Nocturne (21 page)

Chapter Nineteen

THE DRIVEWAY WAS empty when Claire pulled up. She left the car in front of the house and raced inside, tossing the keys onto the hall table. Assuming her mother would still be in her darkroom, Claire tore downstairs and pounded frantically at the door.

"Just a moment!" Claire heard her mother moving through the little anteroom before swinging open the door that stood between them. "What on earth is wrong, c
hérie
? Please tell me you haven't wrecked the car."

Claire gripped the door frame, her fingers white as marble.

"I haven't wrecked the car," she whispered. "It's much, much worse than that."

Marie's expression shifted from irritation to genuine concern. "Come in and sit down," she told Claire, pulling her into the little cubicle of a room that stood between the hallway and her darkroom. Claire felt the tears gathering in her eyes, trembling at the edge of her lashes and making the world around her quavery and insubstantial. She let herself be dragged along by her mother, who pushed her onto one of the high stools around her work table. Marie bent down just slightly, so that she and Claire were eye to eye.

"Tell me what happened. Whatever it is, Claire, it will be okay. I will fix it." Her mother's voice was quiet and smooth and dark—an inky ribbon. As her words whisked over Claire's skin, she shivered, seeing Judith's disapproving face.

She knew, with absolute certainty, that she couldn't tell her mother. Not like this. Because Marie would try to fix it, and Claire would look like a guilty little sniveling brat of a kid who had gone running to mommy-in-charge to get her out of a scrape.

But this was much more than a scrape.

And Claire was much more than a well-connected kid. She had to take responsibility for what had happened. If she didn't tell the whole pack, she'd never be able to live with herself.

"I need to tell everyone. Please—can you call a meeting? For tonight?"

Marie frowned. "Claire, there's no need for that. If I feel the rest of the pack needs to be involved, I will call them. But I'm sure we can work out whatever has happened." Claire shook her head, thinking of her thread-thin relationship with Emily and the scalding argument she'd had with Matthew the night before. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I've already ruined so much in my human life—I can't ruin things with the pack, too." She looked up at her mother. "Don't you understand? If you try to fix this, I'll look horrible." The tears that had been threatening spilled onto her cheeks. "I—I can't. I have to own up to what happened. I have to tell the whole pack. Please."

Her mother closed her eyes for a brief moment and took a deep breath. Gathering herself.

"I can see that you are serious about this. I still think it is unnecessary, but I am not blind to the way that . . . certain members of the pack view you. I will not force you to tell me. I will call the meeting. Is—" she hesitated. "Whatever it is—are you sure it can wait until tonight?"

Claire rubbed the bridge of her nose between two fingers. "I think so." Amy hadn't seemed like she was in any great hurry to reveal Claire's identity. If all she wanted was to turn Claire in, Claire would already be in a cage somewhere. The idea laced her thoughts with panic.

"I mean, I hope so," she whispered.

"I will go make the calls." Marie hurried out of the darkroom.

The adrenaline leaked out of Claire's body. She slumped against the table, still terrified but also exhausted. She didn't know what the pack would say when she told them her identity had been compromised, but she knew what it meant for Amy.

Shaking with the uncertainty of it all, Claire stumbled up to her room and lay down on her bed, checking her phone one more time, not quite able to believe that Matthew still hadn't called her back. She pulled the pillow tight over her head and lay in the smothering darkness, trying not to think. Sometime later, Marie knocked on Claire's door.

"Yeah?" Claire called, her head still stuffed under the pillow.

"It is arranged. We will meet tonight, early. I have told everyone that we will begin at ten o'clock." Marie's voice was muffled by the down of the pillow, but Claire couldn't bring herself to look at her mother.

"Thank you," she said.

There was a wooden thump—something hitting the top of her vanity table. "I brought you something to eat. Do you— can I do anything for you?"

"No." Claire's voice was miserable. She was miserable. Every word her mother spoke made it harder to keep from thinking. When she heard the door click shut, she reached for her headphones, jamming them into her ears and turning the music up until it seared through her head, obliterating everything else. Ten o' clock. It was already late afternoon. She just had to wait a few hours.

