Linger

I came around to the front of her desk and crossed my arms across my chest. I felt like humming along to the throb of the ache in my head. Rubbing my hand over my face—a gesture that suddenly and fiercely reminded me of Sam—I said, “I’m sorry to bother you for something so dumb again, but my head is just killing me.”

“Well, you do look pretty miserable,” Mrs. Sanders agreed. She got up and gestured to the wheeled chair behind her desk. “Why don’t you sit down while I track down a thermometer? You’re a little flushed, too.”

“Thanks,” I said gratefully, and took her place as she headed into the other room. It felt odd being here. Not just in her chair, with her solitaire game still up on the computer and the pictures of her kids looking back at me from the desk, but in the nurse’s office at all. This was only the second time I’d been here, and it was only a few days since my last visit. I’d waited outside the door for Olivia a few times, but never actually been inside as a patient, blinking under the fluorescent lights and wondering if I was getting sick.

Without Mrs. Sanders there, I didn’t feel like I needed to appear stoic, and I pinched the top of my nose, trying to put pressure on the center of the headache. It was the same as the other headaches I’d been getting recently, a dull, radiating pain that burned along my cheekbones. They were headaches that seemed to threaten more: I kept waiting to get a runny nose or a cough or something.

Mrs. Sanders reappeared with a thermometer, and I hurriedly dropped my hand from my face. “Open, dear,” she instructed me, which I would’ve found funny any other time, because Mrs. Sanders did not strike me as a “dear” sort. “I have a feeling you’re coming down with something.”

I accepted the thermometer and put it under my tongue; the plastic sleeve on it felt sharp edged and slimy in my mouth. I was going to observe that I rarely got sick, but I couldn’t open my mouth. Mrs. Sanders chatted about classes with the two awake students on the chairs while three minutes dragged by, and then she returned and slid the thermometer out.

“I thought they made high-speed thermometers now,” I said.

“For pediatrics. They figure you high school hellions have enough patience to use the cheap ones.” She read the thermometer. “You have a bit of a temperature. Teeny. You probably have a virus. There’s a lot of it going around with the temperature going up and down. You want me to call someone to pick you up?”

I momentarily thought about the joy of escaping school and snuggling in Sam’s arms for the rest of the afternoon. But he was working and I had a test in Chemistry, so I sighed and admitted the truth: I was not really sick enough to justify leaving. “There’s not that much of the school day left. And I have a test.”

She made a face. “A stoic. I approve. Well, here. I’m really not supposed to do this without getting ahold of your parents, but—” She stood beside me and opened one of her desk drawers. There was a bunch of loose change, her car keys, and a bottle of acetaminophen in there. Shaking two of the pills into my palm, she said, “That’ll kick that temperature in the butt and probably take care of your headache, too.”

“Thanks,” I said, relinquishing her chair to her. “No offense, but hopefully I won’t be back in here this week.”

“This office is a cultural and social hot spot!” Mrs. Sanders said, feigning shock. “Take care.”

I swallowed the acetaminophen and chased it with some water from the cooler by the door, then headed back to class. I could barely feel my headache. By the end of last period, the acetaminophen had done the trick. Mrs. Sanders was probably right. This nagging sensation of something more was just a virus.

I tried to tell myself that was all it was.

CHAPTER TWELVE

• COLE •

I didn’t think I was supposed to be human right now.

Sleet cut into my bare skin, so cold that it felt hot. My fingertips were like clubs; I couldn’t feel anything in them. I didn’t know how long I’d been lying on the frozen ground, but it was long enough for sleet to have melted in the small of my back.

I was shaking almost too badly to stand, unsteady on my legs as I tried to figure out why I had changed back from a wolf. Before now, my stints as a human had been during warmer days and had been mercifully brief. This was a frigid evening—maybe six or seven o’clock, judging from the sun glowing orange through the leafless tree line.

I didn’t have time to wonder at the instability of my condition. I was trembling from the cold, but I didn’t feel even a hint of nausea in my stomach, or the twist of my skin that meant I was about to change into a wolf. I knew, with sinking certainty, that I was stuck in this body, at least for the moment. Which meant I needed to find shelter—I was stark naked, and I wasn’t about to wait for frostbite to set in. Too many extremities that I preferred not to lose.

Wrapping my arms around myself, I took stock of my surroundings. Behind me, the lake reflected brilliant specks of light. I squinted into the dim forest ahead of me and could see the statue that overlooked the lake, and beyond the statue, the concrete benches. That meant I was within walking distance of the huge house I’d seen earlier.

So now I had a destination. Hopefully nobody was home.

I didn’t see any cars in the driveway, so luck was with me so far.

“Damn, damn, damn,” I muttered under my breath as I winced my way across the gravel to the back door. There were just enough nerves working in my bare feet for me to feel the stones cutting into the cold flesh. I healed quicker now than I had before, back when I was still just Cole, but it didn’t make the initial bite of the stone any less painful.

I tried the back door—unlocked. Truly the Man Upstairs was smiling down on me. I made a note to send a card. Pushing open the door, I stepped into a cluttered mudroom that smelled like barbecue sauce. For a moment, I just stood there, shivering, briefly paralyzed by the memory of barbecue. My stomach—a lot flatter and harder than it had been the last time I’d been human—growled at me, and for a brief, brief moment, I thought about finding the kitchen and stealing food.

The idea of wanting something that bad made my lips curve into a smile. And then my painfully cold feet reminded me why I was here. Clothing first. Then food. I headed out of the mudroom and into a dim hallway.

The house was every bit as gargantuan as it had seemed from the outside and looked like some kind of spread in Better Homes and Gardens. Everything was hung on the walls just so, in perfect threes and fives, perfectly aligned or charmingly asymmetrical. A spotlessly clean rug in a color that was probably called “mauve” led me silently down the wood-floored hallway. Glancing behind me to make sure the coast was still clear, I narrowly avoided tripping over a pricey-looking vase that held a bunch of artfully arranged dead branches. I wondered if real people actually lived here.