Cursed (Howl, #6) (2 page)

Chapter 2

Once they had finished lunch, Samara and Luke went back to their hotel to go relax by the pool. As they searched for empty chairs to sit in which were in the shade, Samara saw it again: blonde hair that looked a lot like Emma’s.

“There she is!” Samara said, tugging on Luke’s arm and pointing at the blonde who was sitting in beach chair a few rows in front of them, her
back facing them. “It’s Emma.”

Luke glanced over at her and touched her forehead with his palm. “Are you feeling okay, Sam? I think you might be running a fever again or something. We’re in Hawaii. Emma’s in Pennsylvania with the rest of our p
ack. It’s not her over there.”

Sighing, Samara settled into one of the chairs, but even as she did, she couldn’t ignore the blonde hair that was in front of them. After a few minutes, she stood up and walked around
to the other side of the pool.

She noticed that the bright pink sundress the girl was wearing was a sundress that Emma also owned. The girl had her face hidden behind a
Cosmopolitan
magazine, but that only helped to confirm Samara’s suspicion. “She’s reading Cosmo,” Samara whispered to Luke as he came up behind her. “That’s Emma’s favorite magazine.”

Luke rolled his eyes. “That’s
every
woman under thirty’s favorite magazine. In fact, Steve and Colby like it, too.” He shook his head, chuckling. “It doesn’t mean that’s Emma just because she’s blonde and reads the same magazine.”

Samara sighed. Glancing to the left of the-girl-who-looked-just-like-Emma, she noticed that there was a guy wearing a large straw hat, a huge pair of sunglasses, and sunscreen that was slathered all over his nose, making it appear ghostly white. It took her a second to put two and two together, but when she did, she turned to Luke. “It
is
Emma! And that’s Colby next to her!”

“That old guy?” Luke asked, raising his eyebrows. “I don’t think
Colby would wear a straw hat.”

“Colby would wear anything.” Huffing at Luke, Samara marched over to
them and said, “Emma? Colby?”

“Samara!” Emma lowered her sunglasses and flashed her a wide smile. “We’ve been looking all over for you guys.”

“Well, we weren’t looking for you that hard,” Colby said. “We’ve been lounging by the pool for most of the day. But we
were hoping to bump into you.”

Samara glanced over her shoulder at Luke. “I think you owe me an apology. You made me think I was nut
s.”

“You are nuts, but it doesn’t mean you weren’t right this time,” Luke said
, kissing her on the forehead.

*

“We have to tell you something, but you have to promise that you won’t get mad at us over it,” Colby said with a serious look on his face. Now that everyone knew that everyone was staying at the same resort, they were eating dinner together on the patio.

“I’m not going to make any promises I can’t keep,” Samara replied, shaking her head. “What's this about?”

Emma shifted in her seat uncomfortably. “Well, you see . . . it’s mostly my fault, I guess. I had this weird feeling about things. I don’t want to say I’m a psychic, because I actually knew it was going to be gone, but . . .” She trailed off and glanced over at Colby for help.

“We tried calling you,” Colby explained. “Not that we actually expected to be able to reach you, and we didn’t want to bother you, with it being your honeymoon and all—”

“But your phone was turned off, so we never got ahold of you,” Emma finished his sentence and stared at Samara pointedly, as though she was accusing her for not having her cell phone turned on the whole time.

“Sorry,” Samara mumbled apologetically.

“We were going to leave you a voicemail,” Colby went on, “but we didn’t want to ruin your honeymoon or anything. But then Luke called us and told us what happened to you, and Emma’s been a pain in the butt about us not going on a vacation, so we just decided, ‘what the heck’ and bought plane tickets.”

“You didn’t want to ruin our honeymoon, and yet you came here?” Luke asked. Samara could tell that he was sort of annoyed by the fact that Emma and Colby were staying at the same resort as them. It gave them less privacy for the rest of their honeymoon, which Samara had also been looking forward to, even though she wa
s happy to see Emma and Colby.

