Havoc (2 page)

Yanking the lamp, I managed to pull its cord free from the wall. In the same motion I turned back toward the shadowman and swung.

The lamp and my hand went right through it.

My fingers stiffened with cold, became numb and heavy. The nail-polish lamp slipped out of my useless hand and clattered to the floor.

I yanked my arm back, clutching my frozen wrist in my other hand. The shadowman stood at the side of my bed, watching me with a tilted head, like a dog trying to understand what its master is saying.

“What do you want?” I wheezed. “What are you?”

The shadowman's smoky black arm rose slowly, as if someone had dropped the speed on the Blu-ray player. It walked sluggishly forward—
through my bed
.

Yeah,
no
.

Rolling again to the side, I dropped off my bed opposite the shadowman. I landed on all fours, crouched and silent like a cat. Which was strange, since I was supposed to be me, regular old Emily Webb, not the death-defying version of me that could do that kind of thing. Regular me would have landed with an “Oof!”—limbs flying every which way like I was going for a pratfall on a bad sitcom. In my head I was me, at least, but the reflexes were all Nighttime.

I didn't have time to worry about it.

I leaped up to my feet and spun to face my bedroom door—and the shadowman was there, nose to nose with me. So close that the fine hairs rose on my arms as its chill seeped through my oversize T-shirt and into my skin.

I spun again, this time toward the window. The same second-story window I'd jumped out of several times already—but never as normal me.

Did I really have Nighttime's reflexes? What if it was just adrenaline? Could I really leap out a window and not break both my legs? How could I know?

Swallowing a trembling breath, I realized I had no choice. It was the only way out.

I darted forward and whipped open the curtains. My thawing fingers scrambled over the latches to unlock the thing and get myself free. Icy air brushed against my back, and I sensed the shadowman growing closer, way too close. I needed to get out, now, now, outside NOW, why wouldn't my hand work already and get the latches open?

A chill flowed down my neck, coating my shoulder blades and making me shiver. The shadowman was directly behind me.

My heart thudding, I gasped for air and spun around, my back as close to the window as I could get without smashing through.

There was nothing, no one, there.

I stood there for a long moment, half sitting on the sill, taking in shallow, gulping breaths. The room was dark, and none of the shadows cast by the streetlight outside my window moved or were alive. Slowly, my heart began to pace itself back to normal. My breaths evened out, and the hand that had gone through the shadowman's incorporeal body once more flowed with warmth.

I turned back to the window, half expecting to find the shadowman floating outside. If this was a horror movie, the director totally would have done that as an easy jump scare. In fact, if I ever sell the movie rights to my life, I'm totally suggesting that the director do that.

But in reality, there was nothing there. Just a view of the clear, starry sky and the darkened streets.

Something caught my eye in the road. A large dog, maybe, lumbering down the center of the street.

Only it wasn't a dog, even if that's what was reported by the local newspaper my dad insists on getting instead of just reading the news online like normal people.

It was a werewolf.

Shaking my head, I closed the curtains. “You were supposed to take the sleeping pills, Spencer,” I muttered.

I closed my curtains and, after a cursory glance around the room to be sure the shadowman was gone, climbed back beneath my covers. I pulled the comforter over my head, willing my breath to slow down, iiiiiin and ooooout, to calm myself down. Whatever that thing was, it was gone now.

But it had been so close. Much closer than any of the previous times I'd seen the shadowmen—which up until now had only been as werewolf me. I didn't know what that meant.

A clattering and buzzing sounded from my end table. I took in a sharp breath, then realized that, duh, it was just my phone.

Lowering the covers, I slapped the end table until I grabbed my phone. The glowy screen on the front read
SPENCER
.

I flipped it open to see I had a text message.

2:34 AM PST: Em Dub, u awake

I blinked at the message a few moments, because hold up, hadn't I just seen Spencer outside? As a wolf-boy?

Behind the times as I am, I slowly hunted down the keys to type back a message—and I mean the number-pad keys, folks, as in press 1 three times just to type a
c
. Megan used to be the only person who ever called me, and she hated texting, so I never really had to do it before. How I longed for a smartphone, especially since I can't
not
type in complete sentences. It's a thing.

