Big black boots tromped into my field of vision. I really hated when guys stood over me while I worked.
Isaac plucked at the string of a plumb bob hanging at my elbow. “Aren’t you going to ask me how I feel?”
“You’re alive. You’re walking around. You feel well enough to harass me. I’m going to guess you’re fine.” A thought occurred to me. “Have you seen Enzo? I checked on him around four this morning, but he was still unconscious.”
“The witch is fine,” he said in a clipped tone.
“Good.” I stood and retraced my footsteps, mentally checking off points on my to-do list. “That’s one phone call I never want to make. Miguel makes for a dangerous ally. I don’t want to try him on for size as an enemy.”
“He won’t move against Lorimar.” Isaac sounded confident. “They have the conclave’s blessing to be doing what they’re doing. His brother knew the risks. He did too. He made that trade willingly.”
That brought my head up. “How much do you know about their deal?”
“Enough.” Isaac grimaced. “Witches are…not the sort of people you want to get involved with if you have other alternatives.”
“We needed help, and he’s the help we got.” I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. “He’s good at what he does, and he’s nice enough.”
“Nice has nothing to do with it.”
“Whatever.” I ducked under a support and put a framed wall between us. “All that matters to me is that he recovers and gets back to work.”
“That’s really all that matters to you?” His voice softened.
“I explained to Enzo that I’m not in the market for a boyfriend or a lover or even a regular coffee date.” Moving made it easier to keep talking. “I’ve been burned by romance one too many times. I’m over it.” A bitter laugh bubbled up from my chest. “That ought to help you sleep at night.”
“Dell…”
The sheer annoyance of being approached while at work had failed to connect several relevant dots for me. “How is it you’re in here, anyway?” I squeezed through another wall. “Aren’t you supposed to be stuck on the outside?”
“Enzo bled me this morning. It didn’t require any magic on his part,” he rushed to add before I got my back up over endangering the resident witch. “I can enter the wards now. Actually, I set up my house before I came to find you.”
“Great.” Would it have killed him to fake it for another twenty-four hours, until I got my head wrapped around his return? Or, you know, forever? “Glad you’re making yourself comfortable.”
“I’m guessing you don’t want to talk since you’re running away from me, but I really did come here on business.”
“Me? Running away?” I scoffed at his audacity. “What can I say? I learned from the best.”
“You didn’t get to search the O’Malley site after Enzo did his thing,” he called.
I pulled up short and cursed under my breath. “His thing was bleeding all over creation, so no. I plan on borrowing Nathalie’s car and driving into town this afternoon.”
“You don’t have to borrow Nathalie’s car or wait until this afternoon. In fact, you shouldn’t. Wait, I mean.” Keys jingled behind me. “There’s a storm front moving through. It’s estimated to arrive around five. If you want to scour the area for scents, you need to get there before the rain does.”
“It rained the day before yesterday.” That’s why I had rushed to search Panda. “I don’t think it much matters now.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” He waited until I turned and faced him before clarifying. “Terrestrial glamour is tricky. It protects the area it conceals, sealing it in a vacuum. The strongest scents will have dissipated by now. The area was exposed to the elements overnight, so that can’t be helped.” He shook his key ring for emphasis. “But until the rain cancels out any remaining magic, the remnants are there just waiting on someone to identify them.”
“A vacuum, huh?” That sounded promising. “So you’re saying glamour can obscure scents?”
Yet another caution against trusting my nose. I wasn’t sure if I was happy or grumpy to hear I couldn’t believe one of my keenest attributes.
“Yes.” He considered his answer. “If the caster is skilled enough.”
The glimmer of a possibility there might be clues there itched under my skin. “Why don’t you let me borrow your keys?”
“I need to make a supply run.” His smile was all innocence. “I don’t want to be hauling groceries around in the rain.”
“Grub?” I untied my tool belt and hung it from a protruding nailhead. “Do me a favor and secure the site?” I pointed out the red metal toolboxes. “Put the boxes in the shed, please. The tarps are in there. There are enough to cover the area if you get creative. Can you handle it?”
He saluted me. “Yes, ma’am.”
Ignoring the roadblock that was Isaac, I crossed to Grub and patted his shoulder, giving his wolf reassuring contact and thanking him in a way his other half required. “You’re doing a great job out here. I really appreciate all the hours you’re putting in to help get this project finished.”
“I won’t lie. I’m hoping you’ll keep me around once we’re finished here.” The large man scuffed his boot on the plywood. “I’m here because it’s the right thing to do, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get bored out of my mind waiting around to see some action. I’d rather have work than not. Idle hands and all that.”
“Good to know.” I patted him again. “I’ll keep that in mind.” I girded my loins to tell him, “You do understand this won’t gain you preferential treatment? I have to ask. I need to make sure you don’t throw your back out trying to impress me then get pissed when an opportunity arises and your shoulder doesn’t get tapped.”
“I understand.” He placed his right hand over his heart in a pseudo pledge. “I swear not to get my tail in a knot no matter what happens.” He winced. “Well, unless you stop letting me come to work. Then I could get a might cranky.”
