All rights reserved

Copyright 2016 © by Zoe Reed

ISBN-13: 978-1546671671

ISBN-10: 1546671676

www.patreon.com/zoereed

www.facebook.com/Author.ZoeReed

Edited by Isabel C. Helbing

Table of Contents

Chapter 1….1

*Chapter 2….10

Chapter 3….21

*Chapter 4….31

Chapter 5….44

*Chapter 6….54

*Chapter 7….65

Chapter 8….78

*Chapter 9….90

Chapter 10….101

*Chapter 11….109

Chapter 12….118

Chapter 13….127

Chapter 14….131

Chapter 15….145

Chapters marked with (*) are followed by bonus material in the form of Abby’s journal entries. These entries can be found online at:

https://www.patreon.com/zoereed/posts?tag=Abby%20Journal

The night air was cold and crisp. It froze in my lungs, cooling the heated blood in my veins and the burning in my muscles so I could keep pushing. Keep running. Each hot exhale I released swirled like a fog as I blew by it, as white in the moonlight as the lingering snow beneath my paws. But I wasn’t cold. My golden fur shielded me from the blasts of icy winds as we shot through the woods, and Camille was running so close to my side that the length of her wolf body was pressed right against mine, and heat was pouring off of her.

We were chasing a ghost, catching only glimpses of the white flashes through the trees, or disturbing what was left of its hovering clouds of breath. But we were gaining on it. We had been for the last few minutes, ever since Camille caught the scent in the still air and tracked the paw prints to our prey’s hiding spot. We were getting close enough that the flashes of white were no longer indistinguishable from the snow, but a clear outline of wolf from head to tail.

For every pace that put us closer, the blood connection I shared with Camille shared the spikes of building excitement that coursed through her, and each time, there was an answer of excitement in me. It echoed between us with every strike of our paws in the snow, until it reached a point where I could feel that Camille was ready to end this. Could feel a desire for the reward of the chase, an anticipation for it that grew so strong it was ready to snap, and with that peak came a shift of action.

Camille gathered a burst of strength and left my side, and I pushed through the burning in my limbs to match her, stride for stride. We separated, using our speed to edge around our prey, until we were in line on either side of the glimmer of white fur. It was Camille who’d caught the scent, Camille who’d tracked and gotten us this far, and now it was my turn. We closed in, dodging trees and getting so near to the wolf that I made out the whites of its hazel eyes.

It was looking at me, knowing I’d be the one to pounce and go for the takedown, and I knew that it was scheming some way to avoid my attack. All I had to do was wait for an opening. I stared into its eyes through the rhythmic clouds of air it exhaled, keeping pace and cutting left or right when there was a tree in my path, but never losing focus. Then it happened. The wolf glanced to its right to look at Camille on its other side, and I sprang.

I left the ground, throwing myself at the wolf and landing on its back, taking the scruff of its neck between my teeth. It was smaller than Camille and me, and it toppled under my weight so we went rolling in a clumsy heap through the snow. Our momentum was so great that we came to a stop only when we crashed into a tree, and a sharp pang shot through the side of my back as I hit it. It caused me to release the grip of my teeth, and the wolf and I both recovered at the same time.

We darted up, not wasting a moment before going back at each other in a tangle of fur. Teeth flashed and paws swiped as rumbling growls filled the air. I leapt and slashed and feigned, trying everything to throw my opponent off its feet and get my teeth on its neck, while trying to avoid the same. Camille circled the sharp coil we’d become, surveying for the opportunity to dive in and help without making it harder for me to aim.

Her opportunity came only a few seconds later. She dashed forward to snap her jaws around one of the white wolf’s hind legs and tugged. It pulled the wolf off balance and sent it crumbling, but she didn’t let go. She dragged the wolf backward instead, which kept it from regaining its feet for the brief span of time it took me to pounce. I went in from the left, stretching my mouth wide to set my teeth on either side of the wolf’s throat, and though everything went dead still and silent, I didn’t bite down for the kill. I angled my head to meet the wolf’s eyes, and it went limp beneath my hold as it let out a defeated growl. I let go, leaping backward in a triumphant prance as Camille jumped on the wolf to get in a few teasing bites of her own.

The ghost was Luna, Camille’s fraternal twin sister. Sometimes Camille and I won the chase, sometimes she did, but the three of us had had plenty of runs like this since she’d moved to Oregon – plenty of nights tracking and chasing and play-fighting in the woods that surrounded the Pack house, and here, too, in the woods around our school. This was our last night before the start of the second semester; a semester Luna would stay for. She’d never admit that she came here because she missed Camille, and Camille wouldn’t admit to being excited about it, but I could tell just by watching them struggle in the snow that they were glad to be together again.

It didn’t take Luna long to battle Camille off her and regain her feet, and while she shook out the ice crystals and scuffle from her fur, Camille came over to me. Her long, canine tongue swiped up the side of my face, and I ducked my head against her shoulder to return the affection. But I was still riled up and excited from the hunt, and couldn’t help a bit of mischief as I stretched forward to bite down on her hind leg. With it in my teeth, I pulled it out from under her and threw all my weight sideways, knocking her into the snow. I nudged her over onto her back, and she tried only halfheartedly to bat me away with her paws while I dipped in and out to nip at her neck and stomach.

We messed around for a minute before I realized that Luna hadn’t interrupted yet, and looked over to find her nursing a small wound where Camille had bitten down. When Camille realized it too, she pushed up to go and give her sister an apologetic nudge. Luna growled, side-eying Camille irritably while Camille bowed, her back half wagging in the air. Luna wasn’t really mad, and after a tense pause, she pounced. They wrestled for a minute before she managed to line Camille up under her back paws and kick, using the surge to hurl herself to all fours and take off running. I gave chase without hesitation, hearing a third stride pick up behind us.

It was getting late, and Luna was racing us back in the direction of school. She had a head start, but it didn’t take long for me to catch up, and Camille soon after. We matched Luna’s easy pace, tired enough by now not to push. Before long, we were back on the outskirts of the dorm buildings where we’d left our clothes hidden in backpacks up a tree. Luna was the first to Phase back to human, and then Camille and I, and a cold shiver traveled up my arms when the lack of fur left me bare to the winter chill.

Finished dressing in a rush, Luna threw her backpack over her shoulders. “It’s freezing,” she said, pulling the hood of her jacket over her head of shoulder-length platinum blond hair, better shielding herself from the cold. “I’m out.” She tossed a wave at us and jogged off in the direction of the dorms.

By the time I was done pulling on my shoes, Camille was dressed and holding my jacket up for me. I slipped my arms in, and then turned to wrap them around her neck and kiss her on the cheek. “Thanks.”

She nodded in the direction Luna had disappeared. “I think that was the fastest you’ve ever pinned her.”

“You helped,” I pointed out.

“Only a little.” She slipped her hands underneath my jacket and shirt, sliding one up to where I’d hit my back on the tree. “Are you bruised?”

I shook my head. “Why?”

“I think…” She hesitated, pausing in consideration. “I think our connection might be getting stronger. When you hit that tree, I could’ve sworn I felt it.”

“It hurt you?” I asked in shock. The blood connection we shared was because of our emotional intimacy when Camille bit me, and it had grown stronger. We could always feel each other’s emotions, and sometimes the physical expressions of more extreme emotions – like my chest tightening from Camille’s heartbreak when she missed Lacey, her best friend who’d died last semester; or like we experienced some of the jumps and peaks in each other’s bodies when we got intimate – but it’d never extended to physical pain.

“Not hurt,” she answered, and in the moonlight I watched her brown eyes squint in concentration. “Just a little pressure, like someone pushed me there.”

I hummed. It was exciting progress – if it was progress – but I wasn’t ready to get serious yet. So I brushed her curly blond hair back over her shoulder, and dipped forward to nip at her neck, punctuating the action with a kiss. “That kind of pressure?” I whispered against her skin.

We used teeth all the time in wolf form, but its effect on human Camille was always infinitely more stirring, and her fingers twitched on my hip. “Not quite,” she said.

“Let me know when…” I opened my mouth against the side of her neck, biting gently and then soothing it with my lips, only to repeat the action a little harder.

The second pass of my teeth had her hands gripping tighter, and by the third, she’d pulled me closer. She seemed to be enjoying it too much to say anything until my tongue touched down, and though she hummed her pleasure, she stopped pulling me closer. “Not out here,” she murmured, fingers flexing like they were trying their best to let me go. “It’s too cold.”

“Alright,” I said, kissing up to her jaw. “Get your bag.” I kissed along her jaw to her chin. “And I’ll race you to the dorms.”

One brief peck to her lips and then I grabbed my bag and was off. She laughed behind me, and then her swift two-legged stride was crunching through the snow. She was a better runner than me, and it didn’t take her long to catch up, but we were both panting by the time we reached the door of the building. I pulled my room keys from my bag and scanned my ID card so we could get through the front door. We walked through the lobby so as not to get yelled at by the security guard, who already didn’t look too happy about us coming in so late.

We stayed on our best behavior while we waited for the elevator, and then while we got on and stood side by side, but the lift had only gone one floor before Camille’s hand reached over and slipped into the back pocket of my jeans. I clicked my tongue. “No self-control.”

“This is self-control,” she said, but I saw the smirk on her face out of the corner of my eye as she squeezed my backside.

It was past one in the morning, so we were probably the only ones wandering the building, and I really didn’t care about self-control. I turned and grabbed the neck of her jacket to pull her to me, to get as much of her as I could before our elevator ride was over, but her lips barely grazed mine when the doors dinged and opened. One of my hands stayed clutched in her coat as we rushed down the hall to my dorm room, so it was already there when we got in and closed the door behind us. So it was that much easier for me to push the jacket off her shoulders and get to the rest of her clothing.

And her lips finally met mine in the open kind of kiss that left me breathless. That kept me breathless until our clothes were scattered piles on the floor and we’d robbed each other of whatever energy was left after the run. Until we were a tuckered-out mess of tangled limbs under the blankets on my bed, and Camille was tracing her usual tired lines up and down my back. I laid my head on her chest, listening to the thud of her heartbeat returning to normal while I tapped out every other pulse against her shoulder, trying to get my own to match it.

“You want to shower with me?” she asked after a minute.

I rolled off her to lie at her side, but was so tired that I ended up flopping onto my back instead. “I can hardly move.”

“Aw, did we run you too hard?” she teased, turning to half lie over me while she slipped her hand under the covers to trace my hip, purposefully skimming a spot that she knew tickled.

I held back a giggle and twitched away from her fingers. “Next time, you can pin Luna, and we’ll see how tired you get.”

“I know I’d be tired,” she admitted. “It’d take me at least twice as long if I even managed it.”

“Oh, is that why you let me do it?” I asked, sliding my hand up her arm. “Make me do all the work and then take me to bed just so you can run me some more.”

“Half the work,” she said with a glare, because she’d done all the tracking. “And you weren’t complaining a few minutes ago.”

“Well it’s hard to do much at all with your fingers-”

She cut me off with a kiss, trying to hold back a smile when she pulled away. “Finish that sentence and you’ll be passed out in another twenty minutes.”

I gave her shoulder a push and laughed, “Go shower.”

She climbed out of bed and started gathering my shower supplies, eventually saying, “I’ll be back,” while wrapping a towel around her bare body for the short trip to the bathrooms.

I nodded and watched her head out the door as I settled into bed. I stared across the empty dorm, fingering the sheets as the spot where she’d been lying was already losing heat, and it wasn’t even a minute before the stillness that sometimes came started creeping in on me. The new silence left me with nothing to do but think, and I thought about what I never wanted to think about. About being kidnapped only a semester ago, about fights and traumas and pain. But it wasn’t the thinking – I could force that away and think about nothing or distract myself with other things – nor was it just the stillness of being alone.

It was what I felt in those moments. It was the emptiness in my chest that came from forcing myself not to think, because it meant I had to shut out everything, even things that might help me feel better. It was the discomfort bordering on nausea in my stomach, because even if I didn’t think about it, the memories were still there at the back of my mind, nagging at my instincts. I couldn’t control that.

Camille and I shared so much – if the connection didn’t make sure of it, it would’ve been certain because I loved her. But there was something I hadn’t shared. Something I wanted to but didn’t know how, and hadn’t worked up the courage to try because I knew how Camille would react. She’d feel guilty, like she felt guilty for turning me even though it saved my life, or like she felt guilty for the scar she’d slashed into the back of my left shoulder, even though it was an accident and she thought she was being attacked by a phantom. So I kept it to myself, but not saying it felt like lying, because in those still moments she was present for, she always knew something was wrong. She could feel it in the connection, and not telling her made me feel guilty.

The door cracked open, and Camille slipped in with a laugh of, “Forgot the shampoo.” She crossed the room to grab it, but on her way back to the door, she stopped to look at me. “You okay?”

I glanced up from where I was still staring and met her gaze, nodding and forcing a smile. Forcing myself to stop thinking about it because I didn’t want to think about it, and I didn’t want her to feel it. “Fine.” And that was enough. She didn’t force it because that’s not who she was, and she never pressured me for anything.

She hesitated to return the smile, but then did and slipped out once more. I stretched for the cellphone on the nightstand to make sure my alarm was set, and then curled up under the blankets and was tired enough that I was asleep by the time she got back. The alarm woke me up the next morning. Well, it was Camille stretching over from behind me to try and reach the alarm that woke me. She couldn’t get to it from where she was, and gave up after a second and dropped back onto her pillow with a groan. My lips pulled into a smile as I grabbed the phone myself to turn it off, and then scooted farther back into the warmth of her body.

It took a good minute of reminding myself that I had to get up and shower before I could open my eyes again. I turned around in Camille’s arms to face her, whispering, “I got to shower.” I wasn’t even sure if she was awake, but then she made another noise of protest and tightened her hold on me. “I’ll be back,” I said, peeling her arms from my waist while I pressed a kiss to her cheek. “Want me to bring some food? Or you want to get breakfast together?” This time, she cracked one eye and gave me an innocent smile, and I understood that look perfectly. “I’ll bring food.”

After giving her one last kiss, I slipped out of bed, gathered my shower supplies and clothes, and tiptoed out the door. I showered in our floor’s bathroom, got dressed and dried my hair, and then hurried downstairs to collect breakfast – a bagel, an egg and cheese sandwich that I practically swallowed whole while waiting in line, the breakfast burrito and boiled eggs I got for Camille, and a coffee each. It was a little tough carrying everything back upstairs while still holding my bag of shower stuff, but I managed to get through the door and kick it closed behind me.

“Morning, Luna,” I greeted without looking, having caught her scent while I went to drop everything onto the desk.

“You brought me food,” Luna cooed, hopping off the bed. “How sweet.”

But as Luna took a step toward the desk and me, Camille reached out from where she was lying and grabbed the back of her jacket to stop her. “Not for you,” Camille said. I sat on the edge of the desk, sipping my coffee while Camille tried to wake herself up and struggled out of bed. A minute later she’d risen and trudged across the room to me, and she planted a tired kiss on my lips. “You’re the best.”

“You’re welcome.” I set my coffee down to grab my bagel, checking my cellphone with my free hand. “Better hurry, you got fifteen minutes to eat and get ready.”

She was already peeling down the foil wrapper of her burrito, but at that, she leaned over to get a look at the phone, eyes going wide. “You have anything else to do before you’re ready?” she asked. I shook my head, and she took a massive bite of her burrito and then extended it toward my free hand, asking through a full mouth, “Can you hold that, please?”

I held it while she searched around the floor and her drawer in my dresser for fresh clothes, offering her a bite every time she got a spare moment. Luna laughed at the next mouthful, telling me, “You’re way too good to her.”

I smirked, extending the food so Camille could get another bite. “Love is holding your girlfriend’s breakfast so she can multitask.”

Luna hummed an agreement and began crossing the room, but she glanced at Camille as she passed by me, making sure she wasn’t looking and then stealing her own swift bite of the burrito in my hand. “Thanks, babe,” she muttered through a full mouth.

Camille swung her leg, and would’ve managed to kick Luna in the rear if Luna hadn’t dodged toward the door with a laugh. “Coffee?” Camille asked, rolling her eyes. I pointed, and she took a gulp before brushing her unruly hair. “And,” she said, tugging on her hooded sweater at the same time as she slipped her feet into her shoes, “done.” She plopped down on the desk beside me and took her food. “Thank you.”

Luna checked the time on her own phone. “Seven minutes. Not bad.”

We hovered around for a few while I drank my coffee and Camille scarfed down the rest of the breakfast I’d brought her, and then we left to start heading to our classes. We only just left the front doors of the building when I grabbed Camille’s arm and stopped in my tracks. There was a swarm of police cars outside the dorm building next to ours, surrounded by a group of students who were too curious to have abandoned the scene for campus. Not a moment after I’d processed the situation, I dragged Camille over without saying a word and with Luna beside us, pushing through the crowd of our peers to get to the inside of it, where the police cars had blocked off the sidewalk. There were a few cops outside who looked like they were taking statements from students, but the rest must have been inside the building.

“What d’you think happened?” I asked, using Camille’s shoulder to stretch higher onto my tiptoes, trying to get a better view through the glass doors at the entrance.

“I think someone died,” a random girl behind us answered.

Luna glanced back at her. “Why do you think that?”

The girl pointed at the only ambulance parked on the outside of the group of cop cars. “It’s been there for over twenty minutes and they haven’t brought anyone down.”

Both Luna and I looked at Camille, but she just shrugged. Our school had a lot of supernatural students, but I’d never heard of there being a death on campus before. At least not recent enough that Camille or my friend Abby had ever mentioned it. Even the ordeal with the phantoms last semester was completely unrelated to school – it was a group of vampires in the city. But as we stood there, watching, the front doors of the building finally opened, and the EMTs came out pushing a stretcher, the person on it covered head-to-toe with a white sheet. The girl had been right. Dead.

The EMTs carted the stretcher toward the ambulance, and as they bumped it up against the back of the vehicle to load it in, the hand of the body slipped out from underneath the white sheet.

“Look,” I hissed, grabbing Camille’s arm again and pointing. There was a strange mark carved into the person’s palm.

“Weird,” Luna murmured.

It looked like an occult symbol, like the kinds I’d seen around a magic shop once when I went with Abby, or in some of the old books at the Pack house. Needless to say, my curiosity spiked. I wanted to know what happened. I had questions. Who was the victim? How did they die? Why’d they have that weird-looking symbol on their hand? Was it a murder? Was it something supernatural? Before any of us could say anything else, a distant bell sounded from campus.

The principal of the school left one of the officers to rush to the crowd of students we were standing with. “Go!” she hollered so all of us could hear, shooing us away with her hands. “Scatter! Get to class, everyone!” It was with reluctance that I let Camille drag me away.

“I’ll see you,” Luna said as we reached campus, and she headed off.

“Keep an ear out for details?” I asked Camille.

She didn’t seem half as interested as I was, but this was why I was here. I’d learned to control my Changes and we didn’t have to stay in Oregon. I could’ve gone home, but helping to deal with the soul-eating phantoms last semester gave me a taste of all the good our powers could do. We saved people. Because Oregon and our school were an epicenter of supernatural activity, it was the best place for me to learn how to keep doing that. And I could start with this.

*

Almost late to first period because of the scene outside the dorm building, I rushed to class, only stopping when I reached the doorway to search for an empty seat. There were a few to choose from, but one in particular caught my attention because of who was sitting in front of it. My gaze briefly met Abby’s, and she glanced around at the other empty desks in the room as my focus darted away. Abby Johnson. It wasn’t that I didn’t like her… not necessarily… but I didn’t exactly know what to say to her. She’d had a short-lived fling with Kyla last semester, and she and I had clashed because of it. But she’d helped save my life when I’d almost been possessed by one of the phantoms, and I didn’t feel threatened by her lingering friendship with Kyla, and maybe I should go sit behind her. If I didn’t, then it really would seem like I still had an issue with her, right?

Then I remembered that she was a telepath, and if she was listening at all then she could hear everything I was thinking, and that was the most awkward thing yet. Deciding to suck it up before I made this even worse by just standing there, I paced to the back of the room to sit. She began to turn around in her seat when the bell rang and the teacher came pacing in. She straightened to face the front again while the teacher pulled his materials out of his shoulder bag, and I rolled my eyes at myself because I should’ve sat down sooner. Then she could’ve said hi or whatever it was she’d been turning around to say, and it could’ve helped ease the tension.

Now I was doomed to staring at her light brown ponytail for the rest of the period, while she was doomed to listening to how uncomfortable I felt, which would probably make things a hundred times worse tomorrow and this was already going horribly. And then Abby laughed. It was too soft for the teacher to have noticed, but I heard. I thought deliberately, You’re laughing at me… aren’t you? as my cheeks warmed with a blush.

Abby cleared her throat, whispering quietly enough that only I would hear, “Yeah, sorry.” Even though she couldn’t see how embarrassed I was, I folded my arms across the desk and buried my face in them.

“Good morning, students,” the teacher said, finally finished retrieving a stack of papers from his bag. “I know the first day is supposed to be an easy day.” He went down the columns of desks, counting out enough papers for each student and adding as a side thought, “Pass these back.” He took the extras to his desk and set them down. “So we’ll just go over the syllabus, I’ll answer any questions you have, and then let you hang out for the rest of the period.”

Abby handed a syllabus to me over her shoulder without turning around, and I murmured my thanks as I took it. The teacher spent the next fifteen minutes talking about everything that was written on the paper, telling us about what we’d learn in his history class and that he intended to make it fun. It seemed easy enough, and he seemed nice enough, and in no time at all, he prompted for questions. A couple of people asked him random things that weren’t on the paper, and then we were free to do whatever we wanted until the bell rang.

I reached down to my backpack to unzip it, and stuffed the syllabus inside as Abby finally turned around. Her hazel eyes set to studying me, and I kind of just sat there, staring back. I took in the light freckles that dotted her smooth cheeks and noted how even though Luna’s eyes were hazel too, Abby’s were brighter and more colorful.

It wasn’t clear whether she’d hesitated to speak in order to read my thoughts, or if maybe she felt uncomfortable too, but it took her a long few seconds to say, “Hi.”

“Hey,” I said, thumbing the edge of my desk so I had something to focus on and wouldn’t start thinking anything awkward or offensive.

“I’m glad you decided to sit here,” she said, adding in a concerned kind of way, “I mean, I wouldn’t have been offended if you didn’t. I know you don’t really have an issue with me anymore.”

My cheeks shaded again. “You were listening.”

She gave an apologetic smile. I knew she couldn’t control it, Kyla had told me that. There was no off switch so she wouldn’t have to hear people’s thoughts, and I could only imagine how annoying that must be, but I didn’t want her in my head. The pressure to be perfectly normal and not awkward around her was hard enough when she couldn’t hear me struggling with it, and I wasn’t good with people in general in the first place, and what the hell were we even supposed to talk about?

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” she said, and I knew she was replying to my thoughts, and she was trying to be nice and comforting but… the struggle.

“Don’t respond to it,” I groaned, throwing one hand to my face. This was bad. How did Kyla deal with this? At that thought, I glanced at Abby with wide eyes, because that was the offensive kind of thought I was worried about. “I’m sorry. That was rude. I’m sorry.”

“Wow,” Abby laughed, and she didn’t look offended in the slightest. In fact, she looked amused, and my eyes narrowed with curiosity. “You were way more intimidating last semester when I thought you hated me. Like, way more intimidating.” She’d never seemed intimidated by me, but she was being so lighthearted about our rivalry that I actually smiled a bit, albeit nervously. “Let me say something? And then I’ll try my best not to react to your thoughts.”

“Okay…”

“Okay,” she repeated, adjusting in her seat to face me more wholly. “One, it’s fine if you feel a little awkward with me. Whether it’s because of the Kyla thing, or the telepath thing, I get it, I really do.” She paused, and I nodded. “Two, just, I don’t know, relax.” I chuckled at how straightforward that was for how little she knew me, and she smiled in return. “This is going to sound cliché, but maybe we can start over?” That did sound cliché, incredibly cliché, and I watched Abby hold back a laugh when I thought that, as if she really was trying not to react to my thoughts. Instead of responding to it, she said, “You know I’m still friends with Kyla, and you’ve been really cool about it, but I’d like to get to know you independent of all that. You know? See what it is she loves about you.” She ended it with a self-conscious shrug, like she somehow thought that, after all of this, I’d decline.

But I didn’t want to decline, for both of our sakes, seeing as we had this class together, but also for Kyla. So I took in a deep breath to ease my tension, and did the next most cliché thing I could think of: I held out my hand. “Camille Zade.”

She grinned, reaching out to shake with me. “Abby-”

“Johnson, I know,” I said, “your reputation precedes you.”

“Well played,” she laughed.

“I’ll try to relax,” I told her, “but bear with me… it might take me a bit to adjust.”

“That’s fair,” she agreed. “It’ll probably help if I don’t respond, so I’ll do my best.” I smiled gratefully, and we both sat there for a few seconds trying to think of what to say. “So…”

“So,” I copied.

There was another lingering silence, and I glanced around the rest of the classroom while I tried to come up with something to talk about. Most of the students were in their own conversations much like Abby and I had been. A couple of them had already started reading the history homework for this week. Another, the girl in the seat next to mine with cute bronze skin, black hair, and who smelled powerfully of perfume, met my gaze when I looked at her and then immediately looked away.

I finally turned back to Abby, and at the same time I began to say, “Did you see all the-,” she started saying, “Did you hear about the-”

We both stopped short and gave nervous laughs, but I motioned for her to finish, and she asked, “Did you hear about the death this morning?”

That’s exactly what I’d been about to ask her, which she knew, of course. “Yeah,” I answered. “There were a bunch of cop cars outside the dorms.”

Abby got out of her seat to turn around completely, straddling the back of her chair so we were face to face. “Did you see anything interesting?”

“We caught a glimpse of the body,” I told her, lowering my voice in case anyone was eavesdropping. “Well, the hand. It had a symbol carved on it.”

She nodded, her voice dropping in volume too. “I got there early, right when the cops did. I kind of saw what the body looked like when the guy’s friend was telling the police about it.”

“Saw?” I repeated. “Visually?” Abby nodded again. “You can do that?”

“Sometimes,” she answered. “If the thoughts or emotions are strong enough, I can see or feel them. In this case, they definitely were.”

“That’s actually kind of cool,” I admitted, and she smiled in thanks. “Did you see anything interesting?”

“I just caught fleeting glimpses,” she answered. “And reading people isn’t like looking at a photo because memory can be really unreliable. I see what a person thinks they saw. Details get kind of blurry.” I nodded my understanding. “What I do know,” she said, “is that his wrists were cut. That’s a detail that’s hard to get wrong.”

“Cut?” I repeated in shock. “Like suicide?” Abby nodded. “That’s strange though, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “I mean, with the symbol carved into his hand, it could’ve been something ritualistic. If we can’t recognize the symbol then we might not know what it was until it happens, but if he knew what he was doing, well… spells that require self-sacrifice make a big splash. It could be really bad news.” I pursed my lips in thoughtful understanding. “Do you remember what the symbol looked like?” She stretched one hand behind her to grab the syllabus on her desk, setting it in front of me. “Could you draw it?”

“Maybe.” I reached down and pulled my backpack into my lap, opening the smaller front pocket to look for something to write with. The pocket was kind of cluttered seeing as I hadn’t emptied it since last semester, so I took my keys out and set them on the desk to make searching a little easier. I managed to find a single pen and returned my backpack to the floor, but when I went to grab my keys and put them back, Abby had already picked them up. She was looking at a keychain I had on the ring – an old, faded souvenir in the shape of California. “That was-”

“Lacey’s,” she said, her thumb running down the length of the state.

As kids, Lacey and I had both been heartbroken when my family left Oregon. I’d sent her that keychain hardly a week after we moved, and she promised she was going to keep it forever. She’d kept it long enough to put it on her car keys when she finally learned to drive, and long enough for us to be reunited when I moved back here with Kyla. Lacey, like me, was one of the three werewolves that the vampires had used to set the phantoms free, but she hadn’t survived the possession. That keychain was all I had left of her.

“I forget that you two were friends,” I said.

“Yeah,” Abby murmured. “My dad hated it – especially with her being the alpha’s daughter.” She laughed, but it was nostalgic and sad. “Every once in a while she’d call the Council office, and purposefully dial my dad’s extension just to ask for me.”

I couldn’t help but laugh too. “That sounds exactly like the kind of thing Lacey would do.”

Abby’s dad was the director of the Supernatural Council – a group of supernaturals who policed our world. It was no secret that he didn’t like werewolves, a feeling that was almost equally reciprocated by the older members of the Pack. As far as I understood it, the Council had only ever been interested in working with the Pack when it was beneficial to them, and because of their bias, even then they didn’t treat us well.

“Sorry,” Abby said, clearing her throat and handing my keys back.

“No, it’s okay. I gave it to her forever ago,” I explained, even though she’d probably heard me thinking about it. “It reminds me of when we were kids. Things were simpler back then… she was here…”

“It’s nice to know where that thing came from,” Abby said, offering a small smile. “She had it as long as I could remember.”

I stared wistfully at the keychain in my hand before realizing that things had taken an intimate turn, which was... unexpected. “Anyway,” I mumbled, putting the keys back into my bag and clicking my pen open. “We weren’t super close to the body.” I started scribbling on the back of Abby’s syllabus, drawing what I could remember of the symbol I’d seen. I drew a circle with an overlong, vertical line through the center of it, and a capital ‘I’ in the circle on either side of the line that passed through. “I think that’s what it looked like.”

I handed the paper to Abby. She looked at it for a while, squinting and flipping it upside down even though it looked the same either way you held it. While she studied it, I couldn’t help asking, “…Did you already see what it looked like in my head?”

She laughed. “You know, it’s easier to ignore your thoughts if you aren’t asking me if I’m reading your thoughts.” She gestured with the paper before my cheeks could tint. “This is helpful though.”

“You recognize it?”

“No,” she answered. “But I can take it to the Council office and do some digging before anyone gets their hands on the coroner’s report.” She pushed the paper back toward me. “If you give me your number, I’ll call you later and let you know if I find anything.”

“Oh, you can just call Kyla,” I said, knowing she already had Kyla’s number. “She’s a lot more interested than I am anyway.” But Abby’s eyebrows rose a bit, and she gave a slow nod like she didn’t know exactly how to respond to that. It only took a moment for me to realize that it’d probably seemed like I didn’t want to give her my number, and I dropped my head with embarrassment. “That sounded evasive, didn’t it?”

“Kind of, yeah,” Abby said, reaching for the paper again, “but it’s okay.”

I grabbed the sheet before she could take it away, and picked up my pen again to write my number down. “I just figured it was Council business,” I explained. “I’d be fine letting you guys handle it completely, but Kyla’s really curious.”

Abby’s gaze lingered on me while I gave her the paper, and still while she folded it up and put it in the pocket of her jeans. “Can I ask you something?” she said eventually. When I nodded, she asked, “Do you agree with the separation?”

She meant the Pack’s separation from working with the Council, and I didn’t really know how to answer that. It was complicated. Ever since the Pack had stopped working with the Council a long time ago, we monitored and dealt with the werewolf population in the United States, and the Council dealt with everything else supernatural. That arrangement seemed to work most of the time.

Only, when the plots of other supernaturals crossed over into involving werewolves, things got kind of messy, and I couldn’t deny that a friendlier relationship between the Pack and the Council could make things easier. But tension was even higher than usual right now because the Council had refused to cooperate with us about the phantom situation until it was almost too late, and Lacey was a casualty because of it. Naturally, Eli, our alpha, wanted little or nothing to do with the Council. Nor could I blame him.

Abby was still waiting for me to answer, but I knew she’d already heard everything I was thinking, and I felt suddenly awkward again. How was I supposed to filter what I thought if she had a direct line? “I guess you got the gist of it…”

“Camille,” she laughed in exasperation, “I want to hear you say it, geez. Believe it or not, conversation does flow better when you actually say what you’re thinking. And then it doesn’t look to everyone else like I’m talking to myself or I never shut up.”

“Right,” I chuckled, growing embarrassed again because that hadn’t occurred to me. “Sorry.” She shrugged. “I think cooperation could be good for everyone, but the Pack separated for a reason, and from what I hear, your dad’s kind of…”

“He can be an asshole,” she provided.

“I was going to say prejudiced,” I said, and she smirked like she’d known that. “You don’t agree with the separation?”

“Of course not,” she answered. “I don’t agree with the way my dad and the Council treat werewolves either. You’re all still human, but some Council members find it convenient not to acknowledge that.”

“They think we’re dangerous,” I observed. Abby took in a thoughtful breath, and whether she’d have said it exactly like that, she didn’t seem apt to disagree. “You can be straight with me,” I told her. Whether or not I was curious about the death this morning, I was curious about the Pack’s relationship with the Council, and I’d never heard about it from the Council’s point of view.

“Okay,” Abby agreed with some reluctance. “On a threat level, they group you with vampires.” My eyebrows furrowed at that, because vampires were way more of a threat than us. A lot of them had found ways to feed without killing people, but plenty didn’t care to make the effort. We didn’t feed on people at all. “Here’s how they see it,” Abby continued, with urgency like she was trying to keep me from being offended. “Witch covens operate under Council law, and they’re subject to punishment for breaking the law. Same goes for most other kinds of supernaturals: telepaths,” she motioned to herself, “half-demons, elementals, psychics, etcetera. But werewolves and vampires, you don’t assimilate as much as the rest of us… You group, like covens do, but you operate outside Council law. And you-” She hesitated, but I cocked an eyebrow to prompt her to say it. “I don’t know how to put it nicely.”

“Put it like they do,” I suggested.

“Okay,” she sighed. “You’re… contagious.” I scoffed, because that was such an oversimplification. Besides, even if a bite didn’t have the potential to kill someone, the Pack didn’t just let us go around biting whoever we wanted. The bite was only for people you couldn’t imagine the world without, and when that allowance was abused, we put an end to it. “I know, Camille,” Abby said in the most apologetic tone she could. “I know. And the Council does too, they’re just skeptical.” She added with an equally apologetic smile, “You wanted to know.”

I nodded, offering a somewhat repentant smile of my own, because I knew it wasn’t Abby’s fault and that she didn’t agree with it. Before either of us could say anything else, the bell for the end of the period went off, and we stood with the rest of our class.

“I only have four periods,” Abby told me as we strode to the door. I hummed an acknowledgement because I did too – it was common for seniors to be done by lunch in their last semester. “I’ll head to the office right after and call you later if I find anything.”

“Okay.”

“See you tomorrow,” she said.

I waved, and then headed off in the opposite direction to go to my next class. Lunch hours were staggered, and this semester I had a different lunch block than Kyla, so hers was just ending when mine began and I didn’t get to eat with her. Since that marked the end of my school day anyway, I headed back to the dorms. There were no more cop cars outside of the building they’d taken the body from that morning, and it seemed like students were coming and going freely again. The thought crossed my mind that I could go in and look around, and maybe even discover what floor the student had lived on, but I wasn’t quite interested enough to get caught snooping.

The next couple of hours passed by pretty quickly. I changed and went to the gym, and then came back to put a half-effort into homework in Kyla’s room. Before I knew it, she threw the door open and shrugged her backpack off to let it fall clumsily to the floor. I could tell immediately that she was frustrated. If I couldn’t feel it in our connection, I’d have been able to see it by the sullen way she trudged across the room to where I was sitting on the bed.

“Longest day ever,” she drawled in her southern accent. She pushed the textbook off my lap so it fell to the floor too, and wrapped her arms around my waist as she climbed up. It knocked me over, putting me in the perfect position for her to lie on top of me, and she punctuated the dropping of her weight onto me with a complaining groan.

“Hello to you too,” I laughed.

She shoved her hands against the bed so she could push up enough to look at me, her face set with annoyance. “My first period teacher,” she began, and dropped her voice to a monotonous, slow tempo, “talks… like… this… and… goes… off… on… long… pointless… tangents… And then once I’m thoroughly drowsy from that snooze fest,” she sat all the way up so she was straddling my hips, “my second period teacher likes to yell!” She threw her arms in the air with each punctuation. “And make big! Loud! Gestures! And scare the crap out of me so I ain’t sleepy anymore!” I was holding back as much of my laughter as I could, but I was shaking beneath her. “And if that ain’t bad enough, I got assigned a seat next to a guy in fourth period who wears so much cologne the smell is still burned into my nostrils.” I snorted with amusement, and she narrowed her green eyes at me in mock offense. “It’s no laughing matter, Camille. How am I supposed to be a good werewolf if all my scent receptors are fried!”

I was still laughing too hard at how melodramatic she was being to even answer her, but in the same way that I could feel her emotions, she could feel mine, and the fact that I was so amused was already helping her to relax. “I have to tell you something,” I snickered, “and you might scream.”

Her expression fell. “What?”

“I can smell the cologne on you.”

“Shut up!” She grabbed at her jacket and lifted it to her nose, inhaling deeply. “Oh my god that much cologne should be illegal.” I pursed my lips, trying to keep my laughter under control, but it wasn’t enough to hide it from her. “Think it’s funny?” she asked, but she was grinning as she fell forward to start rubbing herself on me. “How do you like it, huh?” I tried only halfheartedly to wrestle her off of me, and after a few more seconds, she pushed up again to meet my gaze. “How turned on does that scent get you?”

“You know,” I began, setting my hands on her waist for emphasis, “I’ve never been more attracted to you as when you smell like a teenage boy with no impulse control.”

“I thought so,” she laughed, finally leaning down to give me a greeting kiss on the lips. She sat up again, running a hand through her dark brown hair that she’d recently cut to just above her shoulders, and then pushing it behind her ear. “Please tell me your first day back was better than mine.”

I took in a breath to tell her all about my day, particularly how Abby and I shared first period because I knew she’d be interested, but my phone started vibrating on the nightstand before I could. Since Kyla could stretch farther, she reached over and grabbed it for me. The number wasn’t one I recognized, so I hit the answer button and put it to my ear.

“Hello?”

“Hi,” said the familiar voice, “it’s Abby.”

Kyla’s brow knitted with confusion. Talk about timing. It was like Abby had known that Kyla would be done with classes and we’d be together, and had waited till then to call. I also wondered if Abby could read my mind through the phone, and thought, if you can hear me right now, say ‘pickles.’

