Wolfsbane (Howl #3) (18 page)

Colby’s face softened a little, but Samara knew that he was still upset. Not that she really had time to worry about it right now; she had to focus her attention on finding the talisman. “This house is so big, I’m not even sure
where we should begin looking.”

“Well, I say we split up,” Chris replied. “
Steve and me will take the third
floor, a
nd Kyle can take the fourth floor
. Luke
can take the second floor, and Samara
ca
n take this floor. Sound good?”

“What about me?” Colby asked.

“Oh, you can take the basement,” Chris replied.
“I saw the basement door in the dining ro
om.”

“Why do I have to take the basement?” Colby protested. “It’s probably really dark and
dusty
down there . . .”

“Is Colby Jack scared
of the dark?” Steve sneered.

“Maybe you’ll find a girl i
n a coffin down there,” Chris joked
.
“She won’t have any choice but to like you since she ha
sn’t seen any guys in years.”

“Chris, stop it,” Samara hissed at him. “I think we’re all spending too much together time or something lately.” It seemed like everyone was picking on Colby lately; then again, Colby had been picking on Emma so m
uch that maybe he deserved it
.

“That sounds like a
good
plan, though,” Luke said
, bringing everyone back to the issue at hand: finding the talisman
. “Let’s all go separate ways and find th
is thing as quick as we can.”

“Alright, so go look,” Samara agreed.
S
he hope
d the talisman was in the house
because they were wasting a lot of time if it wasn’t.
Once they were done looking, they had to get ready for the initiation ceremony tonight. “Meet
me
back here once you’re
all
done.”

They all promised that they would, and she heard the sound of feet racing up the upst
airs. She went into the kitchen and began
searching through the cabinets, which were filled wi
th a blue and white dish set.

It reminded her of the one that Aunt Rae had always talked about; it was her own grandmother’s dish set brought all the way from China. It had hand painted floral designs, and Rae always wished
that she would have been able to receive it as a family heirloom
, but Grandpa Jo
e had thrown it away before Rae had gotten
the chance to ask for it.

Samara decided that she was going to ask her aunt if she wanted this set; it wouldn’t have the same sentimental value, but it might still bring bac
k some happy memories for her.

It surprised her
to find that the cabinets were stocked
with breakfast cereals, pasta, and canned soups and vegetables. It had been years since Grandpa Joe died, so Samara had been under the assumption that Mollie Archer had died before he had. But unless this food was many years past its expiration date, her grandfather must have bought the house from Mollie, who continued to live in it until she’d passed away, which m
ust not have been that long ago. Either way, Samara felt
strange abo
ut being in the house at all.

There was nothing in the dining room, aside from a beautiful golden silverware set with the letter
‘
M
’
engraved on it.
Samara
thought it was strange
that the silverware set wasn’t engraved with an ‘A’ for Archer,
but perhaps the silverware set had been a family heir
loom that had gotten passed down.

Samara examined the metal; it was gold in color and it didn’t burn her hands like most things that were constructed from sterling silver did.
Considering how expensive everything else in the house was, it seemed likely that it was a genuine gold set of silverware. Could one even call it silverwa
re if it were made from gold?

Once she was finished looking through the kitchen and dining room, she peeked in the coat closet, a large walk-in closet that was filled with both men and women’s coats, which ranged from genuine leather jackets to sophisticated trench coats that looked like they had once been featured in a women’s fashion magazine. At the bottom of the closet, there was a shoe rack, which had high
leather boots,
designer heels in varying colors, and fur-trimmed snow boots, which appear
ed to be in perfect condition.

Deciding that there was nothing in the coat closet that looked out of place, Samara went into the bedroom.
A king-sized canopy bed was covered by a
blue velvet comforter
and sat alongsid
e a beautiful chestnut dresser.

She went over to the dresser and began pulling the drawers open. She fished out clothing that looked like it belonged to a man. Had Mollie Archer had a husband who had passed before her and she hadn’t bothered to get rid of his old clothes, or had she lived with a boyfriend? Samara knew that it wasn’t really any of her business, but she couldn’t help but feel fascinated by the woman
who this house had belonged to.

Samara had been expecting to find something in one of the dresser drawers—mostly because she had found something in one of her grandfather’s dresser drawers at the cabin—but after she had gone through each and every drawer, she realized that her search ha
d unveiled nothing.

“I found something,” Luke told her. She glanced over her shoulder and found him standing i
n the doorway, holding up a book.

“The talis
man?” Samara asked
excitedly.

Luke shook his head. “No, I didn’t find it anywhere on the floor I was searching. Someone else might have found it, though. But, I did find this.” He took a step forward, opening the pages of the book, and Samara realized that it wasn’t a book at all, but a photo album instead. “It says McKinley on the front, and there are some pictures of Joe inside. I didn’t look at all of them, but I thought you might be curious to see.”

She took the photo album
from him
and began flipping through the pages. “I wonder if
he might have left this
here f
or me to find it on purpose.
Why else would it have been in Mollie Archer’s house?
”

“That’s
sort of what I was
t
hinking,” Luke agreed.

