She Smells the Dead (9 page)

I winced as someone dropped their lunch tray. The clatter of silverware hitting the painted concrete floor was like someone sending icy spikes through my brain.

“Oh, that face is even worse,” Emma said dramatically, “go back to the first expression quick. If you keep wincing like that, I’m going to lose my appetite.”

“Emma, you never have an appetite,” I said feeling a little grouchy.

“I have an excellent appetite but how am I supposed to eat while surrounded by the smell of death?” Emma asked.

“Hey, isn’t that my line?” I joked.

“No, you smell ghosts but I smell death. Every time someone sits at our table with a burger or pepperoni pizza I feel like I’m trying to eat my lunch at an autopsy table,” she said and shuddered. “It’s totally disgusting,” she added.

I looked down at my yogurt and suddenly didn’t feel so hungry. With a warning twist from my stomach, I pushed the yogurt cup a foot away.

“See. Who’s having appetite issues now?” Emma asked archly.

Emma was a great person to have around if you needed to go on a diet.

“So, you need a ride home today?” Emma asked.

I figured that was her way of asking if things were still going well between me and Calvin. “No thanks. Calvin is driving me home later,” I said, a smile crossing my face.

“I thought so,” Emma said, “He seemed really worried when you went all spacey last night. I figured things were getting serious between you two.”

Were we getting serious? I didn’t have enough experience in the dating department to know. “We’re not getting married anytime soon if that’s what you mean,” I joked. I had intended to sound lighthearted but I stumbled a bit on the M word.

“Whose getting married?” Calvin asked as he sat down next to me.

I hadn’t heard him come up behind me and I started to blush. Emma winked at me then laughed.
Thanks for the heads up Emma
.

Chapter 26

Calvin and I went back to his dad’s workshop cabin after school. It was peaceful here without the watchful eyes and prying ears we had to deal with in the school hallways.

Earlier today I had overheard a sophomore telling a group of freshman that the school witch had cursed one of the hot senior boys into going out with her. I was nearly to my next class when I realized they had been gossiping about me and Calvin. If they were going to talk about me, and claim that I could cast spells on boys, I wished that they at least had the decency to call me Yuki the Enchantress or something. I guess I was still stuck with witch. I never should have bought that evil eye pendant. How much luck had it brought me?
Zero, zip, nada
.

Calvin came back into the cabin with blankets he had brought over from the main house.
Well, maybe that pendant had brought me a little luck
. He was dressed all in black today and it made his eyes look like dark pools of water. I could drown in those eyes.

“Sorry it’s so drafty,” Cal apologized.

We both wrapped ourselves in clean smelling blankets and curled up on two armchairs facing each other. The armchairs looked worn, but they hadn’t been here on my last visit. I wondered fleetingly if Calvin had stolen them from his parent’s family room. They looked vaguely familiar.
His parents must really be worried about him
.

“I’d like you to go camping with me in a few weeks,” Calvin said surprising me, “when we get closer to the new moon.”

My thoughts were immediately swept up in daydreams of being alone with Cal in the woods.
In a tent
. I had never been a big fan of camping in the great buggy outdoors, but if it meant a weekend alone with Cal I was game. Then a question struck me. “Why the new moon?” I asked.

“They almost always have Wolf Camp as far away from the full moon as possible,” he said, “for obvious reasons. It’s hard to learn focus when you’re shifting into a wolf.” Calvin smiled his toothy grin.

“Wolf Camp?” I asked incredulously.

“Well, that’s what some of us call it,” he said, “I don’t think it really has a name.”

“Would they even let me come with you?” I asked, “Since, you know, I’m not a wolf.”

Just dating one
.

“They’ll make a special exception for you,” he said, “since you’re touched by spirit. We have teachers who can help you learn to control your powers and communicate with my wolf. Well, at least that’s what my dad says.”

Cal had been talking about me to his dad? This was getting weirder by the second.

“What kind of camp is this?” I asked.

What was I getting myself into
? I didn’t think I wanted to be the only vanilla human alone in the woods with a camp filled with wolf possessed nature enthusiasts.

