Maggie Stiefvater - [Wolves of Mercy Falls 02]

by Maggie Stiefvater

  Mrs. Sanders reappeared with a thermometer, and I hurriedly dropped my hand from my face. “Open, dear,” she instructed me, which I would’ve found funny any other time, because Mrs. Sanders did not strike me as a “dear” sort. “I have a feeling you’re coming down with something.”

  I accepted the thermometer and put it under my tongue; the plastic sleeve on it felt sharp edged and slimy in my mouth. I was going to observe that I rarely got sick, but I couldn’t open my mouth. Mrs. Sanders chatted about classes with the two awake students on the chairs while three minutes dragged by, and then she returned and slid the thermometer out.

  “I thought they made high-speed thermometers now,” I said.

  “For pediatrics. They figure you high school hel ions have enough patience to use the cheap ones.”

  She read the thermometer. “You have a bit of a temperature. Teeny. You probably have a virus. There’s a lot of it going around with the temperature going up and down. You want me to cal someone to pick you up?”

  I momentarily thought about the joy of escaping school and snuggling in Sam’s arms for the rest of the afternoon. But he was working and I had a test in Chemistry, so I sighed and admitted the truth: I was not real y sick enough to justify leaving. “There’s not that much of the school day left. And I have a test.”

  She made a face. “A stoic. I approve. Wel , here. I’m real y not supposed to do this without getting ahold of your parents, but—” She stood beside me and opened one of her desk drawers. There was a bunch of loose change, her car keys, and a bottle of acetaminophen in there. Shaking two of the pil s into my palm, she said, “That’l kick that temperature in the butt and probably take care of your headache, too.”

  “Thanks,” I said, relinquishing her chair to her. “No offense, but hopeful y I won’t be back in here this week.

  ”

  “This office is a cultural and social hot spot!” Mrs. Sanders said, feigning shock. “Take care.”

  I swal owed the acetaminophen and chased it with some water from the cooler by the door, then headed back to class. I could barely feel my headache. By the end of last period, the acetaminophen had done the trick. Mrs. Sanders was probably right. This nagging sensation of something more was just a virus. I tried to tel myself that was al it was.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  • COLE •

  I didn’t think I was supposed to be human right now. Sleet cut into my bare skin, so cold that it felt hot. My fingertips were like clubs; I couldn’t feel anything in them. I didn’t know how long I’d been lying on the frozen ground, but it was long enough for sleet to have melted in the smal of my back.

  I was shaking almost too badly to stand, unsteady on my legs as I tried to figure out why I had changed back from a wolf. Before now, my stints as a human had been during warmer days and had been merciful y brief. This was a frigid evening—maybe six or seven o’clock, judging from the sun glowing orange through the leafless tree line.

  I didn’t have time to wonder at the instability of my condition. I was trembling from the cold, but I didn’t feel even a hint of nausea in my stomach, or the twist of my skin that meant I was about to change into a wolf. I knew, with sinking certainty, that I was stuck in this body, at least for the moment. Which meant I needed to find shelter—I was stark naked, and I wasn’t about to wait for frostbite to set in. Too many extremities that I preferred not to lose.

  Wrapping my arms around myself, I took stock of my surroundings. Behind me, the lake reflected bril iant specks of light. I squinted into the dim forest ahead of me and could see the statue that overlooked the lake, and beyond the statue, the concrete benches. That meant I was within walking distance of the huge house I’d seen earlier.

  So now I had a destination. Hopeful y nobody was home.

  I didn’t see any cars in the driveway, so luck was with me so far.

  “Damn, damn, damn,” I muttered under my breath

  as I winced my way across the gravel to the back door. There were just enough nerves working in my bare feet for me to feel the stones cutting into the cold flesh. I healed quicker now than I had before, back when I was stil just Cole, but it didn’t make the initial bite of the stone any less painful.

