“Sing.”
The voice barked inside my brain, but it wasn’t mine. My inner voice didn’t really sound like anything I could put into words, but this one sounded deep and rich with a friendly sort of twang.
I spun around, hackles lifting, and bared my teeth.
On the other side of the clearing sat two wolves—one black, one white—with their fluffy tails curled politely around their front paws.
The black one looked at me with amber eyes and cocked his head. When he spoke, the words were still inside my brain, but somehow I knew they were coming from him.
“Don’t be afraid, Remi. Sing with us.”
Then he tilted his head back and howled.
Okay, Remi, time to go. That, I recognized as my own inner voice.
I took several quick steps backward, needing to get back to the dorm, back to the place where normal people like Hickoree lived, where wolves didn’t know my name, and the stars didn’t sing.
But instead, I tripped over my own tail.
CHAPTER TWO
My butt came down hard on the prickly forest floor.
My bare butt.
Looking down, I found my usual human body and all its associated human parts right where they ought to be, but completely exposed to the hot breeze blowing through the clearing—and the pair of wolves staring at me. I clamped my legs together and pulled my knees up to my chest, while the sane inner voice I’d always treasured so much whispered that this modesty was completely ridiculous since wolves undoubtedly tore the clothes off their victims before consuming their flesh anyway.
“Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry, forgive me,” the black wolf said—still somehow inside my head—and scrunched his amber eyes shut. “Tell me when you’re dressed.”
My mouth fell open.
The white wolf shot the black wolf a look that could only be described as the lupine version of an eye roll. Then it closed its eyes, too.
Okay, yeah, time to wake up. I clenched my own eyes shut and then popped them open as hard as I could.
The wolves were still there, eyes closed and heads politely averted.
“Cherish?” Now the voice in my head sounded female and uncomfortably sexy. “Do you have this poor girl’s clothes for her?”
“Right here!” Another female voice appeared inside my head, but also somehow behind me, and also… like her mouth was full?
I peeked over my shoulder just in time to see the shape of an upright bear waddling down the same tunnel I had emerged from just moments ago.
My eyes bulged in their sockets. Tremors ran up and down my spine, and my legs turned into useless noodles. Wake the hell up, Remi!
I clapped my hands as hard as I could, remembering a long ago camping trip where Foster Dad #2 told me noise was key in surviving a wild animal attack. But I’d also heard it could work in a pinch for getting yourself out of an unpleasant dream.
But the bear didn’t stop. In fact, I think I heard her laugh?
She lumbered into the clearing on her hind legs with my T-shirt, jeans, and underwear draped over her awkwardly jutting bear arms while my shoes were stuffed between her massive bear fangs.
She dropped the clothes beside me and settled onto all fours, spitting the shoes out. She smacked her lips and coughed. Strings of drool quivered from her lips but didn’t fall. She wiped them away with one truly gigantic paw.
“I’m sorry, sweetie, but I think I swallowed your socks.”
I gulped down my heart, which had risen into my throat. “Um, that’s okay,” I squeaked out. “I have more.”
Wow, Remi. Really? This bear could eat you any second and you’re not just talking to it, you’re lying to it?
The bear backed away, lowering its massive head slightly and averting its eyes.
Still shaking, I snatched my T-shirt off the ground, pulled it over my head, then slipped my bra under my shirt and squirmed into it the hard way. All the while I kept my eyes on the animals, each one with its eyes still closed.
Once I’d wiggled back into my jeans and panties, I tugged my soggy sneakers on and tied them with trembling fingers.
Then I jumped up and ran.
Smack into the once again upright bear’s shaggy chest.
A scream rang from my mouth as her powerful arms closed around my shoulders. She pulled me close and began pawing at my back, pressing me into her fur and muffling my cries. They say if you die in a dream, you really die. And now that the end had arrived, only one thing flashed through my mind—my brother’s face.
Am I about to see him again, or he is still out there?
The bear’s diner-waitress drawl came into my mind. “Honey, I know this is a lot to take in, but let’s not do anything rash.”
I fought against the bear, but her paws were too strong. It was no use.
“We only want to talk,” the other female voice said in the back of my brain. “Explain some things that have been happening to you that probably need explaining.”
My thoughts spun. If I’m not dreaming, I’m crazy.
And then my knees gave out, and the bear’s heavy paws caught me by the back of my head and around my waist, pulling me into—What the hell? Is this an actual bear hug?
But for some strange reason, it felt kind of… nice? I’d never thought of myself as being starved for affection, but I must have been wrong because I found myself just going with it. My arms came up and encircled the bear’s middle. She rested her lower jaw on top of my head and stroked my hair.
Is this what it feels like to accept your own death? Like coming home from a very long trip you never asked to go on? If so, then farewell, cruel world, I’m ready to go.
I waited for the flash of light, the heavenly choir—surely I hadn’t been too mean to Hickoree this evening—but nothing changed other than my face getting wet with tears.
“There, there,” the bear said. “It’ll all make sense soon.”
I jerked back.
That’s right. I’m Remi St. James. Lover of all things that make sense. And hugging a bear, well, that just doesn’t fit.
The black wolf’s voice came again. “What’s going on over there? Can I open my eyes? Are you decent?”
I whirled around. The white wolf had already opened her eyes, but the black one had stretched out on the ground with both paws over his muzzle.
“Yeah, I’m decent,” I said, trying to make my voice sound tough while tensing every muscle in my legs, ready to bolt.
The black wolf sprang to his feet, tongue lolling from the side of his mouth in a friendly canine smile. He bounded over and sat on his haunches in front of me, thrusting out his enormous right paw.
“Hi, Decent. I’m Oberon.” He chuckled inside my head like he was just the funniest guy.
The white wolf sighed heavily. The black wolf dropped his paw.
Now I was certain. This was a dream—I mean, of course it was a dream. But it was one of those Wizard of Oz dreams where all the wacky characters are really just people you know. The black wolf was a composite of all my dorky foster dads. The white wolf a version of all their long-suffering wives. And the bear at my back… well, she must be that waitress from Denny’s who gave me extra hash browns that time this summer when I hadn’t eaten anything but cold beans for a week.
Okay, whew, glad we figured that out, Remi. Let’s just roll with it.
The white wolf stepped forward. “Excuse my husband. He doesn’t know the meaning of ‘a time and a place.’ Especially in his current state. My name is Cordelia Gladwell, and I am the Vice-Chancellor at the Gladwell Academy.” She gestured with her head to the black wolf. “Oberon here is the Chancellor. Because, as I’m sure you’ve already noticed, the world is not fair.”
So that’s what this was about. But I didn’t need some crazy ass dream to remind me of that. I mean, my parents were so dead I could barely remember them, and my brother—my twin—well, nobody had ever wanted us both, so we’d been split up in the system a dozen years ago. We’d found eac
h other online in high school and messaged for a while, but by then we were on opposite sides of the state, and before we’d ever had a chance to meet, he’d stopped answering me. The last time I spoke to my social worker, the day she told me I was on my own now, she finally gave in and admitted that he had run away from a placement gone sideways. As far as anyone knew, if he was alive, he was on the streets.
And then there were my own placements that never seemed to stick. They gave me their food and their rooms, but never their hearts, and never the other stuff for long. First, I was too quiet and broody, and then I was too loud and disrespectful, and so on and so on until one day I was just too old. Everyone wanted little kids; the older ones have too much baggage, too many problems.
And didn’t I prove them right?
So yeah, the world was most definitely not fair, which I guess is why all the fight went out of me and I sank to my knees in the clearing, eye to eye with the wolves.
“What’s happening to me?” My voice sounded small and timid, like it didn’t even belong to me. The wolves exchanged looks. The bear’s breath fell warmly on my neck, and I reminded myself not to let my guard down too much. We may have shared a moment, but that thing could still eat me if this dream went wrong.
