The Thing About Weres: A Mystwalker Novel Read online

  “Use a spoon,” said Cordelia, suddenly appearing over my shoulder. I got a snootful of Chanel as she leaned over to haul the blinds back up. She’d put on one of her neutral outfits. Beige pants, beige top.

  Checking out Tom Collins had been enough to lure her out of her room without her usual dash of bright carmine-red lipstick. She needed a shave. I twirled my finger in the saucer of syrup until it was coated, then I stuck it in my mouth. “He’s just waiting for us,” I mumbled, sucking on my digit. The guy from Kenora smiled slightly.

  “That’s not Tom Collins,” Cordelia murmured. She made a minute adjustment to her red wig.

  “Huh?” And that’s as far as I got, because those motorcycles that had been annoying Cordelia got close enough for even my ears to note them. One—no, two—bike engines throttled down for the turn at the end of our private road. Fae Stars, it was a veritable convoy. The old rusted mailbox listed on its post as the first motorcycle rumbled past it. Harry’s truck followed. Then another vehicle, and beyond that, two more, followed by another motorcycle.

  Cordelia’s eyes were the same arctic blue, but they were now bleak. “Your hair’s a mess,” she said. And then she touched me—something hardly anyone did—gently pulling at the sides of my loose ponytail, so that the tips of my pointed Fae ears were hidden. The bikes came into the yard, their engines loud, abrasive. Under the cover of their noise, she said, “If you haven’t as yet killed that poor little bitch inside you, now’s the time to bring her out.”

  I stared at her, completely flummoxed.

  “I’ve been watching you slowly throttle your Were for months and I’m tired of it. We need you to be you again. Be that girl who had the courage to take over a wolf pack.”

  “I am that girl.”

  “No,” she said sadly. “You’re not anymore.”

  The guy on the BMW pulled up near the Were in Black. Motorcycle guy pulled off his helmet. He was tall, like the Creemore Weres, but broad, with a gut that spoke of beer and bratwurst—not lean like one of Trowbridge’s people. According to my book, Weres smelled like forests and were uniformly lean muscled. They didn’t smell rank as a fox’s lair and look like they spoke in double negatives.

  Barely moving her lips, Cordelia whispered one final instruction. I gave her a quick frown.

  The afternoon sun glinted off Harry’s silver hair as he exited his trunk. A second later Biggs got out from the passenger side. They stood with their backs to us—uneven bookends, the older man head and shoulders taller than the younger—both eyeing the guy in the lawn chair.

  Harry scratched the back of his neck, and then turned his head toward our window. He winked at me. His sleeve was torn. There was blood on his faded denim shirt and at the corner of his mouth.

  I could barely smell the copper of it over the stink of Biggs’s fear.

  “Cordelia, what’s—” She shushed me, and motioned for me to hide Ralph. I slid out of the banquette and tucked him inside my shirt all in one fairly smooth motion. She nodded to me—like she had before we slid Bridge through the portal. We are in serious trouble, I thought, as she took a steadying breath and opened the door.

  Then she stood aside, in a deferential manner I’d only seen her use once before.

  My stomach gave a squeeze. Are you listening, Hedi? Danger. I reached for the Cherry Blossom on the counter before I sidled through the door.

  The Were in Black waited until everyone’s eyes were on him and then got up from his lawn chair. He strolled over to the bottom of my steps, passing Biggs and Harry without even acknowledging them. “I’ve come for an audience with Robson Trowbridge,” he said.

  I could scent the tension radiating from Cordelia. Glibly, I pulled out our stock answer. “He doesn’t take private meetings.”

  “Now why’s that?” Mr. Snoopy had parentheses beside his wide mouth.

  “He’s recuperating.”

  “Still?” His brown eyes examined me through his glasses. “It’s been six months.”

  “He was badly injured during—”

  “Silver, wasn’t it?” He gestured to his belly. “In the stomach, I heard. That would take some recuperating.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “It’s occurred to me, Ms. Peacock … It is Ms. Peacock?” At my numb nod, he pointed to the trailer. “I’m not going to find him inside, am I? Here or in his home.” He held up a hand. “Don’t bother lying. I’ve checked. He’s not in the Alpha’s home. The only thing left of him in that house is a whole lot of blood. Old blood. He hasn’t returned to that house or that room since the night of his alleged ascension.” His face got hard. “You want to tell me what the hell is going on?”

