The Thing About Weres: A Mystwalker Novel Page 2

  His nose is perfect. Long and straight. Not misshapen and bleeding.

  Trowbridge rubbed his shoulder and stared thoughtfully at the narrow lane that had been cut into the old woods. “How long do we have before the Fae come?”

  “They won’t come tonight.”

  He blew some air through his teeth. “They always come. How about giving me a crossbow to fire back at them?”

  “I…” My voice trailed off.

  “Can’t or won’t,” he finished quietly. “That’s our basic problem. You keep making decisions without consulting me first.”

  Not fair, Trowbridge.

  The trees behind him swayed, their leaves rustling and parting to reveal the glint of the sinking sun: a yellow-orange ball of fire, as luminous as one of Threall’s brightest soul lights.

  He lifted his nose to the wind. “Wait … something’s on the wind.”

  Not yet, don’t let the guards come yet. Just a little longer.

  Another inhale, deep enough to flare his nostrils and lift his pecs. “Someone’s burning something in the hearth … peat? Yeah, I’d say it’s peat. Wouldn’t it be better to have this conversation beside a cozy, warm fire?”

  “You know what burning peat smells like, huh?”

  “I’m a figment of your imagination, kid. So, basically, I know everything you know. Hear your thoughts, too.” He began a slogging march through the hip-deep water. Six paces to the left, a sharp turn, and eight paces to the right. With each lurching step, the pool’s water level rose and fell on the high-water line on his tawny skin. One step and the water was up to his waist, drowning his hands, with the next, it had lapped away, providing a coy glimpse of the soft swell of his ass.

  The yearning to touch him began to grow again. Long roots had my desire—like weeds growing between cobblestones.

  Trowbridge shook his head. “You know, the only bearable bit in the first twenty pages of The Highland Warrior’s Mistress was the news that burning peat smells like scorched dirt. One day, I’m going to toss a handful of peat moss on a campfire, just to see if it does. Probably doesn’t.”

  “Why are we talking about this?”

  “I’m telling you, I’m well past done with that romance shit. Seriously, who calls his woman ‘my sweet wee lassie’?” Water churned behind him in swirling eddies. “The next time you send Biggs to Barrie to satisfy your book binge, let the poor bastard come home with a few thrillers. Lee Child, Robert Crais, maybe an Ian Rankin or two. I don’t know how he stands going through the checkout line at Walmart. Why don’t you go buy your own books?”

  Because you might come back while I’m gone.

  “Not going to happen unless you’ve suddenly remembered the words to summon the portal. How’s that going?” He paused in his pacing, his head shifted to one side, his eyes cast down, seemingly intent on something beneath the surface of the water.

  Over and over, I’ve tried. The Gates of Merenwyn are summoned by song. One with very specific lyrics. Which I couldn’t remember for the life of me.

  When I didn’t speak, he sighed, the way men do when they’re trying to be patient—through the nose, teeth lightly clenched, jaw hard, impatience a stretched, jagged shadow behind his façade of tolerance. Very softly, too softly, he said, “If I can’t find a way home, you’re going to have to take your role as Alpha a whole lot more seriously.”

  “I am taking it seriously. I sign stuff. I—”

  “For starters, calling yourself their Alpha-by-proxy is just asking for it. The pack has zero sense of humor about shit like that. Can’t you see it’s messed up, the way you approach the pack? For us, it’s always about status. Who’s higher than me, who’s lower than me.” Water sprayed as my mate swept his arm to demonstrate his point. “You can never let your guard down. You must act, think, and smell like top dog … not…” He scratched his ear.

  A Fae? “I’m doing my best to hold on to your pack but being a leader doesn’t come naturally. Until you come home, they’ll just have to make do with me. It won’t be for much longer anyhow. Sooner or later, I’ll find a way to get you home.”

  “Sooner or later one of them is going to challenge you for leadership,” he said.

  For a bit, neither of us said anything. Trowbridge swished water through his fingers. I watched a dark smudge in the far distance, winging its way toward us. A bird. Long wings, torpedo-shaped body. Perhaps a duck, but they never flew alone.

  “I have my flare,” I said.

  The bird dipped low, skimming the tree line. An emerald-green cap, a flash of gray and white.

