WOL F SP RI NGS CHRONI CL E S
The New York Timesbestselling authors of the Wicked series
NANCYHOLDER & DEBBI E VI GUI É
Chapter Sample
From the bestselling authors
of the Wicked series
Welcome to
Wolf SpringS.
Who do you run with?
Wolf Springs is a town of secrets, grudges, broken
families, and forced alliances. And Katelyn is the new
girl—who’s about to start believing in werewolves.
read & Discuss randomBuzzers.com
Keep Reading for a Sneak Peek at Unleashed . . .
Jacket photograph © 2011 Michelle Monique Photography
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i can fly.
Katelyn Claire McBride was the girl on the flying trapeze.
Her sun-streaked, blond hair streamed behind her as she
soared above the crowd on the Mexican cloud swing. Thick
stage makeup concealed her freckles, scarlet smudging her
mouth, which she had always thought was too cupid-cutesy.
Smoky ash-gray kohl ringed her light blue eyes. The soaring
melody of “Alegría” moved through her like blood. Music gave
her life. Movement gave her a soul.
She had made it. After years of sweat, blisters, pulled muscles, and sprains, she was finally performing in the Cirque du
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Soleil. Far below, in the massive audience, her mother looked
on with her dad, their fingers entwined. Their faces shone with
pride and maybe just a few hundred watts of suppressed parental fear.
Like all performers, Katelyn was a chameleon. Away from
the spotlight, she was a tanned California girl who preferred
Indian-print camisoles, jeweled flip-flops, and big sunglasses
decorated with flowers. But now she looked like a dramatic
flamenco dancer . . . and much older than sixteen. She wore a
black beaded leotard trimmed with stiff silver lace. A black lace
choker encircled her neck, and in the center, a large red stone
carved to look like a rose nestled in silver filigree.
The Mexican cloud swing was Katelyn’s specialty; and
she pumped her legs back and forth as she sat in the V created
by the two long pieces of white braided cotton fibers. A kind
of crazy mania worked its way through her as she breathed
deeply, preparing herself for her last trick—her death-defying
escape from gravity.
I’m the only one here who can fly!
She swung higher, then grabbed the rope dangling from
the complicated overhead rigging and with practiced, circular
motions of her foot she looped it around her right ankle. The
familiar texture of the cotton rubbed against the toughened
skin. She looked delicate, but like all dancers and gymnasts,
she was made of muscle.
Cool air expanded her lungs as she leaped, arching like a
swimmer and grabbing onto the V as it went taut. Gracefully
she held onto the pose as applause washed over her. Scarlet
rose petals showered her from overhead, high in the rigging,
and at the crescendo, she defiantly let go. Thrusting back her
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arms, she raised her chin, ignoring the forbidden camera
flashes. Fearless. Of course she was.
Yet gasps changed to screams as she plummeted down,
down, headfirst, air rushing past. In that split-second, her joy
flashed into panic.
The net’s gone!
The ground rushed up and she flailed wildly.
I’m going to die!
Then the floor split open jagged and deep. From the fissure, flames shot up, straight at her. The heat slapped her face
as she kept falling, straight into hell—
“Katie, Katie, oh, my God, wake up,” her mother shouted
into her ear.
Katelyn’s eyes flew open and just as quickly squeezed shut.
Coughing, she opened them again. Half-smothered in smoke,
she was lying on the sofa in the TV room, and her right arm was
slung over her mom’s wiry shoulder. The Art Deco floor lamp
behind the sofa tumbled light over the rolling layers of smoke.
The feet of the sofa rattled like a machine gun against the hardwood floor; the plaster ceiling was breaking off in chunks. Her
mom was wearing her old Japanese bathrobe—nothing else.
“Earthquake,” Katelyn slurred. Her gymnastics coach had
given her something to take for the swelling and pain after she
had twisted her ankle in practice and it had knocked her out.
“Alors, vite!” Her mom was losing it, screaming at her in
French to hurry. She yanked on Katelyn’s arm, then draped her
across her back like a firefighter, and began to straighten her
legs. Katelyn slid off, grabbing her mother’s wrist, trying to fan
the smoke away as she doubled over, coughing.
Clinging to each other, the two staggered through the acrid
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haze. Katelyn knew she was holding her mother back. She was
slow—still not entirely awake because of the painkiller—and
incredibly dizzy. She stepped on something hot searing her
instep, one of the few places on her feet not protected by calluses. The room shook and swayed. The lamp fell over, throwing light against the portraits of her mother, the famed ballerina
Giselle Chevalier, as they jittered against the cracking walls and
crashed to the floor.
“Get under the door jamb,” her mom yelled.
Katelyn was so disoriented that she couldn’t remember the
layout of the living room. For a moment she froze, foggy and
confused. Her knees buckled and her mother clung to her,
keeping her from collapsing completely.
The room was exploding around them. Katelyn fought hard
to make herself move, to wake up. Her lungs were burning.
The lights went out. Then her mother moaned, and let go of
Katelyn’s hand.
“Mom?”
Katelyn swayed, reaching out into the darkness for her
mother, stumbling forward, her toes collided with something
soft. Her mother’s face. Then something hard: a huge chunk of
plaster, on top of her mother’s head.
Katelyn dropped to the floor and threw herself over her
mother’s still form.
“Mom!”
Her mother groaned. “My darling, run,” she managed.
Then the floor opened up.
And Giselle Chevalier was gone.
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Two weeks later Katelyn was on a very small jet, swathed in
black. Black leotard top, black wrap sweater, jeans, and riding
boots that were a little too snug around the calves. She wasn’t
wearing makeup and the black washed her out. She looked how
she felt—drained and half-dead. It was better than shrieking
with grief—or having another nightmare. She counted off the
last three: falling to her death in the Cirque du Soleil; dancing
the Black Swan in Swan Lake as the roof of the theater crashed
down on top of her; and bursting into flames as she carried the
Olympic torch for the USA gymnastics team. Her best friend,
Kimi Brandao, told her it was survivor’s guilt and to get over
it—Giselle Chevalier would have been glad her daughter survived . . . even if she had not.
Swallowing back tears, Katelyn hunched her aching shoulders. She was trapped up against the window. Unfortunately,
the purple overnight bag containing her iPhone, which Kimi
had helped her load with music for the journey, was stuffed
into the overhead compartment three rows away.
She had figured she could get it once they were airborne,
but then the guy on the aisle had made the woman next to her
straddle him in an effort to escape the row and use the restroom. Katelyn had decided to stay put. She wasn’t about to
straddle anyone. So she sat and tried very hard to ignore the
man and woman sitting next to her.
“Jack Bronson is a genius,” the man was saying to the
woman, who grimaced politely at him as she clutched her
e-reader with her French manicured nails. Everything about
her body language screamed that she wanted him to shut up.
“I’m going to his seminar. Actually, it’s more like a retreat. For
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executives.”
The man puffed up a little. He had thin, mousy brown hair
and he was a bit on the jowly side. He didn’t look like he was
from Los Angeles. In L.A. executives worked out. A lot of them
even got plastic surgery. Image was more than half the battle.
“You need to embrace the wolf side of your nature.” He
flushed slightly, as if he just realized he’d said something risqué. “I mean, to achieve your goals.”
A pause. “What is the wolf side?” the woman asked in a
slight Southern accent, and Katelyn couldn’t tell if she was curious or just trying to humor a stranger.