  Behind him, Harry gave me an imperceptible shake of his head.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “I was sent here under the authority of the Council of North American Weres to investigate the death of Mannus Trowbridge and the subsequent Alpha ascension of his nephew, Robson Trowbridge, and to verify whether or not the Treaty of Brelland was willfully broken by one Hedi Peacock, née Helen Stronghold. This morning I discussed the results of my preliminary investigations with the Council, and I have been since authorized to place you under arrest until your trial at sunset, in approximately one hour. Your jury will be me and the members of your pack.”

  “You can’t do that. We have done nothing—”

  “At that time, Hedi Peacock, you will answer to the following charges.” He pulled out a piece of paper. “Your involvement in the murders of Mannus Trowbridge, Stuart Scawens, and Dawn Danvers. Your fraudulent representation as cherished mate of the deceased Robson Trowbridge as well as your assumption of his title.”

  “I don’t want Trowbridge’s title. I’m just trying to hold the pack together until—”

  “And finally,” he said, talking over me once again. “The most serious charge. Conspiracy and treason.”

  “Conspiracy?” I squeaked.

  “That’s generally what they call it when you pretend to play for one team, but really play for another. Did you really think you could send an Alpha into the Fae world without us finding out about it?”

  Oh … My brain froze, stuck between “oh” and “crap.” For the life of me, I couldn’t come up with a single glib lie. The spot where I should have inserted a plausible rebuttal stretched, and stretched, and then it was gone. Bye-bye. Behind me now. Opportunity had presented itself, taken a bow, and left.

  Cordelia cleared her throat. “Do something!” her icy blue eyes insisted.

  Okay, I thought somewhat slowly. I’ll use my flare like I did last night and that will buy us some time, and … That’s what you do, right? When the thinking part of you stutters to a halt, and you can’t brainstorm your way out of a problem? You head for your automatic defense weapons. I’ll hit them with my magic!

  I gave Cordelia a faint nod.

  Then the NAW’s man chose to do that thing—that wordless, incredibly insulting thing.

  In front of everyone, he blew out a short burst of air through his nose. Derision streamed out of his nostrils, twin fingers of contempt flicked insolently at me. My reaction was all wolf. I felt his mockery as if it were a missile aimed at me. Bullet shaped, fin tailed. Coming straight for me.

  It hit, right there, mid-chest.

  For a very quick count of three, I gazed at the approximate point of impact.

  When I looked up again, my defense had flipped to offense. Oh yeah, go ahead and smile, you smug bastard. I’m going to give it to you—the full dominant light of an awesomely pissed-off fairy—and you, my friend, are going to drop to your knees.

  I gave my opponent a slow smile, knowing that I had plenty of rage to fuel the fire of a truly awesome flare—six months of suppressed anger, half a year of growing disillusionment, 195 days of tamping down the Fae inside me.

  Puppy, we’re going to make you piddle your pants.

  I looked within, ready to tap into my magic.

  And within.

  A
nd, oh sweet stars in heaven—within. My paw tightened over my Cherry Blossom, as sudden comprehension rolled over me. That’s what mortal-me had been ignoring all day. Sunrise should have found me sitting at the dinette—hand submerged in a bowl of ice water—listening to the chatter of grackles as I willed my wounds to heal. But that hadn’t happened, had it? The ball of magic inside my gut should have been rigid, swollen with aggression, ready to take on any Were who dared to doubt her malevolence, but instead the essence of my Fae felt curiously soft, and frighteningly empty.

  I wasn’t hungry, I was void.

  Where was all my magic? Why hadn’t she come back to me? What remained of my handy ball of magic felt as soft as a month-old helium balloon. I gave it a squeeze. I was down to residue. The rest—that big sphere of green fire that I’d walked away from with such disdain—had not returned to me in the night.

