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  "I gotta get going," my brother said and got up. "I have school. Hey, do you remember that? School?" he said addressed to me.

  I grimaced, showing how annoying I thought he was, but the fact was I enjoyed him acting a little more normal like he used to before he changed. He grinned and left the kitchen just as there was a knock on the door. My mom turned on her heel and looked at me like I knew who it could be. I shrugged, then walked out there and opened it. Outside stood Mr. Aran, one of his tarantulas crawling on his neck.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Jazmine was exhausted when she ate her breakfast. She had barely slept two hours last night, and now she had to go to school. It was almost too hard. Her mother seemed cheerful, though, as she was doing the dishes in the kitchen. Her dad had already left for the paper company, as usual. Jazmine stared at her mother, who was singing as she put the dishes away. Jazmine couldn't stop thinking about what she had seen the night before. First, her mom and that cat and the strange light surrounding them, then the vampire party and…well, the biggest surprise, Melanie turning out to be a wolf and not a vampire. Yes, that was the surprise.

  What the heck was wrong with this neighborhood?

  "You look tired," her mom said.

  "I didn't sleep well last night," she said.

  "I see. It's the moon," she said, grabbing another plate. "I can never sleep when it’s full either."

  "That's probably just it, then," Jazmine said and jumped down from the stool at the counter. Her mother handed her a lunch bag, holding onto it a little while and looking deep into her daughter's eyes.

  "Are you sure you're all right?"

  Where do I begin? Well, my best friend's family are all vampires, killing people. A girl I know is a werewolf and just ate a pastor who was also a vampire, and my mom is glowing with the cat in the living room, talking to it, sounding crazier than a bat. But other than that, I am perfectly fine. It's just the usual teenage problems, right?

  Jazmine nodded reassuringly. "Yes. I’m just tired, that's all."

  Her mother exhaled. "Good. Because I don't want you to come down with something. It is flu season, after all. Lots of it going around, they said on TV this morning."

  "Did they say anything else?" Jazmine asked.

  Her mother tilted her head. "Like what?"

  "I don't know. Any events last night?"

  People being found dead at the church?

  "Well, the wolf attacked again," she said.

  "Really?"

  "Yes, at the church, can you imagine? They were having some sort of midnight mass and apparently the beast killed a couple of people there. The pastor has since disappeared. It's this whole big story. Good thing you don't go out at night, right?"

  Her mother wiped the counter where Jazmine had spilled some milk from her cereal. Jazmine nodded.

  "Sure. I would never dare to. Not with everything that is going on."

  Her mother smiled, looking slightly manic, or maybe that was just something Jazmine believed.

  "Good. Now, so far, the attacks have only happened at night, so as long as we stay inside at night, we should be fine. But I want you to be alert during the day as well. Come back straight from school, promise?"

  Jazmine nodded. "Promise." She grabbed her backpack and left the house. She grabbed her bike and rode it out of the cul-de-sac, thinking about Melanie and where she might have woken up this morning and whether she remembered anything at all from what she had done, when suddenly she ran her bike straight into something, or rather someone.

  Jazmine tumbled to the asphalt and scraped her arm and knee. A hand helped her get up. His grasp was icy cold. When she saw who it was, she let out a small gasp.

  "A-Adrian?"

  "Do we know each other?" he asked.

  She got up and wiped dirt off her jeans. She shook her head. "N-no not really. But I know your sister."

  He smiled. He was so handsome, Jazmine couldn't take her eyes off him, even though everything inside of her screamed to.

  "I see. Well, be more careful next time, will you?"

  "Careful?"

  "Yeah, when riding your bike. You rode it straight into me."

  Jazmine laughed, feeling silly. It got awkward. "Oh, that. Yes, well…I am so, so sorry. I hope I didn't…hurt you?"

  She put her hand on his. He had scraped it, but as they stared at it, it slowly healed up. Jazmine gaped, then pretended not to have seen it. She wanted to pull away, but he grabbed her hand in his.

