Vesper (18 page)

Megan slapped her palms against the dining table. A little bowl of apples in the center bounced up and clattered back down.

"I didn't need to tell them anything," she snapped. "You had it all planned out. They probably saw my car was gone, assumed I had left, peeked in your room and saw someone they thought was you sleeping under the covers, then went to bed themselves. Pretty smart, Emily."

Standing up, she sent her chair screeching back against the bare wood floor. I gritted my teeth.

She was being way too loud.

Megan held out her hand. "Can I have my keys?" she said. "I've been up since three thirty waiting for you, since my brother called me, telling me that Jared told him you were out on the town, and that he wanted to make sure you got home okay. Sounds like you had a fun time out."

Fighting my trembling hands, I dug the keys out from under my dress and lifted the makeshift twine necklace over my head. Megan's eyes darted up and down as I dropped the keys in her palm, taking in my state of disrepair for the first time. For a moment, concern flashed over her face.

"Your dress," she said. "And you're barefoot.... What happened?"

I opened my mouth to answer, and she waved her hand. "Never mind,"

she said. "I don't care what you were doing with your new little popular friends, I don't want to hear about it. Just tell me where my car is parked.

I'm leaving."

My jaw hung slack as I struggled to find some way to explain. Giving up, I sighed and said, "Seattle."

"Excuse me?" Megan narrowed her eyes and leaned across the table. "Did you just say
Seattle?"

"Yeah, uh ...," I stammered. "I sorta kinda left your car parked next to a club in Seattle near the Art Institute. A place called Frenzy."

"You left—," she sputtered. "You took my car to Seattle? Why would you leave it there? How did you even get home?"

I crept around the table, hands raised. "Shh, shh," I said. "Please, please don't wake them up, okay? A lot happened to me, and I can explain everything. Let's just go upstairs, all right? We can take a cab to Seattle, get your car, maybe talk on the way."

Megan's face was red again, her jaw taut. She didn't say anything, so I backed away, then turned to head up the stairs to my room. She followed.

Safe in my room with Megan, I shut the door and let out a long breath.

Megan went to sit on my bed, the covers a mess.

I didn't know where to start. So, tugging at the bottom of my dress to make sure my privates were covered, I ran around the room gathering clothes and my glasses, then opened up a little green case I'd stuck next to my computer, inside of which sat several twenty-dollar bills. I had been saving up to buy my dad the complete
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
series set on DVD for Christmas. Regretfully, I plucked four of the twenties from the pile.

Clutching the clothes I had gathered to my chest, I handed the money to Megan.

"So we can get to Seattle by cab," I explained meekly. "And pay whatever I owe for where I parked the car."

Megan snatched the money from my hands. She refused to say anything.

"Well," I said. "Um, I'm going to go take a shower really quick, and then I'll tell you what happened, okay? I didn't know that I'd lie to you about when I changed last night, I promise. It wasn't me who put the sleeping pills in your drink, it was Nighttime Emily, I swear."

Megan's mouth snapped open in shock. "So you did do something to me?

You drugged me with frickin'
sleeping pills?"

"No, not me," I stammered. "It was Nighttime Emily, it wasn't—"

She waved her hand dismissively. "Whatever. Go take your shower."

"Can you call Jared and tell him I'm all right?" Megan turned away from me, disgusted. "Fine."

I watched as Megan took out her cell, and then I walked slowly across the hall to the bathroom. Setting my clean clothes and glasses on the counter, I bent over the tub and cranked the "Hot" knob all the way, steam curling up to fill the bathroom and fog the mirror.

I lifted the destroyed dress off and let it fall to the floor. My body aching, I climbed into the shower, shut the plastic curtain. Hot water sliced into me like heated needles, turning my skin pink. I closed my eyes and scrubbed myself with my loofah, washing away the filth of the night, cleaning the splinters from my back, scrubbing the grass stains from my feet.

And then, letting out a gasping sob, I sat down in the tub and clutched my knees.

