Hemlock (11 page)

Light that was accompanied by pain.

Sharp and immediate and threatening to crack my skul like an eggshel. I let out a low moan.

eggshel. I let out a low moan.

“She’s waking up.”

A white room swam into focus. Beds with railings and thin cotton blankets. A hospital. Someone leaned over me and I cringed away, instinctively, until the rainbow hair and frightened hazel eyes registered.

“Tess?” My voice came out a croak.

She brushed the hair back from my face, her touch feather-light.

“It’s okay, Mac. You’re okay. You’re al right now. You’re safe.”

She turned away and I realized she was crying. She wiped her cheek with her hand and took a deep, shaky breath. When she looked back at me, I noticed ghostly trails of mascara running around her eyes and over her cheeks.

“Ben just went to the apartment to pick up some clothes for you. He’l be back soon. We weren’t sure how long you were going to be out.”

I tried to remember what had happened, why I was in the hospital, but it was like a thick mist had taken up residence inside my brain, obscuring everything. I couldn’t decide what hurt more: my head or my throat. I tried to swalow. “Water?”

Tess glanced over her shoulder and I heard footsteps, the squeak of rubber soles on linoleum.

I struggled to sit up, but she gently pushed me back down. Even though she was being careful, it hurt when she touched my shoulders. “Easy. You’ve been out of it for a few hours. The doctors said it was shock. . . .” Tess reached for a smal, white switch. With the push of a button, the bed raised itself to a sitting switch. With the push of a button, the bed raised itself to a sitting position.

Kyle came into view, standing in the door to what was probably a washroom, a paper cup in his hand.

My stomach lurched. Something about the way he was framed by the doorway tugged at my memory.

An aley. Brick wals. Broken glass. Rough hands on my skin.

“I’m going to get the doctor, tel him you’re awake.” Tess bent down and brushed a light kiss across my forehead, but her words and exit barely registered.

Memories dragged me under. Textures and sounds and sights and smels. And blood. I couldn’t get enough air.

“Mac?” Kyle took a hesitant step toward the bed. He set the cup on a smal, wheeled table.

“Can’t. Breathe.” I squeezed my eyes shut, but that was worse: Jimmy Tyler’s face leered behind my eyelids, like an image projected on a movie screen.

“Should I go after Tess?”

I wanted to answer, to tel him no, but the word wouldn’t come out.

Strong hands cupped my face. “Mac, open your eyes.” Kyle’s voice was calm but insistent. Almost commanding.
“Mackenzie
.
”

I opened my eyes. “You’re having a panic attack. You’re okay.

Take a deep breath.”

I shook my head. How could I breathe when there wasn’t any air in the room?

Kyle leaned forward until al I could see were his eyes. Brown and warm and bottomless. “You can do it, Mackenzie,” he said and warm and bottomless. “You can do it, Mackenzie,” he said firmly. “Just one deep breath.”

My eyes watered and Kyle’s face splintered, like I was looking at him through a broken lens.

Mackenzie
. He never caled me that.

I sucked in a breath and let it out. Then another.

Kyle lowered his hands. Once I stopped shaking, he reached for the paper cup and handed it to me.

A bit of water spiled onto his hand as his fingertips brushed mine. “Sorry,” I mumbled and took a sip.

He stepped away and crossed his arms. “For what?”

“Faling to pieces.” It was hard to look at him.

“For being human, you mean.” There was a strange hitch in Kyle’s voice. He smiled but it was obviously forced. “Don’t apologize for that. Otherwise, I’l have to start apologizing for being . . . you know . . . not.”

Panic tugged at me again, but I squashed it down. I could deal with this. I was always saying that not al werewolves were bad, that LS shouldn’t be some sort of black mark. But saying that—

even believing it—didn’t mean I wanted Kyle to be infected. “Tel me it’s not true.”

He sighed. “Fine. It’s not true.”

He looked normal. Perfectly normal. He was wearing the Eliott Smith T-shirt I’d bought him at a thrift store, and his dark hair was wavy—the way it got when he didn’t dry it after a shower. The expression on his face was exasperation with a tinge of bemusement—his mom caled it his “Mac” look. And yet . . .

“Are you lying?”

