The Body Swap (Werewolf High Book 3) Read online

  The Body Swap: Werewolf High Book 3

  © Anita Oh 2016

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, places or events, is purely coincidental.

  This book, in whole or in part, may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

  To Hamish.

  If I dedicate this book to you,

  will you stop eating my socks?

  Because seriously, it’s getting out of hand.

  Other titles in the Werewolf High series

  Book 1: The Truth Spell

  Book 2: The Tiny Curse

  The Body Swap: Werewolf High Book 3

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 1

  No matter how well you think you know someone in this world, you never can tell what's going on inside their head.

  I'd thought Hannah Morgan was just an ordinary girl. Average. I'd thought she was like me: the kind of girl who'd rather watch Netflix than do her homework, would rather eat a cheeseburger than fit into some haute couture fashion. I'd thought she was my friend.

  Clearly, I knew nothing.

  We were sitting on our beds, studying. She looked up at me over the top of her biology textbooks and smiled when she caught my eye.

  I know what you are, I thought, and then hastily looked back down at my homework. Could she read my mind? I had no idea what she could or couldn't do.

  It had been two weeks since I'd broken the last curse she'd brought down on me. Two weeks since I'd moved back in to our room. I'd hardly slept. How was I supposed to sleep in the same room as someone who'd made repeated attempts on my life? I mean, the fake social media accounts in my name were bad enough, but the evil curses had definitely taken it a step too far.

  She got up from her desk and walked across the room.

  I narrowed my eyes. What was she doing? Sure, it looked like a harmless bathroom break, but how did I know she wasn't going to conjure up some other evil curse to throw at me? As soon as the door had closed behind her, I quickly looked around to be sure all my protections were in place. Tennyson Wilde had said they were a load of poppycock, that you couldn't find real magic by Googling, but that was easy to say when you didn't have to share a room with it.

  I had protective charms hidden under my mattress, sigils carved into my bedposts, crystals and totems and anything else that even hinted that it might ward off bad juju. I whispered protective chants under my breath every morning and night, and had gathered up everything I could find that was made of iron and hidden it under my bed. If I could've figured out a way to be subtle about it, I'd have installed a little moat with running water around my bed as well so that magic couldn't pass over it while I was unaware.

  Hannah came out of the bathroom and headed into the little kitchenette area of our room. "You want some grapes?" She looked so normal, so everyday Hannah, with her pajamas still on mid-afternoon and her hair up in cute pigtails. She didn't look at all villainous.

  I shook my head. "No. Thanks." Everyone knew you didn't accept food from witches, or they'd bespell you and make you their bitch for all eternity.

  She raised her eyebrows at me. "Are you okay? You've hardly been eating at all lately."

  I shrugged, trying to act natural. I had been eating, just not near her. "Probably just stressed," I told her. "I'm so behind in everything from when I was off sick."

  We hadn't talked about my absence, hadn't talked about the reason we hadn't been talking even before that. We'd just smiled sheepishly at each other and pretended that nothing had happened. I didn't want her to know that I knew. Not before I had concrete proof. I'd spent the last two weeks trying to find out what I could, but it was hard without arousing suspicion. I wasn't the world's most natural spy. It was a Sunday afternoon, two weeks after I'd returned to full-size after being shrunk, and I was having a study session with the person to blame for my shrinking. Life sure was a ball of laughs.

  She smiled kindly at me as she set a bowl of grapes on my nightstand. "You'll catch back up in no time, but you should make sure you eat. It's not like you to lose your appetite."

  I looked askance at the grapes. They looked delicious and not evil, but maybe enchanted grapes always looked like that. Still, I wouldn't know unless I tried one.

  I plucked one out and bit into it. It was juicy and sweet. I waited a moment, but nothing strange happened, so I ate another.

  Hannah settled back in with her homework. She didn't keep glancing over with evil glee or anything to check that her grape curse was taking effect, so they were probably okay.

  The thing that sucked the most was that I really liked Hannah. She was a great roommate; tidy but not fussy, fun but not obnoxiously so. We got along really well, and I didn't want her to be evil. I kept thinking maybe there had been some mistake. We'd tracked the cyberbullying down to Hannah, but maybe someone had used her stuff without her knowledge or hacked into her IP or something. Surely that made more sense. But no matter what I wanted to believe, I knew I had to play it safe. Even if Hannah wasn't the villain, it was better to suspect her and be wrong than to be willfully ignorant and dead.

  "I might head to the library," I told her, setting the grapes aside. "Do some work for extra credit."

  It wasn't likely she'd want to tag along, but I held my breath until she answered, just in case.

  "Okay," she said, not looking up from her book. "See you at dinner."

  The weather had started to warm up while I was tiny, and lots of people were taking advantage of the spring afternoon, milling around on the grass in the sun. I hurried along the path with my head down. The bullying hadn't been as bad since I came back to classes, but I didn't want to do anything to encourage it to start back up again, not when I had stuff to do. It was better to just slip by unnoticed.

