chapter 10
U have to come over after school, Justin texted Katelyn as she sat in art class. The class was making ceramic story pots, 3D interpretations of a favorite work in another medium. Katelyn was busily sculpting her own little figurine in a red leotard perched on a Mexican cloud swing. Paulette smiled over at Katelyn as she worked on her version of Where the Wild Things Are. Katelyn wondered if Paulette knew the wild things were in houses and art classes as well as the forest.
She texted Justin back. Can’t today. OK? Don’t feel good. Then she grimaced as if she could see him lose his mind at her mutinous disrespect. That time.
? he wrote back.
“C’mon, connect the dots, Justin,” she muttered under her breath. “Please.”
“Is that Cordelia?” Paulette asked, not concerned, just being snoopy. Paulette was on record as disliking Cordelia intensely. Paulette had warned new-girl Kat McBride that Cordelia was a two-faced, mean snake, someone best shunned.
It’s that time, Katelyn finally texted back, flushing.
Got it, Justin said. Good that you stay away. CU in a couple days.
“Okay, that’s embarrassing,” she muttered to herself. She typed in KK. And good to know that w. girls get a break once a month. She didn’t dare type out the full word “werewolf,” but figured he’d get the point.
She said to Paulette, “It’s not Cordelia.”
Paulette nodded and added a blob of clay to the side of her pot. “I wonder what happened to Mr. Henderson,” she said in a low voice. “I can’t believe he’s gone.”
“Not gone,” Katelyn said, and then she stopped. Because what did she know?
“He must have family,” Paulette went on. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t show up here, asking questions. I’d be going crazy.”
“I know,” Katelyn murmured, feeling guilty even though she’d done nothing to Mr. Henderson. Werewolves didn’t hurt people. Didn’t attack them.
But someone attacked me.
“This isn’t turning out the way I wanted,” she blurted suddenly. She reached out a hand toward the figure.
“Kat, leave it be. It’s really sweet,” Paulette protested. “Besides, if you start over now, you won’t finish in time.”
Katelyn sighed and looked out the window at the parking lot; rain was pouring down at a sharp angle, pushed by the wind, the sky hung low, and overhead lightning crackled. She stared at Trick’s Mustang and reminded herself that a good thing had happened today. An awesome thing. But she was near tears.
Werewolf hormones, she reminded herself. Get a grip.
She smiled at Paulette. “You’re right.” She gave the figure a little push, and Paulette smiled back.
That afternoon, after school, Trick was waiting for her at her locker. She was tired from monitoring herself and he lifted a brow as she got out a few books and shut the locker door.
“Hey?” he said.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I mean, hi.”
They began to walk toward the lot, which was shimmering with rain puddles. He reached in his backpack and held out something wrapped in a gray cloth. As she touched it, she had a strange sensation in her mouth, as if she was chewing aluminum foil. Unwrapping it, she saw it was a knife — by the looks of it, the silver knife she’d left behind at the Inner Wolf Center.
“I went back last night, after we got home,” he said. “It was bugging me. Wasn’t it bugging you?”
“Yes. It was bugging me.” She touched the handle. The metal gave off a tangy, burning odor. She remembered how positive Justin had been that the trap she’d fallen into was silver. Now she knew why. Her senses must have been duller back then. “Maybe if we told my grandfather we found it off the property.” She hesitated. “But I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
“Tell you what. If the police don’t get anywhere, I’ll fess up. How about a week?”
“Oh.” Saying anything felt intense and confining. But a week would give her time to think it through. “Okay, yes.”
“Good.” He hefted his backpack over one shoulder. “Let’s go to Cowffeine to talk about the equipment. They have free wifi. We can drive over together and I won’t keep you long.”
“And you won’t beat anybody up.”
“No, ma’am.” He tipped an imaginary cowboy hat.
They drove down Main Street in his Mustang, Katelyn wistfully admiring the Christmas decorations hanging from the lampposts — candy canes and jingle bells — and the holly wreaths on the doors of the Victorian buildings. Wind buffeted the finery. Nearly all the leaves on the trees were gone, and it began to rain again.
“Looks like an early snow this year,” Trick said as he peered through the windshield. “Your pappy’s laid in lots of supplies, yes?”
“Yes,” she said faintly. A little less than three weeks until the next full moon. Surely it wouldn’t snow before then. She’d have to figure out a way to justify staying out all night.
“Don’t be scared,” he said. “Getting snowed in is kind of fun.”
“If you don’t live in the middle of the forest.”
