by Bree Despain
Dad opened his desk drawer and pulled out a wood box. The lid was inlaid with a golden pattern of alternating suns and moons.
“I drove most of Thursday night to the cathedral. It took quite a bit of convincing, but the priest finally consented to loan the book to the parish. I couldn’t rest until I found the answer.”
“You found it?” My heart raced. “You can cure Daniel?”
“No.” Dad stared down at the box. “I can’t help him anymore.”
“No, you didn’t find it? Or no, you can’t cure him?”
Dad took off his glasses, folded in the arms, and placed them neatly on his desk. He leaned back in his chair and squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Tell me something, Grace. Do you love Daniel?”
“How can I?” I studied a hangnail on my thumb. “Not after what he did to Jude. It wouldn’t be right….”
“Do you love him?” Dad’s voice told me not to consider those other things. “Do you?”
Tears welled behind my eyes. How did I have any more to cry?
“Yes,” I whispered.
Dad sighed and picked up the box. “Then it’s out of my hands.” He placed the box in front of me, something rattled inside it as he did. “I feel you must discover the answer for yourself. I’ll be here when you do … but the choice is yours to make.”
LATE AFTERNOON
I sat cross-legged on my bed with the box balanced between my knees. I couldn’t believe all the answers—the final pieces of the puzzle—could be found in such a narrow box. Could I really hope for such a possibility? Maybe all it held was more disappointment. Maybe there was no cure after all. It would explain how distraught and tired my father seemed. Maybe he thought I needed to discover that for myself … become resigned just like him.
But he said I had a choice to make. And choices can’t be made without knowledge—without answers. So why can’t I open the box?
The truth was that I was afraid of answers. Ignorance may not be bliss, but it seemed preferable to all the pain that accompanied the answers I’d found already.
I stared at the box until my knees ached in their position. My fingers trembled as I reached for the blackened gold latch. I popped it open and pushed up the lid. Inside, I found a book that looked older and more brittle than any of the ones in Dad’s office. The cover was a faded sapphire-blue, with the same gold sun-and-moon inlays as were on the box. I brushed the cover tentatively. I was afraid the book might fall to pieces as I picked it up.
Several slips of paper protruded from the top end of the book. Had Dad marked certain passages to make my reading easier? I turned the delicate tissuelike pages to the first marked entry. The page looked like a handwritten letter, or a copy of one, in faded brown ink. Dad said this was a translation, not the original. I found myself wishing I’d taken Mrs. Miller’s calligraphy class, in addition to painting, as I tried to make out the pale, scripted words.
My Dearest Katharine,
Tidings of thy joyous marriage to Simon Saint Moon could not have come at a better time. My encampment has been besieged by despair and many of the foot soldiers and squires cower at the cries of wolves that surround our camp by night. They think God will let them devour us because of our sins.
My squire, Alexius, claims that the wolves are not ordinary animals, but the Dogs of Death of local legend. He tells me they are men who were once blessed by God to be his soldiers, but the devil turned them from their quest, and now they are cursed to roam the earth as savage beasts.
Oh little sister, you would love dear Alexius. I do not regret taking him on as my squire after the fires.
Many of the other local boys have not fared as well. I pray we will give up on this campaign and move on to the Holy Land. I did not leave our village behind to aide in the killing of other Christians. Perhaps the devil is trying to sway us from our quest also.
Father Miguel assures us that our mission is true and that God will protect us in our fight against the Greek traitors….
A knock sounded softly against my bedroom door. I covered the box and book with my blanket. “Come in,” I said, expecting Charity with dinner.
“Hey.” Jude leaned against the door frame. He held a dark green folder in his hands. “This is for you.” He crossed the distance to my bed and handed it to me.
“What is it?” I pushed the book farther under the covers with my foot.
“All of your homework.” Jude half smiled. “Junior grades are critical for college admissions. I didn’t want you to get behind. I got April to copy her notes from English. But Mrs. Howell says you still owe her a parent-signed test.”
Crap. I’d forgotten all about that.
“I told her you haven’t been feeling like yourself lately, and I talked her into letting you retake the exam instead. She says you can do it after school when you’re feeling better.”
“Wow. Thank you. That was really …” Just like Jude. I don’t know why I was so surprised. This was just the thing my brother always did. It’s what made him … him. But I’d figured he’d never want to talk to me again. Not after what I’d done. “I really appreciate this.”
Jude nodded. “When you’re up to it, I’ll wait for you after school while you take your test. That way you won’t have to walk home alone.” He walked to the door, stopped, and looked back at me. “It’s time to get out of bed, Gracie.”
He knows. I know the truth about what happened to him … and he knows.
“I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you,” I said softly.
Jude nodded slightly and shut the door behind him.
After I heard Jude walk down the hall, I pulled the box and book out from under the blanket. I closed the lid over Katharine and her brother and locked the box in my desk drawer. I couldn’t read any further. I couldn’t search for answers anymore. I needed to drop the whole issue. Jude was moving on, and so was I.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Choices
THURSDAY MORNING
I realized as Jude and I drove the few blocks to school in the numbing cold, that even though there was an understanding between us, we still weren’t going to talk about it.
