Wild Hunt Read Online Free Page B

Katie tugged on my shirt until I looked down at her. “We went to the Fens today for day camp, and we got to go into the Gardner Museum, only you weren’t there—”
    A door down the hall slammed open, followed by a yell of “ Fuck you!” I stepped in front of Katie—for whatever good that would do—just as the speaker reeled out into the hallway: a teenager in a polo shirtand shorts. His face was the color of roast beef, and it only got redder as he yanked a textbook from his bag and threw it overhand into the office he’d come out of.
    The security guard glanced over her shoulder and sighed. “What’s going on?” I asked, dropping to a whisper.
    “Probably needed something for pre-med,” she said wearily. “Happens all the time.”
    By now the angry student had moved on to throwing papers, none of which had the same dramatic impact as the textbook, and screaming about the professor’s limited mental capacity, tiny genitalia, and propensity for self-abuse. The security guard yawned, and Katie shrank behind me a little further. “Cover your ears, kid,” I said. That got me a scornful look, but at least I had deniability if Nate wanted to know where she’d learned that kind of language.
    The kid concluded by yelling something about the professor’s mother and her predilection for livestock, then stood there panting. I started to relax, then tensed again as the door creaked and opened further, and Nate stepped out into the hall, thrown textbook in hand.
    For a moment I didn’t recognize him, and that wasn’t good: I’d been following his scent, and scent is one of those things that, while it may shade one way or another, remains fundamentally the same. Nate’s scent had gone icy. It wasn’t just a matter of keeping his temper; this was a complete shutdown, the emotional equivalent of those big scary blast doors they have in second-rate action movies.
    This wasn’t the Nate I knew. But then , I thought, you saw another side of him, under the streets, at the same time as he saw another side of you…
    The student seemed to recognize that he’d stepped onto dangerous ground, even if he was too mad to have any common sense. He went from red to dead white, and while Nate didn’t move any closer to him,he backed up until he ran into the wall. The contact seemed to wake him up, and he muttered one last “fucking asshole” before taking off down the hall.
    “Nate—” I stopped as Katie squeezed my hand hard: telling me to stop, or comforting me?
    Nate darted a glance over his shoulder like a soldier expecting a new attack, then saw me. The lines of his shoulders slowly relaxed, and the man I knew came back into focus. “Evie? What are you doing here?”
    “She’s with me!” Katie announced with more enthusiasm than accuracy.
    He crossed the hall in a few long strides, caught me by the hands, and pulled me to him for a hug. “God, it’s good to see you.”
    I stiffened and returned the hug about as smoothly as I’d returned Katie’s. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy it—the opposite, in fact. But I didn’t often get this close to someone. And Nate was attractive, in a stretched-on-the-rack, all-elbows sort of way. And this was a very brotherly hug. Dammit.
    “Thought I’d come see you,” I said, and pushed myself away at last. “What was all that about?”
    “Summer classes,” he said. “It’s easy to slack off on them, but it’s not a good idea if you’re already taking a remedial course. He wanted a grade change, and I told him to go to the professor for it.” He smiled a tired smile at me, one that told me that yes, he’d been through this before, right down to the profanity. “It’ll be okay. Katie, you’ve got everything?” She nodded and took his hand.
    We headed out onto the green, then along the Charles River, me walking my bike along the side of the road to keep out of the way of the militant joggers. Katie, following some obscure little-kid logic, ranged ahead of us