I struggled to breathe as tears burned at my eyes. Everything in my life had changed so rapidly, and I didn't know how to handle any of it. A week ago I had been the same person I'd been all my life—quiet, reserved, geeky little Emily who spent her days dreaming about being like the other teenagers and having the confidence to do more with my high school years than stay shut up in my room all the time.

Be careful what you wish for, right?

Sitting there with the harsh water pounding against my face, I felt afraid for the first time. Nighttime Emily's antics were often way out of line, but whatever worry I had about that change was always tempered by a giant dose of excitement—of enjoyment at my new confidence, my new ability to kick butt and take names.

And maybe I hadn't even been afraid about turning into a werewolf—a frickin' werewolf. There was something about the werewolf thing that made my head reel with wonder, because it still didn't feel
real.
It felt more like another fantasy made reality—turning into something better and stronger than myself.

My main memory of my time as the wolf the night before was, with the exception of the shadowy figures I'd seen, a sense of fearlessness unlike anything I'd ever felt before, even as Nighttime Emily. To be able to let the wolf side of me take the driver's seat? That was actually sort of... neat. And so my stupid geeky side actually sat there and thought,
Cool!
even as my rational side realized that my life had just become a lot more complicated.

No, what had me shivering with fear was the man in the alley. The dark figure with the gun and the gravelly voice, luring me, targeting me. Just like he'd snuck up on Emily C. and Dalton. I'd felt bullets fly by my face, narrowly missing me, and though Nighttime Emily had only felt pissed off, now that I was me again, I felt way too mortal. I couldn't die. I just couldn't.

It was only then, sitting in the shower, the little textured fish cutouts rough against my skin, that I realized I wasn't anonymous anymore. Not just for getting crazy at a party, or for dancing wildly at a club. Someone out there, someone I didn't know, wanted me dead. He didn't care that I wanted to grow up, figure out who I was meant to be.

Someone wanted to take that from me, and even though Nighttime Emily could throw Dumpsters, and Werewolf Emily had terrifying teeth and claws, most of the time I was Daytime Emily and I would be helpless. It wasn't an idle
What if it was me?
any longer. It was a dreadful, crushing
When will it
be me?
I could go outside and he could be there, as shadowy as the ghostly figures I'd seen when I was the wolf. He'd raise his gun, pull the trigger...

I couldn't think about Nighttime Emily just then. Couldn't think about whether I was going crazy or still hallucinating or if I was actually a monster.

I had no one to talk to about those things, and thinking about them now, with the threat of that man with the gun still out there, would drive me insane.

But I could talk about the shooter.

Maybe not with my parents or the police or even Deputy Jared, not without them discovering my secret lives, realizing I was some freak of nature and turning me over to scientists to slice me open and discover what I was. But I could talk with Megan. I could always talk with Megan.

She couldn't understand the change into Nighttime Emily, and I wouldn't dare tell her about the werewolf change, but this ... maybe she could help me.

Grabbing the edge of the tub, I pulled myself to my feet. I wiped my eyes, then rinsed my face in the water before turning the shower off. Toweling myself dry and putting on my hoodie and glasses, I snagged the dirty dress from the floor and tiptoed across the hall back to my room. Megan was gone.

I snuck downstairs as quietly as I could, discovered the remnants of our milkshake movie evening in the living room—the open
Scream
DVD case, Megan's empty glass with melted ice cream congealed around its base—but did not find Megan. She'd left and was probably halfway to Seattle to go collect her car by herself.

I sat down on the edge of the couch and buried my head in my hands. On top of everything else, I'd alienated Megan, maybe for good.

I was on my own.

I ended up falling into a restless sleep in my room for a few hours before waking up and having the whole night wash over me all over again. But this time, it didn't seem quite as bad. It's amazing what your mind can rationalize before it snaps for good.

Still, I couldn't help but feel like I would look out my window and see the shooter, his rimmed hat shadowing his face as he leveled a pistol at me, prepared to snuff me out forever.

I hid in my room for half the day, not even going downstairs to eat despite my aching stomach. My dad came to check on me after a while and I lied, telling him I just had a lot of schoolwork that I wanted to get done, convincing him to give me back the cord to connect my computer to the internet so I could do research.