“You and the doc can come stay with us if you want. We’ve got lots of room.”
“Oh.” She turned to look at him. “Thank you.”
“No big,” he replied, but he looked happy.
They drove past Babette’s. Mr. Henderson’s missing person’s notice was taped beside the one commemorating the two girls who had died, Haley and Becky. Katelyn thought about what Paulette had said, about loved ones going crazy with worry.
Thinking of that, she checked her cell phone as she climbed out of the Mustang. There was nothing from Cordelia or Dom. But there was one from Justin.
Hope you feel better.
“Whoa,” she said aloud. That was unexpected, the sequel. Trick raised a questioning brow. “Sorry. It’s nothing.”
“How’s Kimi?” he asked, as if he assumed that was who she was talking to.
“Good. Great,” she told him, and she felt a tightness in her chest as she imagined the beach and L.A. with Trick in it. Just a few days ago, she’d actually begun to dream that Wolf Springs would become a distant memory.
“We’ll get you a bunch of cool equipment,” he said as they went into the coffee house. There was a large display of Discover Your Inner Wolf merchandise, and beyond that a place to order coffees and pastries, and some wooden tables. “You probably know the best websites to order from. We — Shit,” he murmured under his breath.
Katelyn looked in his direction. Jack Bronson was coming out of the restroom.
She stopped dead and Trick murmured, “It’s okay.”
“How have you been?” Bronson asked Katelyn as he walked up to her. His voice was way too friendly. “Katelyn McBride, isn’t it?”
She cleared her throat. “Yes. Fine. Thanks.”
“No more trouble?” he persisted, and she felt Trick jerk.
Smooth, she thought.
“It’s all good,” she said tightly.
“Good, good.” He patted the shelf holding the display of his books, some T-shirts, and coffee cups. “Would you like a copy of my book?”
“We have one, thanks.”
“Your grandfather and you.” He said it almost as if he were making a joke. “Well, good. I hope you like it.” He smiled at her a beat too long, and then at Trick very cursorily, and walked out the front door.
“Yikes,” Trick said. “Trouble?”
“Two of his guys tried to hit on Cordelia and me,” she said. “He stopped them.”
“Whoa.” Trick looked out the door, then at the books. “And yet you never mentioned it.”
“Was I supposed to?” she asked, flaring. Then she softened. “I’m sorry. I’m short-tempered. I — I didn’t get enough sleep last night.”
“Then we’ll get you something to wake you up,” he said. “Caffeine is always my first drug of choice.”
~
The gym equipment was ordered. Among the amazing haul: uneven bars, parallel bars, a vault, a balance beam, a trapeze, and a cloud swing. Trick put it on a black credit card, which meant either that there was no limit or the sky was the limit: a few kids at Samohi had been given black credit cards — and, usually, chauffeurs, if so.
Katelyn’s reprieve from the Fenners ended two afternoons later when Justin told her to drive over to the house to resume her training. She went immediately after school, telling Trick only that she was busy. Which he did not like.
When she got out of the car, Mr. Fenner came over from the house and stared at her car so long she was afraid he had forgotten she was coming over. He growled deep in his throat and pulled back his lips.
“How many bodies does this make, six? It has to end,” he told her.
Katelyn stared at him in shock. There were only two dead people that she knew of. Possibly three if Mr. Henderson was truly gone.
“Excuse me?” she asked.
Lee Fenner looked at her. “I may be only eighteen, but I’m not stupid. I can see what’s happening. Someone has to put an end to it.”
Katelyn’s heart began to pound as she realized he was having one of his episodes, reliving something from when he was about her age. Her mind instantly flashed to everything Beau and her had heard about the rash of killings forty or fifty years earlier. Was six a rash?
“Do you know who’s doing it?” she asked, hoping that her voice didn’t shake.
He stared at her for a long minute, and the hair on the back of her neck stood up. Then he turned without another word and went back into the house, slamming the door so hard the windows rattled.
Justin ambled toward her from the yard, looking from the front porch to Katelyn and back again. “You okay?”
“Yeah, he um, startled me. He was baring his teeth.”
“Don’t let it throw you when he makes wolf gestures in human form,” Justin said. He lowered his voice. “It’s a symptom of his . . . condition. Our pups are taught from the cradle to cut out that kind of nonsense.”
“Oh,” she said quietly, thinking of how she had started growling when she and Trick had snuck into the Inner Wolf Center.
“It’s never happened to you, has it?” he asked, studying her.
