Otherworld Nights (17 page)

Peyton checked the shot, like Daddy showed her. All it showed was the forest and the tip of a black tail.

She sighed. Hearing another yip, she glanced up to see the wolf again. He opened his mouth, tongue hanging out, like he was smiling. When she tried to snap a picture, he dropped and rolled on the ground, so all she got was a blur.

“That’s not funny,” she said.

He raced around her in a big circle. Then he stopped, right in front of her. That’s when she realized she’d walked all the way into the forest.

She tensed to run back to the house, but he just stood there. He lowered his head and flicked his ears. Then he inched closer, his head still down, and as big as he was, he didn’t seem scary at all. She reached out and patted him. His hair was so thick and soft it was like the coat Aunt Nancy had, with the fur collar, and Peyton only meant to pat his head, but soon she was scratching him behind the ears and burying her fingers in the fur around his neck.

Then he ducked away and danced back. She stepped forward. He stepped back. She laughed. He ran a little ways and she thought she’d scared him off, but he stopped, as if waiting for her.

She glanced over her shoulder at the house. He yipped, and he sounded so lonely and looked so hopeful that she couldn’t resist.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s play.”

He yipped, as if he understood. Then they played together, her chasing, him hiding then jumping out and running. At first she kept looking back, making sure she could see the lights of the house. But then she forgot as she kept chasing him, going farther and farther into the forest.

They’d been playing for a while when he took off. She called for him to come back, but he didn’t. The game was over. He’d gone home. So should she.

She turned around and peered into the darkness. There were no lights anywhere.

Peyton took a step. Dead leaves crackled under her boots. A moan whispered through the trees and she went still, her heart pounding. It was just branches moving in the wind, that’s what Daddy told her. But it had sounded different when he’d been with her. Now all she could hear was the wind, making the branches moan and creak, rustling the leaves as it whined through the tree-tops. Then came a shriek, right beside her head.

She started to run and tripped. She hit the ground hard. Something jabbed her cheek. She wiped at it and felt blood. Biting back a whimper, she tried to get up, but her foot hurt and she fell again.

She kept trying, but it hurt too much. Her foot throbbed and her cheek bled. And it was cold. So cold and dark and spooky and she was lost and no one would ever find her. That’s when she started to cry.

She’d been huddled on the ground for a while when she heard a voice.

“Hello?” a man called.

She tried to stand, but her foot still wouldn’t let her, so she got up on her knees and called back, “I’m here.”

Footsteps came toward her. “I thought I heard crying.”

“I-I’m lost.”

“I see that.” The man walked over and the first thing she noticed about him was his blue eyes. They looked just like the wolf’s, and she blinked. The man smiled and crouched beside her, and she realized he just had regular blue eyes, like Mommy and a lot of other people.

“My name is Peyton James,” she said. “I live at 228 Oak Lane.”

“Ah. You must be Roy James’s little girl.”

She nodded.

“I played poker with your daddy. He used to talk about you all the time. Come on, then. My place is right over there. I’ll get you cleaned up and warmed up and back home to your mommy.”

“I can’t stand. I hurt my foot.”

He bent and looked at it. “Seems like your ankle’s twisted. We’ll take a better look at it over at my place. I’ll carry you there. All right?”

Peyton nodded. He lifted her and she curled up against him, so nice and warm, and let him carry her through the forest.

W
hen I pulled into the lane of our rented Christmas cottage, I was disappointed to see it empty. Clay wasn’t there yet. Not that he’d expected to beat us, but the kids and I had hoped he might. He’d hoped so, too. What he’d
really
hoped was to make the drive with us, but he’d been in Montreal at a conference at McGill and when a winter storm hit, it made more sense for him to head straight across to Ontario rather than loop down to New York State and pick us up.

Kate was out of the car before I even had it in park. Leaving the door open, she raced into the front yard.

“There’s more snow here!” she squealed.

Her twin brother, Logan, pulled on his hat and mitts before following. “No there isn’t. It’s the same amount.”

“How much is at home?”

“Twenty-seven inches. But we’re in Canada now, so it’s centimeters. About seventy centimeters.”

