1 Creatures of Habit

Any hunter will tell you that understanding an animal's routines are essential to trapping it.

Hunting humans is no different.

Instincts are what most animals rely on to notify them of potential harm. Millennia of being the most dominant life force on earth have suppressed the biological early warning system in most homo sapiens. There's a level of arrogance that comes with being the pinnacle of the food chain. An air of go ahead, let 'em try. The signals are still in us though, if one knows how to interpret them.

That's how I know someone is following me.

Even before I hear the heavy footfalls, the hair rises on the back of my neck, almost as though the stranger's breaths land against the exposed skin. I stagger from the rave like a wounded antelope, through the rear door into the dark alley, leaving the thumping music and seizure-inducing lights in my wake. The trash that litters the cracked concrete beneath my boots and the scents of damp air from earlier rain mingling with decaying leaves are my only companions.

Until now.

Wind whips through my thin dress. I didn't bring a coat or purse, just what I need sewn into a pocket at the fold of my skirt. It is big enough for a tube of lip gloss, a few bills, and my cell. I consider hiding, but there isn't enough time. My pursuer is closing in and there's no real shelter to be found. I don't run—never run from a predator. Fleeing is a sign of weakness and invites chase from the wrong sort. I put one foot in front of the other and don't look back. Maybe I'll make it to the street, out into the open. Maybe he really isn't after me.

My heart races, blood pounds in my ears, every nerve ending aware of my situation. Distantly I hear the thumping club music and the sounds of tires on rain-slick pavement. And him. The footsteps quicken.

The mouth of the alley is feet away when he catches me around my waist and pushes me face-first against the cinder block wall.

"What's a hot little piece like you doing out here all alone?"

His voice is thick and accented by New Jersey. His body feels massive pressing into mine. He towers over me and is massively built with thick shoulders and arms.

"Please," I whisper. "Don't hurt me."

One hand traps both of mine behind my back as the other travels along my spine. I can't keep from shivering in revulsion at his touch.

I beg again, "Please, what do you want?"

In a sudden burst of movement, he spins me and pins both of my hands above my head in one of his. His face is cast in shadows but there's no mistaking the sinister intent gleaming in his dark eyes. "I want to fuck you," he rasps, that hand fumbling for the side zipper of my dress.

"I've never done that," I tell him honestly through my trembling lips. "I'm only sixteen. Please."

"You want it. Girls like you always want it." His gaze fastens on my mouth. My lips are slick and shiny with my recently applied gloss. I can see his intentions clear as day. He is going to force me in this filthy alley, use my body while he enjoys my screams of terror and pain.

He is a monster.

His hand snakes inside my dress, touching bare skin that crawls at the contact.

Heart racing, I look up at him and ask, "Would you at least kiss me first?"

I can tell my request throws him. He studies me for a minute as though wondering what game I'm playing.

"So, I can at least pretend," my voice trembles.

He appears to come to a decision. The free hand fists in my hair. He yanks hard. Even in this, he wants me to feel pain. My lips part and then his mouth is on mine, brutal, punishing, an invasion.

Monster, meet your match.

He attacks me on several fronts, pressing his body into mine as though promising the punishment to come while meting out the full-scale assault on my mouth.

I don't struggle or try to fight him off in any way, my heart thunders—with anticipation. Any second now.

He breaks away suddenly and shakes his head as though dizzy. I straighten my disheveled dress and watch dispassionately as he staggers back and then slumps down to the ground.

"What did you do?" His eyes grow wild even as his gaze glazes over. And then it happens, the moment I crave. The light of true understanding dawns an instant before it flicks out forever.

Our roles have been reversed. Now he's the hunted. The victim.

My victim.

"You have been found guilty." A small smile curves my bruised lips as I watch him die.

He twitches once, a final spasm as his central nervous system shuts down for good. The last of the spark leaves his eyes and then I am alone once more in the alley with only a corpse at my feet.

Stooping down, I check his pockets, removing his wallet from inside his jacket. It's a battered old thing, nylon with a cracked plastic sleeve holding a few credit cards as well as a driver's license. My victim's name is Paul Anderson. I study the photo and compare it to the dead man at my feet. He's porked up since the image was captured, extra adipose tissue gathering at his midsection. Probably an athlete gone soft. It's too dark in the alley to make out his eye or hair color but the license lists him as blond-haired and blue-eyed. Possibly of Norwegian descent. I'd been right about the accent. His address tells me his permanent residence was in Hackettstown, New Jersey. No explanation to why this middle-aged man had been at a rave in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Not that I need one.

