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13. SPY
(KILLER)
Josie had said I could call, but somehow the details of how and why her brother was turning into a giant wolf didn't really seem like a topic for casual telephone conversation. Neither did the fact that he and his . . . friends were apparently hunting a vampire in the forest. That was why I found myself driving down the tree-lined highway toward Josie and Jacob's house that afternoon after work, and I still had absolutely no idea what to say to either one of them.
Once the initial shock had worn off, I'd spent the rest of my shift at Newton's trying to decide what to do. I hadn't gotten very far. Trying to figure out how to convince someone it was a bad idea to hunt vampires was something I'd never really thought I'd have to do. The fact that the someone I was trying to convince was a werewolf . . . well, I didn't even know where to start with that.
As I made the turn onto La Push Road, my mind drifted back to an old black-and-white movie Josie and I had watched one rainy afternoon a few weeks earlier, to the man who'd had no control over the monster he'd become or what it did. How much control did Jacob and the others have over their own actions? When they changed, were they still logical, intelligent beings, or did something else take over? I could still remember how they'd looked as they emerged from the forest that day, how they'd stalked Laurent with the precision of a well-trained military unit. Crazed monsters couldn't have done that. They had to be rational. They must have been in control of themselves. But what about the rest of the legends? How accurate were they?
According to Jacob and Josie, werewolves and vampires were enemies. Pretty standard, really, but it was comforting to know Hollywood had gotten that part right, at least. The connection to the full moon was obviously a myth, though. I had no idea what phase the moon was in now or what phase it had been in during any of the sightings, but when I'd seen the wolves in the meadow, it had been in the middle of the day. An overcast day, certainly, but it was daytime.
What other legends were there? I couldn't remember many. How you became a werewolf was kind of a gray area. Sometimes there was a curse . . . or witchcraft. In the movie, Lon Chaney, Jr. had just been bitten by one. The story about silver bullets didn't sound very likely, either, but I wasn't about to shoot someone to find out.
By the time I pulled up to the Blacks' house a few minutes later, I still hadn't come up with any answers. I parked beside the Rabbit in the driveway and stared in at the house. One of the faded curtains shifted slightly—someone was home, but I couldn't see who.
Squaring my shoulders, I got out of the Volvo and headed up the ramp toward the front door. It took a few seconds to drum up the courage to knock, and a few seconds longer for Josie to answer. She said nothing as she opened the door, gave no greeting as she stood watching me with her hand resting on the doorknob, but there was a question in her eyes. In the living room behind her, Billy sat in his wheelchair. His expression was guarded, suspicious, like he knew something was going on, but he didn't know what. There were a thousand thoughts bouncing around in my head, a hundred things I could have said, but I didn't know how to begin. A long, silent moment passed.
"I remembered," I finally said.
Josie glanced over her shoulder at her father. Their eyes met briefly, and I could see from the set of his mouth that he must have realized what I knew, but he said nothing. We watched as he turned his wheelchair toward the kitchen and left the room. Josie turned back to face me.
"I'll get my jacket," she said.
. . . . .
Apparently Josie didn't know what to say either because the Rabbit was silent as she drove us to First Beach. She parked several spots away from the only other car in the dirt lot, and we made our way down the path that led through the weeds. The day was cool and overcast, and the owners of the other car were nowhere to be seen. We were alone.
As we walked out along the beach toward the northern seawall, the only sound either of us made was the crunch of our shoes in the loose rocks. I didn't realize what we were looking for until we'd come to it—the long white driftwood log where the twins had shared their story with me so long ago, where I'd sat with an angel the night before. I stared at the weathered length of the bone-white trunk, at the bristly roots that stretched out like the tentacles of some strange sea creature.
"Werewolves," I said, finally breaking the silence between us. "It shouldn't have taken me so long to figure it out."
"Jake and I have been listening to the stories for longer than we can remember, and we still didn't believe them until it happened to him."
I nodded faintly. I knew what it was like to suddenly realize the things you thought were nothing more than fantasy were just as real as the ground beneath your feet.