“No,” she replied, trying to sound earnest, crossing her fingers that he couldn’t hear her heartbeat speed up. But of course he could. Of course he would know. The only question was, would he let it go?
“Hmm,” he said. He walked into the trees and she followed. The darkness and gloom descended. “Soon we’re going to work on focusing your hearing, your vision and your sense of smell.”
“Soon, but not today?”
“No, today, we’re going to see just how strong you are,” he said with a smirk.
“Shouldn’t I be focusing more on social stuff? You know, what to do and not do around the others so they don’t want to kill me for breaking some rule I don’t even know?”
“We need to work on that, too,” he acknowledged. “But you have to test yourself, find the limits of your new abilities so that you understand them. Because understanding what you’re capable of and learning how to control it will help the rest of the world not figure out who you are and want to kill you.”
“So, basically it’s all about not getting killed.”
“Pretty much,” he said, pausing under a tree. The lowest branch was about twelve feet off the ground and Justin looked up at it. “Jump up there and grab that branch.”
She gazed at it. “I’m springy, but not that springy.”
“How do you know unless you try? After all, that’s only about two feet higher than the rim on a basketball hoop. It should be easy for you now.”
She crouched and jumped as high as she could, but came up about a foot short. She landed back on the ground and glanced at him.
“Again. And this time actually try.”
“I did try,” she said, feeling irritated. She crouched back down and stared up at her target. She felt all the muscles in her body coiling and then releasing as she sprung upward. Her hands wrapped around the branch and she gave a triumphant shout and looked down at Justin.
“Good! Now do chin-ups,” he said.
She started and couldn’t help but think about the Cordelia and Mike contest on her first day of school.
“So, the most important thing to know about the pack is that as the bottom member you have to be subservient, you have to drop your eyes when someone is talking to you and make sure to give them those ‘ma’ams’ and ‘sirs’. You have to be quiet and polite and respectful to everyone.”
“See, I have a hard time seeing that happen,” Katelyn said, struggling to keep the sarcasm out of her voice as she worked her chin-ups.
“Those are the rules, Kat. Being bottom-ranking sucks.”
“So, how do I move on up?” she asked.
“Just like the rest of the world. You marry up or fight your way up tooth and nail.”
“No way!”
“Well, Kat, sometimes you have to fight. And sooner or later you’ll understand that.”
She was thinking of hitting Mike and realized that Justin had missed her point. “I meant marry up. I’m not doing that.”
She heard a chuckle and glanced down. “What’s so funny?”
“The fact that you think you have a choice.”
She let herself drop back to the ground, bending her knees to cushion her fall. She suppressed the urge to throw her arms backward when she had stuck the landing.
“What do you mean?” she asked. She thought of some of Cordelia’s diary entries, about her dad telling her he’d choose her mate.
“Everyone marries in the pack, and younger than you’re probably used to, being from California. It’s your duty.”
“I’m not marrying a werewolf,” she said.
He gave his head a weary shake. “You’re not going to have a choice about that. In fact, it’s likely you won’t even have a choice as to which werewolf. These things can be complicated and given how you came to be here . . . Uncle Lee will probably be choosing your mate.” He flushed slightly and glanced away. She wondered why. Was he jealous? She wondered again if his uncle had arranged his romance with Lucy.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No, I’m not.”
“I won’t do it.”
“We’ll see,” he said, effectively shutting down the conversation. “Now, jump to the next branch over, the one that’s a foot higher.”
An hour later Justin declared that training was over for the day. They headed back to the house and reached it just as Jesse trotted from around the back. He was holding a mud-encrusted action figure in one hand and a gardening trowel in the other.
“Hi, Kat, hi,” Jesse said, hurrying up to her and giving her a kiss on her cheek, as all the pack were supposed to do. She kissed him back, and he giggled. “Did you marry Justin now? Because then I can marry Lucy.”
“Justin is going to marry Lucy,” Katelyn said carefully.
“My Uncle Lee says you’re going to get married,” he reported, nodding seriously at her. “He says you need a man.”
“He— he did?” Aghast, she stared at him, then at the Fenners’ house, where the alpha was.
“When you get married, I can wear my suit. You should stay for dinner. Lucy says I can have a drumstick. You can have the other one.” Jesse looked past her and waved. “Hi, little brother.” He cracked up. “Did you kiss Kat?”
“No, sir,” Justin said.
“You should kiss her cheek. We don’t kiss strangers but Kat is not a stranger.”
“I’ll kiss her next time.”