“It’s a lot like a corporate team building retreat,” Calvin said and laughed. “We do team building and trust exercises,” he said, “but we also work on meditation and how to focus our will. We learn how to communicate with our wolf spirit and ways to gain more control over our change. They even have couples therapy.”

“They offer couples therapy?” I asked, surprised, “Is that why they let other humans come to camp?”

Calvin looked embarrassed. “Well, not exactly. Most of our kind mate, um I mean hook up, with other wolves,” he said. “One of the elders said that our blood sings to one another.”

Great.
Howling blood
.

“But I’m not a wolf,” I said stating the obvious.

“That’s because I’m one of the Chosen Ones,” Cal said looking embarrassed again. “The others look for wolf partners, but each generation a child is gifted with the spirit of the original alpha wolf. When this child reaches adulthood, he will hear the singing of one touched by spirit, but not by wolf.”

Like me
.

“Does that mean that the others all have tattoos of two wolves chasing each other around their arms?” I asked. I knew that I had more important questions, but for the moment I couldn’t think of one.

“Yeah, they have two wolves and alphas like me have a different second symbol,” he said. “So in a way we’re marked. We are the destined leaders of our people, so it’s another way for people to know that I am the alpha when in human form, though most of us can sense it.”

I suddenly noticed the worry lines around his eyes. Calvin was taking this all pretty seriously and he must have already been feeling the weight of responsibility. Responsibility for a role he hadn’t chosen, but had been born into.

“So my being touched by spirit, but not by wolf, is a good thing?” I asked.

I was still curious about how the alphas were different. I remembered the man in my dream having a tattoo of a wolf chasing an eagle. He must have carried the alpha wolf spirit too.

“A very good thing,” Calvin said closing the space between us. “You are the anchor that keeps me from losing touch with my human self,” he said while his breath brushed my cheek, “and the crazy thing is that my wolf spirit is
your
anchor.”

I was about to tell him that he
was
crazy when I remembered the wolf, his wolf, holding my shirt in its teeth to keep me from following the butterflies into the light. Maybe it wasn’t so far-fetched after all.

“So it’s fate then?” I asked with him so close my lips brushed the line of his jaw with each word, “Us being together?”

“Absolutely,” Calvin said with a low growl. Then he lifted my chin, tilting my head back, and kissed me deeply.

Who was I to argue with Fate
?

Chapter 27

I was getting excited for Wolf Camp. Who would have thought I’d ever get excited for camping? The more Calvin and I talked about camp, the more animated he became and his enthusiasm was contagious. I printed a lunar calendar from a website I found about moon phases and taped it on the wall beside my bed. Each morning I would wake up and mark off another day with a big red X. I was happy to be moving away from the full moon and towards a fun weekend with my boyfriend.

Calvin was also a bit worried. Last night he had confided his concern about the moon phases. Since his wolf spirit was growing weaker the further we moved away from the full moon, he worried that it may become too weak to protect me. It made me hesitate to use my powers before learning more from the teachers at camp. So I tried to be patient and ignore the vinegar presence of Jackson Green’s ghost. I had promised Cal that I wouldn’t use my makeshift Ouija board without him here with me and I intended to keep that promise.

I was doing well in school so far this semester which was a pleasant surprise for my parents. They thought that Calvin was a good influence on me. Cal and I got together for after school study sessions every day, but we didn’t do a lot of studying in the traditional sense. I probably had Emma to thank for the increase in my GPA. She was helping me find my way around the library since my new enthusiasm in research. If I couldn’t work on my spirit skills, then I could at least brush up on some basic investigative methods.

I was also starting to think about college. Would Calvin be able to attend college next year if his shapeshifting became more intense? If so, could we get into the same school? I hadn’t worried about the future all that much before, but suddenly I had so much to plan for. It was a little overwhelming.

Most of the time I just tried to focus on the task at hand. I studied hard, tried to work on my yoga breathing, planned for the upcoming camping trip, and every once in awhile I would practice for the homecoming dance by twirling around my room in the corset dress I still hadn’t had a chance to wear in public.
Soon my lovely, soon
.