"Is this too weird?" Josie asked after a moment. I could hear the hesitation in her voice. When I turned to face her, I could see it in her eyes, too.
"Too weird that your brother turns into a wolf the size of a horse?" I asked.
She shrugged and glanced away.
"No. Weird is starting to feel pretty normal to me. I just wish I would have figured it out sooner. I should have . . . considering."
I sat down on the log and turned to look out over the water. Josie sat down beside me.
"Is anything not real?" I wondered aloud. "Witches? Zombies?" My eyes followed the path of a seagull as it struggled against the breeze. "Ghosts?"
I wasn't looking at her, but I could feel her tentative smile. "I don't know about ghosts, but aliens are definitely real."
I couldn't quite manage a smile of my own in return, but I was grateful for her attempt to ease the tension. I thought back to the wolves as I'd first seen them in the meadow—huge and terrifying.
"Not exactly The Wolf Man, huh?" I asked, trying to make a joke of my own.
"No, not really." I could hear the relief in her voice. Had she really thought I'd hate them? That I'd give up on our friendship if I found out the truth?
"Why have you and Jacob stayed away? Is it because of my . . . past associations?"
She took a moment to consider before answering.
"Partly," she admitted, "but also because the pack has to be a secret. No one knows unless they absolutely have to know."
Secrecy. I could understand the need for that, but . . .
"They told you," I said, turning to face her. A strange little wrinkle appeared on her brow.
"I kind of got dragged in unexpectedly."
I glanced away again, my eyes focusing out beyond the shore, toward the rocky little islands that jutted up from the water.
"I guess I understand why he didn't want to tell me the truth yesterday."
"It wasn't just that. Sam's the Alpha, the leader of the pack. If he gives any of them an order, they can't disobey it. It's impossible, so when Sam said Jacob couldn't tell you, he literally couldn't tell you. Sam made me promise, too, so Jake and I had to come up with a way of telling you without actually telling you."
I nodded, my eyes still focused on the waves as they rushed up onto the narrow strip of sand and then back again.
"But that's not the only reason we were staying away," Josie continued. "Sometimes it's dangerous to be around them, especially at first. In the beginning, it's harder to control their emotions, which makes it harder to control the phasing. Jacob tries to keep his distance from me if he's angry or upset—which happens a lot now—because he's afraid of what he might accidentally do. He begged Sam to order everyone not to hurt me, but Sam said it was a bad idea. If something happened and I accidentally did get hurt, whoever did it would be . . . destroyed to have broken his command, so we just have to be really careful for a little while."
I remembered what Josie had said the night before about Jacob being "bound." His swings of temper in the garage made sense now, too. And the way he'd looked pained when he said he couldn't explain.
"Jacob was never really sick, was he?" I asked, turning back toward her.
She shook her head. "No, he wasn't." She dug her heels into the pebbles at her feet before looking up again. "You understand now, right? You understand why we need you?"
They needed me? I shook my head.
"We told you the legends, and Jacob said you saw them in the forest last weekend. You know what they're trying to do. There are things that have been passed down, knowledge that's been shared from one generation to the next, but there are a lot of things they still don't know. Maybe you do. Maybe you know something that can help them."
They thought I could help them hunt vampires?
"There's no way to help them, Josie. They can't possibly win." I shook my head again. "We've got to talk to Jacob. We have to get them to stop."
"Stop what?" she asked.
"Hunting the vampire. It's not going to end well for them."
She opened her mouth and drew in a breath, like she was about to say something, but then she stopped herself. She studied me for the length of several heartbeats. "He'll be here soon," she finally said.
"Who? Jacob?"
She nodded, but something didn't make sense.
"How do you know? Did Billy call someone when we left?"
"No, I just . . . . maybe we should wait for him. Then we can both explain."
I studied her for a moment. I was definitely missing something, but I didn't know what it was. I turned to stare out across the water again, but only a moment had passed before something made us both glance up in unison. There was a figure walking toward us in the distance.
Jacob's footsteps were eerily silent as he made his way across the rocks. He slowed as he approached the log, his eyes turning briefly toward Josie's face before settling on me. The anger I'd seen in them the day before was gone. In its place was a look of . . . apprehension, like he was expecting to be chastised for doing something wrong.
