How to Help a Hungry Werewolf by Charlotte Stein (Excerpt)

CHAPTER ONE



Cassie’s first instinct on seeing him approach the house was to murder him, then bury the body in the backyard.

Until it occurred to her that this would involve a lot of digging, and dragging of his gigantic body, and finally tamping down of dirt—and frankly all of that seemed like way too much effort. Plus she’d probably get crap all over the place if she tried, and she really didn’t want that to happen.

She’d only just managed to scrub away seventy years of grime from the ramshackle remains of her grandmother’s old home, after two days back in a place she hadn’t visited in years. At least thirty cobwebs had violently threatened her during the course of her cleaning spree. She’d found things in closets that no human eyes should ever see, unless they maybe wanted to unleash an ancient curse on a small, unsuspecting New England town. And her kneecaps were about to fall off from all the kneeling.

There was no way she was letting Seth Brubaker undo all her good work. If she was going to kill him, she was going to have to do it tidily. Maybe get a bath of acid ready first, to dissolve him in. Or hire a wood chipper to chop him into pieces.

Both seemed like pretty good ideas.

But maybe not quite as good as just refusing to open the door to him in the first place. After all, he had no decent reason to be here. And she had every reason in the world to never want to see him again. He was responsible for the most devastating series of events of her high school life.

In fact, they were so devastating that they still haunted her now, at the big old age of twenty-seven. She found herself lingering on the bright brilliance of having been friends with him for most of their childhoods. Defending each other from the Jerk Squad who had tormented them. Then the brutal sting when he had gotten too hot and cool for the likes of her, somewhere in the middle of high school, and started hanging out with the very boys who’d stuffed her into lockers and called the two of them losers for liking cringe things.

And of course anything had been cringe to Jason Kirkpatrick and his buddies. So everything had become cringe to Seth, too. Starting with the things Cassie and he had treasured together, the things they had shared, and ending with that fateful incident.

All of which made it perfectly justifiable to ignore his now insistent knocking.

Hell, maybe she could even pretend she wasn’t home. The door was thick and nothing but wood. And she’d been in the basement for the last hour, so he couldn’t have seen her silhouette through any downstairs window. Stay quiet and he’ll just go away, she told herself—which seemed like a reasonable thing to imagine.

Only then he started hollering. And even more bizarrely, it wasn’t her he was hollering for.

“Adeline, are you there?” he called out, and Cassie’s stomach seemed to drop three feet. That was her grandmother’s first name. A name that she herself had barely spoken aloud. In fact, she wasn’t sure she ever had. The woman was Gram or Granny to her, and nothing else. So what the heck was Seth Brubaker doing, using it like that?

He’d hardly known the woman. Even back when Cassie and he had still been friends and hung out at her house together—which had not been often, the occasional bout of board-game playing or begging for milk and cookies aside—he’d always called her Mrs. Camberwell.

Because he’d been a polite dork. Instead of the asshole big shot he grew into.

“Come on, Adeline, open up,” he said. While Cassie stood on the other side of the door, horrified. But also completely baffled. And in the end, it was the baffled part of her that won. It made her grab the door’s handle and fling the thing open before she could think any further about it.

Though she wished she had, once it was done.

Now not only was she abruptly face-to-face with her mortal enemy; she was face-to-face with him while being the absolute worst possible version of herself. Most of her dark hair was almost gray with dust. And she’d made the mistake of covering the rest with a red scarf—one that she’d found at the bottom of a box labeled “garbage.” She looked like a reject from a Rosie the Riveter photo shoot. Doubly so when you factored in the overalls she had foolishly chosen for this cleaning spree. They were far too short in the legs, and so worn you could probably breathe on them and make a hole. And even worse: they were very tight over her butt.

Which wasn’t a problem to her.

She loved how that clinginess made her curves look.

But the trouble was, she knew he didn’t feel that way. Oh yeah, she knew his feelings on that all right. And she had zero desire to hear any of those feelings ever again. She didn’t even want to be reminded with some sort of surreptitious glance down or pointed lip curl. Because if that did happen, she knew she would most likely do something very inadvisable.

Like try to attack him somehow.

Even though attacking him was never going to turn out well for her.

The gawky boy she had known looked even cooler and tougher now than he had during those final high school years. His shoulders were the size of boulders; the hand he had on the door resem bled a shovel. And, oh god, the clothes he was wearing. He had on an actual leather jacket. Over an honest-to-goodness Henley. Paired with boots that looked like he’d killed a biker for them.

And all of this was before she even laid eyes on his annoyingly handsome face.

Because even though she hated the very sight of it, even though it turned her stomach, even though she would have done anything to have back the boy with the too-big-for-his-mouth braces and the milk-bottle-bottom glasses, she had to admit: it was handsome. That jaw like the side of a knife; those wide-set, caramel-colored eyes that seemed constantly starved for something you didn’t want to consider.