  "I like your nails," he said and looked at them closely. "How do you make them change colors like that?"

  She looked down at them too. They were going from red to purple to blue, then back to red. She pulled her hand away.

  "I…I don't…"

  "Is it some kind of nail polish?" he asked. "That's pretty cool."

  She shook her head. Her nails had been acting weird lately and she had been hiding them in her shirt, so no one would see them.

  Adrian approached her. He stood very close to her, then reached up and touched her face. She could feel his icy breath on her skin and she shivered. He looked into her eyes, studied them very closely.

  "Your eyes," he said. "They do it too."

  Jazmine shook her head and looked away. "I should…"

  Adrian grabbed her arm and held her steady while their eyes locked once again. Jazmine didn't know whether to be afraid of him or flattered by his interest in her.

  "It's truly amazing," he said. "They change, just like your nails. Look…now they're doing it very fast. It's like one of those…"

  "Mood rings?" she asked.

  "Yes," he said. "Just like that."

  Jazmine pulled out of his tight grip, then backed away from him, while he stared into her eyes, making her feel all warm and weird inside. "I have to… I should…" she said as she grabbed her bike and pedaled away so fast her legs hurt once she finally reached the school.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  How can I help you, Mr. Aran?" I asked, my eyes not leaving the tarantula on his neck for even a second.

  He smiled. "I was just wondering if you heard what happened last night. At the church?"

  I shook my head. "I can't say I have."

  "Huh," he said, his eyes examining me. He inhaled with a sizzling noise. "Terrible tragedy. Terrible."

  "Oh. I am sorry."

  "Four dead bodies. Sucked dry of blood."

  I acted startled. I think I was getting quite good at it by now. "Oh, my."

  "It was all over the news. You sure you didn't hear about it?"

  "I never watch TV in the morning," I lied. It amazed me how good I was getting at lying. And it scared me a little too.

  "They say it was the wolf," he said. "Again. Attacking churchgoers at a midnight mass. That's what the police said. Actually, it was that guy who lives right over there, the officer on the motorcycle, who gave me a ticket when I rode into town. Funny, huh?"

  I cleared my throat. "Hilarious."

  He forced another smile. It even looked fake. He wasn't as good an actor as I was becoming.

  "Anyway. I just wanted to hear if you knew anything. I got the feeling, a vibe, yesterday that your mother usually knows everything that goes on around here, am I right?"

  "She keeps track of what goes on, yes. But not more than any normal housewife, I think."

  That made him laugh. I wasn't sure why.

  "So, you don't know what happened?" he asked.

  I shrugged. "Not really. If the police say it's the wolf, then that was probably it. Hopefully, they'll shoot it soon, so we can move on with our lives."

  "Yee-es, well…it's the part about the bodies being sucked dry of blood that bothers me," he said.

  I cleared my throat again, slightly anxious this time. "Oh, yeah? Why is that?"

  "Where I come from, wolves don't drink human blood."

  "Really? I wouldn't know anything about that."

  He grabbed the spider between his hands and petted it. "We think it might ha
ve been va-a-ampires, don't we, Finn?"

  "Oh, the spider's name is Finn, is it? That's…nice. Well, I don't really believe in fairy tales. Is there anything else I can do for you, Mr. Aran?"

  He petted the spider on its back. I swear I heard it sigh, satisfied. "Not for now. But…maybe later?"

  I stared at the strange man as he walked away, almost swaying on his long skinny legs away from my house. My mom came up behind me. I didn't see her, so it wasn't until she spoke that I knew. It made me jump.

  "What did he want?" she asked with a hiss.

  I shrugged. "I’m not sure I know."

  She looked after Mr. Aran as he disappeared down the street, playing with the tarantula in his hand.

  "Well, he better stay away from us, him and his…germ-filled spiders. Who knows what kind of diseases they might bring to our nice, quiet neighborhood. Stay away from that odd man. You hear me? He is not like us, Robyn. He doesn’t belong here."