“Fair enough.” I grinned at him. “See you tomorrow.”
Having even one person to help share the burden I had been carrying was liberating. I could go places and do things and not hover over every single task in need of accomplishing each day. Huh. Maybe there was something to this delegating stuff after all.
“Are you coming or what?” I started walking, leaving Isaac to catch up to me. “I need to change my shirt before we leave unless you want sweat stains all over your truck.”
“It’s had worse.” He strode ahead of me, winding through the park without a misstep, making a beeline for my RV. An RV he should never have seen and had no idea where it was parked. “I’m picking up supplies to help me scrub blood out of the upholstery. What’s a little glisten compared to that?”
I almost laughed at the reference to Southern women don’t sweat, we glisten.
Glistening is a cute idea, but apparently Southern wargs are a whole ’nother story. I sweated plenty. How could I not out in the heat all day? In the heart of summer, I could wring moisture from my shirts. Or I could back in Georgia, anyway. I’d have to report back after surviving my first Tennessee heatstroke.
We took the most well-worn path in the park to where I lived, and it got me thinking it hadn’t been this flattened to start. No, the ghosts of vegetation past could blame me for this. All those paws and feet pounding a path to my door had resulted in a bare dirt trail leading right to my porch.
My homey pop-up with its perfectly proportioned deck—if I do say so myself—and lone lawn chair came into view about the same time as sunlight glinting off a gleaming silver object caused me to squint. I brought my hand up to shield my eye, and that’s when I saw it.
“No.” I dropped my arm before I swung it at him. “You are not going to be my next-door neighbor.” I flung out my arms. “There’s a whole park here. You didn’t have to hook up right next to me.”
“No,” he agreed, sounding reasonable, “but I didn�
��t want a long commute to work.”
“What the hell are you—?” I raked my hands through my hair, tugging on the roots. “Work? What work?”
“Enzo mentioned his idea for an early-alert system while he was giving me the rundown on the wards.” Isaac shoved his hands into his pants pockets. “It’s a good idea, but I can tell you right now that he can’t create a system so nuanced as to tell you what’s coming and its point of entry without also being here or making regular trips to maintain it. It would require too much magic.”
“Okay, that’s disappointing,” I allowed, “but what does it have to do with you?”
“You’ve seen the inside of my trailer.” He managed to nix the innuendo from his statement. “You know what I can do, what my brother can do.”
The Cahill brothers were, to put it plainly, technophiles. New phones, new computers, new tablets, new anything with circuits and USB slots, and it was in their hot little hands on release day.
“You want to wire the area for surveillance?” I asked to make sure we were on the same page.
“I do.”
“You realize what a large area we’re talking about, right? None of it is wired for a project of this scope. It would take you weeks to run the wiring, mount the cameras and get a basic system in place.” I rubbed my forehead. “Then you’d have to work with Enzo to cast glamour or concealment charms over the cameras.”
“We’ll mount outdoor cameras with infrared LEDs to provide us with crisp night vision. We’ll run the feed into a control room, likely at the office, outfitted with flat-screen panels so that viewing the footage is simplified. We’ll also need—”
“Hold up.” I sliced my hand through the air. “Who is paying for all of this? I can tell you right now that less than half of the pack is employed, which means our tithes, if we had a system in place yet—and we don’t—are anemic.”
“Well…” A mischievous twist of his lips held me enthralled. “About that.”
I sucked in my breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Cam wanted to be the one who broke the news, but she’s not here.”
The oxygen in my lungs sputtered until pain radiated through my chest.
“That means I get to play hero.” He reached in his back pocket and pulled out a debit card. “This is for you.”
The air gusted over my lips after I accepted the card and read my name off the embossed front. “What is it?” For a terrible moment, I worried he might be offering me the funds. The thought of him hacking my personal bank account and seeing the cobwebs strung through the code made me cringe. “I can’t accept it, whatever it is.”
“Are you sure?” He withdrew a piece of paper and handed that over too. “You don’t know how much money that grants you access to.”
Smoke. I smelled smoke the second I saw all those zeros. I think it was pouring out of my ears. “W-w-what?”
“That’s Earth’s defense fund. Well, your portion of it. Cam petitioned the conclave for support. Her argument highlighted the pack relocating, how they sacrificed their homes and jobs in the process. Not to mention you’re the only force actively patrolling the area of a known breach between worlds.”
“We chose to leave.” A thready whisper was all I could manage. “We left Villanow by choice to form the pack—”
“Shh.” He placed a finger in front of his lips. “Magistrate Vause is well aware of the circumstances. She threw her weight in behind the vote, which is part of the reason why it passed. If anyone asks you, you’re a hero. You left your home and family behind to come serve in the rebel warg army amassing on the edge of the first interrealm fissure reported in centuries.”
The paper weighed more than it should have. “I have to think about this.”
“Oh, I almost forgot. Here’s some more reading for you.” He passed me a stack of papers folded into thirds. “It’s the Gaian Treaty the leaders signed before the Gathering began. She figured you might want a copy.”
“Yeah.” I tucked the treaty under my arm for later study. One thing at a time. That was all I could handle, and he had hit me with the card first. “Sure.”
