Maggie Stiefvater - [Wolves of Mercy Falls 02]

by Maggie Stiefvater

  My face in the bathroom mirror opposite me looked surprised, eyebrows hiked up toward my hairline, the black liner around my eyes making them look even bigger and rounder than they real y were.

  “This is the good stuff! You guys were having sex?”

  “No, no. He was just sleeping in my bed. They’re completely overreacting.”

  “Oh, of course they are,” I said. “Everyone’s parents are cool with their daughters sharing bed space with their boyfriends. I know my parents would love it. So, what, they kept you from going to school?

  That seems…”

  “No, that’s because I was in the hospital,” Grace said. “I got a fever, and again they overreacted and took me to the hospital instead of giving me Tylenol. I think they just wanted a good reason to take me in the opposite direction from Sam. Anyway, it took forever, of course, like it always does in a hospital, and I didn’t get home until late. So I just woke up, basical y.”

  For some reason my thoughts immediately ran to

  Grace looking up at Mr. Grant and asking to be excused for her headache. “What’s wrong with you?

  What did the doctors say?”

  “Virus, or something. It was just a fever,” Grace said, so fast that I barely had time to get out my questions. It didn’t sound like she believed herself. The bathroom door came open slightly behind me

  and I heard, “Isabel, I know you’re in there.” Ms. McKay, my English teacher. “If you keep skipping lunch, I’m going to have to tel your parents. Just saying. Class is in ten minutes.”

  The door swung shut once more.

  Grace said, “Are you not eating again?”

  I said, “Shouldn’t you be more worried about your problems at the moment?”

  • COLE •

  After Sam had disappeared to “work,” whatever that was, I poured myself a glass of milk and wandered back into the living room to look through some drawers. In my experience, drawers and backpacks were great ways to get to know a person. The end tables in the living room only offered up remote controls and PlayStation controls, so I headed into the office I’d passed on the way from my bedroom.

  It was a way better jackpot. The desk was stuffed with papers, and the computer wasn’t password protected. The room was practical y made for ransacking, situated on the corner of the house with windows on two wal s, one pair of them facing the street, so I would have plenty of warning if Sam returned. I set my glass of milk down next to the mouse pad (someone had drawn doodles al over the pad with a Sharpie, including a sketch of a very large-breasted girl in a schoolgirl outfit) and made myself comfortable in the chair. The office was like the rest of the house

  —homey and masculine and comfortable.

  On top of the desk, there were some bil s, al addressed to Beck and al marked paid by automatic withdrawal. Bil s were not interesting. A brown leather day planner sat next to the keyboard. Day planners were not interesting, either. I opened a drawer instead. A bunch of software programs, mostly utilitarian stuff, but a handful of games as wel . Also not interesting. I went for the bottom drawer and was rewarded by a swirl of dust, which is what people use to cover their best secrets. Then, a brown envelope labeled sam. Now we were getting somewhere. I pul ed out the first sheet. Adoption paperwork.

  Here we go.

  I shook the contents of the envelope on the desk, reaching in to pul out some of the smal er sheets that stayed inside. Birth certificate: Samuel Kerr Roth, showing that he was about a year younger than me. A photograph of Sam, knobby and smal but stil bearing the same flop of dark hair and heavy-lidded eyes I’d noticed the night before. His expression was complicated. Last night, the freakish wolf-yel ow of his eyes had caught my attention; when I pul ed the photo closer, I saw that baby Sam had the same yel ow irises. So they weren’t colored contacts. Somehow that made me feel slightly friendlier toward him. I put down the photo. Beneath it was a sheaf of browning newspaper clippings. My eyes scanned the stories. Gregory and Annette Roth, a Duluth couple, were charged last Monday with the attempted murder of their seven-year-old son. Authorities have placed their child (not named here to protect identity) into state custody. His fate wil be decided after the Roths’ trial. The Roths al egedly held their son in a bathtub and cut his wrists with a razor. Shortly after the act, Annette Roth confessed to the next-door neighbor, saying that her son was taking too long to die. Both she and Gregory Roth told the police that their son was possessed by the devil.

