Sam whistled through his nose. I had no idea how much he understood of what I said; only that, in his semi-drugged state, he didn’t flinch under my touch.
I tried again. “It could kill you. Do you still want to try?”
Behind me, Isabel coughed meaningfully.
Sam whined at the noise, eyes jerking to Isabel and the door. I stroked his head and looked into his eyes. God, they were the same. It killed me to look at them now.
This has to work.
A tear slid down my face. I didn’t bother to swipe it away as I looked up at Isabel. I wanted this like I’d never wanted anything. “We have to do it.”
Isabel didn’t move. “Grace, I don’t think he stands a chance unless he’s human. I just don’t think it will work.”
I ran a finger over the short, smooth hair on the side of his face. If he hadn’t been sedated, he wouldn’t have tolerated it, but the Benadryl had dulled his instincts. He closed his eyes. It was unwolflike enough to give me hope.
“Grace. Are we doing this or not? Seriously.”
“Wait,” I said. “I’m trying something.”
I settled on the floor and whispered to Sam, “I want you to listen to me, if you can.” I leaned the side of my face against his ruff and remembered the golden wood he had shown me so long ago. I remembered the way the yellow leaves, the color of Sam’s eyes, fluttered and twisted, crashing butterflies, on their way to the ground. The slender white trunks of the birches, creamy and smooth as human skin. I remembered Sam standing in the middle of the wood, his arms stretched out, a dark, solid form in the dream of the trees. His coming to me, me punching his chest, the soft kiss. I remembered every kiss we’d ever had, and I remembered every time I’d curled in his human arms. I remembered the soft warmth of his breath on the back of my neck while we slept.
I remembered Sam.
I remembered him forcing himself out of wolf form for me. To save me.
Sam jerked away from me. His head was lowered, tail between his legs, and he was shaking.
“What’s happening?” Isabel’s hand was on the doorknob.
Sam backed away farther, crashing into the cabinet behind him, curling into a ball, uncurling. He was peeling free. He was shaking out of his fur. He was wolf and he was Sam, and then
he
was
just
Sam.
“Hurry,” Sam whispered. He was jerking, hard, against the cabinet. His fingers were claws on the tile. “Hurry. Do it now.”
Isabel was frozen by the door.
“Isabel! Come on!”
She snapped out of her spell and came over to us. She crouched beside Sam, next to the bare expanse of his back. He was biting his lip so hard that it was bleeding. I knelt, took his hand.
His voice was strained. “Grace—hurry. I’m almost gone.”
Isabel didn’t ask any more questions. She just grabbed his arm, turned it, and jabbed the needle in. She depressed the syringe halfway, but it jerked out of his arm as he seized violently. Sam backed away from me, tugging his hand from mine, and threw up.
“Sam—”
But he was gone. In half the time it had taken him to become human, he was a wolf. Shaking, staggering, nails scratching on the tiles, falling to the floor.
“I’m sorry, Grace,” Isabel said. That was all she said. She laid the syringe on the counter. “Crap. I hear Jack. I’ll be right back.”
The door opened and closed. I knelt next to Sam’s body and buried my face in his fur. His breaths were ragged and exhausted. And all I could think was—I killed him. This is going to kill him.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE • GRACE
36°F
Jack was the one who opened the exam room door. “Grace, come on. We have to go—Olivia’s not doing so good.”
I stood, embarrassed to be found with tear-stained cheeks. I turned to tip the used syringe into the hazardous waste container by the counter. “I need help carrying him.”
He scowled at me. “That’s why Isabel sent me in here.”
I looked down, and my heart stopped. Empty floor. I spun, ducking my head to look under the table. “Sam?”
Jack had left the door open. The room was empty.
“Help me find him!” I shouted at Jack, pushing past him into the hallway. There was no sign of Sam. As I pelted down the hall, I could see the door wide-open at the end of it, black night staring in. It was the first place a wolf would’ve run to, once his drugs wore off. Escape. The night. The cold.
I spun in the parking lot, looking for any sign of Sam in the slender finger of Boundary Wood that stretched behind the clinic. But it was darker than dark. No lights. No sound. No Sam.
“Sam!”
I knew he wouldn’t come, even if he heard me. Sam was strong, but instincts were stronger.
It was intolerable to imagine him out there somewhere, half a vial of infected blood mixing slowly with his.
“Sam!” My voice was a wail, a howl, a cry in the night. He was gone.
