by SM Reine
“It’s the one that—” she began.
“Muscle memory!” he interrupted.
“You peeked.”
He looked wounded. “I did not.”
“You did too. I saw you.”
“I wouldn’t cheat. I need to know this stuff.” He glared at the snowy road like it was challenging him. “I’m going to be a doctor. Maybe a brain surgeon.”
“You can work on my brain whenever,” Rylie said loyally.
He flashed his lopsided grin again, but it faded quickly. Seth was a senior. Even though he was taking extra classes and had good grades, he hadn’t gotten any responses to his college applications. Rylie was only a junior, but she had been dutifully writing essays and applying for scholarships since she was fourteen, so she was pretty much guaranteed to go wherever she wanted.
“Studying isn’t going to do much good right now anyway,” Seth said. “I keep thinking about Branson.”
Rylie blinked. It had only been an hour, but she completely forgot about the body. “Why? What are you thinking?”
“A wild animal didn’t kill him. His hands and forearms weren’t even injured. Think of it like this—what do you do if someone jumps at you?” Seth asked. Rylie bared her teeth and gave a small growl. “Okay. What do normal people do if something jumps at them?”
“I’m normal,” she muttered sullenly.
Seth took a hand from the wheel to mimic shielding his face, arm up and palm out. “Your arm is your first line of defense. Or maybe your last. Anyway, I’ve seen people get attacked by dogs, and their arms get ripped up. Branson’s only injury was his throat. I’m thinking he was surprised.”
“Or he trusted his attacker,” Rylie said.
He gave her a surprised look. “Or that.”
They hit the edge of a neighborhood, and traffic made them slow down further. It never seemed like there were many people living in town until they all tried to get somewhere at the same time.
Eventually, they reached the high school. Seth parked in the empty lot at the back.
“So if it’s not a werewolf, what is it?” Rylie asked.
“I don’t know, but it won’t stick to one kill. We’ll watch for it.” He rolled his eyes. “Abel’s going to be psyched to have something to do.”
Rylie jumped out of the truck and slammed the door behind her. The cold air nipped her cheeks, and she hurried to the warmth of his side. “Should we go to school if something’s around? I mean, should you be, like… hunting?”
“Branson’s killer won’t be wandering around town. We’ll hunt all right, but not during the day.”
“What can I do to help?”
Seth took her hand and gazed at her for a long time. She noticed he was wearing a black plug in his pierced ear instead of the fang he used to have, and she wasn’t sure how long it had been since she saw it. The way he looked at her made it hard to think or breathe or move at all.
He lifted the back of his hand to her lips. “You’re amazing,” he whispered. Seth’s breath was warm on her skin, and her cheeks flamed with heat.
“Shut up,” she mumbled. “You know how much that embarrasses me.”
He laughed and pulled her against his body. Even with a half dozen layers of clothing between them, a thrill of excitement raced through her. She wasn’t used to having a boyfriend, much less someone like Seth. They were usually too busy to have fun, but when they did, it was better than she could have imagined.
He bent down to kiss her, and Rylie stretched up on her toes. Someone cleared their throat behind her.
Her thoughts went murderous and black. She couldn’t help but growl. “What?” she snapped, shooting a nasty look over her shoulder.
The dean of students waited by the fence in a bulky jacket and earmuffs. “I don’t think I need to remind you two about our policy on public displays of affection. Again.”
“Good thing we aren’t at school yet,” Seth said. Rylie felt like she had to straighten her clothes even though they hadn’t done anything.
“This is your third warning this week. Next time, it’s detention—separately. Get to class.”
Sometimes, Rylie wished she had eaten Dean Block on All Hallows’ Eve.
She got her knapsack out of the truck and stalked through the fence. The dean watched them go inside before shutting the gate behind them.
They trudged to the quad. The lonely tree was naked of leaves, and icicles hung off its highest branches. “I’ll see you at lunch,” Seth said. Dean Block was still watching them, so he squeezed her hand to say goodbye.
