him to take. He laced his fingers with hers. They held hands as they talked about anything and everything. She wanted him to know how much pain he’d caused her; he wanted her to know how much he’d missed her.
“I have tons to tell you,” he finally said. “It killed me not being able to pick up the phone. Every time something major happened, I wanted to start dialing.”
Lying next to her in the dark, holding her hand felt incredible. He couldn’t get over it. He was with Silver again, and everything was right with the world.
“I want to hear everything,” she said.
“I’m not sure where to start.”
“Try the first thing that pops into your head.”
“Okay.” The first thing he thought about was Jersey, but he didn’t want to start with the fact their teacher was a werewolf. He didn’t think she would take the news well. So he went with the second thing that popped into his head. “I found the werewolf that killed my parents.”
Her hand stiffened in his. “Where is he? Who is he? Do I know him?”
“I expect so since it’s the janitor at the school.”
He told her the whole sordid story about how he was walking down the hallway and the janitor sloshed water onto his shoes. He ended with how shocked he was to see the familiar eyes hiding behind the scraggly hair.
“Don’t try to take care of him on your own,” she said. “He could be the leader. If he is, he’s too strong for anyone to kill right now. I’ll have to grow up, train some more, get better at sucking souls out before I can do him.”
Jack nodded before realizing she couldn’t see him. “I understand.”
“Unless we use the stone, of course. But we’d have to be double-sure about him first.”
“What about this dream stuff? I dreamed about you the other night. I turned into a werewolf and attacked you. It seemed so real and familiar.”
“That’s because we have shared dreams.” She giggled before turning serious. “I had the dream about you changing into a werewolf too. I was there with you. It was real.”
“How is that possible?”
“We’re connected, Jack. I’ve been trying to tell you that. I’ve been dreaming about you for years, and you’ve been dreaming about me too, even if you don’t remember.”
He turned his head to look at her. That made sense. Sometimes when he glanced at her he saw a vision of them in the woods. “Now you tell me something new about you. How did your week go?”
“Well,” she said. “I know you broke up with me to save my life and keep your nutty vampire friends away from me, but it didn’t work. I was approached by the one you call Summer—Ow! You’re holding my hand too tight.”
“Sorry.” He let go. “Did she try to hurt you?”
“She threatened to if I don’t stay away from you.”
“Never mind. Don’t tell me. Show me.”
“What?”
Jack sat up, facing her in the dark. “I’ve developed a new power. I can touch someone and see the memory they’re thinking about. Let me see what happened with Summer. I need to know.”
Without waiting for her to give him permission, he took her hand again. Instead of lacing their fingers, he held her hand between both of his. This time he concentrated on seeing the scene she’d had with Summer. Electricity coursed through him and he was transported until he was once again inside of Silver’s head, looking at the world through her eyes.
Silver and her parents were hunting at the old Miller place. No one had lived there for years, so it was a good place for the occasional vampire or werewolf to take up residence. Silver and her parents split up to search the area. Each of them had a whistle just in case they found something—or something found them.
She walked behind the barn, a stake in one hand and the whistle in the other. Her father was inside the barn, and her mother was searching the yard. Silver heard soft footsteps. She spun around, hoping it was one of her parents.
The blonde girl from the cemetery, one of Jack’s friends, approached without a sign of caution. The girl didn’t seem concerned about the wooden stake in Silver’s hand. Her hard crystal eyes pinned Silver like a bug on a corkscrew board. She sniffed the air with obvious disdain. “It’s you. You’re the one Jack was hanging with. Is it true that it’s over?”
No introductions. No polite conversation. The girl went straight for the information she wanted. A reckless part of Silver wanted to lie and say they were still an item, but the intelligent part of her brain wouldn’t let her do it.
“He dumped me,” Silver admitted.
A satisfied smile stretched the other girl’s lips. “Good. Lucky you.”
“I’m not the one who needs to be lucky right now.” Silver lifted the stake. “I’m a hunter, and you’re a vampire. What do you think I’m going to do about that?”
Summer laughed. “You couldn’t take me on my worst day. I know tricks you haven’t dreamed of. You stay away from Jack and I’ll let you live.”
Summer turned to go.
Silver took a step after her. “Maybe I don’t want to stay away from him.”
The vampire girl slowly revolved, the smile stretched thin. “You haven’t a chance with him. Jack and I are soul-mates.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I don’t think it. I know it.” She tapped the place where her heart would have been if she’d had one. “I know it in here. The first time I saw him, I knew he was destined to be mine.”
No. His destiny was entwined with Silver’s. Silver thought about cluing the girl in, telling her about Lovely and the diary and what it had to say about Jack. Silver and Jack were major players in the upcoming war. This girl wasn’t even a footnote. She was nothing, just another vampire to be staked.
“He isn’t a vampire anymore,” Silver said. “He isn’t anything like you.”
