The Waking (The Upturned Hourglass) (13 page)

Her demand pulled him up short. Was he that obvious? Was his anxiety and, yes, fear so apparent on his face? Her abrupt challenge had him re-thinking his plan. Could he really put this girl through more today?

Yes
, he thought.
I have to. Disillusioned and alive is better than ignorant and dead.

“I have something I need to show you.” Carefully, he reached his hands behind her head and untied the ribbon of her mask. She seemed too surprised by the action to move away from him. “Something I need you to see,” he murmured.

“Okay?” she replied, a little unsure of herself. She looked up at him and the streetlamp illumined her pale skin and made her amber eyes appear more wide and cat-like than anything. It almost made it easier to pretend that those eyes weren’t exactly like her father’s.

I can do this,
he thought, encouraging himself.

“I’m not what you think I am, sweets. I’m not . . . human.”

Valie’s face lost its sternness, but the confusion in her expression only increased.

I can do this.

Jack allowed his body to sink, to fold in on itself and transform. His face began to change and expand. The hair on his face and arms grew. He was morphing into something truly inhuman.

And for the first time in a long time, he, too, was afraid.

Valie tried to scream, but found her lungs wouldn’t work. She was frozen in terror.

In no time at all, Jack was no longer a boy—he was a massive, chocolate-brown wolf that was deftly extricating himself from the clothes he had just been wearing. 

In a whisper, Valie gasped: “What are you?” She was frozen to the ground, her legs unable to move as all the blood drained from her face in shock. It wasn’t possible. What she had just seen
wasn’t possible!

When the huge wolf took one step toward her, his blue-eyed gaze full of wariness and worry—a look Valie believed no real animal could possess—she panicked. Before she knew what she was doing, her legs came alive and she took off running in the opposite direction.

Valie knew she was fast and with adrenaline pumping through her blood, she believed she could outrun the wind. In fact, even the rain seemed to have trouble finding her as she sprinted through the park, dodging between trees and pathways to come out on the other side.

Valie didn’t dare look behind her for fear of losing speed. She immediately took to the path she knew best, figuring that outrunning the wolf—for that was all she dared to think of it as, a
wolf
—was more important than trying to outwit it. It could find her . . . it already had.

It wasn’t until Valie was running up the steps to Palmetto Manor that she realized what she was doing. She cursed herself for her denseness and at once turned around. She couldn’t go back into that apartment, not even now, when she felt her life depended on it.

Jonathan’s
! she thought, hopefully. Jonathan would be there, even if Luci had returned home.

It didn’t take her long to reach the boy’s street, but just as Jonathan’s building came into sight, Jack, fully clothed and panting, suddenly appeared in front of her, making her screech to a halt.

“Valie, let me explain . . . .” he said quickly. He held up his hands as if that proved he wasn’t going to hurt her. All it really did was make Valie wonder if those were his real hands.

The girl stared at him in fear.

“Please, Valie, I . . . .” The boy’s voice was cut off as if choking on the apology. His sorrowful eyes made her heart ache, but she couldn’t blot out from her memory what she had just witnessed.

Before he could stop her, Valie sprinted sideways and bypassed him. She heard him pursue her, but that only spurred her on.

“Valie!”

She didn’t reply. When she was at the top of the steps of Jonathan’s place, she banged on the door. It was all she could do not to shout at the top of her lungs for someone to open up.

Fleetingly, she wondered what she could say? How would she explain what she had just seen? What was she going to do?

Nothing was right….

She heard footsteps in the entryway and the porch light came on.  It was not Jonathan who opened the door, however. It was Luci, who looked bright-eyed and flustered, her curly hair a mess.  Valie had interrupted something. 

Nothing was right….

“Oh! I’m sorry,” Valie mumbled, tears springing to her eyes.  She turned and hurriedly retreated down the stairs and back out onto the sidewalk, leaving Luci to futilely call her name over and over again, until Valie passed out of earshot.

The steady rain turned into a foggy drizzle as Valie once again took to the streets of Anders to rescue her—or hide her. But the girl was so tired she didn’t think she could walk much less run. Besides, where could she go now? She collapsed onto the sidewalk, completely drained.

For the first time in this weird day, she really felt that she was done for, her pitiable life about to end. Glancing around, she saw nothing. Or maybe what she’d seen was all in her mind? Alden’s blow to her head must have knocked something loose. Maybe she had just snapped . . . people did that right? Just snap?

Valie needed her friends; she needed warmth; she needed
sleep. She needed a family; she needed a home. She needed what everyone else seemed to have, but
she
couldn’t find. Luci and Jonathan had each other and now she belonged to no one.

As if on cue, Jonathan’s car pulled up to the curb near where Valie lay and Luci burst out of the passenger door. With tears in her eyes, she ran to Valie’s side and held her cold hands in her own. Luci quickly assessed the situation and reassured her friend in a worried voice that everything would be okay. She threw a blanket around Valie’s shoulders and chided her about catching cold. Then Luci led her back to the car, the whole time asking her friend over and over what was wrong, what was wrong. And all Valie could think about was the answer . . .

Werewolf.

