Shiver

“I can hear you humming,” she said. “Do you sing?”

I grunted, still fingerpicking idly.

Her brush never ceased moving. “Are those your songs?”

“Yup.”

“Have you written one for Grace?”

I had written a thousand songs for Grace. “Yes.”

“I’d like to hear it.”

I didn’t stop playing, just modulated carefully into a major key. For the first time this year, I sang out loud. It was the happiest tune I’d ever written, and the simplest.

I fell for her in summer, my lovely summer girl

From summer she is made, my lovely summer girl

I’d love to spend a winter with my lovely summer girl

But I’m never warm enough for my lovely summer girl

It’s summer when she smiles, I’m laughing like a child

It’s the summer of our lives; we’ll contain it for a while

She holds the heat, the breeze of summer in the circle of

her hand

I’d be happy with this summer if it’s all we ever had.

She looked at me. “I don’t know what to say.” She showed me her arm. “I have goose bumps.”

I set the guitar down, very carefully, so the strings wouldn’t make any sound. Suddenly it seemed very pressing to spend my moments, so precious and numbered, with Grace.

And in the moment I made that decision, there was a terrific crash from downstairs. It was so loud and so wrong that for a moment her mother and I just frowned at each other as if we couldn’t believe that the sound had happened.

Then there was the scream.

Right after, I heard a snarl, and was out of the room before I could hear any more.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX • SAM

49°F

I remembered Shelby’s face when she asked, “Would you like to see my scars?”

“From what?” I replied.

“From when I was attacked. From the wolves.”

“No.”

She showed me anyway. Her belly was lumpy with scar tissue that disappeared under her bra. “It looked like hamburger after they bit me.”

I didn’t want to know.

Shelby didn’t pull her shirt back down. “It must be hell when we kill something. We must be the worst way to die.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN • SAM

42°F

A riot of sensations assaulted me as soon as I got into the living room. Viciously cold air stung my eyes and twisted my stomach. My eyes quickly found the ragged hole in the door to the back deck; partially cracked glass hung precariously in the frame and thin, pink-stained shards lay all over the floor, winking light back up at me.

The chair at the breakfast nook was knocked over. It looked like someone had splattered red paint on the floor, endless erratic shapes dropped and smeared from the door to the kitchen. Then I smelled Shelby. For a moment I stood there, frozen by the absence of Grace and the frigid air and the stench of blood and wet fur.

“Sam!”

It had to be Grace, though her voice sounded strange and unrecognizable—someone pretending to be Grace. I scrambled, slipping in the spots of blood, gripping the doorjamb to pull myself into the kitchen.

The scene was surreal in the pleasant light of the kitchen. Bloody pawprints pointed the direction to where Shelby shook and twisted, Grace pinned to the cupboards. Grace was struggling, kicking, but Shelby was massive and reeked of adrenaline. I saw a flash of pain in Grace’s eyes, honest and wide, before Shelby jerked her body away. I’d seen this image before.

I didn’t feel the cold anymore. I saw an iron skillet sitting on the stove and grabbed it; my arm ached with the weight of it. I didn’t want to hit Grace—I smashed it on Shelby’s hip.

Shelby snarled back at me, teeth snapping together. We didn’t have to speak the same language to know what she was telling me. Stay back. An image filled my field of vision, clear, perfect, riveting: Grace lying on the kitchen floor, flopping, dying, while Shelby watched. I was paralyzed by this clarion picture dropped into my thoughts—this is how it must’ve felt when I showed Grace the image of the golden wood. It felt like a razor-sharp memory, a memory of Grace gasping for breath.

I dropped the skillet and threw myself at Shelby.

I found her muzzle where she was clamped onto Grace’s arm, and I felt back to her jaw. Pressing my fingers into the tender skin, I jammed upward, into her windpipe, until Shelby yelped. Her grip loosened enough for me to push off the cabinets with my feet and roll her off Grace. We scrabbled across the floor, her nails clicking and scraping on the tile and my shoes squeaking and slipping in the blood she dripped.

She snarled beneath me, furious, snapping at my face but stopping short of biting me. The image of Grace lifeless on the floor just kept going through my head.

I remembered snapping chicken bones.

In my mind, I could see perfectly what it would look like to kill Shelby.

She jerked away from me, out of my hands, as if she’d read my thoughts.

“Dad, no, watch out!” Grace shouted.

A gun exploded, close by.

For a brief moment, time stood still. Not really still. It sort of danced and shimmered in place, the lights flickering and dimming before reappearing. If that moment had been a real thing, it would’ve been a butterfly, flapping and fluttering toward the sun.

Shelby fell out of my grip, deadweight, and I fell back into the cabinets behind me.

She was dead. Or at least close, because she was jerking. But all I could seem to think about was how I’d made a mess of the kitchen floor. I just stared at the white squares of linoleum, my eyes following the streaky lines my shoes had made through the blood and finding the one red pawprint in the center of the kitchen that had somehow been perfectly preserved.

I couldn’t figure how I could smell the blood so strongly, and then I looked down at my shaking arms and saw the red smeared on my hands and over my wrists. I had to struggle to remember that it was Shelby’s blood. She was dead. This was her blood. Not mine. Hers.

My parents counted backward, slowly, and blood welled up from my veins.

I was going to throw up.

I was ice.

I

“We have to move him!” The girl’s voice was piercingly loud in the silence. “Get him someplace warm. I’m all right. I’m all right. I just—help me move him!”

Their voices tore into my head, too loud and too many. I sensed movement all around me, their bodies and my skin whirling and spinning, but deep inside me, there was a part that held completely still.

Grace. I held on to that one name. If I kept that in my head, I would be okay.