Forever. Part 16

But Cole looked thoughtfully into his coffee cup and said, "Mmm, studying. I'm a fan, myself." He pulled one of the books to him and opened it to a random page. The chapter heading read Studying the World From Your Armchair and there was a graphic of a stick figure doing just that. "Do you remember everything that happened in the hospital?"

He was asking in that ask me more way, so I did. He detailed the events of the night, from when I'd started throwing up blood, to Sam and him taking me to the hospital, to Cole puzzling out science to save me. And then he told me about my father punching Sam.

I thought I must've misunderstood him. "He didn't really hit him, though, right? I mean, you just mean that he ..."

"No, he whaled him," Cole remarked.

I took a sip of my coffee. I wasn't sure what was weirder, to consider my dad punching Sam, or to realize how much I had missed while lying in a hospital bed or shifting. Suddenly the time I spent as a wolf felt even more like lost time, hours I'd never get back. Like my effective lifespan had been abruptly halved.

I stopped thinking about that, and started thinking about my father hitting Sam instead.

"I think," I said, "that makes me angry. Sam didn't hit him back, did he?"

Cole laughed and poured himself some more coffee.

"And so I was never really cured," I said.

"No. You just didn't shift, which isn't the same thing. The St. Clairs - I hope you don't mind, I'm naming the werewolf toxins after myself, for purposes of the n.o.bel Peace Prize or Pulitzer or whatever - were all built up inside you."

"So Sam's not cured, either," I said. I put my coffee cup down and shoved the books away from me. For it all to have been a waste - everything we'd done - it was just too much. The idea of a big library and a red coffeepot of my own seemed completely unreachable.

"Well," Cole replied, "I don't know about that. After all, he made himse - Oh, look, here's miracle boy now. Good morning, Ringo."

Sam had descended nearly silently and now he stood at the base of the stairs. His feet were bright red from a shower. Seeing him made me feel slightly less pessimistic, though his presence wouldn't solve anything that wasn't already solved.

"We were just talking about the cure," Cole said.

Sam padded across the floor to me. "The band?" He sat down cross-legged next to me. I offered him coffee and, reliably, he shook his head.

"No, yours. And the one I've been working on. I've been spending a lot of time thinking about how you make yourself shift."

Sam made a face. "I don't make myself shift."

"Not often, Ringo," Cole admitted, "but you do."

I felt a little p.r.i.c.kle of hope. If anybody could figure out how the Boundary Wood wolves worked, I thought it would be Cole. He'd saved me, hadn't he?

"Like when you saved me from the wolves," I said. "And what about in the clinic when we injected you?" That night seemed so long ago, in Isabel's mom's clinic, willing the wolf that was Sam to become human. Again, the memory of sadness pressed on me. "Have you figured anything out about it?"

Sam looked petulant as Cole started to talk about adrenaline and Cole St. Clairs in the system and how he was trying to use Sam's unusual shifts as the basis of a cure.

"But if it was adrenaline, wouldn't someone saying 'boo' make you shift?" I asked.

Cole shrugged. "I tried using an EpiPen - that's pure adrenaline - and it worked, just barely." Sam frowned at me, and I wondered if he was thinking what I was thinking - that "barely" working sounded dangerous.

Cole said, "It's just not making my brain react the right way; it's not triggering the shift the same way that cold or the St. Clair buildup does. It's hard to replicate when you have no idea what it's actually doing. It's like drawing a picture of an elephant from the sound it makes in the next cage over."

"Well, I'm impressed you even figured out it was an elephant," Sam said. "Apparently, Beck and the rest didn't even have the species right." He stood up and held his hand out for me. "Let's go make breakfast."

But Cole wasn't done. "Oh, Beck just didn't want to see it," he said dismissively. "He didn't really want to lose that time as a wolf. You know what, if my father were involved in all this, he'd whip out some CAT scans, some MRIs, about fourteen hundred electrodes, throw in a couple vials of poisonous meds and a car battery or two, and three or four dead werewolves later, he'd have his cure. Hot d.a.m.n, he's good at what he does."

Sam lowered his hand. "I wish you wouldn't talk about Beck like that."

"Like what?"

"Like he's -" Sam stopped. He frowned at me, as if the way to end the sentence was hidden in my expression. I knew what he had been about to say. Like you. Cole's mouth wore the slightest of hard smiles.