“Are you with Kyla?” Abby asked.

“Yeah,” I answered, putting the call on speakerphone.

“Hey, Kyla,” Abby said.

Kyla lifted an eyebrow at me. “Hi?”

“I tried to find information about that symbol you drew,” Abby said. “But it didn’t match anything in our digital archives having to do with occult suicides.”

Kyla didn’t seem so curious about why Abby was calling me anymore. “Are the archives complete?” she asked.

“It’s the most complete archive the Council has,” Abby answered. “If it’s not there, I’m not sure we’d ever find it.”

“What about a broader search?”

“Did that,” Abby said. “Nothing.”

Kyla’s shoulders slumped as she stared at the phone in deep thought, so I asked, “So what now?”

“I’ll wait for the coroner’s report and see if there’s anything useful in it.” Abby paused for a moment. “Oh, I got a name for you, though.” We both stayed silent to listen. “Patrick Prevost. He was a sophomore.”

“Alright,” Kyla replied. “Let us know when you find anything else out.”

“I will,” Abby said. “Bye.”

I hung up the call and tossed my phone back onto the nightstand, and when my gaze met Kyla’s, she looked curious again. “Since when does Abby have your number?”

“I was just about to tell you,” I said, “before she called.” Kyla dropped off of me to sit on the bed, and I sat up to be more at eye level with her. “We have first period together, and I didn’t want to be awkward about it so I sat down behind her and we started talking.”

“Look at you,” she teased, poking me in the ribs, “making friends.”

“You don’t mind?” I asked. “She was kind of your friend first… and I don’t want you to think I’m just keeping an eye out because I’m jealous…”

“We can share,” she laughed. “Besides, I’d feel it if you were jealous, and you haven’t been.”

“I also haven’t really been around both of you at the same time since we got back together,” I pointed out.

“You think it’ll be a problem?” she asked.

“No,” I answered. “It was easier to talk to her today than I thought it’d be, and she’s not so bad, so…” Kyla didn’t say anything, but I could tell by the smile on her face and the excitement in our connection that she was pleased. “You’re happy about it,” I observed.

She nodded. “Aside from you and Luna, she’s my closest friend. It’d be nice if y’all got along.”

“Well,” I said with a proud smile, “I’m trying.”

Kyla grinned too, pecking me once on the cheek before bouncing off the bed. “And I’m starving. Early dinner?”

“Yes,” I agreed, and since the cafeteria wasn’t open for dinner yet, I said, “let’s go to the Pack house, I’ll cook.” That mere suggestion seemed to make up for all the stress Kyla had dealt with today, and we headed off campus to end our day with a good meal.

The thud that filled the room as my back hit the sparring mat was so heavy that Camille paused from her sit-ups. Luna was standing near my legs in the same spot she’d thrown me down from, so I kicked them up and wrapped them around her hips. I used that grip to bring her down, but the moment her shoulders hit the floor, she somersaulted backward. It maneuvered her from the grip of my legs so she could bounce back onto her feet, and I scrambled up before she could try and pin me.

“That’s it,” Camille said, abandoning her exercise and standing. “I’m calling it. We’ll never run at this rate. You tied.”

“You’re such a downer,” Luna complained, and I laughed because we had been sparring for a while. Matches between Luna and I could go on forever.

While we settled out of our attack stances, there were footsteps from the door of the gym room in the Pack house. Will, Luna’s lanky blond boyfriend, stopped in the doorway in his workout clothes and with his headphones on. “Oh,” he mumbled, “never mind,” and immediately turned to leave.

Camille looked from the empty exit to Luna, asking, “What was that about?” Luna mouthed a silent sentence like she didn’t want Will to hear. “What?” She mouthed it again. “Say it out loud.”

“We got in a fight last night,” she repeated.

“What about?” I asked, taking off my sparring gloves and throwing them into a corner.

“College,” she answered, doing the same with her gloves. “He got his acceptance letter from MIT and I wouldn’t consider going to school somewhere nearby.”

“Why not?” Camille asked.

“Because I don’t want to,” she said, and lowered her voice in case he was still close enough to the room to hear, “it’s clear across the country and I’m not as invested as he is.”

“So what’ll happen?” I asked. “You gonna break up?”

Luna shrugged. “I told him he could decide. We can stay together till he leaves, but I don’t want a long distance thing.”

“What’s the point of staying together then?” Camille asked.

“Sex,” Luna said, an implied ‘duh’ in her expression.

“You’re ruthless,” I laughed.

She pointed a contradicting finger at me. “I’m honest. At least he knows what to expect.” She clapped her hands to change the subject. “Are we going out?”

Before we could agree, my cellphone started ringing, and after checking the caller ID, I told Luna and Camille to hold on and strode a few feet away, even if they could still hear me. “You been too busy to call, or what?” I teased when I answered.

“Me?” the deep voice quipped. “You’ve been all kinds of MIA on your school vacation.”

I laughed, but said sincerely, “I’m glad you called.” It was my oldest brother, Jeremy. He was the only one in my family who knew the truth, who knew about me being turned and that I hadn’t truly run away from home, but left to learn to control my Changes. We talked fairly often on the phone, but it’d been a couple of weeks since we spoke last, and it was good to hear his voice. Our conversations and his updates about everything happening on my family’s farm kept me from feeling completely isolated from them, and helped me miss them a little less.  “How you been?”

“Same old,” he answered. “Working. You? You started school again, right?”

“This week,” I confirmed. “Should be nice to start fresh this semester, without having missed a lot of it.”

“That’s good. You’re smart, I bet you won’t have to work as hard this time around.”

“Hopefully,” I chuckled.

“How’s Camille?”

“She’s good,” I said, and glanced over at her. Knowing who I was talking to, she waved. “She says hi.”

“Well, I say hi too,” Jeremy replied.

I nodded even though he couldn’t see, and hesitated for a while before asking what I was always scared to ask. “How’re Mom and Dad?”

“They’re, uh, you know,” he paused and let out a heavy sigh, “they’re hanging in there.” Neither of us said anything, a tense silence hanging in the air before he asked, “When are you coming home?”

And I never could tell if he meant for good. The truth was, I wasn’t planning on going home for good. I liked it here in Oregon, the freedom of being at this school, of running and living with the Pack and with Camille, and Abby was here. Once I’d made things right, I’d go and see my family as often as I could, but I didn’t have the heart yet to tell Jeremy I wouldn’t be staying.

“Soon,” I answered, trying to sound enthusiastic. “I was thinking I’ll come visit this summer, and stay for a while if Mom and Dad ain’t too furious with me.”

“That’s still a few months away,” Jeremy murmured. “It’s getting hard, talking to you and knowing you’re alright, and then seeing how torn up everyone else is and having to keep my mouth shut.”

“I’m sorry I dragged you into this,” I said, guilt flooding my chest, but I couldn’t go back yet. If I did, they could try and keep me there. Try and send me back to school in Tranquility and back to a psychiatrist, and they’d only be trying to help, but that wasn’t what I needed. I needed to be here, at this school that I liked, free to run without sneaking out of my bedroom window or having to sit through silent hours with a counselor. I needed Camille with me every night, and I needed to feel like I was doing something good with the new life I’d been given. “Please, Jer, I need you to be strong for me.” I held back the agony in my divided heart. “Just a bit longer, I promise.”

“Yeah,” he said. He took in an audible breath, and tried to tease, “You owe me one damn good birthday present this year.”

I laughed a little brokenly. “Whatever you want.”

“Just stay safe,” he said. “I love you.”

"Love you too." I hung up, letting out a heavy sigh and taking a few moments to face Camille and Luna. Luna was giving a sympathetic half-smile, but Camille’s eyes were full of concern. “I’m fine,” I said, trudging over to her. She wrapped her arms around my shoulders and pressed a kiss to my forehead, and her affection was always soothing, but right now I needed something more. “I’m itching to Change.”

“Let’s go,” Camille said, nodding.

We left the gym and wandered through the house, Luna yelling as we did, “Anybody want to run?”

It wasn’t moments after we reached the glass room, where we’d filter out to the backyard, that Wes came bounding in, his long brown hair bobbing with his stride and his gray eyes bright. “I heard someone say ‘run.’” He always went with us when we extended an offer. Truth be told, I’d never known him to turn one down.

The waterproof box we stored our clothes in while we were out was at the side of the house, and after stripping and putting everything into it, we Changed. It always felt good to stretch my wolf limbs after being in human form for a few days, especially if I was stressed. It was like standing after sitting through an unbearably long class and getting to feel the blood rush back to your legs, and I was ready to let loose half a week’s worth of pent up energy.

I was first to take off into the woods, but three other strides picked up behind me. Wes passed me in the matter of a minute, taking off ahead of us while Camille arrived at my side. Luna gained a burst of speed to try catching up with Wes, having drive enough that she wanted to sprint, so I sped up too. We raced through the trees, the lighter tones of Wes’s dappled coat giving us something to chase after in the moonlight.

I warmed up quick, my legs settled into a rhythm and I let instinct carry me forward. I slipped around trees with a simple shift of my head. Sailed over shrubs without breaking the cadence of my run. Crashed through drifts of snow with the simple need to feel the wind in my fur. The only things I was paying attention to were the icy breeze and the sound of the metered strides around me. Until one of those strides stopped.

Camille had halted without warning or explanation. I slowed, circling around to her to find out what was wrong. She kept her nose in the air, taking an occasional step off-course while she inhaled. I was following her, so she lowered her snout under mine, nudging it up to make me smell too, and I did like she wanted as Luna and Wes finally doubled back. Camille had a better sense of smell than anyone in the Pack, but it didn’t take much searching of the air for me to catch wind of what she had. It was new, and faint. It was fresh. It was death.

All four of us crept toward the scent, navigating the darkness of the woods with our noses and night vision. The smell got stronger as we got closer, but we reached its source long before I expected to. The kill was fresher than I thought, the scent fainter than I’d predicted. But the rest was exactly what my nose told me it was. Human. Male.

Each of us stopped mere feet away from the body, simply blinking at the unfounded abruptness of it. This spot of the woods was a familiar one. It was on the edge of the lake, and we passed it often on runs, sometimes hearing the raucous of partying teenagers and avoiding it in order to avoid being seen. I’d never heard of anyone dying here before.

I inhaled a deep breath through my nose to see what else I could find. There wasn’t any blood in the snow, but the smell of it filled the still air. I could see why, too, and I immediately nudged both Camille and Luna with my muzzle, nodding toward the body. There were symbols. Occult looking symbols cut in the inside of his forearms and the tops of his feet, and they were uncomfortably similar to the one we’d seen at school the other day. Only, it seemed clear that this guy hadn’t done this to himself – there wasn’t a weapon, and there wasn’t any blood in the snow. There was blood across his forehead, a line of it with a dot above and below, but it didn’t even seem possible that he was killed here. Only left here for someone to find.

I started taking a step forward, intent on seeing what other evidence I could discover, but Wes let out a low growl to stop me. He turned to head back the way we’d come, and Luna followed. I turned too, but didn’t get more than two paces away before there was a loud snap from behind me, like the breaking of a stick. Camille hadn’t moved, she was still facing the body and the noise, and she was the first to react.

She took off in the direction of the sound, disappearing so fast into the woods that only her paw prints in the snow told me where to follow. I ran after her, hearing Luna and Wes right behind us as we bounded toward whoever or whatever had made that sound. It could’ve just been an animal. Or it could’ve been the killer.

We weren’t chasing any longer than twenty seconds before there was a loud yelp in the dark, and an uncomfortable pressure in my lower jaw at the same time as I recognized a spike in the connection, one that let me know Camille was in pain. I sped up, sprinting as fast as I could toward the location of the cry, skidding to a halt while Camille struggled to regain her feet. She’d been hit hard by something, and she shook out her head while she stood, spots of blood flecking the snow beneath her. There was a deep gash in her lower jaw, and she was still in pain, but more apparent than both was a familiar burn of frustration because her target was lost. Whoever it had been was gone, and she wasn’t pleased.

Wes let out another growl, an impatient one that let us know we should follow when he turned again. So we did. We ran all the way back to the Pack house, Phasing to human the moment we reached our storage container. My eyes immediately went to Camille as we began hurrying into our clothes.

“Are you alright?” I asked her, stepping into my underwear and jeans at once.

The cut was across the point of her human chin, deep enough that it was still seeping and blood was running down her neck. She touched the back of her hand beneath the wound, pulling it away to see how badly she was bleeding. “I’m fine.”

Wes already had the bottom half of his clothing on, so he reached into the box and pulled out the first aid kit that was inside it. “Take care of it quick,” he said with urgency, rushing to retrieve a piece of gauze and some tape. “We need to go back out and cover our paw prints with boot tracks before we call the cops.”

I tugged on my bra and shirt and then took the items Wes had given Camille, tossing the tape to Luna. “What happened?” I asked, ripping open the gauze package.

“I was chasing someone,” she answered. “Someone fast. Shit they were fast.” I pressed the gauze down over the cut, and she reached up to hold it in place. “And strong, they disappeared for a second and the next thing I knew, I got hit.”

“By what?” I asked, taking the first piece of tape Luna tore off for me.

“A fist?” she said. “A stick? I don’t know. It hurt.”

“I felt it,” I told her. “You were right, the connection’s getting stronger.” I stuck on another piece of tape, holding my hand out for a third.

“Yeah?” she asked, managing a smile. “Did it hurt?”

I shook my head. “Like you said, some pressure, but it’s hard to miss.” I put on the third strip of tape and prompted for another. “Did you get a scent?”

“No.” There was a thick pause while I placed the final piece, and then she said, “They didn’t have one, they just smelled like blood.” My brow furrowed, and when I glanced over at Luna, she looked just as confused. There was always a scent. Even vampires had scents.

“Hurry,” Wes reminded, handing me the alcohol wipe from the final package he’d just opened.

I used it to clean the rest of the blood off Camille’s chin, neck, and hand, and once it was gone, she finally pulled on her shirt. We only went into the house long enough for Wes to tell Eli what happened and to grab our jackets, and then we were back out again. It was painstaking, making sure we stepped into every single paw print we’d made on our way to the body, and then past it. None of us said a thing while we walked. Camille was tense, and I was listening for any remaining sign of whoever it was that hit her. It felt like it took forever, but finally we turned all our paw prints into boot prints and agreed on the cover story that we were out stargazing, and Wes called the police from his cellphone while we started our trek back.

The cops arrived at the Pack house with investigators and the coroner, and we showed them through the woods to the body. They asked us all kinds of questions like what we saw and where we went to school and why we were out in the woods in the middle of the night and if we were drinking or doing drugs, often asking the same question multiple times in different ways. It took even longer than covering our tracks did.

“You sure you didn’t know him?” one of the cops asked me. Again. But this time he held up the plastic bag one of the investigators just gave him. It had the guy’s wallet in it, a student ID card from our school in the clear front flap. Devon Nealy. A senior.

“No,” I answered. “I’m a junior.”

He showed it to Luna and Camille, and they shook their heads. Then he motioned to the bloodstained gauze on Camille’s chin. “What happened?”

“I ran into a tree branch,” she answered.

His skeptical eyes locked onto the bandage. “You weren’t carrying a flashlight or anything like that? It looks pretty deep.”

“I was,” she told him, “but I guess I got a little freaked out.”

He hummed an acknowledgment, glancing around at each of us before offering Camille some medical attention. When she refused it, he finally told us that he didn’t need anything else. It was three in the morning by the time we got back to the house and Camille and I were in our bedroom, but my brain hadn’t been idle the last few hours. I had more questions than ever, and the moment the lights were off and we slipped into bed, I pulled up the Internet browser on my phone.

“What are you doing?” Camille asked.

“Researching.”

She sighed, turning sideways onto her pillow to face me. “What are you even going to research? We don’t know anything.”

“We know his name,” I told her. “Devon Nealy.”

“Of course you were looking for that…” she mumbled.

I typed the victim’s name into the search engine and hit enter, waiting for the results to load. The results popped up on my screen, and I hadn’t been expecting to get anything but social media accounts. What kind of other useful information could there possibly be about a high school senior? But a few links down was a news article. “Got him!”

Camille perked up a bit, lifting onto her elbow so she could lean in and see my screen. The article wasn’t exactly about Devon, though. It was about another Tollbridge student found dead months ago.

“Travis Prevost,” I read aloud, skimming through the information, “found dead in northern Mount Hood. Got to be the same spot we found the body tonight.”

“Dead from what?” Camille asked.

“Drowned in that lake,” I read. “Looks like he was drinking.”

“What does this have to do with Devon?”

I searched the rest of the article for the answer. “Here,” I said, reading, “Devon Nealy, a close friend of Travis Prevost, was the one to call the police. Reports say that Nealy had plans with Prevost, but when he got to the lake, found him dead in the water. Nealy dialed nine-one-one and waited for authorities. Investigators seemed unenthusiastic about Nealy’s story, as the place of death is a common party spot amongst local teenagers. However, they were unable to find any evidence linking a sober Nealy to cause of death.”

Camille was quiet for a minute, taking in everything I’d read. “Prevost,” she repeated. “Like the kid found at school? Patrick Prevost?”

“Seems like it,” I agreed. “Maybe they were brothers… You think Patrick didn’t believe Devon’s story either?”

“It’s possible,” she said, and she thought for a few moments and then shook her head. “But Patrick died days ago, he couldn’t have killed Devon for revenge.”

“We’re missing something,” I sighed.

“We’re missing a lot of things,” Camille said. “We’re not going to figure anything else out tonight.” She settled onto her pillow again, but I closed the browser and pulled up the phone. “What are you doing now?”

“Calling Abby.”

“Kyla,” she protested, “it’s the middle of the night,” but the line was already ringing.

It took a while, but then there was the click of it being answered, and Abby’s groggy voice asked, “Kyla? What’s wrong?”

“We found another body.”

There was a long pause. “What?”

“In the woods,” I said. “Some guy named Devon Nealy, he had symbols carved in his skin and a connection to another dead student named Travis Prevost. I think Travis was Patrick Prevost’s brother.”

Another long pause. “Okay, um,” her voice was raspy with exhaustion, “this is a lot to process right now… do you… you guys want me to come over? Are you and Camille okay?”

“No, it’s alright,” I said. “We’re well off. But I want access to the morgue.” Camille did a double take at that, and she didn’t have to say it this time, I could see the protest on her face.

“Yeah,” Abby slurred, “okay,” and there was the faint shifting of sheets from her end, like she was sitting up in bed. Her voice came through clearer, but was still heavy with sleep. “I can’t even get in until they’re done collecting evidence.” She paused again, taking in a heavy breath. “Um… we can go Friday morning.”

“I can’t ditch,” I told her. I was focusing as much as I could on school, doing my best to get good grades and be responsible so when I finally went home to my parents I had something to show for all this time away.

“Saturday?” Abby mumbled.

“That’s good, thanks,” I answered. “Sorry I woke you.”

She gave a tired hum, asking with as much humor as she could gather, “Does Camille condone this kind of behavior?”

“Not exactly,” I said, glancing over at Camille. She was shaking her head like she was still in disbelief that I’d called. “I’m fixing to get scolded after this.”

Abby laughed. “Tell her not to worry about it. I’ll see you both at school tomorrow.”

“Night, Abs.” I hung up, setting my cellphone on the nightstand beside the bed and sinking down into the blankets, passing an innocent smile to Camille.

“I can’t believe you called her this late,” she said, but I think Abby’s dismissal of it helped some, because she sounded kind of amused.

“Why not?” I asked, turning onto my side to face her while I teased, “it ain’t like I could’ve just told her everything tomorrow…” Camille laughed, rolling her eyes because she didn’t know what else to say. I reached up with one hand, cupping her face and running my thumb along her jawline. “How’s your chin?”

“Tender,” she admitted, “and I actually have a bit of a headache. Whatever hit me, it wasn’t human.” I could sense her discomfort in our connection, so I stretched forward to kiss her forehead. “Kyla?” she prompted, and I hummed in response. “Please be careful with this. We’re not cops, and we’re not Council, and relations are strained enough without us sticking our noses where they don’t belong.”

I took my hand from her face and leaned away to look her in the eyes, feeling a bit hurt by her discouragement. “You want me to stop?”

“No,” she answered, “I’m not saying that, I’m just asking you to be careful. These are murder cases. These are serious. We can’t draw attention to ourselves or the land around here without risking exposure, and I know the Council wouldn’t want us getting involved in this. If Eli knew how involved you were getting, I don’t think he’d like it either.”

“So what do you want me to do?” I asked.

She shrugged. “We’ll keep our heads down. Not talk about it too loudly here.” I nodded, but I think she could feel that I was disheartened. “Hey,” she said, taking my hand and bringing it up to her lips, “it’s okay that you want to help, and that you want to keep people safe. I’m just trying to keep you safe too.”

Even though she wouldn’t try to stop me, it was clear that this wasn’t what she wanted to do. The risks weren’t worth it to her when she thought the Council had it handled, and I felt bad that she’d been hurt, but she wasn’t trying as hard as I needed her to. She wasn’t being as supportive as I needed her to. But it was late and the night was catching up to me, and with the sudden lack of enthusiasm I’d had only minutes ago, I didn’t have the energy to talk about it anymore. I nodded a final time and turned over, grabbing her arm to pull it around me and drift off to sleep.

*

Kyla, Luna, and I were getting close to the morgue where we were meeting Abby. Luna didn’t know we were meeting Abby there, but when she’d heard where we were going, she insisted she wanted to tag along. She was in the backseat, but leaned over the center console of the Jeep to look at Kyla and me. “Let me get this straight,” she said. “Dead dude from the other night might have been there when the brother of dorm dude died?”

“Say ‘dorm dude died’ five times fast,” I challenged, but before Luna could attempt it with the breath she inhaled, Kyla shot me a stern look.

I wasn’t taking this seriously enough… and judging by the zero tolerance, she might have still been a little upset about me asking her to dial it back the other night. It wasn’t that I didn’t want her trying to help, but it wasn’t just the Council that was involved in this. There was law enforcement, and school administration, and something powerful and obscure that had gotten away from me without even trying. I didn’t want her curiosity getting her into trouble.

“Right,” Kyla answered in response to Luna’s question.

“So it could’ve been a revenge thing?” Luna asked.

“But Patrick died first,” Kyla explained.

“Okay then,” she said, “somehow he came back to kill forest dude, and if this whole thing is about pissed off ghosts, then you’re on your own. I don’t do ghosts.”

“It’s not ghosts,” I said.

“Might be,” Kyla disagreed. “You didn’t get a scent in the woods. What’ve you ever heard of that don’t have a scent?”

“Ghosts,” Luna whispered in horror.

I rolled my eyes, and we pulled into the parking lot of the morgue, stopping next to a blue sedan. Abby got out of it as we got out of the Jeep, meeting us near the hood of our car.

She and Kyla hugged in greeting, and then she looked at me like she was debating if it’d be awkward to hug me too. But I didn’t react fast enough to give an opening because it wasn’t something I was used to, and the moment was already gone, so she smiled instead and said, “Morning.”

“Hi,” Luna said before I could reply, stopping at my side. “Who are you?”

“I’m Abby,” she said, extending her hand.

“Oh,” Luna drawled, “you’re the homewrecker.”

Abby dropped her hand, looking like she had no idea what to say while my face burned hotter than the sun. “I never called you that,” I blurted, and muttered to my sister out the side of my lips, “I’m going to kill you.”

“Come on, I’m kidding,” Luna said easily, and looked at Abby. “I was just kidding. Camille never called you that.” She finally stuck out her hand. “I’m Luna.”

“You’re the twin,” Abby laughed, no offense taken whatsoever, and then I did want to hug her for being so easygoing as she shook with Luna. “Honestly, I was expecting another Camille, but you are like,” she gestured at Luna with a circular hand wave, “the complete opposite.”

“You mean not uptight?” Luna suggested.

Abby attempted to suppress a smile, and I tossed a thumb toward Luna, asking, “I’ve always wondered, does she really just say the first thing that pops into her head?”

“Believe it or not,” Abby said, giving Luna another thoughtful review, “she holds back a little.”

“See?” Luna said. “Told you I have a filter.”

Abby looked at Kyla while she motioned between Luna and me, “Do they do the twin thing where they finish each other’s sentences?”

“No,” Kyla said, “but they get separation anxiety if they’re apart for more than a day.”

“You’re so full of it,” I accused, feeling my cheeks start to warm again.

Luna, however, threw her arms around me, pinning mine to my sides while she grinned. “You need me!”

I deadpanned at Abby because this was her fault, but she was laughing and didn’t seem to care one bit how much Luna was embarrassing me. Thankfully, she only made me suffer through it for her amusement for another couple of seconds, and then she nodded toward the entrance of the morgue. “Shall we?” We followed her into the building and to the front desk, where a young man was sitting. “Hey, Damien.” He was older than us – a college student maybe. There was a subtle scent of decay beneath his natural smell, but it could’ve just been because he worked at a morgue.

“Hey,” he said, smiling at her as we reached him. “How’s it going?”

“Good,” she answered, “you?” He gave a bored shrug, yawning and reaching for his coffee cup, the contents of which smelled so strong it might as well have been diesel fuel. “I need the roster and at least thirty minutes uninterrupted.”

He glanced over the rim of his mug at the rest of us while he took a drink, asking as he set it down, “Who are they?”

Abby glanced back at us, thinking about it for a moment before saying, “Field ops.”

He leaned halfway across the desk toward Kyla, inhaling two short breaths through his nose. “They’re werewolves…” he said as he sat back down. “Does your dad know they’re here?”

“Well,” Abby drawled, “he made me the case lead for these occult murders, so I picked my own team on this one.”

“Abby,” Damien complained, “do you know how hard it is for a ghoul to find a job like this? Wait, wait, wait,” his eyes darted between us, “are they Pack?” Abby gave a grimacing smile. “No way. Your dad won’t just fire me if he finds out. He’ll send me back to the animal shelter, and I can’t live off dead cats and dogs anymore.” I held back a disgusted cringe, but Luna made a grossed-out noise. “Exactly,” Damien agreed, gesturing at her like she’d proven his point.

“Then don’t tell him,” Abby begged, folding her hands together. “Please. I’ll owe you one, anything you want.”

He squinted at her, considering it for a long few seconds. “I want the special meat pie from Ghoulies.”

“Done.”

“In Eugene,” he clarified.

Abby’s shoulders slumped as she let out a defeated sigh. I couldn’t blame her – Eugene was more than a two-hour drive from here. “Fine. Special meat pie from the Eugene Ghoulies.”

Damien reached behind him for a clipboard mounted on the wall, grabbing it and then handing it across the desk to Abby. “Thirty minutes.”

As we took the clipboard through the door to the back room, Luna whispered, “What’s the special meat pie? What’s a Ghoulies?”

“Ghoulies are shops that front as restaurants,” Abby answered. “They sell corpse parts to ghouls. Special meat pie has the best organs in it or something, I don’t know exactly.”

“Ew,” Kyla muttered.

“Is that ethical?” I asked.

“It’s more ethical than them killing people to eat.” Abby shrugged. “They exist. Not much else the Council can do but regulate. And most of them, like Damien, are pretty harmless if they get something to eat.”

“Thanks for doing this,” Kyla said, giving Abby a grateful side hug. “I really do appreciate it.”

“Yeah,” she said, “no problem.” She held up the clipboard. “So, Devon…”

“Nealy,” Kyla supplied.

“Number nineteen,” Abby read, tossing the roster onto a nearby table, walking to the refrigerator, and opening door number nineteen.

She slid out the rack with the body on it, grabbing the chart located near his feet. I didn’t know what to look at or look for, and I wasn’t necessarily keen on seeing this anyway and the smell burned my nose, so I stood there while Kyla and Abby moved to one side of the metal bed. Luna was curious enough that she went over to stand across from them, and even though I didn’t want to get close, I felt weird and out of place hovering in the middle of a cold room full of dead people by myself. I trudged to Luna’s side, but this was uncomfortable.

I didn’t feel like we should be here. We had no connection or obligation toward the victims, the Council didn’t want us here and Eli wouldn’t have wanted us here either, and we were about to invade someone’s privacy. We were in a place that we didn’t have permission to be, staring at the body of someone we didn’t even know and potentially interfering with real investigations.

“He lost a lot of blood,” Abby said, her nose buried in the chart, “but the cause of death was that.” She pointed briefly at a wound in his chest. “Stabbed in the heart.” She motioned to the blood smeared across his forehead. “And apparently this isn’t Devon’s, but they don’t know whose it is.” She then gestured at the symbols carved into his arms and feet. “Stuff like this isn’t always legitimately supernatural, but it has to be if something without a scent managed to hit Camille. Cops would never be able to solve this case alone.” At that last part, Abby glanced across the rack to meet my gaze and offer a small smile, and I knew she was responding to my doubts and trying to put me at ease. It didn’t work, and it was awkward that she was listening to my internal conflict, but I appreciated the effort.

“These are different from the one on Patrick,” Kyla said, pointing at the symbols. “Have you seen any of these before?”

Abby looked at the one in Devon’s arm, eyebrows furrowing instantly. “Wait these are-” She adjusted to look at the one in the top of his foot, and then leaned over the rack to see the two on the other side. “These are familiar. They aren’t symbols; it’s a language. I’ve been studying it because my dad’s teaching me magic. It’s old, but it’s basically the mother-tongue of magic.”

Luna bent closer to the body, getting her face mere inches away for a better look at the loopy figures. “Those are words? Can you read it?”

“Well, no…” Abby admitted. “I’m really new to it, but I’ll snap some pictures and ask him to translate.” She pulled out her phone to photograph the words. “I think this one means ‘heart’ though,” she said, pointing to the one on Devon’s left foot.

“He did get stabbed in the heart,” I pointed out.

“Think it’ll help narrow an archive search?” Kyla asked.

“Maybe,” Abby answered. “It’s practically standard with the occult. Used for spells, rituals, summonings, casting. Unless it’s a spell we haven’t archived, then we’re out of luck.”

“What about evidence?” Luna asked. “Did they find anything in the woods?”

“Um…” Abby looked around the room, eyes setting on a computer on the opposite end. She paced to it, sitting down in the chair while the rest of us followed. She clicked to a website and entered some login information, which took her into the police databases.

“You have access to this stuff?” I asked in shock.

“Council privileges, we have a contact on the force,” she said over her shoulder. “Here.” She pulled up Devon’s name in the evidence list. “They didn’t find much. Just what little he had on him, his wallet, a shot-sized bottle of alcohol, and…” she scrolled down a little, “a bracelet.”

“Hey,” Kyla set a hand on her shoulder, leaning over her to tap the screen. “I’ve seen that before.” It was a fancy metal bracelet with Devon’s initials engraved in it.

“Where?” she asked.

Kyla squinted at it. “I feel like… I know it.” She paused, thinking a bit longer before poking the screen in recognition. “Got it!” She took her hand off Abby’s shoulder to tap me excitedly on the arm. “A girl in one of my classes. That’s her bracelet. She’s got to be Devon’s girlfriend, she wasn’t in class Thursday or Friday.”

“Good job,” I said, smiling.

“That’s huge,” Abby praised. “Does she live on campus?” Kyla hummed her uncertainty. “Do you know her name?”

“No…”

“Okay,” Abby said, “if she’s back at school on Monday, you should talk to her to see if she knows anything. If not, I’ll try to look her up in the system and figure out how to find her.”

Kyla nodded, and Luna asked, “What now?”

Both Abby and I shrugged, but Kyla said, “We should go to the dorms. To Patrick’s room to look for clues.”

“What?” I blurted, my stomach sinking. “We can’t go to his dorm.” We’d already done more than enough digging for one day and nothing about this case sat right with me. I didn’t want to get closer.

“Why not?” Kyla asked.

“Because it’s-” I stammered. “It’s morbid. And most likely off-limits and I don’t want to go snooping around a dead guy’s room.”

“We’re in a blind alley here,” Kyla said. “And since when have you ever cared about breaking rules? We need more to go on, and the only place we might find answers is his room.”

“Just look on the computer for evidence,” I argued, gesturing to the database. “Or at his body, isn’t it here?”

“Yeah, but it was a suicide,” Abby said. “They wouldn’t have looked for much in his room beyond a motive, and his brother was dead. I think investigators called it a day…”

But Kyla’s eyebrows rose with interest as she asked, “The body’s here?”

Abby nodded, and seeing the desire on Kyla’s face to investigate, she picked up the chart she’d left on the table to figure out what number rack to pull out. We all followed her over while she did, and I dared to hope this would be enough to get us out of going to investigate his dorm.

Kyla looked at the symbol in his palm, and the cuts in his wrists, going so far as to fold the white sheet down to his waist to look for other clues. There wasn’t much to see, and eventually she glanced at Abby. “They find anything else?”

“This is it,” Abby answered, gesturing at Patrick. “Occult suicide. No foul play.”

“We should go to his room,” Kyla said again, pushing the rack back into the refrigerator.

“Kyla,” I whined.

Abby shrugged, offering like she thought it would help, “We might find something the police missed.”

“Luna?” I looked at my sister, practically pleading with my eyes for her to agree with me.

“Sorry,” she said, “I think we should go.”

“Come on,” I begged. “You guys aren’t serious.”

“People are dying, Camille,” Kyla said, and maybe it was because she was still a little upset with me, but she seemed to have lost her patience. “Real people. We got the power to do something about it and you’re acting like you don’t care.”

“Need I remind you,” I spat with offense, “that the last time the occult was involved, I almost got possessed by a soul-eating phantom? Lacey sure as hell didn’t survive it!” Abby cringed while I swallowed past the lump the reminder had put in my own throat. “And I got hit in the face by something strong enough it probably could’ve killed me if it had three more seconds to work with. This thing is dangerous!”

“Which is why we need to stop it before it hurts anyone else,” Kyla said angrily. “This is why we stayed, Camille. You know this is why we stayed. You don’t get to back out when people need you just ‘cause you’re scared. So buck up.” And she grabbed the shoulder of Abby’s jacket, dragging her out of the seat and toward the door, and Abby mouthed ‘sorry’ at me as they disappeared.

I kind of just stood there and stared for a minute. Fear. That’s what that was, that icy discomfort at the pit of my stomach that made me willing to yell at Kyla if it would get me out of this. I hadn’t recognized it – I’d never felt it like that before, dull and nagging – but Kyla did. She felt it in the connection and she knew, and it wasn’t a good reason to her for me not to do this. But I was scared.

“Should we close that?” Luna asked awkwardly, pointing at the still-open refrigerator we’d pulled Devon out of.

I didn’t answer, but she pushed the rack with his body back inside and shut it, and then we left the building. Kyla and Abby were sitting in the blue sedan waiting for us, so Luna and I climbed into the Jeep to follow them to the school.

“You going to say something?” Luna asked from the passenger seat after a silent minute on the road.

“Am I acting like I don’t care?” I asked. “I don’t want people to die…”

“I know,” she said, kicking her feet up on the dashboard. “You want my opinion?” I nodded. “I don’t think Kyla lost her temper because you’re not motivated.”

“What do you mean? She wants me to help people and she thinks I’m not trying hard enough.”

“She wants you to help her,” Luna said. “She’s the one who wanted to stay in Oregon, right?” I hummed affirmatively. “Why do you think she’d stay here instead of going home to her family if this wasn’t important to her?”

That hit me like a slap to the face, and I blinked away my surprise at the revelation of just what Kyla was missing to be here. I hadn’t thought of it exactly like that, but she wouldn’t have. “This is really important to her…”

“Duh,” Luna said. “I don’t even think it matters if you care what’s going on, but she doesn’t feel like you care that she cares.”

“Holy shit,” I breathed. Luna was right. It wasn’t about me. It was about Kyla. She was mad because she was trying to do something she believed in, and whether I was scared or not, I wasn’t backing her up.

“You’re welcome,” Luna said, and she let me absorb all of that for a minute before changing the subject. “So…” she murmured, glancing at me out of the corner of her eye, “you didn’t tell me Abby was really cute.”

“What about it?” I asked.

“You noticed?”

“I guess?”

“You guess, or you noticed?”

“I noticed,” I said, “why?”

“She and Kyla,” Luna suggested.

“What about it?”

“They’re kind of… you know?”

I took my eyes off the road long enough to glare at her. “What are you even talking about right now?”

“They’re touchy,” Luna said.

“They’re not touchy.”

“Kyla touched her more times at that morgue than she touched you.” Luna turned in her seat to face me. “That doesn’t make you just a tad jealous?”

“I’m not keeping a tally on how much Kyla touches people,” I said. “That’s creepy, and she’s affectionate.”

“With exes?” Luna asked.

“Let it go,” I told her. “I trust her and it doesn’t make me jealous. Besides, they’re not exes, they were never official.”

Luna made a face. “Did they hook up?” I shrugged. “Make out?” I shrugged again, exaggerated and impatient. “How do you not know?”

“I never asked!” I said, throwing my hands up in exasperation. “I’m trying not to come off to her as hostile about it and she doesn’t have to tell me if she doesn’t want to. Will you please let it go?”

“Okay, geez,” Luna said, gesturing her palms at me in surrender. “I’m just saying, I’m straight and I noticed Abby’s really cute. And her boobs are like,” she held her hands out in front of her chest, “massive.”

“Luna,” I groaned, “let it go.”

“Alright, alright,” she agreed, but a moment later she held her hands in front of her chest again and asked, “but did you notice?” I ignored her, which prompted her to ask with a hint of laughter in her voice, “Camille, did you notice?”

“I’m not answering that question.”

She snorted her amusement. “You totally noticed.”

“You’re so annoying.”

She laughed pretty heartily at that, but stopped bugging me for the rest of the ride to campus. We met Kyla and Abby at the entrance to the dorm building Patrick lived in, and tried to be as inconspicuous as possible while we took the elevator up to his floor. Abby had his room number in some emailed Council files on her phone, so she led us down the hall at a casual pace.

“This is it,” she whispered, stopping outside his door and glancing around to make sure no one was watching.

Just as she did, the door of the room right next to Patrick’s opened up. It was a student who shared a history class with Abby and me, the girl who sat in the desk beside mine, and the moment she saw us standing there, outside Patrick’s room, she went back in and slammed her door shut. I immediately looked at Abby.