Like me, he'd been out hunting.

I pocket the license and keep digging. Credit cards are too easy to trace. I keep the cash though. Waste not, want not as my Aunt Addy always says. A photo of a plain woman with a pretty smile and a blonde toddler is stuck behind a Starbucks card. Distantly I wonder if I've done her a favor or ruined her life. Personally, I wouldn't want to be tethered to cheating, raping scum, but I'm zany like that. Not that it matters. Paul's fate was sealed the second he tracked me into the alley.

"Speaking of Fate," I grumble as my phone lets out the obnoxious hamster dance ringtone. Aunt Chloe's idea of a joke. "What?"

"Status?" Addy asks in a tight tone.

The echo on the line tells me she's put the call on speaker, so I talk directly to Chloe. "One of these days that ringtone is going to scare one of them off."

"Don't be such a worrywart," Chloe calls from the background. "You sound just like Addy."

I toe my victim's bulky arm. "It's done. The package is big though. I'm debating leaving it here."

"No." Like everything else about her, Addy's tone brooks no nonsense. "Not in our own backyard. The three of us will manage."

"Something to look forward to," Chloe hollers. "Been too long since I got a hold of a big package."

"We'll be there in thirty," Addy informs me tersely.

And they would have the wood chipper ready to rock.

****

If you're wondering why my kiss can fell a full-grown man like a rotting tree, well, join the club. It's been that way as long as I can remember, all the way back to before Addy and Chloe adopted me.

Giving a man the Goodnight Kiss is one of my earliest memories. I'd been six at the time and he too had been of the Uncle Bad-touch persuasion. I attract that type like flies to roadkill. Ten years of practice has taught me how to handle them.

I shut Paul's eyes and prop him up against the wall, knowing it'll be better to have him seated before full rigor mortis kicks in. Also, it's easier to pass my cover story with him slumped over rather than lying flat on his back.

"Come on, Dad." I speak loudly, putting on a show for the three millennials who exit the alley the same way we'd come. Out of the corner of my eye, I size them up and dismiss them as a minimal threat. Probably looking for a nice quiet spot to get lit. "Mom and Aunt Franny are on their way. If they see you like this again, there'll be hell to pay."

My theater is a little Weekend at Bernie's, but it works. The college students scurry on their way, not wanting to get caught up in our family drama. If they'd bothered to take a closer look, they would note that good ol' Paul and I look nothing alike. My hair is also blonde, but a much paler shade, almost white. I'm short, barely five feet four with pale blue eyes. Icy eyes, my best friend Sarah called them once. He wears ratty stained jeans and a flannel shirt and a grubby parka where I'm dolled up in what Chloe refers to as my best "bait" outfit. A stretchy purple dress and black over the knee stiletto boots.

Lucky for me, most people are more concerned with their own ends and tend to see what they want. If I talk to the dead man like he is my drunken lout of a father, then they have no reason to think otherwise. With any luck, they'll smoke away the memory of us in this alley long before the police start asking questions.

The forest green Subaru Outback parks at the mouth of the alley exactly twenty-nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds after I'd hung up the phone. The brake lights illuminate the corner of the cinder block building and I hear the engine idling. Addy's as punctual as a drill sergeant so I know she's behind the wheel.

"Oh, you weren't kidding," Chloe says as she joins me in the alley. Her red-gold hair is piled on top of her head a big twist of beautiful curly cues that frames her perfect features. So close I smell her strawberry aroma. Chloe always smells like food for some reason and her scent changes with her mood. "He's a bigg'un. Good catch, Nic."

Addy only shifts her waist-length brown braid over her shoulder and mutters, "Each of you, get a leg. I'll get him under the arms."

"This ain't our first rodeo," Chole grunts as she hefts a limb.

I also do as she instructs. Paul is, as advertised, deadweight but as Chloe pointed out, we've done this before.

"You coming with us, doll?" Chloe asks once Paul is secure in the backseat, hidden beneath the heavy blankets Addy keeps there.

I shake my head and toss the wallet in on top as another item for disposal. "Need to be seen inside. I'll be back later."

