Havoc (3 page)

Spencer pulled onto the street and began driving us to school. Checking his rearview mirror, he said, “Right, so you want to go first?”

Hot air blasted from his vents. I unzipped my hoodie. “Well, not much to say. I woke up and a shadowman was there. I thought it'd just go away like all the other times, but then it was right in front of me. I freaked out and swung a lamp through it, and it made my hand freeze solid.”

He cast me a concerned look. “Are you okay?”

“I am, yeah,” I said. “It disappeared after chasing me around the room for a minute. What about you?”

He didn't answer for a moment, and his eyes glazed over. I looked ahead to see if he was watching anything in particular—and found that we were about to barrel straight past a stop sign and into a busy intersection.

“Holy crap, Spencer!” I shouted, jumping back up in my seat, my fingers clutching the pleather beneath me.

Blinking back to attention, he slammed on his brakes. We jerked forward into our seat belts as the tires screeched to a stop a few feet past the stop sign. A car that had the right of way zoomed past, the driver leaning on his horn.

Spencer looked at me sheepishly, his hair fallen over his eyes. “Uh, sorry, I was trying to remember. I have trouble concentrating sometimes.”

My eyes wide and heart pounding, I lowered myself back into my seat. “It's all right. Just, you know, if the choice is to pay attention to the road or remember something, I say avoid heading down memory lane.”

“Sorry, Em Dub.”

He leaned forward to look both ways, then turned us right. The pheromones swirled together with the hot air from the heater, and my limbs untensed.

“Okay,” I said after a moment. “So, what did happen with you?”

Eyes on the road, Spencer furrowed his brow. “It was basically the same as you. The shadowman followed me around my room while I tripped over computer parts, then it disappeared.”

Despite the warmth of the front seats, I shivered. “Those things are ridiculously freaky. I mean, are they ghosts? Aliens? Why are they following us around all the time?”

“Ooh, I wonder if they
are
aliens.” Spencer perked up at the thought as he made a turn down a new street.

Shaking my head, I looked out my window and watched the trees rush by. “I'm just getting used to werewolves and killer scientists, Spence. I'm not sure I'm ready for aliens. Unless Sharlto Copley is waiting in the wings to show us that they're secretly just misunderstood.”

Spencer grinned at me. “Hey, you like
District 9
too? I loved that movie! It totally should have won best picture this year. I mean, who saw that locker movie anyway?”

I snorted. “You are such a nerd. And I liked
The Hurt Locker
!”

He held his hands up momentarily from the wheel, mock defensively. “Hey, I can't help it if the Oscar people are biased against fun movies! But I'm sure the locker movie was probably good. To the five people who saw it.”

I laughed. “Megan said the same thing. You remind me of her sometimes.”

Spencer looked at me side-eyed. “Uh … thanks?”

“No, I mean that in a good way,” I said. “You're more like how Megan used to be when we were kids, before junior high. She was always super positive and making jokes, just like you. I, you know… I like it.”

“So you like me, huh?” Eyes back on the road, Spencer grinned once more.

Heat rushed to my cheeks, and I sat back. “Maybe a little. Sometimes you're funny. But only sometimes.” I cleared my throat. “Okay, back to last night. Were you, you know,
human
when you saw the shadowman?”

“Yeah. You?”

“Yeah.” I bit my lip, remembering the first times we'd seen the shadowmen. “Before, we could only see them as wolves, right? And they didn't even try to do anything to us then. Now we can still be us when we see them, and they can go all foggy and, like,
touch
us. It doesn't make any sense.”

“Not much of this does, Em Dub.” Spencer cranked the wheel and took us down another street. “Shape-shifting within the span of a few minutes shouldn't be scientifically possible, but unless we're both crazy, we do it all the time.”

“So basically we need to find more time to research all of this. Or find a deus ex machina-y adult to lay out the exposition.”

Spencer scrunched his eyebrows at me. “A deus what?”

I waved my hand. “Nothing. Just wishful thinking. All this would be a lot easier if we didn't have to figure it out by ourselves.”

“That's for sure.”

