‘I love you,’ he said, even though he didn’t have to.
‘I love you,’ I said, wishing there were better words, words no one else had ever used before. Those weren’t good enough, second-hand and shopworn, whatever this was between us deserved something brand new and never seen, with no one in the world allowed to utter them except for us.
Every moment we had together was sacred and I wouldn’t waste a second. All the sounds of the party were far away, all the fear and all the threats left in another world, and the quiet of my room was filled with sharp sighs and sweet gasps and the sound of superfluous clothing hurriedly removed.
The silence didn’t break so much as splinter, shattering with the glass in my windowpane. Downstairs, I heard screaming but in my room there was only panic and the low growl of the wolf that stood beside my bed. Huge and grey with gnashing jaws, its eyes were yellow, surrounded by more red than white.
A wolf, a Were, inside Bell House, inside my room.
‘What the hell …’
Wyn threw his arms out wide, his shirtless body covering mine, too much bare flesh exposed for the present danger. ‘You can’t be here. This isn’t possible.’
The intruder didn’t feel like explaining itself. Gashes from the very real thorns protecting the pair of us ran up and downthe wolf’s sides but still it crouched, mean eyes flickering back and forth from Wyn to me, as if playing a game to make its choice.
‘If you touch her, I’ll kill you.’
Wyn’s words were pure violence but the threat was redundant.
The Were wasn’t there for me.
Everything happened so quickly. It lunged, seizing Wyn’s shoulder in its jaws, shaking its head to tear through muscle and bone, then tossed him across the room like a chew toy. I didn’t scream, I couldn’t move, and Wyn didn’t make a sound. We stared at each other in shock, his body limp against the frame of my window until the wolf grabbed him again, leapt out into the magnolia tree, leaving nothing behind but a trail of blood.
I stared at the jagged pieces of glass, jutting out of the frame like broken teeth. Wyn was gone. The roses around my bed turned to stone, the field of flowers on the floor burst into flames before dissolving into piles of ash, and finally, when I opened my mouth and screamed, every pane of glass in every window of the house shattered into sparkling sand.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
‘Emily?’
When Ashley and Lydia came hurtling through my door, my body was on the floor, imprinted in the stone and ash, but I was not. I hovered somewhere above, close to the ceiling, watching.
‘No!’ Lydia screamed as she hurled herself at me, grabbing my shoulder as Ashley checked my pulse. I heard thunder and lightning and raised voices.
‘She’s alive,’ Ashley confirmed, pulling up my eyelids and releasing them when she saw the milky irises underneath. ‘I think.’
‘What do we do?’ Lydia turned to my aunt, desperate and afraid. ‘Ashley, what do we do?’
‘We calm down for a start.’
She sat back on her heels and surveyed the state of my room. The stone roses, the inch-deep carpet of ash, the broken windows. Then she looked up, staring right at me, through me.
‘Go downstairs,’ Ashley said. ‘Tell everyone our boiler exploded, then get them gone and send your brother up here. I need to move Em.’
‘Already here,’ Jackson replied, careening through the door so fast, he almost tripped over his own feet. He stalled in front of my bed and jerked back at the sight of my motionless body. ‘Is she …?’
‘She needs to be moved,’ Ashley repeated. ‘I need downstairs emptiednow.’
Lydia accepted her assignment without further question and raced out of my room, hollering at the top of her voice. The house wanted to help too, encouraging the stragglers out of the parlour and into the streets, all the way off Bell property. It was still reeling from the attack, violated and unsure, and I ran a hand over the chandelier above my bed to soothe it as best I could. My best was all I had now. I hoped it would be enough.
‘This better work,’ Ashley said through gritted teeth.
Jackson stood close by, carrying my limp body in his arms, as she cautiously raised a hand to the craft room door.
‘I don’t like you, you don’t like me,’ she told the blue painted wood. ‘But she needs you and I know damn well you need her.’
The door opened slowly, little lights like fireflies guiding the way.
‘You can’t go in there.’
