Free Shiver Trilogy (Shiver, Linger, Forever) by Maggie Stiefvater Page A

hairs on my neck stood at attention, and I had the uneasy sense that I was sharing my breath with someone else. I turned and saw her, big for a female, white coat ordinary and yellowish in this full daylight. She seemed to have survived the hunt without so much as a scratch. Ears slightly back, she observed my ridiculous apparel with a cocked head.
    “Shhh,” I said, and held my hand out, palm up, letting what was left of my scent waft toward her. “It’s me.”
    Her muzzle curled in distaste as she backed slowly away, and I guessed she recognized Grace’s scent layered on top of mine. I knew I did; even now, her spare, soapy aroma clung to my hair where I’d lain on her bed and to my hand where she’d held it.
    Wariness flashed in Shelby’s eyes, mirroring her human expression. This was how it was with Shelby and me — I couldn’t remember a time we hadn’t been subtly at odds. I clung to my humanity — and to my obsession with Grace — like a drowning man, but Shelby welcomed the forgetting that came with her lupine skin. Of course, she had plenty of reasons to forget.
    Now, in these September woods, we regarded each other. Her ears tipped toward me and away, collecting dozens of sounds that escaped my human ears, and her nostrils worked,discovering where I’d been. I found myself remembering the sensation of dried leaves beneath my paws and the sharp, rich, slumber-heavy scent of these autumn woods when I was a wolf.
    Shelby stared into my eyes — a very human gesture, considering my rank in the pack was too high for wolves other than Paul or Beck to challenge me like that — and I imagined her human voice saying to me, as it had so many times before, Don’t you miss it?
    I closed my eyes, shutting out the vividness of her gaze and the memory of my wolf body, and instead thought of Grace, back at the house. There was nothing in my wolf experience that could ever compare to the feeling of Grace’s hand in mine. I immediately turned this thought over in my head, creating lyrics. You’re my change of skin / my summer-winter-fall / I spring to follow you / this loss is beautiful. In the second it took me to compose the lyric and imagine the guitar riff that would go with it, Shelby had vanished into the woods, soft as a whisper.
    That she could disappear with the same silent stealth as she had arrived reminded me of my vulnerable state, and I clumped hurriedly to the shed where my clothing was stashed. Years ago, Beck and I had dragged the old shed, piece by piece, from his backyard to a small clearing deep in the woods.
    Inside were a space heater, a boat battery, and several plastic bins with names written on the sides. I opened the bin marked with my name and pulled out the stuffed backpack inside. The other bins were loaded with food and blankets and spare batteries — equipment for holing up in this shack, waiting for other pack members to change — but mine contained suppliesfor escape. Everything I kept here was designed to get me back to humanity as quickly as possible, and for that, Shelby couldn’t forgive me.
    I hurriedly changed into my several layers of long-sleeved shirts and a pair of jeans and traded Grace’s father’s oversized boots for wool socks and my scuffed leather shoes, getting my wallet with my summer-job money in it and stuffing everything left over into the backpack. As I shut the shed door behind me, I caught dark movement out of the corner of my eye.
    “Paul,” I said, but the black wolf, our wolf pack leader, was gone. I doubted he even knew me now: To him, I was just another human in these woods, despite my vaguely familiar scent. The knowledge prickled a kind of regret somewhere in the back of my throat. Last year, Paul hadn’t become human until the end of August. Maybe he wouldn’t change at all this year.
    I knew my own remaining shifts were numbered, too. Last year I had changed in June, a frighteningly huge jump from the previous year’s shift in early spring,