"Have fun!" Chloe waves cheerily and Addy gives me a reassuring nod before driving off.

Most people think Addy and Chloe are lovers. I can understand why. They bicker like an old married couple. They share a house as well as an adopted child. It's rare to catch sight of one without the other. They even run the veterinary clinic together. Addy's the straight-laced vet and Chloe's the bubbly receptionist. The odd couple vibe suits them perfectly. Neither is married or, to my knowledge, has ever been involved with anyone else. To the untrained eye, the underlying tension between them might be attributed to a sexual relationship. My aunts are completely content to let normals think whatever they please as long as the truth stays hidden.

Their truth, as well as mine.

After one final scan of the alley, I circle back around to the front of the building and let myself in through the unlocked glass doors.

The music assaults me first. Raves are not my usual scene. Too much chaos and light for me to relax. Too many people on different drugs letting go of their inhibitions. Bodies press too tightly together. Anyone can sneak up on you. Now that Paul is taken care of, I half hope the sheriff will come shut it down, so I can go home early.

"Nic!" My best friend, Sarah Larkin gyrates between two mouth-breathers who occasionally double as football players. She's tall and graceful. Her hair is dyed black as ink and streaked with crimson strands. Her pupils are so dilated her eyes look black instead of brown. "I've been looking for you for ages!"

"I was in line for the bathroom." A plausible lie. The building had originally been some sort of furniture warehouse, back when America still made furniture. Abandoned for at least a decade, it isn't exactly well facilitated and never meant to hold a few hundred drunken normals who need to pee.

Sarah isn't the brightest bulb in the strand and a steady diet of ecstasy chased with vodka doesn't help. It never occurs to her that any time we party together I spend an inordinate amount of time in the bathroom. Or maybe it does, and she just chalks it up to a nervous bladder. In fact, I'm pretty sure she's just glad she doesn't have to compete with me for male attention. I'm her perfect wingman—always sober, always willing to go out.

Now that I've been identified, I make my way to the corner where the bottles of water and cans of beer are stashed in a giant ice vat. I grab an Aquafina, check to make sure the cap is still sealed and then put my back to the wall, propping one stiletto boot against the painted cinder blocks for balance. From my position, I see Sarah swaying like a willow between two giant hardwoods. The comparison makes me snort.

Because of the whole deadly lip lock shtick, I've never had a boyfriend. It's too bad. Like having a BFF, a boyfriend would help sell my cover. Nic Rutherford, normal teenage girl. Sarah, who changes guys as often as she changes underwear, once asked me point blank if I was gay. The question startled me, not because I was offended but more so because it had never really dawned on me that normals would view me as a sexual being. Predators, yes, but they seek power, not intimacy.

"If you munch rug, that's cool. Like your "Aunts"." Sarah had been stuffing tissues into her bra at the time but paused to do the air quote thing.

I don't think I'm gay. Or straight for that matter. I'm asexual. No relationship could possibly give me the satisfaction I derive from taking down the biggest game going. Of course, explaining that to a hormone-crazed teenage girl is like trying to get a cow to walk on its hind legs.

Oblivious to my struggle, Sarah did what she does best—fill the silence with her prattle. After giving me a slow up and down, she turned back to the mirror. "I'm only asking because if I ever like, want to experiment, I'd totally do it with you."

I offered a tight-lipped smile and no comment. Mercifully, she'd dropped the subject. How like Sarah to believe that every being who encountered her would want her. Sometimes late at night I wonder if I'm so arrogant. After all, I always assume any game I sight will pursue me. And so far, they always have. I have a perfect record when it comes to perverts. Batting 1000 for a decade and counting.

"You want to dance?" A tall, lanky guy wearing a host of glow in the dark bracelets swings his hips in what normals might consider an alluring rhythm.

I study him for a moment. Eager yes, but not one of mine. Even if he had been I won't hunt in the same spot twice. I move about to lessen the risk of exposure. With what passes for a regretful smile, I decline his offer. He shrugs as though I'm the one missing out and then wanders off in search of greener pastures.