  The gardens were pretty, though, with all the flowers coming into bloom, and the divide between the different houses had become obvious again. The flowers of the Red House were bright and vibrant, lining the path I was walking along and ending abruptly as I got into Green territory. I definitely did not want to go that way, so I veered onto a path off to the side, toward the high stone walls of the Golden House. I looked back over my shoulder as I scanned my pass at the gate, making sure nobody saw me enter. If I wanted the bullying to stop, nobody could know about my association with the Golden at all.

  The Golden House loomed over me as I approached, more like some Gothic castle than the friendly cottage of the Red House. The entire garden seemed to fall under its shadow. I crept up to the front door, scanned my card again and buzzed. No answer. I knew that someone was definitely in, though; they were expecting me. I sighed and headed back down the path that wound its way around the house. Maybe they were in the gardens.

  I went into the gardens to my left. I hadn't really explored around there, but they were beautiful, of course. The Golden were the most elite among the super-rich kids at Amaris; everything they had was the best, the mos
t special, most beautiful. I hadn't gotten far before I heard voices and the sound of laughter. I hurried toward them and came out at a terraced area at the back of the house.

  Although I had spent a lot of time with the Golden recently, I was always struck dumb when I first caught sight of them.

  The terrace was painted all white, with thick bunches of lilac hanging down from wooden rafters. Little golden fairy lights hovered in the air. Althea Wilde looked ethereal as she laughed and ran through the lights, the long white skirt of her dress flaring behind her as she was chased by a large brown wolf. Nikolai Volkov was making sarcastic comments as he looked on wryly and tapped away at his phone. In the shadows in the far corner, Tennyson Wilde lurked like a creeper, the golden glow of the lights making him seem otherworldly. Although the day was warm, he wore a dark, heavy jacket with the collar pulled up to his ears.

  As I stepped into their space, the four of them stopped as one and turned toward me.

  The mood changed immediately. They didn't intend to make me feel unwelcome or like an outsider, but the relaxed atmosphere vanished at once. The brown wolf rushed toward me, jumping at me with such force I was knocked to the ground. Before I had time to process what he'd done or feel more than that first flicker of fear, the wolf licked my face and then bounded away.

  "Nice one, Sam," I said, wiping the slobber away with my sleeve, and I couldn't help but laugh. He always seemed so much more at ease in his wolf form.

  He dashed off into the bushes and emerged a moment later as the tall boy I'd known my whole life. His brown hair flopped down into his face and his eyes sparkled as he looked at me, laughing.

  "You always seem to time your reports around meals," Tennyson Wilde said, pursing his lips in disapproval, like someone's maiden aunt.

  I shrugged. It was true, and I wasn't ashamed. "You guys always have the nicest food."

  I was pretty terrible at espionage, and I felt weird about invading someone else's privacy even if they were an evildoer, but I'd been through the files on Hannah's computer and found diddly.

  "Here's everything from her hard drive," I said, throwing a USB stick at Tennyson Wilde's head. "Unless she's using some sort of futuristic encryption that doesn't exist on this planet yet, I think it's mostly just pirated episodes of Game of Thrones. I doubt she'd keep anything on her school computer, anyway. Shouldn't she have some kind of dusty old book of spells?"

  "Most magical knowledge has been passed down through oral storytelling," Althea said. "I guess when you're persecuted for existing, you probably don't want to put any evidence down on paper."

  "I think a lot of stuff was burned or destroyed by witch hunters, too," said Nikolai. "I have cousins with magic, on my mother's side."

  I raised my eyebrows. That was new information. I'd thought lycanthrope families were always lycanthropes. I didn't know you could mix and match like that.

  "If there's nothing else, you can leave," said Tennyson, narrowing his eyes at me.

  "There's no reason to be rude," I told him.

  I didn't have anything else, but I would like to have some of those mini cucumber sandwiches they'd had laid out for them on a fancy tiered platter. I'd expected to find more information on Hannah, but my search so far had been fairly fruitless. I didn't know what else I could do, though. I didn't have any sort of super powers; I wasn't even naturally snoopy.

  "You can stay as long as you like," Althea said. "He's just grumpy because he spent the afternoon speaking with our mother."

  Sam sat beside me and cast me meaningful looks while I chatted with the others and ate mini sandwiches. My belly fluttered each time I caught his eye, but it wasn't from nerves.

  It was strange that the people I felt the most comfortable with at this school were the ones who were the most different from me. I'd thought I'd fit in with Hannah, and her friends Milo and Fatima, but for various reasons each of them had rejected my friendship. Maybe it was just me. Maybe I was inherently unlikeable. I mean, I wasn't exactly friends with the glamorous, shining creatures around me, either; they were just the closest thing to it that I had. Well, except Tennyson Wilde, because that would be like making friends with an icicle. A jerk icicle who dressed like someone's grandpa.

  The day faded around us, making everything glow, and for once I felt as if I was in the exact place I was supposed to be.

