Chapter Nine
It was dark in my dreams again.
The howl of the wolves at my heels, the leaves and branches crunching underfoot as I ran, the smell of burning buildings and bodies poisoning the air.
The screaming I’d heard the night before grew louder, more desperate, as I ran.
It was a woman’s voice, her agony clawing at my soul like nails down a chalkboard.
I had to get to her, I had to save her. It was only when I paused, hesitated for just a second, that I understood where I was.
The archway up ahead, the silver dagger in my hand.
A figure dressed in white waiting for me at an altar. This was a witch’s Becoming ceremony.
‘Lydia?’ I said as the woman came into focus. ‘Lyds, is that you?’
She couldn’t answer. Lydia Powell was too busy fighting off what looked like a legion of wolves, dozens if not hundreds, emerging from the woods and all of them racing right past me to lunge at my friend, staining her beautiful white gown scarlet.
‘Lydia, no!’ I screamed. ‘Get away from her!’
I fought blindly, attacking anyone who would do her harm, blasts of wind, wild rains, sheer force of will, the knife in my hand.
It found unwilling flesh over and over until my arm ached with the effort but it was still too late.
By the time I fell to my knees beside her, drenched in Were blood, my best friend’s eyes were vacant and soulless, evidence of the wolves’ claws and teeth everywhere on her mauled body.
‘End it.’
Her lips formed the words but there wasn’t enough air in her lungs to make a sound.
‘Please, Emily, kill me. End it all.’
Two tears cut a stark path through the ripe red gore on my cheeks.
With a scream, I raised the dagger above my head and plunged it down with all the strength left in me.
As my best friend’s last breath left her body, a huge silver wolf with green-grey eyes the colour of Spanish moss appeared in front of me.
It was a wolf I’d seen before. In Bonaventure Cemetery. Wyn’s brother, Cole.
‘Kill him again,’ a guttural female voice commanded as he approached, pressed low to the ground. ‘You’ve done it once before.’
‘I didn’t know,’ I said, my hands trembling. ‘I couldn’t have killed him if I’d known.’
‘Then you’ll die,’ the voice replied. ‘And if you die, so goes the world.’
Dropping the knife, I held my arms out wide, eyes closed, accepting my fate as it lunged at my throat and everything went black.
When I shot upright, eyes wide open and panting hard, it took a long moment for me to realize where I was.
Then, it took an even longer moment to understand why Jackson Powell was curled up in a nest of blankets and pillows at the side of my bed.
I sat up slowly, doing my best to piece together exactly how we had got here.
Reality chased the dream away, almost equally as chilling. The party. The wolf. The blood.
‘Can’t wait to spend the rest of my life lying about how I got these.’
Jackson was awake. He lay on the floor, tracing the five new silvery lines that sliced across his bare torso.
‘If you come up with a good one, let me know.’
I raised my shirt to display evidence of my own werewolf encounter on my belly. ‘Snap.’
His nostrils flared with recognition.
‘Matching werewolf scars. So much cooler than matching tattoos.’
Rolling up into a sitting position, he pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes then pulled his hands away, blinking once, twice, as though he was making sure they still worked properly.
‘How do you feel?’ I asked.
‘Surprisingly good, considering.’
The blanket fell away from his body and I saw he was only wearing boxer briefs, the black elastic waistband tight against his washboard stomach.
‘I wish I could say it’s all a blur, but the whole night is altogether too clear. How about you?’
‘Not great.’ I rubbed at a tender spot on my forehead. ‘I don’t remember anything after leaving the hotel.’
‘That old excuse.’
Ashley sailed through the door without knocking, hair clipped up on the top of her head and wearing a baggy blue T-shirt and a pair of grey sweatpants that would’ve killed Catherine on sight. In her arms was a huge wooden tray full of food: freshly baked biscuits, pancakes, bacon and sausage gravy.
‘For crying out loud, Powell, could you put your pants back on already,’ she said, kicking the edge of Jackson’s makeshift bed. ‘I’m gay and she’s taken, no one here wants to see what you’re packing.’
‘I couldn’t sleep in them, they were wet.’
Jackson grabbed a pile of black fabric that turned out to be his dress pants, protesting his innocence as she carefully unloaded a pot of coffee and pitcher of freshly squeezed orange juice onto my desk. ‘From the rain and the sprinklers and, oh yeah, my own blood.’
‘Men.’ Ashley clucked her tongue as she rested the tray on my desk then helped herself to a piece of bacon. ‘Y’all are nasty.’
‘I’ll have you know I shower twice daily,’ he said, standing with his back to the pair of us to quickly pull on his pants and fasten the zipper. ‘Except on nights when I’m being pursued by werewolves or making sure my unconscious friend survives the night.’
‘I was unconscious?’ I asked, poking the sore spot on my forehead again.
‘Yes,’ they both replied.
‘Did I black out?’
‘You fell,’ Jackson said, ‘in the square. Right after you pulled Ms Stovell out of the path of that truck.’
‘And we’ll debate the merits of that decision later,’ Ashley said sternly. ‘You were completely out of it when he brought you home. I asked if y’all were doing drugs but he assures me it was good old-fashioned violence.’