INSECURE

“I’m so sorry, V. You two can spend the night here, if you’d like.  Mom can call Luci’s parents. They’d understand.” Her friend put his arm around Valie reassuringly. The three friends sat warm and dry in Jonathan’s living room before a roaring fire.

Yeah
, Valie thought.
They would understand that Valentine, the screwed up misfit, was having another bad night, except now she’s hallucinating about boys turning into wolves. Of course, they would
all
understand. Explain it to them. Explain it to
me
!

Valie had been disappointed that Jonathan and Luci hadn’t seen any sign—human or wolf—of Jack. She wanted someone to tell her she wasn’t insane, that the pretentious boy from school who had listened to her pathetic life story, the same one that constantly had her stomach in knots whenever he looked at her, that that
boy
was not something else. . .something inhuman. She
needed
someone to tell her those things, but she was too afraid to bring it up. She had lied to her friends and told them that, when she couldn’t find them at the party, she had tried to go to Alden’s—which was technically true—to straighten things out, but that he’d been horrible to her. That was why she was crying, not because she’d been chased by…by a wolf.

Jonathan laid his head on Valie’s as she stared at the flickering light. Only a few minutes before, Luci had fallen asleep, her head lovingly resting on Valie’s lap. Without thinking, Valie twirled her small friend’s curls between her fingers as she watched the fire wane.

“Stop,” Jonathan said, lifting his head. He put his hand on top of Valie’s and she ceased toying with Luci’s hair. “I can always tell when you’re being harder on yourself than you need to be. You get that look in your eye. Valie, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

But for once, he was way off base. It was not the fight with Alden that had her noticeably edgy; the fear that Jack Haden was a werewolf was far more troubling.

“Valie…”

“Go to bed, Jonathan. I’ll be fine once I get some sleep.” She leaned her head back against the sofa and returned to twirling Luci’s curls.

“Can you sleep?”

No.

But the girl nodded, “I’ll be fine.”

Jonathan watched her for a moment, but then rose and placed his own blanket on Luci’s outstretched form.

“I’m sorry, V.  We’ll figure it out.”

Will we?
Valie smiled. Figuring “it” out would include an incredible amount of therapy.

Jonathan left the room. Valie heard his mother speak to him in the hallway. And she was vaguely aware when the woman softly closed the connecting door so she could speak privately to Luci’s mother on the phone.
Such a good family. Valie’s eyes began to sting as she wished for her own family to rely upon—her own mother to help her. 

Unexpectedly, Luci stirred and turned her face upwards. Valie stopped playing with her locks and looked down.

“What are you thinking?” Luci asked softly.

Reflexively, Valie smiled at Luci’s intensely somber expression. Though, something about it reminded her of Jack’s own expression before his face had…She didn’t want to think about it.

Her smile faded.

“I was thinking that my life just got a lot more complicated.”

Luci sighed and opened her mouth to speak, but Valie shook her head sharply, cutting her off.

“Please do
not
tell me that you’re sorry. Please.”

Luci closed her mouth.

Wordlessly, they watched the dying fire until, without warning, Valie randomly snickered.

Luci turned her head sharply again. “Valie?” she asked, worried for her friend’s stability. Valie only laughed louder. “What’s so funny?”

“I was just wondering what you and Jonathan were up to earlier--before you came and found me, I mean.”

Luci blushed. “Oh.”  She couldn’t seem to say more.

Valie smiled.  “
Thought
so.”

“I really, really like him, V.”

“As you should; you guys are great together.”

At that remark, Luci scowled.

“What?” Valie protested, almost in a normal voice.

“You have that serious, matter-of-fact tone that you only use when you’re being pointlessly selfless. It makes me feel guilty, like you won’t say what you’re really thinking.”

Valie laughed. “I didn’t know I could
be
selfless. And you shouldn’t feel guilty, Luci. I’m happy for you.”

“Really?”

Valie nodded, softening. “Really. I’m happy when you’re happy.”

Luci sighed with relief, then murmured, “Now, how to make
you
happy. . . .”

Valie shook her head. “At the moment, you’ll have to just let me be, okay? I need to figure some things out, ask some questions,
get some things straight in my head. Then, I’ll get back to you on how that can happen.”

Luci nodded against Valie’s leg. “It’s not the end of the world, Valie. Don’t give up. And we three will always,
always
be friends, okay? Don’t think otherwise.”

If only it were that simple.

“I won’t.”

“Promise?”
Luci yawned.

“Promise,” Valie whispered, just as Luci drifted back to sleep.

Outside, the night was still miserable, but Jack was oblivious to the wet and the cold. He was pacing, pacing—in his soaked jeans and a sweatshirt he’d borrowed from Shane, which was much too small for his bulky frame—pacing in front of the house that was now sheltering Valie and her friends. He watched them through the window. The werewolf scowled at the scene with Valie in the firelight.

“You’re going to wear a rut in the cement, brother,” Shane jabbed half-heartedly as she sat on the curb nearby. She adjusted the hat she’d put on to protect her already wet hair from the rain.

Jack growled sharply at the blonde in anger and frustration. He did not know what to do about the Mark—no, the
girl—
inside. He’d made nothing but snap decisions since he’d made contact with her. It needed to stop.  He needed someone else’s insight.

“I think we should confront Isaac. We need to ask him what’s going on,” Jack declared.