вυмp ιn тнe nιgнт

TWENTY FIVE

a few weeks had gone by easily, with jacob constantly updating jasmine on his "flowering relationship with bella", as embry called it. when the boy had made said comment during one of their group study sessions — consisting of the three boys, jasmine, and hailey at the time — jacob had tackled him, effectively finishing their studying and ending with the group of them heading out for pizza.

jasmine was glad to be surrounding herself with more fun people. they helped distract her from the thoughts of what paul could be hiding from her about his sudden disappearance from her life, and they reminded her of her friends from back home.

but as the days went by, she noticed something was wrong with embry. he would get more outwardly frustrated with his problems, and would snap at her sometimes when he didn't understand what she was saying. it worried her, especially when embry was usually the calmest of the three boys she tutored. hailey just brushed it off whenever jasmine mentioned it to her friend, but the nonchalance of it drew the witch to thinking that the forrest girl knew more than she was letting on about the situation with embry.

it was similar to what had happened to paul before he'd disappeared. and though hailey was better at hiding her emotions compared to the lahote boy, jasmine had picked up on how she'd seemed to steadily grow angrier up until that week she'd missed school completely.

things weren't adding up, and the rising temperature embry exhibited was all too familiar to jasmine.

she'd called joseph, knowing he and the other wolves back home kept track of the others around the country, and asked him if there were any in the area.

"as far as any of us know, there's no one out there. maybe a couple cities away from seattle, but other than that, there's no one in washington. i don't know what's happening to your friends, or why your instincts scream wolf at you, but it might still be something supernatural if you're getting similar vibes to me."

his words had soothed her mind slightly, dimming the worry of her friends having been bitten by a child of the moon that had been passing through or something. but, knowing that there wasn't any wolf like that in even the nearest city to them, it made her worry of something else grow.

when embry didn't show up to the next study group they held, she didn't know what to think.

jacob and quil mentioned how he wasn't in school, and things grew worse. she left voicemails, called his house phone only to hear his mother say that he wasn't feeling well enough to talk to anyone, and even tried to use jake or quil as infiltration to check on the boy.

but he just went missing. for two weeks, embry call was missing, and jasmine didn't know what to do.

when she, cecilia, quil and jacob met up for pizza one day, she noticed the downtrodden looks on their faces.

"the hell is wrong with you two?" cecilia questions, taking a large bite out of her pizza and raising an eyebrow at the two boys. jacob mutters something angrily under his breath, and quil just looks up to give them a lost look.

"embry's back."

"well, isn't that good? tell him to call me, i'm sure his grades have dropped in the time he was gone and he needs to catch up or he'll fail, and-"

"he's not talking to us, jasmine," jacob cuts her off, voice low and bitter.

the sisters share a concerned glance, before the younger turns back to quil. "what does he mean?"

"what he said. embry won't talk to us. he's grown almost a foot i think, he's all bulked up, and he's wearing jorts. fucking jorts! he's even hanging around paul lahote and jared cameron, now, two people he used to make fun of for being weird like that," quil rants, tears of frustration coming to his eyes, and jasmine reaches across the table to grip his free hand in comfort.