“Could he have been any more conspicuous?” I whispered.
“Have you ever tried to fit a full-sized wolf in a two door?” he responded smoothly under his breath as Levi came walking up to us.
“Merci,” Levi greeted me with a firm handshake.
“Levi.” I thought it terribly formal considering we had met before. Maybe he had been put on his best behavior since Piper wanted to meet me? I returned the handshake and braced myself for his brushing, but it never came.
He turned to his pack mate. “Rafe,” he said in a voice neither pleasant nor threatening, but he didn’t extend a handshake and he didn’t smile.
“Primo Howard,” Rafe said lowering his eyes.
I was caught in the whirl of Rafe’s warm fur and a puppy smell I recognized from the night I witnessed the shift. But at least I knew to brace myself on the armrest of the bench; I knew what it was going to do to the pit of my stomach.
Levi quickly swung his eyes back to me. I couldn’t help but picture him in his wolf form, standing proudly in the center of the circle. I doubted that I would ever be able to see him as all man again.
“Are you ready?”
“Always.” I forced a grin. Might as well be on my best behavior too.
Levi walked to his car and opened the front passenger door for me. I climbed in as gracefully as I could and he closed the door quickly on my heels.
I watched the side-view mirror as the men walked around the back of the car. Levi, the passion evident in his body language, was saying something to Rafe, and Rafe dropped his eyes once more. I glanced in the rearview mirror and wished I couldn’t read lips.
From inside the car, I couldn’t hear much, but I could make out that they were talking about me, something about pack and power. Rafe insisted that he had every right to be there. I lost the words as I watched Rafe shrink down when Levi snapped something in response. I looked away quickly when the men broke and went to their own sides of the car.
Both were quiet as Levi pulled away from the curb. We were heading back to the highway that would take us north of the city. I could see Rafe in the side mirror, and whatever Levi had said clearly upset him. He now sat silently in the back seat, his blue eyes focused on the distance out the window. Perhaps he really was in trouble for bringing a me into this.
My heart sank a little. What else could have instantly turned this loquacious man into a sullen child? Why was Rafe such an outsider to his own pack that he even had to involve me? It just added to the questions about a pack that didn’t want to investigate the death of one of their members.
I had to get them talking about something. The dull roar of questions in my head was gathering strength, turning into a full-tilt thunderstorm as we got farther from the city. I needed to take the edge off if I was going to get through the next couple of hours, and I really didn’t think stopping for a drink on the way there was an option.
“So what exactly does a Primo do?”
“Save your questions for Piper,” Levi said abruptly. “Here, Put this on.”
He picked up a black sleeping mask from the center console of the cab.
“Seriously?”
“Do you want to meet Piper or not?”
Clearly, there would be no questioning the blindfold. I was beginning to wonder how powerful this Piper could be if she could call the shots and Levi would obey.
With one last looks at Rafe in the back seat, I pulled the satin cover over my eyes and counted, measuring the miles of distance between me and my city.
CHAPTER SIX
Levi had already turned down three roads and crossed two bridges and we were still in a on roads off the highway. I was just about to ask if he even really knew where he was going, because I swore we had taken four rights, but I didn’t discount that he was trying to confuse me to obfuscate her location. Just as I was losing faith in his internal GPS, he made a sharp left and we hit a gravel road.
“We are here.”
I tore off the mask just as the tree line broke and we pulled up to a huge house. The driveway was long and manicured and we drove past several more SUVs as we pulled around to park in front of the house.
The three of us got out of the car, and I paused, gaping at the complete pastoral scene. The two-story, white farmhouse was surrounded by a clearing, which abutted a dense wood. A porch wrapped around the entire front half so a person could both watch the sunrise and the sunset from the rockers scattered around it. The place was so picture perfect it even had a rooster weather vane with a compass.
And yet here I was, about to walk into a literal den.
The more wolves to eat you with, my dear. Even in death, Ethan loved his puns.
Levi asked me to wait for a moment, then strode into the house, leaving me outside with Rafe.
I immediately turned toward him. “Is everything okay?”
“Fine,” he snapped.
“I already know that you were fighting about me, so you need to tell me. Will you be punished for telling an outsider? There is a pretty big spectrum between forgiveness and execution.”
Rafe watched me with those huge eyes, and something tugged just under my right rib. I was going to chalk it up to weather changes and recent injuries, and not a growing affinity. I focused on his answer.
“It’s what Piper wants,” was all he answered.
“But what Piper wants and what Levi wants are very obviously two drastically different things. Are you in trouble because of me?”
“No.”
He was lying. His upper right cheek tensed up, he crossed his arms, his answer was short, and he avoided looking at me, instead finding the corner of the porch particularly interesting. The confident professor was gone, and I wasn’t sure exactly who stood before me right now, but I didn’t like him. So I told him. “You’re lying.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I do. Why do you drop your eyes when you speak to him? Does it go back to the pack dominance thing? Because you went above his head?”
“I can’t talk to you about this.” He walked off toward the tree line.
I would have followed him; when people lie to me, I usually beat them over the head with so many questions that truth becomes their only way out.
