Vesper (24 page)

"Emily Webb," I said. "Also a werewolf, also a geek. But more of an entertainment geek, I guess."

"Nice to meet you, Emily Webb."

"Likewise, Spencer Holt.”

We chuckled at our dorkiness, then dropped each other's hands. I didn't want to let go. All I could see were his brown eyes, wide and open and looking into my own. I had never really
seen
Spencer before today.

We held each other's gaze too long, and we both broke off at the same time, clearing our throats.

"So, I guess we should start at the beginning," I said.

"Agreed."

I told my story first. Everything, just as I've recounted it here. The calmness I felt at being with the guy who smelled
right
also made me feel open, able to say anything I wanted without fear of being judged. Because I knew—I just
knew—
that Spencer would understand.

And he did. He listened intently, nodding along, never questioning, never judging me. I finished with the evening before, as I prepared to go after the killer.

"And that's it," I said. "You basically know the rest. I went to Patrick's, and this Gunther Elliott guy found me. Then you came and ... well."

Spencer let out a low whistle and slumped into his seat. Outside, cars whizzed by as the morning workers started heading to their jobs inside the featureless buildings.

"Wow,” he said. "You're brave, you know that?"

I shrugged. "Not really. I didn't really do anything. It was all Nighttime Emily and the werewolf."

Spencer's eyes narrowed in confusion. "But, no, that
is
you, right? Just different parts of you."

That made sense, didn't it? Because maybe the confidence and wild ways of Nighttime Emily had always been a part of me, just something I'd been too afraid to ever let loose. Dawn had always insisted that deep inside me was a great girl waiting to be free, all shiny butterfly emerging from its hoodie cocoon.

It wasn't easy to reconcile the total otherness of Nighttime Emily with what I thought I knew about my everyday self. Not at all. But I kind of liked the idea that Nighttime Emily's ease in dealing with trouble was really some part of me I'd just always been too afraid to tap.

Would I ever manage to figure out how to bring that out during the day? I wondered. Figure out how to shut off the part of me that screamed in fear anytime I tried something new?

My mind raced so much with these thoughts that I almost missed Spencer's story. "I'd be in my room and I'd feel sick and I'd cramp up, like you said you did. But I didn't really go wild or anything. I mostly just got super focused on homework and my computer.... I'd been working on building a new computer for the past few months, and I finished putting it together in a few hours. It was like I became some sort of genius."

He shrugged. "I dunno, I guess I was always able to write or program for hours, but I could never really stick to one thing for too long. All my teachers always told me I had a lot of potential, but I was always too lazy to really live up to it."

"So the change made focusing easier?" I asked.

Spencer's cheeks wont splotchy red. He was blushing. It was totally cute.

"Man, I must sound like some totally ADD flake with a huge ego." He ran his hand through his already tousled hair, mussing it further. "But yeah, I guess so. It was sort of like there was some block in my brain that wouldn't let me do things to the ... best of my abilities? And that's when I figured out I might have some other abilities too."

"Like what?" I asked.

"I was kicking around a soccer ball in our backyard," he said, "and my foot wont right through it. So, you know, super strength or whatever. I tried it out by lifting the refrigerator next. That was the same night of the party, when I turned into a wolf for the first time."

"That was your first time too, huh?" I asked. "I was, um, kind of out of it.

What happened?"

"Well, I chased after you and—"

A car door slammed nearby, interrupting us. We'd been so engrossed with our stories that we hadn't really noticed the parking lots around us getting full, a steady stream of shiny cars zipping down the road beside us. Someone had parked their car in front of Spencer's, and a man in a suit walked by, keys jangling.

I half expected him to knock on the window, ask what we wore doing, then call a battalion of armed men out of BioZenith to come drag us away.

Instead he walked past and down the street toward one of the glass office buildings. I craned my head over my shoulder to be sure.

"Weird," Spencer said. I turned back to him and saw that he was surveying BioZenith again.

"What is it?"

"AH the other parking lots are filling up," he said. "But no one is going into that bio place."

He was right. Not a single car even approached the gated entrance to BioZenith.

