Diabolical (11 page)

“You’re claustrophobic?” Evelyn asks Lucy.

“No!” Lucy yells. “Do something! Help me!” She kicks her calves free and throws her weight backward.

I let go so I don’t fall onto her. Cussing me out, she hits the tile floor.

“Hey!” Kieren shouts, holding up the front doorknob. He’s apparently ripped it off. “We have a problem.”

“What?” Bridget calls.

“We’re locked in,” the Wolf replies.

MY FIST TIGHTENS
on the metal knob. Where’s another way out?

I start searching. The door to the kitchen is bolted. Could I bust through? Not without revealing my inner Wolf.

I will my descending canines to retract. Can’t panic. Can’t run faster than a human. But I can run.

With the others, I canvass the building. We stumble over each other like the Scooby gang. First-floor common rooms. Second-floor student housing. The basement gym. Up to three. The seminar room and library? Both locked. Restrooms swing open. They’re nothing remarkable. Nowhere else to look.

The sealed front door is the only one leading outside. Fires blaze in all of the fireplaces.

Back on two, Bridget asks, “What about fire code? Shouldn’t there be a stairwell leading outside at the end of every hall?”

“Relax,” Vesper says. “I’m sure the lock-in is a security procedure. This must be a smart building. You know, run by computers. The front door lock, the spontaneous fires. They’re just opening-weekend glitches in the program.”

“Of course there’s a fire plan,” Lucy adds. “They’ll probably review it tomorrow at orientation.” She sounds convincing. She’s acting unfazed. She smells like fear.

Downstairs, Vesper plucks the sticky note from the Bilovskis’ door. It reads:
AT A MEETING ON 4. BREAKFAST IS AT 7 A.M.

“Four?” Zach puts in.

“Fourth floor,” I reply. “Faculty housing and offices.” The others are winded. I try to sound like I am, too.

Vesper crumples the note. “It could be hours before they’re back.”

“This is our first night in a remote building in the snowy mountains,” Lucy points out. “We’re hot. We’re tired. We’re scaring ourselves for no reason. Let’s go to bed.”

Midway upstairs, I toss the front doorknob and catch it in one hand.

“Can I see that?” Bridget asks.

Once we reach the second-floor landing, I set it in her palm.

“You ripped it out!” she exclaims. “And sort of crushed it.”

“It’s not crushed,” I try to argue. “It’s —”

“Adrenaline,” Evelyn replies, with a dismissive wave. “People sometimes show extraordinary strength in moments of crisis. Lucy was right. We should turn in.”

I count the Otter as an ally.

KIEREN AND
I run our fingertips along the border of his floor-to-ceiling window. We’re looking for a weak spot that we know isn’t there. “What do you think?” I ask.

He sets his palm flat against the pane. “I have no idea whether it’s natural, artificial, or mystical. I’d bet my tail, though, that it’s shatterproof.”

I will my wings to appear and rise to check along the thirty-foot-high ceiling for cracks, anything. “No luck,” I say, coming back down.

“I will never get used to you doing that,” Kieren replies.

He braces himself with both hands against the tinted window.

I return to wholly human form and take the same position, with some space between us. “One, two,
three.
”

Muscles straining, we shove as hard we can. Sweat trickles down my forehead. We might as well be trying to move Mount Rushmore.

“Hold up,” Kieren says.

I let myself fall forward a bit.

“You’ll want to step into the hall,” he announces.

“Because?”

“I’m a Wolf. If I go all out, and the window breaks loose or —”

“Got it.” I retreat to the restroom doorway instead. As Kieren centers himself to try again, it occurs to me that he was trying to protect my ego. It’s considerate. Maybe in the world of teenage guys it’s critical to his getting by. But this isn’t Waterloo High. If Kieren’s shifter strength is the key to our escape, that’s great by me.

He takes a cleansing breath. Straining against the window, Kieren grimaces. His canines lengthen. His eyes go yellow. A moment passes. Fur ripples across his forearms. His T-shirt splits. Two minutes, three, and the glass doesn’t budge.

“Uh, Kieren?”

He swings his head toward me. Opens his jaws.

“Good werewolf,” I say. “Ease off. It’s no use.”

Kieren barks a laugh. “I’m not a cub.” Shaking off the shift, he adds, “Maybe if I ran at it, full speed. We could open both doors. I could get a head start from the back of your room. Race through the hallway into mine, and —”

“Break both of your arms on impact. Maybe kill yourself.” I hate to admit it, but . . . “We’re going to have to wait and see what tomorrow brings.”

Lacking any better ideas, I turn in. I’m wearing running pants and nothing else. It’s warm from the fire in the fireplace, from the heat pouring in through the vents. I’d rather sleep naked, but I’m out of the habit because I have housemates.

Not long after moving into Quincie’s home, I snuck down to the second-floor restroom in the buff. I surprised Nora, who was coming upstairs with a glass of water from the kitchen. She loves to tell that story.

I admit, this platform bed is comfortable. It feels a lot like my futon in Quincie’s attic. Just as lonely, too. Like every night, I imagine tracing the lines of Miranda’s heart-shaped face. Her blue eyes laughing at me. “It usually makes me feel better to think you’re looking down on me,” I begin. “Not tonight.”