Headlights blinded me: Isabel’s SUV, tearing up beside me and shuddering to a stop. Isabel leaned over from the driver’s side and shoved open the passenger-side door, her face a ghost in the lights of the dashboard.
“Get in, Grace. Hurry the hell up! Olivia is changing and we’ve been here way too long already.”
I couldn’t leave him.
“Grace!”
Jack climbed into the backseat, shuddering; his eyes pleaded with me. They were the same eyes I’d seen at the very beginning, back when he’d first been turned. Back before I’d known anything at all.
I got in and slammed the door shut, looking out the window just in time to see a white wolf standing by the edge of the parking lot. Shelby. Alive, just like Sam had thought. I stared in the rearview mirror at her; the wolf stood in the parking lot and gazed after us. I thought I saw triumph in her eyes as she turned and disappeared into the darkness.
“Which wolf is that?” Isabel demanded.
But I couldn’t answer. All I could think was Sam, Sam, Sam.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO • GRACE
40°F
“I don’t think Jack’s doing well,” Olivia said. She sat in the passenger seat of my new car, a little Mazda that smelled like carpet cleaner and loneliness. Even though she wore two of my sweaters and a stocking cap, she was still shaking, her hands wrapped around her stomach. “If he was doing well, Isabel would’ve called us.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Isabel isn’t the calling sort.” But I couldn’t help but think she was right. This was day three, and the last we’d heard from Isabel was eight hours ago.
Day one: Jack had a splitting headache and a stiff neck.
Day two: Headache worse. Running a temperature.
Day three: Isabel’s voicemail.
I pulled the Mazda into Beck’s driveway and parked behind Isabel’s giant SUV. “Ready?”
Olivia didn’t look like she was, but she got out of the car and bolted for the front door. I followed her in and shut the door behind us. “Isabel?”
“In here.”
We followed her voice into one of the downstairs bedrooms. It was a cheery yellow little bedroom that seemed at odds with the decomposing odor of sick that filled the space.
Isabel sat cross-legged on a chair at the foot of the bed. Deep circles, like purple thumbprints, were pressed beneath her eyes.
I handed her the coffee we’d brought. “Why didn’t you call us?”
Isabel looked at me. “His fingers are dying.”
I’d been avoiding looking at him, but I did, finally, where he lay on the bed, curled like a half-done butterfly. The ends of his fingertips were a disconcerting shade of blue. His face was shiny with sweat, his eyes closed. My throat felt too full.
“I looked it up online,” Isabel told me. She held up her phone, as if that explained everything. “His headache is because the lining of his brain is inflamed. The fingers and toes are blue because his brain isn’t telling his body to send blood there anymore. I took his temperature. It was one hundred and five.”
Olivia said, “I have to throw up.”
She left me in the room with Isabel and Jack.
I didn’t know what to say. If Sam had been here, he would’ve known the right thing to say. “I’m sorry.”
Isabel shrugged, eyes dull. “It worked the way it was supposed to. The first day, he almost changed into a wolf when the temperature dropped overnight. That was the last time, even when the power went down last night. I thought it was working. He hasn’t changed since his fever got going.” She made a little gesture toward the bed. “Did you make an excuse for me at school?”
“Yes.”
“Fantastic.”
I gestured for her to follow me. She stood up from her chair as if it was difficult for her and trailed me into the hall.
I pulled the bedroom door almost shut so that Jack, if he was listening, wouldn’t overhear. In a low voice, I said, “We have to take him to the hospital, Isabel.”
Isabel laughed—a weird, ugly sound. “And tell them what? He’s supposed to be dead. You think I haven’t been thinking about this? Even if we give a fake name, his face has been all over the news for two months.”
“Then we just take our chances, right? We’ll come up with some story. I mean, we have to at least try, right?”
She looked up at me with her red-rimmed eyes for a long moment. When she finally spoke, her voice was hollow. “Do you think I want him to die? Don’t you think I want to save him? It’s too late, Grace! It’s hard for people to survive this kind of meningitis even if they’ve gotten treatment from the very beginning. Right now, for him, after three days? I don’t even have painkillers to give him, much less anything that might do something for this. I thought the wolf part might save him, like it saved you. But he doesn’t have a chance. Not a chance.”
I took the coffee cup out of her hands. “We can’t just watch him die. We’ll take him to a hospital that won’t know him right away. We’ll drive to Duluth if we have to. They won’t recognize him there, at least not right away, and by then, we’ll have thought of something to tell them. Go clean up your face and get whatever of his stuff you want to bring. Come on, Isabel. Move.”