“You’re damn right it works,” Rico said as he stormed back into the room.
“Daniels said the Blood Blade fragments wouldn’t bond with the lead,” Cole pointed out.
“It ain’t bonded with the lead. I injected it into hollow point rounds. Some of it leaks through enough to coat the bullet to let it punch through a shapeshifter’s hide. Once it’s in, the rest should be released into its body when the bullet cracks to pieces. Haven’t had a chance to test it for real yet. I’m working on something else right now.”
“Take it with you,” Cole said. “We’re going to Miami to look in on Paige.”
“No we’re not.”
“She went after the Nymar that walked off with God knows what from Lancroft’s place. Considering the stuff that was identified in there, I hate to think of what could be done with the goodies that nobody knew about. They may even be responsible for what happened after we left. Having that pack tear through so soon after the Nymar left is too much of a coincidence.”
“They could’ve just come because the defenses were dropped,” Rico explained. “Those runes are what kept Lancroft hidden from everyone, including the Full Bloods. I been tellin’ Paige and plenty of others that leaving those things down was a bad idea, but nobody listened.”
Cole grabbed a box of modified bullets and headed for the kitchen. “I’m taking some of this new varnish to give my weapon another treatment while I head back to the Emerald. I thought you were gonna help out, but if you’d rather putz around with your Home Ec projects, I’ll bring Prophet. He can handle himself.”
“You ain’t going anywhere,” Rico snapped. “Either one of ya.”
“Why not?”
The big man threw something onto the table that glanced against one of the paint pans and almost slid off the edge. “Because Paige sent you here for a reason, that’s why not. You got some reading to do.”
Cole approached the table again, looked down and found a set of standard, 8½ by 11, spiral-bound notebooks held together by a thick rubber band. The covers were creased and tattered on the edges. He couldn’t make out what was on the other covers, but the top one bore a picture of a large, droopy-eared hound dog. “What the hell is this?” he asked.
“It’s what Paige wanted you to see. She must really think a lot of you. Either that or she’s … just read it while I work. After that we’ll see what comes next.”
Cole pulled the rubber band from around the notebooks and opened the first one. The first words were, I don’t know what’s happening and that scares me. He’d seen enough of Paige’s hastily scribbled notes to recognize her handwriting, even though this seemed to be a slightly neater version.
That’s not it, the writing continued. I do know what’s happening. That scares me even more.
The notebook was full of her writing. All of them were.
They were Paige’s first journals as a Skinner, and the hound dog one was dated eleven and a half years ago.
Chapter Twelve
University of Illinois Eleven and a half years ago
The girls moved like a pack of wolves skirting the east side of Memorial Stadium, on their way to the residence halls on the other side of Peabody Drive. It was early spring but there was enough of a chill in the air for most of them to don university sweatshirts or layers of fashionably weathered flannel T-shirts bearing faded Pink Floyd album covers or the faces of members of more current bands. The campus was well lit, but none of the girls were concerned with dashing from one pool of yellowed light to another. There were five of them in all. The girl at the front turned around so she was backing onto the street without casting a glance toward the oncoming traffic.
“Holy shit, Paige, look out!” squealed one of the Pink Floyd fans as she grabbed her by the front of her sweatshirt and pulled.
Even with the approaching car’s horn blaring at her, Paige was more amused by the earnest attempt of the other girl’s attempt to save her. “Take it easy, Jenny. You’ll rumple the banana!”
Now that they were on the curb instead of in the street, Jenny looked down at the front of Paige’s sweatshirt. It was baggy and one size too big for her, but had been snug a few years ago when she’d put on her Freshman 15. After losing that weight, Paige kept the shirt and wore it like a second skin. Her tendency to refer to the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana as Shampoo Banana always made her roommate giggle and this was no exception.
“You’re going to get yourself killed before we get to the party,” Jenny said.
“Whose party is this anyway?” asked a short girl with straw-colored hair and glasses that seemed more like a pair of windows perched upon her nose. It was a chilly day, so she wrapped her zip-up sweatshirt so tightly around herself that it almost completely hid the picture of Ted Nugent during his Damn Yankees days that was plastered across the front of her T-shirt.
Another one of the girls came up behind her. “You know
Wes.”
“The one with all the tattoos?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Tara’s still in the bad boy phase,” Paige explained while strolling across the street during a lull in traffic.
“Like you’re so much better?” the Damn Yankees fan scolded.
“At least I can keep my mouth shut when screwing someone at three in the morning.”
Taking that as their cue, all of the girls except for Tara chanted, “Wes, Wes, oh God! Yes!” as if it was a cheerleader’s cadence.
Tara winced and pulled the collar of her navy blue sweater up high enough to cover most of her face. “I accidentally rhyme in the middle of a late night quickie and never hear the end of it.”
“You’re in the room right next door to us,” Paige said. “We’d like to hear the end of it so we can get some studying done.”
Rushing up to bump Paige with her shoulder, Tara said sarcastically, “Right. All Margarita Girl here wants to do is study.”
“Finals are coming up soon,” Jenny offered.
“You guys need to lighten up.” Pivoting around to walk backward across a small field of grass on the perimeter of a set of residence halls, Tara added, “Especially Karen. I bet you could be the one screaming by the end of tonight.”
Although the face behind her wide glasses was made to smile, the one she showed the other girls was forced at best. “Sure. Maybe.” That got the others off her back long enough for the rest of the pack to get distracted.
Now that they were close enough to hear music rolling out of one of the smaller halls, they set their eyes on the prize and fell into a strut that made them look like a small girl gang taking over a bar in a campy fifties sexploitation flick. Playing the role to the hilt, Paige swatted the face of the second-string football player guarding the door as she announced, “You can stop wishing for it, boy. The party’s here.”
“About damn time,” the jock said. “Bar’s right down that hall and the food’s upstairs. Just follow the music.”
It wound up being just another loud night in a string of similarly loud college nights. Even though she was taking part in festivities that so many of her peers found enthralling, Paige soon got bored. She drank a few of the margaritas for which she’d become famous, joked around with some guys, deftly avoided their clumsy advances and promised to call the number that had been given to her on a scrap of paper that became a receptacle for her gum.
Wes made an appearance every so often. He was a tall guy who stood out from the rest thanks to a series of intricate tribal tattoos on his neck and forearms. Every so often Paige thought she could see those tattoos shift, but chalked that up to the light in the room or the alcohol in her system.
Finding the rest of her pack was more of a chore than she’d expected. The second floor of the dorm was jammed to capacity with students and townies alike who’d clustered around the free booze and boiled hot dogs like a school of piranha. Jenny was in the upstairs common area on a ripped plastic couch while getting three bottles of Michelob poured down her throat via a length of plastic tubing. Amy was one of the pack’s tagalongs, having been added a few weeks after the start of spring semester. The bright red Huskers jersey given to her by her boyfriend at the University of Nebraska was impossible to miss, but Paige still couldn’t spot her. Amy wasn’t the type to leave a party before being given permission by her friends, so that meant she must have been holed up somewhere out of sight, ditched the sweatshirt, or both. Good for her, Paige thought. Amy’s boyfriend was a self-centered jackass. The rest of the group had been swallowed up by a crowd that became one sweaty, rattling mass. Time for a breather.