Shiver Trilogy (Shiver, Linger, Forever) (24 page)

The phone was ringing. That was the first thing I thought. The second thing I thought was that Sam’s bare arm was lying across my chest. The third thing was that my face was cold where it was sticking out from under the blankets. I blinked, trying to wake up, strangely disoriented in my own room. It took me a moment to realize that my alarm clock’s normally glowing face was dark and that the only lights in the room were coming from the moon outside the window and the face of the ringing cell phone.

I snaked a hand out into the air to retrieve it, careful not to disturb Sam’s arm on me; the phone was silent by the time I got to it. God, it was freezing in here. The power must’ve gone down with the ice storm the forecasters had promised. I wondered how long it would be down and if I’d have to worry about Sam getting too cold. I carefully peeled back the covers and found him curled against me, head buried against my side, only the pale, naked curve of his shoulders visible in the dim light.

I kept waiting for this to feel wrong, his body pressed up against mine, but I just felt so alive that my heart hammered with the thrill of it. This, Sam and me, this was my real life. The life where I went to school and waited up for my parents and listened to Rachel vent about her siblings — that felt like a pale dream in comparison. Those were just things I had done while waiting for Sam. Outside, distant and mournful, wolves began to howl, and a few seconds later, the phone rang again, notes stepping down the scale, a strange, digital echo of the wolves.

I didn’t realize my mistake until I held it to my ear.

“Sam.” The voice at the other end was unfamiliar. Stupid me. I had taken Sam’s phone from the nightstand, not mine. I debated for two seconds how to respond. I contemplated snapping the phone shut, but I couldn’t do that.

“No,” I replied. “Not Sam.”

The voice was pleasant, but I heard an edge beneath his words. “I’m sorry. I must’ve dialed wrong.”

“No,” I said, before he could hang up. “This is Sam’s phone.”

There was a long, heavy pause, and then: “Oh.” Another pause. “You’re the girl, aren’t you? The girl who was in my house?”

I tried to think of what I might gain by denying it and drew a blank. “Yes.”

“Do you have a name?”

“Do you?”

He gave a short laugh that was completely without humor but not unpleasant. “I think I like you. I’m Beck.”

“That makes sense.” I turned my face away from Sam, who was still breathing heavily, my voice muffled by his arms over his head. “What did you do to piss him off?”

Again the short laugh. “He’s still angry with me?”

I considered how to answer. “Not now. He’s sleeping. Can I give him a message?” I stared at Beck’s number on the phone, trying to remember it.

There was another long pause, so long that I thought Beck had hung up, and then he breathed out audibly. “One of his … friends has been hurt. Do you think you could wake him?”

One of the other wolves. It had to be. I ducked down into the covers. “Oh — of course. Of course I will.”

I put the phone down and gently moved Sam’s arm so that I could see his ear and the side of his face. “Sam, wake up. Phone. It’s important.”

He turned his head so that I could see that his yellow eye was already open. “Put it on speaker.”

I did, resting it on my belly so that the camera’s face lit a small blue circle on my tank top.

“What’s going on?” Sam slid up onto one elbow, made a face when he felt the cold, and jerked the blankets up around us, making a tent around the phone.

“Someone attacked Paul. He’s a mess, ripped to shreds.”

Sam’s mouth made a little
o
. I don’t think he was thinking about what his face looked like — his eyes were far away, with his pack. Finally, he said, “Could you — have you — is he still bleeding? Was he human?”

“Human. I tried to ask him who did it — so I could kill them. I thought … Sam, I really thought I was going to be
calling you to tell you he died. It was that bad. But I think it’s closing up now. But the thing is, it was all these little bites, all over, on his neck and on his wrists and his belly, it was as if —”

“— as if someone knew how to kill him,” Sam finished.

“It was a wolf who did it,” Beck said. “We got that much out of him.”

“One of your new ones?” Sam snarled, with surprising force.

“Sam.”

“Could it have been?”

“Sam. No. They’re inside.”

Sam’s body was still tense beside me, and I mulled over possible meanings for that phrase:
One of your new ones.
Was Jack not the only new one?

“Will you come?” Beck asked. “Can you? Is it too cold?”

“I don’t know.” I knew from the twist of Sam’s mouth that he was only answering the first question. Whatever it was that had distanced him from Beck, it was powerful.