“We know her,” I said.

“I know.”

“She’s in one of my classes too,” Luna added.

“Great,” I said, “so she knows us, and she saw us snooping.”

“What was she thinking?” Kyla asked Abby.

“Um,” Abby glanced at the girl’s door, a crease forming between her eyebrows. “I don’t know… it happened too fast and your ‘oh shit’s were kind of loud.” We must’ve all made some mental complaint, because she said, “Hey, I’m not foolproof.”

“Wait,” I sniffed the air. There was the unmistakable odor of bleach coming from Patrick’s room, as surely they’d started cleaning it already. But when the girl had opened her door, underneath the overwhelming smell of her perfume, I’d caught the faintest whiff of something else. “She smelled like blood.”

Before anyone could say anything, Kyla turned and knocked on her door. It swung open a few seconds later, and the girl stood in the doorway. “Hi,” Kyla said, sticking out her hand, “I’m Kyla. That’s Luna, Camille, and Abby.”

The girl glanced briefly at Luna, but though she also knew Abby and me from class, she didn’t so much as look at us. “Constance,” she said, reaching out to shake with Kyla. There was a gauze wrap around her left forearm, stained with at least a two-inch patch of blood and undoubtedly the source of the smell.

“Whoa,” Kyla said, motioning to it, “you alright?”

“Yes,” Constance answered, and it took her an uncomfortable amount of moments to realize Kyla was waiting for more of an answer, and then another few to actually give it. “I groom dogs, sometimes they get irritable.”

Constance’s eyes had been fixed on Kyla that whole time, and didn’t so much as move when Abby gestured at me and said, “We’re in your history class.”

Instead, she asked Kyla, “Did you need something?”

“I, uh,” Kyla glanced over at Abby and me, a little taken aback and unsure of what else we needed.

So I asked, “Do you know anything about what happened?” and pointed to Patrick’s room. Nothing. Not so much as a shift my direction. She stepped back into her room and closed the door on us.

“Okay…” Luna murmured.

“What was she thinking that time?” Kyla asked Abby.

“She didn’t want to talk.” Abby was staring at Constance’s door, and she shook her head. “Wow, that was weird.”

“What?” I asked.

“Thoughts are usually unorganized and scattered, or they’re more like rambling. People can even be pretty blank sometimes, but hers were…” She paused to search for the right word. “Precise. Like script-precise.”

“Fake?” Luna asked.

“I mean they were real,” Abby said, “I could hear them. That’s never happened before, though, I don’t know what to make of it.”

“Is she like that in class?” I asked.

Abby’s eyebrows furrowed, and her mouth fell open as she took in a thoughtful breath. “I’ve never noticed her in class… Everyone else is thinking and I never tried to pick out her voice.”

Luna side-eyed Constance’s door. “She’s not a ghost, right?”

She shook her head. “A ghost’s thoughts don’t project.” And Luna sighed with relief. “Anyway, let’s get this done.” She reached for the handle of Patrick’s room, but one twist let us know it was locked. “Crap.” She twisted it again just to make sure. “I might be able to use magic.” We all nodded, watching as she grabbed the handle and closed her eyes tight to focus. “Atyn,” she whispered. She twisted. Still locked. She said that word again, but nothing happened, and she dropped her hand with a sigh. “I guess I should’ve prefaced that with ‘I’m kind of bad at magic…’”

There seemed only one thing left to do. I reached out, grabbed the handle, and twisted so hard that the metal insides crunched. The lock broke, and I pushed the door open. All three of them were staring at me in shock, but I met Kyla’s gaze in particular. “What? We have people to protect.”

She grinned, and after Abby and Luna climbed between strips of crime scene tape to the inside of the room, she grabbed my arm to pull me aside from the door. “Hey, so… Abby pointed out I was a bit insensitive,” her gaze fell, “about you being scared and all. But you got good reasons for being scared and I shouldn’t have made you feel bad about it.”

“It’s okay,” I told her. Though, admittedly, I was a little surprised she was apologizing. “You were kind of right. This is important to you, and I guess I wasn’t being as…” I trailed off, searching for the right word. “Supportive? As I should’ve. I’ll try harder.” Her lips curled with the smallest of grateful smiles. “You’re doing a good thing here, trying to help people. I want you to know that I have your back, one hundred percent.”

“I know,” she said, but she didn’t feel completely better yet. She looked away from me again, shrugging as her eyes got distant. “It’s just… If I can keep someone from being a victim, then I want to.” There was a familiar emptiness creeping up on her, and I recognized that look in her eyes even though I never knew what it meant, or how to fix it. “I need to.”

I nodded, but she was already too gone to notice, so I reached out to brush my thumb over where the dimple on her cheek should’ve been. “You’re disappearing on me.”

She blinked that feeling away, and when she looked at me a few moments later, she smiled. It was real, and the dimple was there. “Thanks.” She pressed a kiss above the healing cut in my chin, and then another to my lips.

I took her hand, leading her through the yellow tape and into Patrick’s room so we could help look for evidence. Abby caught my eye as we walked in, and though I still wasn’t too comfortable with her being in my head, at least she could tell I was grateful for her prompting Kyla to have that conversation. She gave me a responsive smile and then turned back to the bookshelf she was searching. I let go of Kyla’s hand to close the door behind us, and she wandered off to dig through Patrick’s desk.

We searched around the room for a couple of minutes in silence. It wasn’t as out of the ordinary as I’d have expected given how strange this case already was. There was the desk, the bookshelf Abby was searching, the bed, a closet. Everything was standard except for the massive bleached spot on the carpet in the middle of the room. I skirted around that spot on my way to search the closet.

“Hey,” Abby said, pulling a thick book off the shelf, “look at this – spell book. Never seen it before, either.” She flipped through a few of the pages, reading what was on them and muttering to herself, “Wow, this is old-school. He wasn’t registered as practicing though… Where did he get it?”

“Think the ritual he tried is in there?” I asked.

“Maybe,” she answered, tucking the book under her arm. “But it’s in Anlisc, the same language on Devon. I’ll have to skim through it later after getting it translated.”

“What about this?” Luna asked, picking up a volleyball-sized bowl hidden under the bed. She carried it over to the desk and set it down while we all walked over. She stuck her finger into the charred items in it, crunching them down. “A bunch of burned stuff.”

“I wouldn’t touch it,” Abby said, “you don’t want to know some of the nasty things people burn in rituals.” Luna cringed and yanked her hand out of the bowl, and I shoved her off when she tried to wipe her finger on my jacket. “What’s that?” Abby asked, reaching into the dish. Careful not to touch anything else, she slid a burned piece of paper up the wall of the bowl until it was out, and then held it in front of her face. It was so scorched that all that was left were two lines of unfinished words. “D-E and N-E-A.”

“Yeah,” Kyla said, “Devon Nealy.”

“So, what?” Luna mused. “He performs a ritual and kills himself just for a spell that’ll kill Devon? Why not do it the old-fashioned way and potentially get away with it?”

“Maybe he couldn’t do it himself,” Kyla suggested.

Abby nudged the bowl with her hand. “If only I could tell what he used in here.”

“What he used?” I asked. “Like herbs?” Abby gave a noncommittal shrug. “I think I smelled some in the closet, hold on.” I hurried back over, following my nose to a covered shoebox on the overhead shelf in the closet. I pulled it down, carrying it to Abby and setting it on the desk in front of her.

“What are those?” Luna asked, pointing to a glass bottle of elongated brown seeds.

They were a common kitchen ingredient. I knew that because I liked to cook, and Abby must’ve heard me think it, because she gave me the subtlest nudge with her elbow and told Luna, “Dried maggots.”

“Ugh!” Luna’s face twisted with complete and utter disgust as she grabbed my jacket, hysterically wiping her entire hand on it while Abby and I burst into laughter. “What the hell, guys!”

“They’re just caraway seeds,” Abby snickered, and that made Kyla laugh too. She was still chuckling to herself while she began to dig through the box. She tossed ingredient after ingredient onto the desk, laughter fading as she appeared more and more unsatisfied with the box’s contents. “There’s too much in here.” She didn’t look the least bit amused anymore. “He was practicing. Full-on practicing and the Council had no idea.”

“Does that happen often?” I asked.

“No,” Abby answered. “And he’d be in a world of trouble if he was here to get it.”

“So what now?” Luna asked.

“Nothing left to do here,” she answered, and tapped the text tucked under her arm, “I’ll skim through this book, and use revenge as a cross-reference and rerun my search in the Council’s database.”

“And I still think I should talk to Devon’s girlfriend on Monday,” Kyla said. “See if she knows exactly what happened between Devon and Travis.”

The rest of us nodded our agreement, put everything but the book Abby was holding back where we’d found it, and left. Despite having gotten more answers today than I’d been expecting, I didn’t feel better about this. Knowing more only made it worse, and my gut was telling me to steer clear, but I was in this. I was going to see it through.

The bell for the end of fifth period rang, and I was the first student out of my seat. Devon Nealy’s girlfriend sat on the opposite side of the room as me, closest to the door, so I’d prepared by packing up my bag over a minute ago. I rushed across the room, getting blocked by the rest of the students trying to leave and standing on my tiptoes to try and keep track of her. By the time I made it out, I had to search up and down the hall to see which direction she’d gone. I caught sight of her black braid down the left, so I hurried to catch up to her.

“Hi,” I said. She glanced over at me, and I was paying attention during class to get her name. “Catalina, right?”

“Yeah,” she answered, and her pace slowed a bit as she seemed open to conversation. “But Cat’s okay too.”

“Kyla,” I introduced, holding out my hand. While she took it, I said, “I sit across the room in math.”

“Right,” she recalled, shuffling off to the side so she could stop and we weren’t blocking the hall. “I think I sat by you the first day, until we got assigned seats.” I nodded, smiling. She looked tired. There were dark bags under her dim brown eyes like she hadn’t slept a wink all weekend, and probably hadn’t wanted to come to school either. She wasn’t overly enthusiastic – to say the least – but she was talking, which was a good sign. “Where’s your accent from?”

“Texas,” I said. She nodded and leaned back against the wall. We both stood there for a few seconds in silence while I worked up the courage to ask what I’d started this conversation for. “So uh, I ain’t trying to be rude, but I was wondering if I could ask you about… well... about Devon.”

Her face fell, and she pushed off the wall while motioning down the hall. “I’m going to be late for sixth period.”

“Cat, wait,” I put my hand gently on her arm, “let me explain. See, you probably heard about Patrick, right?” That got her to pause. “And I know Patrick’s brother, Travis, was friends with Devon, and the whole thing’s a bit peculiar, is all.”

“Why do you care?” she asked, sounding loads less inviting than she had a minute ago.

“Can I be honest with you?” I asked, and she gave a hesitant nod. “Patrick had a strange mark on his hand, and Devon had some too.”

Her aversion faded to something like interest. “You know something about it?”

“I know some,” I admitted. “I know the cops ain’t sure what to make of it. I’m just trying to help, but I need to know anything you can tell me.”

“The cops came to question me,” she said quietly, her gaze dropping. “Wanted to know why he had my bracelet. They couldn’t tell me anything though.”

I nodded my understanding. “Did you tell them anything?”

“As much as wouldn’t make me sound crazy,” she said. “What do you want to know?”

“Why’d Devon have your bracelet?” I asked.

She shrugged. “It went missing last week, I thought I’d never see it again... Now I don’t think I want to.”

“When’d you lose it?” I asked. “Before Patrick died?”

“After,” she answered.

“What about Devon?”

“Before,” she said.

“You think he took it from you?”

“Devon?” she asked, and I nodded. “No. He told me to keep it when we broke up, he wouldn’t have stolen it back.”

“You weren’t together anymore?” I asked in surprise. She hadn’t been at school and she still looked so upset about his death, it was hard to imagine they weren’t dating. “Why’d you wear it?”

“We were childhood sweethearts,” she said, the corners of her mouth twitched up like she wanted to give a reminiscent smile, but they immediately fell to a frown. “I guess part of me hoped someday I’d forgive him.”

A moment of silence hovered in the air, and I knew she was waiting for me to ask, “For what?”

She took in a deep breath, and it was shaky when she let it out again. “Devon and Travis were really good friends since elementary school, but a couple of years ago, Travis started getting into some weird stuff.”

“Weird?” I prompted.

“Yeah, like, freaky witchcraft stuff.” She shuddered, studying me to see if I was put off from wanting to hear what she had to say. I gave her an encouraging nod. “Devon went along with it for a while because it was harmless, but Travis started getting serious. It was all talk at first, but he’d say how real power needed sacrifices, and then it wasn’t talk anymore.”

“People?” I asked, trying to keep the horror off my face.

“No,” she answered, “not at first. It was animals. Small ones, and then bigger ones.” She swallowed hard, shaking her head. “Devon was already scared, but when Travis started talking about people, he got terrified.”

“What’d he do?” I asked. “Tell the police?”

“He couldn’t,” she said. “He was too scared that Travis would get mad and curse him or something. Travis was already taking things out on people for less. Caused a teacher’s car accident because of a failing grade. She’s fine, but she had a few broken bones.”

“Cat,” I said seriously, “what’d he do?”

Her eyes flooded with tears, and she sniffled and looked away until she could speak again. “Travis, um,” she swallowed and cleared her throat, “he wasn’t a good swimmer. They used to go out to the lake and get drunk and… and Devon dared him to swim out to the sunken canoe in the middle.”

I knew that lake, we passed it all the time on runs. “There ain’t a sunken canoe out there.”

“No,” she agreed, brushing the back of her hand over her cheek and wiping away a stray tear, “but Devon got him drunk and convinced him there was.”

“Devon was sober that day,” I said. “I read it in the news.” Cat nodded, lips pursing to hold back another frown. “He planned it,” I realized. “He took Travis there just to let him drown.”

“It was wrong,” Cat whimpered, looking up toward the ceiling and trying to blink away her tears. “He was scared and didn’t know what else to do, but I couldn’t look him in the eyes afterward.” The right thing to do would’ve been to tell someone long before she’d told me, but getting mad at Cat wouldn’t solve anything, so I kept my thoughts to myself. “Do you know what happened to him?” she asked tearfully.

“I think-” I paused, taking another minute to consider everything she told me and compare it to what I already knew. “I think Travis was teaching Patrick. Patrick did something before he died, and it might’ve caused Devon’s death.” Cat’s eyebrows met in the middle while her eyes filled with fresh tears. “I ain’t sure exactly what’s going on,” I told her. “The safest thing for you might be to steer clear of this. No telling if Patrick knew you knew about it.”

“You think I’m in danger?” she asked.

“I’m sure you’re alright,” I lied. I had no idea if she was safe or not. “Better not to take chances though, if you ask me.”

She nodded, sniffling some more. “I think I’ll go home.”

“Thanks for talking to me,” I said, offering the most grateful smile as seemed appropriate.

She walked away, and I’d been so wrapped up in our conversation that I didn’t hear the bell for sixth period ring. It must’ve though, because there wasn’t anybody left in the halls. I jogged across campus to my final class of the day, smiling apologetically at the teacher while I ducked in late. As much as I’d have loved to spend the entire period thinking about everything Cat told me, I had a test that lasted the entirety of it. I started ruminating a bit while I walked back to my dorm room, but as I reached the door, those thoughts left my mind. There was a horrible sound filtering through, and though I knew it was my guitar, it’d never sounded so bad.

I opened the door, spotting Camille sitting on the edge of the bed with the instrument in her lap, and I couldn’t help snorting. “What’re you doing?”

She laughed, picking at more strings in anything but a rhythmic order. “I was just seeing how hard it is to play.”

“And?” I asked, dropping my backpack on the floor near the desk.

“It’s really hard,” she chuckled. “I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“Well, first of all,” I laughed, striding over, “you’re holding down the most random combination of chords I’ve ever seen.” I pecked her on the cheek in greeting as I reached down to adjust her fingers. “Second, it might help if the pick wasn’t stuck in the strings.” I pulled it out from where I stored it tucked into the strings, putting it in her strumming hand. “Try this,” I moved her hand with the pick to the bottom, and guided her through each motion, “down, up, down and mute. Then up, down, up, down and mute.” She repeated it on her own slowly for a few seconds until she got the rhythm, then picked up speed a little bit. She only played it for about twenty seconds, but she was grinning by the time she stopped. “Look at that,” I said with a smile, “you can play guitar.”

“Yeah,” she set the instrument down on the floor by the foot of the bed, “but I think I’ll leave it to you.”

“Maybe you could sing instead,” I suggested, stepping between her legs and slipping my arms around her neck. “We could do a duet.”

“I’ll spare us all the torture,” she laughed.

“It’s alright,” I assured her, and there was a flare in our connection that let me know she was catching onto my flirtatious tone, “you got other talents.”

She hummed curiously as her hands landed on my hips. “Like what?”

“Well, you’re a really,” I set my forehead against hers, “really,” our noses brushed, “really,” I skimmed her lips with mine, “great kisser.”

“Yeah?” One hand fell to the back of my knee, bringing it up past her hips to set it on the bed.

“I think so,” I answered. Her lips were still grazing mine, but as much as I wanted to kiss her, I loved the tension in the connection every time we waited as long as possible.

“You think so?” She reached down behind my other knee, and I shifted my weight so she could lift that too, bringing it up onto the bed beside her other hip so I was straddling her. All I did was hum an agreement while I sat back in her lap and her hands rounded the curve of my hips. “Maybe I should prove it to you.”

I let my eyes drift closed, basking in the final moments of tension while I whispered against her mouth, “Maybe you should.”

The second her open lips finally met mine, everything else melted away. I could even hear my cellphone start vibrating from my backpack on the floor, but I didn’t care. There was only her. Her soft lips guiding mine apart. Her smooth tongue grazing the tip of mine. Her strong but gentle hands clutching at my hips to bring me closer. Her loose blonde curls like silk between my fingers. I’d have forgotten about everything and everyone if her phone didn’t start ringing seconds after mine stopped.

Her hands loosened on my hips, her lips closed against mine in a final kiss, but she didn’t pull completely away. I could feel her breath skimming my jawline toward my ear as she said, “That’s either Luna or Abby.” I hummed my agreement. “Should I answer it?”

“Probably.” But my hand didn’t want to leave her hair. I didn’t want her lips to leave my skin.

She pressed one last kiss to the edge of my jaw while one hand left my hip to grab her cellphone. “Hello?” she answered, putting it on speakerphone.

“Hey.” It was Abby. “I tried calling Kyla but she didn’t pick up.”

“She’s here,” Camille told her. “You’re on speaker.”

“Hey, Kyla,” she said. “Did you lose your phone or something?”

“No, I have it,” I answered.

“Oh.” Abby paused, and I could almost hear her thinking about why I’d have my phone on me and not answer it. “Oh,” she realized, “you guys are busy. I can call back later.”

“It’s okay,” Camille laughed, but her cheeks shaded pink, and I couldn’t help grabbing her face to kiss it. “What’s up?”

“I finished getting those pictures from the morgue translated. I was going to see if you wanted to meet me in the cafeteria in an hour for dinner.”

Camille glanced at me to double-check. “Yeah,” I said. “I talked to Devon’s ex-girlfriend too, I’ll tell you what she said.”

“Sounds great. I’ll see you both soon.”

Camille and I said ‘bye,’ and then Camille hung up and tossed the phone sideways onto the bed. She was staring at me, thinking hard about something, and it took her a long minute to say, “Kyla?”

“Hm?”

She leaned back on her hands, putting some distance between us so she could see me better. “Would you work with the Council, if it was an option?”

“Ain’t that what we’re doing already?” I asked.

“I mean… not really.” She shrugged. “We’re working with Abby, it’s different.”

“If Abby wasn’t in the picture?” I asked, and she nodded. My gaze dropped to the bed while I considered it, and then I met her eyes again. “No, I don’t think I would.”

“Really?” A surprised crease formed between her eyebrows. “It’s just that you’re so eager to help, I thought you’d do it if you needed to.”

“Well, it’s like you said, we’re working with Abby and it’s different. I trust her.” I set my hands on Camille’s stomach, tracing her muscled anatomy through her shirt. “But when everything happened with the phantoms… I don’t think her dad would’ve cared much about getting you out alive if it didn’t mean saving people from you being possessed. I don’t trust him.” My hands traveled up past her torso and chest so I could cup her face. “I know this is important to me, but you’re more important than all of it. I wouldn’t put your life in the Council’s hands because they don’t value it the same as I do.” Camille nodded, tilting her head to press a kiss to my palm. “Is this because of what I said the other day? About you being scared and needing to buck up? Because I didn’t mean it like I don’t care what happens to you so long as we’re helping.”

“No, I know,” she said, “I’m over that. I was just wondering what you thought about the Council because Abby and I were talking about it.”

I shrugged. “Tell you the truth, I don’t think about it much.”

“Okay.” She pursed her mouth to one side, and there was a smile in her beautiful brown eyes as she said, “But uh, just so you know,” and she gave a smooth push of her hips beneath me, “I can still buck up if you need me to…”

I couldn’t help laughing as I dropped forward to kiss her, and she fell completely to her back. “We ain’t got time anymore,” I said into her lips.

“We have time if we’re quick.” Her hands slid up my thighs and inward, reaching for the button of my jeans. It was what I wanted anyway, and I was about to give in when there was a knock on the door. Camille groaned, tossing her arms out to either side of her while I straightened out of the kiss. “Luna, I hate you,” she called.

From outside the room came a muffled, “How’d you know it was me?”

“Because,” Camille said, “you have the world’s worst timing.”

Luna finally tried the door, finding it unlocked and letting herself in. “My bad,” she said when she saw the position Camille and I were in. “You can finish later.” Camille stretched a little farther for a pillow, chucking it at her sister while I rolled off of her. Luna caught the pillow easily, laughing and throwing it back. “What are we doing for dinner? I could probably eat three whole cows right now.”

“Meeting Abby in the cafeteria,” I told her.

“The food here sucks,” Luna sighed, dropping into the desk chair. “Let’s go home, I volunteer Camille to cook.”

“Abby can’t come over,” Camille said, and in response to the confused look on Luna’s face, added, “her father’s the Council director, Eli’s pissed at the Council…”

“Oh, yeah.” She hopped out of the chair. “Fine, shitty food it is. Let’s go.”

Camille and I climbed off the bed, and after grabbing my cellphone out of my backpack, we followed Luna out the door. I texted Abby on the way there to tell her we were going early.

“Come on,” Luna whined the moment we walked into the dining hall, inhaling through her nose. “It’s Meatloaf Monday. Abby owes me big time.”

Camille rolled her eyes. “We’ll grab a table.”

Camille and I sat down at the most private empty table we could find, and Luna found us a couple of minutes later with her tray stacked unreasonably high for the food being bad. “Hey,” she said as she fell into the seat beside me, leaning over the table to get closer to us, “that girl works here.”

We both looked over at the food counters. It was that girl from their classes, who lived in the room next to Patrick’s. Constance. Students were allowed to serve food as a part-time job, but we hadn’t had dinner here since we’d started noticing her.

We were in the process of nodding when Luna reached across me to shove a forkful of meatloaf under Camille’s nose. “Smell that,” she instructed, and when Camille made a face and tried to pull her head back, Luna leaned even farther. “Tell me that’s not something other than beef.”

“You’re so obnoxious,” Camille laughed, pushing Luna’s arm away.

“Roadkill, maybe?” Luna asked, sticking it under her own nose. “Raccoon? Squirrel? A combination of-”

“It’s beef,” Abby said, dropping down into the chair beside Camille. “Repurposed from Cheeseburger Saturday with the leftover buns.”

“Cheap bastards,” Luna mumbled, gesturing with her forkful of meatloaf, “that’s why the food is horrible.”

“At least it don’t taste like cardboard,” I pointed out.

“Ever the optimist,” she said, grimacing as she stuffed the meatloaf into her mouth and adding around the bite, “I admire that about you. Say something else to get me through this.”

I studied her tray of food for a second and said, “And you got chocolate pudding to wash the taste out of your mouth after.”

Luna pointed her finger at me. “I knew we recruited you for a reason.”

“I’m getting in line,” Camille laughed.

Abby and I followed her, picking up trays and carrying them down the counter while the student workers piled on food. It wasn’t until we got toward the end that we reached Constance. I didn’t know what to expect, and I certainly wasn’t expecting the smile she gave me.

“Hi, Kyla,” she said.

“Hey.” I tossed a confused glance back at Camille and Abby, and both of them nodded to get me to say more to her. “How are you?”

“Well,” Constance answered. “Pudding?” She held up a ladle full of chocolate pudding.

“Please,” I extended my tray, “thank you.” While she put a bowl onto it and dropped pudding in, I asked, “Just wondering if you happened to hear anything strange last week? You know… when Patrick died.”

“No,” Constance answered. “Here.” She reached over with another ladle full of pudding. “Have some extra.” And she put not one, but two extra scoops in my bowl. Camille and Abby were gawking, and I didn’t know what to say or do, so I smiled gratefully and moved down the line.

“Hi, Constance,” Camille greeted, holding up her tray. Constance didn’t say anything, but put a bowl onto it. “I don’t suppose I could get a little extra pud-”

“No.” Constance slopped the pudding so carelessly into Camille’s dish that half of it fell onto the tray. “Next.”

Camille looked dumfounded as she left the line, and when Abby reached us a few moments later, her pudding had received the same treatment. “What’s her deal?” Camille asked while we carried our food back to the table.

“I seriously can’t tell,” Abby answered. “Her brain is Censorship City.”

“How’s she do it?” I asked.

Abby shrugged. “Could be magic, or she could be some kind of supernatural I’ve never met before, or it could just be she’s wired differently.”

“She seems to like Kyla okay,” Camille said. “You sure you’ve never met her before?” And she added under her breath, “Saved her life or something dramatic.”

I laughed, trying not to look too amused because I really did feel bad about their lack of dessert. We sat down at our table, and even Luna noticed my dish, because she asked, “Who’d you bribe for that?”

“Constance has a crush on her or something,” Camille griped.

“Don’t worry,” I said, throwing my arm around Camille’s shoulders and pulling her in so I could kiss her cheek. “It’d take at least five scoops of pudding to win my heart.” Luna and Abby laughed while Camille passed me a half-hearted glare out the side of her eyes. I took my first bite of meatloaf and looked at Abby to ask, “What’d you find out?”

“The four words on Devon,” Abby said, washing down her bite of food with some water. “They’re a phrase. Alisded bi dreares geut.” She paused, but we all just stared at her. “I thought dreares meant ‘heart,’ but it doesn’t. It’s blood. Redeemed by shed blood.”

“Redeemed?” Camille repeated. “Redeemed from what?”

“Murder,” I said, leaning forward so I could talk quieter, and they all leaned in with interest. “Devon’s ex-girlfriend, Catalina, told me that Travis Prevost was practicing.”

“That’s where Patrick learned it,” Abby guessed.

I nodded my agreement. “Travis was getting out of hand and Devon got scared. So he got Travis drunk, knowing he couldn’t really swim, and took him out to the lake.”

“He drowned him?” Luna asked.

“Let him drown,” I corrected, “but I suppose it’s the same thing, and Patrick had to know.”

“So this was about revenge,” Abby said. “But who, or what, killed Devon?”

Luna took in a startled breath, whispering, “It was Travis’s ghost.”

“Seriously?” Camille asked in exasperation, and then gestured her fork at Abby. “You’re the expert, how likely is it that a ghost killed Devon?”

“Stop, I’m not an expert,” Abby laughed, her cheeks tinting a flattered shade of red. But then she cleared her throat and said, “I don’t think it’s likely. Travis’s death doesn’t exactly fit the criteria for creating a vengeful ghost, and they aren’t so meticulous about killing. They definitely wouldn’t move a body to the middle of the woods.”

“Why that phrase on Devon’s arms and feet?” I asked. “If Patrick just wanted revenge, why’d he bother with something like that?”

“It wasn’t Patrick,” Abby said. “It was someone else. Something else.”

“Something like what?” Luna asked.

“It could’ve been some kind of a spirit… Revenge is usually their thing.”

“You said it wasn’t a ghost!” Luna objected.

“Spirits and ghosts are different,” Abby said.

Luna rolled her eyes. “Potato, pot-ah-to.”

“Think it’s still around?” Camille asked Abby.

“I doubt it,” she answered. “Spirits with a purpose don’t linger. We might be investigating a closed case at this point…”

Even though I’d been eager to help solve this, it seemed like good news that nobody else might get hurt. I certainly wasn’t as disappointed as I might’ve thought about not being able to catch the killer. “I guess only time will tell,” I said, and the others nodded their agreement.

*

Abby turned around in her seat to give me one of the papers the teacher was passing down the rows, smiling as she read the assignment. “I love group work.” She looked up at me while turning even more, straddling the back of her seat. “Morning.”

“Hi,” I said, amused at the fact that she set her paper on my desk to do the work there.

“I already know all the answers too.” She wrote her name at the top of the sheet. “You can copy mine.” I had a particular thought, and though she’d been surprisingly successful at not responding to what was in my head, she narrowed her eyes at me. “I’m not cheating, thank you very much. I like history.”

“I know,” I laughed.

I did know, because she’d helped Kyla bring up her history grade at the end of last semester. It was nice she’d let me copy anyway since she was officially using my desk. She was left-handed, which meant that by facing me, she was occupying the same half of the surface I’d be if I were writing, and we’d be in each other’s way if I tried to work at the same time. That was my excuse anyhow, and I leaned back in my seat to let her start filling out the assignment.

“Is history what you’re going to major in?” I asked her. “Next year, at college?”

“Yeah,” she answered, scribbling down an answer to one of the questions. “European military history, probably.”

“Yikes…” That sounded… dull.

Abby huffed amusedly. “It helps me put a lot of the stuff I deal with for the Council in a historical context. I don’t know, it’s interesting to me.” She passed a brief look up at me. “What are you going to major in?”

“I have absolutely no clue,” I sighed, sinking down in my seat. “I’m not very good at being bored, so college is kind of the last thing I want to think about, you know?”

“You ever thought about being a Fish and Game Officer or a Park Ranger?” she asked. I laughed at the complete randomness of that, and her cheeks gained a visible tint as she let out an embarrassed laugh of her own. “Come on, I’m serious.”

“Okay,” I said with interest, even though I was still smiling. “Why?”

“You have a good nose, right?” she explained. “The best nose. You could track down poachers. You probably know the woods really well by now, and you’d be out instead of cooped up inside all day. You’d have some jurisdiction and access to information if you ever worked another case in the forest. And green is your color, you wear it at least twice a week.”

“I don’t wear green that-” Abby’s lips pursed as her eyes passed down my upper body. I glanced down too to look at my green flannel. “Oh.”

She laughed, and then watched me for a few seconds while I thought about her advice. “I mean, it’s not the only option,” she said, shrugging. “But it’s one option since you don’t want to go to school for a long time just to work a desk job.”

“No, it’s-” I paused, glancing away timidly because she already seemed to know me pretty well, and it didn’t feel like it was all because she had a personal glimpse into my head. “It’s actually the best idea someone’s had yet. Thanks.”

She smiled, and then looked down to continue working on the assignment. She read the next question, glanced up at me while she thought about it, and then sighed. “Shoot, I forgot.” She reached down to grab her backpack, pulling it up into her lap to get her history book out of it.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to a burlap sack the size of a watch face attached to the handle at the top of her bag.

“Protection charm,” she said, adjusting her backpack so I could see it better. “My dad gave it to me a while ago when I started helping out with Council stuff. It’s so old I think all the mojo’s gone, but it’s nostalgic.”

“He can’t make you another one?”

“He could…” She hesitated, set her bag on the ground, and shrugged. “I don’t know. Our relationship’s not what it used to be.”

My eyebrows furrowed. “I thought he was teaching you magic?”

“He is,” she confirmed. “But I’m not the prodigy he was hoping I’d be, like he was, and we don’t agree on much in general.” She gestured at me as an example and then let out a sigh. “I’m an all-around disappointment, I guess.”

“No offense,” I said, tilting my head to catch her fallen gaze, “but if your dad thinks you’re a disappointment, then he’s dumber than I thought, and the Council’s really in trouble.” She looked up again, her hazel eyes meeting mine with a clear appreciation. That had maybe come out more sentimental than I’d meant it to, so I added, “And I don’t even like you that much, so you know I’m not being biased.”

She laughed, muttering under her breath, “You try so hard to be intimidating,” and I couldn’t help chuckling a bit either. “But… thanks.”

I nodded, and while she opened her textbook to search for an answer, I asked, “What do you do for the Council, anyway?”

She finished flipping to the page, and then looked up at me to reply. “Not long ago I used to just check in on the unruly bunches from more peaceful races of supernaturals, like making sure covens weren’t storing illegal ingredients and stuff like that. But over winter break my dad let me go on my first real mission.”

“What was it?”

“There was this healer,” she said, “they’re rare and usually really peaceful, helping sick people and stuff, but I guess she was using her talents to find healthy subjects to harvest, and selling their remains on the black market.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “I helped bring her in so the higher-ups could deal with her. We did it, but I don’t think I’ll go on another one for a while.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Her husband was there, but he was just a normal guy, you know?” She paused, looking down to stare at the assignment. “He grabbed a gun in a drawer nearby before we could subdue him, and Council Ops are always armed when we go out, so I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Oh, wow,” I murmured, pursing my lips sympathetically. “Are you okay?”

She shrugged. “It was really different from fighting vampires in the warehouse last semester. I can’t read vampires, but I could hear him and he was all panic, but then I pulled the trigger and it was just… silence. We were told he knew what his wife was doing, but… I don’t know. I’m just not a field agent. Investigating is more my thing.”

“I hate guns,” I said, nodding my understanding. She met my gaze again when I said that, and she just stared at me for a while. I knew she’d caught a glimpse of what I’d done when I was new to Changing. I’d attacked a man because my siblings and I scared his cattle on a run one night, and he fired a weapon toward us and I didn’t have enough control back then not to attack, but I didn’t want to talk or think about it. “Don’t be too hard on yourself though,” I told Abby, hoping she wouldn’t ask, “he didn’t give you a choice.”

There was a loud click from beside us as something hit the floor, and Abby and I both looked over. Constance had dropped her pen. The bar connecting her desk to her chair was blocking her so she couldn’t reach down and get it, so I leaned over and picked it up, holding it out to her. She snatched it from my hand faster than I could blink, without so much as a ‘thank you’ or a glance in my direction.

“You’re welcome,” Abby said for me. Nothing, not even a twitch, and I could see an emotional shift on Abby’s face – the surfacing of a familiar anger I’d been on the receiving end of last semester – as she adjusted sideways in her seat to face Constance. “Hey, what’s your problem?” Constance finally looked up, turning her head to stare Abby right in the eyes. She still didn’t say anything. “Did we do something to offend you?”

Abby’s voice had risen just loud enough that people in the class were watching to see about the noise, and that included the teacher. “Abby,” I whispered, putting my hand on her arm to get her attention.

It was too late, though. “Problem, Miss Johnson?” the teacher called across the room.

Abby abandoned her angry expression, taking a moment to compose herself and then shaking her head at him. “No, Sir.”

The teacher studied her for a second, and then his gaze went to Constance, and then to me. “Constance,” he said, pointing at an empty seat across the room, “can I have you move over there, please?”

Constance stood, but before she could leave her desk, Abby reached across mine and grabbed the collar of my flannel, pulling me close enough that she could reach my ear and whisper, “Get her scent.” I inhaled through my nose as she let me go, but it wasn’t satisfying. I tried again, and again, and was breathing deeper and deeper until Constance had crossed the room. “Well?”

“She smells like perfume,” I said, inhaling gently once more to catch whatever remained of it in my nostrils.

“Oh.” Abby’s face fell with disappointment.

“No,” I said, “that’s all she smells like.” I should’ve noticed it sooner, but everyone always smelled like perfume and cologne, or drowned themselves in scented soaps, and last time I’d been too distracted by the smell of blood from her arm. “She doesn’t have a natural scent. But her blood had a scent… could something be masking it?”

Her eyebrows furrowed, and she cast a suspicious glare across the room. “I don’t know. Something is seriously off about her.”

“What does it mean if she doesn’t have a scent?”

She shrugged. “We never track people by scent. Or have any information about it, really, unless it’s so foul a human can smell it.”

“You don’t think she’s what hit me in the woods?” I asked. Constance was short, and small, and honestly kind of cute if you didn’t take her personality into account. She was hardly intimidating.

“No.” Abby looked across the room, thinking for a few seconds like she was considering it. “I don’t know.” We both looked over again, staring for a minute before looking at each other. “…Maybe we should follow her after class just to make sure she’s not doing anything strange…”

I nodded my agreement, and we spent the rest of class finishing the assignment and waiting for the bell to ring. Eventually it did, and Abby and I threw our jackets on, grabbed our bags, and hurried out the door to follow Constance. We stayed paces behind her in the crowded halls, that way she wouldn’t notice we were following, but before long we were leaving the building. I didn’t know what her second period was, but it soon became obvious that we weren’t heading to another education building either. We were leaving campus. Abby and I ducked behind walls for as long as we could, following her in the opposite direction the dorms were in, to a far side of the school I’d never been to before. She continued beyond the boundaries and into the woods, where there were a few small houses for the groundskeeping staff.

“Bushes,” I hissed, watching as Constance strode past a truck parked in a driveway and right up to one of the house’s front doors. We shot behind a snow-covered bush just as Constance turned around to make sure nobody was watching. Not seeing anyone, she grabbed the handle, and I heard the lock crunch all the way from here when she twisted it.

Abby gasped. “Did she just-”

“Yes.”

She disappeared inside the house she’d just broken into, and I grabbed the sleeve of Abby’s jacket, hauling her across the open space to the side of it. We crouched beneath opposite sides of one of the living room’s large windows, peering in through the corners. Constance strode into the living room, and we ducked a little farther out of sight, still being able to watch as she began searching through bookshelves.

“Does this constitute strange?” I whispered.

“This is beyond strange,” Abby said. Constance found what she was looking for, shoved something into her pocket, and started back for the front door. “What did she just take? Did you see?”

“I have no idea,” I answered.

We crept toward the front of the house, and because I was taller, I leaned over Abby’s back so we could both peek around the corner. Constance walked to the truck, opened the unlocked door, and then jumped into the driver’s seat. The vehicle started up so fast that she must’ve found the keys inside.