“Well, thank you for worrying about me,” Samara said, “But I’m fine, I promise.”

“So, are you going to tell us what happened?” Luke asked with raised eyebrows.

Emma hesitated for a moment before blurting, “I dreamt that the talisman was broken. So, we checked at the storage facility to make sure the talisman was okay, but it wasn’t there.”

“What do you mean it wasn’t
there
?” Luke questioned, narrowing his eyes at Emma.

“It’s
gone
,” Emma replied. “Someone took it.”

An uneasy feeling formed in the pit of Samara’s stomach. “I know who took the talisman.” Of course she didn’t know for sure, but it was the only thing that made even an ounce of sense.

“Who?” Colby asked, raising his blonde eyebrows.

Samara took a deep breath and stared into the eyes of each of her friends. “Joe McKinley.”

*

“What do you mean, Joe McKinley? He can’t just come back from the dead,” Chris insisted, as they sat around the campfire where they always held their pack meetings. The fire blazed in the c
enter of them, illuminating their faces.

“Why not?” Steve questioned. “Those trusted spirit things are back from the dead. I always knew I would go down in history, but if I ever die, I’m gonna come back to haunt people. I would pull some spooky Bloody Mary shit and haunt kids through their bathroom mirrors in the middle of the night. It would be funny as hell.”

Samara rolled her eyes at him. “Guys, my grandfather didn’t come back from the dead. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s not what happened.” She paused before adding, hesitantly, “And he has to be back, because there’s no one else who could have taken the talisman.”

“The talisman is missing?” Chris asked, holding Kyana close to him. He looked genuinely afraid to know that, somehow, someone had taken the talisman out of their unit at the storage facility—the unit that, as far as they all had known, only
the Tala pack had known about.

“Sam, what’s going o
n?” Seth asked from behind her.

Samara glanced over her shoulder at him, realizing for the first time that she probably should have mentioned something about all of this to her brother before now, in front of the rest of their pack. Grandpa Joe was his grandfather, too; he deserved to know the truth—that their grandfather was still alive—before everyone else. Their cousin, Kyle, de
served to know the truth, too.

“Grandpa Joe isn’t dead,” she replied with a sigh, stari
ng down at her hands guiltily.

“What do you mean he’s not really dead?” Seth asked, his voice twisting into a look of shock
. “How is that even possible?”

Samara shrugged. “I don’t know how it’s possible. All I know is that I saw him on the night of our wedding. He was there, staring at me and smiling. I was going to go to him right away and find out why he was there, but then the whole fiasco with Luke’s mom had happened . . .” She trailed off, trying not to think about the argument that had ensued between Luke and his mom on the night of the wedding when he’d told her the truth about Samara being a werewolf.

Marnie had flipped out, and she and Luke had shared a lot of ugly words. As a result, Luke and his mom were no longer speaking, and Samara’s parents were angry at Luke for creating such a scene in front of all the wedding guests. It had made the otherwise disastrous night even more of a catastrophe.

“Why didn’t you talk to Grandpa afterwards?” Kyle asked, meeting her gaze. Samara wasn’t positive, but she could have sworn that she saw a look of hope flic
ker through her cousin’s eyes.

“By the time I tried to find Grandpa Joe after everyone had calmed down, he was already gone,” Samara replied. She sighed. “I guess I just thought he was going to stick around or something. It doesn’t make sense why he would let me see him, even if he wasn’t even going to talk to me.” She shrugged, knowing that her pack members probably weren’t going to believe a word she was saying.

“Wow,” Steve commented. “I gotta admit . . . that’s some crazy shit right there.”

