Shattered (13 page)

Relief made me bend over and take a
moment to catch my breath. She hadn’t gone to school without me. I might have
dropped dead from worry if she had. Sophia couldn’t go to school with
Christine. She had a job, and besides, she wasn’t as immune to hunters as I
was. Carter, William, and Owen Yates could really hurt her.

“Thank you,” I said. “For not going.” I
cringed when I realized what I’d said. “I mean. For staying here and looking
after me. That was nice.”

She hopped off of her stool and walked to
me. I hadn’t noticed her outfit until then. The sleek black dress clung to her
in all the right places. I stared at my feet so her father wouldn’t catch me
checking her out. She looked beautiful and sophisticated like … well, like her
mom.

“I didn’t think the open house was a
dressy type of thing,” I said. “Should I put on my tux?”

She chuckled. “You’d be a little overdressed.”

I looked down at my wrinkled shirt and
jeans. Tonight, next to her, we’d look like strangers from two different
worlds. “Maybe Paul has a scarf I could borrow.”

We burst out laughing together. “You’d
look ridiculous in a scarf,” she said.

She leaned in for a kiss, and I lifted my
hand to high-five her instead. Was she insane? Her dad was sitting right there.

 
“Excuse us, Dad,” Chris said. She pulled
on my arm and brought us outside. She stepped out of his view and pulled me
closer. “Kiss me.”

“Chris,” I groaned.

She pouted and leaned on my chest. “I
haven’t talked to you all day. Just one kiss.” Why did she have to be so damn
adorable all the time? I stole a quick kiss and jerked away from her puckered
lips. “More,” she demanded. “Don’t worry about my dad.”

 
“But you
should
worry about me,” Sophia said. I stepped away from Chris with
my palms up. “Christine, go keep your father company. I need to speak with
Nathan.” Chris rolled her eyes and ran back into the house. “You look a little
pale, love.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

She placed a gentle hand on my forehead
and giggled. “Silly me. Of course you’re warm. If you’re getting sick, you will
heal faster in your other form. Did you shift yesterday?” I nodded but didn’t
tell her it hadn’t been my choice to do so.

She stared at me with her piercing eyes
so long that I thought I would have to admit to my control slipping. She was
Lydia’s assistant. She’d tell her for sure, and I didn’t want to find out if
the treaty still applied to me. Even with all the years Emma had known Sophia,
she still found herself in cages and subject to the laws of buying and selling.
I averted my eyes to the ground. The embroidered frogs on the bottom of her
dress seemed to stare at me too.

She sighed after a minute then kissed my
cheek. “You probably just needed to rest today. Unfortunately, you’ll have to
go out in a few for the open house.”

“The open house we shouldn’t be going
to,” I said. “Is he nuts? Kamon will figure it out. They’re twins!”

She shushed me and took my face in her
hands. “Tonight will be fine. Lydia is keeping Kamon and his followers very
busy. The bloggers at Trenton are another story, however. But Christopher is
intent on doing the opposite of what Lydia wants him to do.”

Mr. Gavin was letting this thing with his
ex–who he should just kiss already–cloud his judgment. This wasn’t
about them. It was about their daughter, and his foolishness could get him hurt,
and subsequently ruin Christine’s life when she loses him. That, I couldn’t
have.

“Is there anything we can do?” I asked.

“I tried,” Sophia said. “I think for the
rest of this time, we can expect him to go against Lydia just because. If she
says right, he will say left.” To bad saying left could get him killed. “Don’t
stress, Nathan. Okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said. That was a lie. I
didn’t feel firmly me, completely in this skin. All I wanted to do was sleep it
off, but I’d done enough of that today.

****

Mr. Gavin took all of Christine’s paintings
from the Wall of Shame like most of the parents were doing. He laughed with the
other parents when her teacher directed them all back to the wall, and I settled
in a corner, watching everyone else. Waiting. Ready.

The wall felt as comfortable as a bed. I
yawned as I watched the Gavin twins wow the crowd of parents and classmates.
Chris laughed, and a smile lifted my face. She looked happy and beautiful as
she enjoyed her father in public.

The sight of her was almost enough to
make me have a good time, until I heard nails tapping on glass. I checked the
window. Nothing.

It took me too long to notice the queen
of the bloggers with her cellphone lifted too high. Elizabeth Iglesias, or @
lizzyiggy
when I stalked her online, posted mundane things
about Christine on her stupid blog daily. Like … saw witch-girl in the hall or
witch-girl has on pink jeans and a cropped shirt. Asinine things I thought no
one would be interested in but apparently were.