Beck’s voice changed, softer, younger, more vulnerable. “Please don’t be angry with me still, Sam. I can’t stand it.”

Sam turned his face away from the phone.

“Sam,” Beck said softly.

I felt Sam shudder next to me, and he closed his eyes.

“Are you still there?”

I looked at Sam, but he still didn’t speak. I couldn’t help it — I felt sorry for Beck. “I am,” I said.

There was a long pause, completely devoid of static or crackling, and I thought Beck had hung up. But then he asked, in a
careful way, “How much do you know about Sam, girl-without-a-name?”

“Everything.”

Pause. Then: “I’d like to meet you.”

Sam reached out and snapped the phone shut. The light of the display vanished, leaving us in the dark beneath the covers.

My parents didn’t even know. The morning after Sam and I — spent the night together, it seemed like the biggest thing on my mind was that my parents had no idea. I guessed that was normal. I guessed feeling a little guilty was normal. I guessed feeling giddy was normal. It was as if I had thought all along I was a complete picture, and Sam had revealed that I was a puzzle, and had taken me apart into pieces and put me back together again. I was acutely aware of each distinct emotion, all fitting together tightly.

Sam was quiet, too, letting me drive, holding my right hand in both of his while I drove with the other. I would’ve given a million dollars to know what he was thinking.

“What do you want to do this afternoon?” I asked, finally.

He looked out the window, fingers rubbing the back of my hand. The world outside looked dry, papery. Waiting for snow. “Anything with you.”

“Anything?”

He looked over at me and grinned. It was a funny, lopsided
grin. I think maybe he was feeling as giddy as I was. “Yes, anything, as long as you’re there.”

“I want to meet Beck,” I said.

There. It was out. It had been one of the puzzle pieces stuck in my head ever since I’d picked up the phone.

Sam didn’t say anything. His eyes were on the school, probably figuring that if he waited just a few minutes, he could deposit me on the sidewalk and avoid discussion. But instead he sighed as if he was incredibly tired. “God, Grace. Why?”

“He’s practically your father, Sam. I want to know everything about you. It can’t be that hard to understand.”

“You just want everything in its place.” Sam’s eyes followed the knots of students slowly making their way across the parking lot. I avoided finding a parking place. “You just want to perform magical matchmaking on me and him, so that you can feel like everything’s in its place again.”

“If you’re trying to irritate me by saying that, you won’t. I already know it’s true.”

Sam was silent while I circled the lot another time, and finally, he groaned. “Grace, I hate this. I hate confrontation.”

“There won’t be confrontation. He wants to see you.”

“You don’t know everything that’s going on. There’s
awful
stuff going on. There’ll be confrontation, if I have any principles left. Hard to imagine after last night.”

I found a parking place in a hurry, one on the farthest end of the lot so that I could face him without curious eyes watching us on the way to the sidewalk. “Are you feeling guilty?”

“No. Maybe. A little. I feel … uneasy.”

“We used protection,” I said.

Sam didn’t look at me. “Not that. I just — I just — I just hope it was the right time.”

“It was the right time.”

He looked away. “Only thing I wonder, is … did you have s — make love — to me to get back at your parents?”

I just stared at him. Then I grabbed my backpack from the backseat. I was suddenly furious, ears and cheeks hot, and I didn’t know why. I didn’t recognize my voice when I answered. “That’s a nice thing to say.”

Sam didn’t look back at me. It was like the side of the school was fascinating to him. So fascinating he couldn’t look me in the eyes while he accused me of using him. A new wave of anger washed over me.

“Do you have such crap self-esteem that you think I wouldn’t want you just for you?” I pushed open the door and slid out; Sam winced at the air that came in, though it couldn’t have been cold enough to hurt him. “Way to ruin it. Just — way to ruin it.”

I started to slam the door, but he reached far across the seat to keep the door from shutting all the way. “Wait. Grace, wait.”

“What?”

“I don’t want to let you go like this.” His eyes were pleading with me, their absolute saddest. I looked at the goose bumps raising on his arms, and the slight tremble of his shoulders in the cold draft. And he had me. No matter how angry I was, we both knew what could happen while I was in school. I hated that. The fear. I hated it.

