Wolfsbane (Howl #3) (7 page)

Chapter 9

A half hour later, Samara found herself standing in front of Stucci’s Self Storage. They’d had an easy time finding the place with the help of the GPS on Colby’s cell phone, but suddenly
, she was afraid to go inside.

What was she supposed to say? That she was pretty sure her dead grandfather had left her something? Like
that
wouldn’t so
und creepy or anything. . . .

Finally, Luke pressed his hand against the small of her back. His warm touch made her relax some. “Are you r
eady to go inside?” he asked.

“As ready as I can be,” Samara replied, taking a deep breath. She double-checked the storage unit number that was written on the piece of paper. 402. Turning to the rest of the pack, she said, “You guys wait out here. Me, Luke, and Colby will go in.” She wasn’t sure why she wanted Colb
y to go with her, but she did.

“Sounds good,” Steve said, plopping down on the cold ground. Ever
yone else nodded in agreement.

When they pushed through the doors, Samara’s wet boots squeaked against the linoleum floor. A woman with short red hair and black framed glasses sat at the front desk. She glanced
up at them. “May I help you?”

“Yeah, um, I need to get something out of a storage unit,” Samara told her. “Unit
number four hundred and two.”

The woman clicked some buttons on her computer before tu
rning back to her. “McKinley?”

Samara nodded, beginning to feel relieved. At least they hadn’t made this t
rip for nothing; Grandpa Joe
had
left something here at some point. The question was whether or not it was still in storage.

“Do you have t
he password?” the woman asked.

Samara shook her head. “No,
I didn’t know there was one.”

The woman tapped her chin with her long fingernails. “I can’t allow you access to the storage unit unless you can
give me the correct password.”

“Oh.” Samara could feel her face falling, as she realized that the whole trip might have been a waste after all. Even worse, she hadn’t thought to bring the book with her. What if her grandfather had written the password in the book somewhere
, and she’d missed it somehow?

“I can give you a hint if you would like one,” the woman at the front desk said.
“We have a password reminder to help our customers out in case they have forgotten their passwords.”

“Okay,” Samara agreed, even though a shadow of doubt loomed over her
. What good would a password reminder be if she didn’t know anything about her grandfather or his life? This felt like finding a needle in a haystack, if she had never seen t
he needle in the first place.

“S-a-m-d-o-b,” the woman read from the comp
uter. “Does that help at all?”

Samara was about to shake her head and tell the woman that it wasn’t helpful because she still had no idea what the password could
be
when Luke spoke up. “It’s your birthday, Sam. Samara Alyce McKinley, date of birth. That’s
what s-a-m-d-o-b stands for.”

Samara’s eyes widened. Would her grandfather have used her birthday as the password so that she would be able to figure it out easily? “3-1-1996
,” she rehearsed her birthday.

The woman typed away on the keyboard for a moment b
efore standing up. “Follow me.”

Samara’s jaw dropped in surprise. She had been expecting the woman to tell her that
it wasn’t the right password.

The three of them followed the woman to the storage units. “We have large storage units and small locker-sized units,” the woman explained. “Since your items are small, they’re in o
ne of the locker-sized units.”

The woman approached an aisle of lockers and pulled out a key ring. When she swung the locker door open, Samara peered inside. She felt her hear
t drop.

The locker was nearly empty. The only thing she could see was a
piece of paper. She felt stupid
knowing that she had dragged her pack all this way
for a stinking piece of paper.

“Here you go,” the woman said, pulling the piece of paper out of the locker and handing it to Samara. She smiled at her. “Will you be keeping this storage unit
open, or should we close it?”

“Um,
I think we
can close it,” Samara replied.
If all that was in the unit was a piece of paper, it seemed pointless to keep it open.

Once they were back outside, she glanced down at the piece of paper—which was actually an envelope—and opened it. A gold key was inside, along with
a
small piece of paper.

Pulling it out, Samara realized that it was another address, and she sighed. “I feel like this is turning into a scavenger hunt,” she muttered under her brea
th.

“Scavenger hunts are kin
da fun,” Colby offered lamely.

“Like the one you made us do to find out what pack we were on?”
Kyle asked, rolling his eyes.

Samara raised her eyebrows at them in question. Colby explained, “When they turned, I wanted to have a little fun with them. Instead of approaching them, like Alphas normally do, I stuck
anonymous notes in their lockers
and sent emails to them from an unknown sender. I turned it into a game with a scavenger hunt for them to figure out what pack they be
longed to.”

“I think Steve thought someone was stalking him, tho
ugh,” Kyle said with a laugh.

“Stalker or not, you have to admit, it was a really fun game,” Colby said.

“I heard it was a blast,” Luke commented. When Samara raised her eyebrows at him, he reminded her, “I came here because my parents knew I would need to be an Ima. I didn’t really have the choice of being
surprised like the others did.”

“How did you guys not know what pack you were going to belong to if it’s normally genetically predetermined?” Samara questioned. Since Colby had bit her, she didn’t really know what it was like for a werewolf to find h
is or her pack the normal way.

