Wolf's Bane

by Kelley Armstrong

  “What? Who?”

  The girl puts a hand behind her friend’s neck and kisses her. The guys nearby break out in hoots and cheers, and even her would-be suitor eases back with, “Hell, if you’d told me that, I’d have said bring her along.”

  There’s a round of laughter.

  Holly shakes her head, and we break from line to find a table.

  “Why do I feel like I’ve stumbled into a bad teen sex comedy?” I mutter.

  “Better than a bad teen horror movie,” Holly says.

  “True enough. I just hope the camp supplies condoms.”

  “They covered that in the orientation. They’re with the bandages, insect repellent and other first aid supplies.”

  “Excellent.”

  From the sounds of it, whatever’s going on with the girls is heating up, and the ring around them grows as others walk over to watch and yell encouragement.

  “Not my idea of breakfast entertainment,” I say. “Dinner theater, maybe, but it’s too early for that shit.”

  Holly laughs. “Agreed. Want to see if we can sneak outside to eat?”

  I do.

  * * *

  On the way out, I spot Logan, but he’s with Allan on the other side of the buffet table fracas. I catch his eye just long enough to wave. Then I follow Holly out. No one comes after us, and we eat at a picnic table outside.

  I want to get to know Holly better, so I ask questions. I don’t get much. She said earlier that she has the most boring, happy family imaginable, and she sticks to that. Her family is great, very close and loving. She’s just an average girl with an average life. Nothing else to say, really.

  That could be true but . . . I feel as if she’s dodging and deflecting, and that stings a little. I’m not asking for her life story. I’m not trying to intrude. I’m just reaching out, showing interest because I am interested, but a door has been slammed, in the nicest, politest way.

  So we talk about the Sabrinas. If I’m hoping for insight into Holly and her life that way, I don’t get it. Maybe there’s nothing to tell. Or maybe I haven’t earned it yet. I accept that.

  After breakfast, other campers wander outside. Apparently, scheduled activities for the morning have been canceled while the counselors call an emergency staff meeting to discuss behavior issues. To me, that sounds a whole lot more like the prison guards retreating to a locked room and letting the inmates run wild until the warden shows up. They’re waiting for Paige.

  Despite the counselors retreating, it’s a quiet morning. Allan comes out around ten and says Logan’s in his room, talking to Mason, and most of the campers are holed up organizing a party, judging by what he overheard.

  It’s nearly eleven when I go inside to hunt down a midmorning snack. Holly says they put out bowls of granola bars and fruit for us to graze on, and I am in serious need of grazing.

  I’m looking for the bowls when I catch a familiar scent. I turn to see Elijah poised just inside the doorway.

  “Hey,” I say, heading over to him. “I’m snack-hunting right now, but you and I need to chat.”

  He backs up fast, his hands rising to ward me off.

  I stop short. “What the hell’s that for? Do I look like I’m running over to throw myself on you?”

  “No, no.”

  My annoyance from earlier surges. “I didn’t fail to notice you running from me this morning, Elijah. I was turning to say hello. That’s it. Say hello and let you know I planned to eat breakfast with Holly. I’m not a leech. I don’t cling to real boyfriends, let alone fake ones.”

  “Yeah . . . about that . . .” He inhales, not meeting my eyes. “I don’t think the girlfriend stuff is a good idea.”

  My heart stutters, and I have to remind myself I wasn’t really dating Elijah. Don’t take this personally. It was a relationship of convenience, and if it’s no longer convenient for one party, that’s fine. Even if it doesn’t feel fine.

  “You’re great, Kate,” he begins, “but—”

  “Whoa!” I lift my hands. “You’re my fake boyfriend. You don’t need to dump me for real. You’ve changed your mind. That’s cool. Done. We are no longer a pretend couple. Now, I really do need to talk to you. Help me find a snack and—”

  “No,” he cuts in. “I . . . It’s not just the dating thing. I . . . I don’t think any of this is a good idea. I’m sorry.”

  He turns and strides into the hall. I stand there, stunned. Then I jog after him, staying well back, so it’s clear I’m not chasing him.

