Fatal (18 page)

"Last night...?" he said. He sounded dazed.

What was it like, coming down from that? Was it like being on the biggest high imaginable, then crashing? Or was it just like one of those hangovers you got after getting blackout drunk, your head pounding and every last fiber of you praying for more sleep?

"Come on, get out here. How do you unlock this?" I asked tugging at the bars in
the window. He needed to do something. We needed to do something.

When he stood, I'd forgotten that he was totally naked. Some heat rose in my cheeks as I looked away.

The door opened.

"It only works from the inside. The monster is all instinct; he doesn't really know how to open a door, and this one's too strong from him to break down.

I shoved his jacket into his arms. He went back into the room to retrieve what was left of his clothes. His shirt, of course, was torn to shreds. But his jeans and boxers were in surprisingly good shape as he pulled them on.

He walked with me up the stairs, still gripping the rail tightly. He seemed exhausted, too.

"So you understand?" he said when we got to the top.

"I think so."

"We should grab some food. It always leaves me starving."

He started for the kitchen, but I grabbed his arm. His flesh was cold and trembling, and I could tell he could barely stay on his feet. But this couldn't wait.

"Later. We need to do something first," I said.

"What?"

It was hard for me to say. The words just didn't want to come out. Saying them felt like admitting defeat. But they had to be said, if I wanted to bring closure to everything.

"We need to find her," I said.

Adam brushed some of that lank hair out of his eyes. "What do you mean?"

He really was out of it. And that meant I had to say it all.

My voice started to break, and I had to keep rubbing at my eyes.

"We have to find Jenn's body. You have to take me to where you left her."

Adam slumped against the wall, his eyes wide with shock and fear. After a while, he nodded and began rooting around in his pocket for the keys to the car.

Chapter 26

I watched the little car icon on the BMW's GPS move slowly down the road. Hazelglen was sectioned off into a very rough grid, which the map showed. However, if I looked out at the town, all I could see were the rows of old houses.

With it being afternoon now, most people were still at work. The houses were dark and empty. Most of them had their curtains drawn. This was strange. It was the middle of the day, the sun was shining. Were the people here allergic to light or something?

An awful frustration boiled in my stomach. My shirt stuck to the small of my back with the sweat I'd worked up, wandering first around the campus, then around a few acres of woods just outside the town.

They were the spots Adam said his... alter ego was most likely to take the body. How did he know? Well, apparently he'd woken up completely naked in those areas a few times, a dead animal somewhere
nearby.

That was early on in his werewolf career, according to him. The lycanthropy curse set in at the onset of puberty, and those were his memories from around then before
his parents began locking him in that room.

"Maybe she's still alive..." Adam said.

It was hard to be angry with him then, but I managed. He'd searched even harder than I had. He'd never killed anyone before, apparently.

I didn't look at him. I knew if I did, I would find him a touch green in the face. Just the thought of what he did made him nauseous, and he wanted to find her so badly.

"Or maybe you put her body in some random ditch we haven't checked!" I said.

"Maybe she ran? Goths are rebellious, aren't they? Maybe she wanted to run away..." Adam said.

When we got back into the car after finally calling our search off, large black bags formed under his eyes. He stared out at the road in front of the car without blinking, as though this was all just some awful dream he'd wake up from soon enough.

I could feel the tension in him from the passenger seat. He kept adjusting his grip on the steering wheel, shifting his butt around, trying to find some comfortable position.

He couldn't, though. Not because of the BMW. No, it was a lovely car. It was all him. Adam Arnold was uncomfortable in his own skin and bones, like he despised the very fibers of his body for doing what they'd done.

"She was at school, not home. This is where she wanted to be. Why would she run away from where she wanted to be, Adam? Even if she did, don't you think she would have let people know?"

I was wound up tightly, too. That fruitless search was just as frustrating as it had been exhausting.

It wasn't just that, though.

Adam slapped his hands down on the steering wheel as we pulled up to a red light.

Part of me knew that he'd done it. That thing inside him had come out and killed my friend. The other part agreed, somewhat, it just didn't think he deserved all that blame. Different personalities in the same body couldn't be blamed for the actions of the other, could they?

It all hurt my head. I wasn't a god damn philosophy major.

"Just get me back to the campus," I said.

I knew that the search should keep going, but it felt like we were both about to fall over. Not to mention both of us badly needing showers. Besides, I had class in about two hours.

I'd come here wanting to get educated, to finally get on with my future. All this stuff was in my way. How come obstacles always popped up at the least opportune moments? Not the just the normal stuff either, like boys and parties. But murder and monsters of all things!

The light turned green and Adam spun the BMW's tires, peeling away from the intersection. The windows dulled the sharp noise, but it still grated at the back of my mind.

I opened my mouth, about to tell him to calm the hell down, that there might be a cop waiting in some speed trap along the road. But I stopped.

The denim of my jeans stretched across the rectangular box of the phone in my right pocket. I had been this close to calling the cops on him myself.

Maybe it would be better if he got pulled over. The cop would lean in, ask for his
license and registration, and i could just start screaming about how he'd kidnapped me, how he'd already killed my friend...

But then we drove along the little stretch with that single line of trees guarding the perimeter of the campus on one side, and the nice old houses on the other.

