Scratch the Surface (Wolf Within)

by Amy Lee Burgess

  “We were all the way to the Starbucks yesterday before I realized you weren’t driving,” I offered and his smile got bigger.

  “Yes, exactly. You see?”

  “I was too scared of being shot at to be scared at driving in a car,” I sighed. “I just traded one fear for another.”

  “People can’t be scared of multiple things at the same time? You handled the car yesterday, Stanzie. You handled being shot at too.”

  “Ha. I woke up screaming in the middle of the night. Delayed reaction,” I said.

  He sighed.

  “Sorcha died falling down the stairs. I don’t see you scared of staircases now. But if she’d been my bond mate, I’ll bet I’d be afraid and have to live on the ground floor, take a Valium if I need to step up more than three stairs at a time. I’m a coward, Murphy.”

  “No, you’re not. I didn’t fall down the stairs with Sorcha, did I? You were in the car. You were in a terrible, terrible accident. You were with your bond mates when they died. You saw it all. You heard it. You smelled it. You touched it. And you got fuck all for support after it happened. From anybody. Not your bloody ex pack, not your birth pack, you had no friends or anybody at all. And you were alone. All alone. I’ve never been that. I moved to Belfast, sure, but I had friends from Mac Tire visiting me all the damn time. Ringing me up, dropping by all the way from Dublin, emailing me, everything. My mother was there for me and me da too. They wouldn’t let me be even when I begged them, when I screamed at them.

  “So don’t you tell me you’re a coward, Constance Newcastle, because you are not. You’ve got your fears and you’re facing them. You push yourself too hard is what you do. Push and get frustrated and it kills me to watch you doing it. I want to help. I want to be there for you and now you’re thinking you’re hiding behind me and you’re going to push me away but I’m not going to let you, so you’d just better give it up, okay? You push me all you want but I’m not going anywhere.”

  For once the waterworks didn’t start. My eyes remained dry. I felt hollow and yet strangely heavy and weighted down all at the same time.

  “You forget. Everyone blamed me for Grey and Elena. Nobody but Colin Hunter blamed you for Sorcha. Why should anyone have bothered with me if I really had been at fault?”

  “For one thing, you weren’t, and nobody stuck by you. I would have. Even if you had been guilty. People make mistakes. All the time they make them. And if they’re smart enough, they learn from them and go on. Say you had been drunk that night and you lost control of that car and drove off that embankment. Do you think every pack in the world would have cast you out?” Murphy’s voice was passionate but so was mine when I said,

  “You don’t kill Pack!”

  “Not deliberately, but sometimes shit happens.” Murphy sighed in frustration. “There was this woman in Mac Tire once. The Alpha before me. She had a little four-year-old daughter who liked to play with everything but her own toys. This woman was well aware of that. She smoked cigarettes. Can you guess what happened? That little girl found her mother’s matches one morning before anybody else in the house was up. Set herself and the house on fire. She died, the father died, the mother, she lived. Do you think Mac Tire kicked her out?”

  I shrugged.

  “It gets worse. They had a party the night before. That’s why she left out the matches. She was drunk. She admitted that to the Council. She thought about cleaning up before going to bed but was too drunk. She passed out in the bathroom which was near the back door and the only reason she didn’t die in the fire too.”

  I shook my head. I didn’t want to hear it.

  “The Council judged her guilty of gross negligence, Stanzie. Left the punishment up to the Alphas. You know what we did?”

  “Let her stay in the pack,” I whispered to get him to shut up.

  “Yes, we did. Sorcha and I,” he said with a bleak smile. “She bonded with a duo. Her best friend and her bond mate. Last I knew she was teaching art to the kids in the pack.”

  “She didn’t get punished at all?”

  “Oh, yes, she did. She had to give up smoking. Hasn’t gone near a cigarette since. Wonder why?”

  I pushed hair out of my eyes with my free hand.

  “So, okay, Mac Tire is a forgiving pack, and you were a benevolent, generous Alpha. Maybe in Ireland pack members can forgive shit like that, but this is New England.”