“I’m sorry I said it,” Sam blurted out, rushing to get out words before I left. “You’re right. I just couldn’t believe something — someone — so good could happen to me. Don’t go mad, Grace. Please don’t go mad.”

I closed my eyes. For a brief moment I wished with all my heart that he was just a normal boy, so that I could storm away with my pride and indignation. But he wasn’t. He was as fragile as a butterfly in autumn, waiting to be destroyed by the first frost. So I swallowed my anger, a bitter mouthful, and opened the door a bit more. “I don’t want you to ever think something like that again, Sam Roth.”

He closed his eyes just a little bit when I said his name, lashes hiding his yellow irises for a second, and then he reached out and touched my cheek. “I’m sorry.”

I caught his hand and tangled his fingers in mine, fixing my gaze on his face. “How do you think Beck would feel if you went away mad?”

Sam laughed, a humorless, self-deprecating laugh that reminded me of Beck’s on the phone the night before, and dropped his eyes from mine. He knew I had his number. He pulled his fingers away. “We’ll go. Fine, we’ll go.”

I was about to leave, but I stopped. “Why are you angry at Beck, Sam? Why are you so mad at him when I’ve never seen you angry at your real parents?”

Sam’s face told me he hadn’t asked himself this question before, and it took him a long time to answer. “Because Beck — Beck didn’t have to do what he did. My parents did. They thought I was a monster. They were afraid. It wasn’t calculated.”

His face was full of pain and uncertainty. I stepped up into the car and kissed him gently. I didn’t know what to say to him, so I just kissed him again, got my backpack, and went into the gray day.

When I looked back over my shoulder, he was still sitting there, gaze silent and lupine. The last thing I saw was his eyes half-closed against the breeze, black hair tousled, reminding me for some reason of the first night I’d ever seen him.

An unexpected breeze lifted my hair from my neck, frigid and penetrating.

Winter suddenly felt very close. I stopped on the sidewalk, closing my eyes, fighting the incredible desire to go back to Sam. In the end, duty won out, and I headed into the school. But it felt like a mistake.

After Grace got out of the car, I felt sick. Sick from arguing with her, sick from doubt, sick from the cold that was just warm enough to keep me human. More than sick — restless, unsettled. Too many loose ends: Jack, Isabel, Olivia, Shelby, Beck.

I couldn’t believe that Grace and I were going to see Beck. I turned up the heat in the Bronco and rested my head on the steering wheel for several long moments, until the ridged vinyl started to hurt my forehead. With the heat turned up all the way, it didn’t take too long for the car to become stuffy and hot, but it felt good. It felt far away from changing. Like I was firmly in my own skin.

I thought at first that I might just sit like that all day, singing a song under my breath —
Close to the sun is closer to me / I feel my skin clinging so tightly
— and waiting for Grace, but it only took me a half hour of sitting to decide that I needed to drive. More than that, I needed to atone for what I’d said to Grace. So I decided to go to Jack’s house again. He still hadn’t turned up, either dead or in the newspapers, and it
was the only place I could think of starting the search again. Grace would be happy to see me trying to put everything into place for her.

I left the Bronco on an isolated logging road near the Culpepers’ house and cut through the woods. The pines were colorless with the promise of snow, their tips waving slightly in a cold wind that I couldn’t feel down below the branches. The hair on the back of my neck tingled uncomfortably; the stark pine woods reeked of wolf. It smelled like the kid had peed on every tree. Cocky bastard.

Movement to my right made me jump, tense, drop low to the ground. I held in a breath.

Just a deer. I caught a brief glimpse of wide eyes, long legs, white tail, before she was gone, surprisingly ungraceful in the underbrush. Her presence in the woods was comforting, though; her being here meant that Jack wasn’t. I had nothing as a weapon except my hands. Fat lot of good they would do against an unstable new wolf with adrenaline on his side.

Near the house, I froze at the edge of the woods, listening to the voices carrying through the trees. A girl and a boy, voices raised and angry, standing somewhere near the back door. Creeping into the shadow of the mansion, I slid around a corner toward them, silent as a wolf. I didn’t recognize the male voice, fierce and deep, but instinct told me that it was Jack. The other one was Isabel. I thought about revealing myself but hesitated, waiting to hear what the argument was about.