“It’s the side that knows no fear, that sees what it wants
and goes after it.” He leaned toward her with a lecherous smile.
Blech.“Committing completely to the goal.”
Blech to the nth degree.
Maybe that was why Katelyn was stuck on the airplane. She
hadn’t fully committed to the goal of emancipation. Ultimately
her grandfather had refused to let her stay in Los Angeles—to
try and live her life on her own. She had just started her senior
year and would be seventeen in a few weeks, but that hadn’t
mattered to him. He said sixteen was too young. Blindsided
with grief, she had caved without protest, even though Kimi
had begged her to stay. Kimi’s mom, an attorney, had offered
to help her petition the court for emancipation—or at the very
least, spend senior year living with them.
Her grandfather had refused to consider it and Kimi had
been supremely frustrated when Katelyn had “gone robot.”
Hadn’t fought, hadn’t argued, had simply surrendered. Mordecai McBride had ordered her to pack and arranged a one way
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ticket from Los Angeles International Airport to Northwest
Arkansas Regional Airport, a teeny tiny airstrip located in the
bustling burb of Bentonville, home to maybe 25,000 people.
He lived about ninety minutes away from the airport, alone,
in the woods. His closest town was Wolf Springs, and at Wolf
Springs High, there were five hundred and forty-nine students.
Soon there would be five hundred and fifty, even.
“You’ll shrivel up there, you will,” Kimi had moaned. “You
haveto speak up! Tell him you are not not notcoming.”
But how could Katelyn speak up for herself when she spontaneously broke into tears over the smallest things?
In fourteen months she would be eighteen. Then her
grandfather couldn’t say anything if she moved back to Los
Angeles to resume her life, her reallife. And if she got accepted
to a California college? He wouldn’t dare stop her from going.
So maybe only eleven months. Some colleges started in August.
But if I have to go a year without serious training, I’ll never do
anything great. And I want to have a big, amazing life.
The thought flooded her with anger and even deeper
grief. It wasn’t enough that both her parents were dead. Her
dreams—the good ones—were dying, too.
Reflexively, she gripped the stuffed bear Kimi had shoved
into her hands at the security checkpoint at LAX. Soft and
white, the bear was dressed like a gymnast in a sparkly aqua
leotard and matching leg warmers. When she pressed the
embroidered heart on its chest, it said, “Kimi misses Katie” in
her friend’s voice. She’d tried plugging her ear buds into it so
she could listen on the plane without embarrassing herself, but
no luck.
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“And so all y’all are going into the forest, to show y’all’s
wolf side,” the woman was saying to the man. For a few blessed
seconds, Katelyn had managed to tune them out.
“Just outside Wolf Springs, at the old hot springs resort?
That’s where it’s happening,” the man affirmed. “It starts
tomorrow. Tonight . . . I’m free.”
Katelyn rolled her eyes and leaned her head against the
plexi-glass window. She didn’t want to watch the so-not-awolf making goo-goo eyes at a disinterested woman. Then she
remembered that she’d been dreaming that her dad was alive
on the night of the earthquake. He used to flutter his lashes at
her mom to tease-flirt with her. Her mother had always laughed
so hard. Now they were both gone.
And if I hadn’t taken that pill, none of this would be happening.
The tears welled up and flowed and she bit her lower lip to
keep herself from sobbing. She pushed the bear under her chin
and thought of Kimi.
“Oh, the black gums are startin’ to change,” someone said
in the row behind her. “Look at all the red leaves.”
“How pretty,” another voice replied. “Fall’s comin’ early.”
Katelyn shut her eyes. She didn’t want to see anything
pretty, least of all in Arkansas. Kimi had started calling it “Banjo
Land.”
“Football tomorrow night. Tigers have already got it sewed
up.”
“That’s right.”
She wondered if the Tigers were playing the Timber wolves.
Despite being small, Wolf Springs managed to field a football
team. She’d lived her entire life in Santa Monica. High school
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football wasn’t on most people’s radar. Certainly not hers.
Actually, there wasn’t much about high school that held
her interest. Her mind had been on other things—gymnastics,
dance. The last thing she and her mother had done together was
attend a Cirque du Soleil performance—Alegría. Katelyn had
been enchanted, telling her mom that she could combine her
dance and gymnastics skills if she joined a troupe like Cirque
du Soleil—or even Cirque itself.
“Maybe,” her mom had replied before changing the
subject.
Katelyn had never had a chance to ask her if “maybe”
meant she thought it was a bad idea. Or if she thought Katelyn
wouldn’t make it. Or if, as Kimi insisted, her mom couldn’t
bear the idea of Katelyn leaving home to do anything at all.
During her career as a reigning prima ballerina, Giselle
Chevalier had been called “the Iron Butterfly” because both
her will and her stamina were unmatched. But after Sean, Katelyn’s dad, had been murdered, her mother had become fragile
and frightened. Katelyn had tried to make her mom’s life as
easy as possible, teaching the little kids’ classes at the studio,
making dinner . . . and trying to convince herself she was okay
with becoming a classical ballet dancer, too. Katelyn thought
the ballet world was old-fashioned and confining, but she’d
never told Giselle that. It had been hard enough to get her mom
to let her take gymnastics classes.
“What if you hurt yourself?” Giselle had asked her over
and over. “What would happen to your dance career?”
Katelyn didn’t know how to respond. She only knew gymnastics did something for her that ballet didn’t. She’d been
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dreading the day she would have to “declare your major,” as
Kimi used to put it. Just saywhat she wanted to do with her life.
Giselle had told Katelyn professional dancers had no time for
college. But she and Kimi spent hours pouring over course catalogs. Lots of colleges and universities had dance departments.
“Those are not for realdancers,” her mother had retorted.
“Don’t you care about your career?”
Katelyn didn’t know. She did know that she cared about
her mom. And she’d cared about being friends with Kimi, who
had her own dreams. And yes, maybe Alec, who had agreed to
help her learn the flying trapeze at their gym. To be her catcher
as she let go and flew. No Alec for you, she thought. So there was
no point to rehearsing inviting him to prom anymore, though
it was hard to stop. It had become a habit.
Hey, so, Tarzan, how’d you like to catch me on the dance floor?
A week before the earthquake, Katelyn had started senior
year at “Samohi”—Santa Monica High School. Tons of stars
and film people had gone there; Zac Efron had filmed a movie
there. Kids there dreamed big, and “big” could really happen.
Kimi had no doubt that they would catch the wave of magical lives. “Cuz we’ve got the mojo,” Kimi would crow, as they
strolled down the street in their sparkly flip-flops and shades.
On the plane, sighing, Katelyn tried to smile at the memories, but her heart filled with fresh sorrow. Kimi would need
someone new to hang out with, go shopping for her prom
dress with, all that. Katelyn wanted that for her, even though
the thought of being replaced made her freefall inside. Kimi
was her last link to home, and family.
Turbulence stuttered the plane and she sucked in her
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breath. Clinging to the armrests, she struggled not to see the
ground thousands of feet below her. Fall here, and no net on
earth could save her. The pilot announced their descent; she
was so afraid she couldn’t keep her eyes open. She wanted to
scream. Her heart thundered.
When the tires finally bumped on the tarmac, she opened
her eyes and stared out at . . . very little. A tiny airport. Miniscule. Beyond, an open field. Banjo Land.
There had been an equipment failure of their aircraft, and
their departure from LAX had been delayed by three hours.