“See you later,” Katelyn managed, hurrying toward her Subaru. Then, lightning fast, Justin was beside her with his hand wrapped around her forearm.
“You need to say goodbye to the alpha,” he said. “Show respect.”
She looked up at him. “Justin, he’s talking about me getting married. I’m a senior in high school! Did you know about this while we were talking in the forest?”
“No, but I’m not surprised.”
“I’m not getting married.”
“All you need to do right now is say goodbye,” he reminded her. “Don’t stir the pot when you don’t have a spoon.”
“Oh, that’s so quaint,” she flung at him. If she saw Mr. Fenner, and he told her he wanted her to get married—
“Kat, I’ve got your back,” he said quietly. “Just go say goodbye.”
He walked her to the front door and it opened before she could turn the knob. Arial, one of Cordelia’s older sisters, stood on the threshold with her arms tightly crossed. Her blonde hair had been pinned up in a messy bun, but one section had come free and coiled loosely around her shoulder, as if she’d been doing something physical. She looked warily at Katelyn, then visibly relaxed just a little when she shifted her attention to Justin.
“No,” she said to him. “We can’t have visitors.”
“Kat is a member of the pack,” Justin reminded her. “She wants to pay her respects before she leaves.”
“I’ll tell him.” Arial reached for the doorknob, charms on her bracelet jingling.
Justin put his hand around hers. “No. You know that’s something she should do,” he said in a quiet but firm voice. “The alpha deserves her respect.”
Arial sucked in a breath. “The alpha,” she began, then toyed with one of the charms. “Daddy’s resting before dinner.” Then, as if she had to explain, she added, “He’s been through so much. You know what I mean.”
Justin grunted. “I surely do. And I’m wondering who it was that put him through most of it.”
She gave him a wicked scary smile, seductive, dangerous. “Careful, Jus. Remember who you’re talking to.” She still didn’t look at Katelyn as she added, “I’ll tell him she said goodbye.”
Then she shut the door in their faces.
“Sure you will,” Justin muttered.
“I heard that,” Arial said through the door.
Justin smiled sourly. “Knew she would,” he said to Katelyn. He walked her back to her Subaru and politely opened the door. Southern men had manners; she had to give them that.
“Why does she blame me for getting bitten?” she asked him flat out. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You remind her that he didn’t pick her to succeed him,” he said, as she got into the car. He shut the door and she rolled down the window. “And that her alpha’s not in control. Packs are only as strong as their leaders. When the alpha shows weakness, it throws everybody off.”
“So I’m a source of shame to her, too.” Katelyn jabbed the key in the ignition.
“In a word, yes,” Justin said.
“When won’t I be?”
He leaned his elbows on the car door and gave her a sad smile. Then he dropped his arm toward her and tugged on a tendril of her light blonde hair.
“When you’re settled,” he said. “When you fit in. You’re the omega — the lowest-ranking — but the alpha and I are both paying attention to you. That elevates you, and that’s confusing everyone.” One half of his mouth curved up in a cynical grin. “It’ll be less confusing when you’re not such an oddball.”
“Oh, thanks.” She tried to jerk her hair out of his grasp.
He held it tighter, chuckling. “Try to have a little compassion.” He tugged. “Our whole lives are built on pack order. And we’re in disorder. It’s not good for us.”
“Compassion?” Katelyn cried. “For her? She made sure Mr. Fenner knew about me. She nearly got Cordelia killed.”
“Her loyalty didn’t lie with Cordelia. It lay with her father. You know that’s a strong bond.”
“No, I wouldn’t know,” she said hotly. “My father was murdered when I was twelve years old.” She swatted his hand like he was a pesky fly and he released her. Then she started the engine and put the car in reverse, barely giving Justin time to get out of her way.
She sped through the forest, eager to be safely out of it, replaying her conversation with Justin. Remembering that his father was dead, too, and that he suspected Lee had killed him on purpose. Either way, his father was dead. There were a lot of deaths within the pack, so maybe that was why Justin didn’t cut her any slack about what had happened to her.
Her thoughts drifted to her father’s funeral, and how everyone had kept asking her if she was okay. No one had asked her mother, and it was obvious that Giselle Chevalier — her mom — hadn’t been handling it okay at all. And Katelyn had suddenly understood that anyone who asked didn’t really want to know. They just wanted to feel as if they’d done the right thing.
Thunder rumbled through the forest, and the trees shook their gnarled fists at her as she wiped her tears away and fought to pull herself together.
