Wild (28 page)

He grinned at her over his shoulder. “Morning.”

“Morning.” She slipped up behind him to wrap her arms round his waist and hug him. “You didn’t have to do this for me, you know.”

“I wanted to. Can’t beat a good fry up after a night of debauchery.” He turned in her arms to wrap his round her shoulders and kiss her forehead. “Can you grab some plates? Cupboard over the sink.”

They dished up the food and sat in the living room to eat, making the most of the surprise sunshine pouring over the city. Lizzie sat gazing out of the window, marvelling at how different she felt. Full of sunshine herself, bright and burning with renewed energy. She stole glances at Seth while they ate, admiring the play of sunlight on his hair. Every now and then she caught him looking at her too, a soft smile playing on his lips.

“So what’s the plan for the day?” he asked her once they’d both cleared their plates.

Now that she wasn’t skipping town to hide her shame? Lizzie didn’t really care. “Anything,” she said. “Anything you like.”

She could tell from the sly curve of his lips he was about to make a dirty joke, but a sharp rap on the door cut him off. He frowned. “Hold that thought,” he told her, rising to answer the door.

Lizzie craned her neck to see as he opened it, her sunshine turning to storm clouds when she saw Ingrid standing in the doorway. Great. Just when everything was going so well, the wicked bitch of the north-west had to show up. Lizzie glowered, slumping down in her seat.

“Ingrid,” Seth said without enthusiasm. “What’s up?”

Ingrid thrust a newspaper in his face. “Did you see this? Did you see what your little tramp did now?”

Lizzie sat up, heart in her throat. Shit. What if she started asking about drugs again? No, she wouldn’t, not in front of Seth, surely. Didn’t sound like she was thinking about drugs anyway, not waving that paper around like that.

Seth took the paper, flattening it out to reveal the grainy photo of Lizzie and Nick, wolf-shaped, racing down Bold Street. “Ingrid…”

Ingrid pushed past him, saw Lizzie curled up on the settee and laughed. “Oh God, have you moved her in? Seriously?”

Lizzie stood, trying not to feel self-conscious. “Nice to see you again, too, Ingrid.”

Ingrid sneered at her and turned back to Seth, who was frowning at the newspaper. “See, this is what happens when Vargulfs are allowed to run around the city,” she said, tapping the paper. “Once the others find about this, they’re not going to let you keep your new pet.”

“Don’t talk about Lizzie like that,” Seth snapped, slapping the paper down on the kitchen sideboard. “Why do you always have to be such a bitch?” Without waiting for an answer, he went to sit with Lizzie, throwing himself onto the settee and pulling her down beside him. “This is utter bollocks,” he said, more to Lizzie than Ingrid. He took her hand, rubbing his thumb back and forth over her knuckles.

Lizzie shifted uncomfortably, waiting for the hammer to fall. Her nerves jangled, the Other prowling inside her restlessly, looking for an escape route. Clearly Ingrid was waiting too, but with smug satisfaction rather than anxious dread.

“Haven’t you seen the Wolf Watch website?” Seth continued, surprising both Lizzie and Ingrid. “Pictures like this crop up all the time, all over the country. It’s like bloody UFO spotting, or those big cat conspiracy theories. It’s bollocks, Ingrid.”

Ingrid’s face fell as Lizzie’s spirit soared. “Really?” Lizzie asked him. “You lot know about Wolf Watch?”

He nodded, twirling a lock of her hair round his fingers. “We post pictures on there all the time.” He grinned. “Last summer I took a few pictures of my friend Dan in wolf shape and sent them in. He went ballistic – it was hilarious.”

Ingrid snorted. “That’s pathetic, Seth.”

“No more pathetic than coming round here trying to stir things up,” he replied coolly. “If that was all you wanted, you can go now.”

“We have plans,” Lizzie put in, secure in the lofty vantage point of “we,” enjoying the ugly look that crossed Ingrid’s face, even though, yeah, it made her just as smug a bitch as Ingrid.

The other girl ignored her, as if Lizzie were simply part of the furniture, nothing to pay attention to. “You’ll get bored of her,” she told Seth, her eyes flashing ruby for a second. “Or she’ll get bored of you and go running back to her crackhead lifestyle.”

