Hemlock 03: Willowgrove (3 page)

It was the same at school. He continued to play the part of Tracker and alcoholic screwup to draw attention away from the rest of us. He played it so well that there were times when I had to remind myself that he really had changed. He played it so well that sometimes I suspected even he forgot who and what he was.

I stowed my phone and then slid back into my sleeping bag. I rolled over and studied Kyle’s shadowed profile. In the morning, we’d drive back to Hemlock and have to face the real world. Trackers. Jason. The fact that Serena still hadn’t recovered from Sinclair’s “cure” and the knowledge that Kyle would soon have to decide whether or not to return to Colorado.

But morning was still a few hours off.

I reached for Kyle’s hand, gently lacing my fingers through his.

For a few hours, if I tried hard enough, I could pretend that everything was fine.

Amy was still alive, Jason had never joined the Trackers,
and Kyle had never become infected. None of us had so much as heard of Thornhill, and Hemlock wasn’t at the epicenter of what could turn into a full-fledged war between wolves and regs.

Everything—
everything
—was all right.

I edged closer to Kyle and rested my head on his shoulder.

Sometimes, it was better to fall asleep to a comforting lie than to the truth.

I
ROLLED MY SHOULDERS AS I LINGERED UNDER THE HOT
water. I was about as far from pampered as you could get, but I was a city girl, and my back was complaining about a night spent sleeping in the woods.

Still, every kink and knotted muscle had been worth it.

I closed my eyes and remembered the sensation of Kyle’s arms around me and the way his lips had tasted a little like cinnamon. My heart beat a little faster as I turned off the shower and raised my fingertips to the slow smile that stretched across my face. He wanted to stay together. Even if he went back to Colorado, he didn’t want it to be the end of him and me. The end of us.

“Mac?” My cousin Tess’s voice drifted through the closed bathroom door, jolting me from my thoughts.

“Yeah?”

“Your phone’s been blowing up for the past ten minutes.”

Shit.
Straining, I could just make out the last notes of my ringtone before whoever was on the other end of the line gave up.

I quickly hauled on clothes, wincing as my shoulder twinged. The bullet I had taken during the Thornhill breakout had been Warden Sinclair’s last attempt at revenge. I had been warned that my shoulder might never be quite the same, but I wasn’t about to complain about the occasional flashes of pain: a few inches either way and the bullet would have left me crippled. Or dead.

For an entire week, Jason had gone around calling me
Miracle Girl
.

I caught sight of my reflection as I pulled open the bathroom door and quickly looked away. Ever since Thornhill, the girl who stared back at me from the mirror seemed somehow . . . less. It was as though I had left some part of myself back at the rehabilitation camp, locked behind its electric fences.

Miracle Girl.
Yeah, right.

I beelined for my room and grabbed the phone from my nightstand. These days, I usually took it everywhere—even into the bathroom—but I had been so tired after Kyle dropped me off that I had stumbled to the shower on autopilot.

I unlocked the screen. Three missed calls—two from my father and one from a number I didn’t recognize—and a text from Kyle telling me I had forgotten Tess’s sleeping bag in his car. I bit my lip and dialed Hank. Not entirely surprising, it went straight to voice mail.

After Trackers had burned down Hank’s club and run his pack out of Denver, most of the Eumon had relocated to an old mining town in the middle of nowhere. They were so far
out that Hank only had cell reception when they made the trek to other towns for supplies or news. I left a message and then checked my own voice mail.

Two hang-ups. Typical. Messages were footprints and Hank didn’t like leaving tracks. Even his cell phone was a cheap disposable: every two weeks, both the phone and the number changed. It was amazing how many of the habits he’d developed during his long career as a jack-of-all-trades criminal could be applied to life as a werewolf. Don’t draw attention. Stay on the move. Be ready to leave everything behind and run.

For werewolves who managed to evade the LSRB and the rehabilitation camps, life meant constantly looking over your shoulder and always sleeping with one eye open.

As the reg girlfriend of a werewolf, that was the same life I was signing on for.

My gaze was drawn to the wall above my desk, where I had tacked up dozens of articles about Thornhill and the breakout—more fodder for what everyone else worried was my growing fixation. Life on the run was no picnic, but it was far, far better than ending up in one of the camps.