“Are you lying?”

He roled his eyes. “Of course I’m lying.”

“Not cool,” I muttered.

Kyle shrugged. “I didn’t want you to start hyperventilating again.” His hair fel over his eyes and he brushed it aside. “I figured annoying you was safer than admitting anything.” He was joking, but there was something dark and worried in the way he watched me.

I shifted on the bed, closer to the edge, and he stepped away, even put his hands behind his back. Almost as though . . .

Oh. Oh!

The realization hit me: Kyle thought I was scared of him.

Was I? It was normal to be scared of werewolves—even people in RfW admitted sometimes being afraid—but this was
Kyle
.

I puled back the thin hospital blankets and swung my legs over the side of the bed. I looked down. Great. Hospital chic. At least I had shaved my legs yesterday morning.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing.” I stood, testing my balance. A little wobbly, but not too bad. I tugged on the hospital gown, trying to preserve a little dignity and modesty.

For a split second, I could have sworn Kyle checked out my legs.

I took a step forward and he backed into the wal. “Mac . . .”

His voice came out high and uneasy, and I flashed back to what Kyle had been like when we first met: a gangly mess of elbows and knees with a voice that hadn’t broken.

“Shhh,” I said. “I’m testing something.”

Kyle frowned. “Testing what?”

“Myself.” I took a deep breath as three years of memories rushed through my head and strengthened my resolve.

There was a draft from the hal and I realy wished I had pants.

Or at least shoes.

I shivered and Kyle, thinking I was reacting to him, started to move away. I reached out and touched his chin with two fingers, turning his head so that he was looking at me. “The floor is cold, idiot.” My pulse thundered in my ears. I was touching a werewolf.

I gave my head a smal shake. No: I was touching Kyle.

“You’re scared of me. I can tel.” He licked his lips. “I can smel it.”

Okay, that was a little creepy. “What’s your next trick gonna be: predicting my period?”

Kyle shook his head and let out a nervous laugh. “Trust me, Jason and I figured that out years ago—totaly out of self-preservation.”

Jason . . .

“He’s al right,” Kyle said, catching something in my face that made his own expression harden. “I caled the house. I was going to tel him you were here, but his mother claimed he was . . .

indisposed
.” He said the last word like it sliced his throat on the way out. He looked like he wanted to say more, but he just shoved his hands into his pockets and muttered something too low for me to catch.

to catch.

Tess’s voice echoed down the hal and Kyle turned away. “I’d better go. She lied to get me in here. It’s supposed to be family only.”

Before I could argue—before I could ask him to stay—he was out the door.

Ms. Fisher was in her midthirties, wore too much makeup, and spent way too many hours in tanning booths. The police had caled her a “werewolf consultant,” but when she turned her head to the side, the hilt of the dagger tattoo on her neck peeked out from underneath her pink silk scarf.

“Mackenzie, no one is denying that you’ve been through a terrible ordeal.” She crossed her legs and leaned toward me. “It’s normal that you would be confused. We just want to find out what realy happened.”

I shook my head. “I’m not confused.”

Across the hospital room, Tess’s expression was stormy as she leaned against the wal and listened.

We had been going in circles for thirty minutes, me trying to tel a modified version of the truth while Fisher did everything she could to twist my words and discredit me. The two police officers she was with hung back and took notes. I couldn’t tel which one of us they believed. After al, it was strange that a werewolf would attack a grown man and leave a girl completely unharmed.

But it was the truth. Every mark on my body had been left by Jimmy: a sprained wrist, a gash on my forehead, and the bruises on my upper arms and shoulders where he had gripped me hard my upper arms and shoulders where he had gripped me hard enough to leave behind bluish imprints of his hands.

I also had a minor concussion, which wasn’t making the interrogation—sorry, the
interview
—any easier.

“Jimmy Tyler and Alexis Perry folowed me out of Bonnie and Clyde and assaulted me. The werewolf drove them off. I don’t know who it was or why it helped me, but it did.” No way was I teling them that the wolf had been Kyle.

He had saved my life.

He was my best friend.

Since neither Fisher nor the police brought up his name, I was fairly certain Alexis hadn’t seen him before he shifted. She had, after al, been watching Jimmy and me.

