But she couldn’t, because the second there was real silence she heard the pained sounds. Desperate ones, of the sort that made her heart clench, in the same way it had all those years ago. Although this time, it wasn’t over a bloodied nose or a broken finger or a bruised rib.
It wasn’t any injury at all.
It was her friend doing his best to turn back. To go back to being a person, now that the danger was past. Despite how much the effort seemed to be hurting him. God, she could see how much it was hurting him.
“Seth, it’s okay. It’s okay. Stay like that. I’m not afraid,” she said as she stepped toward the humped shape he was making on the grass. But he didn’t listen. He kept on fighting it. He gritted half-human teeth, saliva foaming between them as he strained. Eyes closed tight, as everything ripped. As some muscles shrank and others remained, as bones cracked and popped like fireworks, as fur seemed to shrink or shed or simply melt away.
So she went to crouch next to him, like she had at the gorge.
To put a gentling hand on him, and soothe him out of the state he was in.
But before she could, he scrabbled away. He squeezed out words.
“No,” he gasped. “No, stay where you are.”
And his voice held such a note of desperation that she didn’t know how to disobey. She just stood there, helpless, as he slowly and agonizingly became something like a man again, and shakily got to his feet. Though even after he had, he didn’t seem to want her to come near him.
She took a step, and he held up a hand.
Shook his head, when she suggested that she get him some clothes.
“You can’t leave like that,” she tried to half laugh—because he was barely wearing a stitch. He had on the collar of his shirt and one leg of his jeans. And that pants leg was not covering a lot. She had to keep her eyes well above his waist, to spare his blushes.
But he didn’t seem to care.
In fact, if anything, he seemed more afraid of her getting close to him than he had before. He almost stumbled back when she so much as reached a hand out to him.Like he’s ashamed of something, she thought. And the flush all over his face seemed to confirm. As did the way he sounded when he spoke.
“Just protect yourself, protect the house. I’ll be back soon,” he said, as wavery as wind through reeds. Then before she could protest—before she could say,But what about you, what if they try to get you again?—he turned his back to her. He aimed for the woods.
And he was gone.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Cassie didn’t mean to sleep once she was safe inside the tornado-wracked kitchen. But somehow in the middle of hugging the microwave—which informed her that it would be speaking to its lawyer about being spell-pressed into werewolf fights—she managed to sit on the floor, and slump against the refrigerator.
And that was it. She went out like a dropped anvil.
She didn’t even stir over the sink collapsing. Or when the microwave somehow maneuvered her body, until she was curled up on a heap of dish towels and pot holders and aprons. It even managed to drape a tablecloth over her, by roping in the help of the refrigerator. Like a bizarre version ofCinderella, with kitchen appliances instead of birds.
And so, when she finally did wake, there was no crick in her neck. There were no aching bones. In fact, she felt more rested than she had in ages. Like she had slept all night.
Then she checked her phone, and realized.
She had.
She’d been asleep forhours.
It was well into the morning. Scarily well into the morning.
Because apparently, Seth had not returned. He hadn’t messaged, he hadn’t called. There was no sign of him anywhere. And that meant one of two things: either he was sound asleep too, as peaceful and happy as a clam. Or he had been captured, and was being tortured by the werewolf super bullies from hell.
And she had to know which.
So even though her kitchen was a bomb site, and everythingwas really bad, and there was still goddamn werewolf blood under her fingernails, the first thing she did was make an Are They Okay potion. She threw it together, in the only intact pot she could find, so impatient about it that she burned herself twice. Then once it was finally, finally done, she poured some on the hallway mirror, to see what it revealed.
Though it still wasn’t exactly clear. All it did was give her the sight of Seth, grabbing a tree and trying to haul himself forward. Like he was straining against something, somehow. Like some instinct was making him act weird. Before that same instinct forced him back, back, to what was definitely his dad’s old hunting lodge.
And that was good, in one way.