‘Ashley!’
‘Ain’t one answer better than the other.’
Her eyes narrowed, aimed in Jackson’s direction. ‘I said he didn’t have to stay but he would not budge. Bedded down at the side of you like Old Yeller. You sure there ain’t any wolf in you?’
‘Most assuredly not,’ Jackson said.
Standing in front of my fireplace, he carefully stretched his hands up over his head, testing his scars.
‘Don’t worry, it wasn’t an entirely selfless offer, I was pretty freaked out last night.’
My aunt turned her inquisitive gaze on me.
‘He said there was a wolf. Was it a Were?’
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I’m sure of it.’
‘Then we’ll thank the universe you’re alive and leave it at that.’
‘You might leave it at that,’ Jackson said, absently stroking his new scars, ‘but I don’t know how I’m going to explain any of this to my grandmother.’
I blanched at the thought. His missing shirt and ruined jacket would be enough to send the fragile Virginia Powell to her bed for the rest of the month. The fact he’d stayed out all night might put her in the hospital.
‘No shirt, no shoes, no service,’ Ashley said, slapping his hand away when he reached for a pancake, but he managed to dodge the attack, grabbing two and stuffing one straight into his mouth. ‘Speaking of shoes, any idea where yours might be?’
Kicking away my bedclothes, I ran a hand over the bottoms of my feet. All cut up and filthy like I’d been running in the woods. Just like in my dream.
‘No idea,’ I said weakly, glad to be already lying down.
‘I don’t want Virginia Powell banging on my door, asking questions, any more than you two, so this is what you’re going to tell her,’ Ashley said.
Planting one hand on her hip, she pointed at Jackson with the other.
‘First up, the scar. I’m fostering a rescue dog and it gave you a little scratch when you came by to collect Emily – nothing to worry about, hardly broke the skin.
You left the car at the hotel because you and your sportsball buddies were drinking underage, like everyone else at those stupid Country Day parties.
You lost your shirt during a quick game of shirts versus skins, and you stayed out all night because you two dummies hooked up. ’
Suddenly I was very much awake.
‘Ashley!’ I yelled. ‘No way!’
‘It’s the most logical explanation,’ she replied coolly, splitting one of her biscuits into two equal pieces. ‘Or do you have a better one?’
‘She’ll be furious,’ I said, my too-slow brain trying and failing to come up with an alternative. ‘You want Jackson to tell his grandmother he was drinking? That he, that we …? No way. I’d call you an idiot but that would be an insult to idiots.’
‘Well, actually …’
My eyes shot across the room to where Jackson had cupped his chin with his hand, one eyebrow arched as he considered her proposal.
‘I think Ashley’s right.’
‘As always,’ she said, giving a little curtsey.
‘If Lydia stayed out all night and told your grandmother she’d been drinking and hooking up, she would be sent to a nunnery,’ I said, a red rash of mortification spreading across my chest and throat. ‘She would literally never be allowed to leave the house again.’
Ashley and Jackson glanced at each other, my aunt’s expression irritated, Jackson’s bemused, before speaking in perfect unison.
‘It’s different for boys,’ they said together.
I buried my face in my hands.
‘Boys get away with more, that’s just how it is,’ Ashley said when Jackson snorted out a laugh. ‘A night of drinking and partying won’t ruin young Master Powell’s reputation, but if it was Miss Powell? That would be another matter entirely.’
‘And what about my reputation?’ I said, utterly indignant.
‘I’m sorry, did you want the town to think you were saving yourself for marriage?’
Ashley spoke to me but stared daggers at Jackson.
‘I know it’s giving nineteenth century but the reality is, things have not changed nearly as much as we like to think they have.
Besides, no one else will ever know. Jackson here will not breathe a word and I dare say Virginia Powell will be low-key thrilled.
She has been praying for the two of you to get together since the first day your mamas missed their periods.
I’d be surprised if she doesn’t throw a damn party to celebrate. ’
‘Hate to make a habit of admitting it, but she’s right again,’ Jackson said when I looked to him for a rebuttal. ‘You want to get out of this situation with as few questions asked as possible? This is the way.’
I sank back against my pillows, staring at the two of them as they accepted the proposal on my behalf and went back to bickering over biscuits and bacon.
It was scary how quickly someone could adjust to this life.
He’d been attacked, almost died, and Jackson hadn’t even lost his appetite.
If it wasn’t for the sound of the doorbell echoing through Bell House, I might’ve started crying.
‘I’ll get it,’ I offered before anyone else could, clambering from my bed to stagger out of the room.
The marshland on the hallway wallpaper swayed in the breeze, back to itself again.
Bell House was at peace, at least. If only I could say the same.
There was no time to worry about what Virginia Powell thought about my virtue or lack thereof, I needed to focus on the bigger picture.
The wolf. As I stumbled downstairs, I tried to remember everything I could, how big it was, the shade of its fur, the colour of its eyes, but so much of it was a blur, the bump on my head stealing away the finer details.
It probably didn’t matter too much, I thought, as my feet found the foyer floor.
But I knew I hadn’t seen the last of that wolf.