The Willow Files by Yvonne Navarro

Author:Yvonne Navarro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon Pulse

CHAPTER 3

He could feel the sun, and it was warm and bright. There was a breeze ruffling around him that brought the sound of birdsong to his ears, and it took a moment for him to realize that something else was sort of . . . growling along with it. He scrunched his eyes shut against the brightness and stretched, feeling and hearing his joints pop loudly. He felt a vague, not altogether unpleasant ache that made him groan, and that sound grew out of the previous weird growl.

He opened his eyes and saw a leafy canopy of sun-splashed green overhead.

Wrong.

Where was his bedroom ceiling?

Struggling upright, he stared at the woods surrounding him—vaguely familiar, perhaps the ones behind his own house. Like most forested areas, it had trees and grass and rocks, and probably a thousand small creatures and insects. It was not supposed to have, as he then discovered, his own buck-naked body lying behind a rock.

About the only thing Oz could think of to say out loud was a single, bewildered, “Huh.”

* * *

Home. It should have surrounded him like an old friend, drawn him in and comforted him. Home was where you ran when you got your knee scraped or your ankle twisted, or you found out the girl you had a crush on liked the boy down the street better.

Or when you woke up in the woods without your clothes.

Oz picked up the phone and dialed his aunt’s number from memory. The anticipation of hearing her voice, and of what he had to ask, made him shaky. A moment later, she answered the phone.

“Aunt Maureen? Hey, it’s me—what? Oh, actually, it’s healing okay.” He held up the finger with the small bandage on it and studied it. So small, but so much possibility in there. “That’s pretty much the reason I called. I wanted to ask you something.”

Oz paused and silence filled the telephone line. His aunt didn’t say anything and there was probably a whole two seconds of lag time between his words. It felt like a lifetime.

“Is Jordy a werewolf?”

He heard Aunt Maureen answer and felt it sink in at the same time he heard himself keep going with the conversation. He was pretty proud of himself.

“Uh-huh. And how long has that been going on? Uhhuh.” Wait —she’d asked him something— Never mind; he really didn’t feel up to sharing.

“What—no. No reason,” Oz said in response. “Okay, well, thanks. Love to Uncle Ken.”

She said good-bye—at least he thought she did—and he hung up. Then he sat there for a while, taking in her answer and just staring at nothing.

Home.

It brought no comfort this time.

* * *

“I can’t believe I let that thing get away,” Buffy said. “Cain was right. I should have killed it when I had the chance!”

Willow looked up to see Oz coming in the door to the library, and despite the circumstances, she couldn’t help smiling.

“Killed what?” he asked. He looked a little dazed.

“The werewolf,” Giles said tiredly. “It was out last night.

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