I caught sight of the digital clock in Spencer's dashboard. It read 8:03.

"It's getting late," I said. "We should start heading back to school."

We buckled our seat belts. Spencer turned the ignition and pulled us out onto the street, then headed toward I-5.

"What is it with that place?" I mused aloud. I felt disappointed. I hadn't been sure what I'd see when we went to BioZenith, but I was hoping for something. Some clue as to who was behind this, why we were involved.

"No idea," Spencer said, his eyes on the road. He drove slower than Megan, more cautious. He even kept his hands at ten and two.

So the visits to BioZenith and Dalton's bedside had been more or less a bust. We hadn't learned anything new, really, and I realized that detective work probably took a lot more effort in reality than it ever did in the movies.

But that was okay. Because Spencer being by my side tempered the anger that was driving me to seek out these answers, even after all we'd been through in the past twelve hours. And the more time it took to find out the secrets behind everything, the more time we could spend together.

"Hey," I said as Spencer pulled onto the freeway and sped up. "What were you going to say back there, about the first night we changed?"

He made sure it was safe, then merged. Cars zoomed past.

"Just that I was running out after Dalton and Nikki like Mikey asked me to. Then I smelled you in the woods and I ran after you. I changed into ... you know... and took off running after the smell. But I never caught up with you.

I saw those shadow7 guys, got scared, and went home." He fidgeted with the wheel. "I actually heard the shots, you know. After I changed. But I was so consumed by the wolf that I didn't even do anything to help Dalton. I—I just ran off." His eternal smile faltered, sorrow tightening his features.

"It wasn't your fault," I whispered. Without even thinking, I reached out a hand to touch his arm. "I don't think you could have stopped him. I—Wait.

You heard the shots
after
you smelled me and changed?"

He shot me a glance. "Yeah, definitely after. Why?"

I scrunched my face, thinking, because the timeline didn't fit. I tried to work it out while speaking aloud. "It's just that I went after
you.
I wasn't even in the woods when I heard the shots, and I definitely changed after."

"Maybe you remember wrong?" he asked. "No offense, but you did seem kind of wasted."

So he remembered that. Damn.

"Yeah, yeah, I was," I said. "But I remember that part clearly. I didn't change until
after
the shots, and the only reason I went into the woods in the first place was to chase after you."

Spencer popped his right blinker on and merged into the exit lane. "But that would mean that..." He turned to me, mouth open in surprise. The car swerved, and he jolted back to attention. Behind us, someone blasted their horn.

"Oh wow," I said as realization hit me too. "There's another one. Another werewolf besides you, me, and Dalton."

"And it's another girl," Spencer revealed. "I felt very, very sure of that."

"A girl..."

So there were more of us. At least one other member of our pack who we needed to find. And maybe once we did, she would know more about all of this. Would actually help us finish connecting the dots between BioZenith, the werewolves, the killer, and those creepy shadowmen both Spencer and I had seen when we were the wolves.

At least I hoped so. Because my brain was beginning to overflow with all this new information, and as Spencer rounded a corner and our high school came into view, all I wanted right then was to dive into class work and forget all about this endless, frightening, exciting craziness.

Well, until night fell, anyway.

The school parking lot was more full than all of last week, and Spencer had some trouble finding a place to pull in. We drove through the student parking lot, gravel crunching under his tires, until we found a spot that overlooked the fenced-in baseball field.

The sky was completely clear now, and the morning sun shone bright over evergreens that rustled in the crisp fall breeze. Omnipresent Mount Rainier stood tremendous and triumphant on the horizon beyond the school's brick buildings.

Maybe I'd been wrong earlier. Maybe western Washington weather sometimes did have a way of matching your mood.

Spencer shut off the car, and we both sat in contemplative silence as groups of kids walked by, chatting as they headed under the walkways and Chapter 19

Grown-Up

The school parking lot was more full than all of last week, and Spencer had some trouble finding a place to pull in. We drove through the student parking lot, gravel crunching under his tires, until we found a spot that overlooked the fenced-in baseball field.

