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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used ficticiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Cover Design by Steven Novak
Book design by Marny K. Parkin

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013938664
ISBN: 978-1-937178-35-2
Printed in the United States of America

Also by S. B. Roozenboom
Predator Girl
A Taste of Silver

To my mother, Gudrun,
who made this book possible.
And to my soul sisters,
Stephanie, Shainna, and Kinzie.

“Thou art the Great Cat,
the avenger of the gods, and the judge of words,
and the president of the sovereign chiefs,
and the governor of the holy Circle;
thou art indeed . . . the Great Cat.”
—Inscription on the royal tomb of Thebes.

Preface

E
arth. Wood. Blood. I could smell all three as I looked around the bleak countryside. The wind lifted my hair and made the grass rustle. Not a star hung in the night sky. The creepiest part was I couldn’t recall leaving town. Why was I here and why alone?

A strange howling interrupted my thoughts. I jerked my head around. Figures lumbered through the shadowed woodland on my left. They were too short to be humans, too tall to be . . . animals? I squinted at the shapes. Bears maybe? No. Too limber. Dogs? No way. Even Great Danes didn’t get that big.

Suddenly one stopped in the dim light, turning to look at me. Its eyes glowed yellow, a yellow I’d never seen in an animal before. It assessed me, scanning me up and down in a way that was almost humanlike. It bared razor teeth and bent low to the ground.

Oh, God.

It was going to leap!

A roar echoed from deep within the woods. My heart pounded as I turned to run, to leave the scene behind and to pray the thing wouldn’t follow. But I couldn’t. My sneakers had somehow cemented to the ground. I tried to jump, bend my legs, anything, but it was no use.

I was going to die.

I looked up from my glued feet, expecting to see the beast coming, to see its jaws aiming for my throat . . . but they were gone. All of the creatures had disappeared, like they had never existed. The eerie sounds ceased. I exhaled, my heart still hammering from the shock. Still, I listened, not about to let my guard down. As the breeze whispered through the trees, I had to wonder: did I just imagine all that? I couldn’t have. The air still carried that aroma of earth, wood, blood. Mostly blood now . . .

Chapter 1: The Shelter

I
froze, arm in the mailbox. Movement at the edge of the woods caught my eye.

The cougar crept out of the shadows. My first instinct was to scream, but somehow I held it in. The big cat stopped beside the porch, sniffing at one of Mom’s garden gnomes. He snorted on it before walking on. Near the middle of the yard he stopped, looking at me.

We stared at each other.
Oh my God, oh my god
, I kept thinking. I was standing in the yard with a giant, fanged, and clawed predator. This had never happened before. He stood fifteen, maybe twenty feet away, and the house was just steps in front of me. I could make a break for it, get inside before getting mauled. Well, maybe.

He lifted his head to test the air.
Oh, crap
, I thought. My T-shirt was stained in tuna juice from the casserole. He must smell it. My own cats had been following me around like I was a walking entrée. My knees shook just thinking about what I would do if he came much closer. But human splattered in tuna juice didn’t appear to be his thing. He turned and trotted off, slipping back through the pines, his sleek coat reflecting the last of sunset’s light. I stopped posing like a statue and released the breath I’d been holding.

Thank God
.

Snatching the mail, I bolted up the driveway. Note to self: check the box the second I’m home from school, not at seven o’clock at night. It made sense now—my new home in eastern Oregon
did
have a reason behind its nickname, “Wildcat Country.”

Dumping the mail on the kitchen counter, I called, “Mom! Do not go outside; there is a freaking huge cougar wandering around!”

“What? I can’t hear you, hold on!” Her voice was muffled, signaling she was not on the main floor. Clacking down the stairs, she entered the kitchen.

I peered over the rims of my glasses at her black flats. She’d changed out of her usual evening wear, and judging by the mascara and blouse, she wasn’t just running to the store for milk. I narrowed my eyes. “Where ya goin’?”

