Chapter1
I was born with legs that didn't work. For eighteen years, I never once left our apartment.
On the night I turned eighteen, my mother brought me my medicine, the way she did every night.
I had just blown out the candles on my cake. I picked up the first capsule, and a scream tore through the inside of my skull.
Don't swallow that!
My hand jerked. The capsule rolled across the blanket.
Mom's brow creased. "Evelyn? What's wrong?"
I'd imagined it. I had to have imagined it. I picked the capsule up again.
The voice came back, rough and wild, closer to a snarl than a word.
That's wolfsbane. It's been eating you alive, one bite at a time.
There is nothing wrong with your legs.
I went rigid in my wheelchair.
Slowly, I lifted my eyes to my mother's face. It was full of worry, the way it always was.
Mom said the doctors gave their verdict before I could understand it: a congenital nerve defect. I would never walk.
When I was three, my father decided he couldn't live with a daughter like me, and he left.
After that, it was just Mom and me.
Mom was a nurse. She worked nights at St. Agnes, and every morning she came home smelling of hospital disinfectant, so strong it made my eyes water. She'd come straight to my room and lay her hand on my forehead before she even took off her coat.
She was my nurse, my doctor, my teacher. No one else ever examined me. Which pill, how many, what time: she had it down to the minute.
Eighteen years, and she never missed a single dose.
I'd always believed that was what love looked like.
Until tonight, when a voice in my head told me I wasn't sick.
"Evelyn?"
Mom cupped my cheek. Her palm was hot, hotter than anyone's I'd ever known. When I was little and running a fever, I used to beg her to hold her hand against my forehead. I told her it was the warmest place in the world.
"Are your legs hurting again, sweetheart?"
There was nothing in her eyes but concern. It didn't look like an act.
Get a grip, I told myself. *She's your mother.
But my eyes slid to the pill bottle on the nightstand anyway.
The label said IBUPROFEN, EXTENDED RELEASE. Black letters on white. Plain as anything.
The bottle's real, the voice muttered. I could almost hear teeth behind it. What's inside isn't.
I looked down at the capsule in my palm. Dark brown.
"Mom," I said carefully, "when I was little, weren't my pain pills white? Little white tablets?"
Her hand stopped moving on my cheek.
The room went silent.
And I had the strangest, coldest feeling that she wasn't looking at my face at all.
She was listening. Listening to my heartbeat.
Easy, the voice whispered. She's low-ranking. She can't hear you clearly through human skin. Keep calm. You just don't like the taste.
A few seconds passed. Then Mom smiled.
"Silly girl. Those stopped working years ago. You've been hurting more and more, so you needed something stronger."
She stroked my hair. "Be good. Swallow it, and the pain goes away."
My throat was tight. "Could I have some milk first? It's so bitter."
She didn't move.
She lifted her chin and looked down at me.
"Evelyn, what has gotten into you tonight?"
"You're not being good."
The instant she said it, something pressed down on me. Heavy and invisible, like a hand closing around the back of my neck.
My shoulders curled in on their own. Something deep inside me wanted to shake, to lower my eyes, to give in.
That's dominance, the voice snarled. She's pushing you with her scent. A low-ranker like her, trying that on us? If it weren't for those pills, she wouldn't dare look you in the eye.
"Take it," Mom said.
The smile was gone. In the dim lamplight, her pupils had gone strangely wide, and around the edges glowed a thin, dark ring of green.
I stopped breathing.
Eyes didn't do that. People's eyes didn't do that.
Don't stare, the voice hissed. Look at the pill. Now.
"Don't make me say it a third time," Mom said.
I clenched my fist, tipped every capsule into my mouth, threw my head back, and swallowed hard.
The capsules stayed pinned under my tongue.
She watched my throat the way a snake watches a mouse. Only when she saw it move did her jaw loosen.
"Wait here. I'll warm up your milk."
She went out and pulled the door shut behind her.
The second the latch clicked, I grabbed a tissue and spat everything into it.
Four capsules. The shells had already gone soft. A dark powder leaked out of one, and the smell hit me: sharp and bitter, like dead leaves rotting in a gutter.
I stared at it. My heart was throwing itself against my ribs.
In eighteen years, I had never lied to my mother.
And I'd just done it because of a voice in my head.
You're not crazy.
The voice had gone quiet now, almost gentle, though I could still hear something heavy and animal in its breathing.
My name is Vera. I've always been inside you. Those pills kept me asleep.
You turned eighteen tonight. I finally clawed a way through.
Didn't you ever wonder about that disinfectant? She drowns herself in it to cover the smell of wolf.
Wolf.
I pressed my hand over my mouth.
And don't worry about her smelling the pills on you,* Vera went on. *You've had wolfsbane in your blood since you were a baby. You reek of it. She'll never notice four more.
The man who just moved in next door. He smells like us. And he's much, much stronger than she is.
Go to him. He can find out what this is.
My hands were shaking so badly the tissue almost slipped from my fingers.
Then I heard it.
Click.
The handle of my bedroom door was turning.