  “Elijah,” I call. “I need to talk to you. It has nothing to do with us.”

  He shakes his head and breaks into a lope.

  “Elijah!” I call.

  “Take a hint,” a voice says behind me, and I turn to see a counselor. Behind her, the others stream into the dining hall as if their meeting is done.

  “You got dumped,” she says. “Deal with it. Don’t humiliate yourself by chasing him.”

  “No, I—” I blink hard, forcing myself to change mental gears. “When is Paige coming?”

  “That’s Ms. Winterbourne to you.”

  “Paige is a family friend.” I force a smile, trying to sound casual.

  “Well, aren’t you special.”

  I swallow a retort and ask, calmly, “When is Ms. Winterbourne arriving?”

  “She’s not.” The counselor starts walking off. “Her kid woke up puking sick, and apparently, he needs his mommy. She’s coming tomorrow.”

  “Wait.” I jog after her. “I really need to speak to her. Can I use my cell? I’ll skip my evening call.”

  “Will you?” She turns to me. “You might be special where you come from, Miss Werewolf Princess, but to me, you’re nothing but a spoiled little bitch-dog. One who needs to be taught a lesson.”

  I stare at her. Just stare as she wheels and swans off to join the others.

  Okay, something is definitely wrong here, and it’s getting worse.

  The whole situation is getting worse, and Paige isn’t coming.

  I need to find Logan.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Logan

  After I was attacked, the rest of the night passed without incident. I rigged up a makeshift alarm for the door to alert us to entry. Mason looked at it, snorted, and shoved the dresser in front of the door, instead. Even with that, I don’t think either of us slept. I rest until a bell signals breakfast, and then I ask Mason whether he’s eating, but he only rolls over and grunts. As soon as I leave, though, I hear the dresser being shoved back in front of the door.

  Allan’s also heading for breakfast, so we fall in step together. I tell him a bit about what happened last night. We’re still talking as we join the line for the breakfast buffet, and it takes a couple of minutes to realize something’s happening up ahead, a commotion that has guys gathering like they do when a fight breaks out. I stiffen, ready to leave. Until Paige arrives, I’ll force myself to retreat from any situation that looks as if it could erupt in violence.

  I hear catcalls and whoops, which don’t sound like audience reactions to a fight. I ask Allan, who only shrugs and says, “I don’t even want to know what it is. I’m starting to feel like I’m living in a zoo. Except those who are actually part animal aren’t the ones acting like it.” He pauses. “That didn’t come out right. I don’t mean you’re less human.” Another pause. “How do you guys think of it?”

  “In the Pack, we do consider ourselves part wolf and part human. Just as you might say you inherited certain characteristics from your mother and certain ones from your father. That doesn’t make you two people. It’s a seamless blending.”

  I realize I’ve switched into lecture mode and scoop up a forkful of bacon as I say, “The short version is that we’d be insulted if you said we were subhuman, but not if you call us part human. To us, the wolf doesn’t negate the human.”

  “Makes sense. Oh, there’s Kate and Holly. Looks like they’ve got their food, and they’re ducking whatever’s going on.”

&nb
sp; I catch my sister’s eye, and I’m going to ask what’s happening, but she only smiles and waves and then continues for the door. She’s obviously heading outdoors to enjoy breakfast with Holly, so I won’t interfere. My sister never had a wide circle of friends, but in middle school, she’d had no end of girls wanting to befriend her, and she’d had a decent group of pals. In high school, that slowly constricted. I know my sister misses that female friendship, and I’m glad to see her hanging out with Holly.

  After breakfast, the staff disappears into a meeting, and a bunch of the campers do, too, planning some kind of party.

  While the counselors are away, the campers will play.

  The buffet is still out. I decide to take food for Mason, and Allan decides that’s the point at which we part company.

  “I’m sure he’s secretly a great guy,” Allan says.

  “No, he’s not. But he should still eat.”

  Allan smiles and shakes his head. “You’ll make a great dad someday. However, not being nearly so charitable, I’ll skip the company of the brooding vamp and go find Holly and Kate.”

