Forever. Part 5

* GRACE *

I shifted early one afternoon. "One" afternoon because I had absolutely no concept of time. I had no idea how long it had been since the last time I could fully remember being me, at Ben's Fish and Tackle. All I knew was that when I came to, I was in the little overgrown patio area near Isabel's house. My face was pressed against the damp dirt that covered the colorful mosaic I'd first seen several months ago. I'd been lying there long enough that the tiles had left a lined pattern in the side of my face. Down below me, ducks on the pond held terse conversations with each other. I stood up, testing my legs, and brushed most of the dirt and sticky wet leaf bits off me.

I said, "Grace." The ducks stopped quacking.

I was incredibly pleased by my ability to recall my own name. Being a wolf had drastically lowered my standards for miracles. Also, saying it out loud proved that I was st.u.r.dily human and could risk going up to the Culpeper house. The sun found me through the branches and warmed my back as I crept up through the trees. Checking to make sure that the driveway was empty - I was naked, after all - I made the run across the yard for the back door.

The last time Isabel had brought me here, the back door had been unlocked; I remembered commenting on it. Isabel had said, I never remember to lock it.

She'd forgotten again today.

I cautiously let myself in and found the phone in the spotless stainless-steel kitchen. The smell of food was so tantalizing that, for a moment, I just stood there, the phone in my hand, before I thought to dial.

Isabel picked up at once.

"Hi," I said. "It's me. I'm at your house. No one else is here." My stomach growled. I eyed a bread box; a bagel wrapper poked out the bottom.

"Don't move," Isabel said. "I'm coming."

A half hour later, Isabel found me in her dad's hall of animals, eating a bagel, dressed in her old clothes. The room was actually fascinating, in a horrifying way. First of all, it was huge: two stories high, dim as a museum, and about as long as my parents' house was wide. It was also full of dozens of stuffed animals. I a.s.sumed Tom Culpeper had shot them all. Was it legal to shoot moose? Did they even have moose in Minnesota? It seemed like if anyone would have seen them, it would have been me. Perhaps he'd bought them instead. I imagined men in jumpsuits unloading animals with styrofoam taped to their antlers.

The door shut behind Isabel, loud and echoey like a church, and her heels tapped across the floor. The resonance of her footsteps in the hush only increased the church sensation.

"You look awfully happy," Isabel said, since I was still smiling at the moose. She stood beside me. "I came as fast as I could. I see you found my closet."

"Yes," I replied. "Thanks for that."

She picked at the sleeve of the T-shirt I wore, an old yellow T-shirt that read SANTA MARIA ACADEMY. "This shirt brings back horrible memories. I was Isabel C. back then, because my best friend was Isabel, too. Isabel D. Wow, was she ever a b.i.t.c.h."

"In case I shift, I didn't want to ruin anything nice." I glanced over at her; I was terribly glad to see her. Any other of my friends might have hugged me after I'd been gone for so long. But I didn't think Isabel hugged anyone, under any circ.u.mstances. My stomach twisted, warning me that I might not stay Grace for as long as I'd hoped. I asked, "Did your dad shoot all these?"

Isabel made a face. "Not all. Some of them he probably lectured to death."

We walked a few feet and I stopped in front of a gla.s.s-eyed wolf. I waited for the horror to hit, but it never came. Small round windows let in narrow shafts of light, casting circles of light at the stuffed wolf's paws. The wolf was shrunken and dusty and dull-haired and didn't look like it had ever been alive. Its eyes had been made in a factory somewhere and they didn't tell me anything about who the wolf might have been, animal or human.

"Canada," Isabel said. "I asked him. Not one of the Mercy Falls wolves. You don't have to keep staring at it."

I wasn't sure if I believed him.

"Do you miss California?" I asked. "And Isabel D.?"

"Yes," Isabel answered, then didn't elaborate. "Did you call Sam?"

"No answer." His phone had gone straight to voicemail; he'd probably let the battery run down again. And no one had answered at the house. I tried not to let my face show my disappointment. Isabel wouldn't understand, and I didn't feel like sharing my sorrow any more than Isabel did at the moment.

"For me, either," Isabel said. "I left a message at his work."

"Thanks," I said. But the truth was, I didn't feel very firmly Grace. Lately I had been staying human longer, awkwardly finding myself stranded in the middle of unfamiliar stretches of woods, but I still couldn't seem to stay human for longer than an hour. Sometimes I wasn't even human long enough to really register my change of bodies in my recently wolf brain. I had no idea of how much time had pa.s.sed. All those days, silently marching by me ...