  “Yes, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” growled my Were. “We’re not right! We’re…”

  Running on empty. Not good. I squeezed what was left of my Fae talent, hopeful of wringing out a little juice for the much-needed flare.

  It obliged, kind of.

  A brief burn in my eyes, a buildup of expectation, and then … three, tiny, inconsequential spits of green fire; the type of impotent spark one might expect from a used-up lighter.

  “Oh shit,” muttered Cordelia.

  More of a misfire, really, I thought in dismay. A lot like my miniflares before I found My One True Thing.

  “Boys, put on your glasses,” said the Were in Black, sounding bored. His goons whipped out dark-rimmed glasses identical to his, and put them on. “If that’s all she’s got, I don’t think we have anything to worry about, but we may as well be armed. The Council paid the coven a good chunk of change for these things. Guaranteed protection against any strong flare.” The NAW’s main man thought that was funny, he did. His shoulders shook, before he remembered his role as a professional goon and reined in his amusement. With firmer lips, and a voice deepened to reflect the gravitas of the moment, the Were in Black said, “The following people have also been charged: Harry Windcombe, Russell Biggs, and Frank Evers.”

  Frank Evers? I flicked a WTF at Cordelia.

  He nodded toward the west where the sun was beginning to follow a downward arch toward the western, ragged line of trees. “You’ve got an hour until you meet all your jury. Full restraints, boys. Gag and bind ’em.”

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  He opened the door on Harry’s truck, and then with one foot on the running board, smiled. “They call me Knox.”

  And that’s how Plan B ended. With a hiss of air from my lungs, my early dinner waiting for me on the dinette’s table, and the stiff edges of the yellow Cherry Blossom box cutting into my sweating palm.

  Chapter Six

  This house will be the death of me. For all its gabled grandeur, the Trowbridges’ cream-colored Victorian looked abandoned. One of the shrubs under the bay window was leafless. The portion of the front lawn that hadn’t gone to seed had given way to weed. A memory came unbidden: Bridge, eighteen and shirtless, pushing the lawn mower around his home. Headphones on. MP3 player jammed in the front pocket of his faded cut-off jeans.

  I should have asked Biggs to look after it better but I couldn’t stand the thought of anyone walking through the rooms. It was not a place for the curious. It was the place of my deepest hurt.

  That’s where I’d lost another part of me.

  The hour had passed achingly slowly. Knox’s minions had let me sit and stew in silence while they’d passed the time watching one of those television shows featuring a new mom, a boyfriend, and a paternity test. At the end of the program (the paternity test proved negative), the beefier of Knox’s minions had blindfolded me with a dirty red bandana while the ferret-faced one had riffled through our mail.

  Just to make conversation, I’d said to Fatso, “I thought all Weres were lean.”

  “Shut up.” It hadn’t been a cordial response, but then again, we weren’t destined to be friends, Fatso and I. After my observation, he’d taken care to make sure my blindfold was tied tight enough to make my eyes pound and my head feel like it was in a vise.

  That’s when it had occurred to me, admittedly a little late, that my personal understanding of Weres might have been woefully limited, because bowlegged Fatso was living proof that not all Fur-boys were clever, tall, and lean. Who knew? I’d thought all wolves looked like the Creemore Weres—long-distance runners versus weightlifters.

  I’d been wrong.

  As they drove me to my inquisition, managing to hit every pothole on the rutted dirt road, I kept mentally playing that Bobbie McGee song. Not the whole song, because I don’t know the whole song. I know most of the melody and fragments of the lyrics because Cordelia’s head is crammed with old songs, like the one about Bobbie McGee and his dirty red bandana—a tune she’d taken to singing as she scrubbed at the lime deposits around the trailer’s chronically leaking taps. Here was another truth: while facing bad guys is tough, facing them without your friends is tougher. All of a sudden, I was so keenly aware of everything. I was busted flat—in the wrong car, on the wrong road, traveling to the wrong place, without the comfort of my personal Bobbie McGee, Cordelia.

  They’d hustled her and the boys into the open bed of Harry’s truck and driven them away not long after Knox got into his truck. Her last comment to me had been uttered while she stood beside me on the trailer’s meager front steps, the delivery pitched low. She’d meant it for my ears only, and she delivered it in a tone of grim certainty, as if she’d looked into the future and figured out all the options and likelihoods, and had done so in one quick flutter of her fake black lashes.

