Realizing she’d made a noise, she looked back up at the house. All the lights were still off.
Claire hurried across the lawn, wondering if her mother was going to realize she was gone—if she was about to come and stop her. The nerves in her fingertips tingled in time with her breathing as she tiptoed through the yard. With every step the smell of the grass being crushed beneath her feet flooded into her nose, carrying with it the sharp scent of chemical fertilizer. When she eased through the opening in the brick wall, the more natural, less uniform odor of the forest washed over her like cool water, and she sighed in relief.
Her nose twitched. She could smell everything. The squirrel hiding in the fir tree. The dry dirt and pine needles on the forest floor. And—her mother. She could smell her mother.
Crap.
Claire ducked under the low branches of the evergreen next to her and held her breath. How could she have missed the fact that her mother had followed her? She waited, frozen, her heart thudding against her ribs. The squirrel above her took off through the trees and Claire let out her breath.
When she breathed in again, she realized that the scent was faint and stale.
Oh my God. It’s from last night! I can smell where she walked last night.
She slid out of her hiding place and tried to shake the jumpiness out of her shoulders.
She took a deep breath. If she was going to be stuck like this, she was damn well going to learn to control it.
She focused on the nearly invisible tree trunks in front of her. They shimmered the tiniest bit, like ink on black paper. Huh. I can see in the dark? That’s … helpful. She tried to concentrate, to remember the feeling in her hands and ears when she’d changed before.
The thick fur blanketing her hands and ears was so strong in Claire’s mind that it may as well have already been on her. A wave of dizziness swept over her. Unable to keep her balance, she reached out to grab the closest tree, misjudged the distance, and landed hard on her knees with her fist empty and her head spinning. Her gut ached and her lungs burned, like someone had punched her in the stomach.
As quickly as the feeling had come, it passed. She reached out one shaky, fur-blanketed hand and stroked her ear. The silky fur slid underneath her fingertips. I just shaved it off this afternoon—but damn, it doesn’t feel like I ever even touched it.
Still, it was not horror that she felt when she looked at her fur this time—it was relief. I did it. I can control it. Oh, thank God, uh, Goddess, I can control it.
Success glowed in Claire’s chest like an ember. She checked to see if she was any different than she had been last night, but everything looked the same. Furry ears, furry hands, and human-looking everywhere else.
But still, she needed to be able to change back. And she’d done that before only with her mother’s help. Now she had to figure out how to do it on her own.
She sat down, folding her legs underneath her, determined not to be knocked over by the force of turning human, the way she had been when she tried to become a wolf. She sucked a breath deep into her lungs, smelling a deer somewhere to her right, deep in the forest. The surprise of the scent—so clear and so far away—shook her concentration, and she let the breath slip back out in a quiet oh.
Claire twisted to face a thick stand of trees. She could see the individual grooves in the bark of each tree. The sharp, musky scent of a scared doe wafted out between the branches. It was definitely in there.
Claire clenched her fists. A desire to hunt swelled in her chest. It blotted out everything else. She could barely keep herself from slinking off into the trees, following the deer’s scent. Her stomach grumbled.
She forced herself back onto the ground. Without meaning to, she had risen up onto all fours, ready to run. What the hell am I doing? She shook her head, clearing it, and pulled in another deep breath. If she was hungry, she’d go home and get a snack like a normal person. Jesus. I was actually going to chase down a deer. …
The most important thing now was getting rid of her fur. Drawing herself in was trickier, but she held her breath and focused on being normal—being with Emily, hanging out with Lisbeth, hearing Lisbeth laugh at something she said.
“… right now, no … I can’t. Think how suspicious that would look!”
Lisbeth’s voice rang in Claire’s ears and she gasped, opening her eyes and staring wildly at the trees around her. It had sounded tinny, like a bad phone connection, but it hadn’t been in her head. It wasn’t the same echo of Lisbeth’s voice that Claire heard when she left the water running while she brushed her teeth, or when she threw her clean laundry in a pile on the floor.
She had actually heard Lisbeth. Talking. Here.
What the hell?