Silver Kiss Read Online Free

tree. I could hear the sounds of Lupercali in full
swing—howls and laughs, barks and shouts. The smell of the barbeque
overpowered the smell of game, which was muted by the ice
anyway.
    Werewolves’ blood runs a bit hotter than
humans, so the chill that kept them inside on nights like this
didn’t bother us as much. It would be a while before we really felt
it, as warm as we were from exercise and the shift. We curled up
together, skin to skin, and watched the moon and stars overhead. I
felt happy and sated, almost like I’d been drinking. Vince wrapped
one arm around me and one around Joel, pulling us in together.
Glory—stripped of her wig and glittering shoes by the shift and now
Glenn; slender and boyish and smeared with ruined makeup—lay next
to Joel.
    “ I told you there was
nothing to worry about,” Vince said, nuzzling my hair.
    “ I was mostly worried about
falling off my shoes.” I curled my bare toes into the dirt. Now it
was over, I wasn’t really sure why I’d been so worked up. Yeah, I’d
hated everyone staring at me, but I hadn’t tripped over or thrown
up, I hadn’t embarrassed myself or my parents and I was happy.
Happy to be home, something I never thought I’d say, when for so
long home had been
synonymous with miserable and misunderstood .
    Voices drifted through the night towards us,
accompanied by the burned paper smell of cigarettes. There was an
odd tang mixed with the tobacco, something I didn’t recognize, but
my wolf found intriguing. I narrowed my eyes, picking out the
approaching teenagers. Thin tendrils of grey-blue smoke curled into
the air over their heads and the cherries of their roll-ups glowed
in the shadows.
    “ Hey, check it out,” one of
the boys called when they spied us. “It’s the queer wolves!”
Giggles broke out amongst the girls in the group.
    I sighed and Joel rolled his eyes. “Very
clever,” he said. “You kids must have been waiting all night to get
that gem out.”
    One of them broke free of the group to join
us under the tree, a grin on his cherubic face as he blew smoke
towards us. “Just messing around,” he said and nodded to Vince.
“Alright, Vince?”
    “ Hi, Oscar.” Vince stood
and pulled me up with him. “Ayla, this is Oscar. He’s a waiter at
the Fox. He thinks he’s hilarious but he’s actually just annoying.”
He reached out and ruffled Oscar’s blond curls. “I want to fire him
but he’s the boss’ kid. Nepotism at work.”
    “ Hi Oscar,” I said,
inhaling deeply to try and identify the weird smell coming off his
roll-up. It was sort of earthy, but with a metallic
aftertaste. Unpleasant . “What are you smoking?”
    Oscar offered me the cigarette. “Silver
Kiss. Want to try?”
    “ What’s in it?” I
asked.
    He winked at me. “Little of this, little of
that.”
    I hadn’t ever smoked, so Oscar’s mystery
roll-up didn’t really entice me. Vince shook his head and Joel
turned his nose up, but Glenn accepted. He took a deep drag, then
coughed violently and hurriedly passed the cigarette back to Oscar.
“Vile habit,” he muttered, wiping his mouth.
    Oscar took another drag and fixed me with a
slightly glazed stare. “You’re Adam’s cousin, right? You killed
that copper.”
    “ I didn’t kill anyone,” I
corrected, that tight knot pulling at my stomach again. “But yeah,
I am Adam’s cousin. Did you know him?”
    “ Yeah, a bit.” Oscar sat
down, gesturing for us to do the same. A couple of his friends
drifted over to join him, all smoking the same metallic-scented
roll-ups. I wondered briefly if it was illegal, then dropped the
thought. I wasn’t a copper yet.
    “ I knew him,” a blonde girl
chipped in, settling down next to Oscar and resting her head on his
shoulder. “Is it true it was an Alpha Humans attack?”
    I shrugged, wanting to pull into myself and
hide from them. Adam’s death was still officially an open case as
far as I knew. There was no proof that Alpha Humans were behind it
and the