Cursed (Howl, #6) (5 page)

Chapter 6

Samara sat on the brown leather sofa in Eddie Williams’ house, staring at the ugly gray curtains on the wall. They were covered in spider
webs. Guessing from how messy his home was, Samara had to guess that Ed lived alone—and that he didn’t see many visitors.

Through the front window, Samara could see the rest of her pack members, who—with the exception of Luke, Colby, and Emma—had chosen to wait outside. They stared at the house anxiously, as though they were just waiting for Samara to call them and let the
m know that she needed backup.

Emma was the first one to break the awkward silence that had taken over the room. “So
, you have a lovely home, Ed.”

Samara tried not to laugh at her friend’s attempt to make conversation. Eddie Williams’ house actually gave her a sort of eerie feeling, and she cou
ld tell from Emma’s nose, which looked like she wanted to wrinkle it, her best friend felt the same way.

“Thank you,” Eddie replied quietly. Meeting Samara’s gaze, he said, “I’m willing to answer whatever questions you’re planning to ask me, but only under one condition.” He paused and took a deep breath before saying, “Please don’t tell my mo
ther that you found me here.” 

“Why don’t you want your mom to know where you are?” Samara asked, taking a sip of lemonade from a glass that Eddie had poured her from a pitcher. The bitter taste of the lemon filled her mouth, and she thought about the conversation she’d once had with Edda about her son disappearing. “Your mother misses you. I know, because she talked about you not that long ago. It’s hard on her, you know, not knowing
if her son is dead or alive.”

“I’m sure it
is
difficult for her,” Eddie agreed, taking a sip of his own lemonade. “It’s difficult for me, too, Samara. What you need to understand is that leaving Grandview was in my mom’s best interest.”

“How is letting her think her son is dead i
n her best interest? You’re her only child,” Samara pointed out. Maybe it was because of what had happened to Lilly or because there was a chance that Declan might also have run away from home, never to return again, but she couldn’t help but sympathize with Edda in this.

“I left town because I didn’t want her to know what I’d bec
ome,” Eddie told her. “I told myself that, one day, I would be able to tell her about it, but . . . after the autopsy, I knew it was just too dangerous for me to involve my mother in my life. I started receiving death threats from people who seemed to think I was the one who had killed Joe.”

Colby eyed him curiously. “Why would people think
you
were the one who killed Joe McKinley? Was there bad blood between the two of you?”

Eddie shook his head. “No, it wasn’t that. In fact, there was no way I could have had bad blood with him because we’d never even met.” He took a nervous gulp of his lemonade. “The reason people thought I killed Joe McKinley was to get his talisman. They thought I wanted to become the next powerful werewolf, but obviously, they didn’t know me all that well. Power is the last thing I wanted.
Heck, I still don’t want it.”

Samara found it odd how, even though Eddie looked young, he talked like he was much older. The thing was, though, she had expected the coroner who did her grandfather’s autopsy to be someone much older and much wiser. She wasn’t sure how Eddie, who hadn’t been a werewolf for
that
long, knew enough about being a werewolf to be able to perform an autopsy.

“So, did you kill him?” Lu
ke asked, meeting Eddie’s gaze.

Samara gaped at Luke.
Why would you even ask him that? Obviously he didn’t kill my grandfather, since we know he’s still alive!

We don’t know for sure that it was really your grandfather who you saw. It could have been a hallucination . . . or maybe Joe McKinley really is back in spirit form
, Luke replied without meeting Samara’s gaze.

“No, of course I didn’t kill Joe,” Eddie replied, shaking his head. “My parents may have raised me to be many things, bu
t a killer isn’t one of them.”

“So, your mom doesn’t know you’re a werewolf,” Samara said, processing what Eddie had said moments earlie
r about protecting his mother.

Eddie shook his head. “No, she has no idea I’m a werewolf. I know it would just break her heart if she knew. You see, my mom always blamed herself for a lot of things in my life. I was born with a rare heart defect, which she always attributed to the fact that she was an older mom. I just know if she found out the truth, she would find some way to blame
this whole thing on herself.”

“There’s no way she could blame herself for you becoming a werewolf,” Samara insisted. “I’m guessing your mom isn’t
a werewolf. Is your dad one?”

Eddie shook his head and laughed. “No, neither of my parents are werewolves. But there is a way in which my mother could probably blame herself. She and my dad went away on a vacation once, and they hired this woman to stay with me. My mom didn’t really trust me not to get into any trouble while she was gone, you see, so she thought I needed a babysitter, even though I was seventeen. Well, the woman got really angry at me, and she changed into a wolf right in front of me. It scared the hell out of me, so I tried to shoo her out of the house. I didn’t even know that werewolves existed and, well, it was just terrifying. Before I could get her out of the house, though, she bit my arm.” Sighing, he met Samara’s gaze, with a pained look in his eyes. “Enough about me, though. I’ll trust that you won’t say anything. Why are you here?
”

Samara hesitated. Even though she wanted to talk to Eddie more about his life, she also knew that she needed to get the answers she had come here for or the whole trip would have been a waste. “We need to talk
to you about my grandfather.”

“Well, I could have guessed that much,” Eddie replied with a nod
. “What about him?”

“We need to know if he’s really dead,” Emma
chimed in. When Eddie raised his eyebrows, Emma tossed her blonde hair over her shoulder and shrugged. “Sam thinks she saw him. We need to know if he’s really alive or if she’s just crazy.” She gave Samara a sideways glance. “No offense, Sam.”

“None taken,” Samara mumbled, mostly because she had a feeling that Eddie was going to say that she was right, that Joe McKinley really
was
alive. It was the only explanation for what had happened.