I gave my head a sharp shake, clearing my thoughts.

I didn’t need a crystal ball to guess why Hank had called. He wanted me out of Hemlock until the Tracker invasion was over. We had argued about it twice already this week. My father had changed—I had seen proof of that since Denver—but a sudden paternal interest didn’t mean he automatically got to have input into my life. I had been making decisions for myself since he had abandoned me all
those years ago, and that wasn’t about to change.

I was staying in Hemlock. I wasn’t going to let a sudden influx of Trackers run me out.

A voice mail began to play.

“Mac . . . Hey. It’s Stephen. I’m back in town—at least for a while. Taking a break from school and working for Dad . . .”

The familiar deep voice threw me for a loop. Of all the people who could have left me a message, Amy’s brother was practically the last person I would have expected.

He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I’ve been going through Amy’s room. I thought there might be some things you would want. Photos, books—that sort of stuff. Maybe we can grab a coffee or you can stop by the house. The place is a zoo with the fund-raiser tomorrow night, but call me when you get a chance.”

An automated voice told me I had reached the end of my messages.

My hand shook a little as I lowered the phone. I tried to remember the last time I had spoken to Stephen. Last Christmas, maybe. He went to school out East—at least he had until recently. He had flown back for a few days after Amy’s death, but he hadn’t been at the funeral. Jason said he hadn’t been able to make it past the cemetery gate.

And now he was back in Hemlock.

I bit my lip. I couldn’t imagine Stephen taking time off from school—not even for a semester. He had always been the golden boy to Amy’s black sheep. Straight-A student. Responsible and dependable. The perfect older brother. The
kind of older brother I had always wanted.

“Mac, there’s coffee.” Tess’s voice drifted down the hall.

“Okay!”

Hearing Stephen’s voice shouldn’t have felt strange—even after he had gone to college, I had still seen him when he came home on breaks—but it was impossible to think of him and not think of Amy. Every memory I had of him was tied to her.

I slipped my phone into my pocket as I walked to the bookcase on the other side of the room. I already had the only thing I really wanted of Amy’s: a bracelet made from a handful of foreign coins, a flea market find she always claimed was lucky. I reached into the glass bowl I kept important odds and ends in, and lifted it out.

A flash drive on a length of black cord came up with it.

Frowning, I unwound the cord from the bracelet and set the drive aside. Amy had given it to me days before she had been killed. It was a bunch of photos and videos and music—things she thought I might like copies of. After the funeral, I had spent whole evenings just looking at every image and listening to every song, trying to get her back.

I should go through the files again. Some of the pictures were of Stephen and Amy, and a few of the videos were from concerts he had taken us to; there might be a few he didn’t have and would want.

But the thought of seeing Amy’s brother again, of talking about her in the past tense, wasn’t something I felt ready to face.

Like a coward, I tied the bracelet around my wrist and
headed for the kitchen without calling Stephen back.

Tess looked up from a glossy magazine—one of a whole stack—as I entered the room. “Coffee’s fresh. I just made a new pot.” Her multicolored hair was pulled back in a high ponytail and she had traded her work clothes for a pair of sweats. Tess waited tables at the Shady Cat, a trendy microbrewery/restaurant near the college campus. On a normal Saturday, she headed to bed around 5:00 a.m. and wasn’t seen again until midafternoon, but she had stayed up to make sure I got home okay.

She never used to worry when I was out with Kyle, but a lot had changed.

Tess knew almost everything now—everything except that her ex-boyfriend Ben had been the white werewolf who had killed Amy and terrorized the town. Faced with all of the things I had hidden from her, she wasn’t sure how to trust me again. And she blamed Kyle for the fact that I had run off to Colorado and almost gotten killed. I think that bothered her more than the fact that Kyle was a werewolf. She had always trusted Kyle to keep me safe, and now she felt like he had betrayed that trust.

“How are you still awake?” I asked, passing up coffee and grabbing a granola bar. The TV was on in the living room, but the sound was muted.