“The crackhead lifestyle you were so keen to get into yesterday, you mean?” Lizzie shot back, unable to stop herself.

Ingrid’s eyes blazed. “How dare you –”

“Oh, just piss off, will you?” Seth said, suddenly sounding weary, as if this was a variation on an old argument, one he’d long since lost interest in. “We’re not five anymore, Ingrid. I’m not interested in playground games.”

Ingrid wrinkled her nose as if she might cry, and Lizzie felt a stirring of sympathy despite herself. Must be hard, she acknowledged, to watch someone else with your ex when you’d assumed you’d be back with them somewhere down the line.

Her sympathy evaporated when Ingrid turned to her and said, “He’ll get bored and leave you to overdose in a gutter somewhere, you know.” With that, she swept from the flat, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the windows.

Lizzie released a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. “I don’t think she likes me.”

“She doesn’t like many people,” Seth replied. “I’d take it as a compliment, of sorts.”

“Why did you stay with her so long if she’s always so nasty?” she asked, then wished she hadn’t. It was none of her business, and besides, she knew first hand how easy it was to stay with someone you didn’t actually want to, how many excuses you could make to yourself for putting up with them. Boil it down to habit, laziness, whatever you liked. She’d stayed with Harris for convenience and drugs. Who’s to say Seth hadn’t stayed with Ingrid because she gave great head or something equally as feeble?

“She’s not a bad person,” Seth said quickly. “She’s just spoilt. Her parents always give her everything she wants, and she assumes the rest of the world will too.” He shrugged, eyes going vacant for a second, and Lizzie could almost see him remembering the good times with Ingrid. Then he shook it off. “What was that about crackheads, anyway?”

Lizzie told him about Ingrid’s call yesterday, making sure to emphasis that she’d refused to help. He sighed and ran his hands through his hair, shaking his head. “She’s mad.”

“Have you really posted pictures on Wolf Watch?” Lizzie asked, keen to change the subject.

“Oh yeah.” He leapt up, pulling her with him. “It’s sad, I know, but me and my mates have been doing it for a few years now.” He led her back to the bedroom and fired up his snazzy computer. Such a boy’s computer, all matte black casing and green flashing lights, designed to show off how much the owner knew about computers.

Lizzie sat in his chair and he leaned over her shoulder, his arm brushing hers as he called up the familiar website. The contact sent a static shock through Lizzie, sent images of last night tumbling through her head, and she felt heat steal over her from head to toe. She shifted her weight imperceptibly on the chair so she was pressed closer to him.

“Here we go,” Seth said. A black screen with red and white lettering flashed up, the words
Wolf Watch – urban legend or reality???!!!
emblazoned across the top. The website consisted of the usual blurred, badly-lit photos of objects that could well be werewolves, but could also be rubbish bags, cats, or bushes.

Lizzie laughed, thinking of the hours Harris had spent pouring over the site. “I can’t believe the Kurtadam do this.”

“It’s just a bit of fun,” Seth said. “Nobody’s ever going to prove anything by it. It’s the same as the big cat conspiracy theories – you know, the Beast of Bodmin Moor and all that. There’s always some lunatic convinced he’s got irrefutable proof that giant wolves are roaming the UK.”

“But aren’t you worried someone will get a decent photo one day?” she asked. It seemed hypocritical to laugh at this, then rant and rave about the danger of ghouls. This was as big a risk to the Kurtadam’s vaunted privacy as the ghouls, surely? She said as much to Seth, stung by the implication that she might have blown the lid off the whole werewolf underworld, but a website full of dodgy photos was harmless fun.

Seth sobered. “It’s not the same. Nobody’s really going to pay attention to this.” He nodded at the computer screen. “But ghouls are different. People notice when other people go missing, they notice if they see their best mate or ex-girlfriend on the streets begging for money. They ask questions, they call the police. If anybody got hold of a ghoul, they’d see immediately that something wasn’t right, and then you’ve got doctors involved as well. It spirals on.”