"Hey," he finally said.
"Hey," I responded, but he didn't look any more relaxed. "It's cool, Jake."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." I watched as the tension began to ease out of his shoulders. "But you still have to stop."
"Stop what?"
"Hunting vampires."
Something dark came into his eyes. It was the sudden anger, the temper Josie had been trying to warn me about. Jacob's gaze flickered toward his sister, and he took a careful step back.
"Just let him finish, Jake," Josie said, her voice calm, reassuring. He took a deep breath.
"Why?" he said through clenched teeth.
"It's impossible to kill a vampire unless you're one yourself. You're only going to get hurt . . . or killed." I wanted to sound just as reasonable as Josie had only seconds before, but I could tell I wasn't succeeding. Jacob stared at me for another moment, then let out a sudden, bitter laugh.
"That's it? You're concerned for our safety?"
"People have seen you," I continued, laying down one of the arguments I'd been crafting on my way out of Forks. "They think you're responsible for the missing hikers. There are hunters in the woods right now trying to find you, to kill you."
"We know. They won't hurt us, Edward. They're easy enough to avoid, but they make it too easy for the bloodsucker to find someone else to kill."
I winced. "None of this will stop until you stop. As long as people are seeing you and the others, they'll think you're the killers, but if you stop, if the wolves vanish, the hunters won't have anything to hunt. And if people don't have something else to blame the disappearances on, the vampire will have to move on, too, or else he'll risk raising suspicions. You're not the only . . . people whose existence has to be a secret."
Jacob studied me for a moment. The fire in his eyes was starting to cool. He took a step forward, but I noticed he still left a careful distance between us.
"We can't just stop, Edward. We're protectors, remember? It's what we do. We protect people from vampires. It's the reason we exist—because they do."
"But there's no way for you to kill Laurent. There's no way you can stop him."
"Who's Laurent?" Jacob asked, tilting his head to the side.
"The vampire in the meadow. The one you chased."
"Oh, the black-haired leech?" Slowly, menacingly, a fierce grin crept across his face. "Was that his name?"
"He could have killed you, all of you."
And then Jacob laughed. He laughed.
"One lone vampire isn't much of a problem for a pack as big as ours. It was so easy, it was hardly even fun!"
His words didn't make any sense.
"What was easy?" I asked.
"Killing the bloodsucker who was going to kill you," he answered.
"Killing him?" Surely that wasn't possible. Only another vampire could kill a vampire . . . right?
"Well, it was a group effort," he explained casually. When I continued staring at him, his face fell. "He wasn't one of your friends or anything, was he?"
I shook my head slowly.
"He was going to kill you—he was going for the kill, Edward, we were sure of that before we attacked. You know that, right?"
"Yes, but . . . how did you do it?"
Jacob scowled. "I'd have thought you'd know the details of that."
"But you have to tear them to pieces and . . ."
"You were there. Didn't you see us? We're strong, we're fast, and those teeth aren't just for show. Sure, somebody had to phase back long enough to start the fire, but that's no big deal."
Laurent was dead. He was really dead, and if he'd died right after I'd seen him in the meadow that day, then he couldn't go to Victoria and tell her I was alone. Which meant I was safe . . . for now.
Except that if Laurent was dead, why did Josie say they still needed my help? And who was killing the missing hikers . . .
"It's not over yet," I realized, the blood growing cold in my veins. "There's another one out there."
"There were two of them. We thought his mate would want to fight us—in our stories, they usually get pretty pissed off if you kill their mate—but she just keeps running away and then coming back again. If we could figure out what she was after, it would be easier to take her down, but she makes no sense. She keeps dancing around the edges, like she's testing our defenses, looking for a way in—but in where? Where does she want to go? Sam thinks she's trying to separate us, so she'll have a better chance to . . ."
"Edward?" Josie asked. She reached up to rub my back. I barely felt it. I was having too much trouble breathing.
"Red hair?" I finally managed to choke out.
"Yeah. You know her?"