The strobe light flickers annoyingly. I shut my eyes, tired of the whole scene. Partying bores me and I'm always fatigued after a takedown. Addy explained why to me once. The chemical process that goes along with the hunt. Anticipation combines with a spike of adrenaline to see me through the danger. When it's over, the spike crashes and depletes my reserves. I want to get in Sarah's rattletrap Camry and head back up to the farm, see how Chloe and Addy are getting on with Paul's remains and then stumble to my room and pass out cold.

But judging from her bump and grind, Sarah doesn't look at all ready to leave. One of the meatheads has left, but the other seems determined. I could hound her, feign sick, perhaps. I know she'll take me home if I ask. For all her many faults she is a decent friend. My only friend. I like it better that way.

I decide to give her a few more minutes to enjoy herself though. Sarah's home life is rough, and she lives for the nights when we escape. Though I desperately want to take her drunken lout of a stepfather out of the picture, Addy has forbidden it.

She'd been wearing her bifocals, studying one of her medical texts when I'd brought the subject up. She'd peered over the top of them at me all school-marmy and stern. "It's too close to home, Nic. Don't shit where you live."

"He's one of mine," I'd whined like a child denied a treat. The aunts had never said no to me before. "I'll take extra precautions. Lure him to a city."

It was Chloe, fun-loving, live-in-the-moment Chloe, who'd tipped the balance against me. "There are too many angles, sweets. If you give him the Goodnight Kiss too far from where we can properly dispose of him, he'll be on record. You know the FBI has a task force looking at your victims already."

It was true, though they had nothing concrete other than a stream of missing persons and unexplained deaths. On the rare occasions the aunts and I leave the body behind, the toxin in my kiss doesn't appear on an autopsy. Still, you can only gank so many convicted sex offenders before the red flags go up.

Sarah endures as best she can while I continue to seethe in impotence. With any luck, her stepfather's liver will implode before the thin thread of my patience snaps.

Self-denial isn't my designer handbag of choice.

The noise and the crush of bodies are getting to me. Decided, I wind through the writhing bodies until I can lay hands on Sarah's bare shoulder and shout into her ear. "Going to wait in the car."

She rolls her eyes but forks over the keys. "Take it. Cliff's giving me a ride."

Cliff, who I assume is the knuckle-dragger groping her ass, smirks at me. "There's always room for one more."

I taste bile even as I force my lips to tilt upwards. "I don't share." Except with Death herself.

The night air caresses my skin like a lover, lifting my hair off the base of my neck in a playful tease. I drink in the breeze and it restores me, as fresh air always seems to do. I could never exist in a city, where the wind is blocked by tall buildings and thick with the scent of humanity. Car keys in hand, I stride briskly toward Sarah's POS. It's a standard, but I've driven it before. Our farm is only twenty miles from the factory but still a world apart.

The engine catches and I roll down the driver's side window, glad for the breath of fresh mountain air that joins me for the ride. The dashboard clock reads 12:01. The spring equinox. No wonder I'm tired. Since I'm a nocturnal predator, longer nights mean more time to hunt. At least I live in North Carolina, not Norway or somewhere where the summer nights are practically nonexistent. If I ever visit the land of the midnight sun, I'll be sure to do so in winter. The cold doesn't bother me the way daylight does.

I turn off the factory road and onto the main highway that's more a series of switchbacks giving way to the higher elevation of the Blue Ridge Parkway. The high country is quiet this time of year. Too late for skiers, too early for hikers and after full dark, I have the road to myself.

I've just turned off onto the gravel drive that leads to our farm when the small hairs lift on my arms. The reaction has nothing to do with the plummeting temperature. Someone is watching me.

Not following. I don't have that same urge to escape as I had earlier with Paul. No headlights in the rearview either, not since I turned toward our land. My instincts, carefully honed over the years, give me no clue where to look for the source of my discomfort. It's a physiological response. A tightness in my stomach, an increase in heart rate. There is a predator out there. One who has me in its sights.

My foot taps the brakes lightly, halting all vehicular forward motion. The Camry's headlights form two clear trails through the darkness. I scan the shadowy shapes of the evergreens on either side of the road, trying to pick out whatever it is that doesn't belong. Naked branches stir in the wind and some of the heavier boughs creak with age, but otherwise nothing.

I sit longer than any normal would sit. My instincts have never steered me wrong when it comes to prey or predators. Of course, I'm tired. It's the first day of spring. And I did just hunt. Even a well-disciplined mind can play tricks if the reserves are too low.

