Willowgrove by Peacock Kathleen

Author:Peacock,Kathleen
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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MY SHOULDER BLADES COLLIDED WITH THE DOOR. I didn’t remember standing or moving.

I stared at Ben from across the room as sweat soaked my skin and my heart thundered in my chest. For a horrible second, I was back in the forest outside Hemlock, my shoulders pressed to a tree as a white werewolf—as Ben—loomed above me.

I dug my nails into my palm, using the pain to keep the past from pulling me under.

Ben was thinner than I remembered, and he had dyed his normally blond hair a rich, deep brown, but it was unmistakably him. The front of his shirt was soaked with blood. It clung to his lower torso and his left shoulder in large patches.

A reg would already be dead from blood loss; given the way Ben stayed on the floor, leaning against the upturned desk for support, the wounds might be too much for even a werewolf to heal.

He didn’t look like he was going anywhere, but I wasn’t taking any chances. My gaze swept over the mess on the study floor and settled on a letter opener a few feet away. Locking my eyes on Ben, I walked over to it and crouched down. My fingers skimmed torn books and the remains of a Chinese vase before closing on the ebony handle.

“Don’t worry: I couldn’t hurt you even if I wanted to.” Ben laughed—or tried to—as I straightened. The laugh turned into a cough as a thin trail of blood ran down his chin. “I don’t want to hurt you, incidentally. What happened that night was never part of the plan.”

I glanced at Senator Walsh. He lay unnervingly still, but I could just see the rise and fall of his chest. “What did you do to him?” I asked, voice steady even as I fought an almost overwhelming urge to run. “Killing his granddaughter wasn’t enough?”

Another wet cough bubbled up from Ben’s chest. “I didn’t do anything to him. The senator found out his son is a monster. Too much knowledge can be fatal at his age.”

“What do you mean? What did he find out?” My gaze flickered down to Ben’s bloodstained clothing and my stomach rolled as I tried to picture Amy’s father killing—or at least trying to kill—someone. “Did Ryan Walsh do that to you?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

My grip on the letter opener tightened. “That’s not an answer. What happened?”

“Of course it’s an answer. You just don’t know the right question.”

“What are you doing here, Ben?” I asked, a fraction of my fear giving way to anger. “Why did you come back? Why couldn’t you just have disappeared and stayed gone?”

Ben hesitated. For a moment, I thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then he said, “I needed to get into this room and this party was my best chance to do it.” His gray eyes clouded with pain and then narrowed. “Maybe I should be asking you the same question. What are you doing here, in this room?”

The letter opener shook in my hand as I crossed my arms over my chest.

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