The sky was completely clear now, and the morning sun shone bright over evergreens that rustled in the crisp fall breeze. Omnipresent Mount Rainier stood tremendous and triumphant on the horizon beyond the school's brick buildings.

Maybe I'd been wrong earlier. Maybe western Washington weather sometimes did have a way of matching your mood.

Spencer shut off the car, and we both sat in contemplative silence as groups of kids walked by, chatting as they headed under the walkways and into the brick buildings. More students were back that day, and it seemed a little more laughter and playful screams rang across the school grounds than all of last week. No one would forget Emily Cooke and her untimely death. But maybe they were starting to move on, and things would get back to normal.

"Before I forget," Spencer said, "I wanted to say thank you."

I met his eyes. "Why?"

He smiled shyly and ducked his head. "Before yesterday, I thought I was going crazy. You proved I'm not, and you actually managed to learn a lot more about all this than I ever did. Also, you ... you stayed with me last night when I was hurt, even with those shadow7 guys there."

"Oh." I bit my lip. "Well, you're welcome."

He chuckled, then climbed over his seat, leaning halfway into the backseat to grab his backpack. As he settled back into the driver's seat, I said, "And thank you, too."

"I didn't really do much."

"No," I insisted, "you did. You got the killer off me last night, remember?

And, well, before this morning I felt like everything was going out of control, but then ... I don't know, you sort of calmed me down. Helped make things feel not so totally nuts."

He didn't seem to know what to say to that. My arm began to tremble as I realized I might have just been a little too forthcoming.

"I mean," I stammered. "It's just that-"

Before I could speak further and make a fool of myself, I felt Spencer's arms around me, pulling me into a hug. I stiffened in surprise as he clenched me awkwardly over the stick shift. Then his scent—that natural pheromone of his that had invaded my brain and led me to him—swirled around my nose. I inhaled, and every part of me relaxed. I fell into the hug, wrapping my arms around his shoulders.

"We should talk more after school," he said, his voice muffled by my hair.

"Yeah, okay," I said. "Sure. Definitely. Though I should check with my dad.

I'm pretty sure I'm still grounded for all my wacky party shenanigans."

Spencer let me go and smiled at me. Shaking his head, he opened his door and hopped out.

I didn't want to move from that seat. I wanted to sit there and relive that moment in my head forever and ever. I had just gotten a hug from a cute guy who seemed funny and smart. And oh yeah, who was also a werewolf, just like me.

Every part of me tingled, and I was pretty sure a whole colony of monarchs had set up shop in my lower intestine for all the fluttering happening there.

Part of me wondered, was this just part of the BioZenith programming or whatever it was they had done to us? Had they designed their werewolves to find a preordained mate? If it wasn't for his smell, would I even like Spencer?

But right then, I really didn't care. I'd worry about the details of what Spencer being my "mate" would mean later.

It may have actually happened differently, but as I remember it, a cloud descended from that perfect blue sky, opened the car door, slipped underneath me, and floated me out of the car. I bobbed along on my cloud, out of the parking lot and halfway to school—until I saw Megan standing on the walkway leading to the main entrance, watching me with an unreadable expression.

At that moment, the cloud went to vapor and I fell solidly back to earth. I clutched my book bag close to my chest. Spencer was already at the entrance to the school, high- fiving Mikey Harris as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened to him. He threw his arms into the air, telling some sort of joke. The guys around him all busted a gut in response.

Megan glowered at Spencer and then me, and I knew that she'd seen us together.

I raised my chin and wound through the milling teens to stand next to her.

"Hey," I said, my voice carried off by the hum of noise from the people around us.

"Hey," she said. "I came to pick you up this morning, but your dad said you'd already left."

And then, she actually smiled at me.

Taken aback, I didn't quite know what to say. I scanned Megan head to toe. Same blond hair that hung all the way down her back, same black jeans and shirt, same giant nose. The girl standing in front of me certainly
looked
like Megan. But this was not a reaction to my car-stealing and milkshake-drugging antics that I expected the real Megan to ever have.