Instead of arriving around two-thirty, it was five-thirty, and
shadows were beginning to lengthen. Back home, the sun
would still be blazing against the brilliant blue Pacific Ocean
for hours and hours.
Everyone got up. The Wolf Man was still going on about his
retreat and the E-book lady was nodding. Inching along, Katelyn reached up toward the compartment where she’d stowed
her bag. Since she was only five-three, it was a stretch. A tall guy
wearing a University of Arkansas T-shirt hoisted it down to her
and she thanked him. He gave her a look—her face was probably swollen from crying—and she ducked her head.
She dug into the bag and found her iPhone. She turned it
on. A text had come in from Kimi at the airport: CM WHEN
U LAND. CM meant “call me.” She flipped over to her phone
function. No Service. She tried to text anyway. It wouldn’t go
through.
“Are you kidding me?” she murmured.
Then she walked down a metal gangway pushed up to the
airplane door. The air was boiling hot and muggy, and her
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ponytail drooped like a wet paintbrush. She followed the other
passengers across the tarmac, eventually making her way into
the terminal, and looked around for her grandfather. But no
familiar face greeted her.
He knew she was coming today, right? Did he realize that
her flight hadn’t been canceled, only been delayed?
She went with the others to the baggage claim. There was
one carrousel. Just one. A dozen black bags circled like crows,
decorated with bows and colorful pieces of duct tape so their
owners could tell them apart. A woman in a Tinker Bell T-shirt
grabbed a suitcase tagged with a smiling Mickey Mouse. Most
of these people had likely gone to California on vacation.
They’d gone to see the ocean, Hollywood, and the theme parks.
Still no grandfather.
So where was he? Had he given up and gone back to the
mountains?
I don’t want to be here.
Her vision blurred as she stood holding her purple overnight bag. Reflexively she clutched the bear, damp and stained
dark with fresh tears.
Then she saw the Wolf Man with his prey, the polite Southern lady with the e-reader. They were standing strangely close
together while they scanned the conveyer belt for their stuff,
and the woman was laughing at something he was saying. Were
they hooking up? Katelyn was incredulous.
Her father’s weathered leather suitcase appeared on the
carrousel. The light caught the little brass rectangle with his
initials—SKM—Sean Kevin McBride. She adjusted her
overnight bag on her shoulder and tucked the bear under her
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arm, preparing to make her move. When the suitcase circled
within reach she grabbed it, grunting as she heaved with all her
strength to swing it free.
Once she had it clear, she turned around, and jerked, hard.
She hadn’t seen him in almost five years, but Mordecai
McBride hadn’t changed at all. He was over six feet tall with
pale green eyes, close cut gray hair, and deep frown lines that
made his mouth sag. Inside a leather jacket, his shoulders
looked broad and a blue chambray shirt stretched across a barrel chest. He was sixty, but he didn’t look it.
Her throat tightened. She was so mad at him. He was her
only living relative—or at least, the only one she knew—and he
hadn’t even come to her mother’s funeral.
Their eyes met. Something began to show in his face; then
it hardened and became expressionless. He nodded and took
the suitcase from her hand, swinging it easily from two fingers
as he turned and walked away.
She hurried to keep up with him as he strode through the
crowd. Around her she could see relatives and friends greeting
each other, smiling and hugging. Her grandfather hadn’t even
spoken to her. She clutched the bear even tighter.
The McBride airport limo service was a battered old truck.
Parts of it were still red, but the elements had worn the paint
away, revealing sections of gunmetal gray and rust. There
wasn’t room in the cab for her large suitcase, so her grandfather heaved it into the truck bed and began covering it with a
tarp. Katelyn climbed into the passenger seat and, pressing the
bear against her chest, arranged the overnight bag on her lap
and then tried to text Kimi again.
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No Service.
When her grandfather got behind the wheel, he glanced at
the bear, then at her. He probably thought she was too old to
have stuffed animals, but she could care less what he thought.
He started the engine. Then he sat there for a moment. She
tensed, waiting.
“Things go okay with your mama’s . . . arrangements?”
They were the first words he had spoken to her, and they
stunned her. She wanted him to ask her how she was, how the
flight had been, tell her what the weather had been like today.
Something to ease them both into a conversation. But she also
wanted him to care about her mother, and acknowledge the
fact that he hadn’t come to her funeral.
“Yes. She was buried six days ago,” she managed to reply.
Then, without thinking, she added, “You should have been
there.”
There was a beat. He backed out of the parking space and
turned on the windshield wipers as drizzle dotted the glass.
Clouds rushed across the darkening sky. Treetops bent over
the truck, red painting the leaves like flames.
“Couldn’t get away.”
“You’re retired,” she accused before she could stop herself.
He glanced at her, then back to the road. “Just ‘cuz I’m
retired doesn’t mean I don’t have responsibilities.”
It hurt. But I’m your responsibility, she wanted to say.
He turned his head again. “I had to get things ready for
you.”
Things? What things? Was he implying that she was inconveniencing him? If he hadn’t wanted her to come, she could
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have stayed in L.A. If he didn’t care about her, why had he
made her come live with him? Just to make her life miserable?
They drove past a huge warehouse, brown, weedy fields,
and some apartments and houses that didn’t look much different from sections of L.A. She spotted a fast food place called
Las Fajitas and thought about asking him to stop. She hadn’t
been able to eat anything on the plane, and she was lightheaded with hunger, if not actually hungry. But to make the
request, she would have to speak to him again, and she wasn’t
sure she could force herself to do it. Howwas she going to make
it through an entire school year?
She turned back to look at him. His jaw was clenched and
his hands gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles
looked like they were going to pop through the skin.
He said tersely, “I want to be home before dark.”
Why? She wanted to ask him. What does it matter?Maybe
the headlights on his old truck didn’t work.
She looked back through the passenger side window and
caught a flash of lightning; then the sky opened up and rain
poured down. The sky shrank into a thick layer of gray clouds,
and the truck scuttled beneath it like an insect, scooting past
open fields bordered by batches of leafy trees and ferns. She
saw a broken-down mobile home; several huge piles of split
logs; and a run- down shack with a hand-lettered sign in the
window that read LIQUOR BAIT. Pools of water sparkled
with lightning.
She debated about asking him if it would be all right if she
listened to her music. But since they weren’t speaking it didn’t
seem to matter. So she popped in her ear buds and was soon
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listening to an old Lady Gaga song Kimi had insisted on adding to her mix. It was too happy and catchy, but she let it play
anyway.
They reached a metal bridge. Churning water rushed
beneath it, as gray as the clouds. A river. She remembered that
Arkansas was land-locked and for a moment a deep panic shuddered through her, imagining herself on a map of the United
States, trapped inside the box of the state perimeter. She had
always lived near the ocean and she had always found comfort
staring out to sea, meditating on her future. Many times her
thoughts would turn to her father’s murder. Gunned down,
no witnesses, nothing from forensics. The homicide of Sean
McBride was an ice-cold case, but he had worked for the District Attorney’s office, and everybody took his death personally.
The first thing she saw on the other side of the bridge after
they crossed it was a white wooden sign with DANGER written on it in black letters. There was something else she couldn’t
make out—the writing was cracked, peeling with age. A red
splotch in the lower right corner might have been intended to
look like a bear paw. It was hard to tell in the rain.
She pulled out one of her ear buds and turned to her grandfather. She wanted to know if there were any bears in the area.