Even though she had wanted to be through the woods as fast as possible, she still wasn’t ready to be back at the cabin when she parked outside. Grateful for the rain, she let it run down her face to hide her tears before going inside.
A sharp odor hit her. Her grandfather was at the table beside her computer, cleaning a gun. He looked up at her and gave her a nod, almost a smile, and she smoothed back her soaking wet hair.
“I forgot an umbrella,” she said, even though that was pretty obvious.
“I was just fixing to make hot chocolate,” he said, and she felt a rush of pent-up tenderness toward him. There was no way in the world Mordecai McBride drank hot chocolate when he was alone.
“I’d love hot chocolate,” she managed, her voice cracking slightly. “Thanks, Grandpa.”
He put the gun on the table and went into the kitchen. She sank down beside her computer and powered it up. Mail from Beau. The subject header was Anything? with no message content.
She thought about Mr. Fenner. How old had he been way back then? Cordelia had told her that her father was approaching sixty, so he could have been a teenager then, or a young man. Were they his fault? Six murders. How many had there been, all told?
Nothing, she typed back. Then she shut her computer down.
Taking a breath, she walked into the kitchen. Mordecai was stirring a pot of milk and spooning cocoa mix into it, and Katelyn picked up the container and inspected it; the expiration date was five years old. Given how long hot chocolate mix kept, it was possible that he’d bought this jar before the last time she’d been there as a little girl — with her father, not long before Sean McBride had been murdered.
“You have a fight with that boy?” he asked her.
She set down the jar. “Trick?”
“The other one.” He gave the milk a stir. “Still wondering if I invited the wrong one to Little Rock.”
“No,” she said in a rush. Then she realized there was no way she wanted to talk about boys with her grandfather, and let out a heavy sigh. “I just . . .” Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. “I miss my parents.” Words started rushing out of her. “It was so amazing of Trick to make that bust of Mom for me, you know? But I don’t have anything of Daddy’s, except for that suitcase. It’s all gone, from the fire.” She cried harder. She just couldn’t stop herself.
Looking pained, her grandfather stirred the milk. He poured in the cocoa slowly, deliberately, then ventured, “I’ve got some stuff of your dad’s. Out in the garage. Your grandma kept it.”
She caught her breath and looked at him hopefully. “Really? Like what?”
“Probably everything he ever touched,” he said. “He was our only child. Doted on him so. You never dream you’re going to bury your own son.” A stricken expression clouded his face. Then he shook himself and reached for two cups out of the cabinet. “We’ll go through it. There’s a lot of stuff out there, but I’ll find it and bring it in for you. Don’t go in there, Katie, though — some of the boxes aren’t stacked too safe.”
“Oh, thank you, Grandpa.” She hugged him, putting her arms around his surprisingly brawny body and squeezing tightly. He patted her back, and she did the same, feeling ridges beneath the fabric of his shirt. His terrible, deep scars.
His showed. Hers didn’t.
She watched as he measured out the steaming liquid into two cups and handed one to her. She clinked cups with him, the way she and Kimi used to do, while wondering privately if they’d get sick from drinking such old stuff; but she didn’t want to spoil the mood, so she took a tiny sip.
So did he. And then he looked out the window and said, “We might have a white Thanksgiving this year. Gotta warn you. When the snow comes, we’ll be holed up.”
“Trick invited us to his place for the winter,” she said.
“Did he?” He took the spoon to the sink and rinsed it. “Is that where you want to be when the storm hits?”
She wasn’t sure what he actually was asking, and she wasn’t sure she would have known the answer anyway. “Better there than here, I guess. He’s closer to town.”
“Sokolovs own a snow plow,” he remarked. “I never got that fancy.” He put the spoon in the dish drainer. He seemed to be moving slowly, as if he was in pain.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Just tired. Do you have homework?” he asked, and she nodded, grateful for the excuse to escape to her room. She was feeling edgy again.
She crossed the kitchen and was just about to make her way to the stairs when she impulsively turned back around.
“Guess who I just met,” she said. “The Inner Wolf guy. Jack Bronson.”
Her grandfather’s bushy gray eyebrows shot up. He looked as if she had hit him in the stomach. “How? Where?” he demanded.
“Just in town. At the coffee house. I think he was in to sign some more of his books or something.” She had no idea what insanity had prompted her to bring it up. Maybe because she hadn’t told Trick she’d met him. And she’d never told her grandfather about the run-in with the two drunk guys.