The few hours passed with a fossilizing slowness. She lay there, wondering what they would say. If the pack would kick her out and what, exactly, they would do with Amy. She still seemed to want to be friends with Claire. Maybe there was some other solution they could come up with. Maybe it wouldn't be an automatic death sentence.

Eventually, the dark slipped down her windowpane and covered the lawn and forest, broken only by the lights from the house and the pinpricks of the stars in the velvet black sky. After the sun had completely disappeared, taking with it the faint light that had crept underneath her pillow, Claire lay in the gloom until she couldn't stand it anymore. She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed, watching as the moon rose over the tops of the trees. It was a fat crescent moon, rising pointsfirst into the blackness, like a cup. Or something with horns.

She watched as it traced its path across the sky. She just wanted to get to the gathering. Everything felt out of control—her fight with Matthew, the bizarre intensity of the naming, and now Amy. The only thing she was certain about was that telling the pack—the whole pack—was the right thing to do. It was the only way she could get her hands around the situation.

Behind her, Marie opened the door.

Without knocking.

"It's time to go, c
hérie.
Are you ready?"

"Yes. Let's go." Claire stood up and turned to face her mother. Marie looked her over, almost clinically, her face growing more alarmed as she took in Claire's posture and expression. "Claire, just tell me what happened. I am your Alpha. I can command you, if necessary."

"Please," Claire whispered. "Please don't do that. I have to do it this way. You know I do. When we get there, I promise I'll tell everyone what happened. Just as soon as we get there."

"Then let's go. And quickly."

The fact that her mother had not commanded her to reveal what she knew gave Claire the strength to walk out of the room. If her mother was willing to wait—to respect Claire's desire to face the pack—then she really must be doing the right thing.

Outside, the November air cleared her head. Stripped of the cocoon of numbness that Claire had spun around herself, her panic returned, threatening to overtake her. She and her mother hurried toward the woods. The two of them scurried beneath the protective arms of the trees, following the invisible but well-remembered path to the clearing. Claire kept her eyes on the leaf-strewn ground, watching the shifting patterns of the splintered moonlight on the forest floor.

In the distance, the flicker of a fire caught Claire's eye. Someone had gotten there before them. She began to run, the secret burning her mouth from the inside out. In the clearing, Beatrice sat close to the fire, her face a mask of worry.

"Victoria's not with her," Claire whispered. She'd been hoping to see at least one supportive face around the fire.

"No," her mother said. "She won't be. The baby is still too little to be away from Victoria. She will have a few months before she is required to attend to her pack responsibilities." She grimaced. "No matter how dire they may be."

Guilt sluiced through Claire in an icy rush.

She slunk into the clearing ahead of her mother, and Beatrice immediately hurried over to her, wrapping her arms around Claire.

"Oh, Young One. What happened?"

"No use asking," said Marie. "She won't tell me—not until the pack is gathered."

Judith stepped out of the trees, her eyebrows raised in surprise. "Which is as it should be. If something happens that affects the whole pack, then we should deal with it as a pack."

She'd clearly heard the last part of the conversation, but though she was looking at Claire with irritation, she didn't have her usual, dismissive stare.

Katherine stepped into the clearing behind Judith. "Sorry. I was trying to DVR a show and I couldn't get it set up. So. We're all here?"

Marie shot Katherine a withering look. "Yes. We're all here. Please be seated, and we will hear what Claire has to say."

The other women sank down around the fire. Standing in front of their expectant faces, Claire suddenly wondered if maybe she should have told Marie after all. She didn't want to see the looks on their faces when she told them what had happened.

But it was too late now. Whether or not she wanted to know, she was about to find out.

She stared into the depths of the fire, unable to meet their eyes as she spoke.

"There's a girl—Amy Harper. She's a . . . a friend of a friend. And apparently, she got suspicious about me for some reason." Claire swallowed hard. "And last night, she overheard me talking and somehow, she figured out what I am. That I'm a werewolf. She told me this morning that she knows. Amy Harper knows I'm a werewolf." The words hung in the clearing, heavy and electric as a storm cloud. Claire felt her legs quivering underneath her, and she sat down in front of the fire before she collapsed.