I stroked the wolf's nose. It felt dusty and hard, like I was petting a shelf. I wished I was at Beck's house, sleeping in Sam's bed. Or even at my own house, getting ready to finish up my last month of school. But the threat of changing into a wolf dwarfed every other concern in my life.

"Grace," Isabel said. "My father is trying to get his congressman friend to help him get the wolves off the protected list. He wants to do an aerial hunt."

My stomach twisted again. I walked across the gorgeous hardwood floor to the next animal, a fantastically huge hare forever frozen in midjump. It had a spiderweb between its back legs. Tom Culpeper - did he have to keep pursuing the wolves? Couldn't he stop? But I knew he couldn't. In his mind, it wasn't revenge, it was prevention. Righteous sword swinging. Keeping other people from suffering the same fate as his son. If I really, really tried, I could see it from his point of view and then I could stop thinking of him as a monster for two seconds, for Isabel's sake.

"You and Sam both!" Isabel snapped. "You don't even look bothered. Don't you believe me?"

"I believe you," I replied. I looked at our reflections in the shiny wood. It was remarkably satisfying to see the dim, wavy shape of my human form. I felt a wave of nostalgia for my favorite jeans. I sighed. "I'm just a little tired of it all. It's a lot to deal with at the same time."

"But it has to be dealt with anyway. It doesn't matter if you like it or not. And Sam has the practical sense of a ..." Isabel trailed off. Apparently she couldn't think of anything more fanciful than Sam.

"I know it has to be dealt with," I said wearily. My stomach lurched again. "What we need to do is move them, but I can't think about how to do that right now."

"Move them?"

I walked slowly to the next animal. Some kind of goose, running with its wings outstretched. Possibly it was supposed to be landing. The slanting afternoon light from above played with my sight and made the goose's black eye look like it was winking at me. "Obviously we have to get them away from your dad. He's not going to stop. There has to be someplace safer."

Isabel laughed, a short laugh that was more hiss than mirth. "I love that you came up with an idea in two seconds when Sam and Cole haven't come up with one in two months."

I looked at her. She was giving me a smirking sort of look, one eyebrow raised. It was probably meant to be admiring. "Well, it might not work. I mean, moving a pack of wild animals ..."

"Yeah, but at least it's an idea. It's nice to see someone using their brain."

I made a face. We looked at the goose. It didn't wink again. "Does it hurt?" Isabel asked.

I realized she was looking at my left hand, which had made its way to press on my side, all by itself. "Only a little," I lied. She didn't call me out on my untruthfulness.

We both jumped when Isabel's phone rang.

"That's for you," Isabel said, before she even dug it out. She looked at the screen and handed it to me.

My stomach jolted; I couldn't tell if it was from the wolf inside me or from sudden, inexplicable nerves.

Isabel smacked my arm; my skin crawled underneath her touch. "Say something."

"Hi," I said. More of a croak.

"Hi," Sam said, voice barely loud enough for me to hear. "How are you doing?"

I was very aware of Isabel standing beside me. I turned toward the goose. It winked at me again. My skin didn't feel like it was mine. "Better now."

I didn't know what I was supposed to say in two minutes after two months apart. I didn't want to talk. I wanted to curl up against him and fall asleep. More than anything, I wanted to be able to see him again, to see in his eyes that what we had had been real and that he wasn't a stranger. I didn't want a big gesture, an elaborate conversation - I just wanted to know that something was still the same when everything else had changed. I felt a surge of anger at the inadequate phone, at my uncertain body, at the wolves who'd made me and ruined me.

"I'm coming," he said. "Ten minutes."

Eight minutes too late. My bones ached. "I would really" - I paused to clench my teeth against the shivering. This was the worst part - when it was really starting to hurt but I knew that it was going to get more painful later - "like to get some cocoa when I'm back. I miss chocolate."

Sam made a soft noise. He could tell, and it hurt me, more than the shift, that he could. He said, "I know it's hard. Think of summer, Grace. Remember it will stop."

My eyes burned. I hunched my shoulders against the presence of Isabel.

"I want it to stop now," I whispered, and felt terrible for admitting it.

Sam said, "You -"

"Grace!" hissed Isabel, s.n.a.t.c.hing the phone away from me. "You have to get out of here. My parents are home!"

She snapped the phone shut just as I heard voices from the other room.

"Isabel!" Tom Culpeper's voice rang out, distantly. My body was stretching and ripping inside. I wanted to fold in on myself.