  I tried the back door—unlocked. Truly the Man Upstairs was smiling down on me. I made a note to send a card. Pushing open the door, I stepped into a cluttered mudroom that smel ed like barbecue sauce. For a moment, I just stood there, shivering, briefly paralyzed by the memory of barbecue. My stomach—a lot flatter and harder than it had been the last time I’d been human—growled at me, and for a brief, brief moment, I thought about finding the kitchen and stealing food.

  The idea of wanting something that bad made my

  lips curve into a smile. And then my painful y cold feet reminded me why I was here. Clothing first. Then food. I headed out of the mudroom and into a dim hal way. The house was every bit as gargantuan as it had seemed from the outside and looked like some kind of spread in Better Homes and Gardens. Everything was hung on the wal s just so, in perfect threes and fives, perfectly aligned or charmingly asymmetrical. A spotlessly clean rug in a color that was probably cal ed

  “mauve” led me silently down the wood-floored hal way. Glancing behind me to make sure the coast was stil clear, I narrowly avoided tripping over a pricey-looking vase that held a bunch of artful y arranged dead branches. I wondered if real people actual y lived here. More pressingly, I wondered if anyone who wore my size lived here.

  I hesitated as the hal opened up. To my left, more dim hal way. To my right, a massive, dark staircase that looked like a murder scene out of a gothic horror movie. I wrestled briefly with logic and decided to go upstairs. If I were a rich guy in Minnesota, I’d have my bedroom upstairs. Because heat rises.

  The stairs led me to a hal way that was open on one side to the stairs below. My toes burned against the plush green carpet as feeling slowly returned to them. The pain was a good thing. It meant they stil had blood flow.

  “Don’t move.”

  A female voice halted me. It didn’t sound afraid, despite the fact that a naked guy was standing in the middle of her house, so I figured I would probably turn to find a rifle pointed at me. I was acutely aware of my heart beating normal y in my chest; God, I missed adrenaline.

  I turned around.

  It was a girl. She was pretty much drop-dead gorgeous in an eat-your-heart kind of way, al huge blue eyes partial y hidden behind a jagged fringe of blond hair. And a tilt to her shoulders like she knew it. When she swept her eyes up and down my body, I felt as if I’d been judged and found wanting.

  I tried a smile. “Hi. Sorry. I’m naked.”

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Isabel,” she said. “What are you doing in my house?”

  There wasn’t real y a right answer to that question. Below us, there was the sound of a door shutting, and Isabel and I both jerked to look down toward the noise. For a brief moment, my heart yammered in my chest and I was surprised to feel terror—to feel something after such a long stretch of nothing. I couldn’t move.

  “Oh my God!” A woman appeared at the bottom of the stairs, staring straight up at me through the railing of the balcony. Her eyes swiveled to Isabel. “Oh my God. What in—”

  I was going to be kil ed by two generations of beautiful women. While naked.

  “Mom,” Isabel snapped, interrupting. “Do you mind not staring? It’s total y perv.”

  Both her mother and I blinked at her.

  Isabel moved closer to me and leaned across the railing at her mother. “A little privacy, maybe?” she shouted down.

  This brought her mother back to life. She shouted back, with a voice growing ever higher, “Isabel Rosemary Culpeper, are you even going to tel me what a naked boy is doing in this house?”

  “What do you think?” Isabel replied. “What do you think I’m doing with a naked boy in this house? Didn’t Dr. Carrotnose warn you that I might act out if you kept ignoring me? Wel , here it is, Mom! Here’s
me acting out! That’s right, keep staring! I hope you’re liking it! I don’t know why you make us go to therapy if you aren’t even going to listen to what he has to say. Go on, punish me for your mistakes!”

  “Baby,” her mother said, in a much quieter voice.

  “But this—”

  “At least I’m not standing on some street corner sel ing myself!” Isabel screamed. She turned to me, and her face instantly softened. In a voice a mil ion times lighter, she said, “Kitten, I don’t want you to see me like this. Why don’t you go back to the room?”

  I was an actor in my own life.

  Down below, her mother rubbed a hand over her

  forehead and tried not to look in my direction. “Please, please just tel him to get some clothing on before your father gets home. In the meantime, I’m going to go have a drink. I don’t want to see him again.”

