chapter THIRTY-TWO
• GRACE •
That first day back as me was odd. I couldn’t settle without my clothing and my routine, knowing that the wolf that was me was still lurching around unpredictably inside my limbs. In a way, I was glad for the uncertainty of being a new wolf, because I knew that it would eventually settle into the same temperature-based shift that Sam had had when I met him. And I loved the cold. I didn’t want to fear it.
In an attempt to settle myself into some kind of normalcy, I suggested that we make a proper dinner, which turned out to be more difficult than I’d expected. Sam and Cole had stocked the house with a strange combination of foods, most of which could be described as “microwavable” and few that could be described as “ingredients.” But I found the things for making pancakes and eggs — which was always an appropriate meal, I thought — and Sam moved in wordlessly to assist while Cole lay on the floor in the living room, staring at the ceiling.
I glanced over my shoulder. “What’s he doing? Could I have the spatula?”
Sam passed the spatula to me. “His brain hurts him, I think.” He slid behind me to reach the plates, and for a moment, his body was pressed against mine, his hand on my waist to steady me. I felt a fierce rush of longing.
“Hey,” I said, and he turned, plates in hand. “Put those down and come back here.”
Sam started toward me but then, as he did, movement caught my eye.
“Hst — what’s that?” I asked, my voice dropping to a whisper. “Stop!”
He froze and followed my gaze as I found what had caught my eye — an animal moving across the dark backyard. The grass was illuminated by the light coming from the two kitchen windows. For a moment, I lost sight of it, and then, there, by the covered barbecue grill.
For a moment, my heart felt light as a feather, because it was a white wolf. Olivia was a white wolf, and I hadn’t seen her in so long.
But then Sam breathed, “Shelby,” and I saw as she moved that he was right. There was none of the lithe grace that Olivia had had as a wolf, and when the white wolf lifted her head, it was a darting, suspicious move. She looked at the house, her eyes definitely not Olivia’s, and then she squatted and peed by the grill.
“Oh, nice,” I said.
Sam frowned.
We watched silently as Shelby made her way from the grill to another point in the middle of the yard, where she marked territory again. She was alone.
“I think she’s getting worse,” Sam said. Outside the window, Shelby stood for a long moment, staring at the house. I felt, uncannily, that she was looking at us in the kitchen, though we had to be just motionless silhouettes to her, if we were anything. Even from here, though, I could see her hackles rising.
“She” — we both started as Cole’s voice came from behind us — “is psychotic.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I’ve seen her about when I do the traps. She’s brave and she’s mean as hell.”
“Well, I knew that,” I said. With a little shudder, I remembered without fondness the evening that she had thrown herself through a plate glass window to attack me. And then, her eyes in the lightning storm. “She’s tried to kill me more times than I care to remember.”
“She’s scared,” Sam interrupted softly. He was still watching Shelby, whose eyes were right on him, no one else. It was terribly eerie. “She’s scared, and lonely, and angry, and jealous. With you, Grace, and Cole, and Olivia, the pack’s changing really fast and she doesn’t have much further to fall. She’s losing everything.”
The last pancake I’d started was burning. I snatched the pan from the stove top. “I don’t like her around here.”
“I don’t … I don’t think you have to worry,” Sam said. Shelby was still motionless, staring at his silhouette. “I think she blames me.”
Suddenly, Shelby started, at the same time that we heard Cole’s voice across the backyard: “Clear off, you psychotic bitch!”
She slid off into the darkness as the back door slammed.
“Thanks, Cole,” I said. “That was incredibly subtle.”
“That,” replied Cole, “is one of my finest traits.”
Sam was still frowning out the window. “I wonder if she —”
The phone rang from the kitchen island, interrupting him, and Cole retrieved it. He made a face and then handed the handset to me without answering it.
The caller ID was Isabel’s number. I said, “Hello?”
“Grace.” I waited for some comment on my humanness, something offhand and sarcastic. But she only said that: Grace.
“Isabel,” I said back, just to say something. I glanced at Sam, who appeared puzzled, reflecting my expression.
“Is Sam still there with you?”
“Yeah. Do you … want to talk to him?”
“No. I just wanted to make sure that you —” Isabel stopped. There was a lot of noise behind her. “Grace, did Sam tell you they’d found a dead girl in the woods? Killed by wolves?”
I looked at Sam, but he couldn’t hear what Isabel had said.
“No,” I said, uneasy.
“Grace. They know who she was.”
Everything inside me was very quiet.
Isabel said, “It was Olivia.”
Olivia.
Olivia.
Olivia.
I saw everything around me with perfect precision. There was a photograph on the fridge of a man standing beside a kayak and giving a peace sign. There was also a dingy magnet in the shape of a tooth with a dental office’s name and number on it. Next to the fridge was a counter that had a few small nicks all the way down to some colorless surface. On it was an old glass Coca-Cola bottle that had a pencil and one of those pens that looked like a flower stuck in it. The kitchen tap dripped every eleven seconds, the drop of water running clockwise around the lip of the faucet before working up enough nerve to fall into the sink below. I’d never noticed how everything in this kitchen was a warm color. Browns and reds and oranges, all worked through the counters and cabinets and tiles and faded photographs stuck into the doors of the cabinets.
“What did you say?” Sam demanded. “What did you say to her?”
I couldn’t figure out why he would ask me that when I hadn’t said anything. I frowned at him and saw that he was holding the phone, which I didn’t remember giving to him.
I thought, I am a terrible friend because I don’t hurt at all. I’m just here looking at the kitchen and thinking that if it were mine, I’d find a rug for it so my feet wouldn’t be so cold on the bare floor. I must not have loved Olivia, then, because I don’t even feel like crying. I am thinking about rugs and not about how she’s dead.
“Grace,” Sam said. In the background, I saw Cole move off, holding the phone, talking into it. “What do you need from me?”
I thought it was a very strange question to ask. I just looked at him. “I’m okay,” I said.
Sam said, “You’re not.”
“I am,” I said. “I’m not crying. I don’t even feel like crying.”
He smoothed my hair back from my ears, pulling it behind my head like he was making a ponytail, holding it in his fist. Into my ear, he said, “But you will.”
I leaned my head on his shoulder; it seemed incredibly heavy just then, impossible to hold up. “I want to call people and find out if they’re okay. I want to call Rachel,” I said. “I want to call John. I want to call Olivia.” Too late, I realized what I’d said, and I opened my mouth as if I could somehow take it back and insert something more logical.
“Oh, Grace,” Sam said, touching my chin, but his pity was a distant thing.
On the phone, I heard Cole say, in a completely different voice than I’d ever heard him use before, “Well, there’s not much we can do about it now, is there?”