into a radio.
Hank was a speck of gray and then he was gone.
I raised myself to a crouch. I could see pinpoints of light in the distance—headlights on our side of the fence.
“Eve.”
She stood and stared at the spot where Hank had disappeared. I pushed myself up and then reached for her arm. “Eve!”
She shoved me away, and I barely kept from landing on my butt. “How could he make a deal to save the two of us and leave the rest of them behind?” Her voice was loud. Too loud.
I glanced nervously in the direction I had last seen the headlights. They had disappeared behind a building, but I had no doubt they were headed this way. Eve was staring at me, waiting for an answer. “I don’t know,” I said. “But we can’t stay here.”
She pulled in a deep breath and then nodded. “Come on,” she said before breaking into a run.
I struggled to keep up. I knew she was slowing her pace for me, but before long I began stumbling over my own feet. It felt like someone had slashed my chest with a knife, and I was concentrating so hard on forcing my legs to keep moving, that I didn’t notice or question where Eve was leading me.
She came to sudden stop. Half blind with exhaustion, I collided with her back. It was like hitting a concrete wall. And, like concrete, Eve didn’t budge when I slammed into her.
I wiped the sweat from my face as I tried to relearn how to breathe. I looked up, expecting the dorm. Instead, I saw red bricks covered in ivy: the sanatorium.
We were near the rear of the building. We stood in the shadow of a shed that was half rotted and looked about a century old. It had probably been here when the first TB patients arrived.
Eve stared up at the former hospital. All of the windows were dark, and the only light came from a small orange-tinted bulb hanging above a steel door. “What do you think happens to them? To the wolves who go missing?”
I swallowed and thought about Serena. “I don’t know.”
“He expected me to leave. To just forget about them.
“I’m not going anywhere without Serena and Kyle,” I said with a shrug. “If Hank knew me at all, he would have known that.”
“You weren’t surprised. You really never thought he’d help, did you?”
With a small sigh, I slipped a finger under my wrist cuff and ran it along the edge of Amy’s bracelet. “When Hank left, it took me three days to realize it was permanent. I spent the time huddled in a motel room. Waiting. It wasn’t until the manager kicked me out that I accepted he wasn’t coming back.”
The gray in Eve’s eyes swirled like fog. “Hank told me he left you with relatives.”
I noticed her switch from “Curtis” to “Hank” but didn’t point it out. “Then he lied. I remembered the name of a cousin and found her number in the phone book.”
“He’s not the person I thought he was,” she said softly.
“Maybe,” I conceded. “But I’m not sure he’s the person he used to be, either.” Hank might have been willing to turn his back on the other Eumon, but he had tried to get Eve and me out. He had even tried to find a new place for her.
Maybe the real Hank wasn’t the selfish, callous man I remembered or the leader Eve wanted him to be. Maybe the real Hank was somewhere in the middle.
I flashed back on an image of a gray wolf dodging a hail of bullets. He had risked his life to come here.
“Do you think he got away?”
Eve gave a small, angry shrug, followed by a grudging nod. “He’s fast—even by werewolf standards. It would take more than a single jeep to catch him.” She gave me a long, evaluating glance. “I figured you wouldn’t care, one way or the other.”
I didn’t want to care. I
Eve could have pushed. She didn’t. Instead, she slipped the film canister from her pocket and held it between her thumb and forefinger. “So what the hell do we do with these?”
I let out a deep breath. “Hank said the guard will be expecting two girls with those charms, but he didn’t say anything about the guard knowing what we look like.”
“So someone else could use them. . . .”
I nodded. “I think we should try to get into the main building tomorrow night. If we can find Serena before the truck leaves, she can use my charm.”
Eve thought it over. “Makes sense. And we might find something useful while we’re at it. The packs don’t get along, but I know a couple of girls in Carteron and Portheus who are decent. I can give my charm—along with anything we find—to one of them. If Hank won’t do anything, maybe the other pack leaders will.”
She so wasn’t going to like my next suggestion. “I think it should be you,” I said. “I think you should use the charm.”
She stared at me in disbelief. “Are you
I shot a quick glance at the sanatorium. It was still dark. “Hank wanted to get you out of here. He even made arrangements so you’d have someplace to go after leaving Colorado. That’s a lot more than he ever did for me. He cares about you—enough that you might actually stand a chance at changing his mind about helping the others.”
Eve crossed her arms. “And if he doesn’t listen to me?”
“Then you can try and get some of the other Eumon on your side. There must be some of them who’ve lost people they care about to this place. And you could try approaching the other packs.”
“While everyone else stays in here.” She scowled. “I use that charm for myself and it’s like I’m turning my back on them and running away.”
I shook my head. “Don’t think of it as running away from a problem. Think of it as running toward a solution.”
A look of complete disgust swept her face. “That is the lamest thing I have ever heard.”
“My cousin listens to old self-help books from the eighties on tape.”
She twisted the cuff on her wrist. “All right. Say I agree to use the charm. What happens next?”
A light flickered on in one of the sanatorium windows, and we eased farther back into the shadows.
“We convince Kyle and Jason that we need to break into the building tomorrow night, and we do it without telling them about the charms or Hank’s offer—otherwise, they’ll try to make sure I’m on that truck when it leaves.”
A knot formed in my chest.
Up until now, the biggest secret I had kept from Kyle was the time I had lied about scratching his car. He’d be furious if he knew what Eve and I were planning—so unbelievably furious—but he would eventually get over it. He’d have to.
There was no way I was using that charm for myself.
I TURNED IN A SLOW CIRCLE ON A DESERTED STREET. THE restaurant where I worked. The shops that had closed up after the attacks last year. Riverside Square in the distance and the tang of the water on the breeze.
Hemlock. Home.
But there wasn’t a single person or car in sight. It was like the Rapture had come for everyone and left me behind.
“No piles of clothes.” Amy stepped out from a doorway. She wore a white T-shirt that clung to her curves
