Lately I burned through extension cords the way teens blazed through phone chargers. One of the hazards of buying cheap, I guess. They weren’t made to last.
“I can make that happen.” I made eye contact with each of the other crew members. “Good work, folks. See y’all tomorrow.”
Ladder fisted in her hands, Lyssa grinned. “Later, Dell.”
Shoe Laces stumbled over a cord and danced a jig in an attempt not to fall. “Night, boss.”
Trusting them not to accidentally kill themselves or each other, I crossed to Zed and kicked the leg out from under his chair. His arms shot up, cradling his box as his back hit the dirt with a satisfying thump.
“What the hell?” He glowered up at me.
“We both know you had that coming.” I bent forward and offered him my hand, hauling him forward until he sat upright in his chair. “You sided with Isaac. It doesn’t matter if he’s right, he’s Isaac.”
After setting his project aside, Zed stood and wrapped me up in a surprise hug. “You had this coming too.” He squeezed until my bones creaked. “Thanks for last night.” His hold loosened enough for me to breathe. “And I’m sorry Isaac is back. There’s a lot of wilderness out here and a huge-ass lake. Say the word, and I’ll make sure his body is never found.”
“You say the sweetest things.” My vision went blurry for a minute. “I think Cam would miss him, though. He is her favorite cousin.” As he was so quick to remind us all.
Zed released me before I sprung a leak. “Just keep your options open, okay?”
“I’ll keep your offer in mind.” I laughed and wiped my cheeks. “Pretty sure if I decide he has to go that way, I’ll be the one to dispatch him.”
“I can live with that,” he said amiably.
“Good. There’s something else you’re going to have to live with too.” I walked to the nearest tree and picked a brittle limb off the ground. It was a credit to his trust in me that he didn’t run when he noticed I had armed myself. “Zed Ames…” I touched the branch first to one shoulder and then the other, “…I dub thee Gamma of the Lorimar Pack.”
His knees buckled, and he sat down hard. He missed the chair and hit the dirt. “You’re not serious.” He wiped his hand over his mouth. “What is it with you and knighting people?”
“I’ve been reading a lot of fae history books.” I shrugged. “They’re big on ceremony. I kind of like it. It makes everything from eating breakfast to declaring a co-ruler extra super fancy.”
“This is huge.” His voice quavered. “I’m not ready for this. I’m not well. You need someone you can rely on to be there for you.”
“That’s you in a nutshell.” I sank to the ground beside him and leaned my shoulder into his to give his wolf the contact it needed to settle. “I trust you more than anyone outside the alphas. You’re my friend, and I know I can depend on you.” I bumped against him. “Plus, you sided with Isaac. You agreed this was needed. Now it’s time to take your medicine.”
“Can I think about this?” His hand was shaking as he raked it through his hair. “Are you willing to mediate more dominance fights if the pack disagrees with your choice?”
“I have to talk to the alphas first, but Cord knows you. Cam will trust his opinion of you.” I flicked my wrist. “The others are worn out from hunting every night. If they want to get their fur britches in a twist, I say bring it on. You’re dominant. You can win.”
“You’re supposed to be impartial.” He sighed. “You realize that, right?”
“Not about this.” That went for casual scuffles, and it didn’t matter who I pulled for as long as I called the winner honestly. “Me and you. We can do this.” I scoffed. “Heck, we have been doing this. You’re my right-hand man. Giving you the title gives your word more weight, that’s all.”
“Gamma,” he marveled. “What do you think of that?”
“That if you don’t want to get knighted again, you should keep your mouth shut whenever Isaac chimes in with a bright idea.” I shoved to my feet. “Are you up for your first official gamma duty?”
“I haven’t said yes yet,” he protested, his expression still dazed.
“Details, details.” I offered him my hand. “You coming or what?”
“The park’s on lockdown.” He put a whisper of pressure on my hand as he stood. The news had made him so light, I worried he might float away if I didn’t hold on. “Where are we going?”
“I put us on lockdown.” I tugged him after me. “I can break my own rules.”
“Maybe this beta gig really is going to your head…”
I pinched him, and he yelped. “I won it fair and square. Too late to dethrone me now.”
“Again with the dethroning,” he mumbled. “You’ve got to get your head out of those books.”
“Knowing thy enemy comes with the territory, I’m afraid.” I stuttered to a halt when the path curved and Isaac stood waiting at the end of it. “Speak of the devil…”
“Red’s not my color, and I rarely have a tail.” Isaac held a book under his arm. “Do you have a minute?”
The no I should have hurled at him got hung up in route by his casual mention of an occasional tail.
I was…intrigued.
Bad, Dell. Bad girl.
Anything coiled in Isaac’s pants was his own business.
“Dell and I are on our way out.” Zed stepped up beside me. “Can this wait?”
“I don’t think it can.” Isaac turned the book so I could read the title. “I did some light reading while you were at work.”
