Havoc Read Free

a message—and I mean the number-pad keys, folks, as in press 1 three times just to type a c . Megan used to be the only person who ever called me, and she hated texting, so I never really had to do it before. How I longed for a smartphone, especially since I can’t not type in complete sentences. It’s a thing.
    The pads of my thumbs beginning to ache, I finished typing my response and hit send.
    2:37 AM PST: Yeah, I’m awake. I thought I just saw you outside.
    2:37 AM PST: not me. Im in my room, just saw shadowman. it came at me but then it dispprd.
    My fingers trembled. I looked around the room again, expecting the shadowman to leap out at me, grab me with its icy fingers. Nothing was there.
    But it had been. And it had coordinated a visit between me and Spencer. It had to mean something.
    2:41 AM PST: That happened to me, too. Just a few minutes before you texted me. It chased me around the room, and then vanished.
    2:41 AM PST: wird. we need to talk about this in the am. can I pick u up?
    2:43 AM PST: Yeah. Also, Spencer? I saw a werewolf outside. If it wasn’t one of us, it means it must be the girl. Or Dalton.
    2:44 AM PST: r u srs? this nite is fd up.
    2:45 AM PST: Yes, it is. Get some sleep, okay?
    2:45 AM PST: k Em. c u tmrw.
    2:46 AM PST: kk
    Oh man. Did I really just type “kk”? Texting was going to be the death of me. Or make me a normal teenager. Whatever.
    I closed the phone and set it back on the table. I lay back for a moment, staring at the ceiling, then leaned over my bed, picked up the fallen lamp, and grabbed Ein from where he’d been unceremoniously kicked.
    Cradling my stuffed dog, I closed my eyes and tried to go back to sleep. I expected visions of the shadowmen or worse to invade my thoughts and keep me awake, but my adrenaline was dying down, and whatever remnants of the sleeping pills that were still inside me let me drift off once more, back into dreams that I wouldn’t remember.

2
    YOU ARE SUCH A NERD
    The following morning I sat on my front steps, knees to chest, waiting for Spencer to pick me up. I was bundled up in a hoodie, my glasses were firmly on my face, and my backpack sat beside me. It was three days since I’d last been Nighttime Emily or the werewolf. I was me again. More or less.
    You’re not all you. The voice again. You know you miss being me, too.
    You’d think I’d find it strange to be hearing voices, right? Well, strange was the definition of my life these days. Weirdly, I found hearing her sort of a good thing. It helped to literally talk with myself while trying to figure things out.
    And she was right. I did miss Nighttime’s confidence. Even though a little had bled into my daytime self, it wasn’t nearly the same as Nighttime’s unbridled fearlessness. But I couldn’t risk changing. Right? Not when the consequences after the last time were so horrible. I’d helped kill someone, and I’d liked it. It had been in self-defense, sure, but that didn’t keep me from feeling this nauseating guilt whenever I remembered what I’d done.
    C onsequences? Guilt? He got what he deserved. We did what we needed to do.
    â€œI know,” I said aloud. “Just… Yeah. I know.”
    I waited for a moment. The voice—my imagination running rampant, Nighttime herself, who knows—didn’t say anything more.
    My hands were shoved inside my pockets, and I rocked back and forth a little, staring up at the overcast September morning sky. My thoughts raced, same as they had the past few mornings. Things I thought couldn’t possibly be real now were. Everything I thought was true about myself had been, at most, a partial truth.
    And though I did my best to distract myself with schoolwork and TV and discussions with Spencer, whenever it was just me and my thoughts, I still kept seeing the man from BioZenith, Dr. Elliott, hunting me.
    I closed my eyes. I needed a new distraction, someone to