I realised I was squeezing a flower and let go. Crushed petals flew, and I wiped my hand on my jeans, embarrassed to have brought my anger to Mémère’s grave. It felt wrong, but it had been all too easy for me to lose my temper lately. Perdita was the only one able to keep me grounded, and she had no clue how close I was to the edge. Nobody knew the turmoil in my mind, how easily self-control could slip out of my hands. It wouldn’t take much for me to snap. I only hoped the other werewolves were around when it happened.
“Sorry,” I muttered. “Your memorial is this weekend, and Perdita thinks Opa will come back for that. I hope she’s right. It would help to have him around. It kind of feels like we’ve lost everything. But we’ll get by, and I bet you know that already.”
I felt idiotic, talking to the air, but I could have sworn I smelled violets, and that reminded me of my grandmother. I sat there for a while, not saying a word. It became kind of peaceful in the graveyard. The sun made it seem more serene than creepy, but I had to go. Amelia needed me, and I had promised my grandmother I would take care of my sister. Nobody else was going to do it.
I found Amelia amongst the old graves, the ones people didn’t visit anymore. “You ready?”
She nodded. “I feel bad for these ones. There’s nobody left to miss them. Think it makes a difference?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s just… do you think Mémère is still around?”
“Not really, Ammy.”
She smiled. “You haven’t called me that since we were little.” Her gaze fell on the graves again. “What if they knew nobody was here to mourn them anymore? What if there was nothing holding them here? Maybe if we keep missing her, she’ll stay with us for longer.”
I rubbed my cheek, trying to figure out a way to get her off that track. I knew my little sister too well. She would waste years on that kind of idea. “Why would you want her to? What if there’s something better for her than seeing us right now?”
She glared at me, her short temper setting her cheeks aflame. “What could be better than family?”
“Do you really think she’d want to see Opa like this? Do you think she’d be happy to see the family all… distant like this? This isn’t her family. Not the way we are right now. She’d hate to see this. But as long as we remember her, we keep her with us in a different way. Do you understand?”
She shrugged. “What do we do now? There’s nobody to take care of us anymore. Byron doesn’t exactly love being around us, and I’m starting to think Opa’s never coming back.”
“Byron’s just… grieving, in his own way. He’ll come back. Besides, we’re old enough to look after ourselves. And I’m not leaving you; don’t worry. We’ll have to wait for the oldies to get over themselves and back into the real world; that’s all.”
She laughed, and I could see I had narrowly avoided a sour mood. Dealing with my sister was a lot of work. She was sweetness and light to the rest of the world, but at home, she was stubborn and contrary. It took a lot to keep her happy, and I had to be careful because the wrong word would send her into a major sulk. Definitely spoiled. She had learned early on that orphans got an impressive amount of sympathy and leeway. It was time for her to grow up a little.
“Want to walk home?” she asked. “Make the most of the end of the heat wave. Imagine thinking this is a heat wave.”
I grinned. Ireland wasn’t the warmest place we’d ever visited, but it wasn’t as bad as people had warned.
“I take it you’re not playing this weekend,” she said as we left the graveyard.
“Nah. Too much on. The rest of the lads are still up to it, though. Here’s hoping they win. I may give up on football altogether ‘cause of the way things are with Aaron… and everything else.”
“You can’t let him drive you off the team. He gets away with everything as it is.”
Sighing, I secretly agreed with her. I could stand up to him, but the only thing that worked with him was violence, and there had been way too much of that in my life already. “I don’t need to make any more enemies. I get enough dirty looks from Tammie, ta muchly.”
Amelia scowled. “She’s so nasty. How could Perdita be mates with her? Almost as bad as you and Dawn.”
“Hey, she hasn’t been as bad lately, and you never know what someone might be going through. Give her a chance.”
“Not bloody likely.”
