Fatal (21 page)

I remembered her now, one of the blonde girls in Jenn's dorm. I'd given my number to her to call in case she saw or heard from Jenn. Was Michelle the one with the straight hair, or the curls? I couldn't remember.

Sitting down on the bed I hadn't slept on in a week, I shifted the cell to my other ear. A sick feeling started building in my stomach. My mind couldn't help connecting what was going on outside to this phone call, though I didn't really see any logical reason for them to be counted together.

"What do you mean? What's going on?"

"Oh, she totally doesn't know!" Michelle said. There was another voice in the background I couldn't make out. I figured she was talking to the other blonde girl.

"You need to check out the school's website, K? And we're both really sorry. Okay? Umm... bye, I guess?"

"Bye," I said, nudging the hang up button with my thumb before dropping my phone on my towel-bundled shower gear.

My laptop was on my desk, right where I'd left it. I hadn't really turned that on all week, either. I was lucky enough to find any time to get any school work done, let alone socializing. This morning, I hadn't even checked
Facebook on my phone. It was all just going to be more of the same. And I just didn't feel like reading any more about whatever party or get-together Jim was setting up for the weekend.

I felt nervous as I flipped the laptop open and watched it wake up. A few seconds later, I'd pulled up Internet Explorer.

My homepage was already set to Redeemer. The school top page was a news feed, always talking about this conference or that, or how one of its already rich alumni had done something to make him or herself even wealthier than they'd already been (all thanks to a solid and classic education at New England's premier private university, of course).

Today, there was a big, ugly banner at the top of the feed saying that
counselors were available to students who felt they needed it in this tragic time.

My heart lodged itself in my throat as I forced my eyes to continue down that feed. Somehow, I already knew what it was going to say.

The blue-colored link read: "Body of Redeemer student found on campus."

My mouth went dry. My heart pounded so hard I could taste blood at the back of my throat. I don't know why I reacted the way I did. I knew it was going to happen eventually, that she was dead and gone.

But not being able to find her body had kept it all open ended, somehow. Kept it from being real. It was like that cat Dr. Hackett had talked about for some reason a couple weeks ago. It had come up in response to a question during lecture, though I couldn't for the life of me remember it now.

Anyway, the cat was sealed in a box you had no way of seeing inside. In there, its fate was uncertain. At any particular moment in time, you could consider the cat both alive and dead.

Clicking that link was like opening the box to find that the poor little thing was dead and gone.

Except not nearly
as trite as all that, because Jenn had been a living person with hopes and dreams and fears, and for a small amount of time there our lives had touched.

My eyes glazed over with tears so that the words on the screen were blurry and hard to read.

"The body of first year student Jennifer McClaughlin was discovered by a staff member on a pitch near the Arnold building. Authorities have released little information. However, there is reason to believe a murder investigation will be taking place shortly. Classes in the Arnold building have been moved to facilities in the student center. More information will be provided as it becomes available to us..."

It went on about how Jenn was a beloved and bright student, and about how Redeemer is still statistically one of the safest campuses in the country and to not be
alarmed, but I closed the laptop before I could finish.

I buried my face in my hands and closed my eyes, willing the blackness I found there to swallow me up.

Chapter 31

This was not how life was supposed to go. It felt like I had jumped my track somewhere along the line. I'd missed some crucial turnoff, and now I was due for a
train wreck.

Where it happened, I couldn't really say. It might have been the cancer. It might have been that night I'd seen Adam at Jim's party. But did it really matter where it was?

But location was important. Like when we'd tried to find Jenn ourselves. We'd checked the campus. I know we did.

We looked by the Arnold building, through all the little groups of trees and the trails all around there. Why hadn't we found her ourselves, then?

My breaths shuddered in and out of my body. It felt like my throat was trying to close up. I focused on breathing, forcing the air into me and then pushing it back out.

Something was wrong here. I was missing something. What that thing was, I had no idea.

"Stephanie?"

Someone knocked on my door, three quick, confident raps. My back stiffened in shock. I almost breathed a sigh of relief at the interruption. I could feel myself slipping down into despair and depression.

Vick's voice was like a lifeline, tossed down the side of the cliff. All I had to do was grab onto it and let him pull me up.

I opened my door. Vick looked down at me with concern in his eyes. A brief and inappropriate excitement tingled in my stomach before I could squish that feeling down. Now was not the time to admire the
marvelous bone structure of his face, or the clarity of those eyes.

I opened the door farther so that he could come in. He stood in the middle of my room, looking around at it with his hands shoved into his pockets.

"You heard," I said, closing my door and leaning against it.

"Everyone's heard. Haven't you seen what the place i
s like today? People are worried and scared. I don't think there's been a murder in this town in a long time. How are you doing?"

I wanted to say something, but when I opened my mouth nothing came out by a choked sob. I slid down the door, burying my face in my hands.

It all hit me again. She was really gone. They'd found her body, identified it and everything.

Vick sat down beside me, putting one arm over my shoulders. I leaned against him, burying me face against his letterman jacket.

"It's okay," he said, stroking the back of my head, letting my hair pass between his fingers.

It wasn't okay. We both knew that. It was just something socially acceptable for him to say right then.

Still, it did make me calm down a little. It did make me feel a little better.