  As her mother turned around, Isabel grabbed my

  arm—somehow it shocked me to feel her hands on my skin—and tugged me down the hal and through one of the doors. It turned out to be a bathroom, al tiled in black and white, with a giant claw-footed bathtub taking up most of the space.

  Isabel shoved me into the room so hard that I nearly fel into the bathtub, and then she shut the door behind us.

  “What the hel are you doing human so early?” she demanded.

  “You know what I am?” I asked. Stupid question.

  “Please,” she said, and her voice oozed contempt in a way that threatened to turn me on. No one— no one—talked to me like that. “Either you’re one of Sam’s, or you’re a random naked pervert who smel s like dog.”

  “Sam? Beck,” I said.

  “Not Beck. Sam, now,” Isabel corrected. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’re naked, in my house, and you real y ought to be a wolf right now. Why the crap aren’t you a wolf right now? What’s your name?”

  For a single, crazy moment, I almost told her.

  • ISABEL •

  For a moment, his face flickered to someplace else, someplace uncertain, the first real expression he’d had on his face since I found him pretty much posing next to the balcony. And then the almost-smirk was back on the balcony. And then the almost-smirk was back on his face, and he said, “Cole.”

  Like it was a gift.

  I tossed it back at him. “Wel , why aren’t you a wolf right now, Cole?”

  “Because I wouldn’t have met you otherwise?” he suggested.

  “Nice try,” I said, but I felt a hard smile twist my face. I knew enough about flirting, out of habit, to recognize it in action. And he was a cocky bastard, too; rather than getting more self-conscious as we spoke, he reached up and held the shower rod behind him with both hands, stretching himself out rather beautiful y as he studied me.

  “Why did you lie to your mom?” Cole asked.

  “Would you have done that if I’d been a paunchy real estate broker turned werewolf?”

  “I doubt it. Kindness isn’t general y my thing.” What was my thing was the way that stretching his arms above his head bunched his shoulder muscles and tightened his chest. I tried to keep my eyes on the arrogant curl of his lips. “That said, we ought to get you some clothing.”

  His lips curved more. “Eventual y?”

  I smiled nastily at him. “Yeah, let’s get that freak show covered up.”

  He made a little whoo shape with his lips. “Harsh.”

  I shrugged. “Stay here and don’t hurt yourself. I’l be right back.”

  Shutting the bathroom door, I headed down the hal way to my brother’s old bedroom. I hesitated outside the door for just a moment, and then pushed it open.

  It had been long enough since he’d died that being in his room no longer felt intrusive. Plus, it didn’t real y look like his room anymore. My mother had packed up a lot of his stuff in boxes on the advice of her last therapist, then had left the boxes in his room on the advice of her current one. Al of his sports crap had been packed, as wel as his big, homemade speaker system. Once you took those two things away, there wasn’t anything left to say Jack.

  Moving into the dark room, I knocked my shin on the corner of one of the therapy boxes on my way to the floor lamp. I swore softly, clicked on the light, and for the first time contemplated what I was doing: digging through my dead brother’s stuff to find clothing for a total y swoonworthy but jerkish werewolf standing in my bathroom, after tel ing my mom that I’d been sleeping with him.

  Maybe she was right and I did need therapy.

  I twisted my way through the boxes and threw open the closet. A rush of Jack-smel came out—pretty gross, real y. Partial y washed jerseys and manshampoo and old shoes. But for a second, just for a second, it made me stand stil , staring at the dark shapes of the hanging clothing. Then I heard my mother, far away downstairs, drop something, and remembered that I needed to get Cole out of here before my father came home. Mom wouldn’t tel him. She was good like that. She didn’t like to see crap get broken any more than I did.

  I found a ratty sweatshirt, a T-shirt, and a decent pair of jeans. Satisfied, I turned around—right into Cole.

  I bit off another swearword, my heart thumping. I had to crane my head back a bit to see his face this close; he was pretty tal . The dim floor lamp cast his face in sharp relief, like a Rembrandt portrait.

