Linger (28 page)

• SAM •

There was no longer night than this: Cole and I in the cafeteria, going over every detail of the wolves until Cole's brain was full and he sent both Isabel and me away so that he could sit at a table with his head in his hands and a piece of paper in front of him. It seemed amazing to me that everything I wanted, everything I'd ever wanted, hung on the shoulders of Cole St. Clair, sitting at a plastic table with a scribbled-on napkin, but what else did I have?

I escaped from the cafeteria to sit outside her room, my back to the wall, my head in my hands. Against my will, I was memorizing everything about these walls, this place, this night.

I had no hope that they would let me in to see her.

So all I prayed for was that they would not come out to tell me that she was gone. I prayed for the door not to open.
Just stay alive.

• SAM •

Isabel came and got me and dragged me through the morning-busy halls to an empty stairwell where Cole waited for me. He was full of restless energy, his hands in two fists that he kept knocking lightly against each other, one on top of the other.

“Okay, I can't promise anything,” Cole said. “I am just guessing here. But I have a — a theory. The thing is that, even if I'm right, I can't be proved right. Just wrong, really.” When I didn't say anything, he said, “What is the big thing in common between Grace and that wolf?” He waited. I guessed I was supposed to answer.

“The smell.”

Isabel said, “That's what I thought, too. Though it's pretty obvious, once Cole pointed it out.”

“The shifting,” Cole said. “Both the wolf and Grace haven't shifted for — what — a decade or more? That's the magic number for when wolves that don't shift anymore die, right? I know you said that that was the natural life span of a wolf, but I don't think that's it. I think that every wolf that's died without
shifting has died like that wolf —
of
something. Not old age. And I think that's what's killing Grace.”

“The wolf she never was,” I said, suddenly remembering something she'd said the night before.

“Exactly,” Cole said. “I think that they die because they aren't shifting anymore. I don't think shifting is the curse. I think whatever it is that is telling our bodies to shift is the bad guy here.”

I blinked.

“It's not the same thing,” Cole said. “If the shifting is the disease, it's one thing. If you're shifting because of the disease, it's something else entirely. So here's my theory, and this is such crap science, I don't have to tell you. It's science without microscopes, blood tests, or reality. Anyway. Grace was bitten. When she's bitten, wolf toxin, for lack of a better term, is introduced. Whatever it is in this wolf spit is really bad for you. Let's say that shifting is the good guy, and that something about this wolf spit initiates a defensive response in your body — shifting, to purge the toxin. Every time you shift, the toxin's put at bay. And for some reason, these shifts are timed with the weather. Unless, of course —”

“You stop yourself from shifting,” Isabel said.

“Yeah.” Cole glanced up toward the bottom of the stairwell, toward Grace's floor. “If you somehow destroy your body's ability to use hot and cold as a trigger, you look cured, but you're not. You're … festering.”

I was tired, and I was not a science person. Cole could've told me that wolf toxin made you lay eggs and I would've
thought it sounded reasonable at this point. “Okay. So it sounds fine, if vague. What's the upshot? What are you suggesting?”

“I think she needs to shift,” Cole said.

It took me too long to realize what he was saying. “Become a wolf?”

Cole shrugged. “If I'm right.”

“Are you right?”

“I don't know.”

I closed my eyes. Without opening them, I asked, “And I'm guessing you have a theory on how to get her to shift.”

Oh, God, Grace.
I couldn't believe what I was saying.

Cole said, “Simplest is easiest.”

I had a sudden image in my head of Grace's brown eyes looking out from a wolf's face. I wrapped my arms around myself.

“She needs to get bitten again.”

My eyes flew open and I stared at Cole. “Bitten.”

Cole made a face. “It's an educated guess. Something got messed up in the shifting chain of command, and if you reintroduced the original trigger, it might start her over from square one. Only this time don't cook her in the car.”

Everything in me rebelled against the idea. Of losing Grace, losing what made her Grace. Of attacking her while she was dying. Of making decisions like this, on the fly, because there was no time. I said, “But it takes weeks or months to shift after you get bitten.”

