Hot Blooded (Wolf Springs Chronicles) - By Nancy Holder Page 0,27

for reading it.

In the morning she was up early. Way too early. She dressed in dark clothing, slipping on her sneakers so she could move quietly. She put on her black leather jacket and scrawled a note for her grandfather, telling him she needed to get to school early to check some books out of the library. Pouring fresh, steaming coffee into a travel mug, she crept out of the house as silently as she could and drove away.

Her heart raced the entire way to school. It was still dark out, but she hoped that someone — the janitor, the principal, someone — would have unlocked the school early. Somebody had to be the first one there in the morning.

The sign atop the steepled roof was on. W-O-L-F-C-O-U-N-T-R-Y burned in red across the sky like a brand. Wolf Springs really was wolf country. Did the werewolves of Wolf Springs laugh at the ignorant humans unknowingly advertising their secret?

As Katelyn neared the school, she felt her courage deserting her. She couldn’t believe what an idiot she was to have dreamed she could do this. Then she thought of Cordelia, and Mr. Henderson himself, and started to pull into the empty school parking lot, but immediately realized that a car parked there would look suspicious. She swerved back out, nearly crashing into a utility pole.

She drove a block away and then parked. By the time she shut the engine off, her palms were damp and her hands were shaking.

She got out of the car, checking one last time for the flashlight she had brought. No cars meant no people at all. Maybe she should wait until someone showed up.

Or maybe someone forgot to lock one of the doors. I should at least check. I came all this way.

Nervously, she trotted toward the school, crossing the deserted parking lot, then slowing when she realized she had broken into a run. She was moving too quickly; if someone saw her streaking toward the front entrance, they’d notice. Wind whipped brittle leaves along her path as traces of dawn painted the horizon. She headed toward the back of the large wood building, scanning the veranda for signs of movement. There was nothing.

Guarded on either side by skeletal bushes, there was a break in the wrap-around porch about a third of the way down, and inside, a green wooden door. Katelyn tiptoed up to it and waited a moment to steady herself.

Determined, she touched the door latch. The metal was icy, and she jerked her hand away. Then she realized that it didn’t really bother her. She wrapped her hand around the knob and gave it an experimental twist. There was a snapping sound, and then it turned.

Oh, God, she thought. Did I break it?

She pulled the door open. Darkness stared back at her, but she was afraid to use her flashlight in case someone was inside the building.

Crazy, crazy, she told herself, and then she stepped inside.

Feeling her way with her feet and hands, she encountered something solid at hip-level. A desk, maybe. Was she in a classroom? Something grazed her other hip.

Then, as her eyes adjusted, a dim, watery light beckoned beyond a rectangle of black — the entrance to the classroom — and Katelyn stepped into the main hall of the school. The light was a plate-sized dome glowing from the ceiling at the opposite end, in the direction of her history classroom— and Mr. Henderson’s office.

Her destination.

And, all of a sudden, she could see well. In the dark. Everything shimmered in oranges and reds. She grinned, and began to walk softly on the balls of her feet. Posters lined the walls, and she read them easily. There was a canned food drive for Thanksgiving. Tickets were going on sale for the Winter Formal. Life at any high school.

The school buildings had once been a Spanish church, and to her left, a large stained-glass window of a saint with a blue-eyed pet wolf seemed to gaze down at her. The man wore a robe; there was a halo around his bald head. But there were no blue-eyed wolves in the Ozarks. Had the artist who had created the window known that? Was the creature really a werewolf?

If the saint knew, he wasn’t saying.

She was spooked; she felt watched. Cordelia had told her the school was supposed to be haunted. Back then, Katelyn had privately made fun of the gullible locals. There were enough tall tales about Wolf Springs to fill a dozen books: