“Locke.” I hear a guttural whisper that doesn’t belong on my patio. “Locke!” It comes again, and then there is a tug on my elbow.
I try to shrug whatever it is away. I want to stay at the party. I take another scoop of chocolate cake with my fingers, right from the center, making sure to get a few gummy worms. Honeybun giggles and claps her hands together, so happy I am literally digging her cake. My dad looks at all of us—his family—and beams with pride.
Slap!
I opened my eyes.
Mrs. Lemmon was staring at me intently, her hand raised. “I’m sorry, dear. You were sleep… walking, I guess you would call it,” she said.
I rubbed my stinging cheeks and felt wetness. I pulled my hands away, realizing they were smeared with something dark. “Where am I?”
Mrs. Lemmon put an arm around my shoulders, surprising me with her gentle touch. “You’re in the kitchen.” There was a tenderness in her voice, which made me wonder what was really going on.
I stared down at my hands again, turning them over in the pale light coming from the bank of windows. I couldn’t tell what was on me, but it didn’t smell like chocolate cake. “What is this?”
“Ah, yes.” Mrs. Lemmon released me. “Let’s get you cleaned up,” she said, handing me one of the cook’s kitchen towels.
I took it from her, still unsure of what was going on. “Should we turn on a light?”
“No need to wake anyone with lights. It’s one o’clock in the morning, Shelby.”
“It is?” I lifted my semi-dried hands to my nose and sniffed at the heavy, metallic odor. “Blood?” I said, the alarm in my voice unmistakable.
Mrs. Lemmon nodded and reached out for the empty plastic tray on the kitchen table. “Found you eating some of the cook’s raw steaks for the staff lunch tomorrow,” she said. “Looks like maybe two or three, you had.”
“Omigod.” I rushed over to the sink and began scrubbing my hands with soap. Austin’s words, “Don’t trust anyone,” were ringing in my brain like a fire alarm. I was covered in blood and Mrs. Lemmon had caught me.
“Now, let’s not panic,” Mrs. Lemmon said, bringing the empty tray over to the draining board. “I’ll tell the cook I came down for a glass of milk and found the tray toppled over at the bottom of the walk-in, the steaks coated in filth. God knows the dirty bird never sweeps out the thing. She’ll believe it.”
I ran my hands under the tap, watching the bloody water swirl down the drain. But my shock at the realization I’d been sleep-eating was nothing compared to the shock of Mrs. Lemmon’s kindness. At any minute I expected her to flip on the lights and scream for Madame LaCroix.
“I, uh, thank you,” I mumbled, stepping back.
She nodded and patted me on the cheek. “You been sleepwalking your whole life, then?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”
Mrs. Lemmon rinsed the meat tray in the sink. “My first husband, Eddie, he did it all the time. He’d make phone calls and not remember them. One time he cooked a roasted chicken dinner, complete with mash and English peas.” She gave me the first smile I’d ever seen on her face. “You can live a perfectly healthy life. Eddie did, at least until he was shot down in a Royal Air Force plane. But that had nothing to do with his sleep habits.”
“Oh. I’m sorry, you know, about Eddie.” I dried my hands on a clean towel and watched Lemmon scrub down the tray with bleach.
She didn’t look up at me as she worked. Maybe she didn’t want me feeling sorry for her about Eddie. “That should do it,” she said, setting the tray in the empty sink to dry.
“Mrs. Lemmon, I don’t know how to explain this. I don’t know what’s happening to me,” I said, halfway telling the truth.
“Don’t you worry yourself about it. I’ll be discreet. This kind of problem can be very embarrassing.” She shook her head. “And I see what they feed you girls. I’d be craving a bit of iron myself if I were a student. Especially around that time of the month.” She gave me a sympathetic smile.
“Huh?”
“I heard you had stomach problems earlier, Locke. It’s not hard to put two and two together when you’ve been working with girls for this many years.”
“Oh. Right,” I said, playing along. “You’ve been at Steinfelder forever probably?”
Mrs. Lemmon’s posture straightened. “Steinfelder, no. I’ve just come here this term, like you. But I’ve got a long history in the schools,” she said.
“You’ve given your whole life to help students. That’s, you know, a really cool thing to do.”
I saw another glimpse of the smile, and then Lemmon grabbed a spray bottle and spritzed the kitchen table. I picked up a rag and swabbed up the little blood spatters.
“You know, it’s always you brash ones that need a little kindness,” Mrs. Lemmon said, throwing our dirty towels in the hamper near the door. “There’s something painful in your lives that make you girls the way you are.”
I just shrugged. Maybe Lemmon had a point, but I didn’t want to talk to her about anything painful in my life. That wasn’t exactly my style.
Mrs. Lemmon put her hands on my arms and looked deep into my eyes. “I just want you to know you’re not alone, dear.” With that, she turned and left me to the quiet of the kitchen.
I was astounded by what had just happened. I had no idea that inside Lemmon’s crusty exterior there was a heart. Still reeling from our interaction, I got a glass of water to wash out the awful taste in my mouth. I had been eating raw meat. Holy crap.
