Hemlock Read Online Free PDF Page B

shattered and I screamed.
    “Shhhh.”
    I lashed out and shoved the figure kneeling by my bed. Strong hands caught my arms, holding them so I couldn’t do any real damage.
    “Mac, shhhh. It’s al right.”
    It took me a moment to recognize Jason’s voice, his familiar shape, and the way his eyes glinted in the faint light from the street lamp outside. I stopped struggling and tried to catch my breath.
    “You were having a nightmare.”
    I swalowed. I felt like I had just run a marathon. “Thanks,” I mumbled. “Figured that out.”
    Jason sat on the floor next to my bed. He’d puled his shirt on at some point during the night, and I was oddly grateful. “What were you dreaming about?” he asked.

    you dreaming about?” he asked.
    What could I tel him? Not that Amy had shown up with her skin hanging off her face and blood soaking her clothes. Not when that was probably how he had seen her.
    Jason had been there, in the aley. He’d been looking for Amy and had arrived moments after the police. There was a rumor it had taken two officers to drag him away from her. I didn’t know if it was true; I’d never worked up the courage to ask.
    That was why he had become so much more self-destructive.
    He felt guilty for not finding her sooner, for not saving her.
    What if the attacks were starting al over again?
    I shivered and tried to convince myself that the attack last night was an isolated incident, the unrelated work of another wolf. There were tons of infected people hiding al over the country. There could easily be another werewolf in Hemlock. Maybe even another white one.
    The color of a wolf’s coat was a trait passed on with infection—
    a constant, visual reminder of the animal that had bitten or scratched you. The attack could have been the work of someone who had been infected in the spring and hadn’t turned themselves in. There were twelve attacks that the police knew about, but that didn’t mean there couldn’t have been more.
    “Mac?” Jason was waiting for an answer.
    I didn’t want to talk about the dream, so I lied. “There was a fire and stuff. Burning.”
    He glanced at me, then away. “You said her name.”
    “Oh.”

    “Oh.”
    “I miss her,” he admitted, his voice almost a whisper. Always
    “her” now. Never “Amy.”
    “Me too.”
    “I’m not ready to talk about it.”
    “I know.” The way he shuttered everything inside wasn’t healthy, but I was scared of pushing him. Jason had been so unpredictable over the last few months that sometimes he seemed like a stranger. “I miss you, too,” I admitted, and let out a nervous breath.
    Jason laughed—a low, bitter chuckle—and tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling. “Not much to miss. I was only ever good when I was with her.” He scrubbed a hand across his eyes. “The rest of the time, I was just another tool with a trust fund.”
    It wasn’t true, and I hated that he thought it. I propped myself up on one elbow. “Do you remember the first time we met?”
    He shook his head.
    “I’d only been in Hemlock for a couple of weeks. There was no way Tess was going to turn me over to the state—she kept teling me that—but . . .” I trailed off and tried to swalow past the lump in my throat.
    Other girls had moms who made them peanut butter sandwiches and dads who read bedtime stories and checked under the bed for monsters. I had a mother who skipped out on me sometime before my first birthday and a father who was wanted for everything from gunrunning to seling peyote out of the trunk of his car.
    “Mac?” Jason reached out and touched my hand, just for a second.

    second.
    “Sorry,” I said. It was easy to get lost when thinking about the first fourteen years of my life. Hank and I had been in Hemlock for my grandmother’s funeral when he finaly ditched me. He went out for a pack of cigarettes and never came back. I’d hated him for it at the time; now, I looked back and realized his leaving me was the best