I prepare to lift my foot and creep ahead when he appears in my headlights. A massive black shape on all fours. I suck in a breath, stunned by the sheer size of the wolf. We have bears and mountain lions in this area, but wolves are rare and never so large.

He turns and looks right at me. Something electric shoots down my spine. His eyes are the color of new spring leaves and he stares, not half as nonplussed at spying me as I am at seeing him.

My heart stops as our gazes lock. He seems to take me in and not just my appearance. Me, he sees me, Nic. All my misdeeds, every secret I keep as though I've been laid out for him like a sumptuous feast.

Not a wolf! My instincts scream.

But before I can question them, he turns and vanishes into the trees.

Mornings come early on a farm. Even earlier when a pissed off Fate slams your door open sans knock.

"Where is it?" Addy storms into my room, gold eyes ablaze.

I sit up and the blankets fall past my waist. "What?"

"Don't play games with me, Nic." Her braid lashes around like a whip as her head snaps from side to side. She heads to my dresser and starts opening drawers, rifling through socks and underwear, yoga pants and tanks. "It won't end well."

"I'm not playing games. I need to know what you're looking for." It's a lie, one of my habits coming back to bite me. I know exactly what she's so determined to find.

"The license," Addy snarls. "Did you think I wouldn't check the wallet?"

"Calm down, sis." Chloe drifts in and perches on the foot of my bed. Her scent de jour is vanilla. "It's not that big a deal."

It's the wrong thing to say. Addy rounds on Chloe, hands on hips, eyes ablaze. "Don't even start. She can't keep trophies. You know that. I know that. She knows it. Trophies means she's a serial killer."

Chloe winces and raises her hand in mock abashment. "Hate to point out the obvious, but she kind of already is a serial killer, trophies or no. I have the crud under my nails to prove it."

"It's a mindset." Addy retorts as if she hasn't been stating the same thing every single day since they brought me home. Sure enough, her work-roughened hand starts ticking off all the reasons she doesn't consider me a serial killer. "She's not a Caucasian male. She's not in her prime. She isn't compelled to kill. And she doesn't keep trophies as evidence for the fucking FBI to use against her!"

Chloe opens her mouth, some pithy retort at the ready, but closes it again at the sound of a heavy vehicle on the gravel drive.

"Are we expecting someone?" Chloe rises and moves to the window, pulling back the curtain to peer out.

I get out of bed and stand on my toes, so I can see, too. A big black truck skids to a stop in front of the farmhouse. "It's Sarah. I took her car last night. That's probably her date dropping her off."

Addy's nostrils flare but all she says is, "Get rid of it," before storming out of the room.

"What crawled up her ass and died?" Chloe rolls her eyes.

Her nonchalance doesn't fool me. My aunts have adapted a good cop, bad cop stance. Addy is the heavy hitter, the one who keeps her temper on a short leash, while Chloe is the gal pal, the confidant. The closer.

"She's wrong," I watch Sarah do the walk of shame from the truck to our front porch. Her hair is a wreck, her sparkly top is inside out beneath her ragged denim jacket and even though there's frost on the ground, her strappy heeled shoes are in her hand. She waves jauntily at the driver and then sashays out of view.

I let the curtain drop. "I don't know why she's in denial. I am a serial killer. I kill people I don't even know. What else could I be?" There is no self-pity or remorse in my words. I don't feel either, only frustration. I was born to kill, and I don't understand why.

Chloe puts her hand on my arm. "You have a purpose. Not knowing isn't the same as not possessing."

Of all the infuriating things she'd ever said to me, this might be the worst. "Do you know?"

She stills. "Don't, Nic. You know I can't say."

She's right, it isn't an appropriate time to press for answers. Not with Sarah in the house and Addy on the warpath. But what's the point of being adopted by the Fates if they can't at least drop a hint about my destiny? "I'm some sort of weapon, aren't I? A mystical assassin?"

Chloe's eyes land on my overflowing bookshelf. I am an avid reader, devouring history, mythology, religion, and fairytales by the gross. The stories come from somewhere and I've gleaned bits of truths in each one, reflections of the real world buried in someone's make-believe.

