June walked casually through ankle-high grass toward the high school. Brendan, on the other hand, crouched and ran in spurts, alternately falling behind and running ahead of June, just as the movies had trained him. The sun had disappeared entirely, and the air still had the faint white-purple glow of evening, but it wouldn’t last long.

The school was a sprawling red brick building that had aged well—it had a college brochure look to it, and it certainly looked better than Cordelia’s lab. When they reached the double door at the south end of the building, June jiggled the handle. Locked. Through the narrow glass strips on the door it looked vacant inside, and all of the hallway lights were off. June assumed the fall sports teams had wrapped up their practices and the teachers had long since gone home for the evening.

She tugged harder at the handle but it didn’t budge. “I knew I should have stayed Shifted. There isn’t a lot of cover here, but I’ll make it work. Then I rip that door open. Close your eyes and keep them closed.”

“Whoa, woah, hold on, June!” Brendan cried. "I know how to get in without the use of werecat strength, but we’ll have to be quick once we open the doors. Do you know exactly where the Geiger counters will be?”

“I’m pretty sure.”

Brendan waved his hands in the air. “Pretty sure? What if it’s not there?”

“Then we’ll look elsewhere,” June replied.

“And if someone catches us?”

“Then I’ll Shift.”

“I’m so glad you came to me when you did—I don’t know how you’d keep your powers a secret without me. Are you ready?”

“Yes,” June said, “I am super ready to see your clever way of getting into the locked building.” She crossed her arms.

“Don’t blink—here it is,” Brendan said as he walked over and picked up a nearby rock. Returning, he looked at the glass on the door. He turned the rock over several times. He chewed his lip, took a deep breath and looked at the glass again. June knew he would hand the rock to her, and sure enough, about five seconds later he said, “Here. Why don’t you do the honors.”

June took it and shrugged, then hit the glass on one of the doors. It shattered with a loud crackle and Brendan covered his hand with his sleeve and carefully reached into the hole and popped the door open. He looked at her, and even under his mask, June could see the shape of a wide I told you so grin.

“Don’t gloat,'' she said with a smirk, then sprinted into the building, Brendan on her heels.

Much to her surprise, nothing happened when the glass shattered and Brendan opened the door—no alarms, no red lights. Instead, it was just eerily quiet compared to the normal school day. Their shoes squeaked on the floor, which had as much of a shine as a used-to-be-white floor could have. The same teenager smells lingered, but they were just ghosts of what she’d smelled yesterday with students present.

June’s hope of sneaking around in the dark unseen, however, was foiled by the motion-sensing lights—she quietly cursed the energy-saving technology. They raced down several hallways and turned into the science room. Here the room actually stayed dark, but light spilling in from the hallway provided more than enough visibility.

They walked past the rows of black tables to the cheap wood cabinets at the back of the classroom. As she reached for the door handles, Brendan grabbed her hand.

“Wait,” he said, his eyes bulging in his yoga-pant mask. “Cover your hands with your sleeves. Don’t leave fingerprints.”

She nodded, slid her sleeve down, and gave a quick tug, then a harder tug, both of which failed to open the doors.

“Have another rock?” she asked Brendan.

“I’m fresh out. I think this situation calls for brute force. Don’t you have some super werecat strength even when you're normal?”

“Let’s find out how much,” June replied and grabbed the handles. They bent and strained under her grip, and finally the doors sprang open with a loud crack. She rooted around inside one section while Brendan took the other.

June’s sleeve-covered hands finally found a long, thin object that felt almost like a chunky metal wand. She pulled it out, held it up, and let out a triumphant “Yes!”

She’d found the Geiger counter, a device that would detect the radiation emitted by the stolen serum, hopefully making it much easier to locate. But a noise down the hallway splashed cold water on her victory: loud footsteps…no, not footsteps, it was someone running, run-steps.

Stolen novel; please report.

“Put it in your backpack, quick!” June said, “we’ve got to get out of here now!”

As soon as Brendan had the backpack around his shoulders, they dashed out of the room just as a janitor rounded the corner, three doors down from them. “Hey you two, stop right there!” he yelled in between wheezing breaths.

June felt a stab of pity. Jimmy the janitor shuffled after them, his gut swinging wildly back and forth and threatening at any minute to break free of his janitor’s uniform.

June and Brendan darted in the opposite direction, blue lockers and closed classroom doors passing by in a blur. June found herself thankful to be wearing yoga pants over her face, hot dog smell and all.

“Where—are—we—going?” Brendan asked between gasps of air.

“Back out the way we came,” June shot back, and then realized just how easily she could run and talk. Usually she’d be wheezing like Jimmy. Was this how people felt who were in great shape? If so, it wasn’t half bad.

Jimmy fell farther and farther back, which made him shout more, which in turn made him fall even farther behind. They reached the double doors with the broken glass at full speed, throwing them open with a loud clang. They'd escaped. While Brendan wheezed, June laughed in triumph, and in doing so, stopped paying attention to her surroundings.

