Chapter Thirty-Eight
‘We could hang out in my room?’ Jackson suggested as he followed me, staggering zombie-like back into the house, into the kitchen. ‘Watch a movie or something?’
‘I wouldn’t be very good company.’ I was still standing, still in one piece. Just barely. ‘Why don’t you go back to the party?’
‘Same reason you don’t want to go back to the party,’ he replied. ‘Can’t say I’m much in the mood.’
It was an understatement to say the least.
The party was a hit, that much was obvious, music rolled through the house until every pane of glass shook.
No one else seemed to notice but even the rabbits who lived on the wallpaper in the hallway seemed to be having a good time, hopping around the baseboards, their first social occasion in years.
‘Maybe later,’ I said, trying on a smile and ignoring the uncomfortable fit. ‘I’ll come find you.’
‘Em, you shouldn’t be on your own right now.’
Jackson looked too serious for his seventeen years.
‘And you should be enjoying your birthday party,’ I replied. ‘You could at least try to have fun. You don’t want to ruin Lydia’s night, do you?’
It was a low blow but he knew when he was beat.
‘Fine. I’ll go back in, but if you’re not down here in an hour, I’m coming to get you,’ he told me, pressing himself up against the wall as two girls I vaguely recognized from the party at the DeSoto raced by us. ‘Or worse, I’ll send Lyds.’
‘One hour,’ I confirmed, acknowledging the threat. ‘You have my word.’
The second I opened my bedroom door, I knew I would break my promise. Sitting on the window seat, staring out at the night sky, was Wyn.
‘Emily.’
He leapt to his feet and crossed the room before I’d even let go of the door handle.
‘Wyn? What are you doing here?’
He barrelled into me, knocking the back of my head against the door and embracing me so tightly, the breath I’d been holding since I saw him escaped as a gasp, along with the rest of the oxygen in my lungs.
‘I couldn’t explain it all in a message, I had to see you, had to make sure you were OK, that you were ready.’
The rambled words barely cut through my shock.
‘The trial is set for tomorrow, on the full moon, like I said it would be.’ Wyn released me just long enough to brand my forehead with his kiss then pulled me back in. ‘The pack is coming, Em, the whole pack.’
A trial. My trial. For the murder of Cole Evans.
‘You couldn’t call?’ I replied, trying to find steady ground with a simple question.
‘They took my phone.’
A wave of fear threatened to drown me.
‘They know?’ I whispered. ‘About us?’
‘No. It’s standard before a phase. We have a network that moves our phones around so we aren’t tracked all together in one place.’
‘But the wolves change. How can anyone move them around?’
‘Only the male wolves have to change,’ he said, face buried in my neck, inhaling deeply.
‘Female-identifying Weres have more control. Resisting the phase is brutal but two females deny the moon each month to run the network – family members mostly, like my dad, and sometimes a kid who wasn’t chosen for initiation.
It doesn’t matter, what matters is that I got here before them. ’
‘And they let you go,’ I stated slowly.
‘Told them I was coming to see my girl.’
‘I thought you told them we broke up?’
He released his hold on me, looking down, his forehead creased with confusion.
‘Gramps didn’t question it. Said something about teenagers breaking up and getting back together all the time and warned me to be at the apartment by dawn.’
I wanted to believe him. I had to believe him. But Jackson’s questions rattled back and forth in my mind.
‘There was a pack leader meeting this morning, I wasn’t allowed inside but I heard enough. Told Gramps I was leaving, got right in my truck and didn’t stop.’
‘Wyn,’ I said, pushing my doubts as far away as I could. ‘What’s going to happen tomorrow?’
When he growled, the pink painted roses on my walls turned blood red.
‘Someone will come to you at midday and issue terms, tell you where to be and when.’
‘Here?’
‘Anywhere. They’ll have eyes on you from dawn.’
It wasn’t a reassuring thought.
‘They know who you are,’ he said. ‘They don’t need a twenty-four-seven watch. Even in Savannah with your magic blocking them, the most experienced wolves will be able to hunt you on the day of the phase. Our senses are still heightened in the daytime.’
‘So someone will come.’ I broke away from him completely, moving to perch on the edge of my bed, creating distance but not clarity. ‘Then what? I’m supposed to sit around and wait for them to roll up and rip my heart out? Doesn’t sound like a very tempting offer.’
Wyn stood in front of me, his grey shirt crumpled from hours in the car, the laces of his boots untied. His eyes were rimmed red and I realized, with a gut punch of pain, he had been crying in his truck on the way here.
