Shiver

“Good thing, too,” he said. “It’s supposed to get really cold later. Snow!”

“Yippee,” I said sourly, and he laughed and waved as he walked out to his car. I yanked my backpack onto my shoulder and hurried out to the Bronco. Pulling open the passenger-side door, I jumped in.

It was only a second after I’d shut the door that I realized that the smell was all wrong. I lifted my eyes to the driver and crossed my arms over my chest, trembling.

“Where’s Sam?”

“You mean the guy who’s supposed to be sitting here,” Jack said.

Even though I’d seen his eyes peering out of a wolf’s body, even though I’d heard Isabel say she’d seen him, even though we’d known he was alive for weeks, I wasn’t prepared for seeing Jack in the flesh. His curly black hair, longer than when I’d last seen him in the halls, his darting hazel eyes, his hands clinging to the steering wheel. Real. Alive. My heart kicked in my chest.

Jack’s eyes were on the road as he tore out of the parking lot. I imagined he thought I wouldn’t try to get away if the Bronco was moving, but he didn’t have to worry. I was fixed in place by the unknown: Where was Sam?

“Yes, I mean the guy who’s supposed to be sitting there.” My voice came out as a snarl. “Where is he?”

Jack glanced over at me; he was nervy, shaking. What was the word Sam had used to describe new wolves? Unstable? “I’m not trying to be the bad guy here, Grace. But I need answers, and soon, or I’m going to get bad really fast.”

“You’re driving like an idiot. If you don’t want to get pulled over by the cops, you’d better slow down. Where are we going?”

“I don’t know. You tell me. I want to know how to stop this and I want to know now because it’s getting worse.”

I didn’t know whether he meant it was getting worse as the weather got colder, or worse right this second. “I’m not telling you anything until you take me to wherever Sam is.” Jack didn’t answer. I said, “I’m not playing around. Where is he?”

Jack jerked his head toward me. “I don’t think you get it. I’m the one driving and I’m the one who knows where he is and I’m the one who can rip your head off if I change, so it seems to me you’re the one who ought to start pissing herself and telling me what I want to know.”

His hands were clamped on the steering wheel, bracing arms that were shuddering. God, he was going to change soon. I had to think of something to get him off the road.

“What do you want to know?”

“How to stop it. I know you know the cure. I know you were bitten.”

“Jack, I don’t know how to stop it. I can’t cure you.”

“Yeah, I thought you’d say that. That’s why I bit your stupid friend. Because if you won’t fight to cure me, I know you’ll do it for her. I just had to make sure she was really going to change.”

The staggering sense of it stole my breath; I could barely get my voice out. “You bit Olivia?”

“Are you an idiot? I just said that. So now you’d better start talking because I’m going to ahh.” Jack’s neck jerked, wrenching awkwardly. My wolf senses screamed danger fear terror anger at me, emotions rolling off him in waves.

I reached out and spun the heating dial up. I didn’t know how much of a difference it would make, but it couldn’t hurt.

“It’s the cold. The cold changes you to a wolf and the heat stops it.” I was talking quickly, trying to keep him from getting a word in, trying to keep him from getting any angrier. “It’s worse when you first get bitten. You change back and forth all the time, but it gets more stable. You get to be human for longer—you’ll get the whole summer—” Jack’s arms spasmed again, and the car fishtailed in the gravel of the shoulder before tracking back onto the road. “You can’t be driving right now! Please. I’m not going to run away or whatever—I want to help you, really I do. But you’ve got to take me to Sam.”

“Shut up.” Jack’s voice was part growl. “That bitch said she wanted to help me, too. I’m done with that. She told me you were bitten and that you didn’t change. I followed you. It was cold. You didn’t change. So what is it? Olivia said she didn’t know.”

My skin was burning from the blasting heater and the force of his emotion. Every time he said Olivia it was like a punch in the gut. “She doesn’t know. I was bitten, she was right. But I never changed, not even once. I don’t have a cure. I just didn’t change. I don’t know why, nobody knows why. Please—”

“Stop lying to me.” It was hard to understand him now. “I want the truth now or you’re going to get hurt.”

I closed my eyes. I felt like I had lost my balance and the whole world was spinning away from me. There had to be something I could say to him that would make this better. I opened my eyes. “Fine. Okay. There’s a cure. But there’s not enough of it for everyone, so nobody wanted to tell you about it.” I winced as he smacked the steering wheel with dark-nailed fingers. My mind’s eye whirled away from the alien reality to an image of the nurse sliding the syringe with the rabies shot into Sam’s skin. “It’s a vaccination, sort of, it goes right in your veins. But it hurts. A lot. Are you sure you want it?”

“This hurts,” snarled Jack.

“Fine. If I take you to where it is, will you tell me where Sam is?”

“Whatever! Tell me where to go. So help me God, if you’re lying, I’ll kill you.”

I gave him directions to Beck’s and prayed he’d make it that far. I retrieved my phone from my backpack.

The Bronco swerved as Jack’s attention focused on me. “What are you doing?”

“I’m calling Beck. He’s the guy with the cure. I have to tell him not to give the last of it away before we get there. Is that all right?”

“You seriously had better not be lying to me…”

“Look. This is the number I’m dialing. Not the police.” Beck’s number came back to me; I was better at numbers than words. It began to ring. Pick up. Pick up. Let this be the right decision.

“Hello?”

I recognized the voice. “Hi. Beck, this is Grace.”

“Grace? Sorry, your voice sounds familiar, but I—”

I talked over the top of him. “Do you still have some of the stuff? The cure? Please tell me you didn’t use the last of it.”