But before she could ask, a strange, low moan made her jump.
It came from outside the truck—or so she guessed—and
maybe it was a cow; only it wasn’t so much a moan as an echo
of a moan. Or maybe a howl. It sounded . . . sad. For a weird
moment she thought maybe she’d made the sound herself.
“What was that?” she asked. “A bear?”
“I didn’t hear anything.”
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The moan sounded again, low and sad and maybe desperate. Like how I feel.
“There,” she said. “You must have heard that. What is it?”
The windshield wipers kept time in the silence. Finally he
said, “The wind.”
There were no more moans, but just the same, Katelyn was
unnerved by her grandfather’s response. There was no way
that was just the wind. She put her ear buds back in and turned
to stare out the window again.
Waving in the storm, the trees were pretty, their scarlet
branches flickering like flames. Raindrops on the windshield
acted like magnifying glasses, creating dollops of color. As they
drove the trees began to press in thick and close on either side
of the road, branches arching overhead. The road was steep,
and her head began to bob as she dozed.
Suddenly she felt eyes on her. She shifted in her seat to find
her grandfather staring straight at her. His mouth was moving.
She took out her left ear bud. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I can’t
understand you.”
He frowned. “That’s okay. I don’t understand you, either.”
She heard his irritation in how he’d changed the wording
of what she’d said. Maybe he was finally ready to talk. She took
out the other ear bud, but let the music keep playing.
“Me? What’s there to understand?”
“Miz Brandao said you wanted me to find a gym for you.”
“And?” she asked quickly, brightening at the ray of hope.
“Did you find one?”
“There’s a Y. You’d have to drive.”
She didn’t know why driving would be a problem. She was
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from southern California. Everyone drove everywhere.
“And they have gymnastics?” she asked carefully, trying to
figure out what he was really trying to say.
He nodded slowly. “Mostly for little kids. Your mama said
that you’d given up ballet for the monkey bars.”
Her stomach contracted, as if he had punched her in the
gut. When had he spoken to her mother? She had never mentioned it. And was he making fun of her? Monkey bars?Was he
trying to insult her? And was that what her mother had really
thought?
“I still take ballet classes,” she said. “Didn’t Ms. Brandao
also mention I’ll need a dance studio to go to?”
“Found a yoga place,” he said. “And the Y’s got tai-chi.”
Katelyn suddenly realized he had no idea what her life in
California was like. Had been like. Ballet was not yoga or tai
chi. What hadshe been thinking, agreeing to come live with this
old man and his beat-up truck and his cabin? Was she insane?
Kimi was right. She shouldn’t have caved so fast. She should
have made some demands, set some conditions.
“Look,” she said, “I know this isn’t the big city. I-I know. . .”
But what did she know? This man was a stranger. He didn’t
know what she was like. How could he? He’d never come to
visit. Never called except at Christmas, and now her mother
was deadand he hadn’t even bothered to fly out for her funeral.
“I need ballet,” she said fiercely. “And gymnastics, but not
for little kids. I’m in training for-for a life as a performer. And if
I don’t have a place to work out, I might as well give up now.”
He just looked at her. She could nearly hear his thoughts:
Okay. Give up.
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She stared back at him, speechless. She wanted to cry or to
scream or to throw herself from the car. But of course none of
those things would prove to anyone that she was old enough to
take care of herself.
She remembered the last time they had come to visit her
grandfather, how hard she giggled at thinking of her dad growing up in the middle of nowhere. He had still been alive and it
had been their last family trip.
Hot tears stung her eyes as lightning flashed overhead,
illuminating the gloom of the woods. She clenched her hands,
reliving how hard it had been after her dad had died. She’d gotten through because she had her mom and they’d held each
other as they cried and kept each other strong each time the
police told them there was nothing new.
“You’re a senior this year, right?”
Without looking back at him, Katelyn brushed away her
tears. “Yeah. School started six weeks ago. I’m going to miss
everything. Prom. Graduation. Everything.”
“We’ve got those things here.”
Was he actually trying to make her feel better?
“It’s not the same,” she said, stricken.
“Sure it is. I figure high school, graduating, all that, are the
same anywhere you go. Lots of kids scared of their own shadows struggling to survive. It’s just like the mountains. Just like
life.”
She had forgotten that side of him. Blunt and practical, a
hunter who lived like Daniel Boone. It was hard to believe that
for years he’d been a philosophy professor. Her dad had never
had much use for philosophy and said philosophers were all
2 0
people with too much time on their hands if they could waste
it debating the existence of good and evil or the meaning of life.
Sean McBride had faced good and evil every day. He had
spent his life prosecuting criminals until the day one of them
killed him. She didn’t care what anyone said, evil was real; she
knew what it could do.
Did her grandfather really know how scared she was?
“Lots of . . . professional kids in L.A. don’t even go to
school,” she said. “They don’t have time. Because they have to
focus.”
He went silent again. Then he said slowly, “That’s the most
idiotic thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life.”
“No, it’s not.” She could hear the desperation in her voice.
She felt like she was losing everything. It had been a mistake to
come. “It’s the life of an artist. Mom—”
“—got married,” he interjected. “To a man with a real job.
How long do ballerinas last? Mid-thirties?”
“She opened the dance studio,” Katelyn shot back.
“And thatwas a big success.” He blinked and pulled in his
chin, as if he surprised himself, and turned his attention back
to the road.
She frowned. What did he mean by that? The studio had
done okay. Or so her mom had always told her. Did her grandfather know otherwise?
“Mom loved being a dancer,” she insisted.
“It’s from living out there in La-La Land,” he went on, as if
he hadn’t heard what she’d said. “Kids thinking they’re going
to become movie stars. Like winning the lottery. The average
person has a better chance of being struck by lightning—”
2 1
“I’m fromL.A.” Her voice was icy. “And I have friends who
are making it.” That wasn’t exactly true, but he didn’t need to
know that. “Kids dobecome movie stars.”
“One in a million, and the rest park cars. You need some
normalcy.” He frowned, sighed, and said again, “normalcy.”
She realized she’d miscalculated how to approach him.
Rather than impress upon him how vital it was for her to stick
to her game plan, she had convinced him that she needed to
give it up. “You have to let me go home,” she begged.
Thunder rumbled, and he stopped the truck abruptly. The
rain hit the windshield like pellets. The tinny music from her
ear buds squawked merrily away.
“Katelyn,” he said, “you arehome.”
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of
the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2011 by Nancy Holder and Debbie Viguié
Jacket photograph © 2011 by Michelle Monique Photography
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random
House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark
of Random House, Inc.
Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/teens
Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at
www.randomhouse.com/teachers
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data[tk]
The text of this book is set in [tk]-point [tk].
Book design by Angela Carlino
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment
and celebrates the right to read.
ATTENTION READER:
THIS IS AN UNCORRECTED ADVANCE EXCERPT
NANCYHOLDER has published more than
seventy-eight books and more than two hundred
short stories. She has received four Bram Stoker
awards for her supernatural fiction and is the
coauthor of the New York Timesbestselling Wicked
series. She lives in San Diego with her daughter.
You can visit her at NancyHolder.com.
DE B B I E VI G U Ié is the coauthor of the
New York Timesbestselling Wicked series and
several other books, including the Once Upon
a Time novels Violet Eyesand Midnight Pearls.
She lives in Florida with her husband. You can
visit her at DebbieViguie.com.