And that mouth. How did he have a mouth like that? His upper lip was as plush as a peach. However, his lower was almost mean. It made him look like he was three seconds away from murdering you at any given moment—but in such a soft and seductive way that you’d be really happy about it when he did.

And then just in case all of that wasn’t enough, there was his hair. That black hair, stalking angrily over his eyes and swirling in thick waves across his jaw and forever settling in a perfect swoop just above his broad brow. Like a raven’s wing, she’d once thought, back when it had been thicker and shaggier and less immaculately coiffed.

And she’d been allowed to have such thoughts about it. Heck, she’d been allowed to touch it back then—and without so much as a second of worrying about the consequences. Because her milk-bottle-best-friend wouldn’t have had any consequences to dole out. He hadn’t seemed to even know what consequences for things like affection were. He just wanted to play Mario Kart or watch horror movies until they screamed themselves hoarse.

But that boy wasn’t coming back. This man had shed him, like a skin he no longer needed. And he’d discarded her along with it. In fact, the only sign that he’d been that boy was the slightly crooked incisors he’d been unable to completely fix. The ones she saw when his mouth dropped open, the second he clocked that it wasn’t Adeline on the other side of the door.

“Cassie,” he said, in a voice she’d never heard from him before. It was so faint it barely qualified as a voice. It was more like he’d just let out a slightly heavy breath. As if he’d seen a ghost, she thought—which she supposed was true, in one way.

He had pretty thoroughly murdered her in high school, after all.

She just hadn’t completely died. She had kept going, with all the dead parts stored inside. And now she had to somehow pretend those dead parts weren’t there. Even though that was much, much easier said than done. It took almost every ounce of effort she had just to look him in the face, never mind be cool and calm and collected while she did. Then somehow she was supposed to say something to him, without her voice shaking all over the place? Impossible, she thought.

Until suddenly it was just happening. Words were blurting out of her.

Though, god, they were not good ones.

“I have no idea why you’re looking for my grandmother, but no matter what the reason is you’re out of luck. She died of a heart attack,” she said, and knew she had made a mistake the moment it was out. Bad enough that Seth Brubaker was getting to see her looking a mess. But now she’d also filled him in on the reason she was feeling like a mess. She had given him more ammunition. And felt pretty sure he was about to open fire. Any second now, she thought.

Then didn’t know what to think when he looked concerned.

“Died of a heart attack? Just like that? With no sign of it being anything else? When?” he asked. As if somehow, inexplicably, he really wanted to know. More than that, in fact. It was like he was frantic to know. Like the very idea of not knowing made him lose his shit, just a little bit.

Even though she couldn’t for the life of her think why. He had long since stopped caring about her—never mind her grandmother. Heck, she couldn’t think of anybody who cared about her grandmother. Even her parents hadn’t thought much of her—mainly because they agreed with the rest of the town about how weird and antisocial her Gram had been. The woman would have done anything for anyone, but she didn’t suffer fools. And she wasn’t one for gossip, or too much time spent in company.

So when Cassie had told her parents she was going back to Hollow Brook to settle Gram’s affairs, they’d seemed at first dismissive, and then annoyed. Just sell the house as is and put the money to good use, her father had said. Maybe you can finally get your act together and go to college, like you should have done years ago.

And Cassie had come pretty close to doing that. But then she’d thought of her grandmother wanting her to have the house, and one particular soothing summer she’d spent with her, and she just couldn’t sell it. She couldn’t throw that away. She had to at least pay her respects and swim in a few treasured memories.

And now here she was, paying dearly for that sentimental choice.

“Cassie, answer me. Are you sure she died of a heart attack? Did anything cause it to happen so suddenly?” Seth repeated. Only now he was getting pretty close to yelling. And she wasn’t about to stick around for that.

“I don’t think that’s any of your goddamn business,” she somehow managed to bark out. Then even better: she was closing the door on him.

Actually closing the door on Seth Brubaker. Captain of the swim team. Homecoming king. Guy voted most likely to succeed at being extremely handsome. It was amazing—even if he wasn’t about to go down that easy.

He put a hand out to stop the door. And though it shouldn’t have been very hard to push against him, it really was. In fact, it kind of felt as if she were trying to force a large boulder up a mountain. Instead of just closing her door on a single outstretched arm.

Man, he got strong, she found herself thinking.

It wasn’t just his strength that was startling, however. He was also significantly taller than he had been in high school. She had to tilt her head all the way back just to meet his gaze, and once she had, she wished she hadn’t bothered. He looked weird. Almost like he was having human feelings. About her grandmother, apparently.

“It is my business,” he said. “She was my friend.”

He even made it sound convincing. Like sincerity.

Despite the fact that it couldn’t have been.

