Unleashed Read online

  “We’ll park in the senior lot and then I’ll walk you to the admin office,” he said. “But then I’ve got to leave you. I’m keeping my head down around the principal.”

  “Because of the court thing.”

  He nodded. “Completely unjust, but it’s adding to my aura of mystery. Hey,” he said, his voice suddenly urgent and somber. “I have to talk to you about something.”

  She waited. His green eyes seemed to grow darker, the planes and hollows of his face to accentuate. She held her breath, waiting to hear what he had to say, mesmerized by his good looks.

  “Just before you got here, a friend of mine was killed.”

  The girl in the forest. Of course he would have known her. Everyone knew everyone else here. “My grandfather told me,” she said. “I’m so sorry.” She meant it.

  His expression didn’t change. “What, exactly, did he say?”

  “That she was killed. She was in the forest alone.”

  He glanced back at the road as he maneuvered into the parking lot. The space between them seemed to fill with tension. She wondered if he had been close to the girl. If she’d been his girlfriend.

  “There are a lot of urban legends in a small place like this.” He grimaced, revealing deep dimples on either side of his mouth. “Not urban, sorry. I guess they’d be called country legends. In any case, us country folks talk about haints and all like that. Her name was Haley, and her death was the hot topic until everyone heard that a movie star from Hollywood was moving here.”

  “Oh, my God, you mean me?” She burst out with a shocked guffaw, but he didn’t crack a smile. Then she realized that he was not only upset, but angry.

  “People brought teddy bears and candles, pictures, all that stuff, to school. Everyone hugging, crying. We all went to her funeral. Now it’s almost as if she never existed.” His voice lowered as he added quietly, “But I’ll never forget.”

  “I’m really sorry, Trick,” she said sincerely.

  He gave his head a shake. “I don’t mean to sound like I’m blaming you for showing up.” He slid his glance at her again, and he studied her for a second. “I just want …” And then he forced a smile onto his perfect mouth. “You just be careful, ya hear? And not just in the forest.”

  “Thanks,” she said softly. She figured he was warning her about making her way as the new girl in school. She was pretty nervous about it, too.

  He parked, came around, and before she’d been able to gather all her things, opened the door for her. The rain hadn’t let up, so they dashed along with everyone else toward the arched stone entrance.

  Steamy warmth hit her as they entered the main hall. Here they were, her schoolmates, for the time being, at least. Looking around, Katelyn started picking out the jocks and geeks, guessing at who was popular or unpopular. The clothes weren’t as upscale as in Santa Monica, nor as funky. But they weren’t wearing overalls and cutoffs, either. Mostly jeans and jackets. And she coveted the shiny purple rain boots one girl had on.

  She took a deep breath. Okay, new school, new rules. Who are you going to be, Katelyn? You have a chance to be whoever you want to be here, since nobody knows you.

  Except Trick, she realized. Her chauffer bobbed along, waving at her to hurry. As she tried to keep up, kids did double takes, realizing she was the new girl.

  Trick led her to an open office door and pointed inside. “Here,” he said. “And watch your back.”

  “I can’t watch my back. That’s physically impossible,” she replied, and he raised his brows and grinned in response.

  Then he hung a U and disappeared into the mob.

  And just like that, in a sea of people, she was all alone.

  3

  Katelyn took a deep breath. She looked slowly around the hall one more time before going into the office. Behind a wooden counter sat a middle-aged woman at a desk. The woman—her nameplate read MRS. WALKER—smiled when she saw her.

  “You must be Katelyn.”

  For one wild moment she wanted to say no, that Katelyn was a girl who had a mother and went to school in Santa Monica. I’m not her anymore. The woman kept smiling and Katelyn forced herself to answer. “Yes.”

  “I’ve got your schedule printed out for you and I drew you a map. It’s crude, but it will get you where you’re going.” Mrs. Walker slid a packet to her across the counter.

  “Thanks,” Katelyn said, fighting the urge to ask if it showed the way back home.

  “You’ve got enough time to make it to your first class before the bell if you scoot. It’s out the door to the right, down the hall, fourth door on the left.”