  “You were taking a long time,” Cole said, taking a step back for politeness’ sake. “I came to see if you’d gone to get a gun.”

  I shoved the clothing at him. “You’l have to go commando.”

  “Is there any other way?” He tossed the shirt and sweater onto the bed and half turned to pul on the jeans. They hung a little loosely on him; I could see the lines of his hip bones casting shadows as they disappeared into the waist.

  I looked away quickly as he turned back around, but I knew he had seen me watching. I wanted to scratch the cocky lift of his eyebrows from his face. He reached for the T-shirt, and as it unfolded in his hands, I saw that it was Jack’s favorite Vikings T-shirt, the bottom right edge of it smeared with a bit of white from when he’d painted the garage last year. He used to wear the shirt for days at a time, until eventual y even he admitted it smel ed. I’d hated it.

  Cole stretched his arm above his head to put it on, and suddenly al I could think was that I couldn’t stand to see anyone but my brother wear that T-shirt. Unthinking, I grabbed a handful of the fabric and Cole froze, looking down at me, expression blank. Maybe a little puzzled.

  I tugged, indicating what I wanted, and stil with a vaguely curious expression, he released his fist, letting me pul the shirt from his hands. Once I had the shirt, I didn’t want to explain why I had taken it back, so I kissed him instead. It was easier kissing him, pressing him back up against the wal , trying out the shape of his smirk on my lips, than it was to sort out why Jack’s shirt in someone else’s hands made me feel so sharp and exposed inside.

  And he was a good kisser. I felt his flat stomach and ribs slide up against mine, even though his hands didn’t lift to touch me. This close, he smel ed like Sam had on the first night that I met him, al musky wolf and pine. There was a certain earnest hungriness to the way Cole pressed his mouth against mine that made me think there was more truth in him here, kissing me, than there was when he spoke.

  When I pul ed back, Cole stayed where he was, leaned back against the wal , fingers hooked in the pockets of his stil unzipped jeans, his head cocked to one side, just studying me. My heart was thumping in my chest, and my hands were trembling with the effort of not kissing him again, but he didn’t seem fazed. I could see how slow and soft his pulse was beating through the skin of his abdomen.

  The fact that he wasn’t as revved up as I was instantly infuriated me, and I took a step back, throwing Jack’s sweatshirt at him. He reached up to catch it a second after it bounced off his chest.

  “That bad?” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said, crossing my arms to keep them stil .

  “It was like you were try
ing to eat an apple.”

  His eyebrows spiked as if he could tel I was lying.

  “Rematch?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. I pressed a finger into one of my eyebrows. “I think it’s time for you to go.”

  I was afraid he was going to ask where he was supposed to go, but he just tugged on the sweatshirt and zipped up the jeans with an air of finality. “You’re probably right.”

  Even though I saw that the soles of his feet were cut up pretty bad, he didn’t ask for shoes and I didn’t offer them. The weight of not explaining myself to him was choking the words out of me, so I just led him downstairs and back toward the door he’d come in. I saw him hesitate, just a moment, as we passed by the door to the kitchen, and I remembered the feel of his ribs against mine. Part of me knew I should offer him something to eat, but most of me just wanted him gone as quickly as possible. Why was it so much easier to leave a dish out for the wolves?

  Probably because wolves didn’t have arrogant smirks.

  In the mudroom, I stopped by the door and crossed my arms again. “My dad shoots wolves,” I told him. “Just for the record. So you might want to keep out of the woods behind the house.”

  “I’l keep that in mind when I’m in the body of an animal with no higher thought,” Cole said. “Thanks for that.”

  “I live to please,” I said, throwing open the door. Sleet, coming in sideways from the dark night, dotted my arm.

  I expected a hangdog expression, or something else meant to elicit sympathy, but Cole just looked at me, a weird, firm smile on his face. Then he walked right out into the sleet, pul ing the door out of my hands to shut it behind him.

  After the door had closed, I stood there for a long moment, softly cursing under my breath, not knowing why I was letting it bother me. Then I went to the kitchen and got the first thing I could see—a bagged loaf of bread—and returned to the back door.