Seth glanced down at the dirt ground, but he didn’t say anything. He reached over for Penelope’s hand. Penelope rested her head against his shoulder, but she didn’t meet Samara’s gaze. Samara wondered if it was because Penelope knew that Seth was mad at Samara, or if it was because Penelope was still mad at her for not making her a bridesmaid. Even though Samara knew that Seth probably wished Penelope had been a bridesmaid, Samara didn’t regret her decision. Penelope may have been a part of the Tala pack and she was Seth’s mate, but that didn’t mean that Samara had to trust her.

“But it’s not even possible,” Kyana protested from across the fire, her eyes filled with disbelief. “Joe McKinley was my father’s best friend. My father would have known if he was still alive.”

Samara sighed. “I know, I’ve already thought about that. I don’t know why my grandfather would keep this a secret—or who knows he’s alive and who doesn’t. All I know is that he
is
alive, whether Orkos knows it or not.”

“Are you sure you weren’t just imaging it, Sam?” Josh asked from his place on a log across from her. His eyes were narrowed at her, almost accusingly. “Maybe you were running a fever or something. You even said yourself you’ve been ‘off’ lately.”

“I was feeling ‘off’ for a while,” Samara admitted, running a hand through her chocolate brown hair, trying not to get too angry at him for not believing her. Even she knew just how crazy she sounded, but it still hurt to know that her own pack member didn’t believe her. “I’ve been fine lately, though. It might be hard for everyone to believe what I’m saying is true, because everyone thought my grandfather was dead, but . . . I just know it’s true. He really is alive.”

Colby frowned before saying, ever so hes
itantly, “I believe you, Sam.”

“You do?” Samara questioned with raised eyebrows. She was really surprised that he believed her. For some reason, she had assumed that, like Luke and Emma and apparently the rest of the pack, Colby wouldn’t believe that her grandfather was alive, either. In fact, she thought he was the one who would be least likely to believe that Joe McKinley was alive, considering he had probably read just about every werewolf history book on the subject.

Colby nodded. “Yeah, I mean . . . everyone has always thought Joe McKinley died of natural causes. Obviously, there are others—like Orkos and like us—who thought he was killed. But what’s interesting is no one ever saw his body. No one knows where he was buried or if he was cremated, instead. I always thought that was sort of strange, but I never questioned it. I always just assumed it was another one of the mysteries surrounding his death and that there was more to the story than everyone knew.”

“If no one ever saw the body, how does anyone know he really died?” Samara asked, a twinge of hope forming in her stomach. She wasn’t
sure why, but she felt really surprised by this information. Not that it should have surprised her, considering she’d seen her grandfather with her own eyes on the night of her wedding. Still, it seemed pretty ridiculous that the whole werewolf world was under the impression her grandfather had died, even though no one had ever seen his body.

Colby shook his head. “No. N
o one, except for the werewolf who did the autopsy, ever saw him.” His eyes lit up with an idea and he asked the same question that had filled Samara’s own mind. “What if the coroner who did the autopsy lied? What if his whole death was staged and the autopsy was part of some elaborate cover-up to hide the fact that Joe McKinley was or
is
still out there . . . and still alive?”

“But that wouldn’t make any sense,” Emma protested, as she applied lip gloss in her
compact mirror by firelight. “Wouldn’t people have spotted him somewhere by now? It doesn’t seem possible for such a popular, well-known guy to have stayed hidden all these years. Someone would have noticed.”

“Unless he had a really good hideout spot,” Colby replied with a shrug. He glanced over at Emma and smiled. “You and I both know how easy it is to keep a good secret.”

The fire illuminated the wide smile that tugged at Emma’s glossy lips, as well as the red splotches that blossomed on her cheeks.

Samara
rolled her eyes at them. Their “secret” probably had something to do with how they had been carrying on a relationship. What they obviously didn’t realize was that it wasn’t much of a secret anymore; everyone in their pack knew what was going on between them.

“So, what should we do?” Seth spoke up, but he still didn’t meet Samara’s gaze. “If Grandpa Joe is out there, we need to find a way to get in con
tact with him . . . don’t we?”