Isabel propelled me toward a door; I stumbled into another room. She said, "Get in there. Be quiet! I'll take care of it."

"Isabel," I gasped, "I can't -"

The ma.s.sive old lock at the other side of the hall cracked out like a shot, at the same moment that Isabel slammed the door shut in my face.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

* ISABEL *

For a single moment, I couldn't figure out if my father had seen Grace. His normally tidy hair was all disheveled and his eyes were full of shock or surprise or something else unguarded. He'd opened the door with such force that it banged into the wall behind it and bounced back again. The moose rattled; I waited for it to fall over. I'd never considered what an awesome sight it would be, to see all these animals start to tip like dominoes. My father was still shaking even after the moose had stopped.

I glowered at my father to cover my uneasiness. "Well, that was dramatic." I was leaning against the door to the piano room. I hoped that Grace wouldn't break anything in there.

"Thank G.o.d," my father said, as if I hadn't spoken. "Why the h.e.l.l didn't you pick up your phone?"

I looked at him incredulously. I quite frequently let my parents' calls go through to voicemail. I called them back. Eventually. The fact that I'd let their calls beep through earlier today shouldn't have given them an ulcer.

Mom trailed into the room, her eyes bloodshot and her makeup a minor disaster. Considering that she normally made tears look like an accessory, I was impressed. I had thought this might be about the cop who'd stopped me, but I couldn't imagine Mom losing it over that.

I asked, suspiciously, "Why is Mom crying like that?"

My mother's voice was nearly a snarl. "Isabel, we gave you that cell phone for a reason!"

I was doubly impressed. Good for her. She normally let my father get all the good lines.

"Do you have it on your person?" my father asked.

"Jesus," I replied. "My person has it in her purse."

My father gave my mother a glance. "I expect you to pick it up from now on," he said. "Unless you are in cla.s.s or missing a limb, I want that phone to be picked up and held to your ear when you see that it is us. Or you can say good-bye to it. A phone is a -"

"Privilege. Yeah, I know." I heard faint noises from inside the piano room behind me; to cover up the sound I began digging through my bag. When it had stopped, I pulled out my phone to prove that I had it. It showed twelve missed calls from my parents. And none from Cole, which, after over a month of having at least one missed call from him at all times, felt weird. I frowned. "So what's going on, anyway?"

My father said, "Travis called me and told me the police had just found a body in the woods. A girl, and they haven't identified her yet."

This was not good. I was glad that I knew that Grace was here, in the piano room making weird scratching noises. I realized Mom was still staring at me meaningfully; I was supposed to react.

I said, "And you just a.s.sumed that some random dead person was me?"

"It was near our property line, Isabel," Mom snapped.

Then my father said what I'd somehow known he was going to say. "She was killed by wolves."

I was filled with incredible anger, all of a sudden, at Sam and Cole and Grace, for doing nothing when I'd told them to do something.

There was more noise coming from the piano room. I spoke over the top of it. "Well, I've been at school or here all day. Hard to get killed at school." Then, because I realized I needed to ask or look guilty: "When will they know who she is?"

"I don't know," my father said. "They said she was in bad shape."

Mom said abruptly, "I'm going to go change out of these clothes." For a moment, I couldn't puzzle out the reason for her speedy exit. Then I realized she must've been thinking about my brother's death, imagining Jack torn apart by wolves. I was impervious; I knew how Jack had really died.

Just then, there was a thump from the piano room, clear enough that my father's eyes narrowed.

"I'm sorry I didn't pick up the phone," I said loudly. "I didn't mean to upset Mom. Hey. Something hit the bottom of my car on the way home. Would you look at it?"

I waited for him to refuse me, to charge into the other room and find Grace shifting into a wolf. But instead he sighed and nodded, already heading back toward the other door.

Of course there was nothing under my car for him to find. But he spent so long investigating that I had time to hurry back to the piano room to see if Grace had destroyed the Steinway. All I found was an open window and one of the screens pushed out into the yard. I leaned out and caught a glimpse of yellow - my Santa Maria Academy shirt, snagged on one of the bushes.

There had never been a worse time for Grace to be a wolf.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

* SAM *

So I had missed her again.

After the phone call, I lost hours to - nothing. Caught completely by the sound of Grace's voice, my thoughts chased each other, the same questions over and over. Wondering if I would have been able to see Grace if I'd gotten her message earlier, if I hadn't gone out to check the shed for signs of life, if I hadn't walked farther into the woods and shouted up through birch leaves to the sky, frustrated by Cole's seizure and Grace's absence and by just the weight of being me.