The book looked familiar. I had seen it before. On my bed. Behind my locked front door.
“Where did that come from?” I managed to restrain myself from lunging at him.
“The library,” he said, “the same place all books marked with the conclave seal do.”
An odd sensation bubbled in my gut as I realized what he had done. Telling me a truth, but not the truth. Isaac had just not exactly lied to me with an obvious misdirection. What was the purpose? To show how he could warp the truth until I accepted the lie? I already knew that. Any girl who cried tears on her pillow the night he said goodbye could attest to his skill with his tongue.
“Yes,” I said at last. “I guess it did, huh?”
“Dell?” Zed was a comforting presence at my elbow.
“Isaac.” I curled my finger, and the fool stepped forward. Good. I was hot, tired and sweaty, and I didn’t want this to take a whole lot of energy. “You picked my lock.” I moved faster than the human eye could track, but he saw me just fine as I wrapped my fingers around his throat. The contact sent my wolf into a frenzy in my middle. “You went inside my home without my permission.” His face turned an interesting shade of red, and the wolf lashed out, sending ribbons of pain slicing through my abdomen. “Do that again, and you’re fired.”
The pinprick of discomfort in my arm jerked my gaze to where his left hand, on reflex, had transformed into a glove cobbled together with shards of brandy-colored glass. Blood rolled down my arm, and Isaac lifted his hand with exquisite care so as not to cause any real damage while he got his shift under control.
“I can…” he stood there, purpling, not fighting back, “…explain.”
As cathartic as manual strangulation was, I wouldn’t kill him over a little breaking and entering. Unless he did it a second time.
With an irritated huff, I released him. His hand—back to normal—massaged his throat while he sucked in great lungfuls of air. The wolf—still pissed at me—remained behind my eyes, keeping watch over Isaac.
“You were saying?” I wiped the back of my hand across my grimy forehead, the wolf a heavy presence in my mind that signaled the start of a headache. “You’re all that’s standing between me and a cold shower.”
“I didn’t break into your house.” He tossed the book to me, and I caught it. “Hold on tight.”
The leather cover warmed in my hands. Some of the books Cam loaned me did that. Pretty sure I didn
’t want to know how or why those books were more sentient than the others.
I did as he asked and gripped the old encyclopedia with both hands. “Okay?”
His lips moved in a word without sound, and he snapped his fingers.
The book appeared tucked under his arm a second later.
Even feeling my hands were lighter, I stared down at them. Empty. “How did you…?”
“I dated a girl who worked in the Grand Library once.” The red marks on his throat stood in sharp relief against his skin. “She taught me a few tricks.”
“I bet she did,” I muttered.
“I can’t pretend I don’t have a past, Dell.” He spared me a tired look, the emotion I most evoked from him these days. As if I exhausted him. Ha! “That’s not fair to either of us.”
“Was there a point to this?” Zed inserted himself in the conversation. “Other than to piss her off, which seems to be a superpower of yours.”
“I marked some passages you might find interesting.” Once again, Isaac removed the book from under his arm and offered it to me. “I’ve got an idea of what we’re up against.”
We, he said. As if he was still in this, as if I hadn’t nearly throttled him a minute ago.
“Really?” I had a few ideas of my own. “Sirens, banshees and hulders top my suspect list.”
Respect for my expanding fae vocabulary gleamed in his eyes. “Mine too.”
“If that’s all…?” I jerked my chin toward my RV. “I need to get going.”
“There is one more thing.” He reached into his pocket and produced a leather bracelet. An old coin made an ornament in the center of the twisted braids. The underside was rubberized, and a tiny red light flashed a warning. “May I?”
“What is it?” I kept my hands to myself. “What does it do?”
Slowly, he reached for me, and I extended my arm. The brush of his fingers on my skin burned, a dual-edged sword that cut both ways. The urge was just as strong to shove him away as it was to pull him closer.
And all the while, the wolf sat smug on my shoulders, chuffing at me for falling prey to a clever predator. She liked being petted, and when it came to Isaac, so did I.
We were in so much trouble.
I really ought to save us both the hassle and rip out his heart before he got his fingers around mine again.
As if he had ever let it go…
“It’s a GPS.” Isaac adjusted the band around my wrist. “It’s a sliding knot spelled to expand and retract to fit your wrist.” My eyebrows climbed, and he chuckled. “Don’t worry. It’s perfectly safe. I tested it on myself.”
A dangerous curiosity took root. “I wasn’t aware you did magic.”
“A friend taught me.” He finished his adjustments, careful to avoid the topic of which friend and their gender, and held my wrist a heartbeat longer than he should have before releasing me. “It comes in handy with uncooperative wiring.”
I twisted the bracelet to get comfortable. “What else can you do?”