Isabel’s voice was high. “I don’t understand what you’re saying. What are you saying sorry for? For disappearing? For getting bitten in the first place? For —”

“For Chloe,” the boy said.

There was a pause. “What do you mean, ‘for Chloe’? What does the dog have to do with all this? Do you know where she is?”

“Isabel. Hell. Haven’t you been listening? You’re so stupid sometimes. I told you, I don’t know what I’m doing after I’ve changed.”

I covered my mouth to keep from laughing. Jack had eaten her dog.

“Are you saying that she’s — you — God! You’re such a jerk!”

“I couldn’t help it. I told you what I was. You shouldn’t have let her out.”

“Do you have any idea how much that dog cost?”

“Boo hoo.”

“So what am I supposed to tell the parental units? Mom, Dad, Jack’s a werewolf, and guess what, you know how Chloe’s been missing? He ate her.”

“Don’t tell them anything!” Jack said hurriedly. “Anyway, I think I’ve stopped it. I think I’ve found a cure.”

I frowned.

“Cure.” Isabel’s voice was flat. “How do you ‘fix’ being a werewolf?”

“Don’t you worry your blonde brain about it. I just — give me a few more days to make sure. When I’m sure, I’ll tell them everything.”

“Fine. Whatever. God — I can’t believe you ate Chloe.”

“Can you please shut up about that? You’re starting to irritate me.”

“Whatever. What about the other ones? Aren’t there other ones? Can’t you get them to help you?”

“Isabel, shut
up
. I told you, I think I’ve figured it out. I don’t
need
any help.”

“Don’t you just think —”

A noise, sharp and out of place. A branch snapping? A slap?

Isabel’s voice sounded different when she spoke again. Not as strong. “Just don’t let them see you, okay? Mom’s at therapy — because of
you
— and Dad’s out of town. I’m going back to school. I can’t believe you called me out here to tell me you ate my dog.”

“I called you to tell you I fixed it. You seem so excited. Yeah. Not.”

“It’s great. Wonderful. Bye.”

Barely a moment later, I heard Isabel’s SUV tear down the driveway, and I hesitated again. I wasn’t exactly eager to reveal myself to a new wolf with an anger management problem until I knew exactly what my surroundings were, but I needed to either get back to the car or into the warmth of the house. And the house was closer. I slowly crept around the back of the building, listening for Jack’s position. Nothing. He must’ve gone inside.

I approached the door I had broken into earlier that week — the window had already been fixed — and tried the knob. Unlocked. How thoughtful.

Inside, I immediately heard Jack rummaging around, loud in the otherwise still house, and I slunk down the dim hallway to a long, high-ceilinged kitchen, all black-and-white tile and
black countertops as far as the eye could see. The light through the two windows on the right wall was white and pure, reflecting off white walls and sinking into the black skillets hanging from the ceiling. It was as if the entire room were in black and white.

I vastly preferred Grace’s kitchen — warm, cluttered, smelling of cinnamon and garlic and bread — to this cavernous, sterile room.

Jack had his back to me as he crouched in front of the stainless steel fridge, digging through the drawers. I froze, but his hunt through the fridge had covered up the sound of my approach. There was no wind to carry my scent to him, so I stood for a long minute, assessing him and my options. He was tall, wide-shouldered, with curly black hair, like a Greek statue. Something about the way he carried himself suggested overconfidence, and for some reason, that irritated me. I swallowed a growl and slid just inside the door, silently lifting myself onto the counter opposite. Height would give me a slight advantage, if Jack got aggressive.

He stepped away from the fridge and dumped an armload of food onto the shiny topped kitchen island. For several long minutes, I watched him construct a sandwich. He carefully layered the meats and the cheeses, slathered the bread with Miracle Whip, and then he looked up.

“Jesus,” he said.

“Hi,” I replied.

“What do you want?” He didn’t look afraid; I wasn’t big enough to frighten by looks alone.

I didn’t know how to answer him. Hearing his conversation with Isabel had changed what I wanted to know. “So what is it you think will cure you?”

Now
he looked afraid. Just for a second, and then it was gone, lost in the self-assured set of his chin. “What are you talking about?”

“You think you’ve found a cure. Why would you think that?”

“Okay, dude. Who are you?”

