Hot Blooded (Wolf Springs Chronicles) - By Nancy Holder Page 0,72
him with a pretty girl.”
“Then why do you let me hang out with him?” she asked, smiling.
“Because he knows I’d skin him alive if he hurt you.”
She was touched. There was a bond, a loyalty between her grandfather and Trick. And yet he cared about her getting hurt.
“What if I hurt Trick?” she asked him, working at a patch of tarnish on a spoon.
He concentrated on his polishing. “You talkin’ about Justin?”
She was talking about so much more than matters of the heart. There were too many ways she could hurt Trick even if she didn’t want to. She felt dizzy at the thought of what could happen to him if he was ever around her when she changed.
“I guess,” she said finally, dipping the cloth into the gray, pasty polish.
He cocked his head, appraising her. “Then I’d tell Trick to take it like a man. A young woman’s got the right to do as she wishes. That’s nature’s way.”
“Well, that’s forward-thinking,” she said with a smile.
His face crinkled with a grin. “It’s the truth. You can’t walk through the forest without seeing male birds trying to get the attention of the female. Or a pair of bucks knocking antlers while the doe just watches.”
“And yawns,” she added, and he grunted.
“I figure the human animal shouldn’t be any different. It makes me sad sometimes to see girls throwing themselves at guys who don’t want them. That’s not how things should be.”
Katelyn remembered Becky Jensen, the girl who had died just after she had arrived in Wolf Springs. According to Sam, Becky had invented an entire relationship with Trick — one that ended when he dumped her. Had she been telling the truth?
Now Sam was gone, and Becky was dead, and there was no way to know exactly what the real story was . . . except that Katelyn just couldn’t see Trick doing something so heartless.
But maybe he’d grown up since then, she thought. Maybe I’m seeing a new, improved Trick.
“You and Trick are close but you’ve never pushed me to pick him over . . . anyone else.” She wiped the polish over the back of the spoon and began to rub it. Soon she would see her reflection. How could it not be different, now that she was such a . . . a . . .
Monster.
He looked startled. “There’s no rush, honey. You’re only seventeen. I’d be just as happy if you don’t pick anybody until you’re, oh, fifty-seven.”
That was refreshing.
“But if I did like someone, you’d be okay with it?” she asked.
Her grandfather chuckled. “Your grandmother’s father hated me, but it didn’t stop how she felt. And in the end he was smart enough to see that if he tried to keep us apart, she’d just run away with me.”
“Wow, really?” She was impressed. Her grandparents had been intense. She wished she’d gotten to meet her grandmother, or even better, that she was here now.
“Love is a powerful thing,” he replied. “And it can’t be denied any more than it can be tamed.”
That gave her pause. Back home in L.A. most kids talked about hooking up, not falling in love. Was it different there in the hills, or was her grandfather talking like a person from a different era?
“Why didn’t Grandma’s father like you?”
He chuckled with a faraway look in his eyes. “He thought I was too uppity. I don’t think he had much use for philosophers. College boys either, for that matter.”
Katelyn bit back a smile, trying to imagine how anyone on earth could think of her cabin-dwelling grandfather as “uppity.”
Their conversation died away, and they polished the silver together in companionable silence. The odor was so strong; it was incredible to her that he couldn’t smell it. She wondered why silver was so poisonous to werewolves. And why it didn’t bother her.
It took a couple of hours, but the silver was finally shiny. The rest of Sunday passed quietly, almost too quietly. Katelyn found herself growing more and more agitated, as though she were waiting. For the snow, for more deaths.
~
Monday after school she found herself again at the Fenner house, doing more training with Justin. There was more running, jumping, but he also worked on her sense of smell and trying to use it to track him through the woods. It went better than she expected. When they finished he offered her his cheek. “See you tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll do some more.”