She was the last person to arrive in her English class, and all the students were whispering around a desk in the front. This was nothing new. Ever since Rylie and Seth started publicly dating, people whispered about them constantly. They were basically school celebrities.
But this time, nobody looked at her when she came in. The teacher didn’t even acknowledge Rylie as she took her seat. She shoved her knapsack under the chair and realized she still had the flashcards.
“Hypothalamus,” Rylie murmured, reading the one on top before flipping it over. Seth’s sharp, slanted handwriting said “body temperature, appetite, hormone signaling.” She bet that if her boyfriend did operate on her brain, he would find the werewolf crouched where the hypothalamus should be.
Maybe Rylie should have been the one skipping school to hunt for bad guys. The wolf gave her an amazing sense of smell, even as a human. She could probably track by scent.
But Seth was right. The killer wouldn’t just be wandering around.
The bell rang, and the teacher stood.
“Take your seats. We have a couple announcements this morning. First of all, the leadership committee wants everyone to know that the date of the Winter Ball has been changed from the sixteenth to the twenty-third. You can still buy tickets at the front office.”
Rylie’s stomach pitched. She’d been trying not to think about the dance since it was announced, but it was hard, considering that glitter-drenched blue posters had been plastered everywhere. The smaller rural schools were throwing it together. Hundreds of kids would be there—more people than there were at Rylie’s whole school, in fact.
Seth hadn’t asked her to go yet, but the change in date was bad. The new moon was the night of the twenty-third.
“Secondly, as you’ve already discovered, we have a new student today. Bekah, could you please stand?”
A girl rose from her desk at the front of the classroom.
Bekah turned to face everyone. She had a hooked nose, cascades of golden-brown curls, and a big smile with white teeth. A pendant shaped like a five pointed star dangled from a chain around her neck.
Shock jolted through Rylie. Bekah’s eyes were bright gold.
“Hi everyone. I’m Rebecca Riese. I just moved here from California, and I can’t wait to get to know you.”
She stared at Rylie in the back of the class while she spoke, as though there was nobody else in the room. Rylie knew with total certainty that Seth wouldn’t have to hunt for Isaiah Branson’s killer after all.
Bekah was a werewolf.
Three
Honey
Rylie’s fingertips itched. She looked down to see spots of blood oozing at the edges of her nails. Underneath, the hard points of knife-sharp claws were emerging.
She gasped and stuffed her hands into her lap.
Bekah’s mouth moved. She was still talking, using human lips to make human sounds, but Rylie couldn’t understand any of it. White noise filled her skull.
Now that she had seen Bekah’s eyes, her smell was overwhelming—snow, soil, pine, icy rivers, cold stone. Rylie knew that odor because it was hers, too. It was the smell of Gray Mountain, the place where she had been turned into a werewolf.
The wolf rose in her gut at the smell of a challenger. Rylie’s body seized, and she bowed her head against the strength of it.
She shouldn’t have been able to change. Not during the day. Not here.
&nbs
p; The teacher sorted papers at her lectern. The students were entranced by the allure of a new student. Nobody saw Rylie’s internal battle except Bekah, and her expression didn’t change. She wasn’t surprised to see Rylie in so much pain.
“I can’t wait to get to know everyone,” Bekah finished with a throaty giggle. Demon. Wolf. Murderer.
Rylie shoved her chair back so hard the desk fell over. The distance between class and the bathroom was a blur. She slammed the handicapped stall door shut, threw the latch, and slid down the wall to sit on cold tile.
What were the odds that one of those things would show up the morning after a farmer’s murder and have nothing to do with it? Rylie sucked at math, but she bet the odds were somewhere between “ridiculous” and “basically impossible.”
She clenched her hands in her hair and pressed her face against her knees.
Another female. A challenger. Competition for territory.