“She’s stealing the truck!” Abby said. “Our cars are all the way across campus! We’ll never get there in time to follow her.” But I’d already had an idea, and discarded my jacket to the snow and began to unbutton my flannel. “Camille, what are we-” She turned, stopping midsentence when she realized I was taking my shirt off. “Wha- uh-” Her eyes scanned my bra, and then wandered down to stare at my bare stomach while her mouth hung open, and she breathed “uh” a handful of times like she was trying to remember what she’d been saying but couldn’t. Maybe I should’ve given her a warning before starting to take my clothes off, but I was so used to it on runs that it was second nature, and I thought she’d have heard me think it and been prepared.

“You forget how to read minds all of a sudden?” I asked, tossing my shirt down on top of my coat.

Her eyes widened and then slammed shut. “Shit.” She spun around. “I’m so sorry. God. Shit, that was so inappropriate, I’m sorry. So sorry. Crap. I’m so sorry.”

Okay, she was flustered. So flustered that she was still swearing quietly to herself, and… was it wrong if I was maybe a little flattered? I paused from the hurried removal of my bra, looking up at the back of her head while my cheeks flushed, hoping she wouldn’t say anything about that thought.

She didn’t. She leaned closer to the edge of the house to look. “She’s backing out. You’re just going to follow her, right? Don’t do anything stupid.”

“I won’t.” I slipped my jeans down at the same time as I kicked out of my shoes. “Stay with my clothes. I’ll be back soon.”

“I can’t stay here!” she protested. She began to turn around again, but then must’ve remembered I was naked, and deliberately faced forward. “We’re not supposed to be out here, that house just got broken into, and oh, yeah, a truck is missing!”

I could hear that the truck had finished backing out, and it started retreating down the road. “Then go deeper into the woods if someone comes and I’ll find you. I need clothes when I get back, Abby.”

I didn’t give her another chance to resist, I Phased and took off running, hearing her call after me in a loud whisper, “Be careful.”

It wasn’t until a minute after I’d been following the truck, keeping hidden in the woods, that the urgency wore off and I started feeling the increasingly familiar nag of fear. Constance was at least as strong as I was, and she didn’t have a scent. It didn’t make any sense why she’d have been in the woods the night we found Devon, seeing as her only obvious connection to the whole thing was being Patrick’s neighbor, but I wasn’t ruling out the possibility that it had been her. And if it was, then she was stronger than I’d seen, she was fast, and she could probably kill me if she caught me trailing her.

I chased after the truck as it pulled onto the main road, staying well within the forest that lined the street, trying to ignore that my heart started racing for reasons other than the run. Trying not to think about what I was doing, and that I was doing it completely alone.

Constance drove about four miles away from the school, pulling onto a few smaller side roads and eventually ending up at… a junkyard? That was the last thing I expected, but she cruised past the gates and came to a stop near the owner’s mobile home. I crept toward the opening of the gate, hidden enough behind piles of car wreckage and machine salvage that I could peer around and see what was happening.

The owner came out of his mobile home just as Constance was getting out of the truck. “I know you?” he asked. He was a massive man, made even more intimidating by the chew he spat sideways and the fact that his faded black trucker hat was almost too small for his head. “Why you driving Alvin’s truck?” Constance didn’t say a single word to him, just strode past him and went right into his home. “Hey!” he shouted, stomping after her. “You can’t go in there!” He disappeared inside.

This already seemed like the kind of situation where someone might get hurt, and I was about to creep through the gate and get closer when the man hit the ground outside. Constance had thrown him so powerfully through the door that he hit the dirt and rolled. She didn’t wait for him to recover before she started throwing things or crashing through drawers in his house. He finally came to a stop on his face, pushed up with a furious growl, spat the wad of tobacco out of his mouth, and stormed back to the house. He disappeared again inside.

I left my hiding place, aiming for the side of the home where I could hear better and remain unseen, but I hardly got halfway before there was the unmistakable cocking of a shotgun. The sound alone was enough to make me stop in my tracks, but then the weapon went off. The deafening bang of gunfire filled the air, and my heart leapt to my throat as I sank two steps backward, ready to run.

“That stung,” Constance’s voice growled. “And that’s not the gun he used. Where is it?” Something glass shattered against the wall. I should help the man. I should go in there to try and protect him, but I was frozen in place. Constance got shot and she was fine and that wasn’t normal.

“Who?” the man stuttered.

“Alvin,” Constance said. “Where is it?”

There were five long seconds of silence while one of my front paws hovered in the air, a heartbeat away from taking off in the opposite direction. The man had a gun, but as much as I hated them, I’d been at gunpoint before. I could deal with that. But there was almost no doubt in my mind then that Constance was what hit me in the woods. She was involved in the occult in some way that made her strong, in some way that I couldn’t fight against or protect myself from, and the last thing I wanted to do was go inside that home.

My pulse was racing. This had nothing to do with me or werewolves, and it wasn’t my responsibility to be chasing the occult after it almost killed me. That was Abby’s job. The Council’s job. I was here for no good reason that I could see, and I’d already done what I’d come for – to see what Constance was up to – and maybe she wouldn’t murder this man. Maybe I could back away and everything would be fine, and I could listen to Abby and not do anything stupid. Only, I knew what Kyla would do. I knew that it wouldn’t have mattered to her that we didn’t know this guy, or that Constance was dangerous. Kyla would try. She’d do the right thing, the stupid thing, and protect him.

Before the weight in my limbs could get any heavier, I bolted to the house and through the door. The man let out a startled scream and lifted his shotgun, but I took the barrel in my teeth before he could fire and ripped it from his hands, whipping it outside. I turned to face Constance, setting myself between her and the man while my upper lip curled. There were bleeding holes from the shotgun in the torso of her jacket. Every one of the pellets had pierced skin, deeply, and I don’t know how she was standing. She didn’t even look like she was in pain.

Constance’s eyes met mine, and she held my gaze while her jaw clenched and her body tensed. A second later, something silver appeared in one of the thick buckshot holes in her torso, and the first steel ball pushed from the wound and hit the floor. Others followed, until each one that had hit her was scattered across the linoleum. She was still bleeding so badly that almost the entire front of her shirt was stained red, and the wounds weren’t healed, but I’d never seen anything like that in my life. She passed me a smug smile before looking back up at the man. “I’m going to ask one more time. Where is the rifle?”

I growled to make my point clearer, the rumble from my chest filling the one large room of the mobile home. The man behind me must’ve gestured somewhere, because Constance glanced upward toward one of the long overhead cabinets. It was higher up than she was tall, and she gave an annoyed sigh while she glanced around, gaze landing on a full case of beer. She ignored my growls and kicked the case beneath the cupboard, stepped on top of it, and reached inside. Her hand came out with a rifle in its grip, and the mere sight of her holding a weapon escalated my threats to a full-blown snarl.

She stepped off the box, looking pointedly at me. “Don’t make me kill you, Camille,” she said, ejecting the magazine from the rifle. I was so startled that she knew it was me that my rumbling ceased. “It’s not your turn.”

She pulled a single long bullet from the magazine and then jammed it back in, and that sound snapped me out of my shock. I snarled again, snapping my teeth and taking a pace forward, putting myself between her and the door because whatever her plan was, it couldn’t be good. But then she did something else I didn’t expect. After she put the bullet in her pocket, she grabbed the barrel of the rifle, using her inhuman strength to bend it so far backward it folded over, rendering the weapon completely useless. Then she threw it down at my feet.

“You’re the villain here,” she said, eyes meeting mine once more, “not me.” I bared my teeth as another rumble left my chest. She looked deliberately at the door. “Don’t test me.”

She skirted sideways, and though my growling got deeper and louder, I hadn’t decided on stopping her. She hadn’t killed the man, and though she’d threatened me, she wasn’t trying to kill me either. Not yet anyway. Instead, she’d completely destroyed a weapon capable of killing, and I didn’t know what to do. I was confused, and still afraid of her. Despite the force behind my snarling, my heart was racing and my stomach was in knots. She wasn’t human, she couldn’t be. I didn’t know what kind of supernatural she was, but what she wasn’t was afraid of me. There wasn’t a trace of concern on her face or in her eyes as she took a few more sideways steps toward the door.

It put her close enough to touch me if she reached out, and she looked at me one more time while one corner of her mouth pulled into a smile. Then she was gone. She got out the door faster than I could’ve reacted, and was in the driver’s side of her truck less than two seconds later. The engine roared to life, and she reversed out the gate and sped down the road.

I took off out the door, sprinting as fast as my four legs could carry me in the direction of the school. I didn’t bother following the road because I wanted to get back before Constance did, and instead cut straight through the woods. It took me a fraction of the time to reach the school limits, and I raced around the edges until I found the street back to Abby. I tore through the forest behind the houses, glancing behind me as I neared Alvin’s home to see if Constance was coming up the road yet, if she even would. It was because I wasn’t looking that I didn’t notice Abby was waiting. She was facing the other direction, staring into the woods like she was searching for me that way, but I looked forward again at the same time as she heard the crashing of my paws and began to turn.

There was no way I could stop in time. Though I tried to, I skidded through the snow at running speed, and Abby only got out half a startled yelp before we collided. I smashed into her, taking her to the ground with the force of my speed and the entirety of my weight. The wheezing grunt she let out as she hit the snow was enough to shift my focus away from the crisis of Constance, and onto the fact that I could’ve just broken at least a handful of her bones. I rolled off her, jumping to my feet and reacting the only way I knew how in wolf form, the only way that felt natural in my new state of panic. I nudged her repeatedly and frantically with my muzzle – her ribs, her hand, her arm and shoulder and face, anywhere I could elicit a reaction to make sure she was okay. It was apology and inquiry and my tongue followed every few nudges on instinct because she was so hurt that she wasn’t making a sound.

Before long, she breathed, “Okay,” and tried to push one hand against my head the next time I nudged her. I was still too worried for it to stop me, and as I moved back up to her face, she let out a bark of laughter. “Okay!” She brought both hands up to shove me off, yelling through pained laughs, “Ah, okay! I’m fine! That tickles! Use your words! I can hear you!”

Oh… right… I backed off, calming myself down and trying to adjust to the fact that I didn’t need physical expression to communicate with her like this. Sorry, I thought, lowering myself to lie down a foot away from her. She chuckled and dropped her head back in the snow. Are you okay?

“No offense,” she said, grunting as she pushed herself up to sit, “but you weigh a freaking ton.” Once sitting, she reached up to wipe the sleeve of her jacket over the moisture on her cheek. “Seriously? Was that your nose or your tongue?” She pulled her arm away to look at her sleeve. “Can’t say I’ve ever let a girl lick me there before.”

I was grateful to be in wolf form when she said that, because even if she could hear how embarrassed I was, at least I wasn’t blushing like I would’ve been in human form. Sorry, I thought again.

“You were panicking,” she pointed out, rising to her feet with a last pained groan. “What happened?”

My mind flashed involuntary glimpses of what had happened at the junkyard, and Abby’s eyes went wide. Turn around, I told her. She did, and I Changed and rushed to my clothes. “It was her,” I said, hurrying into my jeans with a renewed sense of urgency. “Constance killed Devon, she had to have.”

“Camille,” Abby prompted without looking at me.

“I think she’s going to kill the guy that lives here,” I continued, reaching behind me to do the clasp of my bra. “She’s got some kind of agenda and I don’t think Alvin will be the last.”

“Camille,” Abby said, turning around even though I was still in the process of pulling on my flannel. “She threatened you.”

My eyes met hers as I did up the buttons on my shirt. “I know.” I reached down for my jacket, a fresh nag of fear in the pit of my stomach. “Kyla’s in science right now. We have to tell her.”

*

My right fist shot out, landing a solid punch on the bag Camille was holding, and my left immediately followed. She and Luna had been helping me with sparring, teaching me what little they knew about fighting and letting me develop my pinning technique on runs, but I wasn’t satisfied yet. If I wanted to really protect myself, or anyone else, then I had to practice. I had to get faster, stronger, and more accurate. I had to get better. So I convinced them to go to the gym with me every chance we got, even when it was the school gym at six-thirty on a Friday night. Even when one of them didn’t want to come – like Luna, who got here only a couple of minutes ago and was sitting by the edge of the mat eating a burrito.

“Why are you practicing so much anyway?” Luna asked through a mouthful of food. “It’s been months now, you’re solid.”

“Ain’t solid enough,” I panted, landing more rapid hits.

“You can pin me,” Luna said. “No one can pin me.”

“And when I’m human?” I asked. I stopped throwing punches, breathing heavily and noting the sheen of sweat on Camille’s forehead just from holding the bag. “I can’t be vulnerable.”

She gestured her burrito at me. “That’s what Phasing is for.”

I didn’t say anything because she didn’t understand the kind of threats I was learning to fight, and I didn’t want to tell her. It was time for a break anyway, and I threw one last lazy punch. Camille ducked out from behind the bag, hugging me around the waist and walking me to where Luna was sitting. She plopped down across from her sister, and I sat next to her to lean into her side.

“Want some?” Luna asked, holding out her burrito.

Camille shook her head, but I stretched forward for a bite while she asked, “Where did you even get that?”

“Vending machine.” Luna stuffed some more into her mouth.

“Gross.”

“Know what?” I said, swallowing the bite I took. “It ain’t bad.”

“Really?” Camille asked. She glanced at the burrito in Luna’s hand when I nodded, and then leaned forward to try it for herself. She chewed, swallowed, and laughed, “Okay, it’s better than it looks.”

“Hey,” called a familiar voice from the entrance of the gym. Abby wandered over, eyeing Luna’s food with a repulsed look on her face while she sat down perpendicular to Luna and me. “We just had dinner a little over an hour ago.”

“Yeah?” Luna prompted.

Abby eyed the burrito again. “And you’re hungry enough to eat that?”

Luna shrugged. “Three out of three werewolves agree it’s suitable.”

Abby looked at Camille and me, and we both gave resigned nods. “Right, okay… What are you guys doing in here?”

“I was practicing,” I told her, motioning toward the punching bag, and now that she was here, I kicked my legs out over hers and reclined further into Camille’s side. She leaned back on one hand, her other setting on my ankle so she could absentmindedly finger the laces on my shoe.

“Hey,” Luna said, eyes suddenly wide as she asked Abby, “you work for the Council, can you fight?”

“I’ve had some training,” she answered, but whatever Luna was thinking, she heard it. “Oh no, no. I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“What?” Camille asked.

“She should spar with Kyla,” Luna said. “Why’s that not a good idea? I want to see what the Council teaches you.”

I wasn’t so sure about it either, but when I glanced at Camille, she shrugged and said, “I’m kind of curious too.”

“Yeah, why not?” Luna prompted again.

Abby’s mouth fell open, but she couldn’t find the words to explain why she was resistant. So I said, “I don’t want to hurt her.”

“What?” Abby asked with a laugh. “You did not just say that. As if you even could without going full wolf-mode.”

I lifted my eyebrows at her. “I’m at least five times stronger than you.”

“And your massive head will weigh you down,” she teased. “You know what?” She pushed my legs off her lap and stood, taking her cellphone from her pocket and dropping it to the floor. “We’re doing this.”

She held out her hand and offered to help me up, and if she was determined to do it, then I guess there wasn’t a reason not to. I let her pull me to my feet, and then followed her to the portion of the mat that wasn’t filled by the bag.

“Wait, hold on,” I protested as she took a stance in front of me. “You got an advantage seeing as you can read my mind.”

“What happened to being five times stronger than me?” she asked with a smile. “Just try not to think too much.”

“Best two out of three!” Luna called from the edge of the mat.

I lifted my hands to head height, and Abby raised hers to her shoulders, but even though she’d told me not to think too much, I was. I was way overthinking, wondering how I could strike without hitting her or take her down without using too much strength. She watched me for a while, waiting for me to do something, but I was too worried.

“No?” she asked expectantly. “Okay.”

And she was done waiting. She bent at the knees and hips to drop below my left elbow, and leaned in so her shoulder hit me in the stomach. It shifted all my weight to my back foot, and her right arm wrapped behind my front leg while her other went around my torso, and then she lifted my front leg and swung me around that side. It happened faster than I could react, and my back hit the mat.

While Luna clapped and Camille let out a huff of amusement, Abby let go of my leg and leaned over my head. “You ready to actually try now?”

I held out my hand, and she took it and hauled me up. “Two out of three,” I reminded.

We both put our hands up again, standing face to face. I tested it out by swatting at her with an open palm. She ducked around it and came in with a rounded strike of her own, which I blocked with my forearm. There was no pause before she threw two more punches. A left and then a right. I swatted the first one away with a wave of my arm, but just as she took the second, I moved in. I got close enough to wrap an arm around her neck, tucked one of my legs behind her to trip her and whipped her sideways, throwing her down.

“Go, Kyla!” Luna yelled.

Abby was laughing from her back, and as I lifted her off the ground, she teased, “Your girlfriend hits harder than you.”

“Yeah,” Camille laughed from the sidelines, “when I’m running forty miles an hour.”

“Did you let me win that one?” I asked suspiciously, putting my hands up again to prepare for the final round.

“No,” Abby answered, raising her hands too. “I wasn’t expecting you to come forward like that.” She grinned. “It was aggressive, I’m impressed.”

“Go in for the kill!” Luna shouted.

“Who are you cheering for?” Camille asked.

“Whichever one of them is going to kick ass.”

Now that we’d gone two rounds, I decided to stop being so worried about it. I didn’t hesitate to throw two immediate punches, but after blocking the first one, Abby did something I never would’ve expected. She blocked my second hit and pushed my arm outward, grabbing it in one hand while the other set on my shoulder, and she used that grip to jump. Her feet left the ground and wrapped over and under my other shoulder, and I was already slightly off balance from throwing a hit, so having her extra weight so suddenly at the front of me sent me toppling forward. Her back hit the mat first as I fell upside down, but she used the momentum and the strength of her legs to somersault me over the top of her, and when my back hit the mat, she rolled over onto me for the pin.

“Ha!” Luna yelled. “Some training! You have some?” And she turned to Camille. “Oh my god, did you see that? She was like a squirrel!”

Abby laughed, jumping up and grabbing my arm to lift me to my feet. “You okay?”

“I’m good,” I answered, and glanced over at where Camille and Luna were occupied talking about that takedown. “You really do have training.”

“Yeah,” she said with a smile, but it faded when she caught the thought going through my mind. “Kyla,” she murmured apologetically.

“You know why I practice,” I said, unable to mask my disappointment. She knew why it was important to me, she’d heard all about it. She’d heard details even Camille didn’t know. “Why haven’t you wanted to help me?”

“It crossed my mind,” she said. Her gaze fell while she shrugged, and then she tossed a look to where Luna was reenacting the move as best as she could for Camille. “Honestly, I’m still working out what kind of boundaries I need with you,” her voice was low enough that only I could hear, “or don’t need, I guess. I want to help, but… that’s a lot of full contact on a regular basis...”

“Oh,” I breathed.

“I’m sorry.”

“No.” I shook my head and reached out to set a hand on her forearm. She made our friendship feel so easy, and she never put pressure on me even when I slipped, and she was getting along so well with Camille that it never crossed my mind that things might still be hard for her. But it wasn’t her fault, and I didn’t want her feeling bad for it. “No, it’s fine. I understand.”

She smiled, squinted at me, tilted her head side to side as if considering something, and then nodded. “Yep, your head’s looking about the right size now.” I laughed while she strode off to rejoin Camille and Luna.

“That was awesome,” Luna said, extending her hand to Abby for a high five.

I went over too and dropped down beside Camille, and Abby looked across at me and asked, “By the way, are you wearing cologne?”

Camille snorted with laughter as I groaned and asked, “Do I smell like that guy from fourth period again?” Camille nodded, trying and failing to keep the amusement off her face. “I ain’t even wearing the same clothes! I swear it’s burned into my skin. I’m filing a formal complaint.”

“It smells good,” Abby chuckled, “if that’s any consolation.”

“Hardly,” I mumbled. “Anyway, you find anything?”

It was three days ago that Camille had trailed Constance to that junkyard, and no one had seen her or the groundskeeper, Alvin, since. She just vanished. Wasn’t going to class, wasn’t working the dinner line in the cafeteria, and wasn’t going to her dorm room. It had to be because she knew we’d try stopping her, especially since she threatened Camille. Every minute of the day, one of us was with Camille – Abby, and sometimes Luna, from the end of fourth period to when I got out of class at the end of the day, and then we were with her the rest of the time.

It was possible that Constance didn’t mean it. That she wasn’t really planning on killing Camille and was only trying to scare her. Either way, we didn’t know why she was targeting people or what she was getting out of it, so we were taking it seriously.

“Nothing,” Abby answered. “Constance hasn’t used any credit or debit cards anywhere, hasn’t used her school ID to get into the dorms… she’s just gone. Her parents called in too, the whole police force is looking for her.”

“And the groundskeeper?” I asked.

“No trace of him either,” she said.

“Did you finish translating that book?” Camille asked. “From Patrick’s dorm.”

“Yeah.” Abby let out a discouraged breath. “It’s all in the Council’s database now, but it wasn’t helpful. It’s mostly recipes for spells without any descriptions of what things actually mean. Besides, if Constance is going after Alvin, I’m not sure how much this really has to do with Patrick Prevost anyway. I can’t see any connection between Alvin and what happened with Travis Prevost.” Before any of us could reply, Abby’s phone started ringing. She put it to her ear. “Hello?” She listened for a minute and then put her hand to her forehead. “Symbols? Same as Devon Nealy?” Another pause, and then she asked in shock, “A bullet and a locket?” A few seconds more. “Okay, thanks.” She hung up, looking around at all of us before saying, “That was Damien, from the morgue. They found Alvin.” I let out a heavy sigh, too upset to say anything. Someone else died because we couldn’t find Constance.

“Where?” Camille asked.

“In the woods.”

Luna’s eyebrows furrowed. “Same place we found Devon?”

Abby shook her head. “On some hunting trail toward the east side. Had that phrase again, alisded bi dreares geut.” Redeemed by shed blood. “That bullet Constance took from the junkyard was in one of his hands, and a locket with a picture of a little girl in his other.”

“Okay,” Luna said, “so Constance got him because he did something bad. What’d he do?”

“He killed someone,” Camille said.

“Are you sure, though?” Luna asked. “There’s a lot of bad things someone can do without-”

“He killed someone,” Camille repeated, pulling her knees up to wrap her arms around them. “He had to have.” Her head fell. “That’s why she killed Devon. It’s why she threatened me.”

“That’s her modus operandi,” Luna whispered with realization. “She’s killing murderers.”

“But Camille’s not a murderer,” Abby protested.

Luna winced. “Technically…”

“Luna,” I scolded, setting my hand on Camille’s back, offering comfort because I knew how much she regretted attacking that farmer. It haunted her, even years later, and the waves of guilt from her in the connection were bad enough to turn my stomach.

“Sorry,” Luna said. “I’m just saying, Constance probably doesn’t care if it was an accident.”

“It’s fine,” Camille murmured. She propped an elbow on her knee to cradle her head in her hand. “She’s right.”

“Alright then,” I said, more determined than ever to solve this, “what do we know?”

“Devon killed Travis Prevost,” Abby said, “Constance killed him and-” Her eyes went wide. “She dumped his body at the lake. Where he let Travis drown.”

“You think…” Luna said.

Abby nodded. “Look,” and she held out her hands to list things on her fingers. “She had to have taken the locket from Alvin’s home, and the bullet from the junkyard. There’s got to be a connection to the bracelet and the alcohol found with Devon. Two items each.” She gestured with the two fingers on each hand. “She cut those symbols into his and Devon’s skin.” Both hands flashed three fingers. “She’s been meticulous. There’s a process. I’ll bet where they found Alvin’s body is where he did whatever it is he did. Just like we found Devon’s body where he killed Travis.”

“But why?” Camille asked.

“What’s it matter why?” Luna replied. “She’s a murderer too.”

“It matters,” I interjected, “because we can’t find a connection to Patrick. This started with his suicide.”

“Theories that involve Patrick,” Abby said, clearing her fingers to begin counting again. “One?”

“His ghost possessed Constance,” Luna suggested.

Abby deadpanned, repeating, “One?”

“Fine,” Luna mumbled, “but you’re all going to feel real stupid when you find out she’s possessed.”

“She’s some kind of supernatural,” Camille volunteered, “Patrick knew about it and convinced her to get revenge for him.”

“And she’s making it a full-time job?” Luna asked.

“It’s better than ghosts,” Camille glared.

“What kind of supernatural might she be?” I asked. “Forget the revenge motive. What’s physically possible?”

“Um, based on strength and speed,” Abby glanced upward in thought, “Reaper, Wendigo, Rakshasi, Angel, Djinn, Harpy, I mean the list could go on and on, I don’t know if that’s a good place to start…”

“Okay,” Camille said, “Patrick recruited her, and then killed himself because?” She looked around at all of us for ideas.

“Maybe he was going to do it anyway,” Luna said. “So he did a ritual to make sure Constance would be successful. Or powerful.”

“That’s a good theory,” Abby agreed. “He recruited Constance and then performed a ritual. What’s another one?”

“Constance killed him too,” I said. “Maybe he wasn’t a murderer though. Different sin, different death.”

Abby nodded and held up two fingers. “Any others?”

“Constance and Patrick were friends,” Luna said. “She’s got a taste for blood and now she won’t stop.”

“Okay, good.” Abby dropped her fingers. “What don’t we know? Besides what Patrick had to do with this.”

“What the items found with Devon and Alvin were for,” Luna said.

Camille said, “Where Constance is doing the killing.”

“How to stop her,” I added.

“And,” Abby said, “I want to know what Alvin did to get him on Constance’s murder list. Devon killing Travis was deliberate. Maybe Alvin’s was on purpose, too, and she was just trying to scare Camille…”

“Who would know about it?” Luna asked. “If people knew he killed someone, he probably would’ve been in prison.”

We all looked around at each other while considering it. “The junkyard guy!” Camille said. “He had the gun Constance was looking for, he was friends with Alvin, maybe he knows.”

“We should go ask him,” Luna suggested. “Right now. I’m totally going to play bad cop.”

“Shoot, what time is it?” Abby grabbed her cellphone to check. “I got to go.”

“You don’t want to come?” Luna asked. “Camille said he’s like six foot five, it’ll be fun to scare some answers out of him.”

Abby stood, saying as she did, “I want to, but I can’t. I have a date.”

“A what?” I blurted.

She blinked at me, repeating, “…A date.”

“You can’t go on a date.”

“It’s Friday night,” she said, stuffing her phone into her pocket. “Why can’t I go on a date?” My mouth hung open, waiting for a response to come out of it. None did. I didn’t know what to say, or why I didn’t want her going. I just… didn’t. “Okay, see you later.”

She turned to start for the door, and I bolted up to follow her. “There’s a killer on the loose,” I protested. “And you want to go out with someone you don’t know?”

Abby stopped walking, let out a heavy sigh, and turned to face me as I reached her. “No one’s seen her for days, she’s not after me, and it’s not a blind date. Besides, we’re going to the Orchid, not a likely place for me to get kidnapped.”

The Orchid? Dancing? “How about us?” I gestured hastily behind me. “We’re going to the junkyard and it might be dangerous.”

“There’s three of you,” she said with unmistakable impatience. “You’ll be fine.” My mouth fell open with another excuse, but she didn’t let me say it. “Kyla,” she muttered under her breath, “boundaries. Please. You’re not helping.”

OH. I blinked away the resistance I felt as my face flushed with realization. Oh...

“I’ll text you when I get home safe,” she said. “Okay?”

“Sorry.” I nodded, too ashamed of myself to look her in the eyes. “Yeah, sorry.”

I watched her feet turn and walk away, and it took me a few extra seconds to gather the courage to turn around and look at Camille. She wasn’t looking at me, though. She was watching the floor, appearing as uncomfortable as I suddenly felt. Luna, on the other hand, was staring at the door where Abby disappeared, eyes wide and her eyebrows almost in her hairline. I trudged over and sat down by Camille, and not one of us said a thing for a long minute.

“Yeah…” Luna murmured eventually, shifting and beginning to stand. “I’m going to get a soda.” She left without another glance back.

“Camille,” I began my earnest apology, “I-”

“We don’t,” she interrupted, clearing her throat. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

I stared at her, speechless, and reached out in the connection to try and see what she was feeling. There was a hint of jealousy, but not nearly as much as I expected. No anger. She wasn’t even hurt, just… uncomfortable. “You know what I just did,” I said. “You felt it. You’re not mad?”

Her gaze finally left the floor to meet mine, and despite the way I’d acted, her brown eyes were gentle as ever. “Here’s the thing,” she took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, “I was jealous last semester, and I was angry, and resentful of her, and it wasn’t a good feeling. You love me, I know it, and you’ve never cheated on me, because I’d feel it.” She paused, glancing toward the door of the gym and then shrugging. “I guess, maybe sometimes we feel things we don’t mean to, and if it wasn’t for the connection, I wouldn’t know what you felt… about her.” She sighed, taking a few moments to speak again. “I trust you, Kyla, and I trust you to know what you want. I think it’d be unfair of me to judge anything other than what you do, and what you did was let her go. So the easiest thing for me, and our relationship, and my friendship with Abby is just… to not think about it. Okay?”

I nodded, but I still felt guilty that she was dealing with whatever leftover feelings I had, and that she could feel them. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” she said. “It’s kind of weird, but… I’m getting used to it? And your feelings for me never change so… I don’t know. I’m fine, too.”

“They never change because I love you.”

She gave a grateful smile. “I know.”

“And I want you,” I added.

She narrowed her eyes at me, staring for a few seconds while her smile faded to a smirk and I caught a flash of mischief in the connection. “I’ll make you want me.”

She pounced, and her lips stifled the shriek of laughter I let out as she tackled me to the ground. I threw my arms around her neck instead of wrestling to let her kiss me. I kissed back, pouring into it my appreciation for her being more patient and understanding than I deserved. For her being sweet and trusting when she could just as easily get jealous and give ultimatums. There was no doubt in my mind how much I loved her. How much I never wanted to be without her.

We didn’t get to kiss long before the door opened again. A few other students in workout clothing walked in and stopped at the entrance, scanning the gym until they found Camille and me. “Hey,” one of the guys called as we separated, and he tossed a thumb toward the door, “some girl out there said to remind you there’s a junkyard hunk waiting for TLC? Whatever that means?”

“Got it,” Camille laughed. “Thanks.”

We got to our feet, and I linked my hand with hers and followed her out to the hall where Luna was waiting with her drink. It wasn’t a long drive to the junkyard, and we parked outside the gates so the man wouldn’t know we were coming. All the lights in his long mobile home were on as we strode up to his front door. Camille hammered her fist against it, and a few seconds passed before it swung open.

She didn’t give him a chance to say anything. “Hi.” She pushed her way past him, Luna and me right behind her.

“I HAVE HAD IT,” the man roared, “WITH TEENAGE GIRLS BARGING IN-”

“Sit down!” Luna said, shoving him onto the couch right across from the entrance. He glanced sideways at the shotgun a few feet away, propped against the opposite end of the sofa. When he made a dive for it, Luna reached out to grab him by the face, throwing him back the other way so he collided with the cushioned arm. “What’d I say?” she demanded.

Though it was clear to both Camille and me she was only playing bad cop like she wanted, he stopped fighting and sank back into the couch, nodding. “Okay.”

She furrowed her eyebrows at him, and then turned a pout on me. “That was too easy to be fun.”

I grabbed a chair from the nearby dining table, swung it over, and sat down on it backward. “We got questions.”

Camille did the same, propping a chair facing forward at my side and leaning to set her elbows on her knees. “That you’re going to answer.”

He nodded again, and Luna picked up the shotgun to lean it over her shoulder with a disappointed look on her face. “You’re almost boring me, pal.” She slapped him in the arm, making him flinch. “Look at all this muscle. You’re going to let us boss you around?”

“You don’t know the shit I’ve seen a few days ago,” he said, swallowing hard. “I’ll answer your questions.”

“Did you hear the news about your friend?” Camille asked. “Alvin.” The man shook his head. “He’s dead.”

“Son of a bitch.” Another shake of the head, and he mumbled to himself, “I told him.”

“Told him what?” I asked.

He glanced up at me. “Told him to run.” Camille and I looked at each other, and then at him. “Some girl came by the other day, looking for his hunting rifle. He leaves it here because he works up at that Tollbridge Academy, can’t have guns on campus.”

“Why’d you tell him to run?” Luna asked.

“That girl,” the man answered, “she said she wanted the gun ‘he used.’ Like she knew. And she was scary. Ain’t weigh a buck ten sopping wet, but threw me clean out the door with her bare hands. Shot her with that shotgun, too,” he pointed to the gun Luna was holding, “bullets came out and she was bleeding, but that thing should’ve put her down for good. Then this giant ass wolf comes out of nowhere, thought the thing would rip me to shreds. I told Alvin to run, alright. Things looking for him I wouldn’t want to see again in my lifetime.”

“That’s why no one had seen him,” I said. “He was trying to run.”

“Didn’t work though, did it?” Camille added. “She found him.”

“How about the locket?” I mused, and looked at the man again. “Alvin had a picture of a little girl. Who was she?”

“Probably his daughter,” he said.

“She alive?” Luna asked, tapping the side of the shotgun’s trigger with her index finger.

The man nodded in earnest. “Lives with her mother up in Seattle.”

“Who’d Alvin kill?” Camille asked.

The man glared. “What makes you think I-” Luna cocked the shotgun. “Come on,” he pleaded, “anybody hears about this and I’m toast.”

“Camille,” Luna said, nodding toward him, “rip his arms off.”

If the man was worried about that at all, he might’ve seen the eye roll Camille gave. Instead, he stared at her for all of three seconds and whispered to himself, “Camille…” A few seconds later he drew in a heavy gasp and clutched at the armrest of the couch, sinking farther into the cushions and muttering under his breath, “Werewolves.”

“Great,” Luna sighed. “Now we have to kill him.”

“No, no, no.” He panicked, his voice shaky and his eyes growing moist. “I won’t tell anyone, I swear, please, I’ll tell you everything you want to know. Please.”

“Dude,” Luna laughed, “you’re killing me, I was joking.” She pointed a finger at him, her face going stern. “But if you tell anyone, we will kill you.”

“I won’t,” he said, “I swear.”

“Who did Alvin kill?” Camille asked again.

“And how?” I added, and Camille nodded at me in acknowledgment.

“We were out hunting last year,” he began to explain. “It was cold, we were drinking.”

“Illegal,” Luna interjected, pointing at him again, “continue.”

“Alvin caught sight of some big game and took a shot. But it wasn’t game.” The man let out a sigh, leaning forward to set his elbows on his knees. “It was this old guy named Wheeler from a dive bar up the road. He was alive, and Alvin tried to stop the bleeding while I called it in, but neither of us was getting any service out there. It was an accident…”

“He died,” Camille said, brow furrowed angrily. “He died and you didn’t tell anyone.”

“We knew he didn’t have any family that’d be looking for him,” the man answered. “Alvin had his daughter, I got an older boy of my own; we couldn’t risk going to prison.”

“Where’d it happen?” I asked.

“Hunting trail out toward Pine Hollow.” His eyes shut as he shook his head. “It was an accident.”

I glanced at Camille, and her face was pale as she nodded and said, “Pine Hollow is east.”

“The bullet the girl took,” I said, “it was from the same gun Alvin killed him with?”

The man hummed a confirmation, and my head fell. This wasn’t looking good for any of us, but especially for Camille. Alvin’s crime was an accident, just like hers, and it was clear that Constance didn’t care whether or not it was intentional. She was getting revenge on anyone she could, and Camille’s insides were so suddenly twisted it was making me queasy.

“Let’s go,” I murmured. “We got what we need.”

Luna dropped the shotgun to the floor, calling to the man as she followed us out, “Maybe you should be a little less trigger-happy, asshole.”

We trudged to the jeep, climbing in and then sitting there for a minute in silence. I stared out the windshield into the darkness until Camille grabbed the steering wheel in both hands and dropped her forehead against it. She’d never felt like this before, this cold and empty and sick. This guilty. Maybe it was because of what she was going through, but I felt guilty too. She hadn’t wanted to do this. She hadn’t wanted anywhere near this case, and because I’d forced her, she’d become the case.

“The bullet,” Luna said, breaking the silence. “It was from the murder weapon. Just like alcohol was used to kill Travis, and a bottle of it was found in Devon’s hand.”

“And the locket?” I asked. “Devon’s bracelet? They had to be sentimental, right?”

“Maybe,” Luna agreed. “I can’t see any other connection.”

I glanced over, and though Camille might’ve been listening, she hadn’t picked her head up. “Cami?” I asked in worry. “You alright?”

She took in a deep breath, let it out slowly, and swallowed hard before lifting her forehead from the steering wheel. “Yeah,” she answered, starting up the engine and putting the Jeep in drive. “Let’s get out of here.” But I could feel that she wasn’t alright, and all I could really do was reach over to set my hand in her lap, hoping it did something for the overwhelming amount of guilt in her chest.

The song I was playing on my guitar ended, and before I could set the instrument down, Camille asked, “Can you play the one that goes,” she hummed out a short tune, “that one’s my favorite.” She was laying behind me while I sat on the edge of the bed, her side pressed up against my back. I began strumming the song, but it wasn’t as upbeat as usual because I wasn’t putting much effort into it, and I felt her head turn to look at me. She gave me half a minute of playing before she said, “You’re not singing it.”

“Sorry,” I said, but my playing stopped.

She sat up, propping herself on one arm and scooting closer to my back while her other hand set on my hip. She pressed a kiss to the scar on the back of my left shoulder, exposed by my tank top, and then set her chin against it. “You’ve been quiet since we left the junkyard last night,” she said. “What’s wrong?” I thumbed the high E string, trying to decide if I even wanted to say it. It was dumb, and what happened last night wasn’t about me. “Kyla?” Camille’s hand left my hip and reached around, setting on mine to stop my picking at the string.

“It’s my fault,” I admitted.

“What is?”

“Constance,” I murmured, “being after you.”