“You should call Cam.” He crossed to me and rested his palms on my shoulders. “This is what she wanted, to take care of all of you. Lorimar jumped in to fill a need. You weren’t trained, you weren’t prepared, you were shoved to the front line.”
A chill whispered up my spine. “You make it sound like the fae view us as disposable.”
“Not all fae see this as a bad thing. Some see it as inevitable. Others were banished from Faerie and figure this is the closest they will ever be to home again.” His lips flattened into a tight line. “Most know better. Most remember to be afraid of the motherland. Most know if she breaks down the wall between worlds, it’s not just the children of man who will suffer. Faerie has always preyed on the weak, be they fae or human or somewhere in between.”
“So this is a payoff, to Cam, since she’s fae.” I tasted the words and found them true. “This is a check cut for her inevitable losses.”
Isaac dipped his chin. “You’re looking at this the wrong way.”
“How am I wrong? We’re the cork stopping up a bottle of champagne that’s been shaken within an inch of its life.” The card felt slimy in my hand. “What’s the point of this if they see us as expendable?”
“We are fighting for humanity, because they have no idea what’s coming. We are fighting for the wargs and the vamps and every other flavor of native supernatural, because this is your home world.” He slid his hands down my arms before I got the chance to shrug him off me. “We’re fighting for the fae born here, who have as much to fear from Faerie as the rest of you. And for those who have felt her hot breath on their nape and lived to tell about it.”
I shook my head, not disagreeing with him, but disappointed with a system so willing to sacrifice innocents en masse.
“Smile and nod, just like Cam’s doing now. That costs you nothing and gives them peace of mind that all is right in their fucked-up world.” A grin cut his mouth. “What the conclave thinks the money’s for and how it’s actually used are two different things.”
“There’s no way they’re going to cut us a check and never pop in to see how it’s spent.”
“You’re right, which is why they’ve assigned a liaison between the conclave and the pack whose duty it will be to report on how the fight is progressing, so there’s no danger of splashing blood on their ivory towers.”
I didn’t have to ask. “Thierry.”
“If it makes you feel any better, she got the job because she’s a half-blood. Most of the magistrates felt the task was beneath a pureblood, and others argued that her muddled human heritage would help the wargs accept her.”
“Ouch.” As much as the conclave distrusted native supernats, it sounded like Thierry didn’t have it much better than us. “I didn’t realize the conclave was a stickler about bloodlines. The way she gets around, she must have friends in high places if her own organization is prejudiced against her.”
“Something like that,” he said vaguely. “Use the card. Deposits will be made on the fifteenth of every month until this situation is resolved, and at the rate the conclave is moving, we could all be in nursing homes by then.”
His earlier glee caused me to ask, “Are you asking me to hire you?”
“I can’t work for free.” He shrugged. “Okay, I can work for free, but I still need supplies.”
“Hmm.” I tapped the card against my palm. “So I would be your boss.”
“Yes,” he said after a moment’s pause.
“That means I can fire you if you annoy me.” I rubbed the plastic between my fingers. “And if you’re no longer employed here, then you would probably go back to the caravan, am I right?”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
“I got rid of you last time without even trying.” Shoving the card in my pocket, I started toward
my RV. “This won’t take but a minute.”
“I’ll be here.”
But for how long?
Chapter 13
The murmuring radio kept the ride into town from turning awkward. We both gave the news channel our full attention, as if sports and political updates were chocolates to be savored by hungry ears. When Isaac turned into the Cantina’s parking lot, I climbed over him to get out. Not my smoothest move ever, but a necessary one. The fear of being trapped in the cab with him thanks to the busted passenger-side door was real. He might want to talk. Or something.
The green Jetta sat where we had left it, the scene undisturbed. Crimson stained the pale gravel where Enzo had bled for his spell, and that scent punched me in the nose when I stepped closer to the vehicle. I tested the driver-side handle, but the car was so old I could tell the push-style locks had all been depressed.
I peered through the window, gaze sliding over the spotless interior. The car could have rolled off an assembly line this morning, so perfect was its condition. “I don’t suppose you know how to pick a lock?”
“As a matter of fact…” Isaac stepped up next to me, cocked his elbow and shattered the window. “No. I don’t.”
“Why did you…?” I gaped at him. “I could have done that myself.”
“You don’t have much time.” He pointed up at the sky. “I’ll pay for the repairs myself, out of my own pocket. Or I’ll cover the insurance deductible if that’s the way Mrs. O’Malley prefers to handle it.”
“Rain will pour in and ruin the upholstery,” I complained while reaching inside and unlocking the door. The car was in pristine condition, and I didn’t want to be responsible for ruining a thing so well loved.
Isaac backed toward his truck. “I brought a tarp and bungee cords.”
I shook my head. It was that or bounce it off the hood of the car. “You planned ahead.”
“It’s the best way to not be surprised.”
Bracing my palm on the frame, I had a better idea. “Zed?”
No response.
I tried again, three more times. Still no reply.
Promise the Moon (Lorimar Pack Book 1) Page 14