“I think that's how long it takes for the toxin to build up initially,” Cole said. “But she's already there, obviously. If I'm right, she'd shift immediately.”

I linked my arms behind my head and turned away from Cole and Isabel, staring at the pale blue concrete wall. “If you're wrong?”

“She has wolf spit in an open wound” — Cole paused, then added, “that she'll probably bleed to death from right now, because it sounds like the toxin is destroying her ability to clot.”

They let me pace for several long moments, and then Isabel, a low voice out of the silence said, “If you're right, Sam's going to die, too.”

“Yes,” Cole said, in such an even way that I knew he'd already considered that. “If I'm right, when Sam gets ten or thirteen years down the road, his cure won't be a cure, either.”

Could I believe the science concocted in a hospital cafeteria over lukewarm coffee and crumpled napkins?

It was all I had.

I turned, finally, and looked at Isabel. With her smudged makeup, her hair rumpled, her shoulders hunched up with uncertainty, she looked like an entirely different girl, trying to wear an Isabel disguise.

I asked, “How would we get into the room?”

• ISABEL •

It fell to me to get Grace's parents out of the room. They hated Sam, so he was out, and Cole's brawn would be needed elsewhere, so he was out. It occurred to me, as I clicked down the hallway to Grace's room, that we were counting on Cole's solution not working. Because if it did, we were all going to be in big trouble.

I waited for a nurse to exit Grace's room, and then I opened the door a crack. I was in luck; only her mom was sitting by her bed, looking out the window instead of at Grace. I tried not to look at Grace, who lay silent and white, her head turned limply to the side.

“Mrs. Brisbane?” I asked in my best schoolgirl voice.

She looked up, and I noted, with some satisfaction for Grace's benefit, that her eyes were red. “Isabel?”

I said, “I came as soon as I heard. Could I — could I talk to you about something?”

She stared at me for a moment, and then she seemed to realize what I had asked. “Of course.”

I hesitated at the door.
Sell it, Isabel.
“Um. Not near Grace. You know, where she could …” I pointed to my ear.

“Oh,” her mother said. “Okay.” She was probably curious about what I was going to say. Honestly, I was, too. My palms were sticky with nerves.

She patted Grace's leg and stood up. When she got out into the hall, I pointed behind my hand at Sam, who was, as we'd advised, standing a few feet on the other side of the door. He looked like he was going to throw up, which was about how I felt. “Not near him, either,” I whispered. I remembered, suddenly, having told Sam that he wasn't cut out for deception. As my stomach churned and I planned what I was going to confess to Grace's mother, I thought that karma was a terrible thing.

• COLE •

As soon as Isabel had gotten Mrs. Brisbane out — Was she the only person in there? Only one way to find out, I supposed — it was my turn. While Sam watched out to make sure no nurses came in, I slipped into the room. It stank of blood, rot, and fear, and my wolfish instincts crawled up inside me, whispering at me to get out.

I ignored them and went straight to Grace. She looked like she was made up of separate parts that had all been brought to the bed and assembled at awkward angles. I knew I didn't have much time.

I was surprised, when I knelt by her face, to find her eyes open, although the lids were heavy on them.

“Cole,” she said. It was the long, low timbre of a sleepy little girl, someone who just couldn't stay awake much longer. “Where's Sam?”

“Here,” I lied. “Don't try to look.”

“I'm dying, aren't I?” whispered Grace.

“Don't be afraid,” I said, but not for the reason she said. I pulled out drawers on the cart by the bed until I found what I was looking for: an assortment of shiny sharp things. I selected one that looked logical and took Grace's hand.

“What are you doing?” She was too far gone to care, though.

“Making you into a wolf,” I said. She didn't flinch, or even look curious. I took a breath, held her skin taut, and made a tiny cut on her hand. Again, she didn't move. The wound was bleeding like hell. I whispered, “I'm sorry, this is going to be disgusting. But unfortunately, I'm the only guy who can do the job.”

