“You never came back?”
“Betty always visited us. The last time Mom was here was when all those other disappearances were happening.”
“Yeah.”
“That was right after my mom graduated college. It must’ve been so weird coming home to boys going missing and having me, then marrying my dad and going off to Tulane to get her master’s. It must have felt like starting over. Maybe she just wanted to forget everything. I mean, she must’ve known some of the guys who got lost.”
The tingling feeling surges. The scrape on my hand burns.
“This is insane,” I say, plopping back on the bed.
He squeezes my good hand in his. “I know.”
I stare up at the flame on the Amnesty International candle. All those people in jails all across the world; tortured, imprisoned, lots of times for no reason at all, lots of times for just speaking their minds. How could this all be part of the same world? Me here with him, worrying about pixies. Them, all across the world, worrying about surviving.
What is the commonality there?
Just the flame of the candle.
Just hope.
“What happened?” I ask. “What happened the last time?”
“People kept vanishing. At night. Always when they were alone. The town had a curfew,” he says. “Eventually it stopped.”
“What stopped it?”
“No one knows,” his voice deepens. “Except maybe Betty. I’m thinking she might know something more.”
“Then she should have told us.”
“Maybe she didn’t think she’d have to.”
“Lame.” I cover my eyes with my hand and try not to think about that voice calling my name, but it echoes in my ears. “And they started taking the boys again right around the time I saw the guy in Charleston. And you, Nick Colt, somehow think it’s your job to protect people from this?”
“I can scare them away,” he says, like he’s boasting or something.
“How?”
“Weres have abilities.”
“What abilities?”
“We can hunt.”
I touch the metal zipper on his sweatshirt, flipping it up and down, and then repeat what he said, trying to understand. “You can hunt.”
Werewolves hunt.
“You kill things.” I move a little bit away from him.
“I don’t kill people,” he says, obviously annoyed.
I sit up on the bed. “How do I know that?”
He cocks his head. “Look at me.”
Hesitantly, I look. Sort of.
“Look in my eyes, Zara. I do not kill people.”
I swallow. “Okay.”
“You believe me?”
Nodding, I get up and walk across the room and light a candle. I begin stacking CDs in piles. They are scattered all over the floor. My bracelet bangs against my wrist as I work.
“Zara.”
“What? I’m just cleaning up, okay?” I am almost shouting at him so I settle my voice down. “This is all a little hard to deal with.”
He swings his legs off the bed and walks over, squatting on the floor like I am. “I know.”
His big hand pats my back and then he stiffens. I drop the CD I’m holding. A spidery feeling creeps along my hand. Nick grabs the fire poker again, clutching it in his large fist.
Then someone pounds on the door downstairs; loud, insistent.
I jump up. My voice sounds scared. “Nick?”
He gives me a steady look, but his hand tightens on the metal poker and his knuckles are white.
“Do not open the door, Zara.”
“Is it—”
A new burst of pounding interrupts my question.
I stare at Nick and catch my reflection in the dresser mirror. My eyes are huge and scared, just like how I feel. That spider feeling seems all over me now, creeping along, invading.
My foot knocks over the pile of CDs, scattering them all over the floor again. My heart leaps out and scatters with them, pieces of it everywhere. I step on a bunch of envelopes I have ready to mail out to dictators across the world.
I clutch Nick’s wrist.
“They can’t get in, right?”
He nods. “Not unless you let them.”
“And I’m not going to let them.”
“Right.”
Another round of pounding against the door. Another. Another.
“Nick?”
He wraps his arms around me. The cold iron of the poker chills a straight line against my back. It is nothing compared to his warmth. “You are perfectly safe here with me.”
“Are you going to change into a wolf?”
“Not unless I have to.”
“You don’t need a full moon or anything?” I whisper, clinging to him.
“Nope.”
I shiver. I wish I could crawl inside his skin and hide under there. “Do you think you’re going to have to change?”
He moves me toward the bed, sitting me down. He has the fire poker in his hand. It looks scary there; ready, metallic, heavy.
“They shouldn’t be able to get inside the house,” he says. “Not unless they’ve been in here before.”
“Are there a lot of them?”
“I smell five at least. The lesser ones I’m not worried about. But their leader?”
“They have a leader?”
“I’m pretty sure.” He pulls away from me and walks across the room and closes my bedroom door, flicking the lock in the doorknob. He doesn’t turn to talk to me, just keeps facing the closed door. His free hand spreads out against the wood frame of it.
Footsteps thud up the stairs. He turns his head to look at me. The irises of his eyes have gone slanted, like a wolf’s.
He speaks over his shoulder in low, menacing rumbles that are barely human. “I think at least one of the pixies has been in this house before.”
I freeze.
Nick’s back shakes with some sort of effort. I don’t know what kind.
“Nick? Can they all come in if one has been in before?”
“No. They’re waiting outside.”
“Can he come in the room if he’s been in the house?” Terror hobbles me.
“I don’t know.”
He snarls and I don’t know what to do, what to say, so I just say his name. “Nick?”
His voice is warm and aching all at the same time. “I’m trying hard not to change, Zara. But when people are in danger, I change.”