There was a moment of stunned silence. The sort of silence that said it was just as bad as they'd been afraid it would be. Claire stared into the heart of the fire, the broken pieces of her life strewn around her. Beatrice shuffled over and put an arm around her shoulders.

"Okay. Claire. Listen. This is bad. But it
happens.
That's why we have laws for it—ways to handle it." Her low voice was full of spiderweb cracks. "Beatrice is right." Marie stood up, and Claire looked at her. Her mother's expression was neutral, but pain flared in her eyes. "We will simply do what we have to—the same way we have for hundreds of years."

Just when Claire felt the freezing ache inside her start to melt, Judith jumped in. "But we just had that . . . that
incident 
this summer. . . ."

Zahlia.

Though they were not allowed to speak her name ever again, they all thought it. Beatrice pulled her arm away.

Judith shook her head. "Killing another human right now is more dangerous than it has ever been. The town is still on edge. That other researcher—the Japanese man—is still here."

Claire felt everything around her swim, like the air had gone liquid and slow. She'd been so worried about herself and the pack, but she didn't want to think about what saving themselves would mean for Amy. The thought of her lying somewhere—dead, broken—was more than Claire could stomach.

"Isn't there some other way?" she whispered. The eyes around the fire all immediately came to rest on her as she spoke. "I mean, she seems to want to be friends with me, even though she knows. She seems w
orried
about me."

The thought of Emily, red-eyed and sniffling, crossed Claire's mind. Killing Amy meant hurting Emily, too. She wrapped her arms around her middle, feeling like she was on the edge of falling apart. "We don't always have to kill a human who finds out, right? I mean, look at Matthew."

Marie shook her head. "Too many humans who know is dangerous for the pack. There will be no more g
ardiens."

"It sounds like maybe one human who knows has been dangerous," Judith said. She looked over at Claire. "Are you sure Matthew has been loyal? Do you know why Amy became suspicious in the first place?"

Panic beat wildly in Claire's chest, like a caged animal throwing itself against the bars. The pack was talking so calmly—so certainly—about killing Amy. She didn't want to sacrifice herself, but if it kept Matthew out of this, she would do it.

"She said that there were things I said—things that she pieced together. And then she overheard Matthew and me at the dance last night, talking about coming to the naming. She said between that and some stuff that happened while we were shopping, she figured it out."

Katherine drew in a sharp breath, and the pack's attention turned away from Claire as they all focused on Katherine's shocked, horrified face. "It wasn't the time I ran into you at the mall, was it?"

Claire laced her fingers, twisting them together until they hurt. She didn't want to lay the blame at anyone else's feet. While she hesitated, Katherine's mouth fell open.

"But I didn't even
say
anything," Katherine protested. Marie turned to Claire with a question in her eyes.

"I don't know exactly what made her suspicious," Claire said simply.

Katherine balled her hands up into fists, pressing them into the sides of her totally impractical khakis. She stared at Claire, her mouth pursed into an ugly little circle. "How can you—"

"Just stop it," Judith snapped at her. "You're the one who leapt in and told us you were at the mall—Claire didn't say anything. And I'm not surprised to hear that you were indiscreet. It's just like the Halloween gathering, when you started to howl in spite of the danger. You don't
think—"

"Enough!" Marie interrupted.

Claire stood, aching. Frozen. Waiting.

Her mother sighed. "Amy must be killed. I will not take that sort of a chance with the pack's safety." She turned her sad gaze to Claire. "Or with yours."

"We don't have to kill her," Claire protested, scrambling wildly for an alternative. Kidnapping her. Somehow erasing her memory. Something. Anything.

"You're right." Judith stepped forward smoothly. "We don't have to kill her. Pack law dictates that it is the responsibility of the wolf whose identity has been compromised to eliminate the human who knows.
We
don't have to kill Amy.
You
do."