Midnight Howl Read Online Free PDF Page B

She turned to me. “Do you have a telescope? We try to bring as many as we can so everybody gets to use them.”
    “Yeah, I’ve got one. I’ll be glad to bring it on the trip,” I said. I had lugged it along as a carry-on onthe plane, even though my mom thought I should leave it at home. “I didn’t realize there was a full moon tonight until you said so. Maybe I’ll set up the telescope outside. I haven’t gotten a chance to use it here yet, and the stars are way more visible than at home.”
    Lily frowned. “Oh … it’s not really the best idea to go out alone at night right around Wolf Valley. Especially during a full moon.”
    I stopped walking. “How come?”
    Anderson started to laugh and lurched toward me with his hands crooked into claws. “Because of the
werewolves,”
he said menacingly.

CHAPTER SIX
    “Werewolves?” I looked uncertainly back and forth between Lily and Anderson. This was obviously some kind of joke, but I didn’t get it.
    Lily rolled her eyes. “There’s no such thing as a werewolf, Anderson,” she said flatly.
    “That’s what you say,” Anderson said, grinning. “Everyone knows that Wolf Valley is stalked by werewolves. How do you think it got its name?”
    Lily frowned. “Um, from wolves?”
    “Yeah, unusually large and intelligent wolves,” Anderson replied. He turned to me. “Hunters are allowed to kill wolves here, but only during wolf hunting season. And they can only kill, like, seventy-five in the whole state, and then the season closes.”
    “Yuck,” I said. “I hate hunting.”
    “Anyway,” he went on, “all year long, people see huge wolves in this area. Especially at night. And especially around the full moon. So hunters come here during wolf hunting season, and some people around here get wolf licenses, but
no one ever kills a single wolf.
They always just disappear. And then, once hunting season is over, they’re back. Does that sound normal to you? Do normal
wolf
wolves know how to read a calendar?”
    I looked at Lily skeptically. Was this guy kidding?
    She shrugged. “Coincidence. Anderson’s overstating how often people see wolves around here. People hear them, but they hardly ever see them. Students from the university camp out around here to see wolves in what should be peak wolf season, and I don’t think they’ve ever seen one. And with only seventy-five wolves allowed to be killed anywhere in the state before they close the season, it would be statistically more surprising for a hunter to actually shoot one than not.”
    “Oh yeah?” Anderson said. “Where did all the werewolf stories about Wolf Valley come from, then? My grandfather told me his own grandmother saw ahuge wolf get shot in the leg, a long time ago, and the next day,
her neighbor was limping.
”
    Lily and I stared at him, then glanced at each other and burst out laughing.
    “Anderson,” she said between giggles, “that is the weakest story I’ve ever heard.”
    We were still laughing when we got on the bus. Lily and I sat together, and Anderson flopped into the seat behind us. Jack was in the back, sitting with some other guys, and he tipped me a little wave.
    “Stop laughing at me,” Anderson groused. “There are lots of other stories, too, from people who’ve actually seen werewolves. If we found somebody with the werewolf signs, we could watch them around the full moon.”
    “Like what?” I asked him. “What are werewolf signs?”
    He straightened up, looking pleased that I was interested. “A long ring finger,” he said. “Pointed ears. Heavy eyebrows.”
    Lily made a
pfft
noise and waved him away. “Please,” she said. “Anyone could have any of those things.
I
have pointed ears.” She pulled her hair back to show us, and her ears were kind of pointy on top.“And I’m not a werewolf, am I? And my ring fingers are pretty long, too.”
    I looked at her hands. The ring fingers didn’t look superlong to me.
    “Well …” Anderson frowned at her.