Kyle raised his hand like he was in the classroom. “I didn’t know because I had both Vyka and Ima relatives.” Samara recalled her cousin telling her this in the
past—and
about how shocked his family had been when he’d be
come an Ima instead of a Vyka.
They’d been expecting Kyle to be a Vyka since Grandpa Joe had been a Vyka.

“Most of us have werewolf relations on both sides,” Steve said, running a hand over his braided hair. He shrug
ged. “It happens.”

“Right, well, anyway, let’s finish this scavenger hunt,” Josh said, snapping everyone’s attention back to the situation at hand. “I guess we’re s
upposed to go to the address.”

“I wonder if it’s another storage facility,” Samara muttered as they began walking down the street, their shoes crunching ov
er the snow-covered sidewalks.

Luke shook his head. “
Nah
,
that
just seems too obvious. Why would he give you a key to another storage facility unit? It just seems t
oo . . . repetitive. Too boring . . .
I d
on’t think it was his style.”

“You’re probably right,” Samara agreed. Over her shoulder, she told the other guys, “Let’s quicken the pace. I’m really
curious to see what this key
belongs to
.”

Chris muttered something under his breath to Steve. Samara wasn’t sure if she heard the words when he said them aloud or if they filled her head, but they were crystal clear:
This is pointless. W
e should have just gone to Massachusetts.

Samara whirled on him. “If you don’t think you’re here for a good reason, then why don’t you just go to Massach
usetts, Chris? Go find Jason.”

Chris glared at her. “It just seems like we’re doing a whole lot of so
mething for a lot of nothing.”

“I have to agree, Sam,” Kyle chimed in. “It doesn’t feel like we’ve accomplished much of anything yet, and it’s starting to get late already. We’ll n
eed to stop for dinner soon.”

Samara let out a loud sigh. She knew that they were sort of right, but she still knew that they were here for a
reason
. Grandpa Joe wouldn’t have just led her out here for no reason, would he have? No. She had been right about the storage facility; if she was right about that, she was p
robably right about this, too.

Just trust your gut,
Luke told her.
I think your natural instincts are right about this. I can feel it, too.

Samara smiled at him before turning back to the rest of the pack. “Look, guys. I’ll make a deal with you. If this turns out to be nothing—if we don’t accomplish anything once we figure out what this key belongs to—then we can just leave and go to Massachusetts. But if I’m right, and I think I am, there’s something waiting for us
at this address. Sound good?”

Everyone nodded and muttered their agreement, but the looks on their faces told Samara that they weren’t sure that they believed her. Instead of trying to convince them at that moment, she decided that there wa
s only one thing she could do.

She was going to show them.

*

Fifteen minutes later, they trudged down Copperfield Avenue, the street of the address that had been left in the storage unit. It was getting even darker outside than it already was, and although Samara could feel the breeze tossing her loose, long hair, she
still didn’t feel cold at all.

“I think that’s it right over there,” Colby said, holding up his cell phone and pointing at a driveway. Samara could hear the robotic GPS’s voice reading the address telling them that they had
arrived at their destination.

“I wonder who lives there,” Samara commented, as she led the way up the driveway. She noticed that no tire tracks
had
left indentations in the snow like they had in all the other driveways. As they inched closer to the house, she could see that it was a tiny, unlit log cabin.
What if there was no one home?

She began to panic. As much as she wanted to believe that her grandfather wouldn’t have left her to deal with some sort of death trap, the truth was, she didn’t know the man all that well. What if he actually wasn’t trying to help her? What if he somehow knew, even back then, that she wasn’t going to be
come
a V
yka, that she was going to choose one of his rivaling packs,
and
he
wanted to get revenge
on her
?

Stop worrying so much,
Luke’s voice filled her head, as he wrapped his arm around her waist. I already told you, I’m not going to let anything happen to you.

She turned around and stared into his emerald green eyes. There was a genuine honesty in them.
I believe you,
she thought back, standing on her tiptoes to plant a tiny kiss on his lips. Just the small touch sent a
wave of chills down her spine.

“Can you guys go even a few hours without kissing?” Kyle asked
, wrinkling his nose
. “I’m not trying to turn all big cousin on you or anything
, Sam, but it grosses me out.”

“Oh, shut up,” she replied with a laugh. “Once you have a mate of your o
wn, you’ll know how it feels.”

Kyle rolled his eyes and shrugged. “I guess. And then you’ll see how much
it grosses you out.”

Samara laughed, as she climbed the front steps to the house. She searched for a doorbell, but there wasn’t one, so instead, she knocked. When she didn’t hear any movement inside
, she knocked louder. “Hello?”

“Anybody ther
e?” Josh call
ed from behind her.

Samara waited for a moment, and when no one came to the front door, she s
aid, “I guess no one’s
home.”

She was about to turn around and walk away when Luke told her, “Open it.” She star
ed back at him with wide eyes.

“Open the door. What else would the key
be for?” Luke asked pointedly.

“I . . .
um, I don’t know,” Samara replied hesitantly. She had figured that someone inside would be waiting with a locked box that her grandfather had left for her to retrieve, or something; it hadn’t occurred to her that she was supposed to open the front door.
Wasn’t that like breaking and entering?

“The key might not even fit,” she told Luke lamely, knowing that
she was just trying to stall.