The bus went over a bump, and my stomach did a cartwheel in my gut like I was going over a drop on a rollercoaster.

"Shouldn't be happening? What does that mean?"

"The fact that you remember nothing of when you've shifted isn't normal." Liz bit at her lower lip. "It means that whatever entity exists within you isn't in contact with you. It's a separate being."

"But where did it come from?" I shouted, rising to my feet just in time for the bus to bump over another pothole, sending me falling into Liz's lap.

"Sorry." I scooted to my side of the couch, trying to put as much distance between them and myself as I could. I pulled my legs in, tucking myself into a ball with my feet at the edge of the seat.

Liz and Jake exchanged a quick glance while Reggie and Veronica stared at me intently. They knew something else. Something they weren't telling me. Why were they keeping it from me?

"Where did it come from?" My voice came out as a growl as I repeated my question. "And how do I make it stop?"

"I think it's always been with you," Liz said. "Since you were born."

I let out an exasperated sigh and ran my hand back through my long hair. "But why me? And why is it only coming out now?"

The sensation of burning and the blackouts had only started over the past year or so. At first, I thought they were just from drugs and alcohol. If this . . . entity . . . had been in me since I was born, why now? "Why hasn't this happened before?" I stretched out and returned my feet to the floor as a tingling sensation crept over my limbs. I scratched at my arms.

"I had a daughter once, you know?" Liz changed the subject. "Alex and I did together."

I narrowed my eyes at her. "So?"

She looked out the window, staring at the trees rushing by as the bus roared down the empty highway. "We were both in different bodies." She looked back to me. "It was a long time ago." She blinked a few times. "How old are you, Allison?"

"Twenty-six," I replied without even thinking.

"Twenty-six years ago." She paused, her dark blue eyes examining me with a maturity far beyond the appearance of her features.

A shudder raged through me, and my breath caught in my throat. "Wait, so when my parents died . . ." I paused, tears burning behind my eyes as it all clicked together. I gripped the edge of my seat. I couldn't take it all in. It was too much. "That was you?"

Liz nodded slowly.

I pinched my eyes shut, tears sliding out the corners and running down my cheeks. "No." I shook my head. "No! This is some sort of joke! You're fucking with me." I couldn't believe this. I refused to believe this.

When I opened my eyes, Liz stared back at me, shaking her head. "I know it's a lot to process, but I'm not lying, Allison," she said. "Our house was on 145 Pine Street. Your best friend was our neighbor Carolyn, and whenever she slept over, the two of you went up to the attic and played with the Ouija board. Your favorite food was blueberry Pop Tarts, and you'd always eat them right before dinner. You thought I didn't notice, but—"

"Stop it!" I screamed at her. "Just fucking stop!" I couldn't talk to her. My parents hadn't died. They'd abandoned me. Both of them.

"Allison—"

"Fuck you!" I snarled. "I hate you." I slammed my palms onto the plastic table, the flimsy surface vibrating and shaking with the impact as I pushed myself up from the couch.

My body was electrified with rage. I needed to get away from her. I needed to get away from all of them, but on a moving bus, my options were limited, so I went with the first and only thought I had and marched my ass to the front of the bus where Alex was driving.

"Allison!" I heard Veronica call to me.

"Let her go," Liz said lowly. "She's always been her father's daughter."

When I reached the cab, I caught Alex's blue eyes in the rear-view mirror. I plopped into the passenger seat next to him, ready to give him a piece of my mind, too. After leaning back and getting as comfortable as I could against the scratchy fabric, I placed my feet up on the dashboard, making sure to get the mud from my boots strewn over all the surfaces. It was petty, but I was pissed.

"I know who you are," I spat with venom.

"Put your seatbelt on," Alex told me without taking his focus off the road.

I crossed my arms. "Why, are you going to crash?"

"Seatbelt."

Reluctantly, I removed my feet from the dashboard and readjusted myself to sit upright, rolling my eyes. I pulled the seatbelt out from behind me and clicked it into place.

Alex looked nothing like the man I remembered my father to be. My dad had been tall with short blond hair and a beard, and he was built like a football player. Meanwhile, Alex had dark, long hair and was skinny as hell. Yet, the way he talked to me was chillingly familiar. I never would have noticed it if I hadn't already known the truth, but the fact that I did made it unsettling.

"So, what is it that you know?" he asked, finally giving me a quick glance out of the corners of his eyes.

"I know my parents didn't actually die." I watched him carefully as I said it.

His jaw tensed, along with his grip on the steering wheel.

"I know you're my dad."

Alex flipped his long, black hair out of his face as he gave me a glance. The mannerism was something I could never imagine my father doing, and yet it seemed natural when Alex did it.

"Well, sort of," he said.

"I hate you."

He loosened his grip on the steering wheel. The backs of both his hands were tattooed in dark ink. The left displayed a pile of skulls and bones that rose from his knuckles all the way to the back of his wrist. A banshee clawed her way to the top, her jaw contorted into a scream of agony. Waves in a storm covered his right hand, and a siren reached out from the water, wailing her song to the sky.