  “Thanks,” Katelyn said again before turning to leave. Nervousness and fear washed over her as she headed out the door and down the hallway. Nothing was familiar and it wasn’t fair that she had to be starting all over again.

  She glanced down at her schedule. Her first class was history. Mr. Henderson. As soon as she walked in, the clamor died down, and all eyes focused on her. The room was almost full and she slid into a vacant seat at the back. A sea of new faces; her stomach tightened further. This was not how her life was supposed to go.

  “Hi,” a blond guy wearing a gray-and-white letter jacket said as he sat down beside her. “You must be Katelyn McBride.”

  She nodded tightly. First impressions were everything. She didn’t want to come off as a standoffish bitch, but the full realization of what was happening to her was crashing down on her. Her mother was dead. And Katelyn was thousands of miles away from her grave, and everything else she cared about.

  “Class, we have a new student who just transferred from California,” said a man at the front of the room. He had wheat-colored hair shot through with silver, and blue-gray eyes beneath heavy brows. He was wearing khaki trousers and a white button-down shirt. “Katelyn, why don’t you stand up and tell us a little bit about yourself.”

  She stood up slowly, trying to hide the fact that her hands were shaking. I don’t belong here, she wanted to tell him. There’s been a terrible mistake.

  She took a deep breath. “I’m Kate—” She hesitated. Then she raised her chin and said, “Kat McBride, from L.A. I came to live with my grandfather; my mother …”

  Her voice gave out. It didn’t matter. They all knew anyway. That was what Trick had told her.

  “Kat. Okay,” Mr. Henderson said mildly, making a note on a piece of paper.

  She wasn’t sure why, but somehow it seemed like it would be easier to go by the nickname Trick had given her than to hear one more stranger call her by her real name.

  “We’ll get you a book,” Mr. Henderson said.

  She nodded and he turned to address the rest of the class. “Okay. Today we’re going to start a new project. I want you all to become investigative historians, and to that end, I’m going to pair you up. Now that Kat’s here, we have an even number.” He smiled at her as if she’d done him a personal favor by moving to Wolf Springs.

  Katelyn winced. A project partner on her first day.

  Mr. Henderson began running through the list of names, and chairs squealed as everyone started to move around the room, reorganizing themselves. Some surreptitious texting went on. A few got down to business. Katelyn tried to remember names but it was too much to ask. Just sitting there was too much to ask. She tried not to fall apart.

  Finally he said, “Cordelia, how about you partner with Kat?”

  Kat, that’s me, she thought, blinking. Cordelia. Which one’s Cordelia?

  A tall, slender girl with shoulder-length auburn hair, dark blue eyes, and perfect movie-star looks stood, organized her belongings, and flashed her a kind smile. Katelyn had often been told she was pretty, but next to this girl she felt like a dog.

  The girl grabbed her bag and made her way over to Katelyn, holding out her hand. “Hi, Kat. I’m Cordelia Fenner,” she said.

  Katelyn ground out a strangled “hi” and took her hand. She wasn’t used to shaking hands with people her own age—maybe it was an Ark
ansas thing—and she grimaced slightly at the strong grip of the other girl. She wasn’t sure if Cordelia noticed her awkwardness, but the other girl broke away quickly.

  “So, welcome to Wolf Springs,” Cordelia said brightly, sitting down. She flicked her glance over Katelyn, checking out her clothes, hair, and shoes. Normally when girls did that, there was an underlying layer of cattiness, of competition. Not so with Cordelia. It felt more like the other girl was taking her measure, trying to understand her instead of judge her. The really beautiful girls back home were never that way. Staring at the other girl, Katelyn couldn’t decide whether Cordelia was just that confident in her own beauty or completely oblivious to it. Either way it was a nice change from what she was used to.

  “Thanks,” Katelyn said, warming quickly.

  Cordelia cocked her head, silky wisps of red hair brushing a flawless porcelain complexion. “Who do you run with?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Sorry.” Cordelia rolled her eyes at herself. “I mean, who do you hang out with? You know—popular crowd, drama class, chess club, dropouts?”