  I take the food to Mason and then immediately wish I hadn’t. I could have foreseen that, couldn’t I? While I’d love to believe he’ll accept the gesture for what it is—simple consideration—if asked to predict his response, I’d have said he’d see the food as a bribe or a solicitation for friendship . . . or a solicitation for more than friendship, the werewolf equivalent of bringing him flowers. Admittedly, had I predicted the last one, I wouldn’t have brought it.

  Last night, our attackers said Mason is gay. That doesn’t jibe with his seemingly homophobic comments from earlier, and I suppose that could mean those guys were wrong. However, Mason didn’t argue the point, either. Does that mean his comments weren’t homophobic but rather like a female roommate warning me about sneaking into her bed in the middle of the night?

  I don’t care what Mason is. I could just do with a little less of him acting as if every friendly word and gesture is a come-on. It’s exhausting. I wasn’t lying last night. My sexual orientation remains a mystery even to me. Maybe that suggests I’m bisexual. Maybe it just puts me somewhere on the spectrum, and I won’t know which way I lean until I have an actual romantic encounter, and I’m in no rush to do that. For me, it isn’t a question urgently requiring an answer, and I don’t appreciate being grilled on it by a near stranger.

  So Mason hints that I’m bringing him flowers, and I ignore him. That seems the best defense. I leave the food, and I grab a book and plunk onto my bed—only because I don’t want to walk out and seem like he was right and I’m fleeing in embarrassment. I read for the next hour. He eats the food and then plugs in his earbuds.

  After an hour, I head out, planning to join Kate and the others. I decide to grab snacks from the dining hall first, and I’m heading for the stairs when I see Elijah. He glances over his shoulder, as if for an escape route. Escaping me? Afraid of me? I’m fine with that—it just surprises me.

  At school, I’m the quiet, studious kid who never makes waves, never causes trouble, certainly doesn’t scare anyone. Even if I have the physique to fight, no one has any reason to start one with me. In the last twenty-four hours, I’ve fought Mason and those guys last night, and I won easily. I threatened Elijah, and now he’s obviously trying to avoid an encounter. Here, I am someone new. Here, I am a guy you don’t cross.

  Here, I am Clayton Danvers’s son.

  Even as I recoil from the thought, a frisson of satisfaction runs through me.

  Hell, yeah, I’m Clay Danvers’s kid.

  What, no, no. That’s Kate, and she can keep it. I’m the thoughtful one, the careful one. The brains. Not the brawn.

  Except Kate has her own brains, and I have my own brawn.

  Dad has a freaking PhD. He is the brains and the brawn.

  Yet Dad is not the calm and reasonable one. He’s the homing missile, the smart weapon, but a weapon nonetheless, and I’m . . .

  I’m standing here, trapped in the web of my anxieties, while Elijah is about to breathe a sigh of relief and retreat.

  I walk toward him, on an angle that means his only escape route is straight through a gaggle of the popular girls. The same girls he’s apparently avoiding.

  Is he really avoiding them? Or did he use that as an excuse to get close to my sister?

  I saw how he looked at her yesterday. Kate isn’t some random girl he asked to help him out. He’s interested, and she’s oblivious to that, just happy to hang out with a cute guy who also happens to be a werewolf.

  Seeing himself cornered, Elijah plasters on a fake smile. “Hey . . . you. Good morning.”

  “We need to talk.”

  “Uh, sure. Later, though. Right now—”

  “Don’t worry. It isn’t about Kate. We need to talk about what’s going on, your theory. Wait here while I grab some fruit.”

  As I walk away, one of the girls giggles and says to Elijah, “Hey, you? Forgot his name, didn’t you?”

  “Nah, I know it,” Elijah says. “Can’t forget it—it was also my brother’s. Which is awkward.”

  I slow as I listen.

  “It was your brother’s?” the girl says. “Your brother’s dead? I’m so sorry. That guy is such a jerk.”

  “For daring to have the same name?” another girl says. “Don’t be stupid. Elijah, I’m so sorry to hear that, though. What happened to your brother?”

  “Uh . . .” Elijah seems to be struggling for a polite way to say none of your business. Instead, he says, “He fell in with a bad crowd, and it got him killed.”