I gathered all the books I'd checked out of the library and spread them around me on my bed. Clutching Ein in my lap, I skimmed through them, trying to find variations on the theme that would explain what was happening to me. But the legends were all the same—a werewolf bites a person, person then transforms into wolf at the full moon, yadda yadda.

Nothing about the transformation beginning with a crazy mood swing, or turning into a wolf when the moon was at half-mast or nonexistent, or turning without even being bit by a hamster, let alone a wolf-man.

Frustrated, I tossed the books aside and instead dug through my DVD

case. I had a number of werewolf movies:
Dog Soldiers, Art American
Werewolf in London, Teen Wolf
all three
Ginger Snaps, Cursed.
With the exception of
Teen Wolf
the stories were pretty much the same—man (or woman) turns beastly, massacres frightened humans, has to be put down.

Reassuring.

Okay, so DVDs weren't really going to help me out all that much either. I could find similarities in books, in movies, but nothing felt
right,
and once again I found myself feeling alone. I didn't feel hopeless because of this, not really. I was just frustrated. It was bad enough to have originally been the geek who liked things no one at my school had ever heard of, and that I'd alienated half the school by acting like a stripper on crack at Mikey Harris's party. Now I had
this
to deal with.

Every teenager changes when she grows up. Develops new senses and new emotions, grows hair in new places. But not quite like this.

Tossing the DVDs to the floor, I slumped onto my bed and lay back, arms spread wide. The ceiling above me was bumpy and white, though I could make out little yellow spots where once glowing neon stars had been stuck with Sticky Tack.

And then I realized: I wasn't alone, was I? The night before, what I now knew were the wolfś instincts had whispered to nighttime me that I needed to find my "fellow's.” Others like me? Perhaps I'd been right yesterday when Megan told me about how Emily C. was killed and how Dalton was shot.

Both of them had gone through changes, like me, and now all three of us had faced off with the killer. That wasn't a coincidence.

And I couldn't forget—there was Patrick. Mysterious, brooding Patrick, who had smelled so
right,
had smelled remarkably like the other werewolf I'd seen last night....

There was something happening. Something going on here that I didn't quite understand, but that meant I wasn't alone after all. At least, not before the killer found the mysterious male werewolf I'd seen running through the woods last night. Not before he finished off Dalton and found me again.

I fired up my computer and began doing searches for "Emily Cooke,"

"Emily Webb," and "Dalton McKinney." I only found a few results for all of our names together, and those were just pages listing all the juniors at Carver High. Yeah, thanks, Google, I already knew we went to the same school.

I deleted my name from the search and tried again. A few more links popped up, all about various clubs and organizations the two had been in.

There had to be something here I was missing.

I thought back to what the man had said to me last night before raising the gun.

Emily Webb? Daughter of Caroline and Gregory Webb?

My parents. That was strange. He'd mentioned my parents. Maybe ...

I didn't know Emily C's or Dalton's parents' names, so I just typed in

"Cooke" and "McKinney" and "Skopamish, WA." Shaking my leg, I clicked Search.

Results popped up.

The first: a link to the employee page of a company called BioZenith. For some reason my heart pounded as I followed the link. Under "Notable Employees" I found two familiar names: Harrison McKinney and Marshall Cooke. Relatives of Dalton McKinney and Emily Cooke, perhaps?

There was something here. This couldn't be a coincidence. But the website didn't give much more information beyond the company's accomplishments, using scientific terms that I didn't understand.

I clicked through to the main page of the website, read their little blurb.

BioZenith was some sort of bioengineering laboratory dedicated to improving the science of agriculture. You know, making grapes seedless and all corn yellow, things like that. Unfortunately, there wasn't any line on the page that said, "And oh yes, we have some werewolves on staff. Ask us how to join our howlingly fun team!"

So there it was, a connection: two men I was sure were related to Dalton and Emily C. had once worked together, or at least for the same company.

The only problem: That connection didn't include me. My dad was a construction worker, my stepmom was a librarian, and before my mom had died she'd worked for Microsoft in their publicity department.