Kate pointed at a pile beside the drive. “That’s more than seventy cent-er-meters.”

Logan rolled his eyes at me as I grabbed bags from the back.

“Because it’s a drift,” he said.

“What’s that in it?”

He walked over as she bent to point at something. As soon as he was close enough, she grabbed his jacket and pitched him headfirst into the drift.

“Should have seen that one coming, baby,” I said as I walked to the door.

I put down the bags to fumble with the lockbox. Behind me, Logan sat on the drift, grumbling, until Kate made the mistake of thinking he might be seriously upset, went to apologize, and found herself lying in the snow beside him.

She should have seen that coming, too. She probably had, same as he did. But if you don’t go along with the prank, you lose the right to retaliate.

I left the kids roughhousing in the snow but didn’t close the inside door, so I could hear them. I opened the living room curtains, so I could keep an eye on them, too.

I’ve read articles about bubble-wrapping your children, and sometimes I think I’m guilty of that. Granted, the twins are only four, but I hadn’t been much older than them when I was trekking down to the corner store alone. Of course, in my case that was because no one in my foster homes much cared what I did, and most times whatever danger I encountered on the streets wasn’t as ugly as what waited for me inside those homes.

But I do hover too much with the twins. I chalk it up to instinct. Not just maternal, but wolf—as a werewolf, I’m naturally protective.

Finally, when Kate ventured too close to the forest’s edge, I stepped onto the porch.

“Paths, Mommy,” she said, grinning. “There’s lots of paths.”

“I know. We’ll go exploring as soon as I’ve unpacked. Just come back into the yard.”

Logan gave me that look that has me convinced he’s a fourteen-year-old trapped in a four-year-old’s body. “We know not to go in the woods, Momma. Kate’s just looking. I’m watching her. It seems …” He gazed wistfully into the forest’s dark depths. “Nice.”

Is Logan a werewolf, like Clay and me? He should be—it’s passed through the male line. Except Clay and I are both bitten werewolves. Either way, it
shouldn’t
pass on to Kate. Yet seeing their expressions as they gazed into the forest made me wonder,
as I’d been wondering for the past couple of years. Both showed secondary characteristics as well—keen hearing, excellent reflexes, increased strength. But even with hereditary werewolves, that shouldn’t happen so young. I told myself it didn’t matter. Whatever would be, would be. That was Clay’s attitude. I worried a little more. Okay, a lot more.

“See that stump?” I said, pointing. “You can go in that far.”

“Thanks, Momma,” Logan said. The books say children don’t develop the ability to display sarcasm until they’re about six, but they also say kids shouldn’t be reading fluently—let alone devouring reference books—before first grade, meaning whoever wrote them has never met my son.

I stuck out my tongue at him—proving that he doesn’t inherit his maturity from me—and went back inside.

I let myself wander past the front room, out of sight of the kids, but kept my ears attuned for the first squeal of trouble.

The chalet was gorgeous. Jeremy had picked it out, so I’d expect no less. I didn’t want to imagine how much a two-week rental cost. We could afford it, but I still stress over things like that.

Clay and I live with Jeremy. Clay always has—or he has since Jeremy found him as a child werewolf in Louisiana. He brought Clay home and raised him, and when I came into the picture, the household expanded to three.

Well, not exactly. There was a decade in the middle where I’d come and gone, Clay and I locked in an endless war of resentment and betrayal and love.

Clay was the one who’d bitten me, in a panic when he thought Jeremy would separate us. Maybe that sounds like something to be forgiven, but it’s not, and for ten years the anger and the hurt and the hate came very easily. The love was tougher to deal with. That’s what kept me running until, finally, he changed and I changed, and we resolved to try again. It still wasn’t the most serene relationship, but in that way our children do take after us—they’ll bicker and
they’ll battle, but the only time they’re truly miserable is when they’re apart.

Occasionally, though, the bickering and battling—and even just the good-natured rambunctious roughhousing—does become a bit much for the other member of our household. So when Jeremy mentioned a chalet for Christmas, Clay suggested we go up a week early, and let Jeremy and the rest of the Pack join us on the twenty-sixth.