  I felt a thick, disgusted glob in the back of my throat that wouldn’t go away when I swal owed. I was having a hard time not thinking of Victor’s little brother, who was eight now. I flipped back to the photo of Sam holding Beck’s hand and looked once more at Sam, his half-closed eyes staring at some point past the camera, vacant. The position of his smal hand in Beck’s turned his wrist toward the camera, clearly showing the recent red-brown slash across it.

  A little voice in my head said And you feel sorry for yourself.

  I shoved the newspaper clippings and the

  photograph back into the envelope so that I didn’t have to look at them, and looked at the sheaf of paperwork underneath instead. It was trust paperwork, naming Sam as the beneficiary of the trust—which included the house—and the contents of a checking account and a savings account, both bearing Beck’s and Sam’s names.

  Pretty heavy stuff. I wondered if Sam knew that he basical y owned the place. Underneath the paperwork was another black day planner. Flipping through it, I saw journal entries with the efficient, backward-slanting writing of a left-hander. I turned to the first page: “If you’re reading this, I’m either a wolf for good, or you’re Ulrik and you should get the hell out of my stuff.”

  I jerked when the phone rang.

  I watched it ring twice, and then I picked it up. I answered, “Da.”

  “Is this Cole?”

  My spirits inexplicably rose. “Depends. Is this my mother?”

  Isabel’s voice was sharp over the phone. “I wasn’t aware you had one. Does Sam know that you’re picking up the phone now?”

  “Were you cal ing for him?”

  A pause.

  “And is that your number on the cal er ID?”

  “Yeah,” said Isabel. “Don’t cal it, though. What are you doing? You’re stil you?”

  “For the moment. I’m looking through Beck’s stuff,”

  I said, shoving the SAM envelope and its contents back in the drawer.

  “Are you kidding me?” Isabel asked. She

  answered her own question. “No, you’re not.” Another pause. “What did you find?”

  “Come and look.”

  “I’m at school.”

  “Talking on the phone?”

  Isabel considered. “I’m in the bathroom trying to work up enthusiasm for my next class. Tel me what you found. Some il -gotten knowledge wil cheer me up.”

  “Sam’s adoption papers. And some newspaper clippings about how his parents tried to kil him. Also, I found a real y bad sketch of a woman wearing a schoolgirl outfit. It’s definitely worth seeing.”

  “Why are you talking to me?”

  I thought I knew what she meant, but I said,

  “Because you cal ed me.”

  “Is it because you just want to sleep with me?

  Because I’m not sleeping with you. Nothing personal. But I’m just not. I’m saving myself and al that. So if that’s why you want to talk to me, you can hang up now.

  ”

  I didn’t hang up. I wasn’t sure if that answered her question.

  “Are you stil there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Wel , are you going to actual y answer my question?”

  I pushed my empty milk glass back and forth.

  “I just want someone to talk to,” I said. “I like talking to you. I don’t have a better answer than that.”

  “Talking isn’t real y what we were doing either time we saw each other,” she said.

  “We talked,” I in
sisted. “I told you about my Mustang. That was a very deep, personal conversation about something very close to my heart.”

  “Your car.” Isabel sounded unconvinced. She paused, then final y said, “You want to talk? Fine. Talk. Tel me something you’ve never told anybody else.”

  I thought for a moment. “Turtles have the secondlargest brains of any animal on the planet.”

  It took Isabel only a second to process this. “No, they don’t.”

  “I know. That’s why I’ve never told anybody that before.”

  There was a sound on the other side like she was either trying not to laugh or having an asthma attack.

  “Tel me something about you that you’ve never told anybody else.”

  “If I do, wil you do the same?”

  She sounded skeptical. “Yeah.”

  I traced the outline of the Sharpie schoolgirl on the mouse pad, thinking. Talking on a telephone was like talking with your eyes closed. It made you braver and more honest, because it was like talking to yourself. It was why I’d always sung my new songs with my eyes closed. I didn’t want to see what the audience thought of them until I was done. Final y, I said, “I’ve been trying not to be my father my entire life. Not because he’s so horrible, but because he’s so impressive. Anything

  — anything I do can’t possibly compare.”