Ms. Fisher sighed and tucked a strand of bottle-blond hair behind her ear. “Mackenzie, I’m here to help you, but I need you to think very hard about what realy happened.”

I struggled to appear calm despite the anger that was raging through me. Losing my temper wouldn’t help anything. “I know what realy happened.”

“I’ve already spoken to Jimmy Tyler and Alexis Perry and they told a very different story. They both said that they folowed your screams to the aley and that Jimmy tried to drive off the werewolf while Alexis ran to cal 911. We have her phone cal.”

I swalowed. “They’re lying.”

“Mackenzie, that is a very serious accusation to make.” She glanced down at her notes. “Bonnie and Clyde is a bar, is it not?

Do you want to tel us what an underage girl like yourself was doing there?”

doing there?”

“Al right, that’s enough.” Tess pushed away from the wal and strode over to where I sat on the edge of the bed. She put an arm around my shoulders and glared at Fisher. “Mackenzie has been extremely patient with your questions, but you’re acting like she’s on trial.”

One of the officers cleared her throat. “Perhaps we could discuss this in the hal?”

Tess nodded. “Let’s.” She flashed me a reassuring smile, but the look on her face as she folowed the others outside reminded me of a lioness preparing to fight.

She was back a few minutes later, sliding a business card into her back pocket. “They want us to cal if you remember anything else.”

“They’re realy gone?” Though I’d tried to stay calm while they were in the hal, part of me had been terrified that they’d come back and haul me down to the police station to ask more endless questions.

Tess nodded and brushed the hair back from my forehead, frowning at the stitches in my temple.

“Can we get out of here now?”

She gave me a tired smile. “Definitely. Why don’t you wait here while I take care of the paperwork and find Ben? He’s probably stil hanging around the lobby.”

She headed for the door.

“Tess?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you pul the privacy curtain? I just want some quiet. . . .”

Even with the door closed, anyone from the hal could look in as they walked by. I was feeling twitchy and exposed.

She nodded and puled the curtain around my half of the room.

Once she was gone, I stretched out on the hospital bed and stared at the ceiling. So Kyle was a werewolf. I reached up and touched my cheek, remembering the way he had cupped my face during my panic attack. My stomach tightened in a way it usualy didn’t—not when it came to Kyle.

I forced myself to think of something else, to replay what the police and the Tracker—sorry, werewolf consultant—had asked and said. Ms. Fisher had seemed way more interested in protecting Derby’s nephew than finding out the truth.

At least that had made it easier to lie about Kyle.

The door creaked open and I heard footsteps. I started to sit up but put too much pressure on my wrist; I fel back against the mattress with a sharp hiss of pain.

A hand snaked around the edge of the privacy curtain, drawing it aside just far enough for Branson Derby to slip past. He let the curtain fal back into place, hiding us from view.

I scrambled for the cal button, but he was faster. He grabbed my wrist—the one wrapped in an elastic bandage—and started to squeeze, gently at first, then harder. Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes and black spots filed my vision.

“If you scream or try for the cal button, I wil make your life very difficult. Do you understand?”

Branson Derby had come to ask about his nephew. Panic Branson Derby had come to ask about his nephew. Panic weled in my chest, and I tried not to let it show on my face as I nodded.

“I took the liberty of peeking at your chart,” he confessed. “A sprain can be so painful—some people say almost as bad as a break.” A slow smile curved his lips and he squeezed harder, digging his fingers into the soft spot just over my pulse.

I gasped, then clenched my teeth, determined not to give him the satisfaction of seeing me in pain.

He let go of my wrist and I cradled it against my chest.

“Good girl.” Derby sat on the edge of the bed. Leaning forward, he brushed his fingertips across the gash on my temple. He smeled liked Old Spice and wood smoke and something else—a faint scent worked into his worn leather jacket: sweat mixed with blood.

I pressed myself as far away from him as I could. If the rails hadn’t been up on the far side of the bed, I would have falen to the floor.

“What do you want?”

“I just spoke with Ms. Fisher. She said you were rather
insistent
. That you seem to think my nephew attacked you and that you were saved by a werewolf.”

I didn’t say anything.