We drove in silence for several long minutes, a bright guitar plucking rapid chords in the background while infinite white stripes flew by the car. Sam’s fingers were pressed against his upper lip as if he had amazed himself by admitting his uncertainty.
“Still waking up,” I said.
He looked at me.
“Your album. Still Waking Up.”
He looked at me, expression intense. Surprised, maybe, that I’d come close. “That’s exactly how it feels. That’s exactly it. One of these days, I’m going to get used to the idea that it’s morning and I’m going to be a guy for the rest of the day. For all the rest of all the days. But until then, I’m stumbling around.”
I darted a glance over at him, catching his eye. “Everybody does that, though. We all, one day, realize that we’re not going to be kids forever and we’re going to grow up. You just got to have that moment a little later than most people. You’ll figure it out.”
Sam’s slow smile was rueful but genuine. “You and Beck were totally cut from the same cloth.”
“Guess that’s why you love both of us,” I said.
Sam made the shape of a guitar chord on his seat belt and just nodded. A few moments later, he said, thoughtfully, “Still Waking Up. One day, Grace, I’m going to write a song for you and I’m going to call it that. And then I’ll name my album after it.”
“Because I am wise,” I said.
“Yes,” Sam said.
He looked out the window then, and I was glad, because it gave me time to dig in my pocket for a tissue without him seeing. My nose had started to bleed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
• ISABEL •
Every third step I ran, my breath exploded out of me all in a rush. One step to suck in another cold lungful. One step to let it escape. One step of not breathing.
I hadn’t been running in way too long, and I hadn’t been running this far in even longer. I’d always liked jogging because it was a place to think, far away from the house and my parents. But after Jack died, I hadn’t wanted to think.
Now, that was changing.
And so I was running again, though it was far too cold to be comfortable and I was out of shape. Even with my new, buoyant running shoes, my shins were killing me.
I was running to Cole.
It was too long of a run from my house to Beck’s, even when I’d been running all the time, so I parked three miles away, warmed up in the transparent mist, and started.
Three miles gave me plenty of time to change my mind. But here I was, the house in sight, and I was still running. I probably looked like hell, but what did I care? If I was just there to talk, it didn’t matter what I looked like, right?
The driveway was empty; Sam was already gone. I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or disappointed. It meant, at least, that there was a good chance I’d find the house entirely empty, because Cole was probably a wolf.
Again, I couldn’t tell if I was relieved or disappointed.
A few hundred feet from the house, I slowed to a walk, holding the stitch in my side. I’d almost gotten my breath back by the time I got to the back door. I tried the knob, experimentally; it turned and the door fell open.
I stepped into the house and hesitated by the back door. I was about to shout hello, when I realized that it might not be just Cole who was human. So I stood there in the dark little corner by the back door looking into the brighter area of the kitchen, remembering sitting in this house and watching Jack die.
It was easy for Grace to say that it wasn’t my fault. Words like that didn’t mean anything at all.
A sudden thunderous noise made me jump. There was a long pause, and then another burst of crashing and slamming and commotion from somewhere in the house. It was like a voiceless argument. For a long moment, I stood there, trying to decide whether or not I should just slip back outside and run back to my car.
You already sat back and did nothing once in this house, I thought grimly.
So I stepped deeper inside, making my way through the kitchen. I hesitated at the hall, looking into the living room, not quite understanding what was in front of me. I saw…water. Ragged trails of water shimmered in thin, uneven patterns across the wood floor, almost icy-looking in their perfection.
I lifted my eyes to the rest of the living room. It was completely trashed. A lamp was knocked onto the sofa, the shade askew, and picture frames littered the floor. The rug from the kitchen was thrown up against the side of one of the end tables, slicked with water on one side, and one of the chairs keeled on its back like a bystander too shocked to stand. I stepped slowly into the living room, listening for more sounds, but the house had gone quiet.
The destruction was so bizarre that it had to be intentional—books lying facedown in smears of water, pages ripped out; dented cans of food rolled against the walls; an empty wine bottle stuck upside down in a potted plant; paint shredded off the walls.
And then I heard the sounds again, scrabbling and smashing, and before I could react, a wolf came staggering down the hall to my left, ricocheting off the wall as it headed toward me. It was starting to become clear how the living room had gotten to its current state.
“Holy—” I said, and stepped backward into the kitchen. But it didn’t seem like the wolf was interested in attack; water sheeted off its sides as it made its erratic way down the hall. It seemed oddly small in this context, its gray-brown fur soaked and slicked against its body, no scarier than a dog. The wolf got a few feet away and then looked up at me with insolent green eyes.
“Cole,” I breathed, my heart doing a double thump. “You crazy bastard.”
To my surprise, he flinched at the sound of my voice. It reminded me that he was, after all, only a wolf, and that his instincts must have been screaming about my presence between him and his exit.
I backed up, but before I could decide whether I should try to get the back door open for him, Cole began to twitch. By the time he was a few feet away from me, he was full-out convulsing and twisting and retching. I took a few steps back so he wouldn’t puke on my nice running shoes and crossed my arms over my chest to watch him shift.
Cole scraped some new claw marks into the wall—Sam was going to love that so much—as he jerked on his side. Then, his body did magic. His skin bubbled and stretched, and I saw his long wolf mouth open wide in pain. He rolled onto his back, panting.
Newly human, he lay stretched on the floor, like a whale washed up on shore, arms marked up with faint pink memories of wounds. Then he opened his eyes and looked at me.
My stomach jerked. Cole had his face back again, but his eyes were still feral, lost in his wolf thoughts. Finally, he blinked, and his eyebrows ordered themselves in a way that told me he was really seeing me.
“Cool trick, right?” he said, his voice a little thick.
“I’ve seen better,” I said coolly. “What are you doing?”
Cole didn’t move, except to unfist his hands and stretch out his fingers. “Science experiments. On myself. Long, distinguished history of that.”
“Are you drunk?”
“Possibly,” Cole allowed, with a lazy smile. “I’m not sure if shifting metabolizes some of my blood alcohol. I don’t feel too bad, though. Why are you here?”