The pads of my thumbs beginning to ache, I finished typing my response and hit send.

2:37 AM PST: Yeah, I'm awake. I thought I just saw you outside.

2:37 AM PST: not me. Im in my room, just saw shadowman. it came at me but then it dispprd.

My fingers trembled. I looked around the room again, expecting the shadowman to leap out at me, grab me with its icy fingers. Nothing was there.

But it had been. And it had coordinated a visit between me and Spencer. It had to mean something.

2:41 AM PST: That happened to me, too. Just a few minutes before you texted me. It chased me around the room, and then vanished.

2:41 AM PST: wird. we need to talk about this in the am. can I pick u up?

2:43 AM PST: Yeah. Also, Spencer? I saw a werewolf outside. If it wasn't one of us, it means it must be the girl. Or Dalton.

2:44 AM PST: r u srs? this nite is fd up.

2:45 AM PST: Yes, it is. Get some sleep, okay?

2:45 AM PST: k Em. c u tmrw.

2:46 AM PST: kk

Oh man. Did I really just type “kk”? Texting was going to be the death of me. Or make me a normal teenager. Whatever.

I closed the phone and set it back on the table. I lay back for a moment, staring at the ceiling, then leaned over my bed, picked up the fallen lamp, and grabbed Ein from where he'd been unceremoniously kicked.

Cradling my stuffed dog, I closed my eyes and tried to go back to sleep. I expected visions of the shadowmen or worse to invade my thoughts and keep me awake, but my adrenaline was dying down, and whatever remnants of the sleeping pills that were still inside me let me drift off once more, back into dreams that I wouldn't remember.

2

YOU ARE SUCH A NERD

The following morning I sat on my front steps, knees to chest, waiting for Spencer to pick me up. I was bundled up in a hoodie, my glasses were firmly on my face, and my backpack sat beside me. It was three days since I'd last been Nighttime Emily or the werewolf. I was me again. More or less.

You're not all you.
The voice again.
You know you miss being me, too.

You'd think I'd find it strange to be hearing voices, right? Well, strange was the definition of my life these days. Weirdly, I found hearing her sort of a good thing. It helped to literally talk with myself while trying to figure things out.

And she was right. I did miss Nighttime's confidence. Even though a little had bled into my daytime self, it wasn't nearly the same as Nighttime's unbridled fearlessness. But I couldn't risk changing. Right? Not when the consequences after the last time were so horrible. I'd helped kill someone, and I'd
liked
it. It had been in self-defense, sure, but that didn't keep me from feeling this nauseating guilt whenever I remembered what I'd done.

C
onsequences? Guilt? He got what he deserved. We did what we needed to do.

“I know,” I said aloud. “Just… Yeah. I know.”

I waited for a moment. The voice—my imagination running rampant, Nighttime herself, who knows—didn't say anything more.

My hands were shoved inside my pockets, and I rocked back and forth a little, staring up at the overcast September morning sky. My thoughts raced, same as they had the past few mornings. Things I thought couldn't possibly be real now were. Everything I thought was true about myself had been, at most, a partial truth.

And though I did my best to distract myself with schoolwork and TV and discussions with Spencer, whenever it was just me and my thoughts, I still kept seeing the man from BioZenith, Dr. Elliott, hunting me.

I closed my eyes. I needed a new distraction, someone to call, maybe. And that's when I remembered—Megan was on her way to pick me up. She'd
always
picked me up, at least until recently. And I hadn't let her know I had other plans.

I slipped my phone out of my pocket, clicked over to the contacts list, and selected
REEDY
—my nickname for her. The phone rang once, twice, then she picked up.

“Hey, I know I'm not late, so what's up?” she answered.

“And a good morning to you too,” I said.

“Mm-hmm, yeah, good morning.” A crunch as she bit into something on the other end. “I'm eating,” she said with a full mouth, “and then I'm on my way.”

My free fingers fidgeted with one of my backpack straps. “Um, actually, that's why I'm calling. I don't need a ride today.”