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The sky above her was gray and heavy when she opened her eyes. Melanie blinked several times until she realized she was no longer dreaming. She was actually staring at the sky above her, the real sky, as in she was out in the open air, out of the shelter.

  She sat up. That was a big mistake. Her head was spinning like crazy and she felt so dizzy, she had to close her eyes once again to make it stop. When she opened them again, she realized she was in a strange place. Snow was all around her, covering the soil and grass beneath her. Melanie shuddered. To her surprise, she wasn't freezing, her fingertips weren't starting to turn purple, and her knees weren't shaking in the cold.

  How did I get all the way up here in the mountains?

  Little by little, images returned to her from the night before and it made her head hurt even worse. Had there been a party of some sort? She remembered people nicely dressed, women in cocktail dresses and men in suits, happy faces, talking and chatting and…and, then…

  Oh, dear God. Then they all turned into vampires. Nasty bloodsucking vampires.

  Melanie shook her head and wondered once again how she had come from the church downtown to all the way up there? She could see the town below her in the valley. She looked at her hands that looked normal, then at her body and clothes. Her shirt was torn where her larger muscles had appeared when transforming. She wondered why she wasn't cold at all. She got up to walk. Her legs were sore like had she run a marathon and it was tough to walk in the deep snow. In front of her, she saw paw prints, big, deep ones and she stared at them for a little while, when she suddenly remembered that someone had cried something about a wolf last night. Had there been a wolf at the party?

  Melanie shook her head and continued to walk. She had to get back to town somehow. Not that she wasn't fine outside, because she felt very comfortable, strangely enough. Even though she was wearing nothing but jeans and a T-shirt, the same thing she had been wearing when her friends had come for her at the shelter.

  Amy! Robyn! They came for me, didn't they? They let me out. And then they took me to…the church where…

  Melanie shook her head again. She couldn't really remember what had happened. Not in detail. It all felt like such a blur. She remembered staring at the party through the window, then seeing the people turn into vampires and then she remembered feeling such deep anger, such a furor she couldn't control herself.

  Melanie took a few more steps across the snow where the big animal had obviously run the other way the night before. Then she stopped and looked up, a terrified look on her face, then down at her fingers that she now remembered being big and having claws and…having…

  Fur? Oh, dear Lord. I was the wolf. I was the one they screamed about. And I…I…I bit…the pastor! I killed a pastor.

  Melanie sank to her knees as the realization slowly sank in.

  If I wasn't doomed before, then I certainly am now.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  My mom seemed particularly jumpy and uninterested in me doing my schoolwork. While I sat at the computer and did my assignments, she paced around in the kitchen, biting her nails, which I found very strange since she never bit her nails. She was very careful with that particular part of her body and often went to spas to have them cared for and painted. She always scolded me if I bit mine.

  What was going on? Did she know I had lied to her?

  She kept looking out the window, staring into the street like she expected someone to drive into the cul-de-sac. It had me greatly worried. Once she spotted Jazmine's mom drive up into her driveway, she made a sound and went to her office. I could hear her talking and guessed she had to be on the phone. I put my ear to the door and listened in.

  "I tell you, Briana. He was here. Yes, he was. He spoke to Robyn. And he brought that…that disgusting creature with him. Uh-huh, uh-huh, yes, I think so too. Uh-huh, yes, no, this can't continue. We must do something. Yes, it was bad, terrible. Last night at the church. I swear, that beast would have killed us all had we not fled from there. I looked into the eyes of that…that beast and I saw it. It wanted blood. It wanted to kill us. Yes, I saw her there. How can you say that? Uh-huh, uh-huh, no, I don't think so. Yes, I’m sure. I wouldn't say it if I wasn't. Yes, I agree. Okay. It's gonna be tough, but it has to be done. Will do. Bye now."