As we headed home, I squirmed a little before trying to get Amelia to confide in me. I wasn’t good at getting through to people. I couldn’t even manage to get my own girlfriend to really talk to me. But for Amelia’s sake, I had to at least try. “Listen, if there’s ever anything you need to talk about, now that Mémère’s gone especially, I’m always here, okay?”
“You’re hardly there for everything,” she scoffed.
“What do you mean?”
She rolled her eyes. “Girl’s stuff, Nathan.”
“Oh. Oh, right.” That sounded potentially scary, despite the mocking tone of her voice. “Well, you could always talk to Perdita. She’s a girl.”
Amelia laughed. “I have noticed.” But she linked my arm, and I felt as though maybe we had a chance at being okay.
Chapter Three
Perdita
Tammie snapped her fingers in front of my nose, pulling me back to earth. Lunchroom. Right. I needed to save the moping for after school. She stared at me intently with an all-too-familiar look of impatience. Gazing up at my previous best friend, I wondered what had happened to turn her into an enemy. Or frenemy as Amelia had taken to calling her.
“You okay?” she said gruffly, rocking onto her toes in a way that made it look as though she was about to take off running.
“What?”
She heaved an impatient sigh and sat across from me. “What’s up?”
“Nothing.”
“Liar. I’ve known you long enough to see when there’s something wrong, and there’s been something wrong for a while now.”
“It’s nothing. Everything’s fine,” I lied.
“Did he do something to you?” She narrowed her eyes.
“Who? Nathan? No! Of course not. I’m fine.” I crossed my arms as if that might protect me from her questions. Tammie was the most persistent person I knew, aside from Amelia.
“Well, something’s going on.” She glared across the room. “I better go.”
As she hurried away, I glanced around to see Nathan heading straight for me, Dawn and Abbi at his heels.
“What did she want?” he asked, apparently forgetting other people could hear him.
I shrugged, giving him a pointed look.
Keeping her eyes on me, Dawn said to Nathan, “She’s probably badmouthing you as well now.”
Rolling my eyes, I grabbed my bag and made to leave. I didn’t have the energy for Nathan’s friends. I needed to be on my toes to keep up with their drama, and it seemed so pointless after everything else that had been happening.
He caught up with me in seconds. “Where are you running off to?”
I clutched my bag tighter. “I can’t act... normal in front of people right now. I’m not like you, okay? I can’t do this. I can’t pretend everything’s fine. And I don’t want to listen to crap about Tammie. It might not compare to everything else, but that doesn’t mean I have to waste time listening to it.”
“I heard her asking you questions.”
“So you barged over to interfere? She was just trying to find out if I was okay, and you didn’t have to listen in, you know. What she was saying isn’t the point anyway!”
He took my bag, ignoring my protest, and followed me outside. “Sometimes I can’t help hearing,” he muttered.
We sat on a bench, and I felt his agitation. It ran through his body in heart-trembling rivets. I knew I was making it worse, but I couldn’t stop. It was getting harder and harder to hold everything in. Stuff was leaking out at the seams, a slow drip-drop of control seeping away on a daily basis. There was too much, and I w
asn’t strong enough. So I took it out on him, because he was the only one who could take it without running away.
“It’s not easy for me either,” he said at last. “I know you hate keeping secrets, but I don’t know what would happen if people knew the truth, and I’m not taking that chance. It isn’t just about protecting my family, Perdita. We’re protecting you now as well. I’m not saying we’re above the law, but imagine if regular police went after those werewolves. It can’t work the same for us as everyone else. Not anymore.”
“I can’t stop thinking about it,” I whispered. “All I want to do is tell my dad. That’s all, just one person. It would make everything better.”
“You know it wouldn’t. Everything would get a lot more complicated, and Byron would flip. He has a thing about doctors—don’t ask—and it’s pretty hard for people to believe in this kind of stuff anyway. I mean, you actually saw Byron change, and it still took a while to sink in.”
I stared at the pathway across from the school, half-expecting to see a werewolf standing there. “I know, but I’m his daughter. He would believe me.”