Meet the Authors
The New York Timesbestselling authors of the Wicked series
NANCYHOLDER & DEBBI E VI GUI É
Chapter Sample
From the bestselling authors
of the Wicked series
Welcome to
Wolf SpringS.
Who do you run with?
Wolf Springs is a town of secrets, grudges, broken
families, and forced alliances. And Katelyn is the new
girl—who’s about to start believing in werewolves.
read & Discuss randomBuzzers.com
Keep Reading for a Sneak Peek at Unleashed . . .
Jacket photograph © 2011 Michelle Monique Photography
1
1
i can fly.
Katelyn Claire McBride was the girl on the flying trapeze.
Her sun-streaked, blond hair streamed behind her as she
soared above the crowd on the Mexican cloud swing. Thick
stage makeup concealed her freckles, scarlet smudging her
mouth, which she had always thought was too cupid-cutesy.
Smoky ash-gray kohl ringed her light blue eyes. The soaring
melody of “Alegría” moved through her like blood. Music gave
her life. Movement gave her a soul.
She had made it. After years of sweat, blisters, pulled muscles, and sprains, she was finally performing in the Cirque du
2
Soleil. Far below, in the massive audience, her mother looked
on with her dad, their fingers entwined. Their faces shone with
pride and maybe just a few hundred watts of suppressed parental fear.
Like all performers, Katelyn was a chameleon. Away from
the spotlight, she was a tanned California girl who preferred
Indian-print camisoles, jeweled flip-flops, and big sunglasses
decorated with flowers. But now she looked like a dramatic
flamenco dancer . . . and much older than sixteen. She wore a
black beaded leotard trimmed with stiff silver lace. A black lace
choker encircled her neck, and in the center, a large red stone
carved to look like a rose nestled in silver filigree.
The Mexican cloud swing was Katelyn’s specialty; and
she pumped her legs back and forth as she sat in the V created
by the two long pieces of white braided cotton fibers. A kind
of crazy mania worked its way through her as she breathed
deeply, preparing herself for her last trick—her death-defying
escape from gravity.
I’m the only one here who can fly!
She swung higher, then grabbed the rope dangling from
the complicated overhead rigging and with practiced, circular
motions of her foot she looped it around her right ankle. The
familiar texture of the cotton rubbed against the toughened
skin. She looked delicate, but like all dancers and gymnasts,
she was made of muscle.
Cool air expanded her lungs as she leaped, arching like a
swimmer and grabbing onto the V as it went taut. Gracefully
she held onto the pose as applause washed over her. Scarlet
rose petals showered her from overhead, high in the rigging,
and at the crescendo, she defiantly let go. Thrusting back her
3
arms, she raised her chin, ignoring the forbidden camera
flashes. Fearless. Of course she was.
Yet gasps changed to screams as she plummeted down,
down, headfirst, air rushing past. In that split-second, her joy
flashed into panic.
The net’s gone!
The ground rushed up and she flailed wildly.
I’m going to die!
Then the floor split open jagged and deep. From the fissure, flames shot up, straight at her. The heat slapped her face
as she kept falling, straight into hell—
“Katie, Katie, oh, my God, wake up,” her mother shouted
into her ear.
Katelyn’s eyes flew open and just as quickly squeezed shut.
Coughing, she opened them again. Half-smothered in smoke,
she was lying on the sofa in the TV room, and her right arm was
slung over her mom’s wiry shoulder. The Art Deco floor lamp
behind the sofa tumbled light over the rolling layers of smoke.
The feet of the sofa rattled like a machine gun against the hardwood floor; the plaster ceiling was breaking off in chunks. Her
mom was wearing her old Japanese bathrobe—nothing else.
“Earthquake,” Katelyn slurred. Her gymnastics coach had
given her something to take for the swelling and pain after she
had twisted her ankle in practice and it had knocked her out.
“Alors, vite!” Her mom was losing it, screaming at her in
French to hurry. She yanked on Katelyn’s arm, then draped her
across her back like a firefighter, and began to straighten her
legs. Katelyn slid off, grabbing her mother’s wrist, trying to fan
the smoke away as she doubled over, coughing.
Clinging to each other, the two staggered through the acrid
4
haze. Katelyn knew she was holding her mother back. She was
slow—still not entirely awake because of the painkiller—and
incredibly dizzy. She stepped on something hot searing her
instep, one of the few places on her feet not protected by calluses. The room shook and swayed. The lamp fell over, throwing light against the portraits of her mother, the famed ballerina
Giselle Chevalier, as they jittered against the cracking walls and
crashed to the floor.
“Get under the door jamb,” her mom yelled.
Katelyn was so disoriented that she couldn’t remember the
layout of the living room. For a moment she froze, foggy and
confused. Her knees buckled and her mother clung to her,
keeping her from collapsing completely.
The room was exploding around them. Katelyn fought hard
to make herself move, to wake up. Her lungs were burning.
The lights went out. Then her mother moaned, and let go of
Katelyn’s hand.
“Mom?”
Katelyn swayed, reaching out into the darkness for her
mother, stumbling forward, her toes collided with something
soft. Her mother’s face. Then something hard: a huge chunk of
plaster, on top of her mother’s head.
Katelyn dropped to the floor and threw herself over her
mother’s still form.
“Mom!”
Her mother groaned. “My darling, run,” she managed.
Then the floor opened up.
And Giselle Chevalier was gone.
5
Two weeks later Katelyn was on a very small jet, swathed in
black. Black leotard top, black wrap sweater, jeans, and riding
boots that were a little too snug around the calves. She wasn’t
wearing makeup and the black washed her out. She looked how
she felt—drained and half-dead. It was better than shrieking
with grief—or having another nightmare. She counted off the
last three: falling to her death in the Cirque du Soleil; dancing
the Black Swan in Swan Lake as the roof of the theater crashed
down on top of her; and bursting into flames as she carried the
Olympic torch for the USA gymnastics team. Her best friend,
Kimi Brandao, told her it was survivor’s guilt and to get over
it—Giselle Chevalier would have been glad her daughter survived . . . even if she had not.
Swallowing back tears, Katelyn hunched her aching shoulders. She was trapped up against the window. Unfortunately,
the purple overnight bag containing her iPhone, which Kimi
had helped her load with music for the journey, was stuffed
into the overhead compartment three rows away.
She had figured she could get it once they were airborne,
but then the guy on the aisle had made the woman next to her
straddle him in an effort to escape the row and use the restroom. Katelyn had decided to stay put. She wasn’t about to
straddle anyone. So she sat and tried very hard to ignore the
man and woman sitting next to her.
“Jack Bronson is a genius,” the man was saying to the
woman, who grimaced politely at him as she clutched her
e-reader with her French manicured nails. Everything about
her body language screamed that she wanted him to shut up.
“I’m going to his seminar. Actually, it’s more like a retreat. For
6
executives.”
The man puffed up a little. He had thin, mousy brown hair
and he was a bit on the jowly side. He didn’t look like he was
from Los Angeles. In L.A. executives worked out. A lot of them
even got plastic surgery. Image was more than half the battle.
“You need to embrace the wolf side of your nature.” He
flushed slightly, as if he just realized he’d said something risqué. “I mean, to achieve your goals.”
A pause. “What is the wolf side?” the woman asked in a
slight Southern accent, and Katelyn couldn’t tell if she was curious or just trying to humor a stranger.
