by Emma Savant
“Looks like you’re stuck,” I said. “Why don’t you come on out and sign this and we can all get on with our nights?”
He muttered something at me. I couldn’t tell what he said, but I could tell it was an insult from the sharpness of the words and the growl underneath them.
“If you don’t sign the paper, the Faerie Court is going to be your only option,” I said.
Even though my eyes had all but adjusted to the darkness, I didn’t have any hope of seeing the man clearly enough to be able to attack him. Instead, I focused on the sound of his footsteps as he paced along the wall. His shoes were surprisingly loud, probably from leather soles, and his coat rustled softly whenever it brushed against the brick behind him.
I’d already wasted three days on this mission. There was no point in throwing good time after bad. I tensed and prepared to spring.
Then I heard him move. I saw something reflective—the edge of a knife, maybe? I took a slight step back and squinted.
No, not a knife.
An eye, reflecting the dim light of the street back toward me. An eye that was huge, and tinted yellow, and staring at me with a predatory gleam that turned my blood to ice.
No wonder he’d seemed familiar.
Brendan had promised me that none of the werewolves under his protection were actively hunting, for prey or new recruits. That promise was the main thing that had persuaded Grandma to allow the pack to set up on our land.
I was going to murder them, Brendan and the snarling werewolf in front of me both.
The giant wolf sprang at the same moment I dodged to the side. He galloped down the length of the alley and looked back at me, his muscled silhouette black against the light from the street.
I’d expected him to run. Now that I was the one who was cornered, though, the idea didn’t seem to hold much appeal. He turned and stalked toward me, back low and shoulder blades slicing the air as he moved.
I held up my dagger. He had weaknesses; all wolves did. The silver blade of my weapon would help, and his eyes were vulnerable. So was his throat, given that he was almost as tall as me when he was on all fours; I could reach it with a well-timed crouch.
The werewolf sprang, and I ran forward and skidded underneath his massive body. Fur covered my face, and a musky scent filled my nose. The moment I was clear of his tail, I whirled and buried my knife in his leg.
He turned on me, and I realized with a jolt that I was trapped between the wall and the exit and totally outgunned. He was huge, he could run faster than me, and I had no way to call for help. Aside from the metal dagger charm that lay under my shirt, anyway, that the coven used to communicate when phones weren’t convenient.
Calling for help now wouldn’t help. No one could possibly get to me in time.
Unless, of course, someone was babysitting me nearby. And if that was the case, I didn’t want to know.
I pulled my wand from my jacket and used it to direct a jet of fire at him, sustaining the blast long enough that the smell of singed fur filled the air. He dove to the ground and rolled to put the flames out, which gave me the chance to jump toward his belly. My dagger had barely nicked his skin before he swatted at me with a giant paw and sent me crashing to the wall.
My head spun from the impact, but I leaped to my feet anyway. I turned to face him, realizing too late that I was cornered, again, and he was approaching me and close enough to block out all the light from the street.
I went to lift my wand, but it had been knocked from my hand when I’d fallen. My outstretched dagger alone was nothing against the hulking monster before me.
I couldn’t see his face, but the heat of his breath rushed against my face. He growled, the sound low in his throat and so deep it resonated in my bones.
“Don’t come any closer,” I said, keeping him at arm’s length with my blade.
It was an empty threat, but my voice was strong, and my hand stayed steady. I was going to die here, the most short-lived of all the Stilettos.
I only had one card left to play.
“Your alpha is going to be pissed if he finds out you hurt me,” I said.
The wolf barked out a rough noise that sounded almost like a laugh. My arm jolted as he swiped my arm with his huge snout, and my dagger clattered to the ground.
I held my breath as his hot exhale stirred my hair. He leaned toward me, and I braced myself for the pain of a bite or the shock of one of his paws throwing me to the ground.
He opened his mouth next to my ear. I couldn’t see it, but I could hear the sickly wet sound of his mouth and smell the sharpness of his breath.
Then he licked me slowly across the cheek. His slimy tongue smeared saliva across my face, and I cringed and twisted away.
He growled, backed up, turned, and ran the length of the alley. He was gone before I dared breathe in again.
10
“He was giving me a warning,” I shouted. I slammed my hand down on the table in the wolves’ newly constructed dining area and leaned in toward Brendan. “I told him his alpha would be pissed, and he gave me a warning and let me go.”
“None of my wolves would do that,” Brendan said.
His face was red, and I could tell he was trying to rein in his temper—badly, almost as badly as I was reining in mine.
“You think so, clearly,” I said. “And it’s nice that you’re such an idealist, but he would have murdered me if I hadn’t threatened him with you, because the almighty alpha is apparently the only thing a werewolf respects.”
“My pack doesn’t hunt people,” Brendan snapped.
“Because you have rules,” I said. “So you’ve said. But you seem to be forgetting that you also have werewolves, and werewolves have instincts. Of course instincts got the better of this guy. He’s a predator. For all I know, he wasn’t even stalking the faerie, he was just waiting in a convenient location for prey and teasing her to keep himself entertained while he waited.”
