Page 8 of Cold Foot Curse

No shit. She was about to Change in the house. She couldn’t do that! She would rip this place down to the frame.

Can you feel him?

Chills rippled up her arms, and Jess peeked out the window again. Was her tiger talking about Connor? Was he here?

“No,” she whispered.

Yes, you do. You do. You do…you do…you…do…The animal’s voice faded to nothing in her mind.

“Hello?”

Nothing. Silence filled her head once more. She hated that feeling—being alone. “Hello?” she asked more frantically. She was upset with the animal meddling, but she didn’t want her to disappear completely again.

She was met with deeper silence. Shit.

She slapped her head a few times, trying to wake her back up, but that didn’t help. It never did.

Why did she feel like crying right now?

She took it back! She wanted to Change. “You can have my skin,” she pleaded. “We can Change.”

Silence.

Outside, there was a commotion, and she pushed up from where she was crouching, and peeked outside. Mac and Tawk were arguing as they jogged by, headed in the direction of Derek’s house. A couple of cars that belonged to more of the Crew zoomed by. What the hell was going on?

She checked her phone, but the Crew loop was silent, which meant someone had called a meeting off-loop, excluding her. But why?

Jess pulled on a black hoodie and settled the long strap of her purse across her body. She pulled on a pair of black running shoes and bolted out of her room and down the stairs. She ran past the bedroom doors of the others who lived in this home, and to the back door. She knew a trail through the woods that would get her eyes on the back of Derek’s house.

She had no solid plan other than she had to know what was happening. She had a right to! It had something to do with her. Misty had said so herself.

She checked the yard, but it was empty. Her sensitive hearing hadn’t gone away with the disappearance of her animal, and neither had her hypervigilant instincts. No hearts beat around her except for a small group of birds in the tree branches of the oaks that lined the yard. She ducked under a low hanging branch, and high-kneed it over some brambles, looking for the trail she sometimes took to a creek when she needed time away from the world.

She found it within a minute and kicked her pace up to a jog, headed in the direction of the Alpha’s house.

She could hear yelling, so she pushed her legs into a sprint. The yelling was getting louder, and now she could hear specific voices. Tawk was roaring something about ‘rules,’ and geez, he sounded on the verge of a Change. That was against Derek’s laws. Changes weren’t allowed in the neighborhood. They hadn’t chased all the humans out of these houses yet.

She skidded to a stop and crouched down behind some brush. She looked down at the sound of a rattle though, and there was a rattlesnake coiled right where she was hiding. Crap! She yelped softly and bolted into the yard, then froze, exposed. Her skin was crawling. She hated snakes! But now she was in the back yard, and the back door was one of those transparent sliding glass ones. Someone would see her! She caught a glimpse of Derek’s house, and it was crammed full of people. Everyone had their backs to the yard, thank goodness.

She bolted for the side of the house, not about to push her luck in the friggin’ serpent safe haven woods behind her.

There was a window on the side, but the blinds were down. Crap. She ducked down and loped to the next window, and this one had a little better view. The blinds had been lifted just a few inches. Two guys were standing in front of the window with their backs to her, and were blocking almost everything, but one of them shifted to the side to say something to the other, and she caught a glimpse of a tall, heavily muscled man, with a slicked back mohawk. He stood in a power-stance, his legs splayed, his arms crossed over his chest. He wore a charcoal gray t-shirt, and medium-wash blue jeans.

Can you feel him?

She startled hard at her animal’s whispered question.

Two men were yelling at him, but she couldn’t see who from this angle. The man didn’t even flinch back.

Can you feel him?

She scanned the room as much as she could see with the men blocking most of her view, but she didn’t see Connor.

He’s here. Can you feel him?

Feel what? All she felt was a heaviness in her chest that hadn’t been there before, but maybe she was just out of shape and out of breath? Or her adrenaline was jacked up because of the near-bite from the rattler in the woods, perhaps.

Watch.

---