“It’s the side that knows no fear, that sees what it wants
and goes after it.” He leaned toward her with a lecherous smile.
Blech.“Committing completely to the goal.”
Blech to the nth degree.
Maybe that was why Katelyn was stuck on the airplane. She
hadn’t fully committed to the goal of emancipation. Ultimately
her grandfather had refused to let her stay in Los Angeles—to
try and live her life on her own. She had just started her senior
year and would be seventeen in a few weeks, but that hadn’t
mattered to him. He said sixteen was too young. Blindsided
with grief, she had caved without protest, even though Kimi
had begged her to stay. Kimi’s mom, an attorney, had offered
to help her petition the court for emancipation—or at the very
least, spend senior year living with them.
Her grandfather had refused to consider it and Kimi had
been supremely frustrated when Katelyn had “gone robot.”
Hadn’t fought, hadn’t argued, had simply surrendered. Mordecai McBride had ordered her to pack and arranged a one way
7
ticket from Los Angeles International Airport to Northwest
Arkansas Regional Airport, a teeny tiny airstrip located in the
bustling burb of Bentonville, home to maybe 25,000 people.
He lived about ninety minutes away from the airport, alone,
in the woods. His closest town was Wolf Springs, and at Wolf
Springs High, there were five hundred and forty-nine students.
Soon there would be five hundred and fifty, even.
“You’ll shrivel up there, you will,” Kimi had moaned. “You
haveto speak up! Tell him you are not not notcoming.”
But how could Katelyn speak up for herself when she spontaneously broke into tears over the smallest things?
In fourteen months she would be eighteen. Then her
grandfather couldn’t say anything if she moved back to Los
Angeles to resume her life, her reallife. And if she got accepted
to a California college? He wouldn’t dare stop her from going.
So maybe only eleven months. Some colleges started in August.
But if I have to go a year without serious training, I’ll never do
anything great. And I want to have a big, amazing life.
The thought flooded her with anger and even deeper
grief. It wasn’t enough that both her parents were dead. Her
dreams—the good ones—were dying, too.
Reflexively, she gripped the stuffed bear Kimi had shoved
into her hands at the security checkpoint at LAX. Soft and
white, the bear was dressed like a gymnast in a sparkly aqua
leotard and matching leg warmers. When she pressed the
embroidered heart on its chest, it said, “Kimi misses Katie” in
her friend’s voice. She’d tried plugging her ear buds into it so
she could listen on the plane without embarrassing herself, but
no luck.
8
“And so all y’all are going into the forest, to show y’all’s
wolf side,” the woman was saying to the man. For a few blessed
seconds, Katelyn had managed to tune them out.
“Just outside Wolf Springs, at the old hot springs resort?
That’s where it’s happening,” the man affirmed. “It starts
tomorrow. Tonight . . . I’m free.”
Katelyn rolled her eyes and leaned her head against the
plexi-glass window. She didn’t want to watch the so-not-awolf making goo-goo eyes at a disinterested woman. Then she
remembered that she’d been dreaming that her dad was alive
on the night of the earthquake. He used to flutter his lashes at
her mom to tease-flirt with her. Her mother had always laughed
so hard. Now they were both gone.
And if I hadn’t taken that pill, none of this would be happening.
The tears welled up and flowed and she bit her lower lip to
keep herself from sobbing. She pushed the bear under her chin
and thought of Kimi.
“Oh, the black gums are startin’ to change,” someone said
in the row behind her. “Look at all the red leaves.”
“How pretty,” another voice replied. “Fall’s comin’ early.”
Katelyn shut her eyes. She didn’t want to see anything
pretty, least of all in Arkansas. Kimi had started calling it “Banjo
Land.”
“Football tomorrow night. Tigers have already got it sewed
up.”
“That’s right.”
She wondered if the Tigers were playing the Timber wolves.
Despite being small, Wolf Springs managed to field a football
team. She’d lived her entire life in Santa Monica. High school
9
football wasn’t on most people’s radar. Certainly not hers.
Actually, there wasn’t much about high school that held
her interest. Her mind had been on other things—gymnastics,
dance. The last thing she and her mother had done together was
attend a Cirque du Soleil performance—Alegría. Katelyn had
been enchanted, telling her mom that she could combine her
dance and gymnastics skills if she joined a troupe like Cirque
du Soleil—or even Cirque itself.
“Maybe,” her mom had replied before changing the
subject.
Katelyn had never had a chance to ask her if “maybe”
meant she thought it was a bad idea. Or if she thought Katelyn
wouldn’t make it. Or if, as Kimi insisted, her mom couldn’t
bear the idea of Katelyn leaving home to do anything at all.
During her career as a reigning prima ballerina, Giselle
Chevalier had been called “the Iron Butterfly” because both
her will and her stamina were unmatched. But after Sean, Katelyn’s dad, had been murdered, her mother had become fragile
and frightened. Katelyn had tried to make her mom’s life as
easy as possible, teaching the little kids’ classes at the studio,
making dinner . . . and trying to convince herself she was okay
with becoming a classical ballet dancer, too. Katelyn thought
the ballet world was old-fashioned and confining, but she’d
never told Giselle that. It had been hard enough to get her mom
to let her take gymnastics classes.
“What if you hurt yourself?” Giselle had asked her over
and over. “What would happen to your dance career?”
Katelyn didn’t know how to respond. She only knew gymnastics did something for her that ballet didn’t. She’d been
1 0
dreading the day she would have to “declare your major,” as
Kimi used to put it. Just saywhat she wanted to do with her life.
Giselle had told Katelyn professional dancers had no time for
college. But she and Kimi spent hours pouring over course catalogs. Lots of colleges and universities had dance departments.
“Those are not for realdancers,” her mother had retorted.
“Don’t you care about your career?”
Katelyn didn’t know. She did know that she cared about
her mom. And she’d cared about being friends with Kimi, who
had her own dreams. And yes, maybe Alec, who had agreed to
help her learn the flying trapeze at their gym. To be her catcher
as she let go and flew. No Alec for you, she thought. So there was
no point to rehearsing inviting him to prom anymore, though
it was hard to stop. It had become a habit.
Hey, so, Tarzan, how’d you like to catch me on the dance floor?
A week before the earthquake, Katelyn had started senior
year at “Samohi”—Santa Monica High School. Tons of stars
and film people had gone there; Zac Efron had filmed a movie
there. Kids there dreamed big, and “big” could really happen.
Kimi had no doubt that they would catch the wave of magical lives. “Cuz we’ve got the mojo,” Kimi would crow, as they
strolled down the street in their sparkly flip-flops and shades.
On the plane, sighing, Katelyn tried to smile at the memories, but her heart filled with fresh sorrow. Kimi would need
someone new to hang out with, go shopping for her prom
dress with, all that. Katelyn wanted that for her, even though
the thought of being replaced made her freefall inside. Kimi
was her last link to home, and family.
Turbulence stuttered the plane and she sucked in her
1 1
breath. Clinging to the armrests, she struggled not to see the
ground thousands of feet below her. Fall here, and no net on
earth could save her. The pilot announced their descent; she
was so afraid she couldn’t keep her eyes open. She wanted to
scream. Her heart thundered.
When the tires finally bumped on the tarmac, she opened
her eyes and stared out at . . . very little. A tiny airport. Miniscule. Beyond, an open field. Banjo Land.
There had been an equipment failure of their aircraft, and
their departure from LAX had been delayed by three hours.