"Yes," I whispered. I was glad I hadn't stopped for lunch after work. I would have lost it by now if I had. "She's not Laurent's mate. They were just . . . friends."
Barely a second later, Jacob was beside me on the log, his eyes wide with excitement.
"Are you sure?"
I nodded. "James was her mate."
"James?" Josie asked. "There's another one?"
I shook my head. "No, he's not here."
"Do you know what she wants?" Jacob asked.
"Revenge. She wants revenge."
"Revenge for what?" I could hear the excitement in Josie's voice. She was just as thrilled by this new information as her brother was.
"For Phoenix. For killing James."
"This James . . . this happened in Phoenix?"
"Yes," I told him. "They . . . the Cullens killed James last spring in Phoenix. That's what happened, how I got hurt." I shook my head. I needed to go back and start at the beginning. "We were playing baseball in the forest. James and the others were just passing through, but they heard us, and they came to investigate. When James realized I was human, he started hunting me. The Cullens took me to Phoenix to keep me away from him, but he figured it out, and he came after us. B. . . Bella and the others killed him. Now Victoria wants revenge."
"But they aren't here anymore. They left." Jacob was standing now. He'd backed away to a safe distance again.
"No, she doesn't want revenge on them. 'A mate for a mate.' That's what Laurent said. Victoria thinks it would be more fitting that way. She doesn't know that we aren't . . . that they aren't . . ."
"She's after you?" I could hear the horror in Josie's voice.
"Did they know this would happen?" Jacob was pacing now. His hands were clenched into fists. "Did they know this Victoria would come looking for you?"
"I don't . . . no, I don't think so. She . . . they left because it was too dangerous for me to be around them. If they thought there was any danger of this, they wouldn't have gone."
It was all rushing back. My terror over the last week. The nightmares in the middle of otherwise sleepless nights. In the end, it hadn't mattered whether or not Laurent had found Victoria. She'd come anyway, and she was looking for me.
"What if she makes it to Forks? What if she comes looking for me and finds Mom, instead?" I could hear the fear in my own voice. It made me feel even worse.
"Don't worry, Edward. They've got this." Josie had stopped rubbing my back, but her hand still rested on my shoulder.
"Seriously, Josie's right. She's not getting through the line to Forks. Nothing's going to happen to you or Lizzie, especially now that we know what she's after."
I glanced up to see the two of them sharing a look, one of those secret looks they'd always shared, but somehow this one felt different. There was something more . . . substantial about it. And suddenly I knew they still hadn't told me everything.
"I'm going to call a meeting," Jacob said. He turned to jog back down the beach. Josie pulled me to my feet.
"Come on, let's head back." I managed to force myself to move, to put one foot in front of the other, but I couldn't really feel them. My legs were unsteady as we made our way back toward the parking lot. In the distance, Jacob's figure grew smaller as he ran across the road and disappeared into the trees on the other side.
"Is he going to go . . ." I didn't know what term to use. Josie just smiled.
"Yeah, he went to phase into a wolf. He'll keep it short, don't worry. He just needs to tell them we have new information."
I was grateful for the distraction. I needed to focus on something else, anything else, and trying to figure out this whole werewolf thing was the kind of distraction I needed.
"What's he going to do . . . howl or something?"
Josie laughed.
"No, it's a . . . mind-reading thing. As long as they're in wolf form, they can hear each other's thoughts."
"Oh." Not an answer I'd been expecting. She studied my face as I processed this new piece of information.
"That doesn't bother you?" she asked after a moment.
"Well, we're talking about werewolves. Once you get past that, everything else just seems trivial."
Josie smirked. "I guess so, and you've had a little bit longer to adjust to the world of monsters than we have, I guess."
"Yeah, kinda, but they're nothing like Bela Lugosi or Lon Chaney, Jr., are they?"
"No, they're not."
We were in the parking lot now. I slid into the passenger's seat of the Rabbit as Josie slipped behind the wheel. Our eyes were fixed across the road, on the stretch of trees where Jacob had disappeared.
"How does it work?" I asked as we waited. "Did Sam . . . bite him or something?"
For just a second, Josie looked horrified. Then she huffed out a short chuckle.