She sat up all the way and froze for a moment like she was considering how to respond. She slid off the bed, watched me prop my guitar against the wall because I knew it’s what she wanted, and then stepped between my legs. She made sure to catch my gaze before saying, “It’s not your fault.”

“It is,” I argued, eyes dropping to my lap. “You wanted nothing to do with this. You were scared because magic almost killed you, but I forced you to do it anyway and now she wants to kill you.”

Her lips pressed against the crown of my head. “Hey,” she said, “look at me.” It took me a few seconds to meet her eyes. “You’re not forcing me to do this. You’re doing it because you believe in it, because it matters to you.” I didn’t say anything, and my focus wanted to leave hers, but then she said, “When I was at the junkyard the first time, I almost left,” and my brow furrowed with surprise. “Constance went in there,” she explained, “and the shotgun went off, and I almost ran because I was scared. But I went in because it’s what you would’ve done. Because stopping her is the right thing to do, the brave thing, and I believe in it too. I made this choice… and it’s one I might have to keep making because of fear, but I will keep making it.”

“But if I stayed away from it like you wanted,” I said, “if I just let the Council handle it, then maybe-”

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” she interrupted. “I have a class with Constance, she knows me regardless. And she isn’t after me because we’re trying to stop her, she’s after me because I fucked up. Because I killed a man. That is not your fault.” She reached up to cup my face. “If anything, I’m less afraid because my life isn’t in the Council’s hands. It’s in your hands, and like you said, you value it more than they do.”

“And Abby’s hands,” I pointed out, “and Luna’s.”

“And they value it too,” she said, letting her hands fall to my thighs, “just like you do.” She squinted one eye in thought and teased, “Well, maybe not Abby as much...”

“She does,” I laughed. “She likes you, I can tell.”

She smiled and folded her fingers with mine. “I don’t want you to give this up.”

“Are you still scared?” I asked. Her gaze dropped as she nodded. “I won’t ask you to do anything else you’re afraid to. I’m sorry I did.”

“It’s okay,” she said, shaking her head. “I think you were right when you said I couldn’t back out when people needed me just because I was scared. I don’t want to back out. You should ask.”

“I got an idea, then, for next time.” I paused, but she stayed quiet to let me say it. “You know how the connection’s stronger, and we can feel pain?” She hummed. “If we get into something you don’t like, or you’re too scared and I ain’t there, press your nail into your palm so I’ll feel it. If I’m there, we’ll leave, and if I’m not, then I’ll do it back so you know I’m coming. So you don’t got to be scared. One time for I’m coming, and two times for hang in there.”

She let out a soft laugh. “I’ll be okay. We don’t have to.”

“No, come on,” I urged. “Try it.” I set my teeth in a begging smile. “Please. I’ll feel better knowing I ain’t making you do this without some solution.”

“You’re not mak-”

“I know,” I said. “I know, but you’re totally behind me in solving this case, and I want you to feel like I’m behind you, too. Even if it’s something small like this.” She laughed again, but finally gave in and pressed the nail of her thumb to the palm of her other hand, watching me to see if I could feel it. “Harder.” She dug a little deeper, but it still wasn’t enough. She pressed a bit more, and finally there was an uncomfortable pressure in the palm of my own hand. “There.” I grinned. “And I’ll do it back.” I did the same, pressing with my nail until she glanced at her hand because she could feel it.

“It’s a good idea,” she said with a smile. “Thanks.”

I returned the smile, but it faded soon after. “So…” I met her gaze briefly before looking back down. “You don’t blame me?”

“Not even a little,” she replied.

“…I just want you to be okay.”

“I’m okay,” she assured me, pressing a kiss to my forehead. She planted another kiss on my cheek, trailing pecks across the bridge of my nose to the other side of my face. “I’m okay,” she repeated. She brought my hand up to the part of her chest that was exposed by the low cut of her shirt, setting it there flat so I could feel her heartbeat. “See?” It was steady. Strong. Familiar. Her forehead set against mine, and the comfort of her reassurance already felt so good that I couldn’t keep my eyes from drifting shut. “I’m okay,” she said again, and then her lips met mine. The kiss was slow and tender and sweet, further promise that she didn’t blame me for this, but amidst the kiss she reached for the bottom of my tank top. She pulled away as I let her lift it up and over my head, and as she tossed it to the floor behind her, she passed a direct look over my upper body. “I’m more than okay.”

I laughed, slinging my arms around her neck to pull her back to me, and there was a wave of need in the connection as her hands set on my bare waist. One there never would’ve been if she were too afraid or worried about what could happen. “Oh, I felt that,” I smirked, bringing my lips in close to hers. “You’re just fine.”

“Told you.”

She kissed me again, lips parting so I could feel the tip of her tongue graze my teeth, and maybe this was what I needed. More than her just telling me she was fine and that she could handle the fear and the risk, the kind of reassurance I needed was her showing me. It was her hands sliding up my ribs and around my back, undoing the clasp of my bra so she could slip it down my arms and reunite it with my shirt. It was her laying me back while her lips left mine for my neck, for my chest, for the bullet scar in my ribs and the birthmark beside my belly button. It was her allowing me to feel in the connection that she really didn’t blame me for the danger she was in, and worrying about it wasn’t how she wanted to spend our Saturday morning, and it didn’t change how she felt.

Nor was it about me, and my comfort. It was her life being threatened. I should be reassuring her, showing her that everything was okay and making her feel safe. And I would. I’d show her with sex, and then affection, and then by solving this case and stopping Constance without her ever getting hurt.

She kept pressing gentle pecks to my stomach, the easiest place for her to kiss without being on the bed, but I wanted her closer. Wanted her skin. Her heat. I rose just enough to reach down, past her shoulders to the hem of her shirt, pulling it toward me and sliding it over her head. After I threw it away, I cupped her face, guiding her away from my stomach and up so I could get what I needed. So I could give her what she needed. She climbed up willingly, placing herself between my legs while she settled above me, and that was what I’d wanted. The weight of her against me. The heat of her bare chest on mine. Her parted lips taking mine in such an earnest kiss it stole the breath from my lungs.

One of my hands went to the back of her head, tangling in her blond curls to encourage the depth of it while my other explored every part of her it could. I cupped her jaw, followed the bend of her neck to caress my fingertips over the smooth skin of her naked shoulder. I traced inward along her collarbone and down the center of her chest, dropping my hand between us. She lifted off me just enough to give me space, shifting her weight to one elbow so I could caress the muscled lines of her abs. So I could touch all the places I knew would get her going. The places that would stagger her breathing, and make her mouth part even more against mine so she could try and get air. The places that would coax her tongue past my lips with every ragged exhale, so I could lose myself in her taste.

I followed her ribs around to her back, trailed the curve of her waist to her hip and worked my way back in. Her skin was so soft that I couldn’t do more than graze or I risked missing out on its delicacy, and her responses in the connection were like electricity against my palm. It tickled her when I ran a single digit across the center of her stomach, and the tingling of it radiated in the pad of my finger as she released a breathy laugh against my lips. It sent jolts to her chest when I skimmed the flesh along the inside of her hip, tracing the waistline of her pants, and the echoes of pleasure coursed through my own veins.

Best of all was when I ran my hand back up to her chest. I filled it with a breast and her stomach erupted with a warmth that flushed through her, and that I felt in me. It forced a weakened huff of air onto my lips, the start of the breathlessness I’d been seeking, and I loved this. Loved the feel of her plump skin between my fingers, and how she pushed into my grip every time I grasped and massaged. Loved the press of a firm nipple against my palm, and how I could lighten my hold to skim over it, or graze it with my thumb. I loved the way her teeth scraped my bottom lip to tell me that she loved it too, or bit down every time I did something particularly right.

And her free hand wasn’t idle. It was all over my thigh. It caressed upward from my knee to my hip, ran back down along the inside between my legs, teasing a touch that I was already impatient for. It moved behind my knee, guiding my leg up so it cradled her waist and gave her room to reach my backside, where I knew she’d linger because it was a spot that she loved. She rounded the swell of it, following to where it ended at my thigh and then grazed back up. Her palm admired the shape of me, mapping the curved planes at the rear of my lower body, moving up to fondle my hip and then working back around. She grabbed, clutching to pull me closer while she ground down against me, and my chest thundered with appreciation for the push.

She fit so perfectly between my legs. Fit against me so well that if I angled my hips just the right way there was friction. Sweet, glorious friction. It wasn’t enough, but it was enough that my breathing was getting labored. And it wasn’t just the feel of her moving against me. It wasn’t just the friction, or the heat, or the moisture forming at my core. It was her. Her rhythm, her skin, her heartbeat, all melding so perfectly with mine that I couldn’t tell if my hips pushed because hers did or the other way around. I couldn’t tell if it was her pulse or mine that skipped when the tip of my tongue met hers, or where her flesh ended and mine began. It wasn’t the friction. It was feeling her in every cell of my body even when we still had some of our clothes on. It was the connection setting her alight in my blood, in my soul, until we were one. Until her wants and needs and emotions were mine, and mine hers, and I needed her release just as much as my own.

With the next drive of her hips, my hands left her head and chest to grab her waist. I shifted her sideways off of me, and she dropped onto her back right-ways along the bed while I got to my knees between her legs. Her hips rose off the mattress when I reached for the hem of her pants, letting me slide them down her thighs, and then her knees, until I could slip them off her ankles and toss them to the floor. I couldn’t help staying knelt there and running my hand up the inside of her thigh, exalting in her indifference toward undergarments which allowed me to admire the beauty of her without barriers.

Camille was gorgeous. I’d always thought so, but it still amazed me that I could act on any desire she stirred in me. I could explore her with my hands, or my lips, or my tongue – her long legs, her sculpted abs, her modest breasts or her muscled shoulders. I could touch and kiss and relearn all my favorite spots a hundred times over, until I knew her body better than I knew my own. I could memorize all the deep, rich tones of brown in her mahogany eyes or each defined line of her powerful anatomy.

I drank in the sight of her so long I forgot she was watching me. Until she said, “I love the way you feel when you look at me like that.”

I met her gaze, taking in the adoration in it while my lips pulled into a smile. “I love you,” I said, and I dropped forward to kiss her deeply. Her hands cupped my face, returning it for a minute before I pulled away to set my forehead against hers. “My heart wants me to kiss you for hours,” I whispered against her lips. She hummed and gave me a brief peck. “…But my tongue wants other things.”

She smiled into the next peck she gave me, but there was a flair of desire in the connection, and her hands left my face to set against my shoulders with a slight pressure. “We can kiss later.”

I laughed, but left her lips to start trailing kisses down the length of her body. I pressed open pecks along the column of her throat, down the center of her chest and up along the swell of a breast, letting my tongue sample tastes of her along the way. A lick at her pulse point, soothing a nip at her collarbone, one teasing flick over a nipple, brief touches between my open lips as they landed between her hips. I scattered kisses over that delicate skin until her left hand cupped my face, then I kissed her palm, her wrist, the tattoo on the inside of her forearm. Her impatience carried through the connection, and I recognized it in the overly subtle request of her touch, of her hand combing through my hair, but I was enjoying myself too much to rush.

I adjusted deeper on the bed while my lips wandered down the side of her hip, down the top of her thigh and to the inside of her knee. That knee bent out at the same time her other did, opening herself up to me, but I ignored the plea and grazed the tips of my fingers up the inside of her thigh instead. She squirmed against the touch, and even more when my mouth began to follow its upward trail, and I ran my fingers back down the inside of the opposite thigh. Her hands were fisted in the sheets so she wouldn’t beg with grasp or push, but the tension was tight in her abs. It was in the occasional shift of her hips and the way her heart raced faster the higher my lips got.

I pretended I couldn’t see her looking at me while I dropped my kisses a few inches back toward her knee, pretended I couldn’t picture the need in her eyes. But I could feel it, and it wasn’t all hers. Every few seconds, I couldn’t help glancing between her legs, tempting myself with the sight of how much she wanted this. Every breath I inhaled, I took through my nose, letting her scent wash over me until it was like a fog in my head. Until my mouth watered and the pure desire to taste forced my lips to wander back up.

The final kiss I pressed was to the bend at the apex of her thigh, but it was close enough that she whimpered, and I didn’t have it in me to resist. I looked up to meet her gaze, to see how she was holding her head up and to see the anticipation in her eyes, watching while I dragged the flat of my tongue through the moisture at her core. Her head lolled back as a relieved moan left her throat, and the wave of pleasure that rolled through her was powerful. It crashed through me at the same time as her taste washed over my tongue, and my thrill met hers so blissfully in the connection that I couldn’t keep my eyes open.

I don’t know if it was because of that burst of feeling, or if it was because I circled the tip of my tongue over her clit to start a pattern, but the hard breath she let out stuttered through her lips. My eyes were closed, but her hips shifted and I knew her back had arched, and I forced them open again so I wouldn’t have to imagine how amazing she looked. I wanted to see the flutter of her chest, and how her head was tossed back, and how the muscles in her arms flexed as her hands gripped tighter in the sheets. I wanted to watch her mouth hang open as my tongue fell into the rhythm she loved, wanted to see the subtle twitch in her jaw because some part of me wasn’t there for her to bite down on like she craved, or how I could just barely see the crease that formed between her eyebrows every time I hit her favorite spot.

Even though what I was doing was all about her, she wasn’t the only one getting something out of it. As much as I loved making her feel this way, and hearing the moans she made or the half-breaths she released, her pleasure was mine in the most physical of ways. Every stroke of my tongue was met with a building pressure that tensed deep in my own stomach. Each time the bliss forced a stunted noise from her chest, echoes of it sparked in my own lungs. Every time my tongue dipped to her entrance to collect more of her taste, she clenched so hard that my own body pulsed in response. The connection was so strong and Camille felt so amazing that I reached up for her hand, and she untangled her fingers from the blanket to fold them with mine. To make sure I felt every thrilled squeeze she made and had something to grasp too, because the demand for release low in my belly grew with every second her taste was on my tongue.

“Kyla.” The raspy sound of my name made my stomach flutter, and I glanced up to give her my attention, but her actually looking at me buried between her legs forced a whimpered moan from her lips. She couldn’t keep her head up, and it fell back again as her chest heaved with the struggle for air. “Don’t finish with me,” she forced on a breath. My heart lurched with the sheer need for it, my body’s rebelling plea to let it happen. She felt it, and drew in another breath to say, “Please, I want to touch you first.”

It would’ve been so easy to finish with her, whether I’d been touched yet or not. God, I wanted to. I hadn’t even tried to resist the building release in the connection. Hadn’t been bridling its effects on me or keeping it from making me react. I’d been basking in it, gladly letting it carry me with her toward the end so that her plea was a request for torturous self-control. But I could do it. I would do it, for her. Because it’s what she wanted, and I knew there’d be no sweeter relief than when her fingers finally brought me to climax.

So I braced myself for the restraint. I clutched her hand a bit tighter, and slid my other beneath her thigh to wrap it around to her hip, gripping to hold her to me and anchor myself. And I focused all my efforts on taking her to the end. I stopped wandering for her taste and trained my tongue on her clit, using my grasp at her hip to add pressure and weight, and increasing to the tempo I knew would take her right to the edge. Her reaction was instant. Her hand squeezed mine hard as her hips left the mattress and a stuttered profanity fell from her lips, and my clasp doubled to keep her from pulling away from my mouth.

My eyes wandered up her torso while my dedicated tongue worked her over, staring in awe at how beautiful she was when she let go. I savored it until the very moment I couldn’t. Until the connection spiked and she reached the peak and I had to slam my eyes shut to focus on not falling over the edge with her. It wasn’t easy. She let out a loud moan as she passed that peak and went into climax. Her free hand grabbed the back of my head as she bucked, and I let go of her other hand to grab her hips with both, clutching her to me so her uncontrolled movement wouldn’t tear her from my touch. I stopped my rhythm just to press against her, to feel the pulsing waves that rolled through her and ended in the powerful throbs against my tongue.

It wasn’t easy. She was clenching and whimpering and quivering with each tremble that went through her, it was so sexy and I wasn’t even looking at her. Every sound, every motion was unchecked and filled with pure, unfiltered bliss. Each tide of the tensing muscles in her body surged in my veins like a flood of heat. Even though they were just hazy reflections of what she was feeling, they were still strong enough to make me weak with pleasure, but I didn’t let that dull what I gave. Every time her pulsing slowed, I gave a gentle lick to keep her going, to draw out more of the breathless whimpers, to feel her hips rock in my hands and her fingers tangle even more in my hair.

I indulged in her in the connection as much as I could allow myself, and cherished the way she assaulted every one of my senses until she settled back into the bed. Until she let out an exhausted sigh and her fingers combed through my hair to smooth what she’d mussed. It wasn’t until then that I finally had the control to open my eyes. I looked at her face and caught the amount of satisfaction in her expression, and couldn’t help grinning as I pressed a kiss where my tongue had been. Her shoulders rose an inch above the bed as she twitched from the sensitivity, but she let out a long, low hum as she laid back again.

I wiped my chin on the back of my wrist while I crawled up to lie over her. Her eyes were shut, and I might’ve thought she was passed out if she wasn’t smiling. “Camille,” I chuckled, pressing a kiss to her nose. She hummed again. “Endearing as it is that you’re so easy to please, I got a problem that desperately needs seeing to.”

She let out a huff of laughter, but her hand met my stomach as she said, “Let me see how desperately,” and she slid it straight beneath the lining of my pants and underwear, knowing exactly where to find what she was looking for. And I wasn’t expecting her to go right for it – she loved to tease – but she found a generous amount of moisture and used it to slide the length of her finger over my clit. I was so worked up, so on edge from not being able to finish with her that the simple touch robbed me of strength. My head dropped against her shoulder as a pleading whimper left my throat, and she chuckled beside my ear. “Yeah, that’s pretty desperate.” Just when I was about to beg, she circled that sensitive point of nerves slowly once, twice, pressed a wet kiss to the shell of my ear, and whispered, “Lie down.”

Her hand left me so I could drop off of her and lie at her side. She rose, undid the button of my jeans and slid them and my underwear down at once, tossing them sideways onto the floor. She fell forward, straddling one of my thighs so she was off-center enough to touch me, and she braced herself on her forearm while her lips found mine. I didn’t need to protest the distraction of a kiss, or remind her of how badly I wanted her. She knew. She felt it, and her other hand moved over my hip and between my legs. But just when I expected her to touch me and bring release, one finger slid into me so slowly that I felt every inch.

It was so damn good to have her pushing inside me, and I took in such a heavy gasp as my head tipped back that it pulled me away from the kiss. She withdrew all the way to the tip of her finger before my body fully adjusted to the overwhelming sensation, and she lined up a second and slipped both back into me. It forced all the air from my lungs in a loud moan, and the extreme pleasure of it curled me into her as I clenched around the humble width of her fingers. My arms flew around her, one hand clutching at her head as she buried her face against my neck, while my other grasped at her back. My shoulders curved toward hers as they left the mattress, clinging to her as closely as possible so I could get contact and heat, and my leg she wasn’t straddling hooked around the back of hers.

I sucked in stunted gulps of air as she drew back and pushed into me again. The staggering pleasure of her thrusts hit me as deeply as her long fingers would allow, sending stars shooting behind my eyes and causing an astounding burst of pressure between my hips. I wanted that feeling to be constant. Wanted the breathtaking force of her thrusts sending steady floods of warmth through my veins until there was too much tension and heat in me to contain. And she knew it, and she didn’t just pick up a rhythm fast enough to give me what I wanted.

She curled her fingers with the next reverse draw, dragging them against my inner front wall to hit the most sensitive place she could. That was constant. With every push and pull, that drag was there throughout the entire motion, hitting a spot that made me both weak and desperate at the same time. I wanted more of it, and even though it already had me moaning and whimpering with every jagged breath I released, I couldn’t help moving my hips. They fell into rhythm with her hand, rocking against her to meet each drive and take her as deeply as possible.

It was everything I needed until her mouth touched down between my pulse point and jaw, until I realized how much I needed that too. My fingers grasped at her head to encourage the open kisses and the brief suction of her lips. The gentle nips and the scorching graze of her tongue. As much as I’d wanted to finish with her the first time, I was glad she’d asked me to wait, because there was nothing better than her lips and tongue and fingers working me into a mewling mess, and there was only one thing better than her finally making me come. It was shared release that left us both satisfied.

I was too weak under her touch, too lost in the pleasure of her and how much I needed this to reach between her legs, but I could feel her in the connection. She was struggling not to let the euphoria that crossed over interfere with what she was doing. She was breathing hard against my skin, and I had no doubt that if I did touch her, she’d be throbbing. She was building again as I did, gleaning pleasure from every rock of my hips into her hand.

I was too far gone to touch her, but she was straddling my thigh in just the right place that if I lifted my knee… My thigh rose perfectly to meet the wetness at her core, and I got more of a startled reaction than I expected when I pressed against her. Her teeth bit down on my neck as she released a muffled whimper into my flesh, and the rhythm of her fingers hitched, jamming so wonderfully against my sensitive front wall that my nails dug into her back.

I curled even further into her so I could reach her ear with my mouth, clutching her to me and panting until I had the breath to plead, “Come with me.”

She lifted enough to find my lips with hers, taking my mouth in a searing kiss while her fingers pulled out of me to find my clit instead. She set to circling that bundle of nerves with the virtue of experience, and I moaned against her tongue as the touch melted all the tension she’d built and threw me right to the edge. It didn’t help her precision that my hips kept rocking with her pattern, but I didn’t stop because it moved my thigh between her legs. It provided all the friction I could give to make sure that when I went barreling into climax, she was right there with me.

It was clear that she appreciated it, too. Her teeth were always an indication of pleasure, and every few seconds she broke from the kiss to grip my bottom lip between them. As much as I loved the sting of her bite, and how soft her lips were after a nip or the slick feel of her tongue when it found mine, I didn’t want her to hold back. Not like she would if she kept kissing me; if she had to think about how rough she was being or anything but the finish.

With my hand still tangled in her hair, I used that grip and what was left of my focus to move her away from my mouth. “Here,” I breathed, directing her out along my collarbone, and it was like the final piece slipping into place when her teeth sank into the ball of my shoulder.

It caused me to draw in a deep breath as I reached the peak, as my hand gripped the back of her head with reception and every muscle in my body seized with the pure bliss I already felt. Then I went stumbling over that peak into the overwhelming ecstasy of the finish. The breath I took left my throat in a cried-out moan as all the heat in my body flooded to Camille’s touch, and the surge of her climax crashed over me in waves as her hold on my shoulder strengthened.

I’d grown to love the bite as much as I loved her kiss, and her touch. It anchored me to her in a physical way when every other sensation threatened to lose me in the connection. It kept me feeling her and her body and the constant stroke of her hand when the pulses that barreled between my legs and my chest and my head left me incapable of thinking. When I couldn’t control the sounds I gifted the ceiling or the rocking of myself against her because all I could focus on was the staggering satisfaction of finally reaching the end.

And it was infinitely more satisfying when she was there with me. When the pleasure rolled through her and echoed in me, so that just when I thought I was coming down, she fueled another round of waves and moans and sent me spiraling all over again. It lasted so long, and by the time we started fading into weakened throbs, I gained the mind to notice the little things. The vibrations of the waning noises she was making, which tickled beneath the prick of her teeth at my shoulder. The humid heat of her breath against my skin. The air cooling the moisture every time she shifted on my thigh. The sated exhaustion seeping into every fiber of muscle I had, and the similarly quenched fatigue that coursed through her.

It ended all at once, and her jaw released and she pressed a kiss to my shoulder before collapsing on top of me. Neither of us said anything. Between panting for breath and the lingering contentment in our chests and between our legs, neither of us had the energy. We just lay there, her nuzzled into my neck where I knew she was basking in my scent, me with one hand dropped to the side of her arm and the other at the small of her back, cherishing the weight of her above me.

Minutes passed before Camille shifted, lifting enough to peck along my jaw. I raised my hands to cup her face, directing her lips to mine instead. The kisses were soft, slow. Lazy and easy but still so full of affection. I was prepared to follow through with kissing her for hours, but she set her forehead against mine and asked, “What do you want to do today? It’s almost lunch, and we can try and investigate more…”

She didn’t want me to give up on helping, and though my heart soared with appreciation, I wasn’t making today about me. “I think we should stay here,” I told her, bringing one of my hands between us to trace a finger down her chest, “find ways to keep ourselves busy if you get restless.”

She pulled away to look me in the eyes. “Really?” And I almost felt guilty for the uncertainty in her expression, like she thought this morning had been a nice enough break, but I was ready to get back to work. It was even more proof that I needed to show she was still a top contender on my priority list.

I hummed in reply, pushing myself up to catch her lips in another kiss. “Maybe I’ll play that song for you again, and actually sing it this time.”

“Okay.” She grinned, but it faded a moment later when her stomach gave a gravelly rumble. “Lunch first?” she laughed.

I grabbed her face and pulled her down for one last deep kiss. “Lunch sounds good.”

*

The bell for the end of fourth period rang, and because nobody was letting me be alone and Luna had a research project to work on, I was going to be spending the next few hours with Abby. We were supposed to meet in the courtyard at the middle of all the education buildings, so I headed that direction the moment I left class. I could see her on the opposite end of the snowy terrace when I got there, but I stopped at the beverage cart to buy two cups of coffee before crossing over to where she was sitting.

“Hey,” I said, dropping down next to her because it was the only spot of bench on the round table that didn’t have snow on it. She passed me the same nervous smile she had that morning before not looking at me for the entirety of first period, and then her hazel eyes wandered to the second cup I’d set down. I pushed it toward her. “I bought you coffee.”

A crease formed between her eyebrows as she eyed the cup in confusion. “You… bought me coffee?”

“Yeah,” I answered, and she kind of just stared at me, waiting for an explanation or context or something to let her know why when I’d never done it before. “Um.” I chewed the inside of my lip. I hadn’t felt this awkward with her since we first started talking, and it seemed mutual, but I couldn’t spend the day with her without clearing the air. “Okay, we haven’t talked all weekend, and I kind of got the feeling like you were avoiding me in history this morning. Maybe because you think I’m upset about what happened in the gym the other night, but I’m not, so,” I gestured to the drink, “coffee.”

The crease between her eyebrows deepened as she glanced between the drink and me. After a while, she laughed, sounding somewhat relieved. “Let me get this straight,” she said, “what happened at the gym… happens… and you bring me a peace offering?”

“I mean, it’s not really a peace offering,” I said, my cheeks tinting with self-conscious heat, which only made Abby’s smile grow wider. “I just didn’t want things to be awkward because we’re friends now,” her lips pursed to try and contain a grin, “and what happened wasn’t really your fault and I know that and stop laughing, don’t make me regret this.”

“I’m sorry,” she chuckled, briefly grabbing my shoulder with both hands in amused apology. “I’m sorry, it’s just that when you do stuff like this, it’s hard to believe I was ever afraid of you, you’re such a-” My glare cut her off because I knew exactly what she was about to say. Softie. Or marshmallow. She’d probably heard Kyla say it about me, and she snickered and then cleared her throat, saying as seriously as she could, “Never mind.” I rolled my eyes, and a few silent moments passed while she pulled the drink in front of her, clutching it in her hands to soak in the heat. “Thank you, though,” she said, smile gone and in the most genuine way. “It means a lot that you did this. I was too scared to bring it up.”

I nodded, tilting my cup to my lips and noticing how Abby hadn’t taken a drink of hers yet. At that thought, she glanced at me out of the side of her eye, but didn’t say anything and still didn’t take a drink. Maybe it was too hot, but an entire minute passed while she kept looking at me, growing more awkward by the second and just clutching the cup in her hands without taking a sip to try it out.

“You don’t like coffee,” I realized.

“I don’t,” she admitted with a severe wince. “Sorry. I wish I did because this was super sweet of you. I appreciate the gesture, though, I really do.”

“It’s okay,” I said, laughing, “don’t worry about it.” I took her drink and pulled the lid off of both, refilling my cup with hers before tossing her coffee into the nearest trash bin. “What do you like? So I know.”

“Tea,” she answered, “most kinds.” She watched me fit the lid back onto my drink while she said, “I was thinking of going to the Council office to keep digging through archives. Do you want to come?”

They weren’t letting me go anywhere alone... “Do I have much of a choice?”

“We could do something else.”

“Am I allowed to be there?” I asked. She gave a nonchalant shake of the head. “Will your dad get mad if he sees me?”

She hummed in consideration. “Yeah, most likely.”

“Okay,” I agreed. She didn’t say anything as she rose from her seat and threw her backpack over her shoulders, but the smirk on her face was approval enough. I got up to follow her across campus to the dorms where she’d parked her car, and we walked for a minute in silence before I asked, “How was your date, anyway?”

“It was alright,” she answered.

I waited for her to say more, and when she didn’t, I asked, “That’s it? It was alright?”

“Yeah… We had fun, and I always like going to The Orchid. I don’t know, he wasn’t really what I’m looking for.”

He? I did an involuntary double take at her because that wasn’t what I expected, and when she laughed at my thoughts, or my reaction, I was too embarrassed to look at her again. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed.”

“It’s fine,” she said, and clarified, “I’m pansexual.” I opened my mouth to tell her I didn’t know what that meant, but she explained before I could ask. “I can be attracted to people regardless of sex or gender.”

“Oh, okay.” We reached the parking lot and her car, and while she dumped her backpack into the trunk, I asked, “So what are you looking for? If he wasn’t it.”

For a few seconds, while she wandered to the driver’s side and I stepped up to the passenger door, I half-expected her to say Kyla. “You know,” she sighed eventually, setting her forearms on the roof and looking across at me, “sometimes I’m not so sure anymore.”

I didn’t know exactly what to say to that, or where else to look except at her for the long span of moments we both just stood there. Then she pulled open her door, and as I did the same and climbed into the passenger seat, I finally thought of something. “You know what Luna would say?” I asked, and Abby hummed curiously as she pulled out of the parking spot. “She’d say you’ll figure it out, and the date was a waste if you at least didn’t get laid.”

“That does sound like something she’d say,” she laughed. She paused to check for traffic while pulling onto the main road. “There’s nothing wrong with that philosophy,” she added, “but I’ve never really been interested in sex unless there’s emotion involved.” I couldn’t help that it made me wonder about what Luna had asked me. About if Abby and Kyla ever- “No,” Abby blurted, reacting to my thoughts even if she was trying not to. “No, no, we never… I mean we kissed, but even then, she was really thinking about you, so it actually felt more like I was kissing you and-” She stopped short, and I didn’t have to look over to feel the heat rushing to her face. Or maybe that was heat rushing to my face… “Can we please talk about something else?”

“Yeah, that’s good, okay.” But neither of us said anything. We sat there in a silence so tense and awkward that the air felt thick in my throat, and I desperately wished she didn’t have a direct line to my thoughts, because I was trying so hard not to think about it. About her kissing Kyla, or kissing me, or the intimacy they might’ve had and how it compared to what Kyla and I had, or if Kyla would’ve thought of me while they were intimate and-

“Oh my god, Camille, please.”

This was as awkward and frustrating for me as it was for her, and I held out my hands defensively. “What else do you expect me to think about?”

“Literally anything else,” she pleaded.

I didn’t know what else to do, or if it would even help, but I turned on the radio and blasted the volume. Even if she could still hear my thoughts, at least it would help me focus on something else until I managed to stop thinking about that. But maybe she really couldn’t hear my thoughts with the music that loud, because out of the corner of my eye I could see her chest heave with a sigh, and most of the discomfort between us melted away after another minute. In my effort to think about something else, my thoughts took me somewhere I hadn’t expected, and then I started thinking about that instead, and it prompted me to turn the music down.

“Can I ask you something?” I asked, and she nodded. “Kyla gets really distant sometimes, and it puts this… this bad feeling in my stomach because it’s what she’s feeling. Do you know why?”

There was a pause, and then she asked on a clipped breath, "Why are you asking me?"

“Because, well,” I glanced sideways, but she wasn’t looking at me. “You hear things, and she trusts you and I guess I was wondering if you knew… if there was something to know.”

She didn’t say anything for a long span of seconds, but her throat bobbed and her hand tightened on the steering wheel. “This isn’t a conversation we should be having,” she said eventually, but her hand loosened so one finger could tap against the wheel, and her jaw clenched. “Actually, we’re going to have this conversation because you just frustrated the hell out of me.”

I’d never been so instantly confused. “What? How?”

“I’m about to be really blunt,” she said, “but I mean no offense, okay?”

“Okay…”

“For being able to literally feel each other’s emotions,” she said, “your communication can be shit.”

I did take some offense. “Our communication is not that bad.”

“Are you kidding me?” she asked. “The only reason I even stood a chance with Kyla last semester is because you guys couldn’t have one simple conversation about what happened. And you’re still not talking about it. Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to watch you two sometimes, feeling the way I do? You have something amazing- no, legendary, so stop bullshitting around your problems and talk. I’ve been in people’s heads my whole life and I can tell you right now that love is not enough. If you want to know why she gets distant, if you want to know what happened, ask her.”

All I could really do was sit there and stare out the windshield as all of that sank in. It took a while before either of us spoke again, and then Abby said, “I’m sorry if that was harsh.”

“No, it’s,” I cleared my throat, trying to rid the shame because I shouldn’t have asked her that question in the first place, “it’s okay.”

We pulled into the parking lot outside the Council office, and she put the car in park and turned off the engine. “It’s just,” she paused and let out a heavy sigh, “I won’t dance around my feelings for Kyla, we all know they’re there… but regardless of how I feel, I haven’t stuck around in hopes that you and her wouldn’t work out. She loves you so much, and I know she wants to have that talk with you, but you’re both too scared that sometimes talking hurts.”

"I'm sorry I asked," I told her, setting my elbow on the windowpane to rest my head in my hand. “That wasn’t fair to you.”

“You’re concerned,” she said, shrugging, “I get it, and I appreciate you trying to confide in me.”

“I don’t know what happened,” I admitted. “We used to talk pretty well, but then I Changed her and didn’t tell her it was me, and we weren’t together for a while, and now I just don’t understand. I’ve tried asking her, but she always just says she’s fine and I’m too scared of how resistant she’s been to really ask.”

“You have to,” Abby said. “Don’t ask her if she’s okay. Ask her why she’s not.”

I nodded. “Thanks for the advice.”

She offered a smile, repeating, “I haven’t stuck around hoping you guys wouldn’t work out.” I wondered why she had stuck around, and though I wasn’t going to ask, she said, “Kyla’s the kind of friend I don’t want to lose, even if that’s all she’ll ever be.” She shrugged and added, “And I guess you’re sort of growing on me too.” My lips pulled into a smile, and she rolled her eyes and muttered, “Marshmallow,” as she got out of the car.

I got out and followed her to the small office building and through the door. There was a reception desk left of the entrance, a large secluded office to the right, and a floor of half-height cubicles spanning out ahead. A couple of people greeted Abby when we walked in, and I tried to ignore the curious glances and the few glares directed at me as she led the way. We strode to the line of cubicles directly across from the secluded office’s windows, to the nook with Abby’s name on it.

“You have your own desk and everything,” I said. “Fancy.” I leaned against the edge of her desk while she hurried to the next cubicle over, rolling back an extra chair. “What’s that?” I asked, pointing to a room at the very back of the office. It was shielded with one-way glass so I couldn’t see inside, and the door was a heavy security door with key-card entry.

“That’s the arms room,” Abby answered.

“You keep weapons here?”

She hummed an affirmative. “Field ops get their briefings and weapons here before missions.”

“Oh.” I reached for a three-ring binder beside her computer and opened it. “What’s this?” It looked like some sort of journal.

“Case log,” she answered, grabbing it before I could read anything and moving it to the opposite side where I couldn’t reach. “Nothing in there about this case that you don’t already know.” She gestured almost pleadingly to the extra seat, like I was asking too many questions, so we both sat down in our chairs and scooted in. While she booted up her computer, she glanced to the side at the overlooking office, squinting as if to peer through the closed blinds.

There was a small line of books against the short wall on her desk, so I fingered the spines as I read the titles, picking out the one we’d found in Patrick’s room. I set it on the desk in front of me and flipped it open to a random page. “Geshehan gildaeht,” I read in a stumble. “How badly did I butcher saying that?”

“Not too bad,” Abby laughed, typing in her password. “It means ‘to provide gold wealth.’ It’s a riches spell.”

Boring, and not helpful. I flipped to another random page, but most of it was scribbled in writing similar to what was on Devon’s skin and that I couldn’t read. Since Abby’s computer had started up, she clicked an app that opened the Council’s databases. “What are you going to search for now?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “I was just going to search what I already have a million times and hope I get different results.”

"Which is?”

“Occult suicide to start,” she said. “Revenge spells, summoning, casting, and cross-references of every variation of those things. I even searched ghosts just to humor Luna.”

I laughed, but before I could say anything, someone came out of that secluded office and around the corner to the rest of the cubicles. It was Abby’s dad. He scanned over our heads to look for someone, but as he took a step, his gaze dropped to us. He noticed Abby, and then me, and his eyes darkened as recognition dawned. He wasn’t happy about me being here – if it wasn’t the irritation on his face then it was the disgust in the pursing of his lips, but instead of saying anything, he continued in the direction he’d started. He walked over to another Council employee within our line of sight, tossing suspicious glares my direction every few seconds.

“You were not joking about him getting mad,” I whispered.

Abby had had her head down ever since he walked out, but she peered over the top of her computer screen at the same moment he scowled at me again. “He’s probably not happy about the amount of space between us either.”

I looked at her shoulder. “There’s like a foot and a half of space between us.”

“Any less than ten is too little,” she muttered, typing a revenge search into the database. “He’d prefer we didn’t talk at all.” I scooted my chair sideways, narrowing that foot and a half of space to less than an inch and causing Abby’s head to whip my direction. “So you get closer?”

“Your dad can bite me.” I tossed my arm over the back of her seat, leaning into the computer screen like it would help me see better. At the same time I noticed Abby’s lips thin to hold back a smile, I also noticed how her father’s face contorted as he looked over again. “Is he thinking about my contagious werewolf germs now?”

“I actually don’t know,” she admitted. “He found a way to keep me out of his head and I can’t read him anymore.” She stared his direction for a few seconds before snickering, “But he looks pissed.”