  “A gang?” one girl says breathlessly.

  Another girl’s voice rises as she says, “Oh my gawd, did you actually say that?”

  Elijah laughs softly. “It actually kinda was a gang. Now, if you will excuse me, ladies, I’m going to duck out before he comes back.”

  They cluck sympathetically as he flees. I don’t pursue. I’m standing at the table, still littered with the remains of breakfast, looking more like an abandoned pig’s trough than a buffet. My mind whirs as I stand with my hand poised over an apple.

  I know it. Can’t forget it—it was also my brother’s.

  Fell in with a bad crowd, and it got him killed.

  It actually kinda was a gang.

  I turn to see Elijah taking off at a lope. He glances sideways down the hall, and his profile . . .

  The girls notice me watching and fan out, as if to block him from my view. I still see him, though, in my mind. That profile. That face.

  I knew I’d seen it before. Now the answer hits with a rush that sets my heart pounding, my brain shouting that I’m being silly. Worse than silly. I’m being racist, seeing a Black werewolf and jumping to an imagined resemblance to one of the few I know.

  I reach for my phone. It’s not there, of course. But I can pull up what I want from memory.

  When we got our first cell phones, Kate and I had taken pictures of the Pack. Kate played amateur photographer, sneaking around like a paparazzi, wanting “real” people, not their smiling photo-ready faces. I wanted the same, but I got it another way. I took pictures of pictures, photographs of Jeremy’s sketches and paintings of the Pack.

  I’d started with the two portraits in his studio. The ones of my parents. In it, Dad wasn’t much older than I am now. He’d been leaning against a wall, talking to Jeremy, with his mouth full of . . .

  I look down at the apples under my hand.

  Dad, talking, with his mouth full of apple, his head bursting with some idea that couldn’t wait until he chewed and swallowed. Like Kate. But now, in that painting, I see something uncomfortably close to a mirror.

  The portrait of Mom is very different. In it, she looks dangerous, almost feral. That was Jeremy capturing sides of my parents seen only by those who knew them best.

  I have other paintings on my phone, too, of Pack brothers, some gone before I was born, like . . .

  I mentally zoom in on one portrait. It’s Mom
in her twenties, sitting on the sofa. Her legs are drawn up, and she’s leaning sideways in deep, almost conspiratorial conversation with a Pack mate, her best friend. He’s laughing at some inside joke, the kind that best friends have, the kind I used to have with Kate. His head is thrown back, and I see him and . . .

  Elijah.

  That’s who I see in his profile.

  I don’t just see Elijah in that painting, either. I see Kate as she’d been last night with Elijah, the two of them laughing at some joke the rest of us didn’t get.

  I remember the first time I saw that picture, and I hear Mom’s voice.

  “That’s your namesake, Logan. I met him just after I met your dad. He died a few years before you were born, and your dad knew it would mean a lot to me if we named you after him.”

  “You were friends,” I say, and it’s not a question—even as a kid, I could see the answer in that painting.

  She smiles. “We were very good friends.”

  Logan Jonsen.

  When I focus on that mental image of the portrait, I see the differences between Logan and Elijah. Logan was lighter skinned—his mother was Caucasian. Their features aren’t an exact match, either. In the first portrait, Logan also has locs, longer than Elijah’s, and that could mislead me, make me jump to a conclusion, but I’ve seen photos of Logan Jonsen taken long after he’d shorn off the college-era locs and become a lawyer, yet another reason I’ve leaned toward that occupation. I can pull up those later pictures and still see the overwhelming resemblance to Elijah in his profile, in his eyes and mostly in his smile.

  Elijah is Logan Jonsen’s half-brother.

  And Elijah knows it. He knows who his brother was. Knows Logan was Pack. Knows he was murdered in a war between mutts and Pack. Yet that’s not how Elijah sees things, is it?

  It actually kinda was a gang.

  Elijah knows who we are. He also knows who we are in relation to his brother, and it is very clear how he feels about that.

  Elijah blames the Pack for his brother’s death. He tried to hide from Kate, tried to hide the fact he’s a werewolf, and now that we know, he’s hiding the connection to his brother.