“That man is crazy. He’s ruining Wolf Springs. Don’t ever go near him or talk to him again.”
They passed the rest of the evening knocking around in the little cabin. Her grandfather finished cleaning his gun and then he read a hunting magazine. Feeling contrite, Katelyn emailed Beau and told him she was sorry she’d been so standoffish, telling him she had “family stuff” and when she’d taken care of it she’d be back to investigating the history of Wolf Springs with him. A small white lie. He’d written back that he was sorry for her troubles, but glad he hadn’t caused them.
When she finally went to bed she couldn’t relax. She lay staring at the skylight, then over at the bust of her mother that Trick had sculpted. There were things of her father’s in the garage. Photographs of him as a little boy, probably. His school papers. But most likely pictures of him and her mom and Katelyn, too. All kinds of things that she’d thought were lost.
Her grandfather had said he’d bring some boxes in for her to go through, told her not to go in there, but Katelyn wanted to look now. Her parents had always laughed on Christmases when she’d forced them to get up at three- and four-o’clock in the morning, unable to wait another second. “So impatient,” her mother had chided her, but her dad had said she was driven.
Maybe if she nosed around just a little, opened a couple of boxes, she’d be able to get to sleep. Her grandfather would understand, right? He’d made the offer. She was just taking him up on it a little sooner than he had intended.
She got up and a minute later, flashlight in hand, she hurried down the little path to the garage and went inside. There was his canoe, and there, the tower of boxes of food, antifreeze, and other supplies he had purchased for the winter. He had his workbench; on it lay more weapons in various stages of disassembly.
And then she faced dozens of boxes — a garage full. Most were cardboard, sealed with packing tape; others had just been folded closed. She ran her flashlight along them and read off labels gracefully written with a black marker: her grandmother’s handwriting, she guessed. Sewing Room. National Geographic. University Files. There were just so many. Sighing, she wandered between two tall stacks, telling herself that if she didn’t find anything in half an hour or so, she’d go back to bed.
Cookbooks. Taxes.
The life of an elderly married couple. Her parents would never have such a life. She wondered if she would, herself.
She kept poking around through dust and cobwebs, getting a little grossed out. She really shouldn’t be doing this. Then the beam of the flashlight passed over a single word:
Sean.
Her heart skipped a beat. She stood in front of the box and placed her hand over her father’s name. Then she lifted the boxes from on top of it and set them on the floor.
The packing tape along the seam was yellowed and dried up, so that it wasn’t really holding the box together. Katelyn picked at it with her fingernail, wincing guiltily when the brittle tape crumpled away. Slowly, methodically, she peeled it off, keeping the strip intact as best as possible so she could at least position it back over the seam. Then, with a deep breath, she opened it.
Sheets of gritty tissue paper made crumpling noises as she pushed them out of her way, revealing a carefully folded blue and white crocheted baby blanket. Her heart tugged as she unfolded it and put it against her face. It was as soft as rabbit fur but she smelled no trace of anything but dust.
She shook it out, refolded it reverently, and held it against her chest. There were more baby clothes inside — little shirts and booties. And photographs of her dad as a baby. She saw her own light blue eyes staring back at her. Her own small mouth, pulling a smile.
“Daddy,” she whispered. “I miss you.”
She went through the box slowly, gently, unfolding each item, admiring it, refolding it. Then, finally, knowing it was getting very late, she made sure everything was put back as she’d found it, picked up her flashlight, and turned to go. One box wasn’t enough, but she should wait. And besides, there was a knocking little hollow place where her heart should be, and it hurt.
Then, as she replaced the tape, she dropped the flashlight. She crouched down to pick it up and a smell hit her. Metallic. Like tin foil. She shone her flashlight over an untouched row of boxes and sniffed the air. Her eyes began to water.
Silver, she thought.
But the side of the box read AMMO.
Weird, she thought. But it was time to go. She straightened and was about to leave when the smell drew her back, and she decided to have a look. As she moved a couple of cartons out of the way, dust lifted, ghostlike, and she sneezed. Then she opened the box and peered in.
Inside sat a rectangular metal olive green box. It really was an ammo box. Her grandfather had carried out a few of those when he’d taught her how to shoot. But there was definitely silver inside.
She unthreaded the black strap wrapped around the box, then opened the lid and aimed her flashlight at the contents.
She gasped. Her heart triple-hammered in her chest, then skipped beats as her pulse roared in her ears and she staggered backwards into another stack of boxes.
There were dozens.
Gleaming in the light.
Silver bullets.