I had interrupted Austin doing that same thing at Camp Crescent last summer. The scene must have looked horrific to Lemmon, what with me gobbling down the steaks, blood running down my face. I glanced down at my hands again, grateful that at least, unlike Austin, I hadn’t been fully transformed into a wolf during my feast. I’d just been hungry. So hungry I’d dreamed of cake while I chowed down on raw meat. This was bad. Really bad.
Wait—raw steaks? The staff got steaks? The injustice of Steinfelder’s menu apparently reached far beyond baked goods. Sighing, I put my glass in the sink. As I turned to leave, I saw Marie-Rose standing by the door.
“What are you doing down here?” she whispered.
“Getting water,” I said, passing by her and out the kitchen door.
She followed me up the stairs, reaching out for me on the landing. “Shelby, wait!”
“No, I don’t want to wait. And why are you always hanging around, anyway?”
Marie-Rose’s face fell. “I’m just—”
“You’re concerned. I get that. Okay, I’m going up to bed.”
I walked down the hall toward our room and collapsed into bed, feeling pretty low. But as I adjusted my pillow, I found something underneath it that made my heart rise in my chest. A packet of gummy worms. A sign from Austin that took me back to the night at camp he’d brought me gummy bears the nurse had given him. On the bottom of the plastic packaging, there was a number eleven, written in black marker.
I stuffed the candy back under the pillow as Marie-Rose wandered in. Ignoring her sheepish look, I went to the window. Out at the end of the white-covered field, I saw a fast-moving shadow that had to be Austin’s. As I watched, he disappeared behind the guardhouse kennel. I felt a tiny swell of hope, knowing he’d meet me the next night at eleven in the old carriage house.
I wanted him to hug me and tell me everything was going to be all right. I wanted him to tell me he’d figured out a plan. And I prayed he’d have some serum on him that would keep me from going totally Lycan before the next full moon.
Chapter Eight
Saturday is supposed to be relaxing—a day you can sleep in, eat a lazy breakfast, see your friends, and go to the mall, but, of course, that wasn’t the case at Steinfelder. Every Saturday started the same as any other day, with soggy muesli cereal eaten at long, wooden tables precisely at seven a.m. Even though it was the last meal before most of the girls left for winter vacation, that morning’s breakfast wasn�
��t any different than the normal slop. Truthfully, I hadn’t expected they’d get a fancy send-off, but I was hungry again. Really hungry. I would have (almost) killed for a pancake.
“You look awful,” Marie-Rose said, lifting a spoonful of cereal to her mouth.
“Thanks.” I refrained from saying she’d look awful, too, if she’d sleep-eaten raw meat and had to deal with a roommate who was a constant shadow.
“I just mean that you need more rest,” Marie-Rose added, as if that made her comment any less annoying.
“Uh, okay.” I nearly sighed in relief as Patricia from our history class took a seat across from us. I slid Patricia the book I’d borrowed. “Thanks, it was helpful.”
“There are more like it in the library,” she said, smiling.
Marie-Rose had followed our exchange. “Interested in school now?” she asked.
“Seriously. Can you just leave me alone?” I hissed.
Her face turned red and she got up from our table and took a seat at the next one over.
“Is there a problem?” Madame LaCroix’s voice called out over the noise of the dining room. “I thought you and Marie-Rose were good friends,” she said, gliding up next to me.
I studied my cereal. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Whatever the problem is, I hope you will sort it out in a respectful way. I would hate to have to resolve your difficulty for you.”
“Yes, of course,” I said in my sweetest tone.
Madame LaCroix gave me a stern look, like she couldn’t tell if I was making fun of her or being serious. When she stalked off toward the staff dining room, I picked up my bowl of cereal. Marie-Rose didn’t look up as I slid down onto the bench next to her.
“So, can you just tell me what’s going on and we can end this weirdness?”
She took another bite of cereal, chewing it thoughtfully.
“I heard you from the hallway outside Lemmon’s door,” I said, fibbing about the location. “I heard you say you were doing a job. What does that mean?”
Her eyes got big. “I’m not supposed to tell you.”
“Well, either you tell me or I’m going to find a way to call Maman and complain,” I said, bringing out the heavy artillery. This was getting serious.
Marie-Rose set down her spoon with a clunk. “I’m looking out for you. Let’s leave it at that.”
“Why did you call it a job? Is someone paying you?”
“I, uh…” Marie-Rose dabbed at her damp forehead. “I can’t tell you.”
“But how can we be friends if you’re keeping this from me? I mean, were you ever really my friend to begin with? Or is this all fake?”
She turned on the bench to face me. “But of course I am your friend. That’s why I’m doing this. You get into trouble. I’m watching over you. I’m keeping you safe.”
“Safe from what?”
Her forehead creased with worry. “From yourself,” she said, but she didn’t explain.