“I had about a gallon of caffeinated goodness before you got home,” she admitted with a small shrug. “Plus, I have this whole theory that if I fill out six months’ worth of
Cosmo
quizzes in a single sitting, everything in my life will magically fall into place.”

“Good luck with that.” I unwrapped the granola bar and broke off a piece. “You didn’t have to wait up,” I said before popping the bite-sized chunk into my mouth.

The look Tess shot me spoke volumes, but instead of pushing, she said, “What are you doing today?”

I swallowed. “I was going to head over to Serena’s.” Jason hadn’t recognized the symbol from my dream and Serena was the only other person I could ask. The last thing I wanted was to remind her of the detention block, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was important. I had been dreaming of that hallway—of that room—for a month. I wasn’t a psychologist, but there had to be a reason my subconscious kept throwing me back there.

“Oh.” Disappointment flashed across Tess’s face. “I have the night off. I was going to ask if you wanted to go on a mini road trip.”

“A road trip?”

“Just a small one. We could leave around three, stay overnight someplace—maybe not the Ritz, but at least someplace with a pool—and come back tomorrow. You’ve been so preoccupied . . . I think getting away for a day would be good for you.”

“Tess, we can’t afford that.” Saying the words was awkward. Money was almost always tight, but we never talked about it.

The corners of her mouth quirked up. “Actually, tips have been really good the last week. Practically insanely good. Most Trackers may be complete assholes, but a lot of them are pretty generous once they down a few beers.”

“More like they’re generous once they catch sight of you coming toward their table,” I teased.

“That, too.” Her hazel eyes sparkled. “So what do you say?”

“It’s just . . .” My voice trailed off. Tess, more than anyone, wanted me to forget about the camp. Just the mention of Colorado was enough to make her flinch. “I really wanted to see Serena,” I said lamely. “And with everything going on in town, I feel weird leaving.” It felt like abandoning my friends.

Tess hesitated just a second too long before speaking. “Okay. No sweat.” She flashed me a smile that was so forced it cracked around the edges. “I’m exhausted anyway.” She stood and walked past me to the sink.

“Maybe we could do it another time?” I asked hesitantly. Hopefully. “Maybe next weekend?”

Tess rinsed out her coffee mug and set it on the counter. “Sure.” She shot me another fake smile. “Besides, I could use a quiet night in by myself. Just me and a tub full of bubbles followed by a bag of Doritos and a
Sex and the City
marathon. Go. See Serena. Maybe call Jason. You don’t spend enough time with him anymore.”

She headed down the hall before I could say anything else. A second later, her bedroom door clicked softly shut.

I tossed the rest of my granola bar in the garbage: suddenly, I didn’t have much of an appetite. Things had been strained since I had gotten back, but that wasn’t Tess’s fault. She was doing her best to trust me again. She was trying.
Even though she was exhausted, she had wanted to spend time with me.

Maybe I couldn’t just up and leave town, but I could have suggested an alternate plan. I liked Doritos and I could make it through at least a few episodes of
Sex and the City
without completely losing my mind.

Suddenly, more than anything, all I wanted was to spend the day with Tess, to show her that I was willing to try, too.

I started toward the hall just as a flicker of movement on the television caught my eye.

Tess had left the TV tuned to CNN. Amy’s grandfather, Senator John Walsh, was on-screen, standing on the stone steps of some building in Washington, surrounded by reporters. I didn’t bother turning the sound on: I already knew the sorts of things he would be saying. He had become vehemently anti-werewolf after Amy’s death, and over the past few weeks, he had been pushing for two things: a public inquiry into security at Thornhill and the authorization of extreme—even lethal—force in recapturing escaped wolves.

I wondered what he’d do if he knew Amy’s death hadn’t been—as everyone believed—the random act of a crazed werewolf. Branson Derby, then head of the Trackers and Ben’s father, had sent his own infected son on a killing spree as part of a carefully orchestrated plan to increase public fear and destroy the pro-werewolf lobby in Washington. To get Amy’s grandfather—one of the few politicians who had openly supported increased wolf rights—to become as anti-werewolf as possible.

If the senator knew why his granddaughter had really died, would he change his stance back? If he had seen the torture the wolves had been running from at Thornhill, would he still want them hunted down like they were something less than human?