  The question was so direct it caught her off guard. “I—I haven’t decided yet.”

  A smile flitted across Cordelia’s face. “It’s nice to have a choice. Not everyone does. Okay. Let’s make Mr. Henderson happy.”

  Katelyn nodded, wishing she had thought to ask Cordelia what group she ran with, though it was easy to guess that whichever it was, she was popular.

  “Mr. Henderson used to be an archeologist. He moved here a couple of years ago,” Cordelia added. “So that makes him just about as new as you.”

  Katelyn let her confusion show. “Two years? I’ve only been here four days.”

  “It’s different here. We’ve had two newcomers in less than a century—it’s a lot of change for folks around here.”

  “Plus there’s that Inner Wolf guy,” Katelyn said.

  Cordelia grimaced. “Don’t even get me started on him. Anyway, Mr. Henderson is this big-city guy who thinks outside the box, and you are lucky to be in here, because Mrs. Herbold reads aloud from the textbook. People have been known to jump out the window to end their torment.”

  “All right, people,” Mr. Henderson said, handing a stack of papers to a girl in the front row. “What I want you to do is take some aspect of local history and dig a little deeper. A legend like the ones you-all are so fond of out here, a story that’s been passed down in your family, a mystery, something cool.”

  Cordelia grinned at Katelyn, and Katelyn returned an answering smile. Apparently they had both had “cool” teachers before.

  “Put on your detective hat and find out where your tall tale or your family story came from.” He mimicked pulling on a hat and kept talking. “You have until October twenty-eighth to work on this. A lot of time. Here’s the breakdown.”

  The blond guy who’d first identified her as the new girl passed a stack of papers to Katelyn over his shoulder. She took one before handing them to Cordelia and skimmed it. Historical sites. Haunts. Legends. Ballads. The class started buzzing as the newly paired investigative historians got down to the business of picking a topic.

  “Legends sounds cool,” Katelyn said.

  “Oh. Uh-huh,” Cordelia said, obviously forcing enthusiasm. “There’s all kinds of backwoods stories. About haints. Ghosts, I mean.” Cordelia tapped the paper with her pencil. “I know lots of them. My family’s been here for generations.”

  Katelyn was amazed. She couldn’t imagine anyone living in Wolf Springs for generations. It was so isolated.

  “Ghosts would be interesting,” Katelyn said.

  The blond guy raised his hand. Mr. Henderson acknowledged him with a nod.

  “What about Haley?” he asked.

  The room fell silent. Mr. Henderson’s expression went carefully neutral.

  “What about Haley, Beau?” the teacher asked.

  “Well, no one’s sure about how she died,” the guy—Beau—said. “So we could investigate that.”

  “Dude, that is not cool.” A tall guy in Katelyn and Cordelia’s row half stood. “Haley’s not a project.”

  “Yeah,” a girl in a white sweater said, glaring in Beau’s direction.

  “Haley went here,” Cordelia whispered to Katelyn. She had gone deathly pale. “She … died a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Trick told me,” Katelyn whispered back.

  Cordelia looked startled. “You know Trick Sokolov?”

  Katelyn tried to decipher Cordelia’s tone of voice. It didn’t sound as if she liked Trick much, but Katelyn couldn’t tell for sure. Maybe because of the “court” thing?

  The girl in the white sweater spoke again. “And besides, we already know how she …” Her voice faltered. “… what happened.”

  Beau shook his head. “But my grandma said—”

  Mr. Henderson cleared his throat. “I think we’ll leave Haley out of this,” he declared; then he surveyed the class thoughtfully before he spoke again. “I know you miss Haley. Her passing was a shock to all of us. And let me remind you all to be very careful in and around the woods.”

  “Right. Like he knows anything about it,” Beau muttered under his breath.

  Mr. Henderson didn’t appear to have heard him. “Now, I’d like you to choose a subject within a day or two. By the end of the week at the latest.”

  The students began to murmur among themselves again. Katelyn glanced at Beau, who stared angrily down at his desk. Suddenly he looked up through his lashes, straight at her. She couldn’t read his expression, but he seemed as if he wanted to say something. Then the girl beside him nudged his shoulder, and he picked up his handout.