The signal clicked softly as he flicked it and turned into the campus. He went as far as he could in the car before pulling up along the curb. He threw the shifter into park.

"We'll find her..." he said.

His fingers flexed on the gear shift, and I could feel him looking at my hands in my lap, considering whether he should grab one and give it a reassuring squeeze.

Hot anger flared up in me again. Not just at him, but at myself. Despite all this, I still liked him! I actually wanted that little assuring squeeze, and
those kind, empty words.

I wanted to fix him, to make everything all right. Something in him was broken, not just the whole werewolf thing. The break happened the night he'd killed Jenn. We could both feel it.

And neither of us could do a single damned thing about it.

"Then what?"
I said, shoving my hands between my thighs so that he couldn't get them. It made my fingers super warm and uncomfortable, but I ignored it. I really needed a shower and some lunch.

It was an unfair question, but I didn't fee
l like being fair. I mean, I was the one who'd demanded the search in the first place. But I blamed not finding her remains on him all the same.

He smoothed his hair back from his forehead, and gave the BMW's center console the most intense stare I'd ever seen outside a movie. I examined his face out of the corner of my eye.

The dirt and sweat made him somehow more attractive. The memory of his urgent kiss from last night resurfaced in my mind, and I found myself licking my lips.

"I'll make sure she's treated with respect," he said.

Maybe I was so mad at him simply because it took so much effort to feel that way. I was torn down the middle. One half wanted to call the cops, the other half wanted to help him run away and escape all this.

In either case, I couldn't be around him a second longer.

"Whatever. I have class soon. Why don't you go do... whatever it is your kind does," I said, shoving the door open hard enough to shake the whole vehicle.

I struggled with the seatbelt for a moment before throwing it over my shoulder. Then I practically jumped out.

"I'll be in touch..." he said, leaning across to pull the door shut.

I started walking away, not bothering to look back when the BMW revved and pulled away from the curb. What did I mean, 'your kind?' Even I wasn't sure. Was it werewolves, or simply being a rich kid? I couldn't really sympathize either way.

Chapter 27

Back in my dorm, I showered and changed my clothes. I wanted to spend the entire afternoon in that steaming stall, letting the hot water spill over my body until it got all
pruny.

But I couldn't. There was something, or rather some
one
, on my mind.

Feeling a bit more refreshed as I stepped back out into the cool air, I started towards the frat house. That was where I thought I could find Vick, the guy who seemed to know so much about Adam.

He had secrets, too. And I meant to find out what they were. Maybe one of them could lead me to Jenn.

It wasn't that hard to find. Eric had told me where it was enough times during class. It was on a side of the campus I rarely visited, since I didn't really have any classes or anything over there.

The grass crunched under my feet as I took a short cut across between two tall residences. My stomach grumbled as the smell of pizza wafted out of a ground floor room. I licked my lips, and flirted with the thought of going to grab a bite before doing what had to be done.

I even went so far as slowing down. It had nothing to do with passing that open window and watching some dark-haired boy take a good-sized chomp out of a steaming slice. He looked kind of like Adam as he glanced my way and frowned.

That was enough to send me on my way to the frat house.

My breath puffed out in clouds in front of my face as that delicious scent faded behind me.

When the hell was it going to snow? It seemed to be taking forever for it to come down. Yet another way my expectations about coming to the other side of the continent weren't met.

My little detour took me through a small tangle of brush. I had to fend off the clinging little fingers of the branches as I pushed through to the sidewalk.

Then the house was up ahead. I'd never actually seen it before, but this had to be it.

It looked older than the rest of the campus. I figured it probably was some old mansion or manor house that was converted. It was long, and three
storeys tall, with a chimney on each end.

The road looped in front of it, widening near the entrance to make a broad driveway.

Beside the front doors was a boulder in a bed of gravel.

Three Greek letters were carved into the surface, with English underneath.

They read simply, "Sigma Sigma Rho."

I went up the walk to the front door. There was the button for a doorbell, but I didn't know whether to press it. In movies, frat houses always seemed like constant party zones, people (usually drunk co-eds, it seemed) coming and going. But there was no one out there. I thought I heard voices within.

Truth be told, I hadn't really thought much of this through aside from arriving at the house and somehow getting in to see Vick.

The more I thought about it, the dumber I found myself. How did I even know Vick was in? What if I rang the doorbell and one of his brothers, or whatever they called themselves, said he was at class or playing football or something like that?

He really should have given me his cell number if he was so serious about Adam.

Besides, I really was hungry. Just the memory of that pizza was enough to make my mouth water.

Yeah, go get some food and some time to rally my thoughts. Sounded good to me.

I
turned, ready to start the trek back to the cafeteria.

The door opened behind me.

"Stephie!"

I froze, hunching my shoulders up and flinching at the voice.

"Oh, baby, I'm so glad you came!"

Should I run? From the way my legs flexed, I knew they wanted to. But what if Eric was like a predator, and running just set off his instinct to chase?

Maybe he was just on his way out to class or something. Even he had to go to class and graduate, right? Though, he did seem the type to be willing to blow that type of thing off if it meant somehow interacting with a girl.