"No, it's a tribal thing. Genetic or something. Our great-grandfather was in the last pack, so now it's Jake's turn."
"But not yours?"
"No, guys only. No girls allowed, apparently." She frowned and her eyes shifted away from the trees to rest on the steering wheel in front of her.
"Feeling left out?" I asked.
"No, it's just . . . Do you remember the night we went to that horrible movie?"
"Crosshairs?"
She nodded as she turned toward me.
"That's . . . that's when it happened, right?"
She nodded again. "Yeah. Jake felt weird that night, so he stayed home. We've gone over the timing of it a hundred times. When he phased for the very first time, that was the exact moment when I got that headache."
I thought back to that night, how Josie had slumped forward in her seat, her head in her hands.
"Do you . . . feel when he . . . phases now?"
She shook her head. "No, not anymore. It was just that first time. For the rest of that evening, I knew there was something wrong, though. I just knew it."
She sighed. "It was worse for him, of course. He didn't understand what was happening. He was terrified, but at least he wasn't alone. As soon as it happened, the mind-reading thing kicked in. The others knew he was there, and they could talk him through it, explain what had happened and what to do. Sam was really great about it. Jake was so scared, but he helped him through it. Sam remembers what it was like, how terrified he was when it happened to him, because he was first, and there was no one there to help him."
When she explained it that way, I could understand why they suddenly liked Sam so much. And I kind of felt a little bad for Sam, too.
Josie was watching me now, hesitating like there was something more that she was afraid to say.
"The whole wolf thing is really complicated," she continued. "Jacob's figuring it out, but there's a lot to it, and sometimes there are . . . new things."
"New things?"
"Like me," she said.
"What do you mean?"
She shifted in her seat, clearly a bit uncomfortable. "There haven't really been a lot of twins in the pack. There's an old legend that there were two brothers once, that they had this . . . special way they could communicate, but that's been so long ago that no one really remembered the details. Then Jacob and I came along." She frowned thoughtfully.
"When I got home that night, Paul and Jared were in the front yard. Dad was outside with them, and he tried to keep me from going in the house, but I didn't know why. I just knew Jake was inside and that he needed me. When I finally snuck in the back door, there was this huge wolf in the middle of the living room." She let out a short laugh. "And you know how little our living room is." She shook her head. "But I wasn't scared because I knew it was Jake. I started talking to him. Telling him it was going to be okay . . . and I could hear him answering, telling me how scared he was. Only he couldn't talk. He was still a wolf." She took a deep breath and let it out. "And that's how we figured out the whole mind-reading thing works between us, too."
I stared at her. "You can read minds?"
"No, not exactly. It's just with Jacob. And it's not a constant thing, like with the pack. We have to want to talk to each other."
"Okay. So when Jake's a wolf you two can . . ."
"No, he doesn't have to be a wolf. We can do it even when he's human."
I thought back to the look they'd shared on the beach before Jacob had disappeared into the woods.
"That's how he knew to come here," I realized. "You told him where we'd be."
Josie nodded.
"And last night, when you came to my house. At first you said no one knew you were there, and then you said Sam knew and that you'd be safe going home."
She nodded again. "With the pack, when they're in wolf form, the mind-reading thing is always turned on, so if anything crosses your mind, everybody knows it. Jacob was trying really hard not to think about where I was and what I was doing, but it eventually slipped out. As soon as Sam found out, Jacob let me know. Jared and Embry were in the woods behind your house when I left. They made sure I was safe on the way home."
"So Sam sent them to make sure you didn't cause any more trouble?"
She smiled and shook her head. "No, just making sure I made it home okay. That's Sam. That's how he is."
It was there again, that almost . . . reverence in her voice.
"You sound like you've got a crush on the guy."
Josie laughed. "No, definitely not. Even if I did, I wouldn't have a chance."
Something in her laugh made me think I was missing something again, some private joke that she knew I didn't understand, but I still had too many questions. I filed it away for later.
"So, if Jacob is a wolf and you're . . . talking to him, can you hear what the rest of them are thinking?"