“And then what would he do, Perdita? Take blood tests? Ban us from seeing each other? What?”
I fell silent. I couldn’t imagine Dad actually allowing me to go out with someone who occasionally turned into a wild animal, especially if I told him about the other wolves. Not good. Not good at all.
And then it hit me, really hit me. I had no choice but to live with what I had done. I was one lone voice stating that something impossible had happened. Nobody would back me up, not even Nathan. If I went to the police and told them what I did, if I mentioned werewolves, I would be laughed out of the station. I was completely alone, and I had to learn to get over it.
I imagined telling my dad the truth; it wouldn’t go well at all. I had been sucked into something I couldn’t escape, no matter how much I wanted it all to end.
“Fine. I won’t tell him. But that doesn’t stop me wanting to.”
He wrapped his arms around me. “I’m sorry.” His breath tickled my earlobe, and my frustration fell away. I didn’t blame him. I blamed the other werewolves, the ones who had ruined everything. I blamed Byron and Jakob for not listening to Lia. I blamed myself for not thinking straight, but I didn’t know whether to blame myself for hurting someone or not hurting them soon enough. My head was a mess, and we hadn’t even thought about the real consequences and what might happen next.
“What if they come back?”
His grip on me tightened. “They won’t. But if they do, we’ll act differently. Next time, none of them will get away.”
A shiver of fear ran through me. He sounded exactly like Jakob had before he left, and I felt as though I was losing everything I liked about Nathan. I didn’t want the aggressive, vengeful wolf. I wanted the cool, funny boy who made my stomach do little flips whenever he looked at me. But I clung to him anyway because even the aggressive Nathan was better than no Nathan at all.
Before lunch ended, he asked if I would stay with Amelia while he and Byron hunted. I didn’t want to, but I knew he needed the hunt, and maybe he would be calmer afterward. I said yes, but a niggling feeling inside warned me to stop saying yes to werewolves.
***
I hated walking through Nathan’s front door. I had that shivery feeling of someone watching me. The house reminded me of the day everything went wrong: King’s blood, the werewolf in the house, the world falling apart in the woods. I couldn’t keep the memories out of my head, couldn’t stop running over the sequence again and again, desperate for a way to see how I could have done things differently. But I put on a smile because I didn’t want anyone to know what I was thinking.
Byron studied my face intently, as if trying to read my mind. I tried not to gulp. I was pretty sure werewolves didn’t do that.
“Keep the doors and windows locked. Keep the dogs with you at all times. Do not go outside. Stay near the phones. If there’s anyone outside, you call the police and make Amelia call us. Do you understand?”
I nodded, mostly because I wanted him to shut up. He acted as though Amelia was an infant. What had he expected her to do in the woods, aside from fall apart? They had kept the real danger hidden from her, and she’d had no idea what was out there waiting for her. I didn’t blame her for going to pieces. It didn’t make her weak, and I hated how he expected Nathan and me to take care of her all of the time. Amelia became a little smaller each and every time he treated her like a helpless child, but he didn’t seem to care, and I didn’t have the energy to fight him.
“Good. We’ll be leaving within the hour. Nathan, be ready.”
Nathan made a face as Byron turned and left us alone in the kitchen. The kitchen had been Lia’s domain, and without her, it felt empty and cold.
“Do me a favour and make sure Amelia eats something,” Nathan said, ignoring Amelia’s shove. She managed to move him an inch, I noted, a little impressed.
“Eat what? There’s nothing here.” She hauled open the fridge door to prove her point.
The last time I had been in the kitchen, the fridge and freezer had both been fully stocked. I knew it was because werewolves had to eat a lot, partly because of the metabolism-on-steroids aspect of the whole werewolf thing and partly because letting the wolf get hungry led to disaster. Currently, there were bits and pieces of suspicious-looking items scattered around the fridge. None of it looked particularly edible.
“Seriously?” I blurted. “This is what you’re all living on now?”