“Why don’t we go for a ride?” the black wolf asked. “Just in case someone’s looking for you. Wouldn’t want them sending you off to the loony bin for talking to varmints in the woods!”
“No one’s looking for me,” I said, but my phone chose that moment to buzz.
“Like I said, let’s go for a ride.” The black wolf jerked its head over its shoulder.
“It’ll give us a chance to shift into something that makes sense,” the white wolf said warmly.
The bear gave me a friendly shoulder bump. “We’re people too, you know.”
***
We emerged from the nature preserve into a rolling hay field. I followed the animals because my subconscious must have crafted this dream for a reason.
Now, to be clear, I didn’t believe that dreams contained messages from otherworldly beings or loved ones who had passed, only that dreams had the power to reveal thoughts and feelings our conscious minds didn’t know how to deal with. Nothing woo-woo about it—those were just facts. Perhaps in order to launch a successful college career, I needed to address my lingering resentment toward the foster system, or my fear that my brother was dead, or my other fear that he wasn’t dead but didn’t want to know me. This seemed plausible, so I figured I might as well get it over with quickly.
Waiting for us was a long, black limo. The white wolf touched her delicate nose to the driver’s side rear door handle. “Go on and have a seat. Pour yourself a soda. We’ll be along shortly.”
I shook my head in disbelief. Keep going with it, Remi. You’ll wake up soon.
Opening the door unleashed a cool purple glow, blinding after so much time in the dark forest. Squinting, I ducked inside and slid my butt across the expensive black leather seat, following its curve from the rear door along the passenger side wall. In front of me, between the two driver’s side doors, an array of bottles shined purple under the neon lights lining the bar. Above it, where a window ought to be, hung a widescreen TV, showing me what seemed like an incredibly realistic and detailed news broadcast for a dream.
That’s so Remi.
I picked up a shot glass from the bar and rolled it between my palms. It felt solid and cold, nothing like a dream, but obviously that’s what this was. In which case, pouring myself a little something from one of the colorful bottles couldn’t hurt. I chose a pink one.
A man poked his head through the open rear door, still buttoning up his pale blue shirt. He smiled at me under a thinning shock of gray-blond hair. “Soda. She said a soda.”
The black wolf’s voice came out of his mouth, but his demeanor was slightly more serious than before.
“Let’s try this again.” He climbed inside and scooted down the leather seat toward me, right hand outstretched. “I’m Oberon Gladwell, Chancellor of the Gladwell Academy. And you are Remi St. James.”
He removed the pink bottle and shot glass from my hands and replaced it with a glass soda bottle from an ice-filled trough in the bar. Then he snatched it back, popped the cap off with some sort of fancy bottle opening gadget, and handed it to me again.
“We usually discourage students from drinking this stuff, too, but no one expects you to quit caffeine cold turkey. Smoking, well, that’s another story. Do you smoke?”
I shook my head and took a sip from the bottle, letting the fizzy bubbles work their wonders on my returning headache.
“And no drugs, I hope?”
I stared at him over the upturned bottom of the bottle, and then slowly lowered it. “I’m sitting in a limousine in the middle of a hay field with a werewolf who looks like someone’s grandpa, so how about you tell me if I’ve done any drugs tonight?”
“A grandpa? I don’t look that old, do I?” He checked his reflection in the mirror behind the bottles on the bar, pulling at the bags under his eyes and frowning.
“You’re avoiding my question, Gramps.”
He turned his head sharply. “That’s Chancellor Gramps to you, young lady.”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “Well?”
He settled back on the seat and crossed his ankle over his knee, revealing a thick woolen sock. In August. So, definitely grandfather age.
“If there are drugs in your system, I can assure you we didn’t put them there.”
“Well, neither did I.”
“Then it seems we’re in agreement. Remi St. James is drug free and of a sound mind.” He spread his arms wide. “Excellent news!”
Squeezing my eye shut, I pressed a knuckle into my throbbing temple.