  “When the chance comes, don’t wait for us,” she said. “Run.”

  I’d worried over that suggestion all the way to the Trowbridge place. Puzzled over the gap between who she thought I was and who I thought I was, as Knox’s goons shoved me down to the floor in the back, and told me to “stay.” And oddly, for someone who found living by rules difficult, I’d done just that—I hadn’t tried to get up, or kick anyone, or hissed anything nasty to Ralph when he chose to burrow into the cup of my bra. I’d been silent—thoughtful even—quietly taking advantage of the rough nap of the carpet to rub the blindfold as high as my left eyebrow as I tried to figure out who, what, and why.

  I needed to see.

  A minor rebellion. Fat-guy had yanked me out of the truck before I’d worked myself free of the blindfold, and when I’d lifted my hands to tug it away, Knox’s voice had come out of nowhere. “Leave it!”

  Oh really? Enough.

  But before I could do what I meant to—yank that damn thing off and toss it in Knox’s face—Fatso had pinned my arms behind me. Mutiny quelled.

  Still, my efforts in the truck had won me a spy hole if you will. Light glimmered through the tiny crack over my left cheekbone. The sky was not yet black. Gray-blue in the west, indigo blue where the moon hung low in the sky. If I tilted my head, I could see well enough to note that there were a lot of cars illegally parked on the Alpha’s front lawn.

  So, the pack was already here. Waiting.

  My Were paced. Back and forth, forth and back. On every circuit, she brushed the spot where my Fae talent usually lolled, and each time she did she uttered another rumble of deep distress. We—Hedi Incorporated—weren’t firing on our usual three cylinders, she told me. We weren’t we anymore.

  Well, tell me something I didn’t know. My gut felt hollow without the reassuring weight of my Fae bobbing inside me. But it occurred to me, right then, that if I kept listening to my Were unravel, I would soon be leaking her despair through my skin, making me, in effect, as obvious a snack choice as meat-on-a-stick.

  I need to stop listening to my Were.

  Knox led us through the backyard. “This way,” he said for the benefit of his guards, as he veered off for the worn trail. The light was dim in the woods. No one talked. The
urge to make a dash for it was almost overpowering, but the fat guard Knox had appointed as my personal companion never loosened his grip on my arm. And besides, I don’t do that anymore.

  That’s the thing I don’t do, Cordelia. Hadn’t you noticed? I don’t run anymore.

  The old Hedi would have; the new and improved version couldn’t. Not after seeing Trowbridge take my beating. And yet, had it changed anything? Here I was, right back to where I’d been six months ago, future looking grim, being shoved down a trail through the woods by someone who really, really didn’t like me.

  Fine time to develop a moral code.

  “Hurry up.” The beefy goon was a mountain of a man, given to double negatives. Fat and stupid; Fatso’s life had to be a bitch.

  Remember to use that against him.

  I bowed my head, and under the guise of complete submission, used the time to experiment with a combination of grimaces and forehead pleats. By the time we emerged from the trees into the gathering place, I’d eyebrow-shrugged my blindfold up so that it sat crookedly over the bridge of my nose. Fat and stupid hadn’t noticed. But I felt a tiny smidgen of hope. I was getting closer to full vision. Left eye open and recording the sights as I trudged to my destiny. Right eye operating at fifty percent capacity, which was both good and bad. I wasn’t totally blind, but I had an obvious weak spot—and Weres love those—and I knew if anyone were looking for a chink in the old Fae armor, they’d come in from my right.

  Keep to the truth. You’re holding the pack together until Bridge comes back. Don’t embroider. Don’t lie. Don’t give the NAW anything they haven’t asked for.

  The pasture was full of Weres still in human form, most of them clustered in the open area in the middle. Goddess, where is Cordelia? When the pack saw me, being led, partially blindfolded, toward them—dinner on the hoof, as it were—all talk ceased for a beat, and then picked up again. Lots of murmurs with individual words indistinct in the stew of conversation.