twenty-nine

“Breathe, Claire, breathe.” Grant’s eyes floated in front of my face, soft and full of moonlight. A cluster of cornstalks bent over us, shielding us from the falling snow with their twisted leaves. The scent of a bonfire flooded my nose.

“It’s okay. We’re safe.”

Something snapped a few feet away and I jumped to my feet. Grant grabbed my shoulders to keep me steady. “We’re not safe. We’re not safe at all,” I choked. “My dad’s a murderer, my sister thought he was going to kill her. She let them take her away, Grant.” My chest constricted with panic and I gasped for breath. “She let the wolves take her to get away from him, and now I don’t know how to find her.” Thick sobs began to clot up my throat.

Grant pressed his body flush with mine and tucked my head into the space beneath his collarbone. His heartbeat thumped against my skin.

But it didn’t drown out the howling.

I pulled my head from his neck and listened.

More howls, long and melancholic, spanned the cornfield. Things snapped and popped all around us, and Grant clutched me tighter.

A flash of gray.

And the blink of a yellow eye.

“Grant,” I whispered, “they’re close.”

He rubbed the back of my neck. “They’re right over there.”

I spun around. Smoke billowed toward the star-speckled sky, and a bonfire snapped and crackled from a few feet away. Laughter bubbled over into the space between us and the party.

“Come on,” he said, pulling me forward. “We can ask them for help.”

I jerked my hand back. “How can they possibly help with this?” What did he expect? That we’d ask them to help us catch the wolves and they’d say, “Sure, no problem. Let me get my net”?

“We could ask someone for a ride back to my house. Then we could think about our next move from there.”

I sucked in a breath. Okay. Okay, that could be good. Some time to collect ourselves before we went out hunting for wolves. I took a step forward.

A wet pile of snow gave way beneath me and I stumbled right into the middle of Lacey Jordan’s party.

“Claire?” Lacey said from the other side of the stalks. I could see through the bonfire smoke that she still had the fat caterpillars crawling along her eyelashes. “What are you doing here?”

The fire snapped in the center of Lacey’s oval-shaped backyard, casting shadows in the spaces between all of the people huddled there. They were a blur of yellow Amble High letterman jackets and snow boots, of cigarette smoke and freedom. And every last one of them was staring at me.

Grant’s fingers touched my back and I let out a breath. “I brought her with me,” he said. “We need a ride back to my house.”

Lacey stepped around the fire, trailed by two girls who also had caterpillars for eyelashes. Must be an Amble thing I’d missed out on. She narrowed her eyes at Grant. “Leaving so soon, Grant? Now that’s rude.”

Something rustled in the shadowed space behind Lacey, and I felt Grant’s body go rigid next to me. “Look, Lacey, we’re not looking for trouble. We just need a ride.”

The space around us had grown tighter, and all their shadows fell in watery patterns across my boots. If it wasn’t so cold, I would have been sweating. They were trapping us, hunting us. They all thought I was the threat, while the whole time wolves and murderers encircled them, watched them.

Hunted them.

“What are you doing, hanging around with that?” a boy about my age said. He had crept up next to me and I hadn’t even noticed. I could smelled the beer on his breath. He reached over me and shoved Grant’s shoulder. “You really shouldn’t hang out with crazies, Grant. Might rub off on you.”

Grant’s fingers left my back. He stepped in front of me and pushed the guy back. “Cole, why don’t you go back over to that cooler, get yourself another beer, and leave her the hell alone.”

A howl bounced in the space around us and I swear my heart stopped beating. But it was only Cole, whose laugh sounded more like an injured dog than a human. “Oh yeah? Why don’t you go find us some wolves, Claire?” He leaned in so that his salty breath plugged up my nostrils. He whispered, “Why don’t you use them as an excuse to tear my face off?”

The next thing I saw was snow.

I sank into the drift as Grant gently pushed me out of the way. He let out a low, growling sound—like something I’d heard in the corners of Manhattan when I was being hunted there—and lunged at Cole.

The two boys kicked up snow around them, and it sparkled in the air around the fire for a second before dusting the rest of the party. Lacey turned to me and screamed, “You ruined my party!”

Everything around me ticked in slow seconds. My brain went foggy, like the smoky air, and all I could see were the corners of the stars trying to peek out from beyond the fire.

I stood up, bracing myself against a bent-up stalk. Grant and Cole were still rolling through the snow. Lacey was coming toward me. The wolves were waiting, still deciding which of us would get new scars tonight.

Grant slammed Cole into a card table positioned at the foot of the yard. It seemed like it wobbled for ten seconds before it tipped over, crashing into the snow and taking down a riot of liquor bottles with it. A vodka bottle cracked open down the middle as it crashed into the metal legs of the table. Liquor splashed everywhere: on the tips of my boots, on Cole’s jacket, in Grant’s hair.

And the scent of cherry filled the air.

“No,” I whispered.

Lacey stood in front of me now, her eyes blazing from under her clumped lashes.

I didn’t know which would come first: the wolf’s teeth in the back of my neck or Lacey’s hand across my face. Either way, it was going to hurt.

But the only thing that happened was the snap of a stalk and a howl close enough to make the entire clearing shudder to a stop. And next came the screams.

The flash of gray wove itself through the boundary of the clearing, its eyes gleaming like orbs in the light of the fire. Bottles clinked together as they were dropped, forgotten, in the snow. Snapshots of boots and arms, varsity jackets and too much makeup clicked through my brain, but I didn’t move. I wouldn’t move until I saw messy brown hair and pale green eyes and freckles.

“You’ve gotta get out of here.” Fingers clamped around my wrist, and I let myself be pulled toward the edge of the yard. It took another three seconds before I realized it wasn’t Grant.

I pulled my wrist free. “Where’s Grant?”

“Come on, Claire, we’ve gotta go. My house is right over there. He’ll be fine.” Half-lidded eyes. Hair that curled over his right ear.

Patrick Gillet was leading me away from the party, away from the wolves.