The aunts know about my research, but they're deliberately obscure when I question them. Some things are obvious, like that they don't age. Not a wrinkle or a gray hair has appeared in the decade I've been with them. Other times I've eavesdropped, hoping to hear something they'll never discuss openly with me. At one point, before they took me on, there was a third sister. Her name hasn't come up and there's no indication if she died or just moved on. The holes in my information gnaw at me.

I probably shouldn't complain. How many parents would literally hide bodies for their children?

Chloe won't—or can't—give me a direct answer. Instead, she brushes some of my hair back over one shoulder. "Right now, the only thing you need to be is a teenage girl. One who'll be late for school if she doesn't get moving. Come on, breakfast is hitting the table in five."

Chloe shuts the door behind her. I listen as her footsteps fade down the hall, the murmur of voices, the sound of laughter. My aunts go out of their way to make Sarah feel at home. They aren't exactly social butterflies. Neither am I. It's hard to be the life of the party when you have the potential to kill someone by accident.

The Goodnight Kiss doesn't require lips on lips. That is, it doesn't have to be a conventionally accepted sort of kiss to do the deed. Through trial and error—some of it dicey—I've discovered that any contact my mouth has with a normal's bare skin will do the trick. The rest of my parts aren't toxic. I haven't killed anyone with a handshake or a sneeze to date. Sarah has even given me hugs with no ill effects. The first time she embraced me I knew the true meaning of terror. Not only did I worry that I'd "Nic her" by accident, but that I'd do so in front of half the school. There would be no coming back from that sort of scene. In the era when social media reigns supreme and everyone has a camera phone, denial isn't an option.

Dread coils in my gut at the thought of exposure. No wind lifting my hair, or fresh scents to mark the changing seasons. Locked away in a cage. Or worse, studied, vivisected so some mad scientist could figure out where my ability originates. The fear isn't enough to make me stop, though. The world is better off without the likes of Paul Anderson.

I dress in jeans and a flannel shirt over a tank top and hiking boots, standard high country all-season gear. In the winter add a parka and gloves. In the summer swap the jeans for cut-offs and the flannel goes around my waist instead of over my shoulders. But otherwise, my clothes are simple, comfortable and nondescript because I don't care how I look. Apart from the bait clothes but those aren't for school. I sported a capsule wardrobe long before anybody on Pinterest.

Once my hair is brushed and my boots are laced I pause and crack open the door. Chloe and Sarah are chatting away in the kitchen. Sarah at the table, her back to me, the wild red and black streaks illuminated by the sun streaming through the skylights. I don't hear Addy but she's most likely with them. She doesn't trust Chloe not to slip and say something she shouldn't in front of normals.

I shut the door again and stride over to my bookshelf and separate Modern Paganism from The Iliad. The book between the two tomes is a chintzy pink fluffy nightmare thing with a heart-shaped lock and a key the size of my pinky nail. A gift from Chloe the year I turned twelve, to write down all my tender wittle feels. I'd shaken my head, sure I'd never use it.

I'd been wrong. The diary is my most prized possession. I leave it hidden in plain sight, always in the same exact spot so the aunts won't know. Even in their wildest imaginings, they wouldn't guess that the cheesy faux fur covered diary has been repurposed.

Unable to resist, I flip to the latest entry, the one with Paul Anderson's driver's license taped to the page, and smile.

****

"And then he asked me to forgive his sorry lying ass," Sarah says. "Can you believe that shit?"

"Forgiveness is for quitters," I say the words at the same time as Chloe. She turns from the stove, a grin in place and casts me a wink.

"Morning, sunshine." Sarah sets down her glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice and smacks the table dramatically. "Gimme my keys afore I cut a bitch."

I roll my eyes at her. "You've been streaming too much Orange is the New Black."

She forks pancakes onto her plate. "Ain't shit else to do on the weekends. Besides, it's a good show. You should watch."

"Our internet speed isn't fast enough for streaming here." Chloe sets down a plate of bacon on the table. Bacon only Sarah will touch. The rest of us are vegetarians, something Sarah doesn't know. Another part of our look as normal as possible cover. In some areas of the country, eating vegetarian wouldn't be out of the norm, but on a Western North Carolina farm, it would raise a few eyebrows.

Ignoring the pancakes, I help myself to a bowl of steel-cut oats and chia pudding.

Sarah makes a face at my breakfast. "How can you eat that? It looks like fish eyeballs."

