Dead to the World

instead of hiding in a dark hole where she couldn’t find us. This was so smart.
    At the same time, I had to admit that I was kind of having fun, despite the difficulties of keeping a grip on Eric in this gently rolling country. The graveyard was somewhat downhill from my house. Bill’s house, the Compton house, was quite a bit more uphill from Tall Pines Cemetery. The journey downhill, mild as the slope was, was exhilarating, though I glimpsed two or three parked cars on the narrow blacktop that wound through the graves. That startled me. Teenagers sometimes chose the cemetery for privacy, but not in groups. But before I could think it through, we had passed them, swiftly and silently. Eric managed the uphill portion more slowly, but with no evidence of exhaustion.
    We were next to a tree when Eric stopped. It was a huge oak, and when I touched it I became more or less oriented. There was an oak this size maybe twenty yards to the north of Bill’s house.
    Eric loosened my hands so I’d slide down his back, and then he put me between him and the tree trunk. I didn’t know if he was trying to trap me or protect me. I gripped both his wrists in a fairly futile attempt to keep him beside me. I froze when I heard a voice drifting over from Bill’s house.
    “This car hasn’t moved in a while,” a woman said. Hallow. She was in Bill’s carport, which was on this side of the house. She was close. I could feel Eric’s body stiffen. Did the sound of her voice evoke an echo in his memory?
    “The house is locked up tight,” called Mark Stonebrook, from farther away.
    “Well, we can take care of that.” From the sound of her voice, she was on the move to the front door. She sounded amused.
    They were going to break into Bill’s house! Surely I should prevent that? I must have made some sudden move, because Eric’s body flattened mine against the trunk of the tree. My coat was worked up around my waist, and the bark bit into my butt through the thin material of my black pants.
    I could hear Hallow. She was chanting, her voice low and somehow ominous. She was actually casting a spell. That should have been exciting and I should have been curious: a real magic spell, cast by a real witch. But I felt scared, anxious to get away. The darkness seemed to thicken.
    “I smell someone,” Mark Stonebrook said.
    Fee, fie, foe, fum.
    “What? Here and now?” Hallow stopped her chant, sounding a little breathless.
    I began to tremble.
    “Yeah.” His voice came out deeper, almost a growl.
    “Change,” she ordered, just like that. I heard a sound I knew I’d heard before, though I couldn’t trace the memory. It was a sort of gloppy sound. Sticky. Like stirring a stiff spoon through some thick liquid that had hard things in it, maybe peanuts or toffee bits. Or bone chips.
    Then I heard a real howl. It wasn’t human at all. Mark had changed, and it wasn’t the full moon. This was real power. The night suddenly seemed full of life. Snuffling. Yipping. Tiny movements all around us.
    I was some great guardian for Eric, huh? I’d let him sweep me over here. We were about to be discovered by a vampire-blood drinking Were witch, and who knows what all else, and I didn’t even have Jason’s shotgun. I put my arms around Eric and hugged him in apology.
    “Sorry,” I whispered, as tiny as a bee would whisper. But then I felt something brush against us, something large and furry, while I was hearing Mark’s wolfy sounds from a few feet away on the other side of the tree. I bit my lip hard to keep from giving a yip myself.
    Listening intently, I became sure there were more than two animals. I would have given almost anything for a floodlight. From maybe ten yards away came a short, sharp bark. Another wolf? A plain old dog, in the wrong place at the wrong time?
    Suddenly, Eric left me. One minute, he was pressing me against the tree in the pitch-black dark, and the next minute, cold air hit me from top to bottom (so much for my holding on to his wrists). I flung my arms out, trying to discover where he was, and touched only air. Had he just stepped away so he could investigate what was happening? Had he decided to join in?
    Though my hands didn’t encounter any vampires, something big and warm pressed against my legs. I used my fingers to better purpose by reaching down to explore the animal. I touched lots of fur: a pair of upright ears, a long muzzle, a warm tongue. I tried to move, to step away from the oak, but the dog