After taking just a few steps outside the door into the cool night air, light suddenly blinded her. Pained squinting revealed a police car about a hundred yards away, and a man standing by the door holding a flashlight with the brightness of the sun in his hand like a spear. A police officer!

June bolted for the forest and then heard Brendan groan. As the police officer rushed toward him, Brendan bent over, fumbling around on the ground by the school door. He jumped up and thrust his right hand triumphantly into the air, just as the officer yelled “Freeze!”

Much to June’s horror, Brendan did just that. “No, run, run!” she yelled to him over her shoulder as she sprinted toward the tree line, leaving him behind. From what she could hear, he had taken her advice to get moving, but so had the policeman (who looked like he ran far more often than Jimmy the Janitor). She wasn’t going to wait for him; Brendan could make all the snarky comments he wanted, but there was only one solution to this problem.

June hit the dark wall of the forest and in seconds her sweatpants and hoodie were flying through the air toward a tree. She willed her body to Shift as she spun back toward the school. It happened quickly, and now Shifted, she raced back toward Brendan, nothing but a giant, dark blur in the twilight moving like a rocket.

*******

Brendan could hear the police officer’s footsteps getting closer. He knew that any second now he would be grabbed from behind. What would his parents say? Would he be suspended? Why had June just abandoned him? His throat tightened at the thought. He could almost feel the officer’s breath behind him. He tried to force his legs to go faster and nearly tripped. He braced for the sensation of being tackled from behind, and then his life would be over. Would he get tased? Would he go to jail? Didn’t you pee on yourself when you got tased?

Brendan felt tremors in the ground, and then he was jerked, violently and efficiently, off his feet. Before his brain could figure out what was happening, soft, quiet darkness with iron beneath enveloped him and he could hardly breathe. He heard the police officer shout—his voice sounded oddly strained and scared—and Brendan realized he was being carried away by something that was not the officer; this something was massive and moving very quickly—June!

He'd only blinked his eyes a handful of times when June set him down. They were deep in the forest already and he could barely see. But her large, yellow eyes glowed in the darkness. His body still shook from adrenaline.

“What in the world did you stop for?” June asked in a rumble. It reminded Brendan of a bass drum.

“Woah! I thought I was a goner. Amazing!” He put a hand over his heart, as if that might slow it down. “I didn’t think you were coming back for me. I had to—”

“Of course I came back—I’ll always come back for—”

“—Grab the rock,” he said.

“The rock?” she asked.

“Yeah, our break-in rock. I realized the policeman might try to get fingerprints off the rock.” He held up his right hand; he had managed to keep hold of the rock even after June scooped him up.

June nodded. “Good thinking.”

“You’ll always come back for—?” he asked now, curious to hear the end of her sentence.

“Of course. For you. You’re stuck with me, probably forever.” She smiled. Warmth spread over Brendan's whole body—so much for slowing down his heartbeat. “Why would you ever think I’d abandon you?” she asked.

“Because you left me.”

“So I could get to the woods, Shift, and rescue you!”

He nodded. “Yeah, that makes sense now. Thanks. But did that officer see you? He had to see you.”

She shrugged. “He didn’t see much. It’s dark and I was moving fast. I heard him say on his radio that he saw a bear attack one of the perps. They’ll probably start searching these woods looking for your body soon. Let’s go find my clothes.”

Brendan's shoulders sagged with relief. “Then you didn’t blow up my Gandalf hoodie?”

“Nope. You’d never let me live that down.” June started sniffing the air.

“True,” Brendan responded. A question sprang to his mind. “How fast do you think you were running?”

“I don't know,” June replied. "Maybe we can measure me against a car later.” She smiled mischievously. “Or maybe we can take a radar gun from the next police officer we run into.”

Brendan forced a sarcastic laugh. “Very funny, June. No more borrowing things that can get us in trouble.” He frowned. “Do you think you left footprints in the field?”

“Maybe.” She looked down at her massive paws. She held one next to Brendan and he looked at it with slack-jawed awe. It was several times larger than his torso. “Not much we can do about it now. Hopefully they just think they’re the tracks of the bear that supposedly mauled you.”

“Yeah, the biggest bear tracks they’ve ever found,” Brendan added, unconvinced.

About five minutes later, the Gandalf hoodie found and safely tucked in Brendan’s backpack to bathe in hot dog odor, June sat crouched, and Brendan clutched her neck.

“Dr. Crushov’s house next, right?” he asked over her bulging shoulder. “He seems the most likely to be our bad guy, which, according to Blimey! Detectives, actually makes him the least likely to be our bad guy. But then again, if he’s the most likely—”

The roar of air in his face silenced him and he grabbed onto her like his life depended on it. Because it did. He couldn't open his eyes as the cold air stung and the force of it hurt, but he knew they were racing at comet-like speed toward their next break-in destination.