I shrug. It's the fuel my body performs best with, like a tank full of high test. But I murmur one word that's like a free pass. "Diet." It is the easiest explanation, one any teenage girl would swallow.

"You don't need to diet. Half the rave was eye humping your bod last night."

"Half the rave was drugged out of their minds."

"Do tell." Chloe sits down, hands wrapped around a mug of coffee. "Nic never mentions the eye humping."

"She's the Ice Bitch." Sarah chomps on a piece of bacon and I curl my lip at the nickname. "Plays it all cool. It drives the guys fuckin' crazy, pardon my French."

Addy nods, as though this is what she wants to hear, then rises from the table. "If you'll excuse me I have an early surgery."

"We need to get going, too." Sarah rolls up the remaining bacon in a pancake and then slings her shoulder bag over her arm.

I raise a brow at her been there done that ensemble. "Um, do you want to borrow something to wear?"

She rolls her eyes. "Like I'd fit in any of your munchkin outfits. Nah, I have a change of clothes in the car. Let's motor already."

I slurp down what remains of my breakfast, say goodbye to Chloe and Addy and follow Sarah out to her car. She unlocks it, then, stuffing the makeshift sandwich into her gaping mouth, leans over to unlock my door.

"Why did you bother locking it?" she grumps. "It's not like there's anyone wandering around on the zillion acres you guys own."

I climb inside, tossing my backpack on the backseat. "It's only 140 acres. And Addy's practice is down at the other entrance. She leaves it open in case of an emergency." That isn't why I locked the door though. For some reason, I don't want to tell her about my eerie encounter with the wolf.

"' Scuse the shit outta me." Sarah backs up to the hundred-year-old oak that shades the farmhouse, then, just when I'm sure she is going to hit the tree, cuts the wheel hard to point the car back down the drive.

"So, tell me about that guy who was all over you." I really don't care. One big dumb goon is the same as the next. Asking people questions is another one of my pretending to be normal tricks with the added bene it keeps their focus on themselves instead of on me.

"Eh, he was okay. Oh, and just FYI, we spent the night here, working on our French paper. In case my mom asks. Which she won't, but you know."

"Sure." I'm only half-listening to her, my gaze roving over the landscape, looking for anything out of place. Did I imagine the wolf with the piercing green eyes?

"Nic?"

"French, got it."

Sarah rambles on. I have no idea how she can put so much garbage into her system—including whatever bodily fluids she exchanged with the bruiser of yore—and then bound through the day like everything's fine and dandy. I tried to tell her once that all the drinking and drugging would catch up with her eventually, but she'd laughed like I made the funniest joke she'd ever heard.

We are early to school, no other cars in the lot and I hit the sidewalk while Sarah changes in the car. To pass the time, I pull up my latest kindle purchase on my cell and read a few pages. Staring at a phone screen is a completely acceptable teenager pastime and I like apps because no one can tell what I am doing.

The tome is not especially interesting and my mind drifts back to the wolf. The way he'd looked at me…it felt familiar. My instincts had shouted that the wolf wasn't really a wolf. How could that be?

"Hey." A familiar voice startles me from my contemplation.

I glance up and paste on a smile for Sarah's devoted fanboy. "Hey, Glen."

Glen is what books often refer to as a "late bloomer." His body is pudgy from hours spent sitting in front of his computer, playing online games and scarfing Doritos and Mountain Dew. His pallor is milky and spotted with acne and his dark hair is always a mess. He has a decadent crop of freckles and an obvious overbite. He's Sarah's neighbor and is hopelessly in lust with her. She, in return, occasionally chooses to acknowledge his existence.

Glen shifts from foot to foot. "Were you guys, uh, out again last night?"

It's too soon for reports to come in about Paul Anderson's disappearance and Glen isn't exactly looped in to the police bandwidth. Most likely he's on a fishing expedition about Sarah's love life. She'd indicated the lie about the French paper was meant for her mother, but I doubt she'd appreciate Glen knowing her business either. "Yeah, big project in French. We pulled an all-nighter." The wood chipper had, anyway.

"Okay, well. Good. I guess that's good. Better that she wasn't at home." Glen readjusts the backpack on his shoulder as though it's giving him discomfort.

"Joe crawl back into the bottle?" It's not a guess but a certainty. The piece of human trash is even worse when he's under the influence.