Brendan opened and closed his mouth a few times but couldn’t seem to form actual words. The light from the oil lamps they were using in the dining room until they installed their generator flickered across his face.
“Well?” I said. “How else do you explain that he backed off the instant I mentioned you? Aside from the disgusting licking thing?”
I could still feel the saliva on my cheek, even though I’d washed the dried spittle off the instant I’d gotten back to the mansion.
To my right, Alec shifted in his seat at the table.
“Did you actually use his name?” he said.
“What?”
“His name,” Alec said. “Did you say ‘Brendan Wildwood’ or just ‘the alpha’?”
My rage didn’t want to be interrupted with calm, logical questions right now, but I gripped the table and tried to think.
“Alpha,” I finally said. “I told him his alpha would be upset if he hurt me.”
Brendan barked out a laugh and stepped back from the table, holding out his hands.
“Well, touché, Scarlett,” he said. “You’re a hell of a detective.”
“There’s more than one werewolf pack in this area,” Alec said.
I frowned at him. “Who else?”
“There’s the Buckley pack, the Blackthorns, the Lindens,” he said. “The Holmwoods. The Lowells, although their alpha moved them toward the coast a year or so back. I’m sure there are more.”
I pulled out a chair and dropped into it. “How many werewolves are there in this city?”
“More than just mine,” Brendan said.
He glared at me, and I realized, a moment too late, that I probably deserved it.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered at the table. “I guess maybe I jumped to conclusions.”
“You think?” he said. “I can’t believe you think one of us would do this. Or that we even could, given that most of my pack are still recovering from what your psycho cousin did to us.”
“I said I’m sorry.”
He kept gla
ring at me. I stretched my leg out under the table and kicked the chair nearest him. It skidded across the den’s hard-packed floor.
“Sit down,” I said. “How do I figure out which pack this guy was from?”
He flipped the chair around and leaned forward against its back. “Smell,” he said.
I shuddered. “He stank.”
“Yeah, but did he stink like a Buckley or a Holmwood?” he asked. Then he rolled his eyes. “Never mind; it’s not something a witch nose could figure out.”
“What was his fur like?” Alec asked. “Any distinctive markings we might recognize?”
I shook my head. “It was dark.”
“We could just go around to every pack in town and start flinging accusations,” Brendan said under his breath.
I cut my eyes at him.
“Hey, chill,” Alec said to Brendan. “We’re all tired. Don’t make it worse.”
I glanced at my watch. It was almost three in the morning. I’d scouted the whole area around Straw for clues and turned up nothing, then waited for Celine to get safely in her car before I’d come home to shower and ask Brendan what his wolves were thinking.
My body felt tired, but my mind couldn’t stop racing.
We sat in silence for a long moment, and it was incredible how quiet the den was in the middle of the night. Aside from our breathing, there was no noise—no cars driving by outside, no clocks ticking, no old mansion creaking as it settled.
Alec broke the silence.
“You think this could be one of the wolves Cate was telling us about?”
I looked over at him, but he was watching Brendan.
“What wolves?” I said.
Neither of them answered me. Brendan furrowed his brow. Finally, he nodded at Alec.
“We need more details. Go wake Cate up.”
11
Cate sat on the table, the mellow lamplight doing its part to obscure the bleary look in her eyes. Her short brown hair stuck out at odd angles, and she had on an old band T-shirt and pajama pants printed with cartoon penguins.
“You’d better have a good reason for this,” she said, aiming her grumpiness in Brendan’s general direction.
I wondered, not for the first time, exactly what her relationship was with him. She was his beta, the second-in-command of the pack, but their personal relationship seemed closer than that of a boss and assistant. They were close enough for teasing, and she was curt with Brendan in a way none of the other wolves seemed to dare be.
A tiny flicker of jealousy stirred inside me.
“You mentioned some werewolves in the city who’ve been acting differently than most,” Brendan said. “Do you remember?”
She rubbed her eyes and leaned in.
“Did you really wake me up for that?”
“It’s important.”
“If you say so.” She yawned and shook out her arms, as if that might magically transport her to the land of the living. “Yeah, I remember. What do you want to know?”
“Everything,” Brendan said. “I just remember you said there are some wolves in the city who actually live downtown.”
“What about them?”
“What else have you heard?”
She blinked at him, clearly at a loss, and I cleared my throat. I quickly explained my encounter with the werewolf outside Straw. By the time I was done, she seemed a little more awake and a little less confused at our intrusion on her sleep.
“It sounds like it could have been one of them,” she said. “Especially tonight. Full moon’s coming, and most wolves head to the forest. Even weres who don’t live in packs tend to go camping at the full moon if they can. Everything feels better in the woods.” She waved a hand, like she was trying to explain something to me that didn’t fit into words. “Like, the feeling of being a werewolf is more somehow. You’re more of a wolf, you’re more wild, you feel stronger and faster and just better.”