The minivan's tires crunched over gravel as Spencer pulled into the auxiliary parking lot at Carver Senior High School. He waved at other students as he slowly made his way to a spot big enough for the car. With the minivan in park, he turned the key and the engine died with a grumble. Chill fall air seeped through the windows, and I zipped my hoodie back up.

“Well, here we are,” he said, turning in his seat to face me.

His eyes were on mine. His lips parted into a pleasant smile. I felt mine do the same. With all that was going on, it seemed so silly to smile all goofy at a boy. But I couldn't help it.

“So, you got a plan for today?” he asked.

“Oh,” I said, feeling myself blush again. “Yeah. Research. How about lunch hour we go to the library? Maybe there are books about shadowmen like there are about werewolves. Not that the werewolf books were all that helpful.”

“Well, maybe shadowmen books will be.” Reaching behind him into the backseat, he said, “Didn't your text say something about seeing another werewolf?”

“Yeah. It wasn't you, so it had to be either Dalton or the girl you sniffed out at the party last week.” Spencer and I had established when we first talked that there was a fourth werewolf, a girl, though who it was we didn't know. “This is good. Maybe if we find them, they'll know more about all of this.”

With backpack in hand, Spencer pulled himself back into the front seat. He tapped the side of his nose. “I'll keep my nostrils open, then.”

I tapped my nose as well. “Me too. Though if it's Dalton, I guess my eyes will work just fine.”

He laughed and shook his head. “You're hilarious, Em Dub.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but someone banged rapidly on the window behind me, and I jumped. For a second I was certain it was another shadowman, or even Dr. Elliott in his fedora, with his gun aimed at me, ready to kill me—

But when I turned, I saw it was just Megan. An obviously annoyed Megan.

I undid my seat belt, then grabbed my bag, opened the door, and hopped out. Spencer did the same, then rounded the hood to wave and say, “Hey, Megan!”

Her eyes darted to him and then back to me. She offered him a brusque, “Hey.”

“Allll righty, then,” he said, his eyes absurdly wide. He backed away and said, “See you later, Em,” then turned and hustled toward the school.

Megan leaned back against the minivan and crossed her arms. She was wearing all black, per usual—a knitted baggy sweater that hung limply from her tall, skinny frame, and jeans that would have been supertight on anyone who wasn't her. Her long, white-blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail.

With Spencer gone, all the pheromone-elation I'd been feeling drifted away, replaced with the horrible awkwardness that now seemed to wash over me whenever I was around Megan.

“Hey, you got here the same time as us, how about that,” I said, trying to fill the silence.

She shrugged. “Yeah, I was hoping to catch up to you. I thought maybe we could hang out and then head to homeroom together.”

I smiled. “Definitely.”

I hiked my bag over my shoulder, and she did the same. We walked side by side across the baseball field that separated the auxiliary parking lot from the front of the school. The sky darkened, and misty rain began to drizzle down. Beyond the school, Mount Rainier was shrouded in gray fog.

“So—” she started to say.

“I—” I said at the same time. We giggled nervously, and I said, “Go ahead.”

She kicked at the dirt. “I was just going to ask, is it, like, official now? Are you dating Spencer?”

I didn't answer right away.

She raised her hands before I could say anything. “It's cool if you are, Em, don't worry. I'm happy for you.”

Her eyes told me she was lying. I asked, “You are?”

“Of course I am.” Her voice was cold despite her efforts.

“You're my best friend, Emily, nothing's going to change that, right?”

“Right.”

She slung her long, narrow arm over my shoulder. “So, as your best friend for life, of course I'm happy when you find love or whatever cheesy thing you want to call it.”

I wanted to sigh, but I stopped myself. “Well, I'm not really sure what it is right now.”
Except that we're both werewolves who are supposed to be mates, though whether that's in the British slang sense or the
Wild Kingdom
sense, I'm not entirely sure.
“But I triple promise you, it's not going to keep me from hanging out with you.”

Megan shrugged and began to say something. She stopped walking instead, and I followed her gaze to see a crowd of kids forming at the front of the school. They were loud and laughing, some girls were hugging, I saw a couple guys high-fiving.

“Oh God, what pep rally hell is this?” Megan snarled.