Instead of arriving around two-thirty, it was five-thirty, and
shadows were beginning to lengthen. Back home, the sun
would still be blazing against the brilliant blue Pacific Ocean
for hours and hours.
Everyone got up. The Wolf Man was still going on about his
retreat and the E-book lady was nodding. Inching along, Katelyn reached up toward the compartment where she’d stowed
her bag. Since she was only five-three, it was a stretch. A tall guy
wearing a University of Arkansas T-shirt hoisted it down to her
and she thanked him. He gave her a look—her face was probably swollen from crying—and she ducked her head.
She dug into the bag and found her iPhone. She turned it
on. A text had come in from Kimi at the airport: CM WHEN
U LAND. CM meant “call me.” She flipped over to her phone
function. No Service. She tried to text anyway. It wouldn’t go
through.
“Are you kidding me?” she murmured.
Then she walked down a metal gangway pushed up to the
airplane door. The air was boiling hot and muggy, and her
1 2
ponytail drooped like a wet paintbrush. She followed the other
passengers across the tarmac, eventually making her way into
the terminal, and looked around for her grandfather. But no
familiar face greeted her.
He knew she was coming today, right? Did he realize that
her flight hadn’t been canceled, only been delayed?
She went with the others to the baggage claim. There was
one carrousel. Just one. A dozen black bags circled like crows,
decorated with bows and colorful pieces of duct tape so their
owners could tell them apart. A woman in a Tinker Bell T-shirt
grabbed a suitcase tagged with a smiling Mickey Mouse. Most
of these people had likely gone to California on vacation.
They’d gone to see the ocean, Hollywood, and the theme parks.
Still no grandfather.
So where was he? Had he given up and gone back to the
mountains?
I don’t want to be here.
Her vision blurred as she stood holding her purple overnight bag. Reflexively she clutched the bear, damp and stained
dark with fresh tears.
Then she saw the Wolf Man with his prey, the polite Southern lady with the e-reader. They were standing strangely close
together while they scanned the conveyer belt for their stuff,
and the woman was laughing at something he was saying. Were
they hooking up? Katelyn was incredulous.
Her father’s weathered leather suitcase appeared on the
carrousel. The light caught the little brass rectangle with his
initials—SKM—Sean Kevin McBride. She adjusted her
overnight bag on her shoulder and tucked the bear under her
1 3
arm, preparing to make her move. When the suitcase circled
within reach she grabbed it, grunting as she heaved with all her
strength to swing it free.
Once she had it clear, she turned around, and jerked, hard.
She hadn’t seen him in almost five years, but Mordecai
McBride hadn’t changed at all. He was over six feet tall with
pale green eyes, close cut gray hair, and deep frown lines that
made his mouth sag. Inside a leather jacket, his shoulders
looked broad and a blue chambray shirt stretched across a barrel chest. He was sixty, but he didn’t look it.
Her throat tightened. She was so mad at him. He was her
only living relative—or at least, the only one she knew—and he
hadn’t even come to her mother’s funeral.
Their eyes met. Something began to show in his face; then
it hardened and became expressionless. He nodded and took
the suitcase from her hand, swinging it easily from two fingers
as he turned and walked away.
She hurried to keep up with him as he strode through the
crowd. Around her she could see relatives and friends greeting
each other, smiling and hugging. Her grandfather hadn’t even
spoken to her. She clutched the bear even tighter.
The McBride airport limo service was a battered old truck.
Parts of it were still red, but the elements had worn the paint
away, revealing sections of gunmetal gray and rust. There
wasn’t room in the cab for her large suitcase, so her grandfather heaved it into the truck bed and began covering it with a
tarp. Katelyn climbed into the passenger seat and, pressing the
bear against her chest, arranged the overnight bag on her lap
and then tried to text Kimi again.
1 4
No Service.
When her grandfather got behind the wheel, he glanced at
the bear, then at her. He probably thought she was too old to
have stuffed animals, but she could care less what he thought.
He started the engine. Then he sat there for a moment. She
tensed, waiting.
“Things go okay with your mama’s . . . arrangements?”
They were the first words he had spoken to her, and they
stunned her. She wanted him to ask her how she was, how the
flight had been, tell her what the weather had been like today.
Something to ease them both into a conversation. But she also
wanted him to care about her mother, and acknowledge the
fact that he hadn’t come to her funeral.
“Yes. She was buried six days ago,” she managed to reply.
Then, without thinking, she added, “You should have been
there.”
There was a beat. He backed out of the parking space and
turned on the windshield wipers as drizzle dotted the glass.
Clouds rushed across the darkening sky. Treetops bent over
the truck, red painting the leaves like flames.
“Couldn’t get away.”
“You’re retired,” she accused before she could stop herself.
He glanced at her, then back to the road. “Just ‘cuz I’m
retired doesn’t mean I don’t have responsibilities.”
It hurt. But I’m your responsibility, she wanted to say.
He turned his head again. “I had to get things ready for
you.”
Things? What things? Was he implying that she was inconveniencing him? If he hadn’t wanted her to come, she could
1 5
have stayed in L.A. If he didn’t care about her, why had he
made her come live with him? Just to make her life miserable?
They drove past a huge warehouse, brown, weedy fields,
and some apartments and houses that didn’t look much different from sections of L.A. She spotted a fast food place called
Las Fajitas and thought about asking him to stop. She hadn’t
been able to eat anything on the plane, and she was lightheaded with hunger, if not actually hungry. But to make the
request, she would have to speak to him again, and she wasn’t
sure she could force herself to do it. Howwas she going to make
it through an entire school year?
She turned back to look at him. His jaw was clenched and
his hands gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles
looked like they were going to pop through the skin.
He said tersely, “I want to be home before dark.”
Why? She wanted to ask him. What does it matter?Maybe
the headlights on his old truck didn’t work.
She looked back through the passenger side window and
caught a flash of lightning; then the sky opened up and rain
poured down. The sky shrank into a thick layer of gray clouds,
and the truck scuttled beneath it like an insect, scooting past
open fields bordered by batches of leafy trees and ferns. She
saw a broken-down mobile home; several huge piles of split
logs; and a run- down shack with a hand-lettered sign in the
window that read LIQUOR BAIT. Pools of water sparkled
with lightning.
She debated about asking him if it would be all right if she
listened to her music. But since they weren’t speaking it didn’t
seem to matter. So she popped in her ear buds and was soon
1 6
listening to an old Lady Gaga song Kimi had insisted on adding to her mix. It was too happy and catchy, but she let it play
anyway.
They reached a metal bridge. Churning water rushed
beneath it, as gray as the clouds. A river. She remembered that
Arkansas was land-locked and for a moment a deep panic shuddered through her, imagining herself on a map of the United
States, trapped inside the box of the state perimeter. She had
always lived near the ocean and she had always found comfort
staring out to sea, meditating on her future. Many times her
thoughts would turn to her father’s murder. Gunned down,
no witnesses, nothing from forensics. The homicide of Sean
McBride was an ice-cold case, but he had worked for the District Attorney’s office, and everybody took his death personally.
The first thing she saw on the other side of the bridge after
they crossed it was a white wooden sign with DANGER written on it in black letters. There was something else she couldn’t
make out—the writing was cracked, peeling with age. A red
splotch in the lower right corner might have been intended to
look like a bear paw. It was hard to tell in the rain.
She pulled out one of her ear buds and turned to her grandfather. She wanted to know if there were any bears in the area.