  “You can talk, talk, talk all night long about how you deserved it and I’ll never agree. You were fucked over, Stanzie. It’s okay to be mad about it. I mean really mad about it. Not pretend mad to get the guilty person to admit he or she was in on it with the old man.”

  “Is that what you think I’m doing? I was angry at Grandfather Tobias. I was mean to him when I gave him the poison. And I don’t forgive him, that wasn’t an act. I don’t,” I cried.

  “Good! Good for you. But are you doing it for yourself or for Grey and Elena?”

  “What’s the difference? And, anyway, Murphy, you’re a hypocrite because you blame yourself for Sorcha’s death. You don’t forgive yourself for not being there.”

  “Maybe,” he allowed. “It seems sometimes like it happened to somebody else, not me. I’m actually kinda happy lately. I want to let it all go, let it be in the past.”

  “Me too,” I admitted, not looking at him because I felt so guilty. “You’re good to me, Murphy. Thank you.”

  “We’re bond mates.” He reached into the glove compartment and took out his pendant.

  “And friends too,” I added, my voice trembling.

  “Yeah, and friends,” he echoed, but he sounded sad, just like me.

  * * * *

  Halfway back to the safe house, my cellphone chirped. I had the ring tone set to the sound of crickets. It reminded me of the woods and being my wolf.

  “Stanzie, Councilor Manning gave me your number.” It was Callie. She tried to sound bright, but I heard the weariness behind it. “What are you and Liam doing for lunch? Do you want to come over?”

  “Lunch?” I repeated, probably sounding stupid.

  “You haven’t eaten yet, have you? It’s just eleven. Nora and Jonathan stopped by for coffee and I thought maybe you and Liam would like to come over too. Nothing special, just sandwiches and chips. I’ve got a bottle of Chianti. You still like Chianti, don’t you?”

  “Sure,” I said. “We can come over, Callie. It’s good timing. Murphy and I are going back to Boston soon. Maybe tomorrow, definitely by Sunday.” This, of course, was wishful thinking, but it was also calculated.

  “I thought you were going to try to find out Grandfather’s Tobias’s deep, dark secret?” Again she tried for light, again she failed.

  “Nah, I give up.” I didn’t have to try to sound tired.

  “That doesn’t sound like you. Normally, you’re a bulldog when it comes to things you’ve made your mind up over,” she teased. “It was Vaughn’s idea to invite you. Isn’t that funny? I think he has something to tell you.”

  For a moment I thought she meant he was going to come out and confess he’d been Grandfather Tobias’s accomplice but then I wondered if she meant he was going to tell me he trashed my house.

  Or maybe Jonathan or Nora had skillfully suggested she invite us over. Only Jonathan wasn’t that skillful. If Nora wasn’t drunk, she might be.

  Or maybe I was paranoid.

  “We can be there in about twenty minutes.” I calculated, taking a look at where we were on the highway and figuring out how far we were from the exit we needed.

  I hung up and told Murphy we had a lunch invitation.

  Suspicion dawned in his eyes and he frowned for a moment as he debated what to do. “Call Allerton and let him know, will you, love?”

  Allerton didn’t say much. He did tell me he hoped we had a good time and that he wanted to hear about it when we returned. And that Kathy Manning was making brownies.

  “Jaysus, Mary and Joseph, I won’t be able to button my pants if she keeps doing shite
like that,” Murphy remarked. I couldn’t help but laugh just a little.

  Chapter 23

  Callie, Peter and Vaughn lived in a small three-bedroom ranch house with a finished basement level.

  They did their entertaining in the basement. Callie had never much liked the kitchen and they’d made the dining room into the third bedroom.

  Technically each of them had a bedroom, but Peter never slept in his, so his room was the smallest.

  The dining room was Vaughn’s hideout. There was an actual door into the hallway, but just an archway into the kitchen. He’d strung up a beaded curtain and it was another reason Callie liked entertaining in the basement. She hated that curtain.