“He will be after I change him back. I almost did it tonight.” A smug gleam entered her eyes. “That’s right. We were at a party together, and I asked him to rejoin us. He was about to go with me when some ignorant fool werewolf interrupted us. But that’s okay. I saw how much Jack wants to be one of us again. He’ll be coming to me, asking me to bite him soon enough.” The vampire girl laughed and added, “When you are old and shriveled, Jack and I will still be beautiful, and we’ll be together. We’ll be together forever.”
“I don’t believe you.” Silver said the words with great confidence even though her heart was breaking. “Jack hated being a vampire. He’ll never go back to it willingly.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” Summer took on a menacing expression. “You weren’t with us. Jack was happy. He loved car surfing, rock climbing, scuba diving, and jumping out of high buildings. He was wild and crazy and reckless. That’s the Jack I know. The Jack you’ll never get to see.”
Summer leaned forward, baring her teeth.
Silver clutched the stake tighter and set the point against Summer’s chest.
“Stay away from him or die,” Summer said.
Before Silver could drive the stake forward, Summer was gone. Faster than the wind, she ran in the direction of Keppler’s farm. Silver remained where she was, frozen in anger and grief. S
he replayed every word the vampire had said to her. She had been at the party with Jack. Was it true he had almost left with her? Did he want to become a vampire again?
“I was tempted,” Jack admitted as he returned to the present. “When Summer asked me to rejoin them, I was very tempted.”
“How can you even think about returning to your old life? You were unhappy.”
“Maybe I wasn’t.” He lay back down with a frustrated sigh and stared at the ceiling. “Maybe I’m just the kind of person who is never satisfied with where they are. Maybe I can’t be happy.”
“I don’t believe that.”
Silver lay her head against his chest. Her arm went around his waist, and Jack forgot to breathe. He was happy at this moment, happy being close to Silver. In this intimate position with her ear pressed to his heart, it was easy to forget his problems. He didn’t know what to do with his arm. He carefully placed it around her, his hand stroking her hair.
“Can you keep your family away from the Miller place for a couple weeks?”
“Why?”
“My old clan is using it for a temporary hideout. We always stay there when we travel through here.”
“Why are you still trying to protect them after the way they’ve been acting? They threatened me and your brother.”
“They were my family for ten years. I’m sure they won’t really try to hurt anyone I care about. And if they do, I’ll kill them myself.”
Heavy sigh. “I’ll do what I can, but my parents don’t always consult me before they go hunting.”
“Speaking of hunting, my brother took me with him the other night. Your mom told him to train me.”
“How did it go?”
Jack told her the whole awful story. He reminded her of the kid at school, the one they’d seen get infected. He explained he had wanted to save the kid but wound up killing him by accident. She gasped when he told her about the claws.
“It’s happening,” she said. “You’re getting powers of both vampire and werewolf.”
“I guess so.”
“How do you feel about that?”
Funny, it hadn’t occurred to him to feel anything about it. He was used to accepting things as they came his way, good and bad. He thought about it a moment before answering. “Well, considering I live in a place overrun with vampires and werewolves, not to mention hunters, I think having powers might be a good thing.”
“What else happened when we weren’t speaking?”
He told her about his interesting conversation with her mother and was surprised to find out she already knew about it. He told her about Billy sharpening his stakes when he thought Jack was reverting back to being a vampire. She laughed, even though he didn’t see anything funny about his brother wanting to kill him.
Jack was silent for a long time, knowing there was one more thing left to tell her about, one more secret to share. He didn’t want to do it, but it had to be done.
“The English teacher is a werewolf.”
Silver bolted upright in bed. “Are you talking about Jersey Clifford? Are you sure?”
“I saw it with my own eyes.” Jack explained how he’d touched the man and got a flashback from his life. “You killed one of his buddies the night we met. He didn’t take the news well. Fortunately, he doesn’t seem to want to kill you. He told his employee you don’t scare him.”
“I don’t believe this.” She got out of bed and began to pace the floor. He could see in the dark, but she couldn’t. She continuously bumped into things. He offered to turn on the light, but she shook her head and said, “Let me think. Usually my necklace burns when I’m close to a werewolf. It doesn’t do that around Jersey.”
“What about the janitor?” He reminded her, “You didn’t suspect him either.”
“I’ve only seen him from a distance. He doesn’t allow me to get that close.”
“I wonder why.”
Silver returned to the bed, stood next to it, and looked down at Jack. “I think Jersey is the head werewolf.”
“He’s not.” Jack knew he should have kept the information to himself. “The janitor is the leader. I know he is.”
“You want him to be the big heavy because he killed your parents. That doesn’t make it true.”
Jack jumped out of bed on the other side. They faced each other over the mattress, both fighting for what they believed. “It’s him!” Jack said in a loud voice.
Her hands went to her hips. “Then how did Jersey manage to fool me and my necklace this whole time? I’ve been within spitting distance of him.”
“Maybe the dumb thing won’t burn around the janitor either. Maybe it’s broken. Why do you want it to be Jersey so badly?”