Rylie’s mind flooded with images of tearing out Bekah’s throat, just like the farmer’s had been. She could make it fast. It wouldn’t even be a fight. Then she would leave Bekah somewhere to tell other wolves that this was her home, and they needed to stay away.
“Stop it,” she hissed, but the harder she tried not to think about hurting Bekah, the clearer her visions became.
She had to do it. She couldn’t be driven off her land.
The claws curved over her fingertips now. She wouldn’t even have to change all the way to kill.
She clenched her fists. Her hands throbbed as the claws dug into her palms. What am I thinking?
“Seth,” she whispered into the empty bathroom, like saying his name would make him appear. It helped to imagine him watching. What would he think if she changed into a werewolf in the girl’s bathroom? What would he say about her murderous thoughts?
Rylie stuffed her hands into her pockets and hurried outside the building. The clouds blocked out the sun and turned everything gray.
She found Seth’s classroom and peeked her head in the window, scanning the desks until she saw him in the far corner. The class was darkened for a movie, and she could see the teacher talking on his cell phone in the hallway beyond.
Seth didn’t notice her waving through the glass. Rapping a claw on the window made several heads turn, but not his. A girl behind him recognized Rylie and kicked his chair.
He shot a glance at the teacher before hurrying to the door. She grabbed his arm and dragged him toward the truck.
“Whoa, slow down a minute. What’s wrong?” Seth asked.
“I found it,” she whispered.
“What? What did you find?”
“The killer.” She barely moved her lips when she spoke. Rylie’s hearing was incredible, so Bekah’s would be, too. She didn’t want the other werewolf to pick up what she was saying.
He looked down and saw her hand smearing blood on his coat. His eyes widened.
“Jesus, Rylie!” Seth dragged her behind a bush where they couldn’t be seen.
“It’s another werewolf. I got so angry, I couldn’t stop myself—and oh my God, I started changing. I managed to wait until I was alone, but—”
He grabbed her wrists. “Okay, stop. Take a deep breath. You have to calm down.”
“How am I supposed to calm down? There’s another werewolf, Seth!”
“Shh,” he said. “Not so loud.”
She dropped her voice to a whisper. “That must have been who killed the farmer. That’s why it happened so close to my house. I’m going to kill her. I have to do it.”
“Rylie!” Seth shook her by the shoulders, and she cut off. “Listen to me. You don’t want to kill anyone. That’s the wolf talking. We’ve been over this before—you have to stay in charge or it’s going to rule you. Don’t let it.” Rylie nodded, eyes blurred with tears. “Deep breath.”
It took three tries, but she managed to fill her lungs and let it out slowly. Seth watched her closely until she felt her face relax and her shoulders slump.
Her fingertips burned. When she looked down, the claws were gone. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “I could have changed in class and killed everyone.” There were no words to comfort her, so he hugged her, and she squeezed back, careful not to hold too tightly. “How did you get so good at this?”
Seth gave a shrug like it was no big deal, but she could tell the answer bothered him. He dropped his gaze. “Abel talked like that when he was changing. He was hung up on killing everyone who pissed him off.” He switched subjects. “Okay, who is it?”
“It’s the new student. We met this morning.”
“You mean Levi Riese?”
“Who’s Levi?” Rylie asked.
“The new student. I guess Coach invited him to join the football team.”
Rylie didn’t like the sound of that at all. “When you and your family were hunting werewolves, how did you find them? Did they hang out on their own like me, or do they come in packs?”
“Families,” Seth said, releasing her hands. “It’s usually families, not packs. Like two or three of them at a time. A dad and son, cousins… or siblings.”
“The werewolf I saw isn’t Levi. Her name is Bekah—Bekah Riese. She has eyes like mine.” Rylie gnawed on her bottom lip. “I bet they’re both werewolves. What are we going to do?”
A voice spoke from behind them. “You’re going back to class.”
Rylie braced herself before turning, expecting Dean Block to be waiting with a detention slip.
