Chapter 2

Three girls sat around a kitchen table in a house that was too big for them, lit by the cold glow of a single tablet.

Tricia, the eldest, scrolled through page after page of rejection emails. Summer was almost over. Once it ended, online registration would close, and so would their last chance at a normal life. They had been searching for months. Every application came back the same way: We regret to inform you. None of them had been caught yet, but if the police ever discovered that three teenagers weren’t in school, someone would end up in a cell.

“Isla, you started all this,” Remy said suddenly. Her voice was small and shaking. “I’m sick of being rejected because of you. You need to fix your problems and free us from this.”

The room went still.

Isla’s jaw dropped. Her eyes burned, and she blinked hard to keep the tears from falling. She would not cry in front of them. Not over this.

Tricia stared at Remy in shock. Remy, of all people. Remy was the soft one, the clumsy one who apologized to furniture when she bumped into it. Cruelty was Tricia’s department.

“Did you just blame Isla?” Tricia snapped. “Seriously? This house belongs to her parents, and we’re squatting in it. She could throw us out tomorrow and she never has. You should be helping, not pointing fingers.”

Isla touched Tricia’s shoulder gently. “It’s fine. I could never send you away. You two are the only family I have left.” Her voice cracked. “And Remy’s right. I’m sorry for what I’ve cost you.”

A single tear escaped. She turned and ran upstairs before another could follow.

She shut her bedroom door and slid down it to the floor, and the tears came at last.

Remy was right, and that was the worst part.

Isla sometimes wondered whether she was cursed. Ever since the accident, ever since the night her parents drove out for groceries and never came back, all of Nashville had decided she was the one who killed them.

She had been ten years old.

Her father owned hotels across the country. Her mother owned the most beautiful flower shop in America. They were rich, and a child who inherited everything was an easy villain. People whispered it in the streets, and then the newspapers printed it. The orphan who wanted the money.

How could they think a ten-year-old could plan something like that? How could they think she would destroy the only two people who had ever loved her, for money that was already going to be hers? She hadn’t even been in the car. She had been at home with her nanny, waiting for them to return.

The city didn’t care. They locked her away anyway.

Six years. She spent six years behind walls and bars, from the age of ten to sixteen, and it would have been ten if their family lawyer hadn’t fought for her until his voice gave out. He was an honest man, the only one who stayed, and he made sure that every property, every account and every inheritance her parents had willed to her stayed hers.

When she walked out at sixteen, she walked out alone.

That was when she met Tricia and Remy. They were standing on a street corner at dusk, two hungry girls selling whatever they could to stay alive, with nobody left to look after them. Isla had a house and a fortune and no one to share it with. They had nothing but each other. So she brought them home.

But the world hadn’t forgiven her. No school would take her. No organization would hire her. She couldn’t walk through a mall without a mask on, and she couldn’t even order food online without someone recognizing her name. Her friends were punished for standing beside her, and she sometimes wondered how everyone always seemed to know who they were, as if someone was watching.

All she had ever wished for was that her parents would walk back through the door. Then the whispers would stop, and the schools would open, and her friends would be free.

A soft knock sounded at the door.

“It’s open,” she said, wiping her face.

Remy’s head popped through the gap first, then the rest of her, clumsily catching her sleeve on the handle.

“Isla, I’m so sorry for what I said. I don’t know what came over me.”

Isla managed a small smile. “You don’t have to beg. You were right. Anyone in your place would feel the same. I understand.”

“We just want to be normal,” Remy whispered. “Go to school like everyone else. You’re eighteen, I’m nineteen. If we wait much longer, we’ll turn into dummies or get caught by the cops.”

“I know.”

“Oh, yes, we all know!”

They both turned. Tricia stood in the doorway, her tablet clutched to her chest, grinning like she’d just robbed a bank.

Tricia was an internet freak. She seemed to know the last room of Google, if such a place existed, and her brain was rare in every sense. When she looked this excited, it usually meant trouble or a miracle.

“Guess what, girls?”

“Spill it!” Remy said.

“We’ve been accepted. To a college. A good one, though it isn’t known to the public.”

“Oh my gosh.” Isla stood up. “Tricia, are you serious?”

“Look.”

They crowded around the screen and read the letter together.

Dear Miss Tricia Atticus, Isla Enid, and Remy Louise, you have been officially accepted as students of…

They paused and looked at each other, hardly daring to breathe. Then they read the last line aloud.

“…Wolfries College of Nashville.”

Remy squealed and danced around the room like a puppy. Isla pressed her hands to her mouth and laughed for the first time in months.

“All thanks to our genius,” she said.

Tricia waved her off and covered her face with both palms. “Stop it, I’m blushing.”

They all laughed.

None of them noticed that the letter had no phone number, no street address, no signature and no brochure. They were too happy to ask why.

Summer ended. On the first day of term, the three girls stood at the gates of Wolfries College, dressed neatly and trying not to look as nervous as they felt.

The campus was enormous, all dark stone, tall iron fences and old trees with branches that seemed to lean toward the visitors. It was beautiful. It was also strangely quiet, and the quiet had a weight to it, like being watched by something that had not yet decided to move.

“Okay, girls,” Tricia said. “We just breathe in and walk through like everyone else.”

“Right, right,” Remy said, drawing a loud breath.

They walked in.

The students didn’t look at them. Not a single head turned. No one laughed or called out to friends, and when the girls tried to ask for directions, people moved past them as if they weren’t there. After endless wandering through corridors that all looked alike, they finally found the administration office.

Isla knocked.

Inside, a bald man in tiny round glasses sat hunched over a stack of papers. He looked up, adjusted his glasses and smiled.

“Oh, so sorry, young ladies. Welcome. Please, sit.” He waved at the chairs and nudged the papers aside. “What can I do for you?”

“Good morning, sir,” Isla said. “We came to confirm our registration, and to ask whether there’s anything else we need to complete.”

“Names?”

“Tricia Atticus, Isla Enid and Remy Louise.” Isla gave them in the order they appeared on the letter. They couldn’t afford a single mistake.

He typed. The girls waited in silence. The only sound was the keyboard clicking, and somewhere far off, something that might have been a howl.

“You’ve cleared everything,” he said at last. “Welcome to Wolfries College.”

“Thank you, sir,” they said together, and turned to leave.

“Wait a moment.”

They stopped.

The old man had gone very still. He was studying them with a strange, careful expression, the look of someone who had just noticed something wrong with a familiar room.

“What kind of werewolves are you?” he asked. “You girls don’t seem dangerous.”

Nobody moved.

“I don’t understand, sir,” Remy said. “That’s a very strange question.”

The man’s eyes went wide.

“Are you telling me you’re human?”

“Of course we’re human!” Tricia snapped. “What kind of question is that?”

He slapped his palm against his forehead and dragged it down his face.

“Oh no. Oh, my dear girls. You’ve registered at the wrong school.”

“I don’t follow,” Isla said slowly. Her stomach was already turning cold.

“This isn’t a human college.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “It’s a werewolf college. And once a name is on the list, there is no going back.”

Behind her, Remy’s knees buckled, and she hit the floor like a dropped coat.

“What?” Tricia and Isla screamed together.