I’ve abandoned Quincie. Walked into the most obvious trap on earth. Brought Kieren with me. Blew it with Lucy. Lost a sword of heaven. Now I have six more teenagers to worry about, too.

Kieren and I should’ve cased out the building before going inside. There could be fire escapes we didn’t see. Hidden doors. Maybe even a tunnel like the one leading out of the dungeon at Sabine’s castle.

“Try not to worry,” I tell Miranda, though there’s no way I can know for sure if she’s listening. “There’s another exit — a way to bring in food and supplies. The forces of evil would never risk the magical costs of conjuring maple syrup or toilet paper.”

“CAN I COME IN?”
I whisper outside Evelyn’s doorway.

“I couldn’t stop you,” she replies, hairbrush in hand.

“
May
I come in?” I try again.

Evelyn lowers her voice. “Are you one of those big bad Wolves or —”

“I’m only half Wolf.” I lean in. “A hybrid.”

At that, she grabs hold of my shirt. She practically drags me inside. “Is it common? Are there a lot of us?”

“Nobody talks about mixed-species kids.” I extract myself from her grip as she checks the hallway before shutting her door. “I’ve met a few. Probably more than I realize.” I run my hand through my hair. “You have to be careful around humans. No hospitals. No blood or urine tests. If the general public realizes that werepeople and humans can have kids —”

She nods. “I saw a werehyena skinned —”

“You were there?” I ask. “Did you know him?”

It happened about a month ago. A Hyena skin from Vermont was sold on eBay. A U.S. senator from Wyoming was quoted as saying it was legal to hunt shifters in animal form. According to a CNN/
USA Today
/Gallup poll, 44 percent of Americans agreed. Worse, 26 percent indicated it was okay if the shifter was in human form.

“No,” Evelyn says. “I know the people who skinned him. My dad is the head of the New England Council for Preserving Humanity. It’s a —”

“I’ve heard of it.” I don’t obsess over bigoted crackpots. But I do keep up with shifter-related news on the Web. “So you’re an Otter on your mother’s side.”

She sits cross-legged on her desk. “From what I’ve heard, Mom is claiming she had a one-night stand with a stranger. ‘Didn’t even catch his name,’ she says. But I’ve heard family stories about her grandmother and about my great-great-grandmother for years. ‘Don’t tell your daddy,’ she’d scold when I was little. I didn’t believe it. I didn’t even know I could transform until it happened last spring at the lake.”

“You went swimming,” I explain. “That triggered your first shift. For wholly aquatic werepeople like Whales or Dolphins, it’s automatic from birth whenever they’re submerged. With Otters, Seals, and Sea Lions, the first shift doesn’t happen until puberty. That’s more typical of shifters in general. Hybrids probably later than most.

“Water calls y’all like the moon calls us Wolves,” I add. “You don’t need it to transform, but it calls. At least that’s what my books said.”

Evelyn studies the hairbrush. “Dad wasn’t there, thank God. Mom screamed at me that I was shameful and told me to leave and never come back. How did you know I wasn’t a full Otter? How did you —”

“You’re an adolescent. You were drinking water in mixed company. Depending on how good your control is, you could’ve sprouted whiskers at the dinner table.”

Her fingers fly to her lips.

“Sorry,” I say, “what else were you going to ask?”

“Why do you know so much about Otters? Besides me, there aren’t any others in the local interspecies community right now, and —”

“I’m a trained Wolf studies scholar. I know more about other kinds of werepeople. More about the demonic. More about a lot of things than most shifters.”

“Do Wolves eat Otters?”

It’s not an unfair question. “This one doesn’t.”

After a long moment, she asks, “Are there any religions that don’t preach that werepeople are shameful?”

She’s using her mother’s word for it.
Shameful.
“Sure. Most Otters are Buddhists.”

I cross to the recliner and give Evelyn time to digest what I’ve said. Then I prompt, “You mentioned a girlfriend.”

Evelyn perks up. “She was doing a summer marketing internship at Vermont College, and I met her at this outdoor art exhibit on campus. It’s been a revelation. That I fell in love with Ollie, that my body can do these amazing things. Werepeople are everywhere. Now that I know, I see us, smell us wherever I go.”

“Ollie?”

“Olinda Ann,” she explains. “Ollie is an Elk.” Suddenly, Evelyn bursts out laughing. She hugs her stomach, as if trying to keep it in. “A wereelk. You know.” She holds up her hands, fingers up, on each side of her head to mimic antlers. She chuckles, snorts. Then she laughs again. The gesture is obviously a private joke between the girls. “Their animal kin was megalo, megatlope . . .”

“
Megaloceros giganteus,
” I reply with a grin.

Evelyn’s laugh is infectious. I’m reminded of her animal counterparts — otters that I’ve seen in zoos and on nature documentaries. Their joy and play in the water. She’s a bright spirit. I should’ve noticed it before. This place is caging both of us.

I’ve never met an Elk before, either. “How tall is she?”

“Taller than Zachary,” Evelyn replies, still giggling. “Evie the Otter and Ollie the Elk. It should be Evie the Elk and Ollie the Otter.”

Like most inside jokes, it’s not that funny. But I like her enthusiasm.

“She has the most beautiful arms,” Evelyn continues. “Long, like a dancer’s. When I met Ollie, I felt safe for the first time.”