  Isabel was silent. Maybe waiting to see if I was going to say more. “What does your father do?”

  “I want to hear what you’ve never told anyone.”

  “No, you have to talk first. You wanted to talk. It means you say something, and I respond, and you talk back again. It’s one of the human race’s most shining achievements. It’s cal ed a conversation.”

  I was beginning to regret this particular one. “He’s a scientist.”

  “A rocket scientist?”

  “A mad scientist,” I said. “A very good one. But real y, I don’t want to have any more of this conversation until a much later date. Like possibly after my death. Now can I hear yours?”

  Isabel took a breath, loud enough for me to hear it over the phone. “My brother died.”

  The words had a ring of familiarity to them. Like I’d heard them before, in her voice, though I couldn’t imagine when. After I finished thinking that, I said,

  “You’ve told someone that before.”

  “I never told anyone before that it was my fault, because everybody already thought he was dead by the time he actual y died,” Isabel said.

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Nothing makes any sense anymore. Like, why am

  I talking to you? Why am I tel ing you this when you don’t care?”

  This question, at least, I knew the answer to. “But that’s why you’re tel ing me.” I knew it was true. If we’d had the opportunity to deliver our confessions to anyone who actual y cared about their contents, there was no way either of us would’ve opened our mouths. Sharing revelations is easier when it doesn’t matter. She was quiet. I heard other girls’ voices in the background, high, wordless streams of conversation, fol owed by the hiss of running water, and then silence again. “Okay,” she said.

  “Okay, what?” I asked.

  “Okay, maybe you can cal me. Sometime. Now you have my number.”

  I didn’t even have time to say bye before she hung up.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  • SAM •

  I didn’t know where my girlfriend was, my phone battery had died, I was living in a house with a possibly insane new werewolf who I sort of suspected was suicidal or homicidal, and I was miles away from al of it, counting the spines of books. Somewhere out there, my world was slowly spinning out of orbit, and here I was in a beautiful y ordinary splash of sunlight, writing The Secret Life of Bees (3/PB) on a yel ow legal pad labeled INVENTORY.

  “We should be getting goodies in today.” Karyn, the shop owner, came in from the back room, her voice preceding her. “When the UPS man comes. Here.”

  I turned and found that she was holding a styrofoam cup at me.

  “What’s this for?” I asked.

  “Good behavior. It’s green tea. Is that right?”

  I nodded appreciatively. I had always liked Karyn, from the moment I met her. She was in her fifties, with short, choppy hair that had gone entirely white, but her face—her eyes, especial y—was youthful underneath stil -dark eyebrows. She hid an iron core behind a pleasant, efficient smile, and I could see how the best parts of what was inside her were written on her outside. I liked to think that she’d hired me because I was the same way.

  “Thanks,” I said, taking a sip. The way I could feel the hot liquid’s journey al the way down my throat and into my stomach reminded me that I hadn’t eaten yet. I’d gotten too used to my morning cereal with Grace. I tilted the legal pad toward Karyn so she could see what progress I’d made.

  “Nice. Find anything good?”

  I pointed to the stack of misplaced books that sat on the floor behind me.

  “That’s wonderful.” Peeling the lid off her own coffee cup, she made a face and then blew steam across the top of the liquid. She regarded me. “Are you excited about Sunday?”

  I was clueless, and I was sure my face reflected it. I waited for my brain to present an answer, but when it didn’t, I echoed, “Sunday?”

  “Studio?” she said. “With Grace?”

  “You know about that?”

  Without putting her coffee down first, Karyn awkwardly picked up half the stack of misplaced books and said, “Grace cal ed me to make sure it wasn’t a day you were working.”