Lizzie imagined it: Harris strapped down to a steel table in a brightly-lit lab, mindless and drooling, while sinister scientists in white coats took scalpels and saws to his skull, prodding his brain to try to work out why he wasn’t human anymore. She shuddered. “Yeah, fair enough.”

“Anyway.” Seth closed the website. “What do you fancy doing today?”

She brightened up, the possibilities blooming before her. With the sun shining and Seth’s warm body pressed to her back, she felt invincible, ready to take on whatever the world threw at her. “Anything you want,” she said, reaching back to wrap her arms round his neck. He echoed the gesture, his arms sliding round her ribs in a bear hug. “As long as I can get dressed first,” she added.

Seth kissed her throat, then nipped lightly at her ear, drawing a surprised squeak from her. “We’ll take that under advisement.”

****

That day set the pattern for the next few. Lizzie’s head spun at how quickly the world remade itself, how easily she slipped into the new life. Hanging out with Seth down at the Docks, watching the grey water lap gently at the red brick walls. She discovered his favourite sport was ice hockey, that he had a weakness for rocky road cake and his favourite childhood cartoon was Thundercats.

In turn, Seth pried it out of her that her favourite meal was good old bangers and mash, that she’d hated art at school, and that she’d wanted to be a ballet dancer as a child. “Right up until I realised you had to wear a pink tutu,” she added, skimming a stone across the water and wincing when it smashed into the side of a boat with a dull clunk.

He asked her how she got into drugs and she explained about Hannah and Harris, how it had seemed like a “fuck you” to her mother and her sheltered childhood.

“Do you regret it all now?” he asked.

Lizzie stared out at the Mersey River, inhaling the smell of brine and damp moss, turning the question over. Really, it hadn’t been that long since she quit. It all felt too recent to really say she had quit – surely you had to go months and years without a pill or a line before you could declare you’d finished with drugs?

“I regret starting,” she said eventually. “And getting involved with Harris. Honestly though, I can’t sit here and say drugs are bad.” She remembered the elation that came with ecstasy, the soaring confidence of coke, and the rubber-limbed hysteria of ketamine. “I mean, there’s the dark side of it all, overdoses, addictions, all that. But I had some fun. Me and Hannah had some crazy nights.”

“So you miss it?” Seth asked. “I mean, I’m not pretending I’m a saint. I’ve tried things out, but I never saw the point of any of it really. The next day you just feel crap. Give me a good hunt in wolf shape every time.”

“I don’t think I’ve had a real hunt in wolf shape,” Lizzie mused. “Just picking through Smithdown Park doesn’t count, does it?”

“I’ll take you,” he promised. “Next full moon we’ll drive out to Southport and go for a run on the beach.”

She pictured a moonlight beach, sand all silvery, ocean dark and mysterious, her and Seth chasing surf and crashing through the waves. The Other liked the image, liked the idea of running wild, no hiding and slinking around like a coward. “Sounds good.”

“After Nuala’s birthday party,” he said, linking fingers with her.

Nuala’s birthday party. A source of constant speculation for Lizzie. She didn’t see Nuala appreciating a big surprise do, all balloons and brass bands and long-lost friends, which was how Seth made it sound. Nuala liked fussing over other people, not being fussed over herself.

It was Wednesday, three days before the big party. She and Seth had walked down to the Docks for lunch, planning to head to Liverpool One afterwards to find a present for Nuala. Again, Lizzie didn’t see the old woman appreciating anything from All Saints or Lipsi, but Seth was determined to find the perfect present.

“Nuala always gets you exactly what you want, even when you don’t know you want it,” he complained as they left the Docks. “I feel morally obligated to keep shopping until I find the ideal present. My mum will kill me otherwise.”

“Are you parents going to be there?” Lizzie asked, stomach twisting at the thought. Meeting his parents shouldn’t be that a big deal after everything else, but it felt like a huge deal. A huge,
human
deal.

He shook his head. “They’re driving down from Scotland next weekend. Dad’s got too much work on. Same as ever.”

She sighed in relief without realising it, and he glanced down at her and smiled. “You’re nervous about meeting them.”

“No,” she lied.