Grace's eyes opened just a little further as I worked up a big mouthful of saliva. I didn't even know how much she would need to be reinfected. I mean, Beck had had it down to a fine science, had thought everything out. He'd had a tiny syringe that he kept in a cooler.

“Believe me, less scarring this way,” he'd said.

My mouth was getting dry as I thought about Isabel losing her hold on Grace's mother. The blood was pumping out of the tiny cut like I'd slashed a vein.

Grace's eyes were falling shut, though I could see her fighting to keep them open. Blood was pooling on the floor underneath her hand. If I was wrong, I'd killed her.

• SAM •

Cole came to the door, touched my elbow, pulled me inside. He latched the door and pushed a surgery cart up against it, as if that would stop anything.

“Now's the moment of truth,” he said, and his voice was uneven. “If it doesn't work, she's gone, but you get this moment with her. If it's going to work, we're … gonna have to get her out of here in a hurry. Now. I want you to brace yourself, because …”

I stepped around him and my vision shimmered. I had seen this much blood before, when the wolves made a kill, and there was so much blood that it stained the snow crimson around it for yards. And I had seen this much of Grace's blood before, years ago, back when I was just a wolf and she was just a girl, and she was dying. But I hadn't really been ready to see it again.

Grace
, I said, but it wasn't even a whisper. It was just the shape of my mouth. I was at her side, but I was a thousand miles away.

Now she was shaking, and coughing, and her hands were gripping on the rails of the hospital bed.

Across the room, Cole stared at the door. The knob was jiggling.

“The window,” he told me.

I stared at him.

“She's not dying,” Cole said, and his own eyes were wide. “She's shifting.”

I looked back down at the girl on the bed, and she looked back up at me.

“Sam,” she said. She was jerking, her shoulders hunching. I couldn't watch her. Grace, going through the agony of the shift. Grace, becoming a wolf. Grace, like Beck and Ulrik and every other wolf before her, disappearing into the woods.

I was losing her.

Cole ran to the windows and jerked up on the latch. “Sorry, screens,” he said, and busted them out with his foot. I was just standing there. “Sam. Do you want them to find her like this?” He rushed over, and together we picked Grace off the bed.

I heard the door crashing now; people calling on the other side.

There was a four-foot drop outside the hospital window. It was a brilliantly sunny, clear morning, perfectly ordinary, except that it wasn't. Cole jumped down first, swearing when he landed in the short shrubs, while I steadied Grace on the sill. She was becoming less Grace in my arms every moment, and when Cole lowered her onto the ground outside the window, she retched on the grass.

“Grace,” I said, my vision swirling now because of her blood smeared across my wrists. “Can you hear me?”

She nodded and then stumbled to her knees. I knelt beside her; her eyes were huge and afraid and my heart was breaking. “I'll come find you,” I said. “I promise I'll come find you. Don't forget me. Don't — don't lose yourself.”

Grace grabbed for my hand and missed, catching herself from falling onto the ground instead.

And then she cried out, and the girl I knew was gone, and there was only a wolf with brown eyes.

I could not bring myself to stand. I knelt, bereft, and the dark gray wolf slowly cringed back from me and Cole. From our humanness. I didn't think I could breathe.

Grace.

“Sam,” Cole said, “I can send you with her. I can start you over, too.”

For a brief moment, I saw it. I saw myself again shuddering into the wolf, I saw my springs, hiding from drafts, I heard the sound I made when I lost myself. I remembered the moment I knew it was my last year and that for the rest of my life I'd be trapped in someone else's body.

I remembered standing in the middle of the street in front of The Crooked Bookshelf, filled with the certainty of a future. I had heard the wolves howling behind the house and remembered how glad I had been to be human.

I couldn't. Grace had to understand. I couldn't.

“Cole,” I said, “get out of here. Don't give them any more reason to look at your face. Please —”

Cole finished my sentence. “I'll get her to the woods, Sam.”

I slowly climbed back to my feet, walked back into the emergency department through the silently swishing glass doors, and, covered in my girlfriend's blood, lied perfectly for the first time in my life.

“I tried to stop her.”