“I think the question is, why are you insisting it isn’t him? What is Jersey Clifford to you?”
Jack didn’t get the chance to answer because the bedroom door swung open and hit the interior wall with a loud bang. Andrew Reign stood in the doorway with his shotgun, loaded and aimed at Jack’s chest.
Chapter Fourteen:
WHEN FRIENDS BECOME ENEMIES
“No!” Silver screamed and rushed forward. She tried to grab the shotgun from her father’s hands, but he held it tight. Yelling for her mom, she placed herself between Jack and her father. “Don’t you even think about it! I swear I’ll never speak to you again.”
Andrew shouted at Jack, “You’d better jump out that window and run for your life, boy. I’m going to blow your stupid head off!”
Vanessa appeared behind her husband. “What in the world is going on in here?”
“I caught your daughter in bed with this piece of trash!”
“You did not.” Silver grabbed her mom’s arm. “Listen to me, nothing happened. Jack and I were just talking. There was a wraith attack tonight at that party I didn’t want to go to, and he saved Trina’s life. I was telling him about wraiths and how to kill them.”
Hearing it was about business calmed Andrew enough to get him to lower the shotgun. “You can’t kill a wraith.”
“Unless you get them when they’re inside their bodies,” Vanessa said. “Tell us what happened, Jack. Was anyone hurt?”
Jack knew what Vanessa was doing, trying to forge a sense of unity between him and her husband. Smart thinking. If they all had a common enemy, perhaps Andrew would forget about killing him.
“The kids from Jefferson Memorial were throwing a party in the field next to the cemetery and they appeared out of nowhere. There wasn’t anything I could do. I’d never even heard of wraiths before.”
Vanessa laid a hand on her husband’s arm and drew his attention to her. “We should go to the field, see if we can find a clue where the wraiths are hiding. They’ll need to be dealt with.”
Jack forgotten, Andrew set his rifle aside before facing his wife. “Honey, we don’t know enough about wraiths to try to find them. I think it would be a big mistake to go after them right now.”
“What choice do we have? If they’re attacking children, we have to stop them.”
“Do you know what they do with the people they take?” Jack asked.
Everyone went silent.
“No one does,” Andrew finally said. He looked directly at Jack, no animosity in his gaze this time. “Considering what they are, I’m sure it isn’t pretty. Their victims are never heard from again.”
“Let’s all go downstairs,” Vanessa said. “I’ll brew some coffee, and we can strategize. We’ll need a plan before we go after them.”
A few minutes later they were sitting at the dining room table. Jack learned Silver drank coffee—three teaspoons of sugar and a dollop of cream. Andrew and Vanessa told a few stories about their hunting misadventures, went over the variety of traps they’d used to catch their prey, and shared ideas of how to find the wraiths.
Vanessa’s idea: find the lead werewolf. Once they had him, they could find the wrait
hs and kill them. That would put a stop to any future aerial kidnappings. It was the best plan they could come up with.
Silver said, “I think I already know who it is.”
“No, you don’t,” Jack said.
Vanessa and Andrew exchanged a look before Silver’s mom asked, “What is going on with you two?”
“Yeah,” Andrew joined in. “This isn’t the big love-fest I expected.”
“I think the lead werewolf is a teacher at the high school,” Silver said. “And Jack thinks it’s the janitor.”
Vanessa stared at them, mouth open.
Andrew leaned forward in his seat. “Explain. I want to hear your evidence against each one.”
Silver looked to Jack, but he motioned for her to go first. She could talk until she was blue in the face. He knew he was right, and he would prove it. He held the warm coffee cup between his hands but didn’t drink it. The dark liquid was bitter. He’d added some sugar, but it hadn’t helped.
While Silver delivered her case against the teacher, Jack tried more sugar and a bit of cream. He sipped it, trying hard not to make a face. He had the feeling a ton of sugar and a gallon of cream wouldn’t convince him to drink the sludge.
“Allow me to present my case,” Silver said. “I have irrefutable proof that Jersey Clifford is the lead werewolf.” To demonstrate her point, she pulled the silver dagger charm from her blouse. “My necklace doesn’t burn when I’m around him.”
That was it? That was her whole argument for killing Jersey? Silver didn’t know it, but she’d already lost the argument. Finished, she sat down across from Jack before motioning for him to speak.
“The janitor killed my mother and father,” Jack said in a cold, dead voice he didn’t recognize as his own. “I remember how easily he did it. He took out two strong hunters, no problem, and he’s avoiding Silver at school. Why would he avoid her if he wasn’t the lead werewolf?”
Andrew nodded slowly. “I hate to agree with this kid, but he has a valid point.”
“No!” Silver exploded out of her seat. “He wants the janitor to be guilty because he hates him. My gut is telling me it’s Jersey Clifford.”
“I have an idea,” Vanessa said. “Get close to the janitor on Monday and see if your necklace burns. If it does, then our man is the teacher. If it doesn’t, then it could be either one of them.”