  It was pretty psychedelic. Bold blues, swirling reds, deep purples, eye-popping yellows. The peace sign picked out in black beads was the piece de resistance, though.

  There was no bathroom in the basement and, after two glasses of Chianti and half a glass of mineral water, I had to go.

  I trudged up the stairs, leaving Callie, Vaughn, Jonathan, Nora and Murphy below. I attempted to be quiet because Peter was sleeping off a migraine. He got them sometimes, usually in the winter. I remembered that.

  Callie’s basement brought back lots of memories.

  The rag rugs on the floor, the fireplace heaped with logs, the blue recliner that could fit two people if they squished.

  It had never seemed shabby before but today it did. It had never seemed claustrophobic either, but I was glad to escape to the top level. The windows were small and narrow, casement windows that cranked open and, even then, not all the way. Not that they were open in this winter weather.

  Callie had covered them with dark brown curtains, which added to the smothering effect.

  I hated that basement room. I realized it as I flushed the toilet and examined my face in the spotted mirror above the sink.

  The bathroom was very clean, but still dingy, because everything in it dated back to the 1980s. I guess people who lived on retail salaries couldn’t have Kohler fixtures and Italian ceramic tile.

  “You’re spoiled, Stanzie,” I told my reflection. I might be wearing a twenty dollar sweater, but my boots had cost two hundred and fifty dollars and I’d plunked down my debit card without blinking when I’d bought them in Manhattan.

  I don’t think Callie had spent two hundred fifty dollars on any item of clothing she’d ever worn in her entire life.

  The towels on the rack were cheap and fraying, although I’d bet she hadn’t owned them more than a few months. I was used to the plush luxury towels found in boutique hotels.

  The shower curtain was cheap too—bright see-through plastic with huge red-and-yellow flowers that almost but not quite matched the towels and bath mat.

  I had on a pair of sapphire earrings Murphy had put into my Christmas stocking. Real sapphires. Not chips, not synthetic, not glass or crystal.

  The only real gems Callie owned were the ones in her bond pendant—a tiny emerald, an even smaller diamond and a garnet.

  My blond hair was long but expertly styled. I’d spent a hundred dollars at a salon in Beacon Hill on New Year’s Eve so my hair would look nice for dinner. Then I’d gone and shifted in the woods. By the time I’d shifted back, the elegant updo had bits of leaves and grass stuck in it. Half the pins had been gone, most of it straggled down my back in a blond snarl that had taken me half an hour to comb through.

  “Spoiled, spoiled, spoiled,” I told myself and nearly kicked down the door to get the hell out.

  Once in the hallway I wrinkled my nose. I wasn’t the only thing that was spoiled. Either the garbage needed taking out or there was something bad in the refrigerator.

  I started to tremble for some reason and went into the kitchen to see if I could track down the smell and get rid of it. It was making me sick.

  The psychedelic beaded curtain was pulled back and looped over a hook in the wall, exposing most of Vaughn’s room.

  It was relatively neat for a man’s bedroom. The bed was even made. The bed consisted of a mattress on the floor covered by a bright blue comforter. A wide bookcase took up most of the floor space. The shelves were piled high with books and papers and magazines.

  There was also a cat. A pretty glass cat. A cat I recognized. The last time I had seen it, shining amber in the slanting summer sunlight, it had been perched on the window sill in my house next to a blue kitten with a glass ball of yarn.

  This cat sat up with her tail curled around her paws, her face tilted as if she pondered something deep and metaphysical.

  If I’d ever needed proof that Vaughn had trashed my house, here it was. And he didn’t even bother to hide it. The cat was now a paperweight on his bookcase. Instead of sitting in a window, she sat on top of the latest three issues of Penthouse.

  Elena would have been pissed.

  “Elena would have been pissed.” I reached out to snatch the cat off the magazines.

  “I know,” said Vaughn from behind me. He’d come into the room silently. I’d only figured out he was there the split second before I reached for the cat.