“My grandmother would never have been friends with the likes of you,” she said, and it felt true when she did. True enough to get him to stop, at any rate. But he didn’t. He kept going.

“Hey, just because I made a mistake in school doesn’t mean I’m beyond help.”

“Probably not. But calling the abandoning of your best friend and then betraying her in front of said school a ‘mistake’ sure does. I mean, hey, I got that we weren’t buddies by that point. The fucking Jerk Squad were your buddies, despite all the bullying they subjected you to before you turned cool. But I never thought you’d stoop so low as to yell insults at me in front of an auditorium full of the people I had to face the next day. And especially when you only did it to impress those assholes.” She pictured the episode. The talent show, the cake, the icing she’d made with her grandmother that changed colors as you applied it. Then the way it had looked all down her.

They rigged it to topple on you, she told herself, for the umpteenth time. They turned you into something from a Stephen King novel. You know they did, because Principal Sykes found the contraption they used to do it and suspended them for hardly any time at all.

And now she wanted to close the door again. But Seth was still protesting.

“I told you—I didn’t do it to impress anyone, okay?”

“Dude, you didn’t tell me anything. You just yelled an apology, one time.”

“Right. Right, and that was wrong. All of it was wrong, I know that. I fucked up majorly and you hate me and you’re never gonna stop and that’s fine. But if you could please just set that aside for one second, because I really need to know what happened to your grandmother. Like, if I could just hear some of the details.”

Fucked up majorly, she thought, and felt her heart lift a little bit.

But then she digested the rest of what he’d said and forced it back down. Because quite clearly, he was only doing this to get something that he inexplicably wanted. Something probably bad. And so now she had to find out what that bad thing was, before he could somehow hurt her with it.

Even if she had to be a little hyperbolic to do so.

“I see, so you can use those details to torment her too,” she said.

Much to his probably fake incredulity. “You think I’m so awful that I can somehow bully someone from beyond the grave? What do you think I’m going to do, dig her up and give her wedgies and a wet willy?”

“Well, now I do. Christ, I don’t even know how you came up with that.”

“I came up with that because there aren’t any other options.”

He nodded, like he was satisfied with his answer. Though she had no idea why. There were a million things he could have said. And now she was going to stick him with all of them. “You could have gone with pissing on her grave.”

“That’s almost as bad as what I suggested.”

“Or insulting her ghost.”

“Ghosts aren’t even real.”

“That is not an excuse for poking your soggy finger into my dead grandmother’s ear,” she said, and oh, his outraged expression was a peach. In fact, it almost made all her anxious sweating worth it. Until he started arguing with her again.

“Oh my god, don’t say it like I’ve already done it. Or would actually do it. It was just an example, because you said that thing about tormenting her,” he blew out. Like she was the bad one here.

“Yeah, and now you’re tormenting me.”

“I’m just asking you a question.”

“While trying to ram your way into my house.”

She knew she was exaggerating wildly, even as she said it. He wasn’t trying to ram his way into her house at all. In fact, that hand he’d put on the door had begun to slide down ever since she’d first started tearing into him. And she was pretty sure one good shove would have put paid to it entirely. But here was the weird thing: he didn’t act like that was the case. Instead, he seemed to jerk when he registered what he was doing. As if the body parts responsible didn’t actually belong to him. Someone had attached them in the night, while he was sleeping. Now they were roaming around, randomly holding open doors and making him seem really tall.

“I didn’t know. I didn’t realize I was doing that. I just. I thought,” he said, as if he’d forgotten how to finish sentences properly. He kept putting periods where they weren’t supposed to be, and trailing off in the strangest places.

She had to prompt him. “You thought what?”

Though in response he just shook his head, like a dog trying to get dry.

“That I gotta go,” he answered.

Then he suddenly started backing away. He stepped off her grandmother’s front porch. Or more accurately, he stumbled off it. He almost went flat on his ass, and probably would have done if he hadn’t managed to grab the railing that lined the steps down.

And even after he’d righted himself, he didn’t seem steady. He kind of staggered away, drunkenly. Lost his footing again, and regained it.

None of which should have been that shocking. But it was, because Seth Brubaker was the one doing it. Seth Brubaker, who had grown into the kind of guy who never put a single foot wrong. Who had started walking down hallways as if his feet were made of wheels, with hair that was never out of place and swimsuits that didn’t disappear into the crack of his ass, and the kind of cool life that she could never have hoped to follow him into.

He’d left her behind, utterly and completely.

Yet here he was, practically making a disaster of his exit. In fact, he was making so much of a disaster of it she came close to asking him something very strange. Something she could never have imagined saying to him in a million years. Are you okay? she thought. Are you okay, mortal enemy of mine?

And was grateful that he was gone before she could.


Copyright © 2024 by Charlotte Stein