Chapter 28

I marked a red X on my lunar calendar with a smile.
Today was the day
. I was going with Cal to Wolf Camp. I was vacillating between nervous and ecstatic. Going through the outfits that I had packed, I would wonder if something was appropriate for camp and my hands would start to shake.
Nervous
. Grabbing my dream diary, I remembered Calvin kissing me the last time we were distracted while reading it.
Ecstatic
. I was wound so tight that if I did snap I was going to fly out into the stratosphere. I really needed to work on my calming skills.

Zipping up my backpack, I glanced one more time in the mirror. The face staring back at me looked haunted.
Well you are being haunted Yuki
. My pale skin looked nearly translucent and the dark circles around my eyes hadn’t been applied with makeup. Though I hadn’t reached out to Jackson Green’s spirit for answers, I was still easily fatigued. I continued to be visited by strange symbolic images in my dreams which left me tired and dizzy feeling. Having my sleep interrupted also, apparently, left me with a deathly pallor. I nearly looked like a ghost myself.
O.k. Casper let’s go camping
.

The drive to the camping area took about four hours, but I didn’t mind since I was riding with Calvin. The sun was high in the sky when we pulled onto the dirt road leading to the parking area. It was then another thirty minutes of hiking to our rendezvous point.

My earlier excitement was waning as my boots caught at every root and rock and my hair snagged on endless clawing tree branches. Cal seemed to know intuitively where to best place his feet on the overgrown trail. Leave it to Calvin to make this look easy. He always seemed in his element when doing something active outdoors which I guess made sense considering his wolf spirit. He looked back with his eyebrow raised when he realized I had lagged so far behind.
Rub it in wolf boy
.

“We’re nearly there, but we can stop if you need to rest,” he said looking perfectly well rested himself.

Calvin wasn’t sweaty and didn’t have one speck of dirt on him. I felt another bead of sweat trickle down my back to meet all of its friends where my pack pressed against my waist. I was sure that when I finally removed my backpack there was going to be large wet marks all over my shirt.
Gross
.

“Remind me never to do this again,” I said pausing for a moment to catch my breath.

Calvin passed me a bottle of water. I cracked the seal on the cap and gulped down most of its contents.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Sure. I’m just a glutton for punishment,” I muttered and we set off again.

Cal had been right. We only had to walk another ten minutes to reach camp. We pushed through a thick screen of hemlock trees that were growing close to the ground and burst out into a clearing.

So this is Wolf Camp
. It wasn’t exactly what I had pictured, though I’m not really sure what I had expected.
More teeth and claws
? I surveyed the faces of the camp residents who all seemed too busy to mind my stares. In fact they all appeared to be doing something industrious. There were no young children that I could see. The older men and women were cooking, building, or playing instruments. The majority of the people here though were in their teens and twenties. They tended to either fall into the group working silently on art projects or the more rowdy group playing team sports or hacky sack. In fact, there were tons of them playing what looked like synchronized hacking. It was mind boggling and yet beautiful. I wondered if they could teach me and immediately regretted wearing a skirt.

Cal followed my gaze to the kids playing hack and smiled. “Come on,” he said reaching out to take my hand, “there are some friends I’d like you to meet.”

With a nod and a growing tightness in my chest I walked with Calvin to be introduced to his extended wolfy family.

The guys and girls playing hacky sack were hard to classify. There were lots of long, white girl dreads and beaded hemp bracelets that made me think crunchy hippie chicks and loads of tanned guys with sun bleached hair and a rolling way of walking that made me think surfer dudes, but really that was an over-generalization. The common thread here seemed to be their love of the outdoors and a feeling in my gut that they all genuinely liked each other. Was it their shared wolf spirits? I really didn’t know, but I suddenly felt a pang of jealousy for what they all shared with Calvin and with each other.
Harmony
. They all moved and reacted to one another with an innate harmony. Maybe their blood is singing out to one another like how Calvin had said their blood calls for their mates. I quickly tried to banish the thought. It wasn’t helping my sudden feeling of jealousy.
Since when did I get jealous
?