"I'm sorry..." I said, wiping at my cheeks. I looked at the wet spot I'd left on his jacket.

When he saw where I was looking, he smiled. "Don't worry about it. We need to talk... about Adam."

I nodded, still trying to claw back some of my composure. He took that as a signal to continue.

"I knew you couldn't quite believe it before. But now you do. Look, I know that most of the time, Adam's a good guy. But when he turns into the werewolf, he isn't. You know what he can do. You know what has to be..."

"Okay," I said.

Vick stopped talking. Clearly, he'd prepared some long, well-reasoned argument. My sudden agreement must have been quite the shock.

A look of suspicion crossed his finely-
chiseled features. I could practically hear him thinking, "What's going on? This is too easy."

Pushing myself to my feet, I went over and sat at my laptop. When I woke it up, it was still on the announcement recounting the discovery of Jenn's body. I could feel Vick standing behind me, peering down at the words that had ultimately made up my mind.

"What do you mean?" he said finally, apparently unable to bear the silence any longer.

"I mean you're right. Adam's good, but the thing in him is evil. You have my help, if you want it."

"I do..." he said. I heard the note of uncertainty in his voice, and I knew it wasn't about my ability to help him bring that monster down.

If I had to guess, it was about himself. This was something like his monster hunting bar-mitzvah, after all. When he did this, he'd be an equal in the eye
s of his family. He'd be a full-fledged member of their little gang, able to take care of himself and all that.

But I thought it might go a bit deeper, as well. From his reaction toward Adam, I think he expected some sort of all consuming, evil lunatic and that he'd be morally in the right for doing what had to be done.

Doing what had to be done involved getting rid of a perfectly fine human being. That's what was getting to him.

I found myself on the offensive, then. The end goal, bringing some justice into this awful world for a wrongful death, was so close I could smell and taste it like I'd been able to smell and taste the pizza at the frat house.

It felt like a certainty in a life full of chance and misfortune.

I got out of my chair and turned to face him down. This was more difficult than it sounded, since he was probably a good foot taller than I was. I would stare him down metaphorically.

"Just tell me what needs to be done so we can get to the end of all this," I said.

For a moment, as we locked eyes there, I felt that same tension with Vick as I did with Adam that first night at his house. That same electricity crackled in the air between us that sent my heart racing.

He could feel it, too. But unlike Adam, he didn't give into his base urges. Disappointment flashed through me as he turned around to give a schedule I had on the wall far too much scrutiny.

"You have a plan, don't you?" I said.

"Yeah, of course I do."

I grabbed him by the shoulder and turned him back around so I could look at him again.

"Then let's get this done before somebody else ends up on the news feed like Jenn."

Vick swallowed heavily. For a moment, I saw past the tall, confident man to the boy inside, still uncertain of who he was and what he was doing in this great and terrible thing called life. I knew because the same feelings were in me.

"Right," he said, "This is what I figure we do."

Chapter 32

It was the first night in a while that I spent in my dorm room. The shadows lurking in the place my lamps couldn't reach were once again unfamiliar. Not that I was paying them all that much attention.

I sat
cross-legged on my bed, my shoes on my feet and laced, my jacket pulled on.

Vick's plan was good.
Foolproof, even. But wasn't there some saying about best-laid plans going awry, or something along those lines.

The plan would be for nothing if Adam didn't call me back soon. My cell sat in my lap. I kept flicking the little unlock bar on the screen back and forth, pulling it not quite close enough to bring up my home screen and then letting it shoot back to the other side as though it were spring-loaded.

The message I'd left on his phone about twenty minutes ago still echoed in my mind.

"Adam, you won't believe what I found at the library. It was in a really old book. It talks about that curse on your family... But... it also says there's a way out of the curse."

I'd done it as breathlessly and with as much excitement as I could muster, hoping he wouldn't be able to detect my falseness with that incredibly sharp hearing of his.

The neon green numbers of my clock said it was coming up on eleven. It was a school night, so most of the campus would probably be in bed.

There would be no one to help him. Just like there'd been no one to help me that night Eric and Joseph held me down. No one to help me but Adam, anyway.

But I wouldn't be there to help him. I was the bait.

This feeling of betrayal didn't sit well in the pit of my stomach. I tried to tell myself that what Vick and I were about to do was with the best intentions, but I remembered that there was another famous saying about intentions and where the road they built led.

"It's for Jenn. You're doing it all for Jenn," I whispered, accidentally unlocking the phone. Its little click was loud in my quiet little dorm room. I hit the lock button on top of the phone, the locking noise just as loud as the unlocking one.

My biggest concern was that Adam had already locked himself in the scarred room in the basement, and wouldn't be human again until the sun peeked down at him tomorrow morning.

If that was the case, we'd just try it again tomorrow. Though, I'd have to come up with a different ruse. I'd also have to pretend that I could no longer find the book at the
library.

Lies upon lies upon lies.
Lying was okay if it was for a good reason, wasn't it? I kept telling myself that.

I even found my resolve fading, found myself hoping that he wouldn't return the call. There had to be some way to fix this without killing him.

The only problem was, I couldn't really think of one.

When the phone rang I dropped it into my lap out of surprise. I looked at the screen as it buzzed again.