I really didn’t like him. I didn’t know why; I just felt it in my gut and I really didn’t like him. If I hadn’t thought he was a danger to Grace and Olivia and Isabel, I would’ve said the hell with him and left him there. Still, my dislike made it easier to confront him. It made it easier to play the role of the guy who had all the answers. “Someone like you. Someone who got bitten.” He looked about to protest, and I held up my hand to stop him. “If you’re thinking you’re going to say something like ‘You’ve got the wrong guy,’ don’t bother. I’ve seen you as a wolf. So just tell me why you think you’ve found a way to stop it.”

“Why should I trust you?”

“Because, unlike your father, I don’t stuff animals and put them in my foyer. And because I don’t really want you showing up at the school and on people’s doorsteps and exposing the pack. We’re just trying to survive with the crappy lot we’ve been given. We don’t need some smarmy rich punk like you revealing us to the rest of the world, so they can come after us with pitchforks.”

Jack growled. It was a little too close to animal for my taste, and my thought was confirmed when I saw him shiver
slightly. He was still so unstable — he could change at any time. “I don’t have to worry about it anymore. I’m getting a cure, so you can get the hell away from here and leave me alone.” He backed away from the island, toward the counter behind him.

I jumped down from my counter. “Jack, there is no cure.”

“You’re wrong,” he snapped. “There’s another wolf that was cured.”

He was edging toward the knife block. I should’ve run for the door, but his words froze me. “What?”

“Yeah, it took me all this time, but I figured it out. There’s a girl who was bitten and got cured, at school. Grace. I know she knows the cure. And she’s about to tell me in a hurry.”

My world reeled. “Stay away from her.”

Jack grinned at me, or maybe it was a grimace. His hand was on the counter, feeling backward toward the knives, and his nostrils flared, taking in the faint odor of wolf that the cold had brought to my skin. He said, “Why? Don’t you want to know, too? Or has she already cured you?”

“There
is no cure
. She doesn’t know anything.” I hated how much my voice revealed; my feelings for Grace felt dangerously transparent.

“You don’t know that, man,” Jack said. He reached for a knife, but his hand was shaking too much to grasp the handle on the first try. “Now get out of here.”

But I didn’t move. I couldn’t think of anything worse than him confronting Grace about a cure. Him trembling, unstable, violent; and her, unable to give him the answers he was looking for.

Jack managed to grab a handle and pulled out a wicked-looking knife, the edge serrated and reflecting the black and white of the kitchen in a dozen different directions. He was shaking so badly that he could barely hold the blade toward me. “I asked you to get out.”

My instincts urged me to leap on him like I would on one of the wolves, growl over his neck and make him submit. To make him promise to stay away from her. But that wasn’t how it worked when you were a human, not when your adversary was so much stronger. I approached him, eyes on his eyes instead of on the knife, and tried a different tactic. “Jack. Please. She doesn’t have the answer, but I can make this easier for you.”

“Get away from me.” Jack took a step toward me, then back, before stumbling to one knee. The knife fell onto the tile; I winced before it landed, but its landing was surprisingly muffled. Jack made almost no sound at all when he followed the knife to the floor. His fingers were claws, curling and uncurling on the black-and-white squares. He was saying something, but it was unintelligible. Lyrics formed in my head. They were supposed to be for him, but they were really about me.
World of words lost on the living / I take my place with the walking dead / Robbed of my voice I’m always giving / thousands of words to this nameless dread.

I crouched next to him, pushing the knife away from his body so that he wouldn’t hurt himself on it. There was no point asking him anything now. I sighed and listened to him groan, wail, scream. We were equals now, me and Jack. For all his privilege and nice hair and confident shoulders, he was no better than me.

Jack whimpered.

“You should be happy,” I told the panting wolf. “You didn’t throw up this time.”

Jack regarded me for a long moment with unblinking hazel eyes before leaping up and bolting for the door.

I wanted to just leave, but I didn’t have any choice. Any possibility of leaving him behind had disappeared as soon as he’d said Grace’s name.

I jumped after him. We scrambled through the house, his nails slipping on the hardwood floor and my shoes squeaking behind him. I pelted into the hall of grinning animals close behind him; the stench of their dead skins filled my nostrils. Jack had two advantages: He knew the house and he was a wolf. I was betting on him using the well-known surroundings to hide instead of relying on his unfamiliar animal strength.

I bet wrong.