I laughed a little, but gestured to the screen with my free hand. “I have a new theory for you.” She hummed curiously and looked over at me, and wow, maybe I was a little too close… I leaned back in my seat. “What if Patrick found out about whatever kind of supernatural Constance is, and he really is possessing her? Not in a ghost way, but in a ‘he transferred his consciousness before death’ kind of way.”

"That's an interesting theory," she mused, and typed in a new search. “As wild as Luna’s suggestions are, possession isn’t a bad guess considering we can’t find an actual connection between Constance and what happened with the Prevost brothers and Devon Nealy.”

She began scrolling through the previews of various sources that had popped up in her search. To kill the minute it would take her to find something, I flipped to another random page of the book we’d found in Patrick’s room. I read the title and the first sentence in my head at least a handful of times before attempting to read it out loud.

“Deof nos Neadwoz,” I read haltingly, “sum deof geclipand purh morwo– this language is a mouthful, how does anyone ever get any magic done?”

“Deof,” said a deep voice from behind us, and Abby and I wheeled around to look at her father because we hadn’t noticed him coming. “Demon of inevitable punishment,” his eyebrows were converged with irritation, “a demon summoned through an act of murder.”

I reached behind me to close the book, partly because that didn’t apply to our case – Patrick had killed himself, not someone else – and partly because I had the feeling I might get murdered should I so much as glance at another Council resource.

"Abby," he said gruffly, “I want to see you in my office.”

“Okay,” she gestured at the computer, “give me one minute, we’re-”

“Now.”

He paced off and around the corner to where the door of his office was. Abby sighed, turning to shut her computer down. “Looks like the fun’s over.” We stood, and I followed her to the front where we stopped between the door to her father’s office and the exit. “Wait here, I’ll be right back.”

She trudged to his office and closed the door behind her so that she disappeared, leaving me standing there by myself. There was nowhere to sit and wait near the entrance of the Council headquarters, and I could feel a few pairs of eyes on me just as there had been when we first walked in, so I settled for leaning back against the wall and pretending I wasn’t being watched. I couldn’t hear much more than muffled murmurs from Abby and her father for the first minute she was in there, but their volumes were steadily rising.

The first words I made out were a growled, “How many more times do I have to tell you?”

"Why don't we try fifty?" Abby spat. "Because I obviously didn’t get it the first hundred.”

"I told you to stay away from them!" her dad shouted. "I tolerated you getting cozy with the mutt because your mother insisted it was harmless, but you will not start bringing animals into this office! Let alone the mutt’s bite-happy sire.” Okay, that stung a little.

“They have names!” Abby roared. “And you could have capable, loyal friends in the Pack if you weren’t too much of an asshole to acknowledge they’re human!”

“Subhuman!”

“Isn’t it the Council’s job to monitor the supernatural world?” Abby snarled. “The world they’re part of? And isn’t it my job as case lead to solve this case in the best way I know how?”

“Your job is to do what I tell you to do,” her dad snapped. “And I’m telling you that whatever foolish crush you have on the danger of them, it’s time to grow up. Stay away from them.”

Abby made an incoherent noise of frustration, threw the door of her father’s office open, and stomped over to grab my hand and haul me out the exit. She let me go the moment we were outside so she could pound across the parking lot to her car. She reached it before I did and set to pacing from end to end, swearing and mumbling furiously, stopping every few trips to kick at a tire.

I came to a halt a couple of feet away and just stood there, still in shock about how quickly their argument had escalated and feeling more than partially responsible for it. I probably wouldn’t have agreed to go if I’d known it was going to be that bad. And if I’d known the kind of berating she had to endure just for spending time with us, I certainly wouldn’t have provoked him. I couldn’t even be mad at her father for calling Kyla a mutt, or for being such a jerk, because I felt too bad for how upset Abby was.

I let her stomp around for a solid minute before asking, “Are you okay?” She stopped, set her elbows on the roof of her car to bury her bright red face in her hands, took in a deep breath, and let it out in a rumbled sigh. All she did to answer was nod without taking her face out of her hands. “I, um,” I began, trying to think of how I could make her feel better, “I’m not much of a hugger, but… you can have one, if it’ll help…”

She straightened away from her car to look at me. “I’m sorry you had to hear the things he said.” And I realized that her face wasn’t red because of her anger. She was embarrassed. “More like mortified,” she corrected, giving an apologetic smile for responding to my thoughts. “I don’t even know what to say. I just hope you don’t think I even remotely feel the way he does about you.”

“I don’t,” I said. She just stood there, staring like she hadn’t heard me and was still trying to recover. “He called me bite-happy, huh?” She met my gaze, her eyebrows knitting with severe apology. “No, it’s totally fine,” I shrugged, “it’s just that I’m really more of a lapdog, so…”

She huffed as she tried to hold back a laugh, but a moment later she did laugh, and she practically fell forward to wrap her arms around my waist and get the hug I offered. I wasn’t exactly expecting it after she hadn’t taken me up on it right away, and I’d never hugged her before, so I was too stunned to return it for the first couple of seconds. I eventually recovered enough to curl my arms around her shoulders, and it lasted a bit longer before she pulled away.

“Thanks,” she said, looking far less upset than she had a minute before. “You and Kyla give the warmest hugs.”

“It’s the werewolf heat,” I suggested. She nodded, but I couldn’t help adding, “Or is it because you have a crush on how dangerous we are?”

“Shut up,” she snickered, striding around to the driver’s side of her car.

But I was enjoying too much how her face had brightened with a smile, so I teased, “Seduced by the peril of having such vicious, contagious friends.”

"Says the lapdog," she quipped. I laughed, climbing into the passenger’s seat and unable to come up with a retort. “You played yourself,” she chuckled.

“I guess I did,” I agreed.

She started the car and left the lot. Neither of us said anything for a little while, but I got the feeling that Abby was in a much better mood, and for the first time, the silence between us was comfortable. It actually seemed like we might even have a nice day in spite of her father, but then there was a loud clang from outside the front of her car. Both of us jumped so bad our butts left our seats. I don’t know if Abby had the same instinct I did, but I thought maybe Constance had been following us and we were being attacked. But then there was a consistent clunking from under the hood as the vehicle slowed.

“Come on, not again,” Abby groaned, pulling off onto the side of the highway. The car came to a complete stop, and she turned off the ignition and fell forward to drop her head against the steering wheel. “Why today, of all days? Am I being punished for my disobedience?”

“Hey, it’s okay,” I said.

“My dad won’t come pick us up after that fight,” she said without lifting her head. “And my mom’s all the way in the city so I’ll have to call a tow truck but that could take hours.”

“I’ll call Luna,” I said. I pulled out my cell phone and clicked her name, but it didn’t even ring once before prompting me to leave a message. “Straight to voicemail… she probably turned it off to study.” Kyla was still in class, and she’d been trying so hard lately to get good grades that we couldn’t ask her to leave early. Abby sighed heavily. “This happens often, huh?” She nodded. “Your dad seems like he could afford to get you a new car…”

She finally sat up only to lean her head back against the seat. “He offered on the condition that I stop associating with werewolves.” I inhaled a breath to ask a question, but I was so stunned by that that nothing came out. I never would’ve guessed the lengths she went to in order to spend time with us. To spend time with Kyla… “It’s not Kyla,” Abby said. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, your girlfriend’s great, but I’d at least lie to my dad about it if she was the only reason.”

“Then why?”

“The principle of it.” She paused to let out another sigh. “He’s wrong about you. The way he thinks and acts isn’t okay and I won’t accept it, not ever.”

If Abby hadn’t already been changing my mind about her since the semester started, that would’ve done it. She had conviction. She was willing to sacrifice her relationship with her own father for something she believed in, for us, and my admiration for her soared. She knew it, too, and she refused to meet my gaze as her cheeks tinted darker in the new silence between us. That is, until she shivered. With the car off, the cold outside was seeping in, and her jacket wasn’t thick enough for staying idle.

“Tell you what,” I said, shrugging out of my own coat. “I’ll Change and run back to school to get the Jeep and come pick you up.”

She took the jacket I was handing to her with a grateful smile and pulled it on over her own, and then asked, “What about your clothes?”

“I keep spares in the car,” I answered, pulling my backpack off the floor and into my lap. “I’ll just hope no one’s around to see me before I can get dressed again.” She didn’t look entirely convinced, but as I reached into my bag to pull out my keys, my motivation evaporated too. “It’s gone…”

“No way,” Abby breathed, shifting and leaning across the center console to see into my hands. Lacey’s California-shaped keychain was missing, and it was clear that we both knew exactly what happened. It was my sentimental item. Somehow, sometime recent, Constance had taken it. Abby sat back in her seat as she said firmly, “You’re not leaving this car or my sight.” She reached into her pocket for her phone. “I’ll text Kyla to come get us when she’s out of class.”

I nodded, but my hand was suddenly trembling as I dropped my keys back into the bag. All of this, the magic and the murders and the threat to my life… it was getting too real. Too close. And none of us knew how to stop it.

Camille was laughing, trying not to while she drove because it didn’t make it easier for her to bite down on the candy I was giving her. Or not giving her. I kept holding it out and then pulling it away when she tried to bite it, and she looked so cute chomping at nothing that I couldn’t resist.

When I did it again, she exclaimed through another laugh, “You’re such a tease!” I tossed the fruit candy into my mouth instead, grinning at her while I chewed obnoxiously.

“Alright,” I agreed, “for real this time.” I took another piece out of the pack and held it in front of her, and she was so distrusting that she inched forward slowly. But I slowly pulled it back and snickered to myself, earning a glare out the side of her eyes. “Alright, alright,” I giggled, and put the piece against her pursed lips. She snatched it so fast with her teeth that she got some of my fingers too. “Ow,” I laughed.

She passed me another lighthearted glare, but was smirking as she teased, “Serves you right.”

I reached over to grab her head, holding her in place while I leaned across the seats to kiss her cheek. She smiled about it for a minute while we continued on the road, pulling through the iron gates and slowing down. After another minute, we’d finally reached our destination at the graveyard, so she pulled the Jeep over on the side of the street that winded through it, parking as close as we could to Lacey’s grave. It’d been a while since we’d visited, but Camille wanted to come this afternoon to apologize – even though she had no control over it, she felt bad that her keychain was gone.

It must’ve been our arrival that caused the sudden shift in Camille’s mood, because as soon as she turned off the engine, she went somber. I thought it was because she was still sad about Lacey, so I asked, “What’s wrong?” to try and get her to talk about it.

“I have to do this before I can’t.” She took a deep breath, but those were nerves I was feeling from her, not sadness, and that was odd… “That’s what I wanted to ask you, actually.”

My eyebrows furrowed because we’d just been laughing and having fun. “What do you mean? I’m fine.”

“Right now you are,” she said, and she was nervous enough that she was staring out the windshield instead of looking at me. “But you’re not always, I can feel it. And I’ve been too scared to push it, but this doesn’t feel like something we shouldn’t talk about. You can talk to me, I hope you know that, especially if it’s because I did something wrong.”

Oh. She was asking. After all these months, she was finally asking. A big part of me was relieved that she’d brought it up, that she was worried enough to push boundaries, because most of the time, her not knowing hurt the most. But there was another part of me that was afraid to say it. Afraid that the walls of composure I’d worked months on building would come crumbling down the moment I said it out loud, or that she’d blame herself for it.

“It ain’t you,” I murmured.

She finally looked over at me, but I looked away. "I won’t force you to talk to me,” she said, “but I wish you would.”

I took a deep breath, and held it for a while to work up the courage to say it. To tell her exactly what happened. “You remember when,” I swallowed around the name, “when Jonathan kidnapped me and Luna?” She nodded. “Well, he didn’t just kidnap me…” She inhaled as if to say something, but nothing came out, and even though her eyes widened and her face paled with realization, I explained anyway. I told her everything. Every detail I could remember. It was uncomfortable, and I wanted to shut down the thoughts and memories before they could hurt me, but I got through it. And to my surprise, I didn’t break down. It did hurt, but not nearly as much as I thought it would, and it didn’t scare me or make me feel as fragile as it used to, and knowing that I’d healed even this much was healing on its own. But then I felt exactly what I didn’t want to in the connection. Guilt. “You’re blaming yourself,” I muttered, “that’s why I never told you.”

“Kyla,” she shifted in her seat to face me more wholly, “how I feel is the least important thing right now. Are you okay?”

"Yeah," I said, but that wasn’t entirely true and we both knew it. “I don’t know… Most the time.”

She swallowed hard, and no matter what emotions I could feel from her – guilt, anger, sadness, discomfort – she was trying her best to stay calm. To respond the way I needed her to, and that made me feel better about this too. Made me feel less afraid of what she’d do or say, and the discomfort I had in talking about it lessened just a little. “I’m sorry,” she said, and when she held out her hand, I put my own into it. “That it happened. And that you had to deal with it alone.”

“Not really alone,” I admitted.

“Abby,” Camille said knowingly, and I nodded, watching her to see if that upset her. To see if there was any jealousy that Abby had known things about me that she didn’t. There was none, and she seemed to recognize what I was thinking, because she said, “It’s okay. I’m glad you had someone to talk to if you wanted, even if it wasn’t me.” My lips pursed with a thankful smile. “Is there anything I can do? Do I ever do things that make you uncomfortable?”

“No,” I said, “I never feel anything but safe with you.” She brought my hand up to her mouth so she could press soft kisses to the back. “To tell you the truth, sometimes what bothered me most was that I couldn’t bring myself to tell you. I felt like I was lying, but I couldn’t do it.”

“Hey,” she said, kissing my hand again, “it’s okay. You weren’t ready to tell me on your own, and that’s okay.”

“I guess, if you feel me closing off,” I glanced down to think about it, “you could hug me. That’ll help.”

“I can do that,” she said with a smile. “And if you ever want to talk about it, or, I don’t know, even cry, I’m here for you.”

“I know,” I said, squeezing her hand in thanks. “But I think I’m fine, or I will be. I’m dealing with it, and even though you make me feel safe, I feel safer because I don’t need you.” I winced, because that kind of came out wrong. “I mean I can protect myself now.”

Camille huffed with laughter. “I understand. I’m glad.” But then her eyes squinted in thought, and she said, “Wait, that’s why you’ve been training a lot, and why you want to help solve this case so much.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Shit, Kyla.” She shook her head, letting out a heavy breath. “I’m sorry it took me so long to do this.” I shrugged, because I’d never thought it was her fault, and I felt worlds better now that we were talking about it. “Maybe Abby was right.”

“About what?” I asked.

"Our communication could use some work,” she said, and she chuckled when I couldn’t help cracking a smile. “We’ve both kept things from each other,” she said more seriously, “we shouldn’t do that anymore. We need to talk, even if it’s hard.”

I pulled my hand from hers to hold up my pinky finger. “We’ll both do better?”

"Yeah," she agreed, hooking her smallest finger with mine, "I promise.”

“Me too.”

“And, Kyla?” she prompted. I hummed that I was listening. “Talking means even if it’ll make me feel guilty.” I gave an embarrassed laugh and glanced away, but she set her fingers under my chin to draw my gaze back. “I’m serious. Even when I do feel guilty, I know it’s bullshit because I know you don’t blame me for any of this. Whatever I feel is my responsibility, please don’t let it keep you from telling me how you feel.”

“I won’t,” I assured her, and I meant it, and I leaned across the middle to kiss her. When we separated, she glanced out the windshield again, staring for a few moments in thought and then letting out another heavy sigh. It seemed she was about to say something to me when she looked over again, but then my phone started ringing. “It’s Abby,” I said, checking the caller ID. Camille gestured for me to answer, so I did and put her on speakerphone. “Hey.”

She didn’t even say hi, just went straight into asking, “Who’s with Camille?”

“Me,” I answered. “What’s wrong?”

“There was another killing last night.” She paused, a disappointed breath coming loud through the phone. “I don’t know where Camille’s at on Constance’s shit list, but don’t let her out of your sight.”

"Alright," I said.

“Not even for a second,” Abby insisted.

“I won’t, Abs,” I assured her, “don’t worry.”

She let out another heavy breath, and Camille leaned in and asked with some hesitation, “…Who was it?”

"Another student," Abby answered after a brief pause. "A member of a local coven. A powerful coven, actually." There was no missing the stress in her voice. “Now they’re pissed and want to know why the case hasn’t been solved yet, and my dad’s bringing the heat and I don’t know what else to do. We have no idea how to find Constance, or who her next target is.”

"Are you okay?” I asked. I’d never known her to let pressure get to her like this, especially when it came from her father. “Want us to meet you somewhere?”

She almost sounded relieved as she asked, “Are you busy?”

“We’re visiting Lacey,” I answered gently, because Lacey was both her and Camille’s loss. “We can come after.”

“Okay,” she agreed. “Thanks. And hey, Camille?”

Camille gave a curious glance at the phone in my hand while she asked, “Yeah?”

“Let her know I still think about her.”

"I will.”

"See you soon," Abby said, and hung up.

Camille and I got out of the Jeep, and I slipped my hand into hers as we walked, hugging that same arm. I could feel that she appreciated the affection and support, but once we reached Lacey’s grave, I let her go. I stood to the side while she squatted down in front of the headstone, giving her some space and as much time as she needed in order to say what she wanted.

She talked about the case, about how quiet and distant Eli had been, mentioned Abby and laughed about the fact that they were friends. She apologized for losing the keychain, and joked about how they might see each other sooner than anticipated if we couldn’t solve the case. She tried to laugh at that but couldn’t, and there was a darkening in the already somber connection as she fell quiet. For a little while, she simply stayed there, head down and not saying anything. Then she murmured a goodbye and stood.

It looked like she was ready to leave, but I saw the sorrow on her face even if I hadn’t been able to feel it, so I trudged over and slipped my arms through her open jacket, wrapping them around her waist. Her arms curled around my shoulders while her face buried against my neck. I hugged her for a long minute as she stayed nuzzled there, breathing in my scent and taking in the comfort I tried to send through the connection, letting it relieve some of her heartache.

Eventually, she pulled away, and said, “Thanks,” while I kissed her on the cheek.

"You gonna be alright?" I asked, hands still on her hips in case she needed another hug.

“Yeah,” she nodded, “I-” She stopped short, her nostrils flaring as she inhaled a breath through her nose. “Did you smell that?”

I’d noticed the small breeze that picked up, but I hadn’t smelled anything out of the ordinary. Nothing but the crisp snow and dirt and the flowers on various graves. “What?”

She turned, seeking the source while she murmured, “Blood.”

I stuck my nose in the air and sniffed. “You sure?”

“Yeah,” she whispered, “it was-” She turned completely and took a few steps farther into the graveyard. “It was fresh. Where…” She wandered off toward the right while I followed, inhaling deeply before she decided that was wrong and headed off to the left. She paced around for a minute searching for the scent before another breeze finally kicked in. “There,” she said, and she hurried off at a jog to follow it.

I trailed her close, and we’d only been after it for fifty yards before I started to smell it too. It was blood, and it was fresh. Camille led the way almost to the opposite end of the cemetery, the subtle scent gaining in strength until she came to a stop in front of a family tomb. It was beneath an old massive oak tree, whose leaves and branches were so thick it was the greenest and most snow-free plot here. The earth-set gravestone beneath the tree was as long and wide as a casket. It was also slightly off center, revealing an edge of deep darkness hidden beneath from which the smell of blood was rich.

“The dead don’t smell like that,” Camille said. She glanced around the empty graveyard and then squatted, easily lifting the heavy stone enough to move it completely sideways. It revealed an opening that dropped down into a cavern, and Camille held her head sideways over it, listening for movement from below before glancing at me and asking, “You agree we have to go down there, right?”

I nodded my full consent, but when she stuck one leg out to prepare to jump in, I grabbed her shoulder. “Me first.” With everything that was going on, there was no way she was going alone into a place that reeked of blood for any amount of time. She looked hesitant about it, but I didn’t give her a chance to protest. I hopped straight into the hole, my feet hitting packed earth about ten feet beneath the surface, and I immediately tensed to prepare for attack. None came, and after a brief glance around, I called up, “It’s empty.”

Camille thudded down at my side, and as we both stood there for a few moments, letting the heavy metallic scent of blood wash over us, a shiver went up my spine. It wasn’t just because the air was at least ten degrees colder in here either. This crypt was eerie. There was something about it, some otherworldly instinct in my stomach that made this place feel far from right. It felt haunted, and deadly, and unwelcoming. As if the spirits that belonged to whoever was in the coffins set in the stone walls didn’t want us here. But we needed to be here, because there were more scents underlying the staggering strength of blood.

“Kyla,” Camille said quietly, and took in a deep breath that echoed in the cavern, “is that…?”

“Devon Nealy’s scent,” I confirmed.

It was so faint, but it was there along with two others, and we didn’t need to follow it to where the smell of blood was strongest, because our night vision let us see it. The shadow of dried blood beneath the only coffin-empty wall across from us. The sets of shackles above it secured about three-quarters of the way up. My stomach tightened so fiercely in response to the sight that I couldn’t even swallow, but it wasn’t my own fear. It was Camille’s. There was no mistaking what had happened here. This was where Constance had killed Devon and Alvin, and the newest victim last night, before taking their bodies elsewhere. Camille was facing the very death that awaited her if Constance managed to get a hold of her.

I reached out for her hand, trying to offer some comfort. “It’s okay. We won’t let her take you.”

“It’s not okay,” she muttered, and her fear shifted to anger. “I don’t care about me anymore. We have to stop her before she does this to anyone else.” She pulled her hand from mine and reached into her pocket to grab her cellphone.

“What’re you doing?”

“Calling the cops,” she answered.

I grabbed her before she could even unlock the screen. “You can’t.”

“This is a crime scene, Kyla,” she argued. “It’s the only lead for solving the case.”

“Exactly,” I said with urgency, “it’s the only lead. If the cops come, it’ll scare Constance away. Then she’ll take the killing somewhere else and we’ll lose the only place we know where to find her.”

She considered it for a moment while her eyes wandered around the crypt, and then nodded and shoved the phone back into her pocket. “Let’s go,” she folded her fingers together and lowered them to create a step, “I’ll boost you up.”

“You first this time,” I said, and when her eyebrows furrowed curiously, I added, “I ain’t leaving you in the murder pit by yourself.”

She stepped into my hands when I put them together like she had, and at the same time as she jumped, I pushed upward. We were both strong enough that it tossed her clear up, and I could only imagine she landed easily on her feet before lying down and extending an arm through the opening to me. I jumped and grabbed her hand, and she pulled me the rest of the way.

Once we reached the Jeep, we called Abby to see where she wanted us to meet her. She was at the school library, and told us to bring our laptops and have Luna come too. It didn’t take us long to get back to campus and retrieve our computers from my dorm room, and by the time we found Abby in a secluded corner of the library between two rows of bookshelves, Luna was already with her.

The first thing I did while Abby stood to greet us was try and see on her face how she was feeling – she’d sounded so tense on the phone that I’d been a little worried. “I’m good,” she said, but she still accepted it with a grateful smile when my arms wrapped around her neck for a hug. She curled her arms around my waist and added, “Just frustrated.”

“What’d your dad say?” I asked, feeling her exhale against me at the question.

“He said I’m not taking this seriously enough,” she answered, “and if there’s another death, I won’t be case lead again for a long time.”

I let her go, briefly cupping her face as I said, “We’ll figure it out.”

She nodded, and we turned to face Camille and Luna. Camille had plopped down across from Luna and stretched her legs out across the aisle, so I sat opposite her and kicked my feet out too, Abby doing the same at Camille’s side so we staggered down the row.

“So what happened?” Camille asked Abby. “Who was it?”

“Some senior named Bonnie Bryant,” she answered. “She was the niece of End Mountain Coven’s High Priestess, Mina Malum. Now End Mountain wants answers and they’re threatening to seek vengeance themselves if the Council doesn’t end it.”

“Was Bonnie practicing?” Luna asked, and Abby nodded. “Do we know who she killed?”

“Not yet,” Abby said. “But the police are questioning people close to her, and my Council contact in the force will call me as soon as he has anything.”

“Where’d they find her?” I asked.

“In her dorm room,” she answered. “Seeing as there was never a murder in that room before, I think it’s safe to say that whoever Bonnie killed, she did it with magic. Plus, she was found with a hex bag and a stuffed animal.”

I motioned to all our laptops. “What’d we bring these for?”

“If you’re up for an all-nighter,” Abby said, “I want to research. Everything. I want to know if there’s a connection between Constance and Patrick that we missed. I want to know everything I can about Bonnie that my contact won’t learn. And I want to know who Constance’s next victim will be if it’s not Camille, and that means searching everyone related to this school to see who might’ve been involved in a murder.”

“All-nighter is right…” Luna mumbled, but when Abby looked across at her, she said more seriously, “I’m up for it.”

"Camille and I have something else to tell you,” I said. “Something big.” Abby and Luna listened intently while Camille and I told them about the graveyard, and we spent the rest of the long night researching anything that we could.

*

The next morning, I woke in the same slouched spot on the library floor that I’d fallen asleep on. Comfortable warmth surrounded me, and we’d been up so late that it was hard to crack my eyes open.

“Don’t move,” Luna murmured, a playful tenor in her voice as I focused my sleep-blurred vision across the aisle at her, “you’ll wake your girlfriends.”

“What?” I asked groggily, but then I picked my head up off the shelf behind me enough to see where all the warmth was coming from. Kyla had deliberately situated herself between my legs and fallen asleep with her head on my thigh, but Abby – it seemed unwittingly – had fallen over onto me too, and I was slouched enough that her head was on my stomach, her arm thrown across my hips.

Luna let out a quiet laugh. “Looks like when you and Kyla got back together, you got a two for one.”

“Shut up,” I mumbled, raising one hand to rub at my eyes. “If I could move, I’d smack you.”

“But you won’t,” she teased, “because you don’t want to wake your girlfriends.”

I couldn’t help chuckling a bit, but the movement woke Abby. She stirred, shifting on my abdomen while her hand set on my hip, pushing herself up an inch as if trying to figure out where she was. But then she realized, and she pushed off of me quickly.

“Sorry,” she said, and I couldn’t tell if her cheeks were rosy with sleep or a blush. She also shivered with the sudden lack of heat I’d been providing and pulled her knees up to her chest, and I kind of felt the chill too.

Luna was laughing about the awkwardness of it, so I glared across the aisle at her and mouthed, “Don’t,” because I just knew she’d tease one of us. She rolled her eyes. "What time is it?" I asked.

Luna didn’t bother checking a clock before answering, “Time to eat.”

I bent forward, brushing Kyla’s hair away from her face and pressing a kiss to her temple. “Hey, wake up,” I whispered, “we have class soon.”

She hummed her acknowledgment, nuzzling against my leg with reluctance to rise while she asked, “Do we have time for breakfast?”

"Like I’d let you sleep through breakfast," Luna answered.

While each of us rose and gathered our stuff, Abby added, “We can go over what we found while we eat.”

We all left the library and headed to the cafeteria in our dorm building to get some food. Constance wasn’t working any of the lines, which was expected seeing as we still hadn’t seen her since the junkyard. After filling our trays, we wandered to the most secluded table we could find in the otherwise full cafeteria, plopping down around it and ready to debrief.

"Luna," Abby prompted, "did you find a connection between Patrick and Constance?”

Luna hummed a negative through a full mouth, swallowing down the pancake before answering more wholly. “I searched through every yearbook since they’d been here, scoured the school newspaper to see if I could find any pictures of them even close to each other… nothing. They weren’t friends or followers on any social media accounts either, barely even friends of friends. Only connection I could see is that their dorms were next to each other.”

Abby visibly held back a sigh, and then glanced between Kyla and me. “Did you find any suspects for her next victims?”

Kyla nodded. “She might be close to exhausting her pool of killers at this school, but there was one other death that Constance might want revenge for.”

"What was it?"

I filled in with what I’d found on my laptop, “It’s a pretty obvious one, I think. Noah Guerrero. He’s a senior now, but when he was a sophomore on the baseball team, he struck a ball that accidentally hit a player on the other team in the head. Kid died.”

“And Constance doesn’t care about accidents,” Kyla added.

"I know him," Luna said. “He’s in one of my classes. That’s why he looks like he’s got baggage…”

“Is that the class Constance is in too?” Abby asked.

“That’s the one,” Luna answered. “She hasn’t been showing up though.”

"Can you keep an eye on him? As regularly as possible? I can get you a copy of his class schedule.”

Luna shrugged. “Sure.”

While I took another big bite of my breakfast and washed it down with coffee, Kyla asked Abby, “What did you find out?”

"I got a text from my police contact,” she answered. “End Mountain gave the police as little as possible, but they’ll work with the Council. Alexa Payne – she was a friend and coven sister of Bonnie’s – she agreed to talk to me first thing this morning.” Abby glanced at me. “If you want to ditch history, you can come.” I nodded my agreement. “I also skimmed my digital translated copy of the spell book we found in Patrick’s room… again… but everything in it is so vague. If our spell is in there, there’s nothing about the marks on any of our victims.”

I sighed, wondering aloud, “Where did Patrick get the spell if it wasn’t in that spell book?”

“I don’t know,” Abby mumbled. She shook her head, abandoning her fork to stare at the surface of the table. “It has to be that book, but none of the spells required suicide, and all the herbs in that bowl in Patrick’s room were too charred to know what they were.” Her phone started ringing, and she looked confused about who’d be calling her this early until she glanced at the screen. She put the phone to her ear. “Dad?” Whatever he said next, her face fell. “Last night?” He went on for almost half a minute. “I’m trying.” There was another long pause. “Yeah, I’ve made progress, but-”

She pulled the phone away from her ear because of how loudly her dad yelled, “Stop playing with the wolves and close the damn case, Abby!”

He wasn’t finished, but Abby hung up on him and dropped her head onto the surface of the table. “Shit.”

“What happened?” Kyla asked.

Abby sat up and sighed. “Constance broke into the office last night.”

“What?” I asked. “Why?”

She shrugged. “She got into the arms room, but she broke the camera and they can’t tell what she took.”

"That’s good though, right?” Luna asked. “All the weapons are still there?” Abby nodded.

"Why'd she even need to go there?" Kyla asked. “What’s the Council got to do with any of her next victims?”

"I don't know," Abby whispered, shaking her head in frustration. "Fuck, I don't know." She pushed her food away. “I need to see Alexa.”

We’d eaten enough, and it was clear that Abby wouldn’t be able to stomach anything else through the stress. Kyla and Luna had to go to their first periods anyway, so I took my coffee with us as Abby and I headed out of the cafeteria and to the elevator, going up a few floors to the level that Kyla and Abby’s rooms were on. I’d thought we were going to Alexa’s room, but then we stopped in front of a somewhat familiar door, though it was one I’d never been on the other side of.

“Oh,” Abby said, realizing she hadn’t explained because she’d been so deep in thought while we walked. “I wanted to change really quick, if that’s okay.”

I nodded, and she led the way into her room. I shut the door behind us as she dropped her backpack and laptop on the desk on her side of the two-person dorm. While she wandered over to her dresser to begin fishing out fresh clothes, I went to sit on the edge of her desk and wait. But I noticed something while I plopped down – the protection charm her father had given her was missing from the handle of her bag. Part of me wondered if it had anything to do with the fight they’d had about me being at the Council office, or even about her not having solved the case yet.

I met Abby’s gaze, and she could hear me thinking about it, but she gave an awkward smile and said, “It’s nothing, don’t worry about it.” There was something in her eyes that told me I should worry about it, but I didn’t get the chance to ask before she murmured, “Um,” and gestured awkwardly with the clothing in her hand, “I’m not used to stripping with an audience…” Maybe it was my distraction with that unfamiliar look in her eyes, but I simply blinked at her because it didn’t register right away what she was implying. “That’s more of a werewolf thing,” she added.

Then it dawned. “Oh, right.” I stood up and turned around while my cheeks shaded, too embarrassed now to worry about what she wasn’t telling me. “Sorry.” But even though she let out a soft laugh, I felt so awkward, and being in here when this happened felt completely different than it had outside Alvin’s house when I’d been about to Phase. “You know what?” I said hastily. “I’ll go change too.”

I hurried out and down the hall to Kyla’s room, dropping off my backpack and computer and then changing into a simple three-quarter sleeve shirt and jeans. Abby was already finished and waiting for me when I went back into the hall.

“Have you ever met Alexa before?” I asked as I followed her back to the elevator. I was somewhat curious, but mostly I just wanted to help get her mind off the stress her father was putting her under.

“Not personally,” she answered. “But I know who she is, I’ve seen her around.” She pushed the button for the first floor. “I should warn you… you know how my dad and some Council members have a certain mindset about some supernaturals?”

“Yeah.”

We stepped off the elevator, and she led the way toward the exit so we could go to another dorm building. “Well,” she said, “a lot of witches and warlocks tend to think of themselves as an elite species, and End Mountain is sort of a connoisseur of the mindset.”

“And the Council wonders why we’d rather live in blissful ignorance than assimilate,” I mumbled.

“If you don’t want to come…” Abby said apologetically.

I shook my head. I was involved in this case whether I'd wanted to be or not, and I wasn’t supposed to be alone and Kyla and Luna were already in class. "It’s fine, I’ll come.”

We walked the rest of the way to the farthest building, and then strode through the first floor to the dorm’s common room. There was a girl in there already, sitting on one of the two couches with a coffee and a magazine. She looked up when we walked in, and stood to meet us halfway on our trek over, tossing her magazine onto the table a couple of feet away.

“Abby?” she asked. She was dressed in a burgundy pea coat and black jeans, her heeled boots making her a few inches taller than Abby. Her curly black hair was pulled into a tight bun, showing off her nice cheek bones and flawless sepia skin.

Abby nodded, sticking out her hand. “Thanks for meeting with me.”

“It’s not like I wanted to,” Alexa answered without shaking, “but Mina’s furious that I knew about Bonnie abusing magic and didn’t tell anyone, so she’s giving me no choice.”

“Okay,” Abby murmured, “well-”

“Who are you?” she interrupted, brown eyes training on me. “Mina didn’t mention you, are you Council?”

“Camille,” I answered.

“A woman of many words…” She looked me up and down with a critical review, her focus eventually fixing on the tattoo on the inside of my left arm. “A werewolf?” she asked, meeting my gaze again, her eyes glimmering with some sort of new excitement that I immediately didn’t like. “I always wondered who on campus was Pack, but you’re so good at hiding the animal in public, I could never tell.” She brushed between Abby and me to work around me in a slow circle. The scrutiny and condescension in her stare put me on edge. “You are a specimen.”

“Alexa,” Abby said, and I was getting to know her well enough that I could hear the irritation in her voice, “we’re here to-”

Alexa held up a hand, the pure entitlement of the gesture cutting Abby off short. “I’ve heard that parts of you are always mostly wolf,” she mused, coming back around to the front of me. She got inches from my nose, studying my eyes and the rest of my face. “Like your senses.” Then she eyed my throat, a look that set my instincts into an anxious defense mode. “Or your vocal cords.” Her lips pulled into a smirk. “Give me a growl.”

I wanted to growl ‘fuck off,’ but I was here with Abby, which meant that in some way, I was representing the Council too. Nor could I truly react, especially physically, because if I lashed out or responded the way my instincts wanted me to, word would undoubtedly get back to Abby’s father. I couldn’t do that to her. Couldn’t get her in more trouble with him than she already was.

“Growl,” Alexa said again, but this time the demand was almost aggressive.

“Stop,” Abby told her. Alexa ignored her, staring me down, waiting. “Alexa, do not-”

Alexa gave a flick of her right wrist, her voice firm as she commanded, “Dhiet.”

A growl swelled in my chest and was ripped from my throat, but I’d already been tense, and the instant realization that she’d just used magic on me made my instincts rage. Halfway through, my fury turned the growl into a full-blown snarl. Before Abby even had time to react, I’d surged forward, backing Alexa into the heavy table beside her with my teeth bared. And I don’t know if it was my anger or the magic, but I could feel the tingle of a Change rippling beneath the surface of my flesh.

Horror had crossed Alexa’s face the moment I reacted, but it faded into an amused laugh not seconds later. “That was brilliant.” She eased forward to back me up a step, apparently not feeling as threatened as she should’ve, because had she actually felt like a threat, then I would’ve already had my teeth in her throat. “You really would make amazing sentries for the rest of us.”

She reached out, seeming intent on grabbing my upper arm to feel the muscle beneath my shirt, but Abby snatched her wrist in an iron grip before she could put her hand on me. “If you pull something like that again,” Abby spat, throwing Alexa’s arm away, her voice low and her eyes narrowed with rage, “I’ll let her break your magic wielding wrist, and your reprimand for keeping Bonnie’s abuse a secret will come from the Council level. Don’t ever touch her.” She tossed a deliberate look at the couches. “Sit down.”

Alexa brushed past us still looking smug, and Abby maneuvered into her place between me and the table. “Camille?” she whispered, voice low enough that she knew only I could hear. “I’m sorry.” She grabbed my face to get me to look at her, and god, if only she knew how dangerous it was for her to touch me right now. I no longer doubted whether it was my anger or the magic. It was the magic. It’d pulled the wolf to the surface in a way that I couldn’t control, and this was why I hated the occult. My fists were balled at my sides as I fought the itching of my skin, and having heard my thoughts, Abby pulled her hands away swiftly. “I’m sorry,” she repeated under her breath, “I didn’t think she’d do something like that.” She reached out like she wanted to touch me again and was struggling not to. “I need you to relax, please. I’m sorry.”

I shut my eyes tight and took in a deep breath, using the air to will away the need for Change. It took a few moments, but I managed to relax and regain the control that the magic had stolen, and Abby sighed with relief when I opened my eyes again and met her gaze. The first coherent thought that went through my mind afterward was that bitch.

One corner of Abby’s mouth twitched with a smile, but she said, “I won’t let her do that again, I promise.”

“Is that even legal?”

She cleared her throat uncomfortably. “You’re not protected by Council law…” I rolled my eyes. “But if she tries it again, I give you permission to hurt her.”

I shook my head, tossing a scowl over my shoulder. “I won’t stoop.”

“Okay,” Abby said, “then I’ll hurt her.”

I couldn’t help chuckling a bit, and Abby’s defensiveness over me helped make me feel better. “It’s fine, I don’t want you getting in trouble.”