‘They’ll make it sound like you have a chance, offer to let you bring a second, but whatever sentence is passed down to you will apply to the second also.’
‘Meaning they’ll kill us both?’
‘Weres are forbidden to take human lives. It’s a high crime.
If you bring a human second and you’re found guilty, the pack won’t kill them but whoever it is will wish they were dead.
They’ll take the second’s hands, eyes and tongue to prevent them from telling anyone what happened.
I’m sure they’re hoping you’ll bring Ashley, save them the task of hunting her down. ’
‘Wyn, that’s sick.’
‘It’s beyond cruel,’ he agreed. ‘And it keeps our secrets.’
‘If it’s such a crime for Weres to take a human life, how come my killing Cole doesn’t count as self-defence?’
‘Because a witch isn’t a human as far as they’re concerned. It won’t matter that you didn’t know, all they care about is one dead Were versus one living witch.’
I pressed both hands into the mattress but there was no way to steady myself.
‘Do they know about Lydia?’ I asked, and he shook his head.
‘But if they find out, and they will, they’ll kill her too.
And they’ll mutilate Jackson and his mom and anyone else in their family who could potentially continue the line.
I know you’re strong but it’s only you and Lydia, and the whole south-eastern pack is coming to Savannah to kill you and I don’t know what to do! ’
The last part was a roar. It was only the music blasting downstairs that kept his voice from summoning everyone in the house.
‘Do you know how they found out?’ I asked. ‘Was it Astrid?’
He shook his head again.
‘No one mentioned her name.’ He sank down at the side of me, my mattress softening under his weight and pushing the two of us together. ‘I asked, but they won’t tell me. Pack leaders and their council only.’
None of this should’ve been so alarming. We knew it was coming, knew the wolves would be at my door on the night of the full moon. All I could do was wait.
‘We’re panicking over nothing,’ I said, forcing myself to be calm, one hand clinging to my wooden bedpost. ‘We’re safe. No one can get into Bell House; they can’t touch us here.’
‘Are you sure?’ he asked, unintentionally echoing Jackson’s question as he turned to face me with challenging eyes. ‘Are you certain the house can defend you against a whole pack of wolves?’
I looked to my home, the vines that ran up and down my bedroom walls growing at an alarming rate, weaving themselves into a defensive thicket of thorns and building up protection from the inside out.
‘She won’t go down without a fight,’ I told him. ‘I wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of anyone who showed up here meaning harm to a witch.’
‘I don’t know what to do.’ Wyn stared blankly at the floorboards.
‘Do I go back and try to talk my mom down? Do I stay here and try to protect you? We can’t run, they’d find us.
A wolf hasn’t been taken out by a witch in over a century.
They’re pulling everyone in for this, everyone, dozens of Weres, maybe hundreds.
They want to make an example of you, Emily, eradicate the witches for good. ’
I instinctively ran my hand through his hair, letting reality sink in. I could stay in Bell House for the full moon but not forever.
‘You should go,’ I said, even as I curled my fingers in his hair so tightly I felt the tension against his scalp. ‘If they arrive while you’re here, they’ll kill you.’
‘Worse. They’ll exile me, I’ll be a lone wolf. I’d rather be dead.’
‘Don’t say that,’ I ordered. ‘Never say that. You wouldn’t be alone, you’d have me. You’ll always have me, no matter what.’
Wyn twisted against my grip on his hair, his lips finding the inside of my forearm, connecting wherever they could.
‘It’s not that simple,’ he murmured against my skin. ‘Living through the phase every month without your pack would tear your soul into pieces. The only wolf exiled from our pack took his own life after the first phase, the pain was too much.’
‘What about Astrid?’
‘She must be strong,’ he admitted. ‘But she also attacked you in a public place in the middle of a huge party. You don’t think she’s gone insane already?’
‘There are still things we don’t know,’ I said, tugging on his arm like a little kid trying to make a grown-up listen when their mind was already made up. ‘We still don’t know how she’s phasing outside the moon cycle. There has to be a part of this picture we haven’t seen yet.’
‘The part we haven’t seen is where they cut your heart out of your body and I am forced to stand beside my mother and watch!’ Wyn yelled.
He leapt up from the bed and stalked off into the middle of the room. With his arms framing his head, each hand clasping the opposite elbow, he stood with his back to me, like he couldn’t bear to look at me. Frozen in place, my mind scuttled back an hour or so, Sistah Mariama and her knowing smile.
‘Do they know about the prophecy?’ I asked.