  Chapter 2

  Spying on Hannah wasn't fun, like hanging out with Hannah used to be, so I started spending all my time in the library. I did need to study — finals were hanging over my head, and my grades had slipped while I was mini — but mostly it was just procrastination from spying. If I was studying, that was a valuable use of my time and nobody could say I was slacking off.

  "You're slacking off," said Tennyson Wilde, sitting down opposite me at my table in the library. His hair was getting longer, I noticed. It had started to curl a little around the nape of his neck, where it brushed against the collar of his school blazer. Not that I cared about him or his hair.

  "Go away," I told him. "I'm studying, and I don't want to be seen with you. Whenever you acknowledge me in public, bad things happen to me, and I have better things to do than deal with it."

  As usual, he ignored me and kept just sitting there being a nuisance.

  "We think we have a way to find proof that she's the one, but we need your help," he said. "You need to stop slacking off and get your head in the game." He actually took my books and pushed them to the other side of the table so I couldn't pretend to study and ignore him. "Althea has procured an ancient device that can detect magical residue in any particular location. Obviously we need your assistance to gain access to the most likely places."

  "I doubt she did any spells in our room," I told him, reaching for my books.

  He rolled his eyes like I was the one being bothersome. "I thought you were going to educate yourself." He picked up my textbook and shook it at me so all the pages fluttered. "What good will An Introduction to Biochemistry do the next time you're cursed?"

  "That's all well and good for you to say," I said. A few people looked over, so I hunched down, then went on in a whisper. "I need to maintain my GPA. I can't just swan through this life having everything handed to me."

  He stood up from the table abruptly. Several people were staring now, and I sank down even more in my seat and pulled my books in front of me so they couldn't see my face.

  "You think that's what I do?" he asked sharply, his eyebrows crinkling into wavy lines. "Just trade on my family name?"

  I tried to shrug in response, but it was hard when I was slumped so far down in my seat.

  He plunked a small brass object and an old book down in front of me. "Well, obviously that type of person would be of no assistance to you, and you would be better off figuring out how to use this device yourself."

  Then he turned and stiffly marched away.

  I stared after him for a moment, wondering what his problem was. I hadn't meant to offend him. When I did mean to offend him, he just ignored me, so I doubted he cared a fig about my opinion. Obviously, something else was going on that had nothing to do with me, and I was better off ignoring him. Still, I was curious about the magical thingie.

  I picked it up and turned it over in my hands. There seemed to be a faint vibration coming from it, and it was a strange shape, unlike anything I'd ever seen — sort of like one of those G-shaped clamps my dad had used when he was doing woodwork stuff, before he'd abandoned us and possibly turned to the dark side. Only different, because it was sparkly and magical. I had no clue what I was supposed to do with it, so I opened up the book to see if maybe it was some sort of handy user manual.

  Maybe it was, but it was written in some sort of Old English. I rolled my eyes and pushed my homework away. It was going to take all my attention to decipher this. Damn Tennyson Wilde and his delicate feelings.

  ***

  From what I could gather from Ye Olde Instruction Manual, I had to clamp the device somewhere where the essen
ce of the magic doer would gather. I figured under Hannah's bed was the best spot. I had no idea about essences or any of that, but she was less likely to see it there than other places.

  I doubled back to our room after breakfast the next day, telling her I'd forgotten my history book. Any excuse to miss morning assembly was a good one, anyway.

  I tried to act all tough about it in front of the others, but I really hoped that whatever this magic clamp thing did would prove that Hannah wasn't guilty. Even though it would set us right back to square one in terms of finding the bad guy, at least I'd have my friend back.

  I clamped the magic thingie at the base of her bed, near the head, and stood back to survey my work. Nothing happened immediately, and I wasn't sure I'd done it correctly. I flipped open the book to the part about getting it to work, but it might as well have been written in Mandarin for all the sense it made to me.

  "Beginnan halig miht," I read, the words making zero sense to me. But before I could look it up in my old English to normal English translation app, a crackling sound like pop rocks distracted me.

  I looked up and gasped. Blue smoke had started to billow out from under the bed as if I'd switched on a smoke machine under there. It had a funny smell to it and soon filled the room so I could barely see. I felt as if it should be choking me and I covered my mouth, but after a moment I realized I wasn't breathing it in at all. I didn't need an app to translate what this meant in magic. It was clearly saying, "Evil witchy stuff is afoot right here."

  I tried to rationalize it. Maybe the clamp always did that when it was activated; it didn't necessarily mean that Hannah was guilty. But then the smoke cleared and sparkly magical words hovered in the air. They said Hannah Morgan.

  My heart sank as I stared at the words. They were fairly hard to misinterpret.

  I messaged Althea on the tablet she'd loaned me after my old one had died, and snapped a photo of the sparkly letters as well, just in case they didn't actually mean what they seemed to.

  I had no heart to go to class, which was good, because before I could even get over the shock, there was a thumping at my door and the four Golden piled in.