“I’m waiting,” Alexa called.

Abby’s lips pursed with annoyance, but we both turned to head to the couch opposite of the one she was sitting on. Instead of following me straight to a seat, however, Abby passed by behind her. She leaned down by Alexa’s ear and whispered with a disturbing amount of calm, “Next time you want to play dangerous games with a werewolf, just remember that they don’t answer to the Council.” But while she whispered, she was looking across at me, and she winked at the same time as Alexa’s eyes widened with realization.

I held back a smirk, and it seemed a more than appropriate time to let a rumbling growl emanate from my chest. Alexa swallowed visibly, and even though she said, “You don’t scare me,” her voice wavered. That was satisfying, and I nudged Abby gratefully with my shoulder when she plopped down on the couch beside me.

"So," Abby began, sounding as pleased as I felt, “you and Bonnie were friends?”

It took a second for Alexa to recover, but then she went back to that same defiant attitude. “We weren’t friends anymore,” she answered. “Just coven sisters.”

“Mina said you were close,” Abby pointed out.

“We were,” she answered impatiently, “but then she found out I slept with her boyfriend.”

Aw, I thought sarcastically, just when I was starting to like her… And having heard it, Abby jammed her elbow into my ribs, barely managing to suppress a snort. “Regardless of whether you were friends or not,” she said with some difficulty, “I was told you had information relevant to this case.”

“That was relevant,” Alexa sneered. “Bonnie killed him because of it.”

“She-” Abby hesitated in disbelief. “She killed him for cheating?” Alexa nodded. “Let me guess, with a hex?”

“Under his car seat; never knew what hit him.” Alexa shrugged. “She told me it was my punishment for being a backstabber.”

There was a long pause, and then Abby repeated, “Punishment?” under her breath.

“I didn’t even like him that much,” Alexa continued. “I didn’t think she did either.”

“Punishment…” Abby muttered again.

“But she was so pissed that I was still kind of waiting for her to punish me too.”

Abby’s hand slammed down over my thigh, fingers grabbing my knee and scaring me so badly that my stomach flipped. At the back of my mind, I registered another spark at her touch that didn’t feel entirely like shock, but it was clear that she’d thought of something, something important, and she asked Alexa, “Anything else you need to tell me?”

“No…”

“Okay,” Abby took her hand off my thigh to wave it toward the door, “go away now, thanks.” Alexa scoffed and stomped out the door, but the moment she was gone, Abby rose. “Oh my god.”

"What?" I asked.

“Oh my god,” she repeated, pacing in front of me. “So stupid, Abby.”

“What?”

“Of course it’s punishment. So freaking stupid.”

“Abby.”

She stopped pacing. “What building is Luna in right now?”

“…Literature…”

“Come,” she said urgently, grabbing me by the wrist and yanking me off the couch and out the door. “I have to go to the Council office, right now, but I can’t take you in case my dad’s there.”

“Okay,” I agreed, beginning to follow her across campus. “You want to shed some light on this revelation you just had?”

"It's not revenge," she said. “Ugh, we’ve been looking at it all wrong. Revenge is personal, and often messy, and unique to a circumstance. Constance doesn’t know these people, not really, and her process is meticulous. It’s punishment.”

“How does that help?”

“You remember the spell you were looking at in Patrick’s book when my dad caught us at the office?” I hummed a noncommittal agreement. “Deof nos neadwoz,” she said, “demon of inevitable punishment.” My eyebrows furrowed with surprise. “And the charred piece of paper in the bowl in Patrick’s room? It wasn’t for Devon Nealy. D-E, N-E-A. Deof nos neadwoz.”

“Holy shit,” I breathed. She threw open the door of the literature building, and I trailed her in. “But wait, that demon was supposed to be summoned through an act of murder. Patrick committed suicide.”

“I know,” she agreed, catching sight of Luna through a windowed door and stopping outside it. “That’s why I need to go to the office and figure this out. I’ll come meet you guys as soon as I have answers, keep your phones on.”

She was already jogging back down the hall, and I called after her, “Be safe!”

Having seen us, Luna slipped out of her class with her backpack over her shoulders. “What’s up?”

I watched Abby disappear out the door before meeting Luna’s curious gaze. “I think we just had a breakthrough.”

My feet thundered across the carpet for the countless time, and I reached the end of my dorm room and wheeled around to pace back in the opposite direction. Abby should arrive any minute to tell us what she found – and she had found something, I heard it in her voice when she called. But it was taking her forever. She’d been at the Council office all day. She’d missed dinner, and it was dark out, and whatever information she had could save Camille’s life.

“Kyla,” Luna groaned as I passed where she was sitting on the bed again, “you’re driving me nuts.”

"Sorry." I stopped in the middle of the room, but I didn’t know what else to do, so I stood there shifting on my feet.

Until Camille reached out from her seat on the edge of the desk. “Come here.” I went over and let her turn me around, pulling me back against her so she could wrap her arms around my waist. “She’ll be here soon.”

I nodded, absorbing her warmth and her forced calm and cherishing the way she nuzzled into the back of my neck. It relaxed me enough that I didn’t fidget so much for the remaining minutes that we waited. Fourteen minutes, to be exact, which was eight minutes longer than it should’ve taken for her to arrive. The moment she knocked on my dorm room door, I paced over and threw it open, a breathed ‘finally’ on the tip of my tongue.

“Don’t say it,” Abby muttered, brushing past me into the room. “My dad caught me on my way out of the office and had questions and wanted to know the plan and why I was rushing out and who I was in such a hurry to see.” She groaned and fell onto her back on the bed. The rest of us just stared at her, watching her lie there for almost a minute before she realized nobody had said anything. She sat up again, glancing around at us.

“Well?” Luna prompted.

“You know what we’re up against?” I asked.

Abby nodded. "I spent the whole day compiling information from the most obscure sources. God, it took forever.”

It was clear she’d been working hard and that she only wanted a minute to catch her breath, but we’d been waiting for so long, and I was anxious. “And?”

She inhaled deeply, letting the breath out slowly before finally answering, “Deof nos neadwoz, like I thought. Demon of inevitable punishment.”

Luna said, “Did I mention demons are worse than ghosts?”

“You’re not wrong,” Abby agreed. “Its sole purpose is to avenge wrongful deaths in a ritual, but it serves both the victim and the killer.”

“What do you mean?” Camille asked.

“It seeks justice for the wronged, but it also ensures that the wrongdoer is cleansed and rested in peace.”

“With the ritual,” I said.

Abby nodded. “The ritual calls for spirit of the crime, spirit of innocence lost, and spirit of justice. In this case, the items related to the crime – the alcohol, the bullet, the hex bag; and the sentimental items related to innocence – Devon’s girlfriend’s bracelet, the picture of Alvin’s daughter, Bonnie’s stuffed animal-”

“Lacey’s keychain,” Camille whispered, and Abby’s downward glance was confirmation enough.

“But what would your spirit of the crime be?” Luna asked Camille. “You killed him with your teeth.” My eyes widened, a similar look of horror crossing Abby’s face as Camille visibly shuddered, her lips pursing tight. Luna prompted in distraction, “What is the spirit of justice?”

“The blood,” I answered readily, “on their foreheads.”

“Right,” Abby said. “The demon’s blood, or, you know, Constance’s.”

“Why move the bodies to the murder sites?” Camille asked.

“To prevent exactly what Luna was afraid of – vengeful ghosts. If a victim’s spirit lingers where they were killed, by showing them that their murder was avenged, the demon sets them free.” Abby pulled her legs onto the bed and folded them beneath her. “The cemetery was a deliberate spot for the ritual, too. Once our killers are cleansed, they’re killed – at the graveyard – where they can be at rest.”

"How did Patrick summon the demon, though?” Camille asked. “I thought it was summoned through murder.”

“It’s supposed to be,” Abby confirmed. “Everything this demon does operates on a what-goes-around-comes-around cycle. If someone wants revenge or justice enough that they’re willing to summon it, then they have to be willing to pay the ultimate price.”

“Patrick clearly was,” Luna pointed out.

“Yeah, but he was supposed to sacrifice someone else, and in doing so, become a killer himself. It would summon the demon to possess him, giving him the means to carry out justice, and once it was done, the cycle would end with Patrick’s death. Only, I guess he couldn’t kill someone else and murdered himself instead, leaving the demon without a host.”

“So…” I asked, “it possessed the next closest person?”

“Exactly.”

“Didn’t I say that?” Luna exclaimed. “I told you she was possessed!”

“And I feel pretty damn stupid. It was right there this whole time.” Abby shrugged. “The demon had to be masking her scent, too, just like it was masking her thoughts. That’s why none of you could catch it and track her.”

"How'd she survive getting shot?” Luna asked.

"Possession typically makes the host able to withstand a lot of damage,” Abby answered. “Had the demon left her right after she got shot, she would’ve died, but healing’s accelerated. By now the wounds are probably completely gone.”

“But why hasn’t the cycle ended?” Camille asked. “Devon is dead, that’s who the demon was summoned to kill.”

“That’s the thing I’m not so sure about,” Abby said. “I think it’s because Constance isn’t the one who summoned it. It killed Devon, but it doesn’t know who it was summoned for anymore, so it’s killing everyone it can. And Constance is technically an innocent, and this being is all about innocence. It can’t willingly end its possession without killing the host.”

"She’s as much a victim in this as anyone," Camille murmured.

Abby nodded. “We have to try getting the demon out of her, but to do that, we have to find her.”

“What should we do?” I asked.

“Well,” Abby said and then hesitated, “…we know for sure who she’s after…”

There was a pause, but the moment it sank in what she meant, I shook my head. “No way. It ain’t happening.”

“Kyla,” Abby protested, “we-”

The lights in the room flickered, and a moment later, all the power shut off with a whir. It wasn’t just our room, either. The hallway outside my door was dark too, and I’d never experienced a power outage at this school, not even during storms. It was so unexpected that none of us said anything for a long minute. We stayed there in silence, waiting for the power to come back on, growing more tense every second that it didn’t because the timing was too perfect to be a coincidence.

"This ain’t normal…" I said.

“The school has backup generators,” Abby added. “Unless they’re broken…”

“You mean unless somebody destroyed them,” Luna said.

Camille rose from her seat at the edge of the desk. “We should check it out.”

“I don’t think you should leave the room,” I told her. “If Constance did this, she’s likely waiting for you out there.”

Camille inhaled to counter, but Abby said, “I agree with Kyla.”

“You were just about to suggest using me as bait!” Camille argued.

“Yeah,” Abby agreed, “in a controlled setting where you’d hardly be in danger. Nothing about this is under our control.” She pulled out her cellphone, turning on the camera light so she could see us. “I’m not risking you. The safest place for you is in here.”

"With me here to defend you,” I added.

"Someone should at least see to the generators and make sure it was sabotage,” Luna said.

“I know where they’re at,” Abby told her, “we’ll go. We should check on Noah too.” Luna nodded, and they both climbed off the bed and moved to the door.

I immediately pulled off my shirt, and while Abby looked anywhere but at me and directed her light elsewhere, Camille asked, “What are you doing?”

“Preparing for a fight,” I answered, unhooking my bra and tossing it to the floor. “I’ll be damned if she’s getting her hands on you.”

She reached for the hem of her shirt too, but before she could pull it over her head, Abby said, “Stay human.” Camille hesitated. “We need to be able to call you.” Camille settled back onto the desk with a grumble, and Abby avoided looking at me while she said, “And you have to try not to bite her.”

“What?” I asked. Constance was too strong and fast for me to stand a chance as human, but how was I supposed to fight her as a wolf if I couldn’t use my teeth?

“Without the demon possessing her, she’s still human,” Abby said. “She’s a victim too, remember?”

“Then I won’t kill her,” I said, discarding my jeans and underwear, “but my teeth are my best chance at keeping Camille alive.”

“Abby’s right,” Camille said. “Survival rate decreases with each successive bite. You’re second line, bitten. Her chances of dying or going rabid are at least fifty percent.”

“You’re just now telling me this?” I asked.

“What?” she quipped. “Were you planning on biting someone?”

“Kyla,” Abby cut in, “we also don’t know how the bite reacts under influence of possession. We shouldn’t risk it.”

I sighed, focusing on the already building tingle beneath my skin. “Fine,” I said. “I won’t break skin.” It’d be fighting every instinct I had to protect Camille no matter the cost, but I’d try. I let the Phase overcome me. The tingling seared through me in a flash of agony as flesh and bone and muscle shifted and changed, becoming wolf in the blink of an eye. I hit the carpet on all fours, the power of this form coursing through every cell of my body. Be careful, I thought, striding forward to nudge my snout beneath Abby’s hand, call if there’s trouble.

She finally looked at me, scanning my new body and then meeting my gaze. Her hand stroked up my muzzle, fingers brushing through the golden fur on my head for a few moments while she held my eyes. Then her focus flicked briefly to Camille, and when she looked at me again, she said, “We’ll be back soon.”

I pressed up against her palm in acknowledgment, and she and Luna disappeared into the dark hall, closing the door behind them. The path I’d been wearing into the carpet earlier called to me. I stalked across the room, my ears perked forward to listen for any sign of danger, and as I turned around to start back toward Camille, she let out a soft laugh.

“Don’t start that again,” she said. But I was tense, and when I reached her and made to turn once more, she threw her arms around my neck. She pulled me to her, hugging me against her chest and chuckling, “Ow,” when I nipped the underside of her chin with protest. “Try to relax,” she pleaded, her voice losing its hint of playfulness. “I need you to pretend I’m going to be fine, even if I’m not.”

And when she said that, when I focused past my own stress and protectiveness, I felt it in the connection. The blunt ache of fear. I nuzzled my snout up under her chin, pushing down the restlessness of my instincts to try and comfort her. She settled the weight of her head down on mine and hugged me with one arm, her other hand caressing through the fur along my neck and chest.

“I’m sorry I got impatient with you just now,” she said. “I should’ve told you sooner that your bite’s more dangerous than mine.” She sighed, continuing the strokes against my chest that were soothing for us both. “There was a lot to teach you about turning, and I’m sure there’s still things I’m forgetting. I just… I’m not going to remember all at once, but I didn’t keep it from you on purpose.”

I leaned my body deeper into her, nuzzling again into her chin to let her know it was forgiven. Her arms curled around me, hugging me to her with reception. We stayed there in silence for a few minutes, hoping to hear from Luna and Abby, before Camille let out a heavy breath like she needed a distraction.

“I feel dumb hiding in here while they’re out investigating,” she said. “I’m not used to avoiding a fight.” She let me go to reach up and grab my ears. “Doesn’t help that I can’t Phase. Rubbing on you just isn’t the same.” I shoved forward past her hands, mopping the full length of my head and neck against her face, shifting over to the other side to do the same. She laughed, grabbing my jowls to push me off. “See? You got hair in my mouth.” She clutched the back of my neck just long enough to kiss the top of my head, and then stood so she could begin pacing. She crossed the room, rounding about again to come back my direction. “I hate magic,” she muttered, starting her second march. “Don’t tell Abby, but I’m kind of glad she’s bad at it.”

I let out a wolfish snort of laughter, and then laid myself on the floor with my hind legs tucked under me, ready to spring up at the first sign of trouble. Camille paced, and I alternated between watching her and staring at the door. Several more long, tense minutes passed with no word from Abby or Luna, no sign that the power would come back on, and no movement from outside the door. It got worse every second. Camille’s patrol made me even more restless, though for her sake I tried not to show it and stayed on the floor, but I’d have thought Luna and Abby would’ve at least texted first thing to say whether the generators had been sabotaged or not.

Eventually, I couldn’t take it anymore, and rose with a frustrated growl. I cantered over to Camille and nosed the cellphone in her pocket. “Yeah,” she agreed, pulling it out, “it’s been too long.” She called a number, and the line rang five times before going to Luna’s voicemail. She called another, and there was another handful of aggravating rings before Abby’s mailbox kicked in. She called Luna’s number again, and when there was still no answer, she huffed and strode to the window. “Where are they?” She called Abby a second time, but no one picked up. For some reason, Camille took in a sharp breath and wheeled around, her eyes fixing on me. “Abby’s protection charm was missing,” she murmured, “her dad made it for her…” There was a tense silence. “And the office got broken into.” Her gaze fell to the floor. “But she’s never…” There was a short pause before her fists balled at her sides, her eyes going wide with panic. “Constance took a bullet from the Council armory. We have to go find them. Now.”

She turned for the exit, but no sooner than she had, there was the barest creak of a floorboard from out in the hall. We both froze with our stares trained on the door, listening for another sound. “Luna?” Camille whispered. Nothing. “Abby?”

The door handle ticked just slightly like it’d been grabbed, and even though a warning rumble started deep in my chest, it didn’t deter whoever was on the other side. The knob turned, and the door eased open until there was space enough for a figure to slip into the dark room.

Constance shut herself in with us, saying as calmly as ever, “Hello.” I snarled, vaulting myself between her and Camille. “I refuse to hurt you, Kyla,” she said, “but Camille will come.”

“Like hell I will,” Camille spat. The rigid burn of her rising Change carried to me, and I snapped my jaws in agreement. “Where’s Abby and my sister?”

“This is for your own good,” Constance said. “You’ll see that in the beyond.”

A roar tore from Camille’s chest, accompanying the loud rip of clothing as a dark brown wolf burst forth. She landed on four paws at my side, and we both snarled our challenge.

“Fine,” she said, pulling a knife from the rear waist of her jeans that was already coated in blood.

An inhale through my nose made my stomach sink. That knife, that blood smelled like Abby, and the very sight of it slashed my heart in two. Abby was hurt. She could be dying. I wanted so badly to go and find her, to make sure she was okay, but I couldn’t let Constance take Camille, couldn’t bring myself to leave Camille’s side even if I tried, and the conflict wrenched a desperate whine from my throat.

In the dark, Constance followed my eyes to the knife, her upper lip curling when she’d deciphered my reaction. “I disapprove of your choices, Kyla.”

There wasn’t time, and as important as it was to try and save Constance, Camille and Abby’s lives were far too important to me. I was going to end this. I launched myself forward, leading with my paws to try and take Constance down, jaws wide and ready to bite if she made it tough. But just when I should’ve collided with her chest, there was empty space. I adjusted myself in midair quick enough to land on my feet instead of hitting the door, and wheeled around to face Constance, who’d crossed to the other side of the room so fast that I couldn’t tell if she’d jumped or teleported.

Camille’s teeth were bared in threat, and we’d hunted together so many times that I knew by heart the exact moment the building tension in her muscles would snap. I knew the very fraction of a second that she’d spring, and when it hit, I sprang too. We both threw ourselves toward Constance in a timed attack. I’d been aiming to close my jaws around her shoulder, but when my teeth snapped down, they snapped down empty. She’d twisted her body in a way to dodge my bite as she grabbed Camille by the shoulder with her free hand, using the momentum to send Camille arcing over her and crashing into the wall.

Camille had taken harder hits than that, and she recovered and bounced off the wall at the same time as I twisted to snap another bite. Constance dodged me too, but Camille managed to knock into her and take them both to the floor. She threw Camille off her as they rolled across the small room, regaining her feet as Camille smashed into the desk.

She was fast – too fast – and even though Camille and I went in for strike after strike, she avoided or countered nearly all of them. We couldn’t coordinate our attacks because she threw off our rhythm with attacks of her own. The hit of a closed fist to Camille’s head, the slash of her knife to Camille’s body, a powerful throw into any furniture she could to slow Camille down. But she never hit me harder than she needed to. She ducked and redirected, or shoved me to the floor when necessary, but she never did more than bruise.

At the next nick of the knife through Camille’s thick fur, I decided I could use Constance’s unwillingness to hurt me to our advantage. I stopped trying to catch her with my teeth, and threw my body at her instead, making myself as large as possible and hoping it would slow her down. Every time she knocked me back to my feet, I swirled and lurched around her, throwing any part of my body that I could into her path so she couldn’t reach Camille.

Camille caught on, adjusting her attacks to dodging in and out with as little of her body exposed as possible. She whipped her head on forward thrusts to try and slash with her teeth, and though Constance dodged each score, Camille ducked back out before she could retaliate and while I delivered a bodily blow of my own. After a few cycles of it, Constance howled her frustration. She grabbed me on Camille’s backward skip, hurling me clear across the room and reaching for Camille before I’d even hit the carpet.

She slammed her fist into Camille’s shoulder right as Camille had been about to lunge. It threw Camille’s balance off, and Constance pushed her to the floor and tossed herself over Camille’s middle, raising her arm into the air. As she landed with her knees on either side of Camille’s body, she brought her fist down with her momentum and weight and strength, hitting Camille so hard in the head it knocked her out instantly.

I roared, not caring that I hadn’t regained my feet enough to get as much leverage and speed as I could. I hurled myself forward clumsily, missing Constance as she side-stepped and wrapped her arm around my neck from behind. The crushing strength of her arm closed around my throat and cut off my air. I fought in her grip, twisting and thrashing against her to try and break free, but even my advantage of size didn’t help. She held tight, choking me until my lungs burned and my vision got blurry. Until my muscles grew too tired and weak to struggle.

“Sleep now,” she murmured, and everything went black.

There was a distant murmur as something shook me, pushing my shoulder. “Kyla.” The voice was getting closer, and the nudges stronger. “Shit, Kyla, are you okay? Wake up.” It was Luna, and my eyes drifted open to find her kneeling above me in the dark. “Kyla, get up.”

My eyes flew all the way open as everything came flooding back, and I shot into a sitting position as I searched the room. “Camille?”

“Gone,” Luna said, rising to her feet and offering a hand.

I let her pull me up. I was human again – being unconscious caused an automatic shift – so I hurried to gather my clothes off the floor, struggling to contain the panic as I said, “Constance took her.”

“Kyla…”

I didn’t bother taking the time to put on undergarments, and pulled my shirt on over my head. “I can feel her, she’s alive.”

“Kyla.”

I tugged on my jeans, doing the button as I slipped my bare feet into my shoes. “She has to be at the grave-”

“Kyla.”

I gasped as it finally hit me what Luna was trying to say. “Abby,” I blurted, all the blood draining from my face. “Oh my god, Abby. Luna, what happened? Is she okay?”

“I don’t know,” Luna said, her eyebrows furrowed with deep apology. “We were fighting Constance and it was obvious she wanted Abby, so we were making it difficult.”

“What happened?”

“She got stabbed,” Luna whispered. “In the stomach. I don’t know how bad it is, but she went down and Constance knocked me out. I woke up alone.”

A wounded breath stuttered from my lungs as I threw my hands to my head, so instantly worried that my mind was swimming. I inhaled a deep breath and let it out in a pulse of air, trying to keep myself from panicking even more because that wouldn’t help. But Abby was hurt, who knows how badly, and even though I could feel that Camille was alright, there was no telling how long that would last. “Okay,” I breathed. “Shit, okay.”

“I’m sorry, Kyla,” Luna said. “I tried.”

“I know,” I said. “Camille and I tried too.”

“What are we going to do? Abby didn’t tell us how to stop Constance.”

“Let me think.” I folded my hands behind my head, hoping the stretch would help me breathe as I paced a tight circle. My stomach was an icy knot of fear, and my chest was so tight it took an effort to suck in steady gulps of air. I couldn’t lose either one of them. God, I couldn’t, and I needed to keep my head if I wanted to see either of them alive again. If I wanted to keep myself whole. “They got to be at the graveyard,” I thought aloud. “But if Abby’s hurt we can’t waste time fighting a useless fight against Constance.” I turned another circle, grateful for Luna’s air of calm even though I knew she had to be nearly as panicked as I was. “We got to know how to stop her first.”

“You think Abby found out how?”

“If I know her at all,” I said, “she did.”

“Then the information is on her computer,” Luna suggested. “At the office.”

I didn't waste a moment in turning to search for Camille’s backpack, where her keys to the Jeep would be. “Keys,” I muttered.

“I have mine,” Luna said, reaching into her jacket pocket.

I darted toward the door, stopping cold as I reached for the handle. “I don’t know where the office is.”

Luna’s eyes dropped with intense thought, and then she reached into her pocket again. “Abby dropped her phone.” She took it out and tried to open it. “Password.”

I snatched the phone from her hands, typing in the four digits and then rushing to pull up the contact list. The Council office had its own contact in her phone, and I opened the details only to sigh with relief at the address listed. “Got it.”

We sprinted out the door, not bothering to take the elevator as we vaulted down entire flights of stairs at a time. I threw myself into the passenger seat of the Jeep, navigating to the address while Luna peeled out of the parking lot, following my directions.

“Why’d Constance take Abby?” she asked, veering a hard right and slamming on the gas.

“I don’t know,” I said. I grabbed the overhead handle to brace myself for the next turn. “She had a mission over winter break, but…” I shook my head, trying to process that maybe Abby had known this was coming. Even Camille realized it when Abby and Luna weren’t answering their phones. Camille must’ve known about the mission too, and she’d noticed something of Abby’s had gone missing, and Constance had broken into the Council office for something else. Abby was too smart not to have known. “Dammit, Abs, you should’ve said something.”

Luna glanced over at me. “We’ll get them.”

We screeched to a stop outside the Council only minutes later. I’d hoped that someone would be there, that we could get help from them because Abby was in danger too, but the office was as dark as our dorm had been. Everyone had gone home. Luna and I sprinted to the door, which had been glass before Constance had broken through it, and now the middle of it was boarded.

I tried the handle. “Locked.”

Luna peered through the building’s windows while I pressed on the board, testing how easy it would be to break through. “Kyla,” she said, pressing a finger to the window, “that’s an alarm.” I reached her side to look too – there were flashing lights from a panel on the wall. She pointed up into a corner of the office and added, “And those are motion detectors.”

We didn’t have a choice. If we didn’t find out how to get rid of the demon, then Camille and Abby could die. “We’ll have to be fast,” I said, lining myself up in front of the boarded door. “Sorry, Mr. Johnson.” I kicked so hard that the wood flew away from the frame, hitting the carpeted floor with a thud. The alarm beeped once before a steady light started blinking. A silent alarm, but it knew we were here. “Hurry.”

We rushed down the first line of cubicles on our right, finding the desk with Abby’s name on it. I booted up her computer, and during the minute it took to turn on, there was a bite of pressure against my palm. It was unmistakable even though I’d only felt pressure like it a couple of times before. It was Camille. She was scared, but we weren’t ready yet. “Hang in there, Cami,” I said, digging my nail twice into my hand.

“The sentry project,” Luna whispered from the desk behind Abby’s, lifting the cover of a manila folder.

“What are you doing?” I asked, waving her back over to me. “It’s bad enough we’re here without snooping.” The computer started as Luna reached me, prompting for the password to log in. “Please work.” I typed in the same password Abby used for her personal laptop, relieved that it got me in and we wouldn’t waste time trying to figure it out.

“Do you know all her passwords?” Luna asked, and I knew what she was insinuating.

“Really not the time…” I muttered, scanning the desktop for something useful. Right there in the middle of it was a folder titled ‘Deof nos Neadwoz.’ I clicked it open, and there were various subfolders labeled with things like ‘summoning,’ ‘ritual,’ and ‘history.’

“There,” Luna pointed to another folder. “Dispelling.” I opened it, spotting a document titled ‘Kyla.’ “No way that’s not for you.”

I clicked the document, bringing up a scan of an old-looking piece of paper that described how to get rid of the demon. “The only person who can forcibly relieve the demon of service,” I read in a murmured rush, “is the innocent survivor of a murderer.”

“Where are we going to find the survivor of a murderer?” Luna asked. “Isn’t that the point of murder? No sur…” But she trailed off as it sank in what that meant, and why the document was titled in my name.

It was me. I was innocent – I’d never killed anyone – and more importantly, I was a survivor. Jonathan had been a murderer, he’d killed people before me, and would’ve killed me too if Camille hadn’t given me the bite. Constance knew it. That’s why she was so nice to me when she’d barely even look at Camille or Abby, and why she was so reluctant to hurt me.

"What do I do?” I asked, scanning further into the text. “All that’s required is reciting this phrase in Anlisc. ‘I am a survivor of the guilty, innocent and unmarked, and I relieve you of this burden. Go.’” I skimmed even further, rubbing my wrist at a vague discomfort in my skin, a discomfort that carried through the connection. “That’s it?”

“What do you mean, that’s it?” Luna asked, gesturing at the foreign language on the screen. “Look at that. How do you pronounce any of it?”

“I’ll practice on the way.” I grabbed a pen from the desk nearby, but there was another pulse of pressure in my hand before I could write the phrase down, and I’d been so focused on finding a solution that I hadn’t stopped to feel. Camille wasn’t hurt too badly, mostly it was the discomfort in my wrists that were a result of her pain. But I could sense that she was far from okay. She wasn’t close enough for me to feel exactly what she was – the strength of the connection lessened over distance – but something was wrong. So wrong. I dug my nail into my hand once to let her know we were coming, and then scribbled the phrase onto my palm. “Let’s go.”

We didn’t bother turning off the computer before sprinting back out to the Jeep. I vaulted into the passenger seat as Luna tore out of the parking lot, but the moment she got onto the road, there was another bite in my palm, harder than the last two. And Camille was never so impatient. Never so urgent. “Luna, step on it.” She slammed the gas pedal to the floor, but all I could think was that if Camille was okay, then she was distressed because Abby wasn’t, and my heart was steadily sinking. “Please be alright.”

A shiver ran the full length of my body, stirring me from unconsciousness. The first thing that registered through the groggy weight in my mind was the pain. My head was splitting, no doubt from how hard Constance had hit me to knock me out, and I was bruised elsewhere from the fight. Most notably bruised were my ribs, which stretched painfully because my arms were stuck somewhere above me. There were minor cuts all over my body too, I could feel the sting of them, but they were already healing and weren’t enough to cause the pungent scent of blood in the air.

It was more than the older blood I’d scented the first time Kyla and I had come to the graveyard – that’s where I was, the graveyard, I could tell even with my eyes closed. But the blood was fresh. So fresh, and rich, and familiar. And when I finally stirred enough to recognize that familiarity, my eyes shot open. My head whipped to the right to see who was chained to the crypt wall beside me.

“Abby?” I jerked forward, trying to break free of the chains to get to her, but I could feel the burn of silver in them, making me weaker and preventing a Change. I’d never get out.

She looked over at me and offered a weak smile, but her eyes were red like she’d been crying. “Have a good nap?”

I strained forward as much as I could in the chains at my wrists and ankles, trying to find the source of blood. Even though I’d been in wolf form when knocked out, Constance had dressed me in sweats and a baggy tank top, not nearly enough to prevent me from feeling the chill of the dank, dark air. She’d also stripped Abby of her jacket and socks and shoes, and as I craned against my restraints, I found the stain in Abby’s shirt. There was a deep, seeping knife wound on the right side of her stomach.

“You’re bleeding.” I tugged harder at my chains, awake enough now to feel the beginning thralls of panic. There was no give, so I jerked harder, holding my breath and pushing my feet against the wall for leverage while I tried to break the metal from the earth. It was useless, and I shouted my frustration and slumped back. “How bad is it? Has the bleeding slowed?” She shook her head, but she hadn’t needed to answer anyway. I could smell it. I didn’t know how long I’d been unconscious for while she’d been wounded, but there was too much of it in the air. She’d already lost too much.

“She stabbed me,” Abby said. “Luna fought… she tried so hard, but it didn’t help.”

“Luna?” I breathed in worry.

“She’s okay,” she said. “The demon doesn’t kill innocents.” There was a thick pause, and then Abby whined and fresh tears flooded her eyes. “I didn’t want it to be true.” She sniffled, sinking forward into the restraint of the shackles around her wrists. “It was that mission, he’s the only one, but he wasn’t innocent.” She choked on a cry. “He couldn’t be, but Constance can’t be wrong. My dad’s wrong, or he lied… but why…” She mewled, chest heaving with the struggle to hold back sobs. “I never meant to hurt anyone,” she whimpered, “Camille, I never…”

“I know,” I said, “I know, it’s not your fault.” I knew that feeling, that sickening guilt when you realized you’d taken an innocent life. “It’s not your fault.” I wanted to hug her. Needed to check on her and make sure she’d be okay, but I was trapped and silver-weighed and I felt fucking helpless. I pulled again, thrashing side to side in fury when it didn’t work. “You’re going to be okay, okay? Stay strong.” I glanced around to try and find something useful. “Kyla and Luna will come and you’re going to be fine.” But I didn’t know if that was true. She’d lost so much blood already, and if I stopped struggling long enough to listen, I could hear that her heartbeat wasn’t as strong as it should be.

She swallowed hard, forcing down the tears and trying to say with some humor, “You can’t lie to me when I’m in your head.”

“Well then,” I countered, hoping a little playfulness would keep her spirits up, “maybe you should stay out of my head.”

Instead of reminding me that she couldn’t control it, she rested the back of her skull against the wall and admitted, “I like it in your head. You’re not as stoic and composed as you act most the time.”

“Is that right?” I asked, peering upward to see the shackles while I toyed with the lock, searching for a way to undo it.

Abby hummed. “Kyla’s so straightforward.” She coughed, and I glanced over to catch the dark tint of blood that reached her lips. “But your head is a whirlwind of… I don’t know… anger and guilt and a million other things.”

I stopped my fidgeting with the chains because it wasn’t helping at all, and because the more I struggled, the faster the silver in the metal chaffed at my skin. “Why is that good?” There was no answer, so I looked over with concern. She was staring across the crypt at the beam of moonlight from the open hole to the earth above, losing focus. “Abby?” I prompted, and she met my gaze. “Why is that good?”

“Because you try,” she said. Her chest tightened with another cough, but she held it back. “Kyla doesn’t have to try. She’s brave, and compassionate, and it’s easy for her to be who she is.” She inhaled a labored breath, but the icy air reaching her lungs sent a visible chill through her body. “You have to try to be who you want, and you do, and it m-” she broke with a shiver, “makes me want to try harder.”

She was getting worse. I didn’t respond so I could listen for her heartbeat, and what I heard put me back on edge. “How are you feeling?” I asked, attempting to keep the creeping panic out of my voice even if she’d hear it in my mind.

“Weak,” she whispered, huffing with another restrained cough. “Cold. Everything hurts.”

I gritted my teeth to try and stay calm, suddenly remembering Kyla’s plan for fear. I dug my nails into my palm till it hurt, and waited. What felt like five torturous seconds later, there was a responsive pressure in my own hand. Two pulses. Hang in there. But we couldn’t. Abby had lost too much blood already, and I didn’t know how much longer she’d last. Constance was planning on killing us anyway, but I had to keep Abby alive long enough for Kyla and Luna to get to us. And I knew what I had to do.

I strained against my chains, testing how much slack I had while I studied the ones around Abby’s wrists. “Okay,” I panted, relaxing to regain my strength for the next push, “I need you to stretch toward me. As far as you can.”

Abby laughed, which sent her into a fit of coughs that looked excruciating. “I can’t,” she breathed, struggling for air, “I can’t let you bite me.”

“You can,” I urged pleadingly. “You have to.” Her choking ceased, and she was so weak that she went limp in her chains, barely shaking her head. “It’ll heal you,” I begged, “it’ll keep you alive until Kyla and Luna get here and you’ll be okay. It’s the only way.” She didn’t respond, and her normally glowing complexion was growing pale. “Goddammit, Abby, do it!”

“Admit it,” she murmured. “You’re fond of me.”

“Please.”

“Come on.” She huffed with as much amusement as she could manage. “I’m dying, humor me.”

“Yes,” I blurted in desperation. “Yes. You’re growing on me too. I like you.” I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “I like you a lot, okay? But Kyla, she… Kyla loves you. I know you know it.” She didn’t say anything. “Abby?” I pulled at my chains, pressing my nails harder than ever into my palm. “You know it, Abby.” There was one pulse of response in my hand. They were coming. “It doesn’t matter if she chose me. It doesn’t mean she can stand to lose you. Don’t do this.”

"I have to."

“You don’t,” I argued, struggling fiercely even though the silver seared against where my wrists were going raw. It’d make me sick soon, but it didn’t matter. “You helped save my life last semester, please, please let me save yours.”

“I have to save you again,” she said weakly. “If I turn, my dad will kill you. He won’t care about the Pack and he’ll kill anyone who tries to stop him. It’s not worth it.”

“It’s worth it,” I whimpered. I didn’t want her to die. “Damn it, you’re worth it.” She didn’t deserve it and I didn’t want it and I’d do anything, consequences be damned.

She gave a feeble smile that only managed to reach one corner of her mouth. “You’re a whirlwind.”

She wasn’t going to let me, and my heart ached with helplessness. I tugged and thrashed so violently against the metal cuffs that my wrists started bleeding, but I ignored the pain in them and in my bruised body to try and fight it. To try and break free. All it did was hurt, and I arched away from the wall. “FUCK!” I dug my nails into my palm till it broke skin, screaming toward the beam of moonlight, “Help! Down here! Help!”

There was a flash through the light, and the gentle thud of feet hitting the ground beneath the opening. Constance straightened, glancing from me to the earth above. “Yell all you want,” she said, “there’s no one around to hear.”

"Let Abby go," I pleaded. “I won’t fight the ritual, I swear, just get her help. She shouldn’t be here.”

“She took an innocent life,” Constance said, striding across the crypt toward us.

“She didn’t mean to. She didn’t know.”

Constance edged near Abby’s face, staring into the brimming tears in her eyes and then pulling back to pinch her bloodied shirt above the knife wound. “She made choices. Those choices have consequences.” She pulled that same knife from earlier from the back of her jeans.

“Touch her and I’ll kill you!”

She deliberately faced me while she lifted the long sleeve of her sweater, and used the knife to reopen the nearly healed wound on her own arm. She stowed the knife and dipped her index finger in the pool of blood she’d produced. “Ic i beo ledand neadwoz,” she began, lifting her hand to paint a crimson streak over Abby’s forehead. Abby tried to jerk away, but Constance grabbed her by the chin to hold her still, and she was too weak to fight it.

“Hey!” I hollered over Constance’s next phrase, as she pressed a spot above the streak. “Do me first!”

“Alifd-”

“Stop!”

“-enc et atilan dhisum sawl.” She pressed a second spot beneath the streak.

