Linger

She stared at me for a moment, and then she seemed to realize what I had asked. “Of course.”

I hesitated at the door. Sell it, Isabel. “Um. Not near Grace. You know, where she could…” I pointed to my ear.

“Oh,” her mother said. “Okay.” She was probably curious about what I was going to say. Honestly, I was, too. My palms were sticky with nerves.

She patted Grace’s leg and stood up. When she got out into the hall, I pointed behind my hand at Sam, who was, as we’d advised, standing a few feet on the other side of the door. He looked like he was going to throw up, which was about how I felt. “Not near him, either,” I whispered. I remembered, suddenly, having told Sam that he wasn’t cut out for deception. As my stomach churned and I planned what I was going to confess to Grace’s mother, I thought that karma was a terrible thing.

• COLE •

As soon as Isabel had gotten Mrs. Brisbane out—Was she the only person in there? Only one way to find out, I supposed—it was my turn. While Sam watched out to make sure no nurses came in, I slipped into the room. It stank of blood, rot, and fear, and my wolfish instincts crawled up inside me, whispering at me to get out.

I ignored them and went straight to Grace. She looked like she was made up of separate parts that had all been brought to the bed and assembled at awkward angles. I knew I didn’t have much time.

I was surprised, when I knelt by her face, to find her eyes open, although the lids were heavy on them.

“Cole,” she said. It was the long, low timbre of a sleepy little girl, someone who just couldn’t stay awake much longer. “Where’s Sam?”

“Here,” I lied. “Don’t try to look.”

“I’m dying, aren’t I?” whispered Grace.

“Don’t be afraid,” I said, but not for the reason she said. I pulled out drawers on the cart by the bed until I found what I was looking for: an assortment of shiny sharp things. I selected one that looked logical and took Grace’s hand.

“What are you doing?” She was too far gone to care, though.

“Making you into a wolf,” I said. She didn’t flinch, or even look curious. I took a breath, held her skin taut, and made a tiny cut on her hand. Again, she didn’t move. The wound was bleeding like hell. I whispered, “I’m sorry, this is going to be disgusting. But unfortunately, I’m the only guy who can do the job.”

Grace’s eyes opened just a little further as I worked up a big mouthful of saliva. I didn’t even know how much she would need to be reinfected. I mean, Beck had had it down to a fine science, had thought everything out. He’d had a tiny syringe that he kept in a cooler.

“Believe me, less scarring this way,” he’d said.

My mouth was getting dry as I thought about Isabel losing her hold on Grace’s mother. The blood was pumping out of the tiny cut like I’d slashed a vein.

Grace’s eyes were falling shut, though I could see her fighting to keep them open. Blood was pooling on the floor underneath her hand. If I was wrong, I’d killed her.

• SAM •

Cole came to the door, touched my elbow, pulled me inside. He latched the door and pushed a surgery cart up against it, as if that would stop anything.

“Now’s the moment of truth,” he said, and his voice was uneven. “If it doesn’t work, she’s gone, but you get this moment with her. If it’s going to work, we’re…gonna have to get her out of here in a hurry. Now. I want you to brace yourself, because…”

I stepped around him and my vision shimmered. I had seen this much blood before, when the wolves made a kill, and there was so much blood that it stained the snow crimson around it for yards. And I had seen this much of Grace’s blood before, years ago, back when I was just a wolf and she was just a girl, and she was dying. But I hadn’t really been ready to see it again.

Grace, I said, but it wasn’t even a whisper. It was just the shape of my mouth. I was at her side, but I was a thousand miles away.

Now she was shaking, and coughing, and her hands were gripping on the rails of the hospital bed.

Across the room, Cole stared at the door. The knob was jiggling.

“The window,” he told me.

I stared at him.

“She’s not dying,” Cole said, and his own eyes were wide. “She’s shifting.”

I looked back down at the girl on the bed, and she looked back up at me.

“Sam,” she said. She was jerking, her shoulders hunching. I couldn’t watch her. Grace, going through the agony of the shift. Grace, becoming a wolf. Grace, like Beck and Ulrik and every other wolf before her, disappearing into the woods.

I was losing her.

Cole ran to the windows and jerked up on the latch. “Sorry, screens,” he said, and busted them out with his foot. I was just standing there. “Sam. Do you want them to find her like this?” He rushed over, and together we picked Grace off the bed.

I heard the door crashing now; people calling on the other side.

There was a four-foot drop outside the hospital window. It was a brilliantly sunny, clear morning, perfectly ordinary, except that it wasn’t. Cole jumped down first, swearing when he landed in the short shrubs, while I steadied Grace on the sill. She was becoming less Grace in my arms every moment, and when Cole lowered her onto the ground outside the window, she retched on the grass.

“Grace,” I said, my vision swirling now because of her blood smeared across my wrists. “Can you hear me?”

She nodded and then stumbled to her knees. I knelt beside her; her eyes were huge and afraid and my heart was breaking. “I’ll come find you,” I said. “I promise I’ll come find you. Don’t forget me. Don’t—don’t lose yourself.”

Grace grabbed for my hand and missed, catching herself from falling onto the ground instead.

And then she cried out, and the girl I knew was gone, and there was only a wolf with brown eyes.

I could not bring myself to stand. I knelt, bereft, and the dark gray wolf slowly cringed back from me and Cole. From our humanness. I didn’t think I could breathe.

Grace.

“Sam,” Cole said, “I can send you with her. I can start you over, too.”

For a brief moment, I saw it. I saw myself again shuddering into the wolf, I saw my springs, hiding from drafts, I heard the sound I made when I lost myself. I remembered the moment I knew it was my last year and that for the rest of my life I’d be trapped in someone else’s body.

I remembered standing in the middle of the street in front of The Crooked Bookshelf, filled with the certainty of a future. I had heard the wolves howling behind the house and remembered how glad I had been to be human.

I couldn’t. Grace had to understand. I couldn’t.

“Cole,” I said, “get out of here. Don’t give them any more reason to look at your face. Please—”

Cole finished my sentence. “I’ll get her to the woods, Sam.”

I slowly climbed back to my feet, walked back into the emergency department through the silently swishing glass doors, and, covered in my girlfriend’s blood, lied perfectly for the first time in my life.

“I tried to stop her.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

• SAM •

So it comes to this: I would have lost her either way.

If Cole hadn’t reinfected her, I would have lost her in the hospital bed. And now Cole’s wolf toxin pumps through her veins, and I lose her to the woods, like I lose everything I love.

So here is me, and I am a boy watched—by her parents’ suspicious eyes, since they cannot prove that I kidnapped Grace but believe it nonetheless—and I am a boy watchful—because Tom Culpeper’s bitterness is growing palpable in this tiny town and I will not bury Grace’s body—and I am a boy waiting—for the heat and fruitfulness of summer, waiting to see who will walk out of those woods for me. Waiting for my lovely summer girl.

Somewhere fate laughs in her far-off country, because now I am the human and it is Grace I will lose again and again, immer wieder, always the same, every winter, losing more of her each year, unless I find a cure. A real cure this time, not some parlor trick.

Of course, it’s not just her cure. In fifteen years, it’s my cure, and Cole’s cure, and Olivia’s cure. And Beck—does his mind still sleep inside his wolf’s pelt?

I still watch her now, like I always did, and she watches me, her brown eyes looking out from a wolf’s face.

This is the story of a boy who used to be a wolf, and a girl who became one.

I won’t let this be my good-bye. I’ve folded one thousand paper crane memories of me and Grace, and I’ve made my wish.

I will find a cure. And then I will find Grace.