She shook her head. "No, I can only ever hear Jake, but if he's a wolf, the rest of the pack can hear anything I say to him."
"Then how did you tell him to meet us here without everyone else knowing?"
Josie grinned. "I told him the pipe was leaking in the bathroom again and Dad needed him to come crawl behind the commode and fix it before the bathroom got flooded. Unlike my brother, I can still lie to Sam." But then she sobered, a faint frown replacing the grin. "I don't like to do it, though. Sam doesn't deserve it." She glanced away, as if ashamed of herself. "Once Jake got home and phased back, he found out there was no leaking pipe and figured out something was up, so he just asked me. I told him the truth."
Jacob was emerging from the trees now, walking slowly. I opened the door and slid into the back so he could take the front. He looked like he was still growing. I didn't know if he'd fit into the back seat anymore.
"Took your time," Josie said as he closed the door.
"Well, you two were having such a nice conversation. I didn't want to interrupt." He grinned teasingly at his sister, and for one brief moment, it felt like we were back in the garage again, laughing and joking with each other as they worked on the Rabbit.
He twisted in his seat as Josie pulled out onto the road. He was trying to look at both of us as we spoke, but there wasn't a lot of room for him to maneuver in the cramped space.
"I kept it real short—I tried not to think about the two of you so they wouldn't know what was going on. I was afraid Sam would tell me I couldn't bring you."
"Because if Sam had told you to leave the two of us out of it, you wouldn't have been able to let us know what was going on," I said.
"You catch on quick."
"And he's great with weird," Josie added.
"Like I said, weird is normal for me now."
Josie pulled off onto the road that led along the cliff edge, the road we'd been on the day we watched Sam and the others cliff diving.
"They aren't going to be happy to see me, are they?" I asked.
"Maybe not at first." Jacob shrugged. "But Josie was right. You know a lot of things we need to know."
His words seemed casual, comfortable, but something about them felt wrong. I'd made promises about keeping secrets, too, promises I would always keep, even if the people I'd made them to were gone. But Jacob and Josie already knew the truth, I reminded myself. They had been the ones to tell me. Still, the need to keep her secret, to protect her the only way I could was undeniable. I would never risk hurting her or her family, no matter what, but was there something I could tell Jacob without feeling like I was betraying them?
"I don't really know much that would help. I don't really know Victoria."
"You probably know a lot of things," Josie said.
"Even the littlest thing could be a big help," her brother added.
I tried to think back, to remember parts of those chaotic days the previous spring without remembering other parts of what had happened.
"I don't know. I don't know if she's gifted," I said, thinking aloud. "James tracked us all the way to Phoenix, so maybe he had something. There was another vampire with him. She was gifted, but she's dead now, too."
Jacob spun around in his seat, his eyes wide with excitement. Josie's startled gaze met mine in the rearview mirror.
"What do you mean by 'gifted?'" Jacob asked.
For just a second, I felt like a traitor, like I was betraying . . . something, but surely I owed no allegiance to Victoria, and I wasn't telling them anything about the Cullens.
"Sometimes vampires have . . . gifts," I explained. "Special abilities. Things they can do above and beyond the norm."
"So it's true," Jacob mused. "I thought those were just stories. I've heard legends about vampires who could do . . . extra stuff, but I thought that was just a myth."
I thought about Alice, about Jasper and Chief Swan and . . . and Bella.
"No, it's true."
"See? This is why we need you," he said. "You know a ton of things that can help us. It's not like you're just some ignorant human. You're like a . . . I don't know, spy or something. You've been behind enemy lines."
Now I really did feel like a traitor.
Josie pulled the Rabbit over to the side of the road and parked. She'd barely cut the engine when Jacob opened the passenger's side door.
"They're here," he said. "Let's go."
As I climbed out of the back seat on Josie's side, my eyes were fixed on the mysterious forest and its ominous shadows. "Are you sure this will be okay?" I asked.
"They'll deal with it," Jacob answered. He grinned at his sister. "Who's afraid of the big, bad wolf?"
Josie reached down to give my hand an encouraging squeeze. "Don't worry," she whispered. "Jake's got this."