Howling In The Night | Night Cat #2

Howling In The Night - Chapter 2

Now You Apologize?

I ran my brush furiously through my hair as I tried to make it stop looking like a raccoon had died on it.

After all I’d been through, was a good hair day seriously too much to ask?

Once I’d managed to make most of my hair lie flat, I stuffed the brush back into my backpack, checked myself in the mirror one more time, and then headed out the bathroom. I found my best friend, Brie Young standing beside the drinking fountain, tapping her foot against the tiled floor as she waited patiently for me to finish grooming myself.

“About time, Princess.” She quipped as she pushed herself off the wall she was leaning against. “A couple of minutes longer and I would have missed lunch.”

I gave her a wry smile. “Could you stop exaggerating, Brie? I was only in there for five minutes.”

“Seven, actually.” She corrected.

“You were counting?”

“I was bored.”

I shook my head. “You could have come in with me. Your eyeliner could use some fixing.”

She skidded to a halt and ducked behind a car. Confused, I followed her around the yellow convertible. I almost burst out laughing when I found her inspecting her eyeliner in the car’s side mirrors, completely ignoring the people in the car who were staring at her.

“Liar!” she bellowed when she realized that I had been bluffing. I chuckled at the look on her face. She was about to rail me out some more, when suddenly, her words got caught and her eyes went wide. “Oh, my God.”

I whipped around to see what she was gawking at, and nearly leapt ten feet in the air. Standing only a few meters away from me, stood Keegan Sanchez, my once good friend. As I stared at him in shock, I noticed that he was walking towards me. It didn’t make any sense. The last I had heard of Keegan, his grandmother had taken away his ability to shift and shipped him off to Canada. What was he doing back in Crescent Falls?

I guess I should explain. Keegan Sanchez was the other werecat I was talking about earlier; the one that had gone completely insane and started killing off innocent campers for sport. When Xander figured out that Keegan was the psycho bobcat who was murdering people and stalking me, he decided to use this information to threaten him to keep away from me. That turned out to be the wrong decision to make, seeing as the next thing Keegan did was tell his grandmother that I was the killer and trick her into putting a hex on me that prevented me from shifting.

The whole thing ended up backfiring on Keegan when I managed to break Grandma Sanchez’s spell. The spell hit Keegan instead, and trapped him in his bobcat form. Later, after making sure I was in safe hands, Xander had taken Keegan to his Grandma, where she had changed the spell so that instead of being trapped in his cat form, he was trapped in his human form.

A week after this whole debacle, Keegan disappeared from Crescent Falls. Rumour was that Grandma Sanchez had convinced Keegan’s mom and dad to move to Canada. I hadn’t questioned the story until now. If he had moved to Canada, why on earth was he standing a few feet away from me in our school parking lot?

“Ave!” He waved at me, grinning. Behind me, I felt Brie stiffen. She didn’t know what had really happened between me and Keegan, just that we had had a falling out.

“Yikes.” She muttered into my ear nervously. “I smell drama. I think I’m going to let you deal with this, okay?” I didn’t notice her back away from me slowly. I was too busy gawking at Keegan. “See ya.”

When her words finally sunk in, it was too late. I whipped around to beg her to stay with me, but she was already gone, and Keegan was practically standing in front of me. “Hey, Ave.” He said with a smile.

I didn’t bother with pleasantries. “What are you doing here? I thought you had moved to Toronto.”

“Ottawa.” He corrected. His smile faltered a little at my slightly inhospitable greeting. When I didn’t reply, he continued with a sigh, “Well, if you must know, I’m back here to get my silly grandmother to lift this silly hex she put on me. Being stuck in my human form is driving me insane, Ave. You have no idea how irritating it is to listen to my cat voice harp me 24/7”

Actually, Keegan. I do. I thought with a smirk. I didn’t say that, though. What I said was, “There’s no way Grandma Sanchez is going to lift the spell Keegan. You might as well hop back on a plane back to Ottawa.”

He shot me a sarcastic look. “Of course she will, Avery. All I have to do is convince her that I’m good now. Tell her I’ve seen the error of my ways and a whole bunch of crap like that and, BAM, curse – lifted.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “She’s never going to fall for that act, Keegan, and you know it.”

“What makes you think it’s an act?” He asked. At first I thought he was playing me, but on further inspection, I realized that his voice was coloured with seriousness. “I’m serious Avery. I was a moron before, and I know that there’s no way that you’ll ever forgive me for what I did. I murdered innocent people – hunted them, tortured them and killed them. There’s no excuse for that, I know.

“I only realized what a monster I’d become that night when you and Xander fought me. I saw the horror in your eyes and that’s when it hit me. Out of everyone I know, you’re the only one whose opinion of me I cared about. And to see the way you looked at me that night – as if I was the most evil creature that walked on this earth... I just couldn’t take it anymore.”

I was about to open my mouth and say something. Anything. But he cut me off. “Look, I know that I’m asking a lot, but do you think you’d ever be able to forgive me?” I opened my mouth again. He held up his hand, stopping me. “No, wait. Don’t answer now. Give it some thought and get back to me. I’ll be waiting.”

And with that, Keegan Sanchez walked away, his dreadlocks flying behind him in the breeze, leaving me with nothing but a whole load of confusion and a killer headache.