“Deep breaths,” Chancellor Gladwell said. “You came out of that shift too fast. Your body may try to go back into it. That’s it, nice and slow. Through the nose, out the mouth.”
Shift?
As I followed his instructions, the pain lessened—not completely, but enough to open my eyes when I heard the car door shut. Two women had joined us, each wearing a burgundy blazer over a light blue blouse. The one closest to the Chancellor had brown skin, close-cropped black curls faintly peppered with gray, and the sculpted legs of a woman twenty years younger emerging from under her skirt.
She offered me a finely manicured hand and said in the white wolf’s raspy-sexy voice, “Vice-Chancellor Gladwell. So nice to meet you in the human flesh.”
My eyes must have been bouncing back and forth between the Gladwells in an embarrassingly obvious manner, because the Vice-Chancellor gave me a patronizing smile as I shook her hand.
“There is no correlation between skin and coat color. It’s completely random.”
“What color am I?” I blurted out before I could stop myself from asking the ridiculous question.
“Gray.” She shrugged. “Like most lycanthropes.”
I’m not sure what I’d been hoping for, since I was not a person prone to hoping for anything, but she spoke so dismissively a knot of disappointment formed in my stomach.
Plain. Figures.
“Oh, but she does have those pretty markings around her eyes,” the second woman chimed in with the bear’s sweet twang. She drew a mask around her own eyes with a fingertip. “Very striking.”
That shouldn’t have made me feel better, but it totally did. I prided myself on practicality, sure, but that didn’t mean I liked the idea of my own subconscious casting me as the dullest character in my own crazy dream.
“Remi,” the Vice-Chancellor said, indicating the second woman, “this is Cherish Belhollow, Dean of Science and Health Education at Gladwell Academy. She’s also a registered nurse and veterinary technician, so she oversees the campus clinic as well.”
Dean Belhollow leaned forward, grasped my hand, and shook it vigorously. “It is so, so, so good to finally meet you. You’ve been a hard one to get ahold of!”
“Have I
?” I took a nervous sip of soda, nearly spilling the liquid.
The Gladwells nodded in unison.
“We don’t normally collect students ourselves,” Belhollow went on. “That’s the senior-year apprentices’ job. But you gave ‘em the slip every time. With classes starting in two days, we realized if we wanted it done right, we’d have to do it ourselves.”
“Classes?” I set the bottle down on the bar and wiped my wet hand on my jeans. “Classes don’t start until next week. This is just orientation for freshmen.”
Three pairs of eyes started at me blankly for a long moment before three mouths burst into laughter.
“Well, not here, of course.” The Chancellor wiped tears from his eyes. “We’re talking about the Academy. Classes start Wednesday. We’re going to have to drive all night to get you there in time to register and buy books before the feast.”
Feast? That sounds ni—wait, what? No! Focus, Remi!
I waved my hands in front of my face as if clearing a fog. “Buy books? I already did that today. I don’t have any money left.”
“Oh, no, no, no, honey. The Chancellor misspoke,” Belhollow said quickly.
“Not unusual.” The Vice-Chancellor smiled wryly.
“No one has to buy anything at Gladwell. It’s all paid for.” Belhollow patted my knee. “You’ll just have to meet with your adviser and drop in on the bookstore. It’s really not going to be a problem.”
Raking my hands through my hair, I collapsed against the soft back of the seat. Why was I even having this conversation? Why I was still asleep? I drew a deep breath through my nose and let it out through my mouth.
“Good girl,” the Chancellor said to me, and then turned to his companions. “She’s overwhelmed. Let’s roll the tape.” He flashed me a proud smile. “We just had it made this year.”
I continued the breathing exercise with my eyes shut tightly against the bar’s purple glow. There was the sound of old people fumbling with a TV remote and then the whir of a DVD player. A blast of majestic music came close to blowing out my eardrums. More scuffling with the remote, and then the volume plummeted to an acceptable level. I opened my eyes.
Academy of Shifters: Werewolves 101 Page 2
