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staring at the foot of my bed where I’d seen it. All my lights were on, blazingly bright yellow, but I knew that wouldn’t stop it if it felt like materializing to watch me.
    And when I wasn’t thinking about the shadowman, I was remembering Dr. Gunther Elliott. I remembered the night at the club when he lured me outside, then fired a gun at me. I remembered the night he’d found me outside Patrick’s and Spencer’s respective houses and tried to kill me.
    That was the night Spencer and I became wolves together. Leaped at Dr. Elliott. Tore into his neck and chest with our terrible, monstrous teeth. Hot, oily blood leaked from horrific wounds, filling my mouth, coating my tongue. And the shadowmen were there, watching us do it.
    Applauding us.
    I was a killer. I was a freak. A…
    I gasped a sob on my bed, where I lay thinking these thoughts. I was made this way and I didn’t know why, and it seemed like no one else knew, either.
    But I was also strong now, right? I could be fearless, if I let myself. I had a connection to others, my pack, that reminded me of being a little kid, when I last felt like I was really close to my family. It was the feeling of Christmases with the grandparents over, everyone in sweaters, a fire in the fireplace, me tossing wrapping paper into the air while they laughed and videotaped the present-opening carnage. It was cuddling next to my dad, an old knitted afghan over us as we watched Alias , me wondering aloud why sometimes Sydney Bristow wore only her underwear when doing spy stuff. And it was Megan and me running around with blankets slung over our shoulders as royal robes, screaming at the top of our lungs while we pretended we were being chased by carnivorous unicorns.
    I mean, it’s not like my family wasn’t still close. We were just all … doing our own thing now, I guess. And in the span of a week Megan and I had drifted apart. But when Spencer was there, and now Dalton, those old, fuzzy feelings all came back somehow. That feeling of me needing them, and them needing me, and together we could just be relentlessly happy .
    Only my pack wasn’t there just then. One, Emily Cooke, would never be there. I was alone with all this craziness, and all I wanted was to find Spencer and let our biochemistry mingle and keep me in a dopey, goofy haze.
    Sick, right? It was funny, but at first I’d thought I could handle all of this alone. I’d thought I’d sort of reconciled all the sides of myself and I was an independent woman, strutting like Beyoncé and getting all single ladies up in here. Except I was preventing myself from turning into Nighttime and Wolftime, the stronger versions of Emily. And the only time the past few days I’d felt all wanton and worry free was when I was with a boy.
    It doesn’t have to be that way, girl. Nighttime. Stop being so damn afraid. You know you’re better than that. You proved it. Believe it, already!
    â€œI know, I know,” I muttered. “You’re so awesome, I’m so lame, blah, blah and, oh look over here, in the back of the closet behind an old pair of bright red galoshes: another blah .”
    I pulled my glasses off my face, squeezed my eyes closed, and massaged the bridge of my nose. Considering all the sleep I was getting, I shouldn’t have felt so tired. But being consumed all the time by sci-fi craziness on top of, y’know, school and angry best friends can be a bit of a drain.
    Oh. Angry best friend. Maybe of all my problems, that was one I could actually fix without too much hassle.
    I glanced at my clock—it was a little after four p.m. I still had some time to kill. I probably should have done homework. But I wasn’t really in the mood to parse mathematical equations. Instead, I had an idea about how to bond with Megan.
    I grabbed my phone and went downstairs. The house was eerily quiet—when Dawn disappears into her room to study, she really