This was not the night for her to be
staring at Chris and her dad while tapping her nail against her screen
repeatedly. Those pictures would be up in a matter of moments for the world to
see.

I texted Lydia and told her about the @
lizzyiggy
emergency.

He
understands what he’s doing. It’s what he wants
, Lydia replied.
I can’t stop him. I’ve interfered with their relationship enough. Kamon
won’t come there tonight, and we’ll protect him when this gets out.

I took a deep breath to calm myself. If
Lydia wasn’t freaking out, I needed to relax. At least for tonight, they were
fine, and … I was tired. I leaned my head against the wall, trying to ignore
the urge twisting through me to shift and launch myself at the silly girl with
the flashing phone.

Christine’s professor pointed a remote at
an ancient sound system covered in multicolored paint splatters and changed the
trendy instrumental music to something more refined. I was more than familiar
with the song. Tchaikovsky. Sleeping Beauty. Somewhere in Act III. Ballets and
the music in them were my mother’s way of shaping me to be her version of the
perfect guy–smart, good with numbers, and well cultured. She would dance
while she talked about ballets or operas and how her parents used to bring her
places like that. Her childhood seemed magical. Someone like John shouldn’t
have been able to capture her mind.

I felt the tears on my cheeks before I
realized the song was breaking me down. I hadn’t cried since leaving Lydia’s
prison, and it was incredibly stupid and pointless to do it now. Stupid Tchaikovsky
and his stupid song and these stupid memories had turned me into a blubbering
mess.

I ran out of the room and straight to the
bathroom across the hall. There was pee all over the seats. It hadn’t been
cleaned today. I dried my face and took a deep breath. I needed to get back to
the open house. I didn’t have time to do this. Someone needed to watch over the
Gavin twins.

“Enough,” I said, and tossed the paper
towel into the overflowing trashcan.

A deep yawn paralyzed me for a moment and
another followed. I needed a bed with Christine in it. I just wanted to sleep
and stop crying and pretend everything … everything…

I yawned again. This time, a whine came
out of my throat instead of my voice. My spine twisted, begging me to get down,
to get ready for my body to change. I couldn’t. Not here. Not now.

I bolted out of the bathroom and towards
the stairs. I didn’t want to shift, but if it was happening, I couldn’t be this
close to humans.

I wasn’t sure about him coming to the
show, but Dad was a big hit. The other parents were laughing nonstop at his
charming jokes, and a few of my sluttier classmates couldn’t stop staring at
him. And their mothers were drooling.

My other guy wasn’t as big of a hit.
Actually, he was missing.

I called his cell. No answer. When the
crowd started to thin, I got worried. I tried to breathe and think of all the harmless
scenarios to explain his whereabouts and use my brain before freaking out like
I hadn’t in the past. Nathan could be plenty of places that didn’t include Kamon’s
prison. There was no need to panic. This building was the only one open
tonight, so if he wasn’t in the car, he had to be in here somewhere. I decided
to check inside first.

The men’s restroom was across the hall
from Max’s class. I knocked, and no one answered. Peeking my head inside, I
said, “Nathan?” Only a dripping faucet answered.

I decided to try the bathroom on the
third floor. Maybe the one on the fourth had been full when he’d tried. The
stairwell door slammed behind me and muted the music and clatter from the open
house. The third floor was locked, so I went down to the second. Locked. The
first was locked too.

“Duh, Chris,” I said. “He works here.
He’s probably in the lounge.”

I smiled when I cleared the last step and
made it to the basement door. It was open, but it was dark and silent.

“Nate?” My voice echoed in the lounge.

I shined the light from my phone screen
to my left, then to the right. Fear crawled up my spine and wouldn’t let go. A
dark basement seemed like a great place for a hunter to hide, and here I was,
this powerless thing, just waiting to be picked off. I stayed in the lit
doorway and called his phone. It rang in my ear, then … somewhere in the
shadowy basement.

You’re
beautiful. You’re beautiful, it’s true
.
 

I remembered when he’d set that song for
my number. He’d said James Blunt summed up everything for him. I thought the
song was too sad to describe us, but that hadn’t made him change my ringtone.

“Nathan? Where are you?”

His phone was in the basement, but he
wasn’t answering. He must’ve shifted, but why would he choose tonight to shift?
Maybe Dad was right. Maybe Nate was avoiding him.

I walked towards the sound of the song.
The least I could do was gather his clothes and check on him.

The ringtone repeated the chorus until it
stopped ringing.

“Hey,
it’s Nate. Leave me a message if you’re not Paul.”

“It’s me. I’m looking for you. Or your
phone. I-” A whine cut me off. It sounded like Nathan. The furry Nathan. I hung
up and ran towards the sound. He sounded like he was in pain.