  “Penthouse, Vaughn?” I turned around, cradling the cat in both hands and gave him a scornful, outraged look.

  He shrugged. “I can’t stand Playboy, sorry.”

  “You stole this.” I shook the cat in front of his face and wished that smell would go away. “What is that smell?”

  “I don’t know. It’s rank, isn’t it?” Vaughn wrinkled his nose and we both looked around his room, but it wasn’t coming from here. It wasn’t coming from the kitchen either. He gave a little shiver and his face was foreign to me at that moment. Here was a man I’d played duets with on Saturday afternoons, a man I’d laughed and joked with, slept with, commiserated with when he’d told me he’d loved Elena. But after two and a half years he was almost a stranger and everything that had come before seemed like a mirage or suspect memories. Maybe fantasies or dreams. Not reality because reality was standing right in front of me with a blank expression and no connection to me whatsoever.

  “It was supposed to be me and Grey who died, right? And then you’d get Elena? Is that how Grandfather Tobias told you it would go? Is that why you helped him?” My voice was flat, but I was shaking. I almost dropped Elena’s cat but managed to hang onto her.

  Vaughn stared at me for an excruciating moment. A pulse beat thickly in his throat.

  “You’re fucked in the head,” he eventually said. Malevolence gleamed in his small brown eyes. “It was an accident, Stanzie. The old man made a mistake. Now you’re saying not only did I cover it up, I helped him do it on purpose? Fuck you. I loved Grey like a brother. I loved you, you idiot. I would never have hurt either of you. Even to get Elena. I would never have covered anything up and let you take the blame. You go to hell.”

  I stared at his unfamiliar face and it all at once swam into focus. I knew him. And what’s more, I believed him. I totally and completely believed him.

  “But you know who did help him, don’t you?” I accused next and he let out a desperate laugh and swept a hand through his tangled brown hair.

  “You’re fucked in the head,” he said again, but there was no conviction.

  “It’s all right, Vaughn,” said Callie, pulling the beaded curtain closed as she entered the room. “You can tell her.”

  “Callie,” whispered Vaughn. His eyes begged her to stop talking, stop walking, but she did neither.

  “This was going to be the nursery,” said Callie, looking around the room and laughing a little.

  Her ethereal features seemed to glow with the fervor of her dreams. She was never more beautiful or terrible.

  Her strawberry blond hair flowed down to her shoulders, a mass of loose, beautiful curls.

  “I thought it would be convenient near the kitchen. I could sing the baby to sleep when I did dishes or when I was cooking dinner.” She shook herself out of her daydream and smiled.

  I took an involuntary step backward and hit the bookcase. There was n
owhere to go.

  “You weren’t the only one who visited Grandfather Tobias, Stanzie. He always liked you best, but he could talk to me. Tell me how he really felt. You were too innocent, too naive, but not me.”

  She smiled again. Her hands were clasped behind her back, which made her look as if she were a sweet innocent maiden posing for a picture. If anyone ever looked naive it was her. Except for her eyes. They knew darkness.

  “Callie,” Vaughn tried again, shaking his head, and I realized he didn’t know anything. He hadn’t known anything until now when it all fell into place for him. “Callie, I loved her. I loved Elena. Tell me you didn’t...you didn’t have anything to do with it. Tell me!”

  She flashed him a look of pitying contempt. “He tampered with that car on purpose. It was no accident, Vaughn, and I knew about it. I’m the one who suggested they get her a car for her birthday. Don’t you remember? Elena and Grey came over one night for a beer and we were talking about what to get Stanzie for her birthday and I said a car. Stanzie’s always wanted a Mustang, and you laughed because you didn’t think Elena and Grey could afford that but then you never paid much attention to how much money they had and how poor we were. As long as we had enough for beer and your fucking Penthouse subscription, you were cool, right?”

  “Callie,” Vaughn croaked. His eyes were pools of utter horror. He remembered the conversation, I could see it. “Why?”