  “We were talking about Trick.” Cordelia prompted Katelyn in a low voice.

  “He’s my ride to school,” Katelyn explained. She didn’t want to be too quick to link herself to Trick if no one liked him. “We live out in the woods. I mean, my grandfather and I. Not Trick and I.” She gave a small smile at that.

  “Oh.” Cordelia nodded cautiously. “Well, Trick’s kind of … unpredictable,” she said. “Maybe you could find someone else.…”

  Alarmed, Katelyn raised her brows. “Unpredictable how?”

  The other girl shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “He just provokes people, sometimes. He’s so odd—”

  “How’s everybody doing?” Mr. Henderson said loudly, interrupting Cordelia.

  Cordelia’s cheeks went pink and she cleared her throat. “Be careful. Okay, Kat?”

  Katelyn nodded. It seemed like everyone in Wolf Springs was telling her to be careful. And Trick was wrong. Haley’s death was still on a lot of people’s minds. More than ever, Katelyn wished she could go home. This place was creepy. She wanted the sunshine back—and everything else she’d been forced to leave behind.

  “I don’t mean to sound, y’know, bossy,” Cordelia said uneasily. “I’m just trying to help you out.”

  “I know,” Katelyn replied, trying to reassure her. Cordelia somehow seemed fragile. And was something really wrong with Trick? Maybe he had broken into houses.

  “It’s nice of you to show me the ropes,” Katelyn added to change the subject. She made herself smile, and Cordelia relaxed.

  “Okay. That’s settled. So,” Cordelia said, “what do you have next?”

  “P.E.,” Katelyn replied after consulting her schedule.

  “Me too.” Cordelia wrinkled her nose. “Since it’s raining, we’ll be doing indoor stuff. It might be a little on the draggy side.”

  Katelyn didn’t say anything but privately figured draggy was about all she could handle for the moment.

  “Kat,” Cordelia blurted, “if Trick’s your friend—”

  “He’s just my ride,” Katelyn said again, more firmly this time. “Really. And I’ll keep an eye on him,” she added, hoping to emphasize to Cordelia that she was interpreting her warning as friendly advice.

  Cordelia nodded, looping her hair around her ear. Everything about her was poli
shed and put together—except for her attitude. Cordelia seemed to be very worried about offending her. Though it could be that Cordelia just didn’t know how to treat a stranger. From what Katelyn could tell, they weren’t that common.

  The rest of the class time was taken up by discussing the requirements for the project, and it ended without Katelyn and Cordelia’s settling on a topic. It was hard for Katelyn to focus, and she kept forgetting to answer to her new name. When the bell rang, she and Cordelia headed for the gym together. Guys flirted openly with Cordelia and just as blatantly checked Katelyn out. She didn’t see Trick anywhere.

  “Our school used to be a church,” Cordelia told her. “Sacred ground.”

  There was a pause, and Katelyn realized Cordelia was waiting for her response. “It’s very pretty,” Katelyn offered, glancing up at an old stained-glass window of a man with a halo. A large gray dog stood beside him. No, not a dog. A wolf.

  “And it’s haunted,” Cordelia added.

  Katelyn smiled. She couldn’t tell if Cordelia was being serious. “Why don’t we investigate the history of the school?” Katelyn suggested, then pointed to the window. “Who’s this holy man in the middle? A saint?”

  “I’m not really sure.” Cordelia shrugged. “He’s just always been there.”

  “We could find out,” Katelyn said, prodding. “Do that for our project.”

  “That could be ‘cool.’ ” Grinning, Cordelia made air quotes.

  By then they had reached the entrance to the gym. Cordelia pointed to a small door next to it.

  “Coach Ambrose is in there. You should check in with him. I’m going to the locker room. See you in a few.”

  Cordelia disappeared inside the gym and Katelyn stuck her head into the coach’s office, which looked out onto the gym floor.

  “Coach Ambrose?”

  A broad-shouldered bald man wearing a gray sweatshirt and a whistle on a lanyard around his neck looked up from his desk. “New kid, right?”