I stretched my
screen in front of me to light the way and saw a shadow slipping into the
hallway that only led to the parking lot. “Nate?” He didn’t stop. I ran faster,
trying to catch him in my inconvenient heels. “Nate!”

Still no
answer.

When the loud
metal door slammed behind him, I snatched off the shoes that were slowing me
down and sped to the door.

The parking lot had an eerie hush to it,
magnifying every sound around me. My breaths sounded like howling wind. I
slipped my feet back into my shoes, adding the banging sound of my heels to the
silence.

“Nate?” I said. I felt overwhelmingly
alone. I didn’t see any sign of him. I wrapped my arms around my stomach and
took a deep, noisy breath. “Nate?”

Still nothing.

I lurked around the parking lot like a
burglar, unsure of what I expected to find as I peeked between cars and peered
inside of dark windshields. Finally I came to my car. It was parked exactly
were Dad had left it, and Nate wasn’t inside.

I circled the lot closest to the building
twice before giving up on finding him.

Trenton College during the day was a
bright and open place, safe like my home. Trenton College at night was a
completely different story. The air seemed thick with evil possibilities. Dangerous
winds blew around me, and haunting groans from the trees made me shudder.

I startled at the sound of a strained
grunt. I saw nothing but the thin patch of forest on the other side of the
street and sighed. Of course the sound had come from there.

This was the moment to call my dad to
come outside or call Mom or Sophia to meet me here. An idiot would go into the
woods, chasing phantom sounds. Just before my thumb reached the screen, I heard
the grunt again, followed by a sad whine. An animal one.

The heartbreaking sound of his cry grew
louder.

Correction, a scared girlfriend would
also go into the woods, chasing her boyfriend who needed her. I yanked off my
heels again and darted for the trees. I didn’t slow a bit as my feet rammed
into twigs and burrs. Nothing mattered but finding him and figuring out why he
was crying.

“Nate!” A new sound stopped my heart, the
unmistakable crack of a bone. “Nathan! Baby, where are-”

A weak whine and what sounded like bones
grinding against each other interrupted me. I raced through the dark woods with
only the faint glow of the stars and the distant city lights to keep me from slamming
into trees.

My breath caught as I spotted him on all
fours in the muddy grass. The night washed his skin of color, and the dim stars
turned him silver. Silver with piercing green eyes and wounds that spilled dark
red blood.

I ran to him. His arms were mangled. Bones
were protruding out of his skin. His shoulders were wrong, the bend of them,
the
look of them. They squirmed under his t-shirt like busy rodents,
magic gone awry.

“Honey, what’s
wrong?” I said.

“I have to
stop it,” he said, barely whispering.

“Stop what?”

He tried to stand, but his spine lurched
him forward. “No!” he grunted. “Not right now.”

“Are you shifting?” I said, thoroughly
confused. I’d seen Nate shift countless times. It was a seamless change into
one form and out of the other. This was agony. This wasn’t normal. “I’ll go get
the car. You can shift in there, and we can go home. Okay?” The bones in his
back twisted and pools of red soaked through his shirt where the bones had
punctured his skin.

“Or you can shift now,” I said. “I can
get you home.” He didn’t budge. He actually looked like he was fighting it,
trying not to shift even though he had to be in agonizing pain. “Can you hear
me?”

“Hear you,” he said. “I hear Chris. I
smell Chris. I have to get to Chris.”

“I’m Chris,” I said.

“I hear Chris,” he repeated. “I smell
Chris. She’s scared. I have to get to her.” He stood on his breaking legs, and
I cringed.

He ran a few feet, and then collapsed
into the mud. His hair turned white then black then back to white. Then an odd
gray. Then black again. Oh God.

“What’s happening?” I asked. His back
cracked, and he let out a loud whine. “Shift,” I said. “Don’t fight it.”

He rose to all fours and straightened his
back, the bones falling in place like toppled dominos. “Chris.”

“Yes. It’s me! Shift!”

“Chris. I hear Chris. I smell Chris.”

“I’m right here!” I screamed.

“She’s upset.”

His hair flittered through the white to
black spectrum again, and I gave up on getting him to notice me. We had bigger
problems. Nate, before my very eyes, was losing control of his body. He was a
shifter … losing control of his body!

Please, God, no.

I took his arm and tugged it gently to
get him to stand. I draped it over my shoulder and said, “Let me help you get
back to Chris.”

“Okay,” he whispered.

I tried to find a path through the trees
or any markings to find my way back to Trenton. Everything looked the same, and
I didn’t know the first thing about navigation. Every direction felt like north
when you’re walking in it.