Some things never change.
Maybe it’s better that way.
Jude walked me to my locker and then took off to find April before first period. I tried to act natural, like this was just any other day and I was any other girl. But it was hard to pretend that I was normal.
Normal people gossiped—mostly about the strange things that had happened over the weekend. I’d hoped that the rumor mill would have died down during my three-day absence from school, but apparently it was still running full tilt. Word had spread about Jenny Wilson finding her mangled cat in the middle of her cul-de-sac. Other people talked about Daniel rescuing James in the woods. They whispered about Jude’s accusations. And I got the distinct feeling people were also talking about me—more than the usual, that is.
Normal people passed the flyers plastered around the school of Jessica Day’s class picture from Central High. They’d look at her long blonde hair and her big doelike eyes and shake their heads, saying, “What a shame.” But normal people didn’t know what danger she may really be in. They didn’t know what horrors really existed in this world. They had no idea there was a werewolf in my AP art class.
How would everyone else react if they knew that truth?
Would they accuse Daniel of being the new Markham Street Monster? Would they blame him for all the bad things that had happened lately?
I stopped midstride on my way to fourth-period art. Did I believe any of those things? I told myself that it couldn’t be true. Daniel had that necklace, so even if he went into wolf mode he’d be able to stop the monster from hurting people. Wouldn’t he? There had to be another explanation.
Or maybe that necklace didn’t work as well as he and my dad thought. Or perhaps it did work—perhaps Daniel was fully conscious when he did those things….
I stood outside the art room until long after the
bell rang. I knew that Daniel was in there. Enough people had been talking about him for me to know he’d shown up for school. I wished he hadn’t. I took three deep breaths. Daniel wouldn’t hurt those people if he was in his right mind. There was definitely another explanation—and it wasn’t my job to figure it out. Someone else could play Velma from now on.
I pushed the door open and went straight for Barlow’s desk. I put my tree sketch in front of him and didn’t wait for any comment before I went to the back of the room for my supply bucket. Lynn and Jenny stopped talking as I approached. Lynn shot me a sidelong glance and then said something to Jenny behind her hand. I ignored them and pulled my watercolors out of my bucket. I could feel Daniel’s presence only a few yards away; I could smell his earthy-almond scent even with all the oil solvents and chalk dust lingering in the air, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. I grabbed the rest of what I needed and joined April at our table.
“I called you, like, ten times,” April said. She didn’t look at me as she drew sharp, angled lines in her sketch pad. “You could have at least emailed me back or something.”
“You’re right.” I opened my box of pastels and dumped out the chalk bits on the table. I’d forgotten that most of them were broken. “I’m sorry.”
“So are you over it?” April nodded slightly toward Daniel.
“Yeah.” I picked up a red pastel bit. It was too small to draw with effectively. “I think so.”
“Good.” April put her charcoal pencil down. “Jude says Daniel is a bad influence on you.”
“What else does Jude say these days?” I asked.
She sighed. “He’s upset that your dad keeps trying to get him to be friends with Daniel. Your dad says Jude should just forgive and forget, and be happy Daniel’s back.” April shook her head. “I don’t get it. I mean, Jude’s his real son. Why would he even want Daniel here?”
“I don’t know,” I mumbled. My mind flitted back to that book of letters in my bedroom. “Has Jude said anything else?” I asked, wondering how much April really knew about any of this.
April shrugged. “He invited me to the Monet exhibit at the university tomorrow night.”
“That’s sweet.” I inspected another broken pastel. It was just as useless as the first.
“Yeah, but my mom won’t let me go because it’s in the city. It’s like she suddenly cares about me after what happened to Jessica Day or something.” April crinkled her nose. “I think we’re just going to have a movie fest at my house. You can come, too, if you want.”
“No. But thanks anyway.” I’d seen enough of Jude and April snuggling to last me a lifetime.
April pulled her box of pastels from her supply bucket and slid it in front of me. “You can borrow mine if you want.” April gave me a small smile. “I really am glad you’re better now.”
“Thanks,” I said. But I glanced back at Daniel. His gaze was shifted away from us, but from the look on his face it seemed like he’d been listening to our entire conversation from across the room.
That didn’t make me feel better at all.
LATER THAT SAME DAY
Daniel had asked me to spend my lunch breaks and after school with him and Barlow. I doubted that offer still stood—or that he’d actually expect me to stay now—and I cleared out to the library when the lunch bell rang, refusing April’s offer to join her and Jude at the café. I stayed until it was time to go back after lunch. When fifth period was over, I took off as quickly as I could for my next class.
“Wait up, Grace,” Pete Bradshaw called as I approached my locker.
“Hey, Pete.” I slowed my pace.
“You okay?” he asked. “I said your name three times before you noticed.”
“Sorry. I guess I was a little distracted.” I put down my backpack and turned the combination to my locker. “Did you need something?”