I glanced at the others. “Speaking of, why aren’t you guys out running right now?”
Alec snorted at the idea. “Too tired,” he said. “We’ve been working on this den nonstop, and my entire body is killing me. Last thing I want to do is go for a run, even in wolf form.”
“And we haven’t fully explored the new territory,” Brendan said, more seriously. “I don’t like to send my wolves out until we’ve figured out how big our space is and what’s safe. Especially here, where we’re at the edge of a residential area, we need to know where we can run without being seen.”
“You must feel cramped,” I said. “Sorry, I didn’t realize.”
“Better to be cramped on the Stiletto’s property than free on public lands,” Brendan said grimly. “Your cousin wasn’t the first to attack us, just the most successful.”
“These wolves you’re talking about, though?” Cate said. “They don’t seem to be interested in being in the forest. Word is, they stay in the city all the time. They stick together like a normal pack, though, and they’ve been buying up Glim clubs and forming underground gambling rings, at least according to my faerie friend who used to go to one of those clubs before the pack got hold of it. She’s pretty pissed at the changes they made.”
“Like what?” I said.
She shrugged. “Different vibe. They attract a different kind of customer. You know faeries, they don’t like anything that’s not kind of sparkly and green. And this pack doesn’t seem sparkly. They’ve got the same pack instinct the rest of us have, but the way they operate—it feels more like a gang than anything else.”
“What’s the timing on this?” I said. “Like, when did they start buying clubs?”
“Few months, maybe?” she said. “At least that’s the impression I get. Who knows? They could have been around for years, and this is just the first I’m hearing of them.”
“There’s been an uptick in the number of murders in the city over the past few months,” I said. “Nothing the Daggers have gotten called in on, but we keep tabs on that sort of thing.”
“You think it’s related?” Alec asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve just always been taught to not dismiss coincidences. There might be a connection.”
Cate frowned. “That would match up with what I’ve heard of the alpha. Sounds like he’s pretty violent, at least to people he catches cheating at the games. I heard a magician got beat up pretty badly and banned from the club.”
“Are you going to investigate?” Alec asked me.
I wrapped my hands around one of my knees and thought. Technically, I knew I should report everything I’d learned back to Grandma and let her take it from there. But everything I had so far was just rumor, and wouldn’t Grandma be more impressed if I came back with solid information?
Brendan took one look at my face, and the corner of his mouth quirked up a little.
“I’ll go with you,” he said.
“I didn’t say I was going,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, so anyway, I’ll go with you.”
“I’d rather do it on my own.”
“I’ll still go with you.”
I sent him a glare that I hoped would make him think better of it. When he didn’t budge, I sighed in irritation. “All right, fine.”
He leaned back and folded his arms with a smile. “Okay, then,” he said, and gave me a brisk nod.
12
By the time I rode out of Carnelian’s parking tower, the sun had already set and the city streets were lit by streetlamps and traffic lights and glowing neon signs. It had rained during the day, and the asphalt still reflected every light in puddles filled with shimmering streaks of red and green. I zipped up my jacket as far up as it would go and hunched over the handlebars of my motorcycle as I navigated through the streets to the address Brendan had given me.
The club didn’t seem like much from the outside. It didn’t even resemble a club so much as the kind of seedy bar that was only sustained by regulars. A neon beer light flickered under a faded sign r
eading The Hideout, and the door looked like it had needed a new coat of paint several years ago.
Once inside, I stopped and did a double take. I’d expected some kind of dramatic change, like the ones that usually came when magical spaces were set inside the ordinary Humdrum world, but this place was a dingy bar on the inside, too. It was small, holding only a few grimy tables. The bar was lined with dilapidated bar stools, their faux leather seats cracked with age.
A single bartender stood in front of an uninspiring display of bottles, staring vaguely at the TV in the corner, and three men sat playing cards at one of the tables.
I approached the bar and was about to get the bartender’s attention when a hand closed around my arm. I tensed, ready to attack whoever had touched me, and then relaxed again as I realized it was just Brendan.
“I think you gave me the wrong address,” I said under my breath.
He shook his head and jerked his chin toward the faded Restrooms sign near the back. I shrugged and followed him. No one seemed to notice us as we walked into the narrow hallway under the sign, or maybe they just didn’t care.
Brendan stopped in front of a restroom door with a big Out of Order sign duct-taped to the stained white surface and tapped the words three times, once in the middle of each O.
The door swung open on unexpectedly silent hinges to reveal total blackness. Brendan took my hand and led me into the darkened room.
The instant we were through, loud music and strobing blue and purple lights swarmed my senses. The warmth of hot bodies and the sharp, sweet bite of perfume and alcohol filled my nose and clung to my skin.
Brendan pulled me through a crush of dancing people toward a bar illuminated by fireflies in elf glass jars. The fireflies’ tiny bodies crawled around as their luminescence flickered on and off, and the enchanted glass made them appear brighter and more dazzling than usual.