"How about this?" Cole said. He gestured at the chair Beck had sat in before, making me think that he, too, had had a conversation with Beck in this bas.e.m.e.nt. That was an odd thing to consider, for some reason: Cole having a history with Beck that we were unaware of. "How about you tell me who Beck was for you, and I'll tell you who he was for me? And then, Grace, you can tell us whose version sounds like the real one."

"I don't think -" I started.

"I knew him for twelve years," Sam interrupted. "You knew him for twelve seconds. My version wins."

"Does it?" Cole asked. "Did he tell you about what he was like as a lawyer? Did he tell you about living in Wyoming? Did he tell you about his wife? Did he tell you about where he found Ulrik? Did he tell you what he was doing to himself when Paul got to him?"

Sam said, "He told me how he became a wolf."

"Me, too," I said, feeling like I should back Sam up. "He told me he was bitten in Canada and met up with Paul in Minnesota."

"Not that he was in Canada with a death wish, and that Paul bit him there to keep Beck from killing himself?" Cole asked.

"He told you that because that was what you needed to hear," Sam said.

"And he told you the story about hiking and about Paul being already here in Minnesota because it was what you needed to hear," Cole said. "Tell me how Wyoming fits into this, because he didn't tell either of us about that. He didn't come from Canada to Mercy Falls when he discovered there were already wolves here, any more than he was bitten while he was out hiking. He simplified the story so he wouldn't look bad to you. He simplified it for me because he didn't think it was relevant for convincing me. Don't tell me you haven't doubted him, Sam, because it's not possible. The man arranged for you to be infected and then adopted you. You had to have thought about it."

My heart hurt for Sam, but he didn't look down or away. His face was completely blank. "I've thought about it."

"And what is it that you're thinking?" Cole asked.

Sam said, "I don't know."

"You must be thinking something."

"I don't know."

Cole stood up and took the step to stand right next to Sam, and the sheer force of the way he did was intimidating, somehow. "Don't you want to ask him about it?"

Sam, to his credit, didn't look intimidated. "That's not really an option."

Cole said, "What if it was? What if you could have him for fifteen minutes? I can find him. I can find him and I have something that should force him to shift. Not for long. But long enough to talk. I have to say I have some questions for him, too."

Sam frowned. "Do what you want with your own body, but I'm not going to mess with someone who can't give me his consent."

Cole's expression was deeply aggrieved. "It's adrenaline, not prom s.e.x."

Sam's voice was stiff. "I am not going to risk killing Beck just to ask him why he didn't tell me he lived in Wyoming."

It was the obvious answer, the one that Cole had to know that Sam would give. But Cole had that small, hard smile on his face again, barely there. "If we caught Beck and I made him human," he said, "I might be able to start him back over, like Grace. Would you risk his life for that?"

Sam didn't answer.

"Tell me yes," Cole said. "Tell me to find him, and I will."

And this, I thought, was why Sam and Cole could not get along. Because when it came down to it, Cole made bad decisions for good reasons, and Sam couldn't justify that. Now, Cole dangled this tempting thing in front of Sam, this thing he wanted more than anything, along with the thing that he wanted the least. I wasn't sure which answer I wanted him to give.

I saw Sam swallow. Turning to me, he said softly, "What do I say?"

I didn't know what to tell him that he didn't already know. I crossed my arms. I could think of a thousand reasons for and against, but all of them started and ended with the wanting I saw on Sam's face now. "You have to be able to live with yourself," I told him.

Cole said, "He'll die out there anyway, Sam."

Sam turned away from both of us, his hands linked behind his head. He stared at the rows and rows of Beck's books.

Not looking at either of us, he said, "Fine. Yes. Find him."

I met Cole's eyes and I held them.

Upstairs, the teakettle began to scream, and Sam wordlessly bounded up the stairs to silence it - a glad excuse, I thought, to leave the room. My stomach had an uncertain lump in it at the thought of trying to prompt Beck to shift. I'd forgotten too easily how much we risked every time we tried to learn more about ourselves.

"Cole," I said, "Beck means everything to him. This isn't a game. Don't do anything you aren't sure of, okay?"

"I'm always sure of what I do," he said. "Sometimes I was just never sure there was supposed to be a happy ending."

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 a.s.sist 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 pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.s 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 h.e.l.l."

"Well, I knew that," I said. With a little shudder, I remembered without fondness the evening that she had thrown herself through a plate gla.s.s 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 b.i.t.c.h!"

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, "h.e.l.lo?"

"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.