CHAPTER FIVE

 

Afterward, Carrie only remembered flashes. Running over the grass, sailing through the air, howling at the moon, leaping between trees in the woods. Mick by her side, her alpha. Everywhere she went, she felt their connection.

She awoke in her bed the next morning, sunlight streaming in through the window. She lay on top of the covers, completely naked. Her feet and hands were stained with dirt. It was black under her fingernails. She stretched, surveying her body.

And then she saw that Joan was standing in the doorway to her bedroom.

Carrie let out a little squeal, scrambling to cover herself. “Joan, what are you doing here?”

Joan glared at her. “Why didn’t you return my calls?”

“I was…” Carrie clutched at the covers. “Can you give me a second to get dressed?”

“What the hell is going on, Carrie? I saw you driving with the guy from the Ferris Wheel yesterday. You’re not answering your phone. And when I knocked on the door this morning, your mom didn’t answer. No one answered. Where’s your mom?”

Carrie felt tears threatening again. But she couldn’t cry. What was their story? Some long-lost relative. She wouldn’t cry over that. She bit down hard on her bottom lip, trying to get herself under control. “Let me get dressed, okay?”

Joan sighed. But she trounced out of the room and shut the door after herself.

Carrie jumped out of bed and threw on the first clothes she could find. Her heart was pounding. She had to lie to Joan. She didn’t want to lie to Joan, but she couldn’t tell her the truth. She and Joan had talked about werewolves before. Joan was terrified of them. Joan was terrified of a lot of things, actually. Anyway, there was no way that Joan would still be her friend if she knew the truth. Carrie had to lie. But she’d never told a lie like this. Nothing so big. And not to Joan.

Carrie opened the door. She tried to smile.

Joan narrowed her eyes. “Okay, spill it. What’s going on?”

“My, um, parents had to leave.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“Um… my great-aunt Agatha just died, and we’re her only living relatives. Her estate is enormous, and it’s going to take my parents months to sort through it. So, um, they had to go.”

“You don’t have a great-aunt.”

Carrie twisted her hands together. “I didn’t think I did.”

Joan surveyed her for a minute, and then seemed to accept this. “Okay. So, why didn’t they take you with them? They take you everywhere they go. They never let you out of their sight.”

Carrie didn’t know what to say. She scuffed her toe against the floor and tried to think. “Um… it’s ‘cause of school?”

“What?”

“Yeah,” said Carrie, warming to the idea. “It’s because I have to finish school. If I went with them, I wouldn’t be able to graduate on time, and they said I could stay here.”

“Alone?”

Carrie shrugged.

“That’s not like them,” said Joan, shaking her head. “They’d never do that. They must have been really upset about your great-aunt.”

Oh, that was a perfect thing to blame their out-of-character behavior on. Carrie nodded vigorously. “Yeah, they were really upset. They weren’t themselves at all.”

“Funny, though, that they were so upset about this woman they never even told you about.”

“Well,” said Carrie darkly, “it turns out that there were a lot of things they never told me.”

“What do you mean?”

Shit. Why had she said that? “Nothing.”

Joan folded her arms over her chest. “Well, that kind of explains things. But why were you driving the car with Ferris-Wheel guy?”

Mick. Damn Mick. How was she supposed to explain Mick? She cleared her throat. “Um… well, he’s a family friend. You know how I said I knew him? That was because I do. My parents asked him to stay with me until they get back.”

“I thought you said they were letting you stay here alone.”

Carrie winced. “Well, it’s like being alone. I mean, Mick isn’t really…” She rubbed her forehead. “Anyway, I’m going to make him leave.”

“Mick?”

“Yeah, that’s his name.”

“He’s a family friend? Why does he work at a carnival?”

Carrie shrugged. “I don’t know. Why does anyone do anything?”

Joan wandered further into Carrie’s room. She stopped at her desk and began straightening stacks of letters. “Why were you avoiding my calls?”

“Joan… I wasn’t really avoiding you.”

“Because this is huge. Your parents left you alone with some hot carnie. You’d think the first thing you’d do would be to call me.” Joan turned to look at her. “If something this big happened to me, I’d call you.”

Carrie realized that her friend was hurt. “I’m sorry. Really, I am. Everything happened so fast.”

Joan chewed on her bottom lip.

“Besides, you know everything now.” Carrie smiled. “It’s still huge.”

Joan looked around the room. She sighed. “Yeah.” She tried a smile. “It is huge.”

Carrie’s smile widened.

“Man,” said Joan, “if we weren’t such hated outcasts, I’d say we should throw a party.”

Carrie laughed. “Yeah, that would go over well. No one would come.”

Joan mused. “Maybe if we somehow got lots of free alcohol, we could buy our way to popularity.”

Carrie snorted. “I doubt it.”

“And then Holden Rane would fall hopelessly in love with you and—”

“Oh, I almost forgot. I saw him at the carnival while I was waiting for my parents to pick me up. I, like, ran into him.”

“He noticed you?”

“I literally collided with him. I wasn’t looking where I was going, and he was right there, and bam.”

Joan’s eyes widened. “Oh God. That’s terrible. Were you really embarrassed?”

“I wanted to die.”

“I can imagine. You poor girl.”

“But… you’re not going to believe this.”

“What?”

“He knows my name.”

Joan’s jaw dropped.

“I know,” said Carrie. “I thought he didn’t know I existed. But he knows my name.”

“Whoa,” said Joan.

Carrie grinned. This was the first thing she’d felt good about since yesterday morning. She still remembered the little thrill she’d gotten when Holden had said her name. That had been exciting and wonderful, almost good enough to wipe out the horror of the past day—at least for a short moment.