It would be our first Christmas with just the four of us. As much as I love Jeremy, I kind of liked the idea.

I decided there was really no need to unpack as soon as we arrived. So I tossed the bags in the bedroom and carted in the groceries we’d bought in town. Perishables in the fridge, the rest left in the bags, granola bars and juice boxes stuffed into a knapsack, and then back outside I went.

A white Christmas is never a given. Not at home—just outside Syracuse—and not even here, near Algonquin Park. But it was December 21 and we’d had snow for almost a week now, with no sign of a sudden rise in temperature before the holiday.

The twins are still at that age where the first snow of winter is like their first ever. While I’m sure they remembered snow, it seemed to be more of a sensory memory—the chill of flakes on their skin, the crunch of the crust under their boots, the sweet, clean smell of it. When it started to fall a week ago, they raced outside, and I’d barely been able to get them in since.

Now, as I tramped along, they ignored the paths and zoomed through the brush and trees, as if every unbroken expanse was new territory to be conquered.

They zipped out of sight a few times, but I could still hear the swish of their snow pants, so I didn’t call them back. Then they disappeared and everything went silent. When I couldn’t catch their
scent on the wind, I knew it only meant they were downwind, but my heart started to thump.

“Logan? Kate?”

A purple mitten appeared over a bush. I trekked over to find them crouched, their hats off, ears to the snow. They motioned me to silence as I approached.

“Mice,” Kate whispered.

I knelt. Even before I put my ear down, I could hear the
skritch-skritch
of mice tunneling under the snow.

“Can you catch one?” Kate asked.

I lifted my brows. “Catch one?”

“Dad can catch them,” Logan said.

His eyes glinted with a look I knew well from his father. Challenge. I laughed under my breath.

“Oh, he can, can he?”

I took off one glove. The twins giggled and hunkered down. I put my ear to the snow, listening and waiting. Then—

My hand came up empty. The twins covered their mouths to stifle laughter as I mock-glared at them.

“Dad can’t always do it the first time, either,” Logan said.

“Thank you.”

I cleared my throat and made a production of getting into position again. I listened for the patter, then scooped up a squirming mouse. I held it firmly, keeping its teeth away from my bare skin. Those oversized incisors only flashed a couple of times before it got a whiff of my wolf scent and froze.

“Can I hold him?” Kate said.

“Dad lets us if we keep our mitts on and our hand flat.”

I put the mouse on Kate’s outstretched palm. It cowered there as she lifted it to her face and petted its tiny head.

“It’s okay,” she crooned. “I’m not going to eat you.”

“I wonder what it would taste like?” Logan said.

“Crunchy,” Kate said, and they both started giggling.

Which, actually, is true. As wolves, Clay and I chomp them down like popcorn. Sounds completely revolting when I’m in human form, but that won’t stop me from doing it next time we Change.

Logan reached over to touch the mouse, and they talked to it and patted it as if they hadn’t just been discussing what it would taste like. I could chalk their comment up to innocent childish curiosity. After all, they certainly didn’t see us eating mice. They didn’t know we were werewolves.

Kate dug a hole in the snow and carefully lowered the mouse in. As she did, the breeze changed and I caught a scent that had me tensing and lifting my head.

“What do you smell, Mommy?” Kate asked.

“See,” Logan said. “What does she
see
.”

They exchanged a glance, and for a second I felt like the child, watching the adults passing a look that said they were humoring me. About a year ago they’d started noticing when we smelled things. Maybe it was the involuntary flare of our nostrils. Sometimes I admitted it—if it was something that could be reasonably smelled by anyone. The rest of the time I’d say no, that I’d just heard or seen something.

This was the first time they’d called me on it with that shared look. Clay would say it’s a sign that we should tell them. I said hell no. They were still much too young to be burdened with that secret. We just had to be more careful.

“Was it Dad?” Logan asked.

“Hmm?”

“Did you … see Dad?”

Kate shook her head. “No, if it was Daddy, she’d be happy.” She slid onto my knee, her arm going around my neck. “She’s worried.”

I tried not to look startled. I shouldn’t be. Our quiet son may be the intellectual prodigy, but our wild daughter is the genius when it comes to reading emotions.