Chapter 3
Chapter Three
In a fair world, that would have been the end of it.
The sight of a cop would have been enough to scare some of the kids into confessing to their parents, the parents would have found out that they were all playing Dungeons & Dragons until three in the morning, and I never would have had to think about it again.
But this was my life, not an ideal world where high school teachers were paid a million dollars for putting up with everyone's kids five days a week, and I wasn't married to Ryan Gosling, with two beautiful, adopted children and enough spare income for both nannies and unicorn riding lessons.
So instead, I suffered through the rest of the day, tensing every time someone opened the door because I thought that Detective Nicholas King was coming back with the rest of his Paranormal Crimes buddies to arrest me.
Then, after I had taught six periods and used my prep to attempt to fix a paper jam in the copier, I took the bus home.
I realized someone was following me after the second stop. Wolves have a sense about that sort of thing, and most of the time, it’s just a really effective way to avoid Humans Are Humans believers or awkward encounters with rival packs. But this time, I could feel the nervousness of my pursuer.
I figured it was someone trying to make it through a pack initiation, or maybe even a kid trying to make a viral video dunking on the first werewolf they saw, only to realize viral internet fame wasn't all it was cracked up to be.
So I ignored them, glancing in the bus window occasionally to try to see if I could pick out who on the bus was after me. I got off a stop before my normal one, just to throw them off, but they got off too, and I glanced over my shoulder, blinking in surprise.
The bus pulled away.
“Mercy?” I looked around. This was bad. This was very bad.
Mercy was one of my freshman honors students.
And I had just explained to Detective Nicholas King all the different reasons why it was a bad idea for me to meet with any of them after school, why I didn't do it, why I was extremely careful to not be seen in public with my students, because I knew better. I knew better.
She bit her lip, pulling the sleeves of her sweatshirt over her hands and twisting them between her fingers. When she looked up at me, her eyes were wide.
“Come on.” I jerked my head toward a nearby alley. This wasn't any better, but at least we weren't standing out on the street.
She shuffled behind me, her shoes dragging on the sidewalk.
I checked both sides of the street, but no one seemed to be paying attention to us, and my werewolf senses didn't pick up anyone else interested in the two of us.
I ducked back into the alleyway, finding her tucked behind a trash bin.
The smell was overpoweringly bad, and my nose twitched.
My whole body wanted to turn away. She looked up at me.
“You said we could talk to you,” she said.
Blinking, I corrected, “I said that no one had talked to me.”
I felt like the biggest jerk in the world splitting hairs, but now, my invitation for students to come talk to me seemed even more foolish.
“At the beginning of the year,” Mercy said, her eyes searching my face. “You said we could always come talk to you. That you were someone safe.”
My shoulders slumped. I had said that. It was part of my beginning of the year spiel.
I always wanted them to know that, no matter what, they could come talk to me.
That unless I was legally obligated to tell law enforcement or child protective services, I wanted to be an adult in their life that they could trust with things they couldn't tell anyone else.
Over the years, a few werewolf kids had taken me up on it, coming to me with questions that they didn't feel comfortable asking their parents or their pack. Almost no human kids had ever trusted me the same way.
“You can talk to me,” I said, trying not to feel grudging that her talking to me meant my hopes and dreams of avoiding the SAPD were shrinking by the minute.
Mercy blew out a breath, nodding her head. “I think I know what's happening.”
Neither one of us pretended we didn't know what she was talking about. I waited, and she twisted the arms of her sweatshirt again and again until they were nearly knotted.
She wasn't going to say anything if I didn't, and it was time to step up.
I could be Stanley Tucci. I could. Even if whatever was going on terrified me, because I knew that if she told me, I would have to tell someone else, and then I wasn't going to be invisible anymore.
I wouldn't be able to slide under the radar and keep myself from notice.
I was going to be very noticed, and wolves who stood out were the easiest targets.
But these were kids. Twelve kids who were mine—at least from 8:15 to 9:15 a.m. five days a week. It might not be the same as having a pack, but wolves took care of pups, even if they weren't in your pack. And whatever was going on, these pups needed help.
“What's going on, Mercy?”
She bit her lip, releasing it with a puff of air.
“It's not me. You have to know, right? It's not me.”
That, I did believe. I had seen the kids in class. A dozen of them, gleaming with some strange glittering light. I nodded. “But you know what it is?”
“So, you know how me and Grant used to be dating?” She looked at me, and I nodded, even though I hadn't known she and Grant used to date.
She nodded again, then said, “A couple of weeks ago, after we already broke up, he said he had something cool to show me, so I followed him, but he wanted to go up into the hills.
And I'm not stupid. I grew up here. You don't go up into the hills. Especially not at night.”