“I’m ready!” I shouted. She ignored me to retrieve the knife. I could guess what came next, and I could feel Kyla getting close, but they weren’t close enough. Abby couldn’t stand to lose any more blood than she already had. My nails scored into the raw crescents I’d dug into my palms as I flailed against my restraints. “Do me first! Don’t fucking touch her!”

She reached into one of her pockets with her free hand, pulling out the protection charm she’d stolen from Abby’s backpack. She pressed it to Abby’s right palm, but Abby refused to hold it. “Grab,” Constance demanded. “Grab or I’ll make it stick.” Her fingers closed around the charm, and Constance brought the point of the knife up to the inside of her forearm.

“NO!” I shouted.

Constance ignored me. She carved into Abby’s arm while she spoke more phrases, and Abby screamed, her voice raw with exhaustion and weakness and pain. Her fist closed tighter around the charm like the pain was so bad she couldn’t let it go. Her eyes squeezed shut, but agonized tears still forced their way out and streamed down her cheeks. I thrashed so hard that the struggle drove the grip of silver poisoning around my stomach, making me queasy. But I wouldn’t let it make me weak. I fought and yelled because my wolf wanted blood and it was all I could do.

It still did nothing. Constance finished carving her first symbol into Abby’s flesh. Redeemed. And I was so furious that I’d have already Phased if the silver wasn’t preventing it. I was burning with the need to Change, the need to rip Abby’s assailant apart with my teeth, and that need to protect her ran so deep it should’ve terrified me, but the wolf inside me howled with rage because I’d never felt so powerless.

Constance reached into her pocket again, pulling out the small bullet she’d taken from the Council office. “Hold,” she ordered, shoving the bit into Abby’s left hand.

Every muscle in my body tensed as I prepared to start writhing in my chains and ignoring the bite of the metal at my wrists, but then two figures dropped through the opening in the earth. Kyla and Luna thudded down in the darkness, and Kyla snarled so viciously when she saw what was happening that her staying human was an unbelievable display of self-control.

“Luna!” I hollered. “Call an ambulance!” She hesitated to reach for her phone because there was so much happening here that we’d have to explain. There were rules for exposure, but none of that mattered. “NOW!”

Luna pulled out her phone, and knowing that her time was growing short, Constance lifted the knife to Abby’s left arm. Kyla flew across the crypt, managing to catch a distracted Constance around the waist and throwing her clear into the wall at the opposite end. Constance was on her feet before even hitting the ground, and she turned with a glare, but Kyla placed herself in front of Abby, snarling in warning. She was close enough that Abby’s head lolled forward against her upper back, and Abby was too weak to straighten and her breathing was shallow, and my insides were twisting with poisoning and fear and worry.

“Whatever you’re going to do,” I told Kyla, “do it fast.”

I expected her to attack, to fight, but instead, she stopped snarling, her upper lip still curled while she looked at her hand and read in an unsure falter, “Ic i beo oferstel odh m-”

“I must finish!” Constance yelled, her eyes going wide.

She launched herself across the crypt, trying to grab Kyla and throw her aside. Kyla retaliated, whipping her off balance and shoving her to the ground, but she made a sweeping kick that knocked Kyla’s feet out from under her. Constance was back up with her knife in hand before Kyla even hit the dirt. The moment she tried to dig the first part of the second symbol into Abby’s left arm, Kyla threw herself off the ground, grabbing Constance by the hips and taking them both down.

Kyla used that moment to continue. “Morjorshyld.”

Luna had been pacing on her cellphone, but the second she hung up, she sprinted toward the action. She flung herself between Constance and Abby when Constance sprang up, yelling, “Kyla, finish!” Constance lunged forward to try and get at Abby with the knife, but Luna shouldered her away.

Kyla held her hand up again and read rapidly, “Sacleases ond unbesmin.”

Constance froze, throwing a frantic look over her shoulder like she couldn’t decide whether to stop Kyla or try and finish with Abby. Her reluctance to hurt Kyla must’ve overridden anything else, because she made another move, this time at Luna. She reached over Luna’s shoulders like she was trying to get at Abby, but the moment Luna grabbed her around the waist to throw her back, she wrapped one leg behind Luna’s, pulling Luna’s knees forward and sidestepping out of the way so Luna fell.

“Dhu yu alihst,” Kyla continued.

Luna snarled her frustration as she kicked out, the soles of her feet hitting Constance in the hip just as the knife got near Abby’s arm again, and Constance went flying into the nearby wall.

“Dhaer sorgyron,” Kyla read.

“NO!” Constance roared, glaring at Kyla from where she’d regained her balance.

Kyla finished in a decided tone, “Afeor.” Constance continued to glare, but nothing happened. One corner of her mouth tugged into a smirk after a moment as she started stomping back toward Luna and Abby. “It ain’t working!” Kyla yelled in panic. “Afeor!” Constance kept marching. “Leave!”

There was a barely audible whisper from my right, and I could see Abby’s lips moving when I glanced over. I strained to hear her, but she was too weak and her voice too soft. “Louder, Abby,” I pleaded.

She drew in a labored breath, gathering the strength to say just loud enough I could make it out, “Af-ee-or.”

Kyla’s pronunciation was off. “Kyla, af-ee-or!” Constance shot me a look that made my blood run cold, but it didn’t deter me. I pronounced it correctly again. “Afeor!”

Kyla didn’t hesitate to yell, “Afeor!”

Constance seized the very second the word was out of Kyla’s mouth, her eyes growing so wide that white surrounded her brown irises. Her hands began to shake so inhumanly fast that the movement was blurred, and it traveled up her arms, through her chest and neck until her entire body was vibrating. Her eyes and nostrils and mouth began to glow a bloody orange, dull at first, but brighter as that vibrating had spread, until it was nearly blinding in the dark crypt. There was a high-pitched wail, so loud it felt like my ears would bleed, and then all at once it was silent and dark.

Constance collapsed onto the crypt floor, and every one of us remained frozen for a long moment to see if it worked. When we were certain it did, Kyla sprinted over, sliding to her knees at Constance’s side to search her pockets for a key. She pulled one out and dashed over, hesitating when she reached us and with a panicked look in her eyes, like she was torn between her duty to me and her concern for Abby.

“Get her down,” I said urgently.

She undid the chains at Abby’s ankles, and then the ones around her wrists, catching her when the lack of restraint left her unable to stay upright. Kyla held her, helping her to the ground while she tossed the key to Luna. “Alright,” she murmured to Abby, her voice shaky, “you’re alright, don’t quit now.” They reached the floor, and she cradled Abby in one arm while her other hand pressed to the wound on Abby’s stomach. There were sirens in the distance, so close that they’d be here within the minute.

Luna couldn’t unchain me fast enough. The moment I was unbound, I rushed to my knees across from Kyla. “Push harder,” I said, trying to hold back my panic, pressing my hand over Kyla’s on the wound because she was too emotional to do it right.

Her eyes had filled with tears, and her lips pursed with holding back a frown, but she nodded and removed her hand to let me do it. “Don’t die, Abs,” she pleaded, sniffling as she cupped Abby’s face. “Please don’t.”

Abby was too weak to say anything, and I was still going back and forth in my mind about whether I should bite her. About whether the medics would be able to save her because it was worth it. Even if her dad would come after me, even if she’d be upset with me for doing it when she’d said not to, even if Eli would punish me for biting another person so soon, it was worth it. But she wasn’t too weak to hear my thoughts, and her hand fell onto my forearm, squeezing with what strength she had left. I could feel the reassurance in the touch, the promise that she wasn’t done fighting.

Luna had knelt to check on Constance, who was alive and conscious and still bleeding from the wound on her arm. She was clinging to Luna, muttering ‘thank you’ and ‘I’m sorry’ repeatedly as she sobbed. Later, I’d be happy that she was okay and that she’d survived the possession, but all I could think about at that moment was making sure Abby survived.

From somewhere above us, the sirens stopped, and voices yelled, “Hello?” and “EMTs!”

“Down here!” I shouted.

I yelled until beams of flashlights shone over the hole above us, and when they finally found us, I shouted about Abby having lost too much blood. They set to work immediately on figuring out how to get Abby up, lowering a stretcher and ladder and making sure she was stable before hoisting her out. We climbed out after them, Luna helping to support Constance once we’d reached the outside. We were immediately intercepted by police, who cut off our path to the ambulance Abby was being loaded into, and led Luna and Constance over to a second one so Constance could be seen for her arm. But Kyla was tense as she stared at the first vehicle, and I felt her panic and worry. Her stomach and heart were in such a flurry it was making me sick, and the silver poisoning from the chains made me almost unable to bear it. My stomach was tight with holding back a gag.

“Go with her,” I said.

Kyla tore her eyes away from the ambulance with surprise, studying my face to make sure I was certain about it. “Are you okay?” She took in my raw wrists, and then stepped closer to touch a hand to my nauseated stomach.

“I’ll be fine,” I told her, wrapping my arms around her shoulders when she hugged me tight around the middle. “Go,” I said, giving her an encouraging push toward the ambulance. “Keep me updated, please, text Luna’s phone. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

“Love you.” She kissed me and jogged off toward the vehicle.

I watched it depart swiftly, and once Kyla had disappeared, I didn’t have to worry about holding back the silver poisoning anymore. If she was too concerned about me, she wouldn’t have gone with Abby, but I needed to know that Abby wasn’t alone. The feeling in my stomach caught up with me the moment she was gone, and I stumbled away and buckled over to vomit in the snow.

It happened once more in the next minute, and when I felt well enough to stagger to the ambulance that Luna and Constance were at, an officer was holding out a bottle of water to me. “It’s normal after a trauma,” she said sympathetically. I nodded, glad the woman had come up with an excuse for me, and took the water to sip on it.

A male officer draped a heavy blanket around me, gestured toward my arms and said, “You should let a medic look at you.”

“I’m fine,” I said, lying, “I’ll do it at the hospital. I want to get this over with so I can go see my friend.”

He nodded. “Can you tell me what happened tonight?”

“I got knocked out,” I explained, and motioned toward the crypt. “I woke up down there with Abby and Constance.” Constance looked at me, her rising terror about what I’d say so severe it was tangible. “There was a guy,” I said, looking directly at her so she’d know that, even though I’d been furious enough to threaten her, I didn’t blame her for this, “he hurt them, but then Kyla and Luna found us, and he ran.” Constance’s eyes filled with fresh and grateful tears, and I gave her the subtlest of smiles while Luna set a comforting hand on her shoulder.

“Did he drive away?” the female officer asked. “Run?”

“I don’t know,” I answered.

The male turned aside, saying into the radio at his shoulder, “Suspect fled, possible four-seventeen alpha.” Then he said to us, “You all should call your parents before we ask you any more questions, or we’ll call if you need.”

Luna stepped away, but she was only pretending to call Eli and told the officers she couldn’t get a hold of anyone. We’d tell him the truth later, without a human audience. Constance’s parents arrived quickly, looking frantic but relieved, and I could only imagine that they hadn’t heard from her once since she’d been possessed. It took forever for the police to finish asking questions, and the fact that we hadn’t heard from Kyla made me more anxious every minute. By the time we were done giving statements, I was eager to be at the hospital. We stuck around just long enough for Constance to give us crushing hugs, and she murmured another teary apology when she gave me mine.

Afterward, Luna and I raced to the hospital in the Jeep, and I called Kyla as Luna pulled to a stop in the parking lot right outside it. “We’re here,” I said into the phone when she answered, “what’s happening?”

“Don’t come in,” Kyla murmured, “I’ll be there in a second.”

The defeated tone of her voice worried me, but I knew it would’ve been far worse if Abby hadn’t made it. So I waited as patiently as I could, tapping my bare heel against the floor of the car. She eventually came out, climbed into the back seat, and slammed the door shut with a heavy sigh.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“She’s in surgery,” Kyla said, glaring toward the hospital. “Her dad wouldn’t let me stay.”

My chest rumbled with a low growl. “You should’ve stayed anyway.”

Before Kyla could respond, Luna asked, “Did it seem like he knew it was us who broke into the office yet?”

“Not yet…” Kyla said.

“I’ll go in,” she volunteered. “He doesn’t know me; I’ll say I’m a friend from school.”

“Yeah?” I asked. “And how’d you hear about this so fast?”

“My dad’s a cop,” she suggested, sighing when Kyla and I seemed less than receptive. “Look, it’s better than you two going in and causing a scene.”

“Her dad would cause a scene,” I muttered under my breath, and Kyla huffed her agreement.

“Jesus,” Luna complained, “you guys are so weird about her. Do you want me to go in or not?”

Neither Kyla or I said anything, but it seemed clear that Luna going in was pretty much our only option. But she was still waiting for a confirmation, so I gestured impatiently toward the hospital, “GO.”

Luna rolled her eyes, mumbling as she got out of the car, “Lucky I like you, freaking frenzy-causing, werewolf-enchanting, big-boobed lesbian-seducer.” She threw the door shut behind her and paced into the hospital.

Kyla and I sat there for a long span of minutes in silence, tense and waiting for a call even though we knew it’d be a long time before we heard anything. Eventually Kyla said, “Camille?” I hummed. “Come back here?” I climbed over the middle console and into the back seat, and she curled against my side, setting her head on my shoulder. Her hand found my arm and traced the edges of the silver burns in my wrist, careful not to hurt me. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” I answered. “I’m healing.”

"Your ankles? And the other cuts?”

“They’re not as bad.”

There was dried blood near the deeper parts of the wounds on my wrists, and the skin around them was raw and irritated. “You should’ve let the EMTs clean it,” Kyla said. She reached behind our seat into the trunk to grab the first aid kit. “You could still get infected.”

“I was worried,” I told her. “I wanted to be here.”

She stopped digging through the kit to look up at me. Her eyes held mine and then scanned the rest of me, and I felt her reach out in the connection, searching more than just my face. “You care about her,” she said. Even though her voice was soft, it was a statement and not a question, and there was an edge of surprise in it. “Like I do…”

I didn’t know what to say to that, or what I even thought about it, but Kyla and I had agreed to be honest with each other. Always. “I offered the bite,” I murmured.

Her eyebrows furrowed, and she asked haltingly, “For… me?”

“Yeah,” I said. But that wasn’t right. “No. I don’t know.” I stared at my hands, eventually shaking my head, saying decidedly, “Not just for you.”

When I said nothing else, she asked nothing else, but gave a small smile and returned to the kit. She retrieved a bottle of rubbing alcohol, some ointment, and some gauze wrap, and I held my wrists out over the floor to let her do what she needed. She met my gaze as she held the open bottle above my wounds, hesitating because we both knew it would be excruciating, and I braced myself and nodded. She poured, and I gritted my teeth, rumbling deep in my chest through the searing pain of the alcohol. It was over in a few seconds, but the stinging lasted, settling deep into my flesh even after she applied the ointment and bandages, and I’d been through so much stress that my skin itched with a Change. I needed to run, needed something to release all the pent-up tension that had built throughout the night. I leaned my head back against the seat, breathing deep to try and relax through the pain and the worry and the restlessness.

Kyla dropped the first aid kit back into the trunk, and she watched me for a few moments before she leaned in. She kissed the edge of my jaw, the pulse point below it, and the muscle in my neck below that, soft and open and slow. They were apologetic and soothing, an offer of comfort, but also testing. A request. I knew exactly what she was asking, and with the adrenaline from the night still lingering in my veins and tingling in my skin, it didn’t take convincing. I turned my head to find her lips with my own, kissing her once in acknowledgment.

“We need t-”

“I know,” I said, and in the space of an instant, I’d pushed her back against the seat and straddled her lap, and my lips were back on hers.

She needed to feel me. It had been a long, painful night, and she needed to kiss and touch and reassure herself that I was fine. That I’d survived and everything was okay. She needed to feel connected, and I needed some kind of release because we couldn’t run. And we were both so restless. We had nothing else to do but sit here, trapped, waiting for news that Abby was okay, and sitting in silence was torture. But Kyla was comfort. Safety. We could lose ourselves in the connection and in each other, and it would ease the anxiety and make waiting easier.

I kissed her deeply while her hands found the bottom of my loose tank top, slipping under to feel my skin, and they carried the promise of everything I needed. They were so hot in contrast to the chill air, so soft and strong and skilled. She always knew just where to touch me. Which rib to trace so it stirred instead of tickled, which spot to press on my back to get my hips to move, where to caress on my chest to make my breath catch in my throat with anticipation. But her restlessness made her impatient, and the demand in the movement of her hands and in the connection filled me with an uncontrollable need for release. My skin burned with it, my chest ached with the restraint of holding back the Phase that the silver had stolen from me. I was riding the thin edge of Change, and she felt the desperation.

She pushed my shirt up my chest, leaving my lips to kiss between my breasts. “Stay with me,” she whispered, her hand slipping beneath the lining of my sweats, “I’ve got you.”

The first brush of her fingers over my clit was such a relief that the moan I released was mixed with a heavy sigh. There was too much tension in me for teasing and build up, and she knew it. She set right into the touch and rhythm she knew from experience would finish me quickest, and it made me so weak that I collapsed forward, bracing my hands against the seat behind her. Her head was still at my chest, and she kissed everywhere she could reach while I rocked my hips into her hand. She pressed searing pecks up my neck and across my collarbones, brushed her lips or tongue over a stiff nipple to draw another moan from my throat, nipped the fleshy muscle above my breasts because if I couldn’t sink my teeth into something, then she knew having her teeth on me was the next best thing.

I was heading toward climax so fast that I was already breathless, but I missed her lips and her tongue and her taste. I leaned back and took one hand off the seat to cup her face, tilting her chin up so I could take her lips in a desperate kiss, hardly caring about air as I moved against her. The pressure between my hips was almost too much to hold back, and I could feel in the connection how badly Kyla wanted it. How much she needed to hear me come.

“I’m close,” I breathed, taking her bottom lip between my teeth.

“I know,” she said. “I’m finishing with you.” I gathered the capacity of mind to reach between us, aiming for the button of her jeans even though I knew it’d be hard to touch her like this. “No need,” she whispered against my lips, her free hand grabbing mine to set it instead against the back of her neck, “you’re enough.”

That hand joined the other between my legs, and she didn’t hesitate to slide two fingers into me while the other continued working higher up. The fullness of her fingers forced a profanity onto the stuttering breath that left my chest. I clenched so hard around her as heat exploded at my core, and it carried through the connection so that her eyes lidded and her breath hitched.

I was there, only managing to hold back just long enough to ask, “With me?”

“Yes,” she whimpered, her hips pushing impatiently beneath mine with the next thrust of her fingers.

And I was gone. I let the peaking pleasure wash over me, and curled into her as I fell into the first bursting wave of climax. She hit that peak with me, throwing her head back as her eyes slammed shut, and it exposed her neck as I felt the invitation in the connection. I bit down over the taut muscle beside her throat while I throbbed against her and around her, every muscle in my body seizing with euphoria while I felt the vibrations of the moans in her throat against my mouth. My body was so grateful for the release that it lasted, and every time I fell into fresh waves, it sent Kyla reeling, until the echoes cycled back to the pulsing in my clit and sent me into another weaker ebb.

By the time it ended, I was too weak to even keep the grip of my jaw at Kyla’s neck. I let her go to press lazy, wet, soothing kisses to the indents my teeth had made while we recovered. She was still inside me, fingers feeling for my heartbeat in the sensitive flesh, and she hummed her approval every time I pulsed against her with an aftershock.

All the burn of holding back a Change was gone. My body was beautifully content, and prepared for the remaining stress of waiting for word from Luna. “Thank you,” I whispered against Kyla’s neck.

She pulled out of me while she set her forehead against mine, wiping her fingers on the inside of my sweats and then reaching up to press a hand to the center of my chest. “Are you really okay?”

It was clear then that she wasn’t just asking about the wounds in my wrists and ankles. She was asking about my emotional state. About my fear of the occult and the fact that it had almost killed me a second time. About how I’d been stuck while Abby was hurt and unable to do anything about it. I was still worried about Abby, but being with Kyla had grounded me to safety and calmed every other stress I’d been through, making me strong in the face of waiting for news.

“Yeah,” I answered, setting my hand over Kyla’s on my chest. “I was too worried to be afraid for myself. Are you okay?”

“I’m relieved you’re not hurt,” she said, kissing me once. “If I lost you, I don’t know what… I couldn’t…” Her gaze wandered past me to the hospital. “But Abby…” Her eyes grew watery while she stared, but then she blinked the tears away. “I don’t want to think about it till we know for sure.”

I shifted off her lap, pulling her with me while I laid down across the seat. She settled on top of me, and I wrapped my arms around her as she buried her face in my neck. And we waited. For a couple hours more, we lay there, silent but fully awake, comforting each other with our embrace or the occasional kiss.

Eventually, Luna pulled open the driver’s side door and hopped into the seat, turning around to look back at us. “She’s out of surgery and she’s going to be fine.” I sighed with profound relief, but such a powerful wave of it went through Kyla that it was almost painful even for me. “She’s sleeping now, but we can come back tomorrow and see her.”

Kyla sniffled and reached between us to wipe the tears from her eyes. “Thanks for going in.”

Luna gave an understanding smile and asked, “Home?” I nodded, and held Kyla a little tighter while Luna drove us back to the comfort of the Pack house.

I pulled the Jeep into the same hospital parking lot the next day, shutting off the engine as the excitement in my stomach escalated. I couldn’t tell if it was more my excitement or Kyla’s, but either way, it didn’t matter. The occasion was special enough for Kyla to agree to ditching – Abby would be awake and taking visitors – and we’d spent the day getting our gifts ready.

Luna, Kyla, and I climbed out of the car, and I put my backpack on as we hurried toward the hospital’s entrance, but someone outside it stopped us before going in. Constance was sitting on a bench outside with a bouquet of flowers on the seat beside her. She was staring at the ground, but she looked up when we approached and her eyes went wide. She still looked cautious about us, and maybe a little bit afraid.

"Hi," Kyla greeted her first, giving a friendly smile. “Were you here all night?”

“Um, no,” Constance said quietly, standing. “I was just-” She glanced from the flowers to the entrance of the hospital. “I felt bad, so I called to find out about your friend and…”

“Are those for her?” Kyla asked, pointing at the flowers. Constance nodded timidly, but when Kyla said, “She loves tulips,” it got her to crack the smallest of smiles.

Luna asked, “Did you want to come in with us?”

“No,” Constance blurted, eyeing the cement beneath her feet. “I mean no, thank you. I’ve been sitting out here forever, trying to work up the nerve, but…” She drew in a deep breath and shrugged. “I’m still trying to make sense of everything. I can’t.” And she gestured at me. “I can barely look at you without feeling sick to my stomach.”

“I’m okay,” I told her, “and none of it was your fault.”

“How are your wrists?” she asked, risking a brief second of eye contact with me. “You were bleeding.”

“The wounds will be gone in a few days,” I said, and it seemed like she was aware of everything that had happened while she’d been possessed, so I added lightly, “werewolf, remember? We heal quick.”

“Right,” she murmured, looking from me to Kyla and Luna like she was finally realizing the extent of what she’d been involved in. “And Abby? Is she…?”

“Human,” I answered, “but she’ll be okay, too. Don’t worry.”

“And she ain’t gonna blame you either,” Kyla added. Constance’s lips pursed with another small smile, and Kyla pointed at the flowers. “Did you want us to give her those?”

“Would you?” Constance asked, picking them up and holding them out, saying “thanks,” when Luna took them. “Thank you for being so nice to me. I’m really sorry.” A car pulled up next to the curb, and when it caught her eye, she took a step toward it. “My parents. I got a call from some Council. They offered a therapist who will actually believe me about what happened, so…”

"We'll tell Abby you came by,” Kyla said.

"Thank you," she said, looking at me and giving a wave and a nervous smile, “and I’m sorry, again.” But she froze where she was, eyes widening with realization as she said, “Oh!” She reached into her pocket and hurried back to me, holding out Lacey’s keychain. “This was yours, right? Seemed important when I took it.”

"It is," I murmured as I grabbed it. I thought I’d never see it again. “Thank you.”

She grinned at the genuine gratitude on my face, said, “Bye,” and hurried to her car.

We all waved, and walked into the hospital once she was gone. The elevator took us up to the floor Abby was on, and we wandered down the halls, reading the numbers on the doors to search for her room. We found it even before we spotted the number because Abby started shouting.

“Get out!” she yelled, but her voice was raspy with weakness and it broke with emotion, and Kyla and I immediately started hurrying toward her door. “I don’t care! You didn’t tell me you screwed up and it’s your fault! Get out!”

I was almost there when a large man stormed out of her room, almost crashing right into me. He stopped just in time, and I stood there, staring up into the face of Abby’s father. He already looked furious, and even more so when he recognized us. His eyes narrowed at me, and he was very clearly waiting for me to step aside so he could continue his stomping away, but I didn’t budge. Screw him. He’d just upset Abby the morning after she almost died, and there were still remnants of protective rage in me from last night, because he could go right to hell.

I held his gaze and scowled, squaring my shoulders to let him know I wasn’t moving. If he wanted to leave, then he was going to have to go around me. But he didn’t. He glared back, taking my challenge and standing his ground with his jaw working back and forth, and that made a low growl bubble in my chest. I wasn’t the most dominant wolf in the Pack, but I could damn well show him what one looked like.

The moment that rumble left my throat, Kyla grabbed me by the arm. “Mr. Johnson, Sir,” she said, hauling me away from him.

“Hey!” he barked, turning as we darted around him. We stopped. “If I ever see any of you around the office again, you’ll be dealt with.”

Knowing exactly the way I’d react to a threat like that, Kyla whipped me around so I couldn’t see him, clapping a hand over my mouth to muffle the snarl I was about to let out. “Not here,” she muttered.

“Hi and bye, President Director Guy!” Luna said loudly, waving big to call attention to him. “It was fun saving your daughter’s life! Don’t let the door crush your fat ego on the way out!”

Kyla led me directly through the door to Abby’s room, and even though Abby was still teary-eyed from the argument with her father, she was smiling. “Did you just almost get in a fight with my dad?” she asked.

“Wouldn’t have been much of a fight,” I grumbled.

While Luna set the flowers down on a nearby table, Kyla left my side to hurry to the bed, pulling Abby into a tight hug. There was a gauze wrap around Abby’s right forearm, and an IV leading into her hand, and she was leaning to the left like the right side of her torso was uncomfortable. She looked tired too, but she was sitting up a little and her cheeks were flush with healthy color, her freckles bright. It was her eyes that really looked tired, and part of me thought it wasn’t all because of the physical injuries she had.

Kyla eventually let her go, taking her left hand as she went around the bed to sit in a chair beside it and folding their fingers together. I made my way to the bed to hug her too, feeling her unoccupied right arm go around my shoulders. It was a far greater relief than I expected to feel for myself that she was okay. She wasn’t as fragile in my arms as I worried she might be, though I didn’t hold her quite as tight as I wanted to for fear of hurting her stomach. But she hugged me with firm strength, and because I was leaning over her to embrace her, her face was buried against my neck. She hugged me for the same long minute she had Kyla, and she smelled healthy and her heartbeat was strong. When we separated, I reached behind me for a second chair, pulling it to her bedside and then setting my backpack on the ground to sit.

Luna hopped up to plop down on the foot of the bed. “Hey, wolf lover.”

"Hey,” Abby chuckled.

"Your dad’s…” Luna began to say, and trailed off to think for a moment. “Swell.”

“He’s something,” Abby murmured, a cold edge in her voice as her eyes focused blankly on her bedsheets.

“He knew,” I said. He knew that the man Abby killed wasn’t a part of his wife’s crimes. Whether he’d known before the mission or after, he knew that man was innocent, and he’d kept it from her.

Abby glanced briefly at me, gaze darting back to the bed when her eyes filled with tears. She nodded. “He said he made a mistake,” she whispered, mouth curving into a frown, “and he couldn’t admit it.” She sniffled jaggedly like she was holding back a sob, and reached up to wipe away a stray tear. “I killed an innocent person.” Kyla set her other hand on their folded ones, lying forward to rest her chin over them. The affection only seemed to make it harder for Abby to hold back tears, and she shut her eyes tight, running her free hand over both cheeks to dry them.

"It gets easier,” I said, twitching one corner of my mouth in sad smile. “The guilt never goes away, but… you learn to live with it…”

"And you’re not alone,” Kyla reminded her. She nodded, sniffling away the last of the tears and pursing her lips gratefully.

“You’ll have some pretty badass scars, too,” Luna pointed out. “Can’t hang out with werewolves without having badass scars.”

“No?” Abby asked.

Luna shook her head. “We’ve all got them.” But she blew a breath through her lips, admitting, “Okay, well, mine are all small… but Camille and Kyla have some good ones.”

Kyla sat up, letting go of Abby with only one hand so she could lift her shirt up to her ribs, revealing the bullet scar on them. “And you’ve seen my shoulder.”

I did the same with my shirt, revealing the scars across my torso from Phasing accidents and fights. “I’m sure you noticed these.”

“Welcome to the club,” Luna said.

Abby smiled, a light blush coloring her cheeks. “I should just agree before you all start taking your clothes off.”

“Aw,” Luna teased, “you two flustered her.”

“You really are a pain,” Abby said, but though her blush had darkened, she was smiling her usual bright smile, the tears gone from her eyes.

Luna beamed. "You didn't think I’d stop teasing you just because you’re in the hospital?”

"Didn’t dream of it,” she said. We all laughed a little, and then Abby motioned to the flowers with her free hand. “Are those for me?”

“From Constance,” Kyla answered, nodding.

Abby passed a confused glance around at us, so Luna explained, “She was outside, but couldn’t get the courage to come give them to you herself.”

“Oh,” Abby said, “that was nice of her. How is she?”

“She’s good,” Kyla said. “Seems like the Council’s taking care of her.”

“We do that sometimes,” Abby said, and then looked at me. “And you?” She reached out to set her hand on the back of mine. Her thumb ran below the edge of the bandage around my wrist, but when I looked up from her touch to meet her eyes, she hastily pulled away.

“They’re just scratches,” I said, feeling a warmth spread in my cheeks.

“I wanted to say thanks…”

“I didn’t do anything,” I muttered. A dull frustration rose in my chest at the fact that she’d thank me when I’d been completely useless.

“You offered to,” she said quietly, “and I know not to take that lightly.”

Kyla knew because I’d told her, and she smiled across the bed at me, but I felt Luna pondering what Abby meant. After a few silent moments, she drew in a breath, asking in complete shock, “You offered the bite?”

"It's no big deal," I said, not wanting to dwell on it because I still wasn’t even sure how to feel about it. Or what to think about it. All I knew was that I had offered, and I didn’t regret it. Luna didn’t respond, but the room was silent and she was clearly thinking deeply to herself, and every moment that she thought, the more Abby’s cheeks darkened with a blush. “Leave her alone,” I told Luna.

“No, I wasn’t teasing her,” Luna said, studying me closely. “Sorry…”

Whatever she was thinking, it made Abby uncomfortable enough that she slid her hand out of Kyla’s, but Abby didn’t leave much opportunity for things to get more awkward. “I wanted to thank all of you, too,” she said. “For helping me. Constance probably would’ve killed me if I’d been working with anyone else.”

“I’m glad we helped,” I told her, and I shrugged and admitted, “I’d probably do it again.”

Abby smiled warmly, but after a brief pause, Kyla perked up. “Maybe we should do it again.”

“But the tension between the Council and the Pack…?” Luna reminded.

“That’s exactly why,” Kyla said. “Our paths keep crossing, and maybe we can show the elders that we can work together. We’ll show Eli that the Council can include us without just using us for the dirty work, and we can show Abby’s dad that the wolves are good for more than killing. Maybe someday they’ll be open to another alliance.”

She looked across the bed at me, searching my face for feedback. I nodded and said, “It could work with Eli if he doesn’t forbid it, but his only interest is protecting the Pack. If another alliance with the Council will end like the last one did…”

All three of us looked at Abby, and she said, "I don't know how much it'll get my dad to budge.” She shrugged. “But I like working with you more than anyone at the Council. I’d do it without an agenda.”

"Partners?" Kyla asked, hovering her hand over Abby's lap.

“Yeah,” Abby said, setting her hand on the back of Kyla’s.

I put mine on Abby’s, nodding, and Luna rested hers on mine and said, “No more demons, though. And no ghosts.”

“Can’t make any promises,” Abby laughed as we withdrew our hands, and Luna gave an exaggerated sigh.

For a change in topic, Kyla said, “We brought you some stuff.” She motioned to me while I grabbed my backpack off the floor. “Camille made you her chicken soup.”

“Kyla helped,” I said, pulling a thermos of still-hot soup from my bag and setting it on the bedside table. Abby grabbed it and unscrewed the lid, inhaling a deep breath of the soup and humming her approval. She smiled gratefully while I reached into my bag again, pulling out a soft black jewelry box. “And we got you this.”

I was trying really hard not to think about what was inside so it’d be a surprise, and maybe Kyla and Luna were too, because Abby took it from me with a curious look in her eyes. She opened it, staring down at the necklace inside for a long moment before looking up. “What…”

“We went to that magic shop,” Kyla explained, “the one you took me to last semester. Harold said this was the best protection charm he had.”

“You know,” I added, “since the one your dad made you was pretty useless.”

“It’s silver,” Luna said, “so you won’t be as much of a werewolf magnet.” I reached over to smack her on the arm, and she laughed and finished, “But Harold said silver and that sapphire are super magical or something.” So was the shape of it – the small diamond-shaped rune of the metal with the blue sapphire at the center. They were great for protection.

"You guys, it's..." Abby traced the shape with her finger, looking stunned and maybe on the verge of tears again. “It’s beautiful, and so thoughtful, but you didn’t have to.”

“Harold likes you, you know,” Kyla said. “And he practically gave it to us for a lock of werewolf hair and for drinking with him.” Apparently Harold had been in trouble with the Council plenty of times for brewing a drink called Magic Moonshine, which gave people psychic hallucinations.

“You didn’t,” Abby said in shock.

“Luna did,” I said.

“What a trip,” Luna cackled. “I’m still coming down from that high, and apparently there’s a tall-dark-and-handsome in my future.”

“Oh my god,” Abby laughed, but the movement cut her laugh off short as she sucked in a sharp breath, her hand going to her stomach.

"See," I teased, “you’re kind of fragile. You need all the protection you can get.”

"Yeah?” she asked with a smirk. “When I’m better maybe we should spar. I’ll show you who’s fragile.”

"That I have to see,” Luna said.

Abby smiled, holding back another laugh so it wouldn’t hurt, and then she gestured with the box in her hand. “Thank you for this.” She pulled the necklace from the box, raising it to try and put it on, but bending her arm to do it put pressure on the wound in her forearm. With a wince, she stopped trying and extended the necklace to Kyla. “Would you?” Kyla nodded, and while she put it in place, Abby murmured, “Stitches are a nuisance…”

“If you’re in pain…” I said, glancing out the door behind me because I’d get a nurse if she needed.

“It’s okay,” Abby said, smiling gratefully as she motioned to the IV. “They’re giving me a little medicine. I’m mostly just sore.” Kyla finished putting the necklace on her, so she added, “Thanks,” while she straightened it around her neck and Kyla wiped her silver-irritated fingers on her jeans.

“When can you get out of here?” Luna asked.

“Yeah,” I said, “history’s not the same without you.”

“Did you even go to history this morning?” Abby asked.

“No,” I answered, “because it wouldn’t have been the same.”

Abby laughed as much as the ache in her stomach would allow, and then said, “They’re keeping me here today to make sure there’s no internal complications, and I should be able to go home tomorrow. I’ll probably stay at my mom’s for a couple of days before going back to school.”

I nodded as a middle-aged woman appeared in the doorway. She was about Kyla’s height, with light-brown hair and dark blue eyes, dressed in business casual attire. She looked familiar, like one of the Council members who’d been at the warehouse helping to fight vampires with us last semester. “Oh,” she said, stopping when she spotted us, “hello.”

"Mom, hey,” Abby said with a smile. “You remember Kyla, and Camille?” She gestured toward Luna. “And that’s Camille’s sister, Luna.”

"The wolves,” her mom said, extending a small smile. It was more of a polite formality than genuine friendliness, but it was at least better than Abby’s father. “Your dad called me, said he was worried.” She cast a glance around at us. “I can see now what his issue was.”

“He’s the issue,” Abby muttered. Her mom’s gaze was focused on Kyla, but after a few more seconds, it moved to me, and she stared intently like she was looking straight into my brain. “Mom,” Abby said, interrupting the look, “don’t pry.” Oh. I glanced away uncomfortably. She had been looking into my brain… guess that’s where Abby got it from.

“We should go anyway,” Kyla volunteered. She stood and gave Abby a tight parting hug.

“Thanks for the gifts,” Abby said as I took my turn hugging her. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Get better,” Luna told her, swatting her on the thigh. “I got my money on you for that spar with Camille.”

“Thanks,” Abby chuckled, giving a wave as we moved to the door. “Bye.”

We left the hospital room, and Kyla took my hand while we left the building and wandered out to the parking lot. “What now?” she asked, climbing into the passenger seat of the Jeep.

I headed around and got into the driver’s seat. “I have a proposition for you. And Luna, too, I guess.”

She turned in her seat to face me while Luna leaned forward from the back, asking, “What is it?”

“This morning, me and Luna were telling Eli about what happened, and how you really wanted to help.” I paused, and Kyla hummed curiously. “He’s got a job for us, if you want it.”

Her green eyes lit up. “What’s the job?”

“String of wolf kills in Missouri,” I answered, “risking exposure for the rest of us. Abby can help us research the situation and, if we need to, we’ll go there under Wes’s supervision and deal with it.”

“Eli wants us enforcing?” she asked in shock.

“He wants us to learn,” I said. “If you want to help.”

She nodded eagerly, saying, “Yeah,” and nodding some more. “If a wolf is hurting people, I want to stop it.” I couldn’t help smiling, having expected nothing less. “But… what about you?” I cocked an eyebrow. “You almost just died again, are you sure you’re up for this so soon?”

“I can handle a wolf,” I laughed. “And mine’s itching for something I can actually fight. What do you say?”

“I want the job,” she said immediately.

“Luna?”

Luna tsk-ed. “Like I’d let you three have all the fun.”

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