The Waking (The Upturned Hourglass) Read Online Free

Surprisingly, Noah seemed unperturbed, after being chewed out by Jack so intensely.
    “I don’t understand, Jack. I thought the whole point was to get to know the Mark—and that it does help with assimilation.”
    “You get to know marks as people , Noah, not as wolves. We are not big puppy dogs. We are werewolves. There’s a huge difference and most human beings sense that difference, even if they can’t explain it. Appearing to a human in a wolf form is simply too risky.”  And then more to himself than to Noah, he added, “Maybe we’ll get lucky; maybe it was too dark for her to get a good look at you.”
    “Jack?” 
    “ What , Noah?” Jack growled, the exasperation returning to his voice.
    “I like her. I think she’s . . . interesting. Special. And she seemed to like me, too.”
    Jac k rolled his eyes again. “Yeah. Whatever,” he huffed.
    Inwardly, though, Jack suspected the boy was right. The girl was interesting to say the least.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    BEGINNINGS
     
     
    Valie woke just before the sun to the crying of a tenant’s baby in the downstairs apartment. She tried to muffle the sound by cramming her pillow over her head, but in the absence of ambient noise, the shriek only became more acute. In frustration, she slammed the pillow onto the floor.
    A singular knock sounded at the open, bedroom door.
    “I’m awake!” Valie croaked, annoyed, her voice still thick from sleep. The teenager knew Alden would stand in the doorway for a moment watching with his bleary red eyes, so she refused to open her own eyes until he left. She listened impatiently as her grandfather shuffled unsteadily back to his bedroom on the other side of the apartment, grumbling under his breath.
    Stiffly, Valie untangled herself from the sheets wrapped around her and rose to dress in the usual, early-morning daze. The one luxury she’d been afforded in the too-small apartment was her own bathroom adjacent to her room. She wasn’t sure she could have taken sharing with her grandfather and waking up to the smell of last night’s bad brandy every morning.
    When she’d brushed her teeth and dressed, Valie wandered to the kitchen to grab the usual five dollars waiting on the kitchen counter. It had been the same every morning since she’d started kindergarten. Her grandfather wasn’t a touchy-feely sort of guy who made lunches in the morning, much less cooked breakfast, but, at least, the regular money meant that he thought about her everyday—it meant something—although anything else she needed she had to beg for.
    Her grandfather had checked out of life a long time ago. Valie didn’t know him or understand him. Alden’s world was the couch, the television, and his alcohol. He owned this small twelve-unit apartment building—Palmetto Manor--and once a month trekked down the halls to collect the rents. Valie honestly thought that the farthest he’d ever been outside of their apartment in the last ten years was down to the corner liquor store—a little less than a block away. 
    No one else in the building seemed to be awake, aside from the newlyweds downstairs whose child never slept. At the end of the hallway, the girl paused in front of the elevator doors, pushed the button and watched them open. She stared inside the empty car with longing—but then turned left, heading toward the narrow stairwell.
    It was the same everyday.
    Valie had never taken an elevator or been in a car without the windows down, or played hide-and-seek and hidden in the dark, confining recesses of forgotten places. She couldn’t even close the door to her own room without hyperventilating, much less get into the box-like prison of the elevator. It was out of the question.
    So she always took the stairs.
     
    The older neighborhood where Valie lived was on the west side of town, across the highway that ran through the downtown, which made its living on the