Shiver

I spun in the parking lot, looking for any sign of Sam in the slender finger of Boundary Wood that stretched behind the clinic. But it was darker than dark. No lights. No sound. No Sam.

“Sam!”

I knew he wouldn’t come, even if he heard me. Sam was strong, but instincts were stronger.

It was intolerable to imagine him out there somewhere, half a vial of infected blood mixing slowly with his.

“Sam!” My voice was a wail, a howl, a cry in the night. He was gone.

Headlights blinded me: Isabel’s SUV, tearing up beside me and shuddering to a stop. Isabel leaned over from the driver’s side and shoved open the passenger-side door, her face a ghost in the lights of the dashboard.

“Get in, Grace. Hurry the hell up! Olivia is changing and we’ve been here way too long already.”

I couldn’t leave him.

“Grace!”

Jack climbed into the backseat, shuddering; his eyes pleaded with me. They were the same eyes I’d seen at the very beginning, back when he’d first been turned. Back before I’d known anything at all.

I got in and slammed the door shut, looking out the window just in time to see a white wolf standing by the edge of the parking lot. Shelby. Alive, just like Sam had thought. I stared in the rearview mirror at her; the wolf stood in the parking lot and gazed after us. I thought I saw triumph in her eyes as she turned and disappeared into the darkness.

“Which wolf is that?” Isabel demanded.

But I couldn’t answer. All I could think was Sam, Sam, Sam.

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO • GRACE

40°F

“I don’t think Jack’s doing well,” Olivia said. She sat in the passenger seat of my new car, a little Mazda that smelled like carpet cleaner and loneliness. Even though she wore two of my sweaters and a stocking cap, she was still shaking, her hands wrapped around her stomach. “If he was doing well, Isabel would’ve called us.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Isabel isn’t the calling sort.” But I couldn’t help but think she was right. This was day three, and the last we’d heard from Isabel was eight hours ago.

Day one: Jack had a splitting headache and a stiff neck.

Day two: Headache worse. Running a temperature.

Day three: Isabel’s voicemail.

I pulled the Mazda into Beck’s driveway and parked behind Isabel’s giant SUV. “Ready?”

Olivia didn’t look like she was, but she got out of the car and bolted for the front door. I followed her in and shut the door behind us. “Isabel?”

“In here.”

We followed her voice into one of the downstairs bedrooms. It was a cheery yellow little bedroom that seemed at odds with the decomposing odor of sick that filled the space.

Isabel sat cross-legged on a chair at the foot of the bed. Deep circles, like purple thumbprints, were pressed beneath her eyes.

I handed her the coffee we’d brought. “Why didn’t you call us?”

Isabel looked at me. “His fingers are dying.”

I’d been avoiding looking at him, but I did, finally, where he lay on the bed, curled like a half-done butterfly. The ends of his fingertips were a disconcerting shade of blue. His face was shiny with sweat, his eyes closed. My throat felt too full.

“I looked it up online,” Isabel told me. She held up her phone, as if that explained everything. “His headache is because the lining of his brain is inflamed. The fingers and toes are blue because his brain isn’t telling his body to send blood there anymore. I took his temperature. It was one hundred and five.”

Olivia said, “I have to throw up.”

She left me in the room with Isabel and Jack.

I didn’t know what to say. If Sam had been here, he would’ve known the right thing to say. “I’m sorry.”

Isabel shrugged, eyes dull. “It worked the way it was supposed to. The first day, he almost changed into a wolf when the temperature dropped overnight. That was the last time, even when the power went down last night. I thought it was working. He hasn’t changed since his fever got going.” She made a little gesture toward the bed. “Did you make an excuse for me at school?”

“Yes.”

“Fantastic.”

I gestured for her to follow me. She stood up from her chair as if it was difficult for her and trailed me into the hall.

I pulled the bedroom door almost shut so that Jack, if he was listening, wouldn’t overhear. In a low voice, I said, “We have to take him to the hospital, Isabel.”

Isabel laughed—a weird, ugly sound. “And tell them what? He’s supposed to be dead. You think I haven’t been thinking about this? Even if we give a fake name, his face has been all over the news for two months.”

“Then we just take our chances, right? We’ll come up with some story. I mean, we have to at least try, right?”

She looked up at me with her red-rimmed eyes for a long moment. When she finally spoke, her voice was hollow. “Do you think I want him to die? Don’t you think I want to save him? It’s too late, Grace! It’s hard for people to survive this kind of meningitis even if they’ve gotten treatment from the very beginning. Right now, for him, after three days? I don’t even have painkillers to give him, much less anything that might do something for this. I thought the wolf part might save him, like it saved you. But he doesn’t have a chance. Not a chance.”

I took the coffee cup out of her hands. “We can’t just watch him die. We’ll take him to a hospital that won’t know him right away. We’ll drive to Duluth if we have to. They won’t recognize him there, at least not right away, and by then, we’ll have thought of something to tell them. Go clean up your face and get whatever of his stuff you want to bring. Come on, Isabel. Move.”

Isabel still didn’t answer, but she headed for the stairs. After she’d gone, I went into the downstairs bathroom and opened up the cupboard, thinking there might be something useful in there. A houseful of people tended to accumulate a lot of meds. There was some acetaminophen and some prescription pain pills from three years previously. I took all of it and went back to Jack’s room.

Kneeling by his head, I said, “Jack, are you awake?” I smelled puke on his breath and wondered at the hell he and Isabel had been living in for the past three days; it twisted my stomach. I tried to convince myself that he somehow deserved this for making me lose Sam, but I couldn’t.

It took a very long time for him to answer. “No.”