“I think you’re the one who needs to watch yourself.” I dropped my spoon into my bowl and got up from the bench. Passing a first-year server, I thunked the bowl down onto the tray she carried and stormed out of the room.
My mind was reeling with thoughts of who might have hired Marie-Rose as my babysitter and why, at a school for messed-up girls like me, I’d be singled out for special watch. But wait—what if this didn’t have anything to do with my not following the rules? Marie-Rose could easily be working for someone who had a much more sinister motive than keeping me out of Mrs. LaCroix’s office.
It suddenly occurred to me that this could be a really bad thing for me and for Austin. Marie-Rose could absolutely not know he was coming to meet me. She’d been watching me—maybe she’d really been watching for him.
I realized this meant my friendship with Marie-Rose really was over. I’d lost the one confidante I’d found at Steinfelder. And my only friend.
***
“Not heading home, eh?” Mrs. Lemmon took a seat in an armchair in the library that afternoon.
“No, ma’am.” I returned her smile and went back to flipping through the pages of the book in front of me, another history of the Middle Ages in Europe. But then I heard laughing, so I glanced out the window and saw girls building snowmen and chasing each other around the yard with snowballs. The last bus had pulled away an hour ago, so these girls were all holiday shut-ins like me, but somehow they were having fun.
The scene reminded me of our snowy winters back in Milwaukee, before Dad invented Re-Gen and our fortunes changed. Living in Beverly Hills with Honeybun the last few years, I’d missed real winters, although here in isolation at Steinfelder, I hadn’t found the snow any comfort, not like it had been in the Midwest. But, then again, nothing had been the same since Milwaukee. Or since my mom had passed away.
Winter had been Mom’s favorite season. We’d spent so many of them making our house full-on Christmassy, with a holly wreath on the doors and popcorn garlands on the tree. She’d been an expert at making snow angels and knew just how many marshmallows a cup of hot cocoa should have. It so wasn’t fair that she was gone.
I felt my face getting hot, so I focused on the book in front of me, letting the thoughts of winters past drift away.
Over near the fireplace, Mrs. Lemmon opened a bag and took out knitting. I hadn’t known her to be crafty, but she looked like a pro, wrangling the yarn around the needles. “You seem quite interested in the history of the castle,” she said, gesturing toward my stack of books.
“I guess Patricia’s paper kind of inspired me,” I said.
The blaze in the hearth crackled, filling the room with warmth. Above the mantel, yet another portrait of the Duke stared down at us, firelight reflected in the shiny paint.
“He was quite a character,” Mrs. Lemmon said, pointing up at the Duke. “Ran with a rather colorful group claiming to be on a mission to protect the continent. Several principalities financed his campaigns, hiring him to drive out whatever element they didn’t like or understand.”
“A mercenary,” I said.
“Of sorts, yes.” She frowned down at the red yarn in her hands, making a clucking sound at the back of her throat.
“What are you knitting?”
Lemmon held the project up so I could see. It had a few lumps and bumps, but it wasn’t too horrible looking. “I’ve been working on this scarf for weeks and can’t seem to get it all put together right,” she said. “I don’t know that I’ll be done in time for Christmas.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to buy one?”
She laughed. “Yes, of course. The point is that you make something for someone and it means more. You’re thinking about them with each stitch, you see.”
“Oh, okay. I get that.”
“Do you have a list of Christmas presents to buy? We’ll be taking some of you into town tomorrow to buy a few things.”
“I don’t know about sending presents. My family is kind of wrapped up in stuff,” I said slowly. “My stepmother’s having a baby.”
Mrs. Lemmon’s eyes brightened. “Well, maybe you might like to learn how to knit, then? You could make the little tyke a blanket.”
I had such a longing for my family at that moment, my heart seemed like it was going to burst. I was going to have a little brother or sister, and whatever my situation, they were my family. At least they were at the moment. Who knew what would happen once they found out the truth about me? They surely wouldn’t want an animal around the baby. Hot tears trickled down my cheeks.
“Oh, dear. I’ve hit a soft spot,” Mrs. Lemmon said. “I’m a brash one too, you see.”
I gave her a watery smile. “No, it’s a kind offer, thank you. I’m fine.” I wiped my face with my sweatshirt sleeve.
“Well, you let me know. It fills the emptiness of winter, knitting does.”
“Who is your scarf for?”
Mrs. Lemmon’s cheeks flushed and she gave me a pointed look. “A friend, Locke.”
“Oh.” I got it. M
assimo. I let her keep her secret as she knitted away, and turned my attention back to the book in my hands.
I turned page after page, learning about how Duke Steinfelder had persecuted the unsavory folks in foreign lands, killing off diversity. About how he’d died, terrified of retribution from awful creatures. The book had a reproduction of the painting from the hallway, the one of him mounted on the gray horse, ready for battle. Ready to drive people out for a price. Maybe people like Austin and his family. Like me.
With all that had happened lately, I’d almost forgotten I wanted to know how I’d come to be here at Steinfelder. I needed to know.
Sometimes By Moonlight Page 7
