The staggering sense of it stole my breath; I could barely get my voice out. “You bit Olivia?”
“Are you an idiot? I just said that. So now you’d better start talking because I’m going to ahh.” Jack’s neck jerked, wrenching awkwardly. My wolf senses screamed danger fear terror anger at me, emotions rolling off him in waves.
I reached out and spun the heating dial up. I didn’t know how much of a difference it would make, but it couldn’t hurt.
“It’s the cold. The cold changes you to a wolf and the heat stops it.” I was talking quickly, trying to keep him from getting a word in, trying to keep him from getting any angrier.
“It’s worse when you first get bitten. You change back and forth all the time, but it gets more stable. You get to be human for longer—you’ll get the whole summer—” Jack’s arms spasmed again, and the car fishtailed in the gravel of the shoulder before tracking back onto the road. “You can’t be driving right now! Please. I’m not going to run away or whatever—I want to help you, really I do. But you’ve got to take me to Sam.”
“Shut up.” Jack’s voice was part growl. “That bitch said she wanted to help me, too. I’m done with that. She told me you were bitten and that you didn’t change. I followed you. It was cold. You didn’t change. So what is it? Olivia said she didn’t know.”
My skin was burning from the blasting heater and the force of his emotion. Every time he said Olivia it was like a punch in the gut. “She doesn’t know. I was bitten, she was right.
But I never changed, not even once. I don’t have a cure. I just didn’t change. I don’t know why, nobody knows why. Please—”
“Stop lying to me.” It was hard to understand him now. “I want the truth now or you’re going to get hurt.”
I closed my eyes. I felt like I had lost my balance and the whole world was spinning away from me. There had to be something I could say to him that would make this better. I opened my eyes. “Fine. Okay. There’s a cure. But there’s not enough of it for everyone, so nobody wanted to tell you about it.” I winced as he smacked the steering wheel with dark-nailed fingers. My mind’s eye whirled away from the alien reality to an image of the nurse sliding the syringe with the rabies shot into Sam’s skin. “It’s a vaccination, sort of, it goes right in your veins. But it hurts. A lot. Are you sure you want it?”
“This hurts,” snarled Jack.
“Fine. If I take you to where it is, will you tell me where Sam is?”
“Whatever! Tell me where to go. So help me God, if you’re lying, I’ll kill you.”
I gave him directions to Beck’s and prayed he’d make it that far. I retrieved my phone from my backpack.
The Bronco swerved as Jack’s attention focused on me. “What are you doing?”
“I’m calling Beck. He’s the guy with the cure. I have to tell him not to give the last of it away before we get there. Is that all right?”
“You seriously had better not be lying to me…”
“Look. This is the number I’m dialing. Not the police.” Beck’s number came back to me; I was better at numbers than words. It began to ring. Pick up. Pick up. Let this be the right decision.
“Hello?”
I recognized the voice. “Hi. Beck, this is Grace.”
“Grace? Sorry, your voice sounds familiar, but I—” I talked over the top of him. “Do you still have some of the stuff? The cure? Please tell me you didn’t use the last of it.”
Beck was silent.
I pretended like he’d answered. “Thank goodness. Look. Jack Culpeper has me in the car.
He has Sam somewhere and he won’t tell me where he is unless he gets some of the cure.
We’re, like, ten minutes away.”
Beck said, very softly, “Damn.”
For some reason, that made my chest shake; it took me a moment to realize it was a swallowed sob. “Yes. So will you be there?”
“Yes. Of course. Grace—you still there? Can he hear me?”
“No.”
“Be confident, okay? Try not to be afraid. Don’t look him in the eyes, but be assertive.
We’ll be waiting at the house. Get him inside. I can’t come out or I’ll change and then we’re all screwed.”
“What’s he saying?” Jack demanded.
“He’s telling me what door you should come in when you get there. To get you in the fastest, so you won’t change. He can’t use the cure on you if you’re a wolf.”
“Good girl,” Beck said.
For some reason, Beck’s unexpected kindness was hard to bear—it made tears prick my eyes where Jack’s threats hadn’t.
“We’ll be there soon.” I snapped the phone shut and looked at Jack. Not right at his eyes, but at the side of his head. “Pull straight into the driveway and they’ll have the front door unlocked.”
“How do I know I can trust you?”
I shrugged. “It’s like you said. You know where Sam is. Nothing’s going to happen to you, because we have to know where he is.”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE SAM
40°F Cold clung to my skin. Earthy darkness pressed against my eyes, so heavy that I blinked to clear it from my irises. When I did, I saw a dull white rectangle in front of me—the crack of a door. Without any other shapes to gauge by, I couldn’t tell if it was desperately close or horribly far away. Smells crowded around me, dusty, organic, chemical. My breathing was loud in my ears, so wherever I was had to be small. A tool shed? A crawl space?
Crap. It was cold. Not cold enough for me to change, not yet. But it would be soon. I was lying down—why was I lying down? I staggered to my feet and bit my lip, hard, to keep from gasping aloud. There was something wrong with my ankle. I tried it again, carefully, a fragile fawn on new legs, and it gave underneath me. I crashed sideways, arms wheeling, feeling for some kind of support. My palms raked across a legion of spiked instruments of torture hung on the walls. I had no idea what they were—cold, metallic, dirty.
For a moment I stayed on all fours, listening to my breathing, feeling blood well on my palms, and thinking about giving up. I was so tired of fighting. It felt like I’d been fighting for weeks.
Finally, I pulled myself back up and limped to the door, arms stretched out in front of me to protect my unarmored body from more surprises. Icy air seeped in through the crack in the door. Trickled into my body like water. I reached for a handle, but there was nothing but ragged wood. A splinter stuck into my fingers and I swore, very quietly. Then I leaned my shoulder into the door and pushed, thinking, Please open please if there’s any justice in this world.
Nothing.
CHAPTER FIFTY GRACE
39°F I picked up my backpack. “This is it.”
It seemed stupid, somehow, for Beck’s house to look exactly the same as when Sam had brought me here to walk me to the golden wood, because the circumstances were so wildly different, but it did. The only difference was Beck’s hulking SUV in the driveway.
Jack was already pulling to the side of the road. He took the keys out of the ignition and looked at me, eyes wary. “Get out after I do.” I did as he said, waiting for him to come around and pull the door open. I slid out of the seat and he grabbed my arm tightly. His shoulders were thrust too far together and his mouth hung slightly open—I don’t think he even noticed. I guess I should’ve worried about him attacking me, but all I could think was He’s going to change and we won’t know where Sam is until too late.
I prayed Sam was somewhere warm, somewhere out of winter’s reach.