A dark look passed through Eddie’s eyes, and he darted them away from Samara and down to the
floor. “Joe McKinley is dead.”

“Are you sure?” Samara questioned, eyeing Eddie curiously. When he hesitated, she continued. “You don’t have to try to cover things up for him, Eddie. I know you’ve tried to do a good job keeping it a secret from everyone so far, but . . . we aren’t going to tell anyone. I just need to know for my own sanity. I’m pretty sure my grandfather
wanted
me to see him recently. I’m just not sure why he took off before I even had the chance to talk to him.” It still baffled her as to why her grandfather would show himself to her, but then disappear before they had the chance to talk. Sometimes, it even made her question whether she really
had
seen him at all, just for the sole fact that it didn’t make sense why he would leave so suddenly.

“I’m positive that he’s dead,” Eddie said, meeting her eyes again and keeping his voice at an even level. “At least, I’m as positive as I ca
n be, given the circumstances.”

Colby narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean you’re as positive as you can be? Is there a chance y
ou could be wrong about this?”

Eddie sighed. “Look, contrary to what a lot of people think, I never actually performed an autopsy on Joe McKinley. I know how to do an autopsy, but I’m not sure I would have
been able to figure out Joe.”

“Then, who did the autopsy?” Luke asked, his voice rising to a slightly angry level.

Samara shot him a look.
Don’t yell at him. We came here for answers, not to spark an argument. You can’t expect him to answer us if you make him mad.

I can’t help it. All of the werewolves in the world think this guy did the autopsy, and he never did?
Something seems off here, if you ask me
, Luke replied, not bothering to meet her eyes.

Samara held in her inner sigh, hoping that Luke wouldn’t make any mistakes while they were here. The last thing they needed to do was start a fight while they wer
e on another pack’s territory.

Eddie stared down at the floor guiltily. “I know what I did wasn’t ethical, but I had to honor Joe’s requests. I don’t know why he wanted me to be the one who did the autopsy—or to be the one
not
to do it, I should say—but, for whatever reason, he chose me.” He closed his eyes, as though he were trying to remember exactly what had happened.  “The body had to be shipped to me so I could perform the autopsy, except . . . there was a letter that came with it, instructing me not to open the body bag. Joe had written me a note, telling me the reason he had died was because his power had gotten to be too much—that he knew the reason was because it was beginning to drain him of all his energy.” He opened his eyes again and stared at each of them. “Joe didn’t want me to do the autopsy, understand? He gave me the reason he died, and I was to let everyone know that was what had caused his death.”

“So, you never actually checked to see if that was what really caused his death?” Colby questioned, raising a blonde eyebrow at him. Samara could tell, from the look on his face, that Colby felt disappointed to find out that everything he had had learned about Joe McKinley’s death—or at lea
st his autopsy—had been a lie.

Eddie shook his head. “No, I didn’t check to see. And to be honest, I’m not sure that I would have known what to check for. It’s not like there would have been a silver bullet wound or his airway had gotten blocked off during a fight or something. He really died of natural caus
es, just like he said he did.”

Samara hesitated, considering what all of this could mean. “S
o, you did see the body then?”

“Well, yeah, sort of,” Eddie replied with a nod. “I opened the bag enough to make sure there was really a body in there, and there was. He died while he was in wolf form, so there was a white wolf body in the bag. But I didn’t want to look at his face. It just made me feel sort of weird, to see him dead like that, considering I’d never met him before. Can you imagine looking into a dead wolf’s face for the first
time after they were already dead? It’s creepy. That’s something that would stay with you for the rest of your life.”

“Creepy or not, it shouldn’t have mattered,” Luke protested. “You were supposed to d
o an autopsy, but you didn’t.”

“But I
wasn’t
supposed to do an autopsy,” Eddie insisted, and his eyes filled with a look that pleaded for them to believe him. “Joe didn’t want me to do the autopsy on him, for whatever reason. He just asked that I bury his body and announce to the world what he told me. I did exactly that. I couldn’t disrespect his wishes, especially considering he was the most powerful wolf in the world.” He sighed. “Sometimes, I used to wonder if someone might have killed Joe and delivered him to me with a note because they didn’t want anyone to know that they’d killed him, but that wouldn’t make much sense, would it? Everyone wanted to kill Joe. If someone really had done it, they would have been proud of it. Who wouldn’t be proud of killing the most famous wolf in history? That would have made them the next most powerful—or maybe, in some eyes, even more powerful.”

“You’re right, unless they were afraid that Joe had too many friends,” Samara said quietly. “Maybe they were afraid that someone would com
e after them for killing him.”

Eddie laughed. “Joe didn’t have a lot of friends. I know you’ve probably heard that he had a lot of enemies, but I don’t think you realize just how many. He had
a lot
of enemies. That’s probably why Joe went into hiding for a while.”

“He went into hiding?” Samara questioned. She was pretty sure she remembered Orkos mentioning that Joe had been planning to go into hiding, but she hadn’t realized that he had actually done it. If he really had gone into hiding, who was to say that he wasn’t
still
in hiding? It would mean that he had a lot of practice at it.

“That was the rumor. I think he was supposed to go into hiding somewhere in Arkansas. No one would have thought to look for him there.” Eddie shrugged. “I know that he used t
o keep a book of his enemies?”

“A book?” Sama
ra asked with raised eyebrows.

Eddie nodded. “Yeah, that’s what the Vyka youth pack told me. He had this book with names of the people who he trusted and the ones who he didn’t trust. A lot of werewolf historians think that if they can get their hands on that book, they might be able to figure out who killed him—or narrow it down to a
few names, at the very least.”

“You
have that book, Samara,” Colby said, turning to her. “It’s the book he left you—the one where the names are color-coded as either green or red!”