“Actually, I wanted to give you something.” He pulled a package out of a plastic bag. “Donuts.” He handed me the box. “They’re a little stale, though. I brought them yesterday, but you weren’t here.”
“Thanks … um … What are these for?”
“Well, you still owe me a dozen from before Thanksgiving. So I thought if I got you some instead, you’d feel extra indebted to me.” Insert “triple threat” smile here.
“Indebted to do what?” I asked coyly.
Pete leaned forward. His voice was low as he spoke. “Is there something really going on between you and that Kalbi guy, or are you just friends?”
Something really going on? Now I was sure people were talking about me.
“Don’t worry,” I said, “I don’t even think we’re friends.”
“Good.” He leaned back on his heels. “So these donuts are supposed to make you feel guilty enough to go to the Christmas dance with me.”
“The Christmas dance?” The dance hadn’t passed my mind in days. Did people who knew the secrets of the underworld go to dances? “Uh, yes. I would love to go,” I said. “On one condition, though.”
“What’s that?”
“Help me eat these donuts, or I’ll never fit into a dress.” Pete laughed. I opened the box and he snagged three donuts.
“Can I walk you to class?” he asked as I shut the box in my locker.
I smiled. It was such a 1950s-perfect-boyfriend thing to ask. “Sure,” I said, and hugged my books to my chest and pretended I was wearing a poodle skirt and oxford shoes. Pete wrapped his arm around my waist as we walked down the hall. He nodded to more than a few quizzical-looking people as we went.
Pete seemed so confident, so normal, so good. He’s just what I need, I thought as I watched him—but I couldn’t help noticing there was someone else watching me.
WEDNESDAY OF THE NEXT WEEK, JUST BEFORE LUNCH
I sat next to April in the art room working on a preliminary sketch from an old snapshot for a portfolio piece. It would eventually be a painting of Jude fishing behind Grandpa Kramer’s cabin. I loved the way the light swept in from the side of the photograph and glistened off the top of Jude’s bowed head like a halo. But for the moment, I was working with pencils, sketching out the basic lines and defining the negative and positive spaces. There was more shadow in the picture than I had realized, and the graphite of my pencil was worn down to a useless nub, but I was avoiding the pencil sharpener in the back of the room because Daniel’s seat was only three feet away from it.
A few minutes before the lunch bell, Mr. Barlow made his way over to Daniel’s desk.
“Look at Lynn fume.” April nudged me.
Lynn Bishop glared at Daniel as Mr. Barlow stood beside him, watching him paint. She looked like she was trying to burn a hole in Daniel’s back with her eyes.
“Looks like Barlow’s got a new favorite. Poor Lynn,” April said with mock sympathy. “You’re totally better than she is anyway. You should have heard Barlow going on about that sketch of your house you turned in last week.” She pointed at my drawing and sighed. “I love this one, too. Jude looks so hot in that picture.”
“Hmm,” I said. I gathered up a couple of spent pencils and made a break for the back of the room while Daniel was occupied.
I put a pencil into the sharpener.
“Stop!” Barlow bellowed.
I jumped and looked behind me but Barlow had been speaking to Daniel.
Daniel held his brush midstroke. He looked up at Barlow.
“Leave it the way it is,” Barlow said.
I leaned sideways a bit to get a look at Daniel’s painting. It was of himself as a child—a subject Barlow had assigned the rest of us earlier in the year. So far, Daniel had a simple background of red hues and the flesh tones roughed in for his face. His lips were outlined in pale pink. And since Daniel always went about things in the hardest way possible, he’d finished the eyes before anything else. They were dark and deep and confused like I had always remembered them.
“But it isn’t finished,” Daniel said. “All I’ve perfected are the eyes.”
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“I know,” Barlow said. “That’s what makes it so right. Your eyes—your soul is there, but the rest of you is still so undefined. That’s the beauty of childhood. The eyes show everything you’ve seen so far, but the rest of you is still so open to possibility, to whatever you might become.”
Daniel held the brush tightly between his long fingers. He glanced at me. We both knew what he had become.
I turned away.
“Trust me,” Barlow said. The Masonite board scraped against the table. I assumed he’d picked it up. “This will make a great portfolio piece.”
“Yes, sir,” Daniel mumbled.
“Are you done or what?” Lynn Bishop stood next to me with a fistful of colored pencils.
“Sorry,” I said, and moved out of her way with my still-dull pencil.
“I hear Pete asked you to the Christmas dance.” Lynn shoved a pink pencil into the sharpener.
“I guess word gets around.”
I heard Daniel’s chair sliding back over the ferocious gnawing of the sharpener.
“Yes, it does,” she said in her knowing, “I’ve got a juicy bit of gossip” tone. “Interesting he still asked you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Pete’s been friends with my brother for years.”
“Hmm.” Lynn removed her pencil and inspected the long, pointy pink tip. “I guess that explains it—an act of charity for your brother. Pete must be trying to bring you back to the land of the living.”
I was already cranky, and I didn’t need crap from the gossip queen of Holy Trinity—kind of an oxymoron if you think about it—but the lunch bell rang, stopping me from telling her what she should do with her pencil.