“I’m so sorry, Lina. Giselle just called. She needs me to come finish the evening shift. Her main chef is out with some flu and her other left for a family emergency.” She yanked her blonde curls into a ponytail then leaned in to kiss my head. “I’ll be back in a while. Go across the street to Ms. Cummings’ if there’s a problem. Oops . . . sorry about that.”

“It’s fine.” I didn’t need a mirror to know she’d left a huge smudge on my forehead. Mom wore more lipstick than an old lady.

“I gotta hustle now. I’ll be back before midnight, honey. I promise. Bye.” The front door slammed.

Sitting at the table, I listened to the engine of the Honda, the tires grinding gravel as Mom backed into the street. I watched her zip down the road, hurrying off like she’d done several times this month to take the spot of some unavailable employee at The Golden Fox.

Wow
.
Alone again
. I hadn’t even gotten a chance to tell her my hair-raising yard adventure . . . or warn her about being careful coming home. I repeated in my head:
this is not my mother’s fault.
This is her job. This is not her boss, Giselle’s, fault. My mother is her most prized chef and waitress next to Chef David McEvans.

A loud meow came from the living room. Chubby Harry who had one black spot across his white behind sauntered into the kitchen. He plunked himself onto the table then moved to sit in the window. His roll of fat molded to the sill like hairy Jell-O. Despite my mood, I smiled. So I wasn’t totally without company.

I went to make sure our other cats were inside for the evening. When they didn’t come out from under the couch, I headed upstairs. Albert, our striped tabby, was nestled in mom’s office chair. His eyes flickered, reflecting the hall lights as I opened the door. Snowella came creeping out of the bathroom, fresh from the litter box.

Everyone was safe.

Back in the kitchen, the smell of cheese and tuna wafted from the oven. It killed my appetite. I really hate tuna casserole; I’d only made it because it was simple and saved Mom from eating another microwave meal. I’d just taken the dish from the oven when the phone rang. Grabbing the cordless, I answered, “Hello?”

There was no immediate response. In fact, the only answer to my greeting was someone’s breath coming through the line. “Hello?” I repeated. “Hellooo?”

The line went dead. I hung up. Okay, that was creepy . . . Actually it was probably just dad, mistaking my voice for Mom’s. The man always panics when he has to talk to his ex-wife, so it’s easier to just hang up and try later. Not that
I
wanted to talk to him, really. Dad wasn’t my favorite person these days. Nonetheless, I tugged the curtains aside in the front room and scanned the yard. Nothing but an empty driveway, a pale lawn, and the pine woodlands curving around the house.

Stupid paranoia.

With Mom gone, the house felt empty even with the presence of my cats. Tired of the loneliness, I turned in early. As I climbed into bed, a breeze ruffled my hair. The bedroom window was still open.
That’s weird
. When you live out in the countryside, you know when your window’s open—there’s always something outside making noise, whether it be the song of crickets or the hoot of a lone owl.

I sat there a moment, listening. Dead silence. Moving to my window, I peered outside. The porch light was off, which was reassuring. If there was something slinking through the yard it would trigger the sensors.

I glanced across the street at the neighbors. Ms. Cummings’ porch light was on, rendering a soft glow over her lawn. Dark shapes trotted across her driveway. I tensed.
Is it just me
? They looked too large to be coyotes, but wolves didn’t inhabit this area, and I doubted Mr. Cougar had a clan. I remembered reading cougars were solitary cats.

As they hit the edge of the drive, I flicked my lamp off. My eyes adjusted to the darkness. They were heading into the street now, whatever they were. I squinted harder. A shape paused in the middle of the road. I saw a glow of eyes and went still in the window. Definitely animal. An unsettling feeling passed over me, like I was being watched. The eyes blinked then headed into the trees.

I closed the curtains. First the cougar, then a pack of . . . what? Dogs? Living out here was definitely not the same as living in my busy little beach town, where prowlers were kids trying to get a few bucks for beer, not big, hairy animals looking for, well, food I guess.