  “You have to turn into your wolf, Tink. They have to believe that you are one of them.”

  “It’s a really good flare.”

  Wings beating furiously, the mallard came in for a landing. It reared back, wings arched, feet thrust forward. A splash and then a long glide. The duck preened its feathers, then paddled sideways to give us a bird glare from its beady eye, before it swam to the end of the pool where the water was murky and the trees hung low.

  “Friend of yours?” Trowbridge asked.

  I scanned the sky but it was night-gray and heavy, and as far as my gaze could sweep, I could not spot another dark smudge. “Shoo,” I said to the mallard. “Go find your mate before winter sets in.”

  Trowbridge watched the bird, his lips twisted. “Let it go, Hedi.”

  “Tell me about your life there,” I asked softly. “Have you found Lexi yet?”

  He shook his head, ever stubborn. “It’s moontime there, isn’t it?”

  “Tomorrow.” Three nights of hell. “How’d you know?”

  “You’re more anxious around the full moon. That’s when the worst dreams come.” Trowbridge’s shoulders flexed as he spread his arms wide. He bent his head, his fingers skimming the surface—seemingly poised for a dive.

  Don’t. Not yet.

  Water curled up to his navel and then dipped back. “Have you heard from the NAW yet?”

  The letter came this morning. I didn’t explain how the air in the trailer had thickened with the sharp spice of Were anxiety after Harry, Cordelia, and Biggs had taken their turns reading it. But then again, in my dreams, I didn’t need to.

  His wince was the type that happens before a trigger is reluctantly squeezed. And for a second, it was all there. Despair worn down to weary acceptance, fatigue etched into bone weariness—the visual equivalent of a heavy sigh if my Trowbridge was a man given to such things. But he was not. He wiped out the bad and replaced it with a smile that promised hell and havoc. “I have to get out of this pool.” My mate started walking toward me, the sound of the churning water loud to my ears. “I’m coming out now. We need to—”

  “No!” I closed my eyes. “One thousand, two—”

  “Shit! Stop with the counting!”

  “Three thousand, four—”

  “It’s freaking annoying. Hedi,” he called, his tone sharp and demanding. “Open your eyes and look at me. I’m good now. There’s no scars on my chest or wrists. No silver in my gut. I’m healed.”

  “Five thousand, six—”

  “That’s it, I’m coming out of this water right now,” he promised, the sound of his splashing progress getting louder, closer.

  My eyes popped open. “No! You have to stay in the Pool of Life.”

  If anything he moved faster. “Dammit, I’m healed!”

  “No! Every time you walk out of it, you die!” Acid began rising in my throat.

  “I’d rather die on dry land!” he shouted back.

  The wind came from nowhere. It whistled through the trees—frost tipped and javelin sharp—and whipped the water into a vengeful chop. It thrashed the trees and shredded their leaves. The remnants came in a whirl, a veritable barrage of dead and broken things; dry whispers of brown, bright flickers of yellow and red. They swirled and danced over my lover’s head.

  He hunched his shoulders as he batted them away. “Hedi, you’re going to blind me with these damn things! I need to see!
Chill. I mean it! Close your eyes and think of something else.”

  I did. I covered my eyes and thought of something easy, but in the landscape of my dreaming mind, the wind still moaned.

  “Okay, okay. Shh, sweetheart, I’ve got you,” he whispered in my ear. “Breathe deep. Steady now. It’s a dream. That’s all it is.” A sigh—I swear I felt his warm breath on my face and the soft press of his lips to the peak of my ear.

  “Please, Tink, go back to sleep. Dream of Krispy Kremes and napoleons, not of me.”

  Strangely obedient, my fist tightened on something soft and giving, perfumed very faintly of Trowbridge. I rubbed my cheek on its cotton softness, but as I wrapped my arms around it, a keening part of me registered the lumpy contours of my pillow.

  “Sweet dreams, little one.”

  Arm shielding my eyes, I rolled over, feeling the sheets catch on my hip.

  Gray light in my bedroom. The floor-to-ceiling cabinet holding my clothes and his, reassuringly within arm’s reach. Good. Now wake yourself up, fully. Get out of bed for some water. Go for a pee. Move. But I didn’t. I lay there, drowsy and bereft, hovering on the brink of dread.