  I rushed back to my computer as my mom came out of the office, still looking worried. I smiled as she passed me, but she didn't even look at me. It was so unlike her. She grabbed a bunch of onions and started to peel them. The stench made my eyes water, but my mom continued. She started to chop them, then put them in the blender along with yogurt and a banana. Even for her, that was a strange combination for a smoothie. Still, she blended it, then poured it into a glass and drank it, her eyes distant. I was mortified. She had said she saw someone at the church. Was she talking about me? What was it that needed to be done? Did it have to do with me?

  "Mom?"

  "Yes?" she said without looking at me.

  "Is something wrong?"

  Finally, I received one of her fake smiles. "Wrong? Why on earth should anything be wrong?"

  "I don't know. You just seem a little preoccupied or something."

  She scoffed. "Nonsense. Did you finish your math?"

  "I was doing science today, remember?"

  She became eerily distant again. "What was that? Yes, yes, that's great, honey. Just go on."

  "But…I’m done?"

  "Really? Huh?" my mom scratched her head, then stared out the window toward the mountains.

  "So, what do you want me to do now?" I asked, hoping she would say read my book.

  But my mom didn't answer. Not right away. She kept staring at the mountains and the heavy gray sky above them. Then it was like she remembered something. She turned her head and looked at me. Her eyes were sparkling with excitement.

  "How about a field trip?"

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  She drove us out of town. I was thrilled to be out of the house, of course I was, but I didn't like the way she rushed through town and how fast we left. It was like she was in a hurry.

  "So…where are we going?" I asked, slightly worried.

  Why were we even going on this trip? She hadn't mentioned a word about a field trip before. Did it have anything to do with what happened the night before at the church? Had she seen me after all? Was this some sort of punishment?

  "To the mountains," she said.

  "O-okay."

  I looked out the window as the landscape rushed by. I wondered if it was the last time I would see it, if I would ever come back to Shadow Hills again. My mom sped and passed all the other cars on the road. I felt my heart race in my chest as she was almost hit by a huge truck going in the opposite direction. The truck honked, and my mom honked back, just before she slid in between it and the three cars she was passing.

  "That was close," I said, swallowing.

  "Nonsense. There was plenty of room," she said.

  I turned my head and looked at the cars disappearing behind
us. Soon, we were alone on the road as we started to climb up the mountain. "So…what exactly are we doing up here…in the mountains?" I asked.

  "A hike!" my mom said, then looked at me with a smile. As usual, she had covered herself with a hat and glasses and put on a thick layer of sunscreen. "In nature."

  She kept staring at me and it made me nervous.

  "Please, look at the road, Mom, there’s a…car coming!"

  I closed my eyes and screamed as my mom almost hit the car coming toward us, going the opposite direction, but managed to turn away just in time, the car honking wildly at us.

  My mom laughed like the crazy ride made her feel more alive. I wondered if she was going to kill me. Then, how she was going to kill me. Car crash? It wouldn't look suspicious at all. She would easily heal herself like I had seen Adrian heal from the gunshot wound, whereas I…wouldn't.

  "Do we have to go this f-fast?" I asked as the road became narrower, but she didn't slow down.

  "Ha-ha, is my daughter afraid of a little speed, huh?" she poked me with her finger. "Live a little. You're so boring. How did my daughter become so boring, huh? I used to be so much fun when I was younger."

  I stared at the woman I hardly recognized as my mother anymore. My crazy overprotective mother who barely would let me get my license. It was very hard for me to imagine her being fun.

  That's it; she's gone mad. She's lost it, and now she'll kill you.

  "It s-scares me," I said.

  But that only made her laugh harder and speed up.

  "Please, Mom?" I said and closed my eyes. My mom didn't slow down; instead, she rushed up the mountainside, and very close to the top, she stopped, the car skidding sideways across the icy road. I screamed, closing my eyes when the car finally came to a halt.

  "We're here," she chirped and opened the door. She rushed to the side of the road and stared at something in the snow.