Samara heard a loud banging sound, and she heard Colby cursing in his head. She climbed off the floor and raced down the hallway and to the d
oor that led to the basement.

“Colby?” she calle
d downstairs. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he replied, but his voice, which sounded really di
stant, wasn’t too convincing.

“Are you sure you’re okay, Colby?
” Luke asked from behind her.

There was a long pause. Finally, Colby said, “I think I could use a little help. There’s something down here. It looks like a
snake . . . and it’s on me.”

A snake? Maybe
one of
Mollie Archer
’s neighbors
owned a pet snake
that had slithered its way into the house
, Samara thought to herself, as she led Luke down the stairs into the dark depths of the basement
.

Once they were downstairs, Samara noted that the basement was surprisingly clean—as far as basements went, at least.

“Where are you, Colby?”
Samara asked, and she heard his strained voice
mutter, “Over h
ere,” from one of the corners.

When she got closer to him, she burst into laughter.
“Colby, that’s not a snake!”

“It’s not?” he asked, and even through the darkness, she could see
the surprise on his face.

“No, it’s just a garden hose,” she said, unwin
ding it from around his legs.

Once they were all back upstairs and in the bedroom, where she had left the photo album, Samara heard the sound of shoes squeaking against the hardwood floor, and she glanced up to find that Kyle
was standing behind them.

“I didn’t find anything in
any of
the upstairs bedrooms or bathrooms that I was looking in,
” he told
her apologetically.

She sighed, climbing up onto the bed. She scooted down to the edge, feeling weird that it had once belonged to Mollie
. Samara found herself wondering if Mollie had passed away in this very bed.

“What’s that?” Kyle asked, pointing to the photo album that she was still holding in her hands.

“Luke found an old family photo album,” she explained. “A
McKinley family photo album.”

Opening the pages, she began looking through the photos.
There wa
s a picture of Grandpa Joe with his wife, Samara’s grandmother, who Samara
had only ever seen in a few blurry photographs since she’d died before Samara was even born.
Her grandmother stood about a foot shorter than her grandfather, and she looked so tiny and fragile in comparison to his well-built body.
Now that she knew that her grandmother wasn’t a werewolf and her grandfather was, the differences in thei
r bodies made a lot of sense.

She flipped to the next photo in the album. It was another picture of her grandfather. This time, he was sitting down at a kitchen table, a birthday cake in front of him. He wasn’t smiling, but he didn’t really look unhappy either. He just sort of looked . . .
there
.
Samara imagined that birthdays must have lost their luster to him af
ter he’d already had so many.
She hoped that she would never feel that way.

The next picture was of her grandmother lighting the birthday candles, her hair in a braid that
hung to one side of her neck.

“She l
ooks like you,” Luke murmured.

“Really?” Samara asked,
glancing over
at him. No one had ever told her she’d looked like her dad’s mother before, but then again, hardly anyone ever spoke of her because of the memories that he harbored from
the
horrific day she was murdered.

Luke nodded, giving her a small smile. “You have the same eyes—not the same color of eyes. Hers were much lighter than yours. But when you smile, your eyes smile the same way hers did.”

Samara beamed, pleased that
he had noticed such a small thing about her, and then
focus
ed
her attention back to the photo album. She half-expected to find a letter from her gr
andfather telling her the talisman’s location in one of the pockets.

Once she flipped through all the pages, she was disappointed to find nothing except for a few cute pictures of her father and Aunt Rae when they were babies with their mother. When she was done, she closed the book and set it down. “There’s noth
ing in here that can help us.”

“Can I look at the pictures?” Colby asked from his place on
the floor in front of the bed.

Samara handed him the photo album. “Sure. There wasn’t anything really i
nteresting in it, though.”

“Just seeing pictures of Joe McKinley is f
ascinating enough in itself,” Colby
insisted, and she rolled her eyes. She couldn’t help but feel annoyed whenever people implied that her grandfath
er was some sort of superstar.

She heard the sound of shoes clunking against the hardwood floor and found Chris standing in the doo
rway. “Did you find anything?”

“There was nothing at all,” Chris said, stepping into the room and sitti
ng on the floor next to Colby.

Samara let out a loud sigh.
“If
Steve doesn’t find it, then I think the reason we’re not finding it is
because it isn’t here.
Someone else has to have it.”

Kyle shrugged. “Do you think there’s a chance that Seth could have taken it? Maybe he found out something a
bout this house
and came here and
took
it for himself.”

“I don’t think Seth is the one who took it,” Samara replied, shaking her head. “It doesn’t even seem possible that he could have found it. There’s no way we would have known how to find it if we hadn’t found those le
tters when we were in Alaska.”

“Hey, guys, look. You can see the talisman really well in this picture,” Colby said, pointing to one of the pictures in the alb
um that he held in his hands.

Samara
glanced at the photo over his shoulder
.
Her heart skipped a few beats.