I tried not to frown, tried to show no reaction. I had no idea what she was talking about. Where I had grown up, you didn't go into the hills at night because of coyotes, and because that was where the pot farmers came in, bringing kilos of product along with the weaponry to protect it.
But she seemed to be waiting for me, waiting for me to have some idea what she was talking about, so I nodded, a bobblehead version of Stanley Tucci.
Yes, I could be the mentor in the movie, perfectly capable of empathizing with a fourteen-year-old girl, even though she and I had about as much in common as Stanley Tucci and I did.
“You don't go up into the hills,” she repeated. “Especially not at night. So as soon as his car pulled onto Ridgecrest Trail, I locked my doors. I wasn't getting out. He called me a coward and parked under these old oak trees. Everyone was there. I mean, you know, everyone.”
I nodded again, the perfect bobblehead for this story. I had no idea who 'everyone' was, but I could imagine, based on the sparkly, glittering children in my class.
“And Grant was all, 'Come on, you're making me look bad.' But I'm not stupid,” she repeated. “So I locked the door. I told him I wanted to go home, and he got mad and slammed the door and left me there. And then he walked away. Everyone walked away. They didn't even check on me.”
I frowned, trying to understand. “So it was just a party in the woods?”
She shook her head. “They, like…” She trailed off, clearly groping for words, then turned to me and repeated.
“You don't go into the hills. They know that.
I know that. And when they came back, they were different.
I fell asleep. I can't believe I did, I was so scared. But when I woke up, it was already morning, and everyone was there, laughing and giggling, and just covered in… and Grant, he gave me this twig.”
She fumbled in her bag, pulling it free.
She held out something gold, and I opened my hand automatically, accepting it.
It was a graceful Y shape, the bark patterned almost like coral, but it was warm against my skin, as though it had been sitting out in the sun.
I ran my finger over it, sure that it was just paint, but I could tell just by touch that it was pure gold.
“And he said, he said I would never be invited again. That now they didn't want me because I rejected them.” Her eyes were wide.
I frowned down at the twig. I wanted to ask who, but it seemed the wrong question.
She seemed to assume I knew exactly who, she seemed to think that the whole story made sense, when all I understood was that Grant was a jerk who had abandoned someone in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night.
“I think he thought it was a threat. But, like, thank god, you know?” Mercy was still staring at the twig, her eyes wide.
“Where did they go?” I asked. “Who would never invite you again?”
She shook her head, and when I tried to offer back the twig, she shook her head even harder, backing up a few steps before turning. She stopped, looking over her shoulder. “But, like, it wasn't from me, right? You didn't hear it from me. I didn't say anything. I didn't narc.”
“No, of course not. Do you want me to tell Detective King what you told me?” I asked, unsure what to do with the whole strange story.
There was enough in it that I didn't understand, enough that made me absolutely certain Detective King of Paranormal Crimes needed to hear part of this, because I wasn't a local, and I could barely make sense of it.
Mercy shook her head again, and then she was gone, her feet echoing even after she left the alley. I stared down at the twig in my hand, frowning.
Was this part of the World Tree? The strange tree in the middle of the city that could take you to any number of strange worlds?
No. That was in the middle of the city, and she had talked about going to the farthest edge of it, the place where the city disappeared entirely into California wildness, where the last vestiges of civilization faded into wilderness.
I bit my lip, frowning down at the twig again. What was I supposed to do?
With a sigh, I took out my cell phone, searching my pocket until I found Detective King's card. Mercy might not be a narc, but she'd come to me for a reason, and I wasn't going to let her down.
“No human can save them now,” a voice said.
Startled, I dropped my cell phone, wincing as it cracked on the ground.
Across from me was my neighbor. His blond hair stood out starkly against the stucco wall of the building behind him.
One of his legs was propped against the wall, and he looked as if he'd always been standing there, even though that was impossible.
When Mercy and I had gotten here, I had checked. It had just been the two of us.
I would have seen him, or, if not seen him, I definitely would have smelled him. But here he was, impossibly casual.
His voice was deep, and that was unexpected, sending a shiver up my spine. “They are beyond saving. You should save yourself and pretend you did not hear her words.”
“What do you mean they’re beyond saving?” I asked sharply. I bent, picking up my phone, grateful that it looked like it had survived with a chip to the case and nothing else. “They're my students. I'm not giving up on them.”
“You should. You are foolish. You give away gifts and your name. They will eat you alive.” His eyes were boring into mine, and I felt the wolf rise in me, answering the challenge implied in his gaze.
“Who?” I asked sharply.
His lips pulled flat, and he shook his head. “Your students. Your charges? They are under the thrall of the fae, and there is nothing a human or a wolf can do to save them.”