  Of course she had. Grace wouldn’t have

  scheduled an appointment for me without making sure that everything was sorted out beforehand. I felt a pang somewhere in my stomach, the miserable twist of missing her. “I don’t know if we’re stil on for that.” I hesitated as Karyn’s eyebrow raised, waiting for me to say more. And then I told her the details I hadn’t told Isabel the night before—because Karyn would care, and Isabel wouldn’t have. “Her parents found me in her room after curfew.” I felt my cheeks warm. “She was sick and cried out, which was why they came in to check on her, and they made me leave. I don’t know how she is. I don’t even know if they’l let me see her again.”

  Karyn didn’t answer straightaway, which was one of the things I liked about her. She didn’t automatical y spit out It’ll be okay until she was sure that was the right answer. “Sam, why didn’t you tel me you couldn’t come in to work today? I would’ve given you the day off.”

  I said, helplessly, “Inventory.”

  “Inventory could have waited. We’re doing

  inventory because it’s March and it’s freezing and no one is coming in,” Karyn said. She considered for a few more minutes, sipping her coffee and wrinkling her nose as she did. “First of al , they’re not going to keep you from seeing her again. You’re practical y adults, and, anyway, they have to know that Grace couldn’t do better than you. Second of al , she probably just has the flu. What was wrong with her?”

  “Fever,” I said, and I was surprised at how quiet my voice came out.

  Karyn watched me closely. “I know you’re worried, but lots of people get fevers, Sam.”

  I said softly, “I had meningitis. Bacterial meningitis.

  ”

  I hadn’t said it out loud before now, and now that I had, it was almost cathartic, as if acknowledging my fears that Grace’s fever might be something more dangerous than a common cold made them more manageable.

  “How long ago?”

  I rounded to the nearest holiday. “Christmastime.”

  “Oh, it wouldn’t be contagious from then,” she said. “I don’t think meningitis is one of those diseases that you can catch months later. How is she feeling today?”

  “Her phone went to voicemail this morning,” I said, trying not to sound too sorry for myself. “They were real y angry last night. I think they’ve probably taken her phone.”

  Karyn
made a face. “They’l get over it. Try to see it from their point of view.”

  She was stil shifting back and forth with the books to keep them from fal ing, so I set down my green tea and took them from her. “I can see it from their point of view. That’s the problem.” I walked over to the biography section to shelve a misplaced biography of Princess Diana. “If I were them, I’d be furious. They think I’m some bastard boy who has successful y worked his way into their daughter’s pants and wil shortly be on his way out of her life.”

  She laughed. “I’m sorry. I know it’s not funny to you.

  ”

  I said, sounding rather grimmer than I meant to, “It wil be hilarious to me one day, when we’re married and only have to see them at Christmas.”

  “You do know that most boys don’t talk like that,”

  Karyn said. Taking the inventory list, she headed behind the counter, setting her coffee next to the cash register. “You know how I got Drew to propose to me?

  A stun gun, some alcohol, and the Home Shopping Network.” She looked at me until I smiled at her line.

  “What does Geoffrey think of al this?”

  It took me too long to realize that she was talking about Beck; I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard his first name said out loud. And the realization that I was going to have to lie hit me right afterward. “He doesn’t know yet. He’s out of town.” My words tumbled out too fast, with me too much in a hurry to get the lie over with. I turned toward the shelf so that she wouldn’t see the way my face looked.

  “Oh, that’s right. I forgot about his Florida clients,”

  Karyn said, and I blinked at the shelf in front of me, surprised at Beck’s guile. “Sam, I’m going to open a Florida bookstore for the winter. I think Geoffrey has the right idea. Minnesota in March is just not a good idea.”

  I had no idea what story Beck had ever told Karyn to convince her that he was in Florida for the winter, but I was fairly impressed, as Karyn didn’t strike me as gul ible. But of course he must’ve told her something

  —he had spent enough time in here as both a customer and, later, when I got my first job here and before I got my license, as my chauffeur. Karyn had to have noticed his absence in the winter. I was even more impressed by the easy way that she said his first name. She’d known him wel enough for Geoffrey to fal natural y from her lips, but not wel enough to know that everyone who loved him cal ed him by his last name. I realized that there had been a long pause, and that Karyn was stil watching me.