But before she could ask, a strange, low moan made her jump.
It came from outside the truck—or so she guessed—and
maybe it was a cow; only it wasn’t so much a moan as an echo
of a moan. Or maybe a howl. It sounded . . . sad. For a weird
moment she thought maybe she’d made the sound herself.
“What was that?” she asked. “A bear?”
“I didn’t hear anything.”
1 7
The moan sounded again, low and sad and maybe desperate. Like how I feel.
“There,” she said. “You must have heard that. What is it?”
The windshield wipers kept time in the silence. Finally he
said, “The wind.”
There were no more moans, but just the same, Katelyn was
unnerved by her grandfather’s response. There was no way
that was just the wind. She put her ear buds back in and turned
to stare out the window again.
Waving in the storm, the trees were pretty, their scarlet
branches flickering like flames. Raindrops on the windshield
acted like magnifying glasses, creating dollops of color. As they
drove the trees began to press in thick and close on either side
of the road, branches arching overhead. The road was steep,
and her head began to bob as she dozed.
Suddenly she felt eyes on her. She shifted in her seat to find
her grandfather staring straight at her. His mouth was moving.
She took out her left ear bud. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I can’t
understand you.”
He frowned. “That’s okay. I don’t understand you, either.”
She heard his irritation in how he’d changed the wording
of what she’d said. Maybe he was finally ready to talk. She took
out the other ear bud, but let the music keep playing.
“Me? What’s there to understand?”
“Miz Brandao said you wanted me to find a gym for you.”
“And?” she asked quickly, brightening at the ray of hope.
“Did you find one?”
“There’s a Y. You’d have to drive.”
She didn’t know why driving would be a problem. She was
1 8
from southern California. Everyone drove everywhere.
“And they have gymnastics?” she asked carefully, trying to
figure out what he was really trying to say.
He nodded slowly. “Mostly for little kids. Your mama said
that you’d given up ballet for the monkey bars.”
Her stomach contracted, as if he had punched her in the
gut. When had he spoken to her mother? She had never mentioned it. And was he making fun of her? Monkey bars?Was he
trying to insult her? And was that what her mother had really
thought?
“I still take ballet classes,” she said. “Didn’t Ms. Brandao
also mention I’ll need a dance studio to go to?”
“Found a yoga place,” he said. “And the Y’s got tai-chi.”
Katelyn suddenly realized he had no idea what her life in
California was like. Had been like. Ballet was not yoga or tai
chi. What hadshe been thinking, agreeing to come live with this
old man and his beat-up truck and his cabin? Was she insane?
Kimi was right. She shouldn’t have caved so fast. She should
have made some demands, set some conditions.
“Look,” she said, “I know this isn’t the big city. I-I know. . .”
But what did she know? This man was a stranger. He didn’t
know what she was like. How could he? He’d never come to
visit. Never called except at Christmas, and now her mother
was deadand he hadn’t even bothered to fly out for her funeral.
“I need ballet,” she said fiercely. “And gymnastics, but not
for little kids. I’m in training for-for a life as a performer. And if
I don’t have a place to work out, I might as well give up now.”
He just looked at her. She could nearly hear his thoughts:
Okay. Give up.
1 9
She stared back at him, speechless. She wanted to cry or to
scream or to throw herself from the car. But of course none of
those things would prove to anyone that she was old enough to
take care of herself.
She remembered the last time they had come to visit her
grandfather, how hard she giggled at thinking of her dad growing up in the middle of nowhere. He had still been alive and it
had been their last family trip.
Hot tears stung her eyes as lightning flashed overhead,
illuminating the gloom of the woods. She clenched her hands,
reliving how hard it had been after her dad had died. She’d gotten through because she had her mom and they’d held each
other as they cried and kept each other strong each time the
police told them there was nothing new.
“You’re a senior this year, right?”
Without looking back at him, Katelyn brushed away her
tears. “Yeah. School started six weeks ago. I’m going to miss
everything. Prom. Graduation. Everything.”
“We’ve got those things here.”
Was he actually trying to make her feel better?
“It’s not the same,” she said, stricken.
“Sure it is. I figure high school, graduating, all that, are the
same anywhere you go. Lots of kids scared of their own shadows struggling to survive. It’s just like the mountains. Just like
life.”
She had forgotten that side of him. Blunt and practical, a
hunter who lived like Daniel Boone. It was hard to believe that
for years he’d been a philosophy professor. Her dad had never
had much use for philosophy and said philosophers were all
2 0
people with too much time on their hands if they could waste
it debating the existence of good and evil or the meaning of life.
Sean McBride had faced good and evil every day. He had
spent his life prosecuting criminals until the day one of them
killed him. She didn’t care what anyone said, evil was real; she
knew what it could do.
Did her grandfather really know how scared she was?
“Lots of . . . professional kids in L.A. don’t even go to
school,” she said. “They don’t have time. Because they have to
focus.”
He went silent again. Then he said slowly, “That’s the most
idiotic thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life.”
“No, it’s not.” She could hear the desperation in her voice.
She felt like she was losing everything. It had been a mistake to
come. “It’s the life of an artist. Mom—”
“—got married,” he interjected. “To a man with a real job.
How long do ballerinas last? Mid-thirties?”
“She opened the dance studio,” Katelyn shot back.
“And thatwas a big success.” He blinked and pulled in his
chin, as if he surprised himself, and turned his attention back
to the road.
She frowned. What did he mean by that? The studio had
done okay. Or so her mom had always told her. Did her grandfather know otherwise?
“Mom loved being a dancer,” she insisted.
“It’s from living out there in La-La Land,” he went on, as if
he hadn’t heard what she’d said. “Kids thinking they’re going
to become movie stars. Like winning the lottery. The average
person has a better chance of being struck by lightning—”
2 1
“I’m fromL.A.” Her voice was icy. “And I have friends who
are making it.” That wasn’t exactly true, but he didn’t need to
know that. “Kids dobecome movie stars.”
“One in a million, and the rest park cars. You need some
normalcy.” He frowned, sighed, and said again, “normalcy.”
She realized she’d miscalculated how to approach him.
Rather than impress upon him how vital it was for her to stick
to her game plan, she had convinced him that she needed to
give it up. “You have to let me go home,” she begged.
Thunder rumbled, and he stopped the truck abruptly. The
rain hit the windshield like pellets. The tinny music from her
ear buds squawked merrily away.
“Katelyn,” he said, “you arehome.”
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of
the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2011 by Nancy Holder and Debbie Viguié
Jacket photograph © 2011 by Michelle Monique Photography
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random
House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark
of Random House, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data[tk]
The text of this book is set in [tk]-point [tk].
Book design by Angela Carlino
Printed in the United States of America
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First Edition
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ATTENTION READER:
THIS IS AN UNCORRECTED ADVANCE EXCERPT
NANCYHOLDER has published more than
seventy-eight books and more than two hundred
short stories. She has received four Bram Stoker
awards for her supernatural fiction and is the
coauthor of the New York Timesbestselling Wicked
series. She lives in San Diego with her daughter.
You can visit her at NancyHolder.com.
DE B B I E VI G U Ié is the coauthor of the
New York Timesbestselling Wicked series and
several other books, including the Once Upon
a Time novels Violet Eyesand Midnight Pearls.
She lives in Florida with her husband. You can
visit her at DebbieViguie.com.
Meet the Authors
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