“Well, Tal,” April said, “I’m glad you were there to help us out. We would have been toast without you.”
“Toast?” Talbot asked. The twang in his voice made it sound like he was thoroughly amused by April’s friendliness. “What are you girls doing here anyway? Doesn’t seem like your kind of scene.”
They were too far away for me to kick April in the shin before she could share any more information about us. “We’re looking for Grace’s brother.
His name’s Jude Divine. He’s missing, and we think he may have been hanging out at that club.”
Talbot stopped and turned back toward me. I almost ran right into his chest again. “Really?” he asked. “What does your brother look like? Maybe
I can help.”
I looked up at him. He grinned down at me with a friendly smile that made his dimples extra pronounced. Something about him put me on edge—
made my heart beat faster when he looked at me. Maybe it was the way everyone else in the club had seemed a little bit afraid of him.
Talbot put his hand on my shoulder. “You can trust me.”
And there it was: the shape of his mouth or the tone of his voice—something I still couldn’t place—caused a wave of warm familiarity to ripple through my body. That same feeling had made me want to trust him in the club, so why not trust him now? He’d saved us from those guys, after all.
“I don’t know for sure what my brother looks like anymore,” I said. “I haven’t seen him in almost a year.” I remembered how much Daniel had changed physically in the three years while he was gone. Jude could look like anyone these days—especially if he was trying to hide. I pulled out my cell phone and scrolled to the very first photo I’d taken the day I got it—the day before Jude ran away. I’d snapped a picture of Jude as he looked at the moonstone ring Dad had given him.
I handed the phone to Talbot. “It’s kind of hard to tell in that picture because he’s looking down, but Jude’s, like, seven inches taller than me, and he has a lot squarer jaw. He had short, dark brown hair the same color as mine the last time I saw him. And we’ve always had the same nose and violet eyes.”
“Hmm.” Talbot held the phone up next to my head. He bit his lip while he studied the picture on the phone and then my face. I couldn’t help but stare back at him. It was then that I realized that despite the dimples, he had a more mature fullness to his face than most teenage guys I knew. If I had to guess, I’d say he was probably about twenty-one or twenty-two years old. Talbot reached out and brushed my hair off the side of my face as if to help him see my profile better. He took a small step closer and studied me for another moment. I held my breath for every second of it.
“Nope, sorry. Haven’t seen him,” he finally said. He handed back my phone, his warm fingers brushing against my skin. “I’m pretty sure I’d remember eyes like yours.”
Heat crept into my cheeks again. I dropped my gaze and stepped away.
“Well, we’re here.” I motioned toward the Corolla about twenty feet away. “Um, thanks for your help back there.”
“Yes, thank you, Tal!” April looked like she was about to spring a bear hug on the poor boy.
Talbot held up his hands. “No problem. It’s what I’m here for.”
“Good-bye!” April waved at him while I dragged her to the car.
“Hey, Grace Divine?” Talbot called after me.
I glanced back at him. “Yeah?”
“See you around.”
“Okay,” I said, but I don’t know why—it wasn’t like I was ever going to see him again.
“You should so totally go for him!” April blurted out as we pulled away from the curb.
“What are you talking about?” I checked my rearview mirror and saw Talbot standing like a sentinel on the sidewalk. He wasn’t kidding about keeping an eye on us until we were driving away. “I already have a boyfriend.”
“Okay, I will concede to the fact that Daniel is wicked hot, but Tal is like a delicious new treat, don’t you think?” April trembled in that excited way of hers. “Did you see how those other guys practically ran away from him?” She squealed and sank into her seat with a dramatic sigh.
“Um, you’re welcome to make a move on the boy, if you want. I can turn the car around so you can get his number.”
“No!” April sat straight up. Her eyes were wide, as if horror-struck by the very idea. She could be a flirt sometimes, but she usually cowered like my old cocker spaniel when it actually came to something real with a guy. “Don’t you dare! Besides, he only had eyes for you.” She jabbed me in the arm. “Grace Divine,” she said in a deep voice, imitating Talbot, “see you around.”
Heat swelled in my face, and I turned my head away before she could see me blush. It didn’t mean anything, and the last thing I wanted was for her to tease me about it.
Just when I thought April had already forgotten our purpose for going to the club in the first place, she sighed again and stared out the window.
“Anyway, Jude is the only guy I care about.”
We were stopped at a traffic light a good three blocks away now, and Talbot had faded from my rearview mirror. I looked straight ahead through the windshield and noticed a long line of motorcycles parked outside a bar called Knuckle Grinders. One of them—a black-and-red Honda Shadow
Spirit—reminded me of Daniel’s bike.
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I said. “I’ve already got the best guy out there.”
April made an uncomfortable noise and shifted in her seat. After a second she asked, “Do you think Daniel’s really changed?”
The light turned green, and I drove through the intersection. I took one last glimpse at the Honda outside the bar. It sure did look a lot like Daniel’s bike. But there was no way he’d coincidentally be at a bar only three blocks from where I’d been at The Depot. There was no way he’d even be at a bar at all. Besides, he was home sick in bed. “What do you mean?” I asked April.
“All the stuff Jude told me about Daniel—the things that he did. Who … what … he used to be. Don’t you worry about him just going back to the way he was before?”
“I know he won’t,” I said. “It’s physically impossible—he’s been cured of the wolf curse that turned him into a monster in the first place.”
“But the other stuff. You know, the stuff he was into before he even turned into a werewolf. Jude said he got real messed up before then. Drugs and drinking and fighting and stuff.”
“That was all still the influence of the wolf. He was born with the curse. The wolf was always there, driving him to make bad choices.” At least that was the way I thought about it. I guess it was possible that Daniel had made some of those decisions on his own. But that didn’t matter anymore. “I know he wouldn’t go down that road again. We sacrificed too much to save him. He’d never turn his back on that … on me.”
“My mom says people never really change.” April kept staring far out the window. I wondered if her mom was referring to April’s dad, who’d walked out on them a few years ago.
“If you really believed that, then you wouldn’t have come with me to help find Jude.”
“I guess not.” She was quiet for a moment. “But I still don’t think you should trust Daniel as much as you do.”
“Hmm,” I said, and let silence fill the space between us in the car.
For a while this evening it had felt like we were friends again. I’d missed the way April and I joked around, and the way she drooled after guys and acted like an overexcited puppy most of time. With everyone at school treating me like last week’s gym socks, my mom checked into Hotel
Alternate Reality, Dad leaving all the time, and me trying to keep Charity in the dark about everything, when Daniel wasn’t around, it felt like I had no one to talk to. I could handle the weird stares from people and the whispers behind my back, but I hated the silence that filled so many hours of my day. Not that it was quiet— especially when my superhearing kicked in—it was just that very few people talked to me these days, rather than just about me.
And I missed my best friend.
