Hemlock 03: Willowgrove by Kathleen Peacock

I grabbed one of the pillar candles and slipped out the door.
    The bathroom was at the end of a long, narrow hallway. Inside the black-and-white-tiled room, I set the candle on the edge of the lone sink and then dumped the contents ofthe basket into the toilet in the far stall. I didn’t bother trying to flush: like electricity, the church’s water supply had been cut off.
    I stepped out of the stall and set the basket down. Cleaning up someone else’s puke wasn’t anything new: I had cleaned up after Jason more times since Amy’s death than I could count.
    I leaned against the sink and glanced up.
    Amy stared back at me from the other side of the mirror. Her black hair fell around her shoulders like curtains and her eyes were dark, bottomless pits.
    The phone rang, startling me so badly that I almost knocked over the candle.
    “Kyle? Jason? Are you okay?” I fumbled with the phone as the words rushed out. I glanced back at the mirror. My face, not Amy’s, filled the glass.
    There was a long pause on the other end of the line and then a familiar, rough-edged voice said, “It’s me.”
    “Hank.” I gripped the edge of the sink as disappointment threatened to crush me. I had left a voice mail for my father—one with Jason’s phone number—shortly after Serena’s collapse.
    “Are you all right?”
    “I’m not hurt.” Unless you counted bruises, exhaustion, and so much worry that I was close to losing my mind.
    “Serena?”
    “She’s . . .” I started to tell him about the fever but the battery warning on Jason’s phone went off again. The small interruption gave my tired brain a chance to register thestrangeness of the question. The message I had left for Hank had been on the far side of extremely vague. While I didn’t think it was likely someone was hacking my father’s voice mail, I hadn’t felt safe leaving anything more than Jason’s number and a request to call. “How did you know something happened to Serena?”
    He ignored the question. “Is she all right? Is she safe?”
    I didn’t want to answer his questions until he answered mine, but I was too worn-out and worried to play games—especially with Jason’s phone on the verge of death. “She’s sick—some kind of fever. Men showed up at her house this afternoon. They had a photo of her. From Thornhill. Serena’s brother held them off—along with Kyle and Jason. They gave us a chance to get away.”
    I hesitated. “I don’t know where they are,” I admitted. “Jason gave us an address. He told us to wait until sunset and then get out of town if they hadn’t shown.”
    “It’s past sunset.”
    “They’ll be here.”
    “You can’t afford to be sentimental, kid. You know better.”
    “They’ll. Be. Here.” It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t a debate. My father had always been great at cutting people loose, but I wasn’t anything like him.
    Hank sighed. When he spoke again, he sounded like he had aged about forty years. “The remaining two Denver packs were hit last night. Someone is going after the wolves from the detention block. They managed to get three—two from Carteron, one from Portheus. It’s why I tried to callyou this morning. I thought there was a chance they’d go after Serena.”
    “They almost got her.”
    “She’s lucky,” said Hank, a dark edge to his voice. “I don’t know who these guys are, but they’re not LSRB. According to the other pack leaders, they killed a couple of people who got in their way, but they weren’t interested in anyone else. They were fast and efficient, and they knew exactly who they were going after and how to get in. They were good. Mercenary-level good.”
    Packs didn’t take security lightly. If the men had known how to get in and where the wolves from the detention block were, that meant . . .
    “They had moles inside the packs.” My blood ran cold as the words left my lips. “What about the Eumon?” Two of the wolves from the detention block were with