Marie shot Katherine a withering look. "Yes. We're all here. Please be seated, and we will hear what Claire has to say."
The other women sank down around the fire. Standing in front of their expectant faces, Claire suddenly wondered if maybe she should have told Marie after all. She didn't want to see the looks on their faces when she told them what had happened.
But it was too late now. Whether or not she wanted to know, she was about to find out.
She stared into the depths of the fire, unable to meet their eyes as she spoke.
"There's a girl—Amy Harper. She's a . . . a friend of a friend. And apparently, she got suspicious about me for some reason." Claire swallowed hard. "And last night, she overheard me talking and somehow, she figured out what I am. That I'm a werewolf. She told me this morning that she knows. Amy Harper knows I'm a werewolf." The words hung in the clearing, heavy and electric as a storm cloud. Claire felt her legs quivering underneath her, and she sat down in front of the fire before she collapsed.
There was a moment of stunned silence. The sort of silence that said it was just as bad as they'd been afraid it would be. Claire stared into the heart of the fire, the broken pieces of her life strewn around her. Beatrice shuffled over and put an arm around her shoulders.
"Okay. Claire. Listen. This is bad. But it happens. That's why we have laws for it—ways to handle it." Her low voice was full of spiderweb cracks. "Beatrice is right." Marie stood up, and Claire looked at her. Her mother's expression was neutral, but pain flared in her eyes. "We will simply do what we have to—the same way we have for hundreds of years."
Just when Claire felt the freezing ache inside her start to melt, Judith jumped in. "But we just had that . . . that incident this summer. . . ."
Zahlia.
Though they were not allowed to speak her name ever again, they all thought it. Beatrice pulled her arm away.
Judith shook her head. "Killing another human right now is more dangerous than it has ever been. The town is still on edge. That other researcher—the Japanese man—is still here."
Claire felt everything around her swim, like the air had gone liquid and slow. She'd been so worried about herself and the pack, but she didn't want to think about what saving themselves would mean for Amy. The thought of her lying somewhere—dead, broken—was more than Claire could stomach.
"Isn't there some other way?" she whispered. The eyes around the fire all immediately came to rest on her as she spoke. "I mean, she seems to want to be friends with me, even though she knows. She seems worried about me."
The thought of Emily, red-eyed and sniffling, crossed Claire's mind. Killing Amy meant hurting Emily, too. She wrapped her arms around her middle, feeling like she was on the edge of falling apart. "We don't always have to kill a human who finds out, right? I mean, look at Matthew."
Marie shook her head. "Too many humans who know is dangerous for the pack. There will be no more gardiens."
"It sounds like maybe one human who knows has been dangerous," Judith said. She looked over at Claire. "Are you sure Matthew has been loyal? Do you know why Amy became suspicious in the first place?"
Panic beat wildly in Claire's chest, like a caged animal throwing itself against the bars. The pack was talking so calmly—so certainly—about killing Amy. She didn't want to sacrifice herself, but if it kept Matthew out of this, she would do it.
"She said that there were things I said—things that she pieced together. And then she overheard Matthew and me at the dance last night, talking about coming to the naming. She said between that and some stuff that happened while we were shopping, she figured it out."
Katherine drew in a sharp breath, and the pack's attention turned away from Claire as they all focused on Katherine's shocked, horrified face. "It wasn't the time I ran into you at the mall, was it?"
Claire laced her fingers, twisting them together until they hurt. She didn't want to lay the blame at anyone else's feet. While she hesitated, Katherine's mouth fell open.
"But I didn't even say anything," Katherine protested. Marie turned to Claire with a question in her eyes.
"I don't know exactly what made her suspicious," Claire said simply.
Katherine balled her hands up into fists, pressing them into the sides of her totally impractical khakis. She stared at Claire, her mouth pursed into an ugly little circle. "How can you—"
"Just stop it," Judith snapped at her. "You're the one who leapt in and told us you were at the mall—Claire didn't say anything. And I'm not surprised to hear that you were indiscreet. It's just like the Halloween gathering, when you started to howl in spite of the danger. You don't think—"
"Enough!" Marie interrupted.
Claire stood, aching. Frozen. Waiting.
Her mother sighed. "Amy must be killed. I will not take that sort of a chance with the pack's safety." She turned her sad gaze to Claire. "Or with yours."