The Night Has Claws (Book Two) EXCERPTS ONLY

4. SOMEBODY THAT I USED TO KNOW

I do my best to properly bandage up Arden’s arm where I bit him, finding some gauze in the bathroom medicine cabinet and sterilizing the wounds with soap and water. Despite being in such close proximity to each other, we awkwardly try to avoid making eye contact. It’s clear that he’s in a lot of physical pain, not just from the bite but from the broken bones beneath the cast as well. His eyes are damp and he can’t suppress a small yelp of anguish when I knock into the plaster. If he’d ever been in any kind of pain before, he never would have let me see it. Now all I see is how fragile he is.

“Sorry,” I say while tying off the gauze as gently as possible.

He bites his lower lip and I avert my gaze. Despite the quiet that comes with an absence of neighbors or other flatmates, my ears pick up the steady hum of the fridge. How did I not hear that before? I notice so much more now. There’s no such thing as absolute silence. Not anymore. Except maybe for Arden. Did he lose all his heightened senses with the cure? Now doesn’t exactly feel like the right time to talk to him about it. He can barely sit up straight at the kitchen table.

Sitting back in the chair, he asks almost in a whisper, “Why’d you do it?”

“What do you mean?” I step back to give him the wide berth he requires for personal space. “Bite you? You’re the one who―”

“No.” He slowly shakes his head. “Why’d you ... save me?”

What am I supposed to say? I shrug.

“When you bit me, there were only supposed to be two options,” he continues, staring at the tabletop. “I didn’t think you’d care either way.”

I know better than to try to flatter him. Legal guardian or not, my little white lie at the hospital about him being family seems closer to the truth to me now than anything. He’s like that annoying older brother I never had: effortlessly stylish, ruthlessly tormenting, lording his proxy powers of parental control over my every move. Yet a brother nonetheless. All the time that I thought he was being arrogant and overbearing just for the hell of it, he’d actually been looking out for me in his own way.

“It’s not about that,” I explain. “It’s simple human compassion. It’s about doing the right thing. Or trying to. And before you go off your head, I didn’t think you really wanted to die from hypothermia, buck naked out in the woods. Besides ... I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I’d just walked away.”

He focuses on a deep crack in the surface of the wooden table. I can tell he’s fading out. Eventually he closes his eyes and I fold the note with the name of the painkiller into my wallet. My phone buzzes. It’s a text from Madison.

WRU@? A sigh of relief escapes me tinged with frustration at her poor timing. My thumb hovers over the keypad of my iPhone as I think of a response. She’s not exactly in my good books just now, but I also need to talk to her. I doubt Arden will allow her to set foot in here — his disdain for the Hounds runs deep — but I don’t trust myself to be out in the real world for more than a few minutes.

“I’ll be back in a bit, alright?” I say.

He grunts from his seat, clutching at the edge of it with his good hand. Pale and probably feverish, it’s all he can do to support himself. I can’t even begin to imagine the pain that he’s endured so far. The nearest pharmacy is only a few blocks away, so it’ll be a quick trip, which is doubly good not just because it will save him from even a minute more of agony. The last thing I want is a repeat of this afternoon’s near-shift experience at the coffee shop.

When I swing open the downstairs door, mid-text, I get a whiff of a familiar scent and a girl’s voice calls out before it completely registers. I jump back, startled, and catch sight of her leaning back against the building’s stone facade. Madison’s cherry-red hair flows loosely around the shoulders of her simple black hoodie, highlighting the word printed in the middle: Meh.