“Nate, you remember Remi don’t you?” He
didn’t answer. “Well … she was turning into a panther for good. Tell me you’re
not doing that.” Both of his ankles snapped and healed and snapped again. He
kept walking like he hadn’t felt it. “What’s happening to you?”

“Harmony,” he whispered. “I’m off. No
control. I hear Chris.”

“I know. I hear her too. Nathan, how long
has this been happening?”

“The day we saw balloons. Kamon. No
harmony. Because of Kamon.”

I stopped walking. It felt like something
had plowed right through me. For a terrifying moment, I couldn’t feel anything.
He’d lost control of himself because of Kamon. Nate was stressed, and like Em
had said could happen, his body wasn’t handling it well.

Now I knew how she felt about Paul. How could
I not know? But unlike her, I knew the answer. I was so consumed in my normal
life and school and midterm grades and pictures from my mother to see what was
right in my face.

As we walked, I tried to devise a plan to
get him home without my father thinking he was a psychopath. A flash of light
through the trees provided a guide through the woods. As we moved closer, I saw
that they were the headlights of the cars leaving Trenton.

Nate’s back made the loudest crack yet,
and I grabbed his arm to steady him. My fingers pressed into one of the
protruding bones, and it slid further out of his arm. He grabbed my wrist to
free himself. Nathan wasn’t just a helpless creature in the woods. He had superhuman
strength. My wrist snapped easily in his hand.

“Nate, let go!”

He dropped my wrist with a sudden dulled
look in his eyes. Then he collapsed onto the muddy ground.

I felt it in the wind. Things going from
bad to worse. Nathan wasn’t okay, by any means, and now my wrist was throbbing.
As though the world was collapsing around me, folding in on itself, my phone
rang in my hand. My dad. He must have noticed we were missing.

“Yeah?” I said.

“Where are you two!?” Dad yelled. I
stuttered for a moment. “Christine Cecilia Gavin, if you two snuck off to fool
around, I
am
going to be livid.”

“No! It’s nothing like that,” I said, frustrated
with how his mind always went there because he hated Nate so much.

“Then what’s it like?”

“He’s um … hurt,” I said. I glanced down
at Nate. He looked like an angel, sleeping peacefully as his bones finally
settled. As him and not as a dog.

“What? What happened?” Dad said.

“He’s unconscious. Behind the McCray
building. In the woods.” I heard him panic on the other end, running, breath
huffing, doors slamming in his wake. “Bring the car,” I said. “I don’t want this
to be on those stupid blogs.”

“Okay, sweetie. Just stay on the phone
with me, okay? I’m on my way.”

He asked me to describe my surroundings.
I couldn’t come up with anything better than:
there are trees
. The engine revved loudly in the speaker, and soon,
his headlights flashed through the dark shadows. He left the door open, and the
car beeped to alert him of it. The sound blended with my heart as Dad ran
towards the light of my phone.

His jaw hung open when he saw Nate, dirty
and bloody and seemingly dead on the ground. My wrist screamed in pain as I lifted
his left side while Dad grabbed his right.

We rushed Nate to the car, being reckless
with his broken body, trying to avoid the storm of negative publicity this
would cause.

Dad asked for the story in the car. I
couldn’t speak. My head was swimming from the last few minutes. It felt as
though I was in the middle of a cyclone, fierce winds ripping at my skin,
ransacking the calm I’d lived in for months. The calm only
I
lived in, apparently.

I’d known all along that Nate could be
stressed about Kamon. Who wouldn’t be? But I should’ve seen that there was
something more. He seemed fine after the murder, but that was when he’d started
working at Trenton.

I covered my mouth.

He’d been worried all this time. The
cellar, the rides home from school, the fact that he even worked there in the
first place. I closed my eyes and saw him pushing a dust mop, and tears
cascaded down my cheeks. Why hadn’t I told him he didn’t have to work at
Trenton? Why hadn’t I asked him if stress was the reason for the job? When did
I get selfish enough to want my boyfriend to clean where I went to school
because I liked the thought of him being there? When did it become okay to
never ask him about shifting or anything?

I positioned his head on my lap and
stroked his hair. Nate had always been the strong one, the funny one,
the
one who made things better. My life had turned him into
this
.

“What happened, honey?” Dad pressed.

I said the first thing that came to my mind.
“He’s hurt. He’s healing on his own, but something … something or someone …
hurt him.” That someone was me. I hadn’t shoved the broomstick into his hands
or purposefully piled the stress on him, but he’d lost control because of me. I
couldn’t help but feel responsible.