  You see? I couldn’t leave him. I never could.

  My eyes closed again all on their own.

  In those brief seconds of semiwakefulness, time had passed. Merenwyn’s sun had fallen, its golden light given way to the silver shimmer of the stars. Fall had yawned, and trundled off for bed. Gone were the bands of vivid gold, the touch of crimson in the hills. Winter chill was in the air and, save for the firs, the trees in the vista were bare. Viewed from a distance, the horizontal swaths of their gray-taupe trunks and naked branches seemed to be a gray fog wreathing through the vertical spikes of the sharp-tipped evergreens.

  Almost like Threall seen from a bird’s-eye view, I thought.

  The pond was empty, save for the man I could not rescue.

  Trowbridge’s back was goosefleshed and bluish in the cold. “Back so soon?” he asked, without turning. The muscles on his back pulled and stretched as he folded his arms.

  “Karh! Karh!” warned a distant raven.

  My mate cocked his ear, and took a step toward the deep part of the pool. “You should be dreaming of better things than this, Tink.” Water crept to his waist as he took another resolute step toward the drop-off. “Why do you do this to yourself? Always come back for the end? Why?”

  “I don’t want you to die alone.”

  “You should have checked the fine print of the mating bond. Our destinies will always be connected.” His gaze was fixed on the road leading out of the forest. “I told you a Were should never cross the portal. Nothing good’s going to come of it.”

  “I had no choice.”

  “You did. You could have had the courage to let me go. Instead, you broke the treaty. The Fae will come,” he said with a cold certainty that made me feel all kinds of awful.

  The Fae have come. It used to be that I’d meet you every night and now I’m never sure who I’m going to meet in my slumber. Mad-one and some old Fae keep slipping into my dreams. Am I starting to go mad, too? Because that’s what mystwalkers do. We lose our marbles.

  Numbly, I watched my lover draw a shape in the water with his hand. A backward S curve slid into an upside-down one, as Trowbridge carved a figure eight reclining on its side, infinitely graceful. “I’m tired of this,” he murmured softly. “Why does it always have to come down to a fight?”

  As I’m tired of it. The welling guilt, the sharp bite of desire, the low swell of longing, the growing acid of fear.

  “I’ll change into my wolf tomorrow night, Trowbridge. I promise.”

  But he’d lifted his ear sharply to something only he could hear, and then he quietly asked, his breath misting in the cold air, “What could I say to make you leave now?”

  That you’re coming home. That you forgive me.

  “You ask for the moon, Hedi Peacock.” A snowflake fluttered from the sky to land on his shoulder with a frozen kiss. It lay there, a perfect crystal that did not melt. The raven issued another volley of urgent karhs, and then, over its sharp cry, came the sound of horses being ridden in haste. I heard the hollow drumming of hooves on hard earth and the long metallic slither of silver swords being drawn.

  Trowbridge swiveled his head to look at me. Blue eyes piercing. “These visits have to stop. It just makes things harder. You need to face the fact that I’m never going to find my way back.” Then, his jaw hardened. “Now go home, Hedi. Don’t watch this.”

  The sound was getting louder.

  All I could hear, those drumming hooves.

  The muscles of his neck moved as he swallowed. “It’s time for my swim.”

  My Trowbridge dived into the depths of the Pool of Life, hands pressed like in a prayer, just as the first arrow soared through the air.

  Chapter Two

  Why do I keep making promises?

  “It’s easier if you’re nude when you do it,” Cordelia said.

  “What is it with you Werewolves?” I flapped away a mosquito. October in Creemore and the bugs were still hungry. “You’re always looking for any excuse to walk around naked.”

  It was getting dark, but I could still witness her left eyebrow rise into a truly impressive arch. “Do I walk around nude? Have you ever seen me without clothes?”

  “If anyone had, I’d be three hundred and seventy-five bucks richer,” said Biggs from the other side of the cedars.

  “Haven’t you and your ‘bros’”—her throaty voice stretched the word out in one long vowel of dismissal—“anything better to do with your pennies?”

  “Hey, Cordelia, inquiring minds want to know.”

  I knew where this was going. They couldn’t say “pass the salt” without sarcasm and disdain hitching a ride on the saltshaker.