She wasn’t prepared to see Bekah Riese with all her honey curls and a sparkling smile.
Her hackles lifted. Seth stepped in front of her.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“That’s a pretty deep question for someone I just met. What do I want? What does everyone want? I bet it’s the same thing.” Bekah faltered under his hard stare. Her smile faded. “Seriously, you both need to get back to class. I told the teacher Rylie is sick, but she’ll come looking if we don’t get back soon.”
“Why would you lie for her? You don’t even know anything about us,” Seth said.
“I know a lot more than you think.”
The wind shifted, wafting Bekah’s smell toward her. Rylie tried to move forward, but Seth blocked her with his body. He shifted so that she couldn’t even see Bekah.
He lowered his voice. “Did you kill him?”
Rylie would have given anything to see Bekah’s face in that moment. When the other girl spoke, she sounded genuinely confused by the question. “What are you talking about?”
She was pretending. She had to be.
“You know what I mean,” he said.
“I’m going back now. You guys should, too,” Bekah said.
Her footsteps moved away from them, crunching in the snow. Rylie sagged against Seth’s back, wrapping her arms around his stomach, but he didn’t face her until Bekah was gone. “She’s right,” he said.
“Are you serious? You expect me to go to class and ignore the werewolf in the front row?”
“No.” Seth glanced over his shoulder, like he was checking for Bekah. His hearing wasn’t as good as Rylie’s. She had already heard the door to the building open and shut again. “But you can’t ditch. The dean’s already out to get us. Can you do that? Can you get through class?”
Rylie bit her lip, but nodded. “If I have to.”
“Get through today. That’s all.” He gripped her hand hard. “You can do it.”
It was nice one of them was so confident.
Four
Maidenhair
Bekah wasn’t in any of Rylie’s other classes, but she still spent the afternoon glancing over her shoulder and around corners like she expected the other werewolf to jump out.
“Dude, what’s wrong with you?” Tate asked.
Rylie was slouched over her desk and bouncing her knee at a rate of about a million times a second. The teacher hadn’t bothered telling her to put down her hood.
Tate’s family was rich and important, so p
eople didn’t call him out on his misbehaviors, and his friendship gave Rylie some immunity. But Tate was a special kind of untouchable. In fact, he had been arrested twice since Halloween and still hadn’t seen a judge.
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“You look freaked out. What did you take?”
Rylie made herself stop joggling her leg. “Nothing.”
“Then that’s your problem for sure,” he said wisely. She laughed. It was the first time she had laughed all day, and it made the knot in her chest loosen a little. “Are you coming over tomorrow? I’ve got the new Dark Crash Exodus game. The guys and me are going to stay up until we beat it.”
“You’re doing multiplayer? In person?”
“We can’t share snacks over the internet.” Which was Tate’s way of saying “we’re going to try out my new gravity bong.” Rylie pulled a face. Her nose was too sensitive for that.
“I have stuff to do at the ranch. Sorry.”
But Rylie didn’t go home at the end of the day. She had appointments with a therapist Fridays after school—no exceptions. The visits became required after she tried to tell her aunt she was a werewolf. She skipped out on the first couple of sessions, but Gwyn put a stop to that by threatening to kick her out of the house, and her attendance had been perfect since.
She normally walked to therapy, but the snow was deep, so Seth dropped her off. Riding with him wasn’t as nice as usual. He was too distracted to even kiss her goodbye.
Janice Brown was a frail woman with gray hair to her waist, a love of gardening, and an obsession with chess. She had the board ready when Rylie showed up. “Do you want to be white or black this time?”
“Black,” Rylie said. She always asked to be black. The pieces were prettier.
“How was school?”
“Fine.”
Rylie sat on a worn yellow stool. Once Janice finished watering her ferns, she took the other seat. “This time of year is hard on the plants. The air is so dry.” She moved her pawn, and Rylie moved her knight. “It would help my plants to get more attention throughout the week.”
