Chapter 6: The Ice House

I crouched in the wet grass and breathed in.

The ring dulls what other wolves smell on me.

It doesn't dull my nose.

Lark was there, lavender shampoo and cocoa.

So were three boys.

Cheap body spray, chewing tobacco, and the leather of a varsity jacket.

Rhett.

"I'll keep her on ice for you," he'd said at lunch.

I'd thought it was a joke about the betting.

I ran.

Down past the gym, along the lake path, through the mist.

The old ice house sat at the far end of the lake, half sunk into the hillside.

Stone walls. A tin roof. One heavy plank door.

A new brass padlock hung on the hasp, shiny as a coin.

I put my ear to the planks.

"Lark?"

Nothing.

Then a sound like teeth.

"M-Mercy?"

"I'm here. Are you hurt?"

"They p-put me in the sawdust. It's wet. I c-can't feel my feet."

My wolf threw herself at the ring so hard my vision went white at the edges.

One shove from her and that door would be kindling.

One shove from her and the vow was over.

I pressed my forehead to the wood and held her.

"Talk to me," I said. "Keep talking. Tell me the bones of the hand."

"Are you s-serious?"

"You've got a quiz. Go."

"Sc-scaphoid. Lunate."

I looked at the door the way my father taught me to look at a fence.

Not at the lock.

At the hinges.

Two old iron straps, bolted into the planks, hanging on pins as thick as my finger.

The pins dropped in from the top.

"Triquetrum," Lark said. "Pisiform."

I had a dinner knife in my jacket pocket.

I'd taken it off Peyton's tray at lunch, because a knife is a knife.

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