“Did he seem angry with you?” said Joan.

“No, not really,” said Carrie. “He didn’t really seem anything. But he kind of smiled at me.”

“That’s a good sign,” said Joan. “Maybe we should have a party after all.”

“Whatever,” said Carrie. “You know we can’t pull something like that off.”

* * *

Later, Carrie walked Joan down to the front door. Joan was heading back to her house for the afternoon, and she’d been insistent that Carrie answer her phone the next time she called. Carrie had promised to do her best.

Mick was waiting at the bottom of the steps.

Joan saw him and started a little bit. “Oh, hi. You’re Mick, right?”

Mick nodded. “That’s right. I’m Carrie’s uncle.”

Joan looked confused. “I thought you said he was a family friend.”

Carrie laughed nervously. “He is. I just always called him uncle when I was little.” She glared at Mick. They were going to have to work on getting their story straight.

“Oh,” said Joan, but she still looked confused.

Mick offered her his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

She shook with him. “Oh, I’m Joan, incidentally.”

“Sorry,” said Carrie. She should have introduced them, but she was feeling too off kilter to know what to do.

“It’s fine,” said Joan. She headed over to the front door. “So, I’ll see you later, Carrie.”

“Yeah,” said Carrie. “Good. Later.”

Joan started to go through the door, and then she hesitated. “Um, how did your parents leave?”

“What?” said Carrie.

“The garage door’s open, and both the cars are there? If they didn’t take a car—”

“I lent them my car,” said Mick smoothly. “They wanted the other cars here for Carrie. They said it was high time she learned to drive.”

Joan made a funny face, and Carrie winced. After all, that was completely unlike something her parents would say.

“Uh,” said Carrie, “the grief… it really got to them.” Then she remembered that Joan had already been suspicious since her parents had never talked about this “aunt” of hers. Carrie swallowed.

Joan only shook her head. She turned back to the door. “Okay, well, I guess I’ll see you later, then, Carrie.”

“Bye,” said Carrie, going after her and taking hold of the door. Once her friend was out of the house, she closed the door tightly after her.

Mick raised his eyebrows at her. “Your friend is awfully curious. She could be a problem.”

A problem? What the hell did that mean? Would Mick kill Joan if he thought she was a danger to them? “She won’t be.”

He shrugged.

“Besides, you made it worse, saying you were my uncle,” said Carrie. “We really need to work this whole story out. How can you be a friend of my parents if you work at a carnival? And why did my parents drop everything for this aunt that they’ve never spoken about? It doesn’t make sense.”

“That’s good,” said Mick.

“What? No, it’s not.”

“Real life doesn’t make sense, little fael. When you explain the story to someone, and they don’t understand why something happened, you must agree with them. Nod and say, ‘You’re right. I don’t understand it either.’ Because that is more realistic than having an answer for everything.”

Maybe he was right. He seemed to know what was going on more than she did. She guessed he had more experience with this kind of thing.

“Breakfast?” said Mick.

And she realized that she could smell something delicious wafting through the air from the kitchen. She should probably hate Mick, but it was hard to do when he was so nice to her. And when he had such a perfectly muscled stomach. She smiled weakly. “It smells amazing.”

He smiled and started for the kitchen.

She followed him. “Are we going to change again tonight?”

“Do you want to?” he asked.

* * *

She did want to, she realized. She wasn’t sure why, because she couldn’t really remember what it had been like to run through the woods as a wolf. All she remembered were bits and snatches, like a half-remembered dream. But it was a beautiful dream, in which she had felt strong and wild and free. When she thought of running under the moon, it filled her with a longing—something fiercer than she’d ever felt before.

She spent the rest of the day in breathless anticipation, waiting for the moon to crest over the horizon into the sky.

The transformation in her was astonishing, and just yesterday, it would have been abhorrent to her, but she was adjusting to it rapidly. She still mourned her parents, and she still felt waves of sadness. They would hit her out of nowhere, like punches to her gut. She’d be doubled over with the force of her tears. And that happened often. But in between her bouts of grief, she felt… almost buoyant. As if the world was perfect and wonderful, as if she had finally found her way to the place where she belonged, as if all of her dreams were finally coming true.

And she wanted the moon to rise. She wanted to shift. She wasn’t even frightened of the pain of it. She welcomed it, because it would bring the wolf to her. And she found that she missed the wolf.

When it started to grow dark, Carrie went out on the porch and watched the sky turn darker and darker shades of indigo.

Mick came outside behind her. They both gripped the wooden railing and stared up at the sky.

She closed her eyes. She could feel the moon even before she could see it. It was pulling on her, like a magnet. It was coming closer.

Mick’s voice was dark and soft. “You feel it, little fael?”

“Yes,” she breathed. And then the first tremor of pain went through her body. She groaned.

He moved behind her, his hands caressing her shoulders and sliding down over her arms. “It doesn’t have to hurt, you know.”

She leaned back into his chest, and she could smell him. He smelled wild and strong, like the forest. He smelled like the moon.

His lips against her ear. “Surrender to the moon, Carrie. You can cast aside your human body like a change of clothes. Let it go.”

Another painful tremor went through her. But then somehow, she made sense of his words. Not in her mind, because she could always understand his words. But in her body. Her physical form made sense of what he was saying, and she felt how to surrender.

At once, the change washed over her, and it was euphoric. The wolf overtook her in an instant. She stood on the deck behind her house on all her paws. She turned her muzzle to the moon.

She howled.