He nods. "And I think they got into a fight or something. The police were there." His puppy dog brown eyes go wide as Sarah emerges from her Japanese chrysalis looking daisy fresh and dressed to kill.

So to speak.

"The police were where?" she asks, tugging her mini skirt down over her ass by a whole three inches. The dress code brigade will probably send her home early for that look.

"Um," Glen glances over his shoulder, unwilling to make eye contact with his goddess.

"Spit it out, Penguin Man." Sarah's brow furrows as she scowls at him.

I have no idea the source of this nickname. He looks nothing like a penguin to me. Must be an inside joke, one on Glen instead of with him because he never appears pleased when she rolls it out. Maybe I should ask about its origins, but I don't particularly care.

Glen makes a whimpering sound but doesn't answer.

"Your house," I supply. Glen shoots me a grateful look. I'm somebody's savior, go figure.

Sarah digests the news then apparently shrugs it off. "Come on, Nic. I need to hit the can before first."

Our school, like many of the teachers within, is old, gray and haggard. It sits on a hilltop overlooking a lush countryside, an ugly blemish on the face of otherwise pristine landscape. The main building is one sprawling story surrounded by a few scraggly trailers to hold the overflow classes that aren't considered important enough to warrant a room inside the original structure. Once upon a time, it was just meant to be a high school but then the housing market burst, people moved out of the area and the middle school ended up being split, with sixth grade conjoined with the elementary level and seventh and eighth graders stuffed into our building as part of the junior/senior high school.

The seventh graders are puny compared to the seniors and have developed the survival habit of flattening themselves against lockers or the walls so they aren't trampled. They all have the look of frightened deer and the upperclassmen smirk at them like cats toying with the mice they plan to eat.

Sarah's feigned nonchalance disappears when we reach the lavatory. A seventh-grade girl is washing her hands at the sink. She jumps when the door crashes open.

"Get. Out." Sarah's eyes narrow.

The girl obeys, leaving with the faucet still running.

"You okay?" It's the correct thing to ask even if it's obvious she isn't.

"Peachy." Sarah stalks into a stall. "God, Nic. Can we just leave this freaking place already?"

I have no intention of leaving and I'm certain Sarah doesn't want to go anywhere either. It's more of a game we play. "Where should we go?"

She's silent a minute, except for the typical bathroom sounds. The toilet flushes and then she slides out of the stall, one hand on the door as if it's holding her up. "California."

I lean back between the hand dryers, crossing my arms over my chest. "And what will we do when we get there?"

"Find a bar. On the beach. Hook up with a couple of surfers."

I raise a brow. "Just you or am I included in this?"

"Bitch," she says playfully.

"Takes one to know one."

The bell rings, the warning one.

"Fuck," Sarah runs her fingers through her hair. "I gotta go. If I'm late again, Mrs. Gordon will kill me."

"I doubt that," I say and head off to my own homeroom.

My first class is Microsoft Word and Excel, a mixed class for sophomores, juniors, and seniors. I can't bother to give a shit about computers, but it was one of the few electives open to me. I'm not an artist nor do I much care about music. Computer work is drudgery, but it's better than pretending my soul has something to express.

That's for my free time.

There's someone sitting in my usual spot, facing the desktop, a senior by the size of him. His back is to me, but his shoulders are massive, his back broad.

We don't have assigned seats, so I shrug and look around for an open terminal. There's one directly behind his screen facing him and one at the other end of the room next to Glen. He waves to me, indicating the open spot.

I quickly circle the row and sit opposite the seat thief. I made the mistake of sitting beside Glen once and all he did was pepper me with questions about Sarah and tell me drawn-out stories about how they would play naked together in a plastic pool when they were toddlers. Back before her mother hooked up with her abusive husband. While he talked, I fantasized about luring Glen out behind the equipment shed, giving him a quick peck then stuffing his lifeless carcass in between the soccer cones and the lacrosse sticks. Temptation is best kept at a distance.

"Did I take your seat?" A deep masculine bass rumbles the question.

All the hairs stand on my arms at the sound of that voice. I don't realize he's talking to me until there is a tap against my foot. I tilt my head around the monitor so I can see him.

And freeze.

Bright green eyes, the color of new spring leaves, stare back.

The wolf. Only he isn't a wolf any longer.