Silence on the other end, save for more crunching as she finished chewing.

Clearing my throat, I said, “So, you know, take your time with breakfast. Yay, free time!”

“Are you walking?” she said at last. “Or are you getting a ride from someone?”

“I'm getting a ride. From Spencer.”

I heard Megan snort. “Well, all right. Saves me the gas. I'll see you at school.”

Before I could respond, the line went dead.

I was hoping we'd magically be past this, this jealousy Megan had when it came to me and Spencer. But things had been weird between us since Monday morning, which I guessed was only normal. I mean, I couldn't really blame her. The weekend before, I'd drugged her, stole her car, and then basically made her hoof it up to Seattle to reclaim said car since I'd sorta abandoned it there. Well, Nighttime Emily did. But I'd already established with Spencer at this point that no matter how different she was, Nighttime Emily was still me. I couldn't put all the blame on the Hyde to my Jekyll.

And then the past couple of days at school I'd kept sneaking away during lunch and free periods to convene with Spencer, talk about everything that was happening to us. Megan knew I was keeping secrets from her, there was no way she couldn't know. We'd told each other everything since elementary school, and I wasn't exactly the world's greatest liar. I hated doing it. But whatever was going on with me had sent someone to
kill
me, and the last thing I wanted was to put her in danger.

I just hated the rift it was starting to put between us. As I put my phone back in my pocket, I vowed then and there to force myself to find some Emily-Megan bonding time. Just because I was sort of “blossoming” didn't mean I had to leave behind my oldest—
wait for it
—“bud.”

Get it? Blossoming? Bud? Ha. Whew. Yeah, I'm corny.

I was pulled from my thoughts by the screeching of brakes. A tan minivan pulled up in front of my curb, and Spencer leaned over to wave out the passenger-side window. His messy brown hair had fallen into his face, and he was grinning in that endearingly goofy way of his.

I couldn't help but smile when seeing him, because with Spencer came the kind of distraction I needed to get out of my head. Grabbing my bag, I leaped up and raced across the lawn to his car. I opened the door, and his smell—his musk, his pheromones, whatever it was—washed over me.

The harried thoughts, the visions of dead Dr. Elliott, the stress about Megan—all of it whooshed away as I climbed inside, shut the car door, and found myself surrounded by the wonderful scent that always enveloped me in the presence of my mate.

Uh. Not that we'd
mated
. The terminology, it's a werewolf thing.

I dropped the bag between my feet, then leaned across the driveshaft to give him an awkward hug.

“Sweet, a morning hug,” he said as I pulled back.

My cheeks burned. “Sorry. It's just nice to see you, especially after last night.”

He grinned at me, then put the car in drive as I pulled on my seat belt. “Always good to see you, Em Dub.”

It was strange. Spencer and I had always gone to school together. Skopamish wasn't a very big city, and though we had new kids coming in and kids moving away every year, those of us who'd lived there our whole lives more or less knew of one another. But until a week before, I'd never really noticed Spencer as anything other than the short, funny kid who always hung around with Mikey Harris and Zach Nickerson and Dalton McKinney, cracking jokes and making wise. He wasn't exactly what I'd considered my “type,” not that I'd had any real experience to tell me what my type was.

Then, when all this started—the nighttime changes, this urge to
sniff
out things—his personal scent gripped me in ways I'd never felt before. His smell identified him in that strange, werewolf part of my brain as my “mate.”

I didn't tell him this, but sometimes when we were apart I wondered if maybe this was on purpose. We'd more or less figured out that we were “created” by scientists at BioZenith, one of whom knew full well he could get my attention by using chemical versions of male werewolf pheromones. I wondered if they
wanted
us to seek each other out and pair up.

But when I was actually side by side with Spencer, it didn't matter. I'd spent years alone in my room, watching movies and TV, wondering what it was like to be around a boy you felt a deep connection with. Now I knew—the flutteriness inside, the desire never to be apart. It wasn't exactly “I shall watch you sleep for an eternity, my immortal love,” but I liked what it was. I didn't want to overthink it and make it go away.