Okay
,
quit worrying
about it, Lina
. Supposedly a lot of creatures occupy these dry sage woods, but I’d lived here for a while now. I hadn’t seen anything like that before. Was that why the outdoors were so silent tonight? Something abnormal was passing through?

Oh, shut up
. I returned to my bed.
You’re just being a worrier again
.

I worried a lot. Mom thought it was a side effect from the divorce. The problem was that lately my worries had been weaving odd dreams. Eerie and vivid, they always included woods, monsters and fear. I was always being followed or chased by something . . . something I couldn’t quite see.

I sighed, putting the memories aside. I had school tomorrow and, whether I liked it or not, sleep is one of those vital ingredients you can’t really go without. I had just rolled over in bed when the phone started ringing again.

Crap
. I hesitated. Leave it?
No, it could be Mom
. Maybe she hit that cougar with her car. Throwing the blankets off, I jetted down the stairs, grabbing the phone just before it went to voicemail. “Hello?”

“What are you wearing, baby?” A feminine voice said.

I snorted. “Hi, Kat.”

She burst out laughing. “I keep waiting for the day that that freaks you out, but it never seems to happen.”

“I’ve known you for like, what? Three years now? Since when has your weirdness got to me?”

She sighed, pretending to be annoyed. “Never. I know.”

“Exactly.” I laughed.

A few years in Wildcat Country hadn’t earned me many friends, but Kat Portman had been there for me since day one. She rescued me from the bullying of hotshot Jake Hawspring freshman year, and we’d been best friends ever since.

“So what are you calling so late for?” I asked.

“It isn’t that late, woman. Jeez, you’re such an early bird. I’m sorry, but I have brain-fattening gossip that I have to download on you now!”

I rolled my eyes. This was the only problem I had with Kat: if she had gossip, it had to come out soon as possible, and a lot of the time it’d be sometime in the night when I was asleep. She called me at two in the morning once, just to tell me she saw her newest crush Avery March in the grocery store buying Pepsi and Oreos.

“All right, Kat. Spill it.”

“Okay! So you know how I decided to take the job at Anna’s Boutique in town and that I’m leaving the shelter?”

“Of course.” Kat had gotten a job about a week ago at the local wildlife clinic/shelter, where her mother worked. Just when she took it, however, the manager at this little fashion store in town called and asked her for an interview. Working two jobs and being a high school student would turn Kat into a crazy, so she had to pick one or the other. Cute clothes always won in her world.

“Okay, so our boss at the shelter decided she was taking off for a couple months—don’t know why. Right before she left though, she hires this new kid. I get there today and the kid shows up. Lina, oh my God, he is
so
beautiful!”

“Oh, Kat, not again,” I said, flopping onto the couch. “Jeez, it’s a new guy all the time, silly! Do you know that? I swear; it’s like for every shower you take, you step out thinking of a new guy.”

“Odd comparison . . . but no, no! This one was like, special. Like, extra effing hot!” I imagined her fanning herself on the other end of the line, curls bouncing around her face as she hopped up and down. “His name’s Aaron. He’s tall with dark hair and light eyes. He’s got the whole tough-and-untouchable thing going on. It was so hard not to drool all over the front counter!”

“Hmm.” I pursed my lips, running my fingers through my long hair. “Does sound sort of hot actually.” I was pretty picky when it came to guys, but dark hair and blue or green eyes always caught my attention.

She made a giggling noise. “He is . . . but I’m so sad because I’m leaving the shelter now. Maybe I should’ve stayed.”

“You’re seriously considering staying because of a guy?” Of course, I wasn’t as boy-crazy as Kat. Hadn’t been since the divorce, when my mother told me all men are insert-bad-word-here.

“No,” she said, glum. “I’m still taking the job at Anna’s . . . It’s just sad that such hotness will never know me. Maybe I’ll sneak down to see Mom more often.”

I snickered. “Don’t worry, Kat. You’ll get over it in a couple days when you see some hot blonde in the coffee shop or somewhere.”

