No. No, no, no! She’d had a happy day yesterday sketching the Wolf pups and juveniles. She’d drawn her friends as they napped and played and chased one another. Why, today, had she drawn them looking like this?

She tore the page in half, then in half again, before shoving the pieces under her bed. This wasn’t a vision drawing. It wasn’t! Her friends were whole and healthy! They weren’t missing limbs. They weren’t trying to crawl away from danger with their heads bashed to pulp. They weren’t lying in a field burned beyond recognition.

“It’s a bad drawing.” Hope sprang to her feet, intending to leave the cabin, to get away from the pencils and pastels and paper that told lies. “Won’t be real. Can’t be real.”

She reached for the door but didn’t touch the knob.

She hadn’t seen the reason for these drawings. If it was a vision drawing, she still didn’t know why the young Wolves might look like that. Would the next drawing give her the answers? Would it give Jackson and Grace what they needed to know in order to save the pack?

Turning away from the door, Hope settled on the floor with her large sketchpad and closed her eyes.

What is going to happen to the Wolves?

She opened her eyes and stared at the drawer in the desk, craving the euphoria that came from using the razor. Instead, she picked up a pencil and let the vision sweep her away as her hands drew the answer to her question.

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 29

Firesday, Juin 22

Annoyed and oddly out of sorts, Meg gathered the prophecy cards that were scattered all over the sorting room floor. “Darn it, Sam,” she muttered. “I told you these cards weren’t playthings.”

He’d been curious about them. Of course he was. Wolf pups were curious about everything. But she’d told him these cards were special. And she knew that Simon and Henry had talked to the pup, explaining that these special cards were tools for visions. Like the razor. Something potentially dangerous. Not something for pups to play with.

And now the cards felt odd, off, filmed in a way she couldn’t explain.

She spread the cards over the surface of the big table, backs facing up. Each deck had a distinctive design on the back, so it would be easy enough to sort the cards into their proper decks. But she didn’t try to restore order. Instead, she touched the cards, and as she shuffled them around the table, a suspicion rose in her.