Levi called out from the porch of the house. I watched Rafe’s retreating form for another moment, then turned to the country home. I took in a deep breath and put on my game face, squared my shoulders, and walked toward the porch. If Rafe wasn’t going to help me out with this, then I would have to rely on the old Lanard Charm.
Levi held the door open for me, and when I walked in, I was met with the coziest house I’d ever been in. It wasn’t so much the decor, which could be called clean, yet shabby chic; it was a feeling that hung in the air like the islet curtains across the windows. And it smelled like my grandmother’s house, like something cinnamon was baking in the oven. As we walked through the sitting room, I fought the urge to curl up in the corner of the couch and read books as I had at Grand-Mere’s house when I was little.
Now that was magic.
Levi led me into the bright kitchen where two people were brewing hot tea at a white granite island. An older woman looked up, and a warm smile spread across her face. Immediately, I knew this was Piper, the Den Mother. It was all in the sparkle of her wise, green eyes. The man with her was tall and dark, with yellow-green eyes that betrayed no emotion. He just looked at me and then back at the other woman.
“Piper, this is Merci Lanard. Merci, this is Piper Fantaye, our Den Mother,” Levi introduced.
I extended my hand and Piper took it graciously. “It’s an honor to meet you, Ms. Fantaye.”
“Please, here it’s first names only,” she said, then gestured to the man, “This is my husband, Kye.”
Kye nodded, not extending his hand. I mirrored his greeting.
“Can I get you some tea?” Piper offered.
“I would love some. Thank you,” I said, adjusting the bag on my shoulder.
“Kye, why don’t you and Levi let Merci and me chat for a while?” Piper asked sweetly.
When Kye didn’t move, Piper gave him a stern eyebrow.
“If you need anything,” he grumbled and he followed Levi into the sitting room I had just passed through. They were both unsure about this, keeping a close watch on their matriarch and the outsider who knew too much.
Piper shook her head and sighed. “Boys.” She shrugged as she took the glass pot of tea and gestured for me to have a seat at the little bistro table by a gorgeous bay window, framed by frilly white curtains overlooking acres of property. “You save the world and they still think they have to protect you,” Piper set up the two mugs with tea, milk, and sugar.
I thanked her and she took the seat across from me. My leg bounced and as soon as she looked over at me, my skin started to burn, like a sunburn all over my skin, crackling and dry. There were so many questions swirling through in my head like a dryer with shoes tumbling around.
“Now, Merci. Rafe told me you have discovered possible magical activity.” Piper sipped her tea.
The story. The sizzle of it singed my neck, and I was ready to get to work, stronger than I had been in weeks. Focused with proof in hand.
“Yes, ma’am. I have the photos right here if you would like to go through them,” I said reaching down into my bag.
She put her hand out and shook her head, her brows knotted together. “Rafe showed me enough.”
I put the folder back into my bag and just sat there, feeling exposed under her wise gaze. If we weren’t going to talk about the story, then why was I here?
“Ethan spoke of you often.”
The mention of Ethan sucked the air out of my lungs and I couldn’t speak. I don’t know why it came as such a surprise. These were his people, whom he called family, of course his name might come up in conversation, but it still shocked me.
“The pack has not been the same without him, without knowing what really happened to him.” She gazed out the window and cocked her head for a moment as if she was listening to something. She sighed, took another sip of her tea, and turned back to me. “Is there anything that I can answer for you? About us? About this world that will help you with his passing?”
I nearly laughed before my chest caved in with sadness, ached with this woman’s consideration for my feelings, ached with loneliness at seeing all the people Ethan had to lean on. And I ached, knowing that the sense of home beneath this roof was something that would not come back with me in my cold townhome.
Even though I had written a hundred questions for her in my notebook, there was one question I’d rehearsed a thousand times today. Saying it now was more like muscle memory as I breathed it to life. “Why did Ethan keep this from me for so long, and yet with a few dead bodies, you jump at the chance to meet me?”
Piper stared at me as if I had zapped her with the Taser. She shook her head and forced a smile. “I’m sorry. Brain freeze.”
The woman was lying. My interrogation mode hummed with it. The way she leaned away from me and cupped the mug squarely between us. The way her eyes crinkled and her lips thinned when she smiled. She was lying.
That wasn’t a good sign.
“Kye, could you come here for a moment?” Piper called out pleasantly, but there was a new tension in her shoulder.
The man was through the doorway before I could blink. I sat very still, not quite knowing what was going on. I kept my hands as still as I could and forced my leg to stop bouncing through red flag number two.
“Put down your shield,” Piper said to her husband.
Kye shot her a quizzical look.
“Oh just do it,” she said in that exasperated wife tone.
I knew the moment he let his “shield” down. I felt it, as I’d felt Rafe and smelled Levi. But this was fur like silk against my cheek and it smelled tangier, more exotic. My hands clenched against the table, and I refused to faint, though the swirling in my stomach was greater than I had experienced before. He had to be twice as powerful as Rafe.
“Merci, ask Kye a question,” Piper said softly, her eyes on me.