I saw a head slightly above the crowd, one with red hair and chiseled features.

Dalton McKinney. Football player. Attempted murder victim who'd been shot in the head. Werewolf.

One of my pack.
Another voice. Not Nighttime this time.

Just seeing Dalton up and walking, his eyes bright and alert, grinning as kids slapped him on the back—relief washed over me, and I couldn't help but smile, giddy.

“Dalton's back,” I whispered.

Megan rolled her eyes. “Yay.” Then, with a quick shake of her head, she added, “But wait. He was shot in the head, like, a week ago. Why would they let him out of the hospital and back to school? Did they just pretend his injury was worse than it was or what?”

“It must have been him,” I said to myself, momentarily forgetting Megan was even there.

“What must have?” Megan asked.

I barely heard her. I was already racing forward, my bag slapping against my back, ready to meet the third member of our would-be pack and see if he had any answers.

3

DAL-TON

By the time I was underneath the covered walkway that led to the front entrance of the school, Dalton was absolutely mobbed by students. I reached the back of the crowd and jumped up and down, trying to get a look at him.

From what I could tell, he actually looked
good
. He was grinning, slapping friends on the back, chest-bumping football teammates. Color had returned to his flushed cheeks, and he was dressed in his pristinely pressed khakis, polo, and letterman jacket. The only sign that he'd been, y'know,
shot in the head
was a fresh square bandage on his temple and the peach fuzz of red hair growing over his emergency-room-shaved skull.

It was subtle, but a bit of the earthy, boyish musk I'd come to associate with Spencer wafted off Dalton, swirling through the damp air before meeting my nose. As it did, a voice in the back of my head distantly commanded,
Gather your fellows
.

Dalton's friend Mikey Harris was next to him, holding a football high and leading the crowd in a chant of, “Dal-TON, Dal-TON, Dal-TON.” His cheerleader girlfriend, Nikki, all porcelain-white complexion and burgundy hair, hugged his side possessively, unable to contain her glee at having him back alive. Behind her were her fellow cheerleaders, the triplets Delgado—Amy, Brittany, and Casey, with Amy smirking at the crowd.

“Excuse you, thank you.” Someone shoved me aside, and I barely caught a glimpse of cocoa-brown skin and bobbing black curls before the speaker dug her way into the mass.

“Uh, yeah, excuse
you
.”

I turned to see Mai Sato beside me. She was one of the school's track stars, and also best friend of the recently deceased Emily Cooke. She took in the scene at the back of the crowd with a look between disgust and sadness, then wandered away. She left behind her a scent trail of some flowery perfume. Strange. I'd never pegged Mai as the perfume type.

The pushy girl was, of course, Tracie Townsend, our class president. She wore a prim yellow blouse and skirt, with a matching headband holding back her curls—halfway to Stepford Wives territory, though somehow it worked for her. Despite being smaller than half the people who made up the inner circle of the crowd surrounding Dalton, she expertly shoved her way to stand directly before him.

Holding up her hands, Tracie smiled forcefully until the chants of “Dal-TON” finally died down.

“Wonderful, thank you!” she said, her voice loud, crisp, and curt. “We are all super glad that our very own Dalton McKinney has overcome such tragic circumstances to come back to Carver. Give him a hand, everyone!”

The crowd hollered and clapped, and I couldn't help but do the same, my hands slapping against each other as fast as a hummingbird's wings. I could barely see Dalton, but the glimpses I got made me feel one step closer to whole—one step closer to a pack. All these weird feelings were hardwired instincts, I knew that, just strange wolfy desires that were ingrained in my DNA by invasive scientists. That didn't stop the connection between me and Spencer, and me and Dalton, from feeling stronger than even that of my own family.

Tracie raised her hands once more, and the crowd died down. Gently shoving aside Mikey and Nikki, Tracie strung her arm through Dalton's and made him step forward. “I am going to go to Principal Alexander later today and ask that we prepare a special assembly to celebrate. But I think from the glares of the office staff—hellooo, yes, we see you! Ha-ha!—we should probably disperse and clear the walkway.” She let go of Dalton and strode through the crowd toward the front entrance, shooing with her hands. “All right, let's go.”