  All our nerves were shot tonight. Yesterday morning a letter had arrived from Reeve Whitlock, head of the Council of the North American Weres. It had looked innocuous enough. Plain envelope, a Canadian stamp affixed crookedly in the corner. Inside was this piece of news: a formal request from the NAW for our accounts books and notification of a meeting, set for the middle of next week. The prospect of an audit should have produced an eye roll from Cordelia and a heavy sigh from Harry.

  Right?

  But Harry had said, “It’s a smokescreen. They’re laying a paper trail down so that they can sew it up neatly later for the Great Council. Whitlock’s ironed out whatever problem kept him from sticking his nose into our business and now he’s coming for us.”

  Cordelia had refolded the letter and slid it back into its plain white envelope. Then she’d turned and stared out the dinette window, her carefully painted mouth a long grim slash. “It couldn’t have gone on much longer,” she said. “We all knew that.”

  We did?

  Six months ago, my aunt Lou had killed Mannus, the former Alpha of Creemore. As crowns for the furry are a matter of lineage and ability, my mate, Robson Trowbridge, had stepped into the position. Well, technically, he’d been shoved into it as he’d been borderline comatose in those desperate moments following his sudden ascension.

  I had a choice: save his life or watch his death.

  I’m always going to put my money on life.

  Anyhow, for the last six months, I’d assumed the role of Alpha-by-proxy, which meant I was “leading” the Weres of Ontario in his absence. Basically the job boiled down to signing stuff. And smiling a lot. And pretending to look like I understood what was going on, when usually I felt about fifteen minutes behind the conversation.

  It was hard to keep focused. My brain kept drifting from topic to topic because I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in … Fae Stars. Eight months? It was bad enough watching Trowbridge die night after night. But now my nightmares pulled me into Threall. And to that room with the old wizard and Mad-one.

  Cordelia snapped, “Tell Biggs to keep his eyes straight ahead.”

  Tetchy, wouldn’t you say?

 
Maybe I should have chosen a place up in the hills to do this, instead of the forgotten part of the cemetery. But only the most intrepid Creemore wolf would willingly put a paw in this portion of the graveyard, because wolves are, on the whole, superstitious, and—get this—scared of anything supernatural. Ghost stories? They wouldn’t read them. Hell, R. L. Stine novels are banned in the halls of St. Hubert of Liege’s School of Learning.

  Yup, the pack wasn’t much keen on the woo-woo. Even though I’ve never met a Were who’s seen a spook, the entire pack had formed the opinion that their final hunting ground was infested with spirits and avoided it like the plague. They wouldn’t even take a leak on the cedar shrubs that lined the cemetery and that’s when they were dog stupid and wolf keen to mark territory.

  Yeah, I know. It makes me smile, too.

  Truth was, there were only three ghosts as far as I could see. The fussy duet who lived at the newer end of Creemore’s St. Luke cemetery kept to themselves, hovering close to the marker of CAROL’S DEARLY BELOVED HUSBAND DWAYNE (1899–1993), while the single spirit who lived in the oldest part—a female ghost who seemed to have a strange fixation on me—always stayed behind the low crumbling stone wall that surrounded her tiny pocket of the cemetery. I’m thinking stalker-ghost was once an outsider, too, because her final resting spot was on the wrong side of the rotting picket fence that once had delineated what was sacred land from that which was not.

  What had she been? A suicide?

  Whatever she’d been, they’d hated her enough to put two barriers—a fence and a stone wall—around her earthly remains. Seemed unfair. As spirits go, yes, she was a bit of a stalker—snoopy as hell in a very unnerving, focused sort of way—but on the whole, she was quiet, verging on shy. The one time I’d snuck up to say hey, she’d taken off, her shroud wreathing around her in a very cool way. Mostly, she flitted from one end of her corral to the other. She never left it.

  That’s why we were doing this whole cloak-and-dagger business on this side of the old barrier—the safe side—where there were only five little headstones for five dead babies, and three tall pines, and yeah—one blurry-edged ghost. I considered explaining all this to Cordelia but her teeth were set on presnarl and conversations in the face of that scowl inevitably unraveled. Besides, she’d screwed up her courage to do this here, the one place we could count on not being bothered. Kind of took away from her bragging rights if I told her that the only person watching this besides Biggs was a skittish spook.