My mind raced. All these questions and I couldn’t form my mouth around a normal one as I stared into his eyes. I finally managed, “What is your favorite cereal?”
Kye inhaled sharply. “Chex,” he finally said.
I tore my eyes away from his and was left slightly spinning at the sudden disconnection.
“What is that?” Kye asked.
“I didn’t believe it when Ethan told me, but he was right.”
My skin went cold, and the previous sizzle was dampened like a wet blanket with her words. “Right about what?”
Piper relaxed, pulled her hand back to her tea, and put on that calming smile again. It didn’t work for me nearly as well as it had a minute earlier. She inhaled slowly before speaking. “When you ask questions, I can feel magic.”
The world stopped. Everything. Sounds faded. The lights from the kitchen ballast became too bright and everything else dulled into a blanket of white nothing.
The sweet scent of cinnamon brought me back the kitchen, back to the table, brought the world back into focus.
“Do you wander?” Piper asked, her hand on mine.
“No.” The bitter taste of rotten lo-mien filled my mouth, and I suddenly was not sure about anything.
Magic? Me?
My brain twisted into a hurricane of questions, while my stomach became a stone. I sat heavily in the chair while my mind flew with the velocity of the truths I suddenly needed to know. What kind of magic? How strong? When?
“Why did he think that?”
Piper spoke softly, paced her words out slowly as if speaking to a scared cat under a chair. “He came to me about six months ago. After the IRS story. He told me about your process, your drive.”
Oh, the IRS investigation. It was hours of going through public records and late nights and conversations that ebbed from silly to intimate. It was the first time that I told him about the storm in my head that happened when I got into a story, the sizzle of interrogation mode, how it was better than a hit of Ritalin to keep me focused on one headline at a time.
Piper continued. “I thought he was just proud of you, but then he told me about the actual interview with the IRS agent. I think that’s when he really knew. He said you were able to get him to confess to what he did.”
I flashed back that interview. The lightning in my brain had been full tilt for that story because it had affected the lowest income family in this agent’s district, and I had been pissed. I didn’t sleep for days while chasing that one, and the agent in question did give us everything we needed to publish the story. It seemed to fall out of his mouth, and my audio recorder gobbled it up and spit it out into headline news.
But it couldn’t be magic. “We had proof. The guy couldn’t deny it.”
“Ethan called it The Lanard Charm, but I think it might be a type of ability.”
Hearing our inside joke come out of her mouth, another wave of betrayal washed over me and brought the sizzle back to my skin. I had told Ethan everything about myself and he had turned around and told her. Even though I wasn’t a big person on keeping secrets, this was my secret and he blabbed it to her.
Piper started to speak, and with it an ebb and flow of cookies and cinnamon wafted around me. “The Mother created us and gave us gifts. Each of us takes our energy and our magic to help the world. Please stop me if I am wrong here, but it probably starts with a buzz, a hum, a tingling of some sort?”
I nodded slowly, thoughts racing. Every shrink I’d ever gone to said my compulsion stemmed from the anxiety and guilt I felt after losing my father. I’d just chalked it up to journalistic instinct, that excitement while chasing a story. But it was magic?
“And then you have to do something, trigger the ability, and then you ask them a question, and they are compelled to tell you the truth?”
My ego shattered around me. The entire world grew
silent as my entire world shifted axis again, the third time in a week. The words shuffled together like a new deck of cards, sticky and strangely out of alignment as they awkwardly fell into a sentence. “My dad said you always have to look an informant in the eye. Let them know you are serious.”
Piper leaned forward over her tea. “So that’s your trigger, looking someone in the eye?”
“How else are you going to know if they are lying?”
But that wasn’t it anymore? I thought seven years in the field had taught me to spot a liar from across a football field, but it was really just a magic ability? Ethan and I tripled the numbers of spotlight articles together. His ability to sniff out a story and my ability to get the truth was nearly unbeatable. But it wasn’t because I was good, it was because I was gifted?
The Charm, the magic, the whatever, began to rise along my skin, the familiar and yet now foreign sizzle making the hairs on my arms stand on end. Everything about me, my life, my career, every single interview I’d ever done glowed with a new light, an entire lifetime of magic in my brain.
Piper sat there quietly, patiently.
I bit my bottom lip to keep the questions from all jumping out at once. Finally, one question slowed down long enough to make it to my lips. “So it is a kind of magic, not some obsession?”
She nodded slowly. “Yes, but what is strange is how faint it is. The others might not be able to detect it.”
Another question slapped against my tongue like a newspaper in the storm.
“So what am I? ”
“I can’t tell,” Piper said, shaking her head, obviously puzzled. “Of course the obvious guess would be witch or guardian maybe, but I can’t be sure.”
My knuckles had gone white, my fingers pressing against the lace tablecloth. But I was still here. And they weren’t tying me to a stake or anything. If she really was as genuine as she seemed, Piper might be the only person who could have some insight, who could actually help me control it, because the whiskey wasn’t working as well as it used to.
“You’re taking this quite well. Usually, when I break the news that people are Wanderers, they panic, freak out.”
The Truth About Night Page 11