Wolf's Bane (Monstrous Hearts #2)

Chapter Sixteen

Alice pulled the blanket closer around herself, trying to ignore how every movement stirred up the stench of ash. It clung to her hair and skin, stoked the pit of nausea in her stomach. Burned at her swollen eyes. Despite the stuffy heat of so many evacuees milling around in one room, she couldn't stop shivering, vacant in thought as the TV bolted in the upper-right corner flickered grim news reported by grim faces.

They were all in a section of a community college hastily transformed into an evacuation center. They were all people who had lost everything in the fire, and showed it in their numb faces and ash-streaked hair. Many cried into their hands or wiped at reddened eyes. Despair etched foreheads and carved the corners of mouths. Panic scratched behind words. They were burned things, themselves, cringing at how the bright light of morning hadn't chased away the horrors of the night.

And yet Alice only sat there and watched, her own tears long gone and her own worries evaporated. She felt utterly remote from everyone and everything. A few hours earlier, the part of her mind that still thought had even guided her into texting her parents, letting them know she was okay. She didn't want them to see her, not on this day.

Dully, she blinked at the bowl of Halloween candy set out on what would have normally been the professor's desk. The bowl was in the shape of a gap-toothed pumpkin, and the candy already looked picked through. The day of Samhain had come at last, and Magdalene would be in full power.

The name left her fingers curling against the woolen folds of the blanket, digging into the thick fabric like claws. She felt empty, a mere outline of a person, and yet something dark and bitter beat deep inside. She couldn't name what it was, only sense that it was there, growing whenever she buried her face into her shoulder and breathed into the flannel shirt she still wore. Even after her night of hell, it still smelled like him.

"Alice?"

The sound of her name shuddered awake some part of her mind, rousing it through the prickle of familiarity. She blinked, eyelids feeling like sandpaper, and turned to see who it was.

There stood Gretchen, looking far out of place in her sharp black-and-white maternity dress and precisely-pinned hair. She wore large, chic sunglasses that turned her face into something severe and remote, and the faint smell of lavender and honey drifted from her skin. Alice supposed she should have felt small and pitiable in comparison, with her bare feet still showing traces of mud and her hair left in snarls. Strangely, nothing flickered within that hollowness that filled her, and her words sounded only flat as she asked, "Why are you here?"

Gretchen removed her sunglasses, then, revealing eyes that looked strangely unsure. "When we talked at the dinner party, you mentioned living in Calico Creek. I recognized the name right away when the news mentioned it this morning."

"So you must've heard that everything there was destroyed by the fire."

The other girl nodded. "There's already drone footage. It looks like what you scrape out of a fire-pit. No one's looking for survivors. They're just hoping they can find bones in all the ash."

For a split second, Alice felt her mouth tremble, and quickly looked down to hide it. Her hands pulled at the blanket again, drawing the flannel shirt closer against her skin. If Colton had somehow escaped the flames, he would have already found her. She was sure of it.

When she said nothing, Gretchen's voice grew awkward in the way of someone used to ignoring emotions now faced with the possibility of consoling them. "I'm sorry. It's just that... I grew worried."

"Why would you care?" The words fell out like dull pebbles, much too small and worn to be hurtful.

Gretchen's fingers flexed against the cloth bag she carried over one shoulder. She almost seemed embarrassed. "Do you want go outside to talk? It's stuffy in here."