Nathan looked embarrassed. “No, we’ve been living on takeaways, mostly. Cooking isn’t my strong point. Neither is shopping.”
“What about Byron? It’s up to him to take care of you. No wonder you’ve been edgy. You’re practically starving.”
He shrugged, his cheeks flushing even redder, but Amelia made a face that said she fully agreed with me.
“You have to talk to him.” I gave Nathan a meaningful look. “The world hasn’t stopped.”
“I’ll say it to him, but he’s... you know.”
I felt bad. I knew exactly what Byron was like.
Nathan and I moved to the living room while Amelia gave us a few minutes alone.
“I’m worried about her,” I said, unable to hold it in any longer.
“I know. So am I.”
“It’s just… I think he needs to stop babying her like this. How is she ever going to learn how to take care of herself?” I saw echoes of my own situation. Maybe I would have reacted differently if I had more freedom, if I had seen more danger. No way to know, but it didn’t stop me thinking.
He shifted uncomfortably. “I get it, but he wants to keep her safe.” He caught a glimpse of my expression and shook his head. “Not now, please?”
I shrugged, a little annoyed that he was putting everything on the back burner too, but I didn’t want to fight. Everything else had slipped through my fingers. He was all I had left.
“Have a good time later,” I said, and once again a disturbing thought pervaded. I was giving up a lot for him and his family; I was giving up how I saw myself.
“Don’t think that’s possible,” he said, but he kissed me deeply, and all of a sudden I forgot about everything. I liked it that way, how it momentarily filled the void, and for a change, he was the one to pull away. “Hey,” he whispered gruffly as I pressed myself against him. “You’re supposed to be keeping me on the straight and narrow, remember?”
“Whoops. Won’t happen again,” I lied, wrapping myself around him.
“Careful,” Byron warned.
We both knew exactly what he meant, but sometimes neither of us cared about the consequences. That was the scary part. It disturbed me so much that I secretly hoped it had nothing at all to do with the curse and everything to do with just us. I wished I knew what it would be like without the curse, if we would still fall head over heels whenever we kissed. Deep down, I really hoped so.
We snuck one last kiss before they went on t
he hunt, and it left my skin burning with a longing I had never felt before. Getting lost in that drunken desire was the closest thing to bliss I would ever get. And it was oh, so easy to lose myself. Despite everything else, a kiss between us made everything heat up, made me forget it all, no matter how I had been feeling previously. And the wrongness of that always left a little bit of dread in the pit of my stomach later.
After they left, Amelia pretended to eat while we watched soaps on television. She did her I need to talk fidget until I threw a cushion at her.
“I hate when you do that,” I said. “Spit it out already.”
After another ten minutes of nibbling on her fingernails, she got on with it. “This is going to sound stupid.”
I stared at her. I was pretty sure whatever it was, it couldn’t sound any worse than anything that had already happened.
She winced. “I’ve been having these dreams.”
I sat up straight, suddenly interested. “Soul mate?” All of the wolves in her family had dreamt of their soul mates, and Amelia was reaching that special age, so it was potentially a big deal.
“No. Well. Not mine, anyway. It’s as if I’m in somebody else’s body, as if I’m living their life, and it feels so real, but then I wake up, and I’m me again.”
“Oh.” I sank back into the chair. “It’s only a dream then.”
“It’s not, though. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s more than a dream. When I wake up, I feel... different. Stronger. Except… sometimes it’s like I don’t even recognise my room for a minute. That’s weird, right?”
I thought about it. “Is it a recurring dream?”
“No, but it’s the same people, like in a story. It’s old. Everything is old-fashioned. Last night, I was walking down a trail, wearing this really long skirt. I remember because I was really careful about it not touching this boy. Oh!”
“What?”
“Someone helped. I like him. I mean, she likes him. This is confusing. He was... a farmer. I’m... I’m like a gypsy or something. He’s nice to me, but he’s married, and I’m supposed to keep away from the gaje.”