"I'm sorry," he finally said.

"That's all you're going to say?" I clenched my hands into fists in my lap. "You abandoned me when I was twelve years old, and all you have to say for yourself is I'm sorry?"

"I don't expect you to forgive me for it. I don't deserve to be forgiven."

"But why?" I asked, suddenly feeling like I was about to start crying again. Even though I was angry, I wanted him to fight to win me back. I wanted him to give a shit. "Why did you leave me behind?"

"It's not something that's in my control, Allison." His hands shook. He reached to the center console, taking a lighter and cigarette out of the box that was stashed there. After sticking the cigarette between his teeth and quickly lighting it, he rolled down the window. A rush of cold air streamed into the bus.

"This—what I am—is not a choice." He coughed out smoke and held the cigarette next to the window to waft it out.

He glanced over to me again. "It's a curse. As much as I try to control it, there is still something animal in me that's always fighting back." He took another drag. "I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough. I failed you."

I stared out the windshield, my eyes stinging with tears. Trees rushed by beyond the barricades at the sides of the highway. A single car came screaming down the road on the other side of the median.

I pulled at the unwinding threads of my cut-off jean shorts. "Why couldn't you have told me, though?" I finally looked back to Alex. He looked so young. It was unsettling. "Why did you have to let me believe you were dead?"

He ran a hand back through his hair and exhaled heavily. "Yeah, 'cause a twenty-four-year-old man telling a twelve-year-old girl who just lost both her parents that the soul and consciousness of her father is in him would be a great idea. I'm sure that would really help with a grieving child's psychology."

I crossed my arms over my chest and pouted. "I don't like that you are right."

"You never did." He smiled for half a second as his eyes flicked over to meet mine.

"What about what's happening to me, now?" I asked. "The shifts . . . You knew this was going to happen, didn't you? Couldn't you and Mom have at least warned me about this?"

"We didn't know that it was going to happen," Alex said. "You didn't show any of these signs when you were a child, so we thought that maybe you'd evaded it. But, we kept an eye on you anyway from afar, just in case."

I thought about all the tours Wolfpack had invited us on over the years when Derek, Sam and I had first formed Hell Flower. At first, I'd thought that a well-known and popular band like them must have only been inviting us on tours because my parents had been members of a famous rock band in the late nineties and early two-thousands . . .

I supposed in a way I'd been right on the money with that. It did have everything to do with who my parents had been, just not in the way I'd anticipated.

"So, you can help me then?" I finally asked Alex. "You know how to make this stop!"

"I didn't say that."

"I can't take it, though!" I raked my hands through my tangled hair. "It's getting worse. When it first started happening a year ago, it was only once a month. But now it's been happening almost nightly. I killed someone last night! I need you to help me!"

Alex put his cigarette out in the ash tray on the door and rolled up the window. He flipped on the blinker and hit the brakes as we eased into a gas station. After we'd come to a full stop in front of one of the pumps, he finally turned to face me with his full attention for the first time.

"Allison, we are going to do everything that we can to help you. That's why we've kidnapped you."

"I came willingly. It's not kidnapping. Plus, I'm your kid."

"Don't say that too loudly." He chuckled. "The state thinks you're older than I am."

I couldn't help but smile a little. "Okay, so what are we going to do? What's the plan?"

He swung the door to the bus open and hopped out, so I got out as well. I rushed around the front so I could meet him on the other side. I needed answers!

"How are you going to help me?"

"That's what we've got to figure out," Alex said.

We walked to the rear of the bus where the gas port was located, and he put his credit card in the machine and started to fill it. The smell of gasoline and garbage stifled the otherwise crisp and cool morning air.

"Haven't any of you ever had children before?" I asked. "Certainly I can't be the first one."

Alex froze where he stood. A gust of cold wind blew through the gas station, sending tumbleweeds of rubbish racing across the parking lot.

"You're not." He leaned back against the bus, avoiding eye contact with me. "Liz and I had a child before you. Once."

"Okay, so what did you do then?"

"We swore we would never have kids again."

A chill rushed through me. What did he mean by that?

"When we joined the consciousness of your original parents," Alex continued, "we had no idea that your mother was already pregnant with our child. But, when you were born, you didn't show any of the signs of being infected. We thought that it was a miracle. Maybe, because you were conceived before the werewolf was there . . ."

"I would just be human," I finished his thought when he trailed off.

"Right." The pump clicked off. Alex removed the nozzle from the fill line and returned it to the fuel station. "Our first child was a monster. The shifts happened every month on the full moon, from the day he was born. We tried to control him and teach him to learn to control it, but there was no way."

"What happened to him?" I asked, the wind stealing my voice before it could even come out. My legs shook beneath me as my heart pounded in my ears.

"The shifts became worse and more frequent—happening nightly instead of just on the full moon. And then, we lost him."

"He . . . died?" I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat.

Alex shook his head, and his eyes flickered red for a second as they met mine. "No. One night, he never changed back."