She muttered something that sounded like,
oh bite me
. “Eh. Maybe . . . Hey! So I didn’t just call to gab about Mr. Sexy Pants. A few of our employees are gone on vacation starting tomorrow, and Mom needs an extra pair of hands. She wants to know if you can help after school.”

“Really?”

“Yeah! What do you think?”

I’d helped out at the shelter once before, but that had been a couple years ago when it was still out on the fields. Now they’d built a new structure near the wildlife reserve about a mile from my house. “I’d love to. It sounds way better than another lonely evening at the house.”

“Yay!” Kat cheered. I heard a clapping of hands through the line. “Awesome, I’m so excited! Okay, so come on down around three-thirty?”

“Three-thirty it is. Now can I go to bed?”

She cackled. “Fine. Night, early bird.”

• • •

The sun was shining as I arrived home from school the following afternoon. I ran inside and threw on my fleecy, then headed back outside and down the porch steps. I crossed the driveway to the garage, noticing bits of frost still glittering on the ground. Harry had hopped up in the living room window and was watching me as I pulled my bike out of the garage. I waved at him, then jumped on and started for the shelter.

The eerie silence from last night had passed. The woods had come back to life with the calls of twitterpated birds and annoying clouds of gnats. Despite this, it still seemed quiet to me. It always seemed quiet to me. That was a big difference between Wildcat Country and Seaside: there was always noise near the beach, even in the off season. And they had traffic. Here, I was surrounded by brush and juniper trees instead of people and cars. Rust-colored dirt replaced the pale sand, and the weather was more temperamental than a PMS-ing woman. My salty, ocean-air smell was long gone, traded for the spicy one of sage. Not a bad smell, really. Just not the scent of home.

Donovan Lane curved downward. I turned my bike onto Old Wood, a dusty, unpaved lane through scrub brush and pines. I missed Seaside in more ways than I could explain, yet at the same time there were reasons to not miss it at all. My last year there had been like ketchup on an ice cream sundae. The only nice part was the home-schooling, where I could endure my suffering in private. Now, I was back in general school, and I fit in about as much as a mouse among elephants. If it wasn’t for Kat, I might not have survived this long.

The trees began to thin. Down the hill the wildlife reserve appeared. A steel fence lined with barbed wire surrounded it from left to right, going on as far as the eye could see. You’d think they were trying to keep prisoners at bay, not protect wildlife. I wondered what the need for such heavy fencing was. A white building sat outside the gates, a fancy waterfall wrapping its side, pouring into the pond by the walkway. It looked nothing like the old log building the shelter was before. A sign sat tackily propped against the building’s side: Fisher’s Creek Wildlife Rescue.

I parked my bike on the end of the sidewalk, spotting Kat’s mom’s SUV. She had bought the hulking, shiny vehicle when she got the shelter job some years ago. It worked better for transporting animals than her Toyota Camry. Recently, Kat hinted that her mom would be leaving Fisher’s Creek soon, too. Something about her office job demanding more of her time.

I glanced at my phone. Three-thirty on the dot. Throwing my hair from my face, I started for the sidewalk. A bell jingled when I opened the door. Behind the counter, a red-haired boy looked up at me. A pair of glasses bulkier than mine sat on the ridge of his nose, his white skin almost translucent. He didn’t look familiar but he was clearly another new perk for the new office.

My eyes darted around the room. Besides the counter, a small lounge area hung off my right, home to a lush, red rug and a pair of loveseats. Little office windows lined the left wall, doors closed and lights off. No Kat or her mom, though. Where were they?

I started to the front counter. Red-Hair Boy was giving me the CAT scan from boots to forehead.
That’s unsettling
. I blushed. Did I look that appealing? No one at the high school stared at me like that. His eyes finally floated up to meet mine as I came to a stop.

“Hello.” His voice was husky, pleasant. He smiled. “And what can I do for you?”

I had a feeling he’d had multiple meanings to that question. “Hi, I’m Lina. I’m actually looking for Kat or her mom, Jamie Portman. Are they here?”

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