“Not much. Mom thinks it has something to do with a Gemini’s resistance to glamour making other forms of magic also repellent to us.” He reached into his pocket again. “Cam can’t perform magic at all, except for transformation magic, which is hardwired into our DNA. I can do a few things, but Theo is the most gifted of us, and that’s not saying much.” His gaze met mine. “Our best tricks are things Enzo probably learned while in diapers.”
“Jealous.” Zed sounded ten kinds of amused. “Healthy competition is good for him.”
“There is no competition.” I worried the bracelet, sliding it left to right. “I’m not a trophy.”
Mischief glinted in his eyes. “Your love life is the stuff of—”
“—soap operas.” Not, as I was sure he was about to say, fairy tales. “Also? For the record? I have no love life. I barely have a life.”
“This one’s for you.” Isaac tossed a second, thicker bracelet to Zed then scratched his head. “I can’t remember if I mentioned it’s also a wearable panic button. Press the coin, and it triggers an alert that will be sent straight to me.”
“Why do we need these?” Zed dangled his between his fingers with his lip curled, like he was holding a dead mouse and not an accessory. “We can communicate with the pack just fine. Why do we need to be able to get ahold of you?”
“This isn’t about me. Or keeping tabs on Dell, which I’m sure is your next accusation.”
Zed shrugged but didn’t disagree.
“Dell was enchanted and unable to touch the pack bond. She couldn’t call for help. The wolf had to take point and get her home.” Isaac’s lips dipped at the corners. “You didn’t come back at all. If you’d been wearing one of these, I could have located you via the GPS and told the others. Even if you don’t get a chance to push the panic button, it will let us know where you are if you’re unable to tell us.”
“It makes sense.” I had to admit it was a better and less invasive solution than any I had envisioned.
Zed glared at his bracelet as he strapped it on. “What happened to never siding with Isaac?”
I pressed my lips together to buy myself time to figure out what to say.
“Women.” Zed fought the slide knot until I stepped up to adjust it for him. “If I live to be a hundred, I still won’t understand a single one of you.”
“We’re complex creatures.” I smirked and patted his arm. “Trust me. The view of the opposite sex isn’t any clearer from here.”
He grunted and shook his wrist with open disgust. “I never wear jewelry. It gets caught in machines too easily.”
“You don’t have to wear it all the time.” I rolled my eyes. “Only when we’re off adventuring into the unknown.”
Zed scrunched up his face. “So…every day.”
I shoved him back on his heels.
“Where are you going?” Isaac glanced between us.
I jingled my wrist. “If this thing works, then you’ll know soon enough.” I took Zed by the shoulder, aimed him toward the chair on my porch and pushed. “Cop a squat. It won’t take me but a minute to shower and change.”
As long as I didn’t wash my hair. Wading through those thick, curly tangles required more bottles of conditioner and time than I had to spare. Ponytail it is.
Alone with Isaac, I sucked up my pride and squared off against him. “I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions about where you got the book, but you had to know how it looked for me to walk up and see you reading the reference guide I left at home, and you just stood there being smug about it.”
“Is this an apology?” He rubbed his jaw. “It’s hard to tell between the insults and vague threats.”
“Yes,” I growled.
“Apology accepted.” A smile tilted the corner of his mouth. “You’ve changed since the last time I saw you. You know that?”
“Metamorphosis does that to a girl,” I agreed cryptically.
Comparing myself to a newborn butterfly wasn’t far off base. I had shucked my old skin, my old life. The submissive bend of my shoulders had straightened, and the giggles I once used as camouflage had dried up. This was the real me. I was the spark of potential the alphas had noticed and nurtured, the dutiful granddaughter who believed in her own worth and worked on mending all those broken promises to her teenage self each day by honoring Pawpaw’s wishes for a brighter future.
Isaac, as much as the wolf protested the label, represented a dark shadow from my past.
Now that I’d had a taste of sunshine, I wasn’t as quick to step back into the shade.
An earnest glint sparked in his eyes. “Be safe out there.”
“Careful, Isaac.” I walked past him. “I might start to think you care.”
He caught my wrist in a featherlight grip, but I didn’t stop moving, and my hand slid from his.
Zed had warned me once about playing with fire. Well, this was me playing basketball with the sun.
Chapter 17
We took Tallulah, w
hom Zed had rehabbed, out to the O’Malley house. This time no chubby cheeks pressed to smudged glass. No waiflike girl haunted the trees with hope bright in her eyes. The yard sat empty, absent of laughing children, and the house stood dark, its curtains drawn against the pain of looking out at a world that had caused its family harm. Both accused me of not trying hard enough to protect the family that belonged there, the one I was willing to bet a twenty had fled to safety.
After cranking the window down, I leaned out and inhaled the faded scents overlaying the area. “Traces of the family are at least twenty-four hours old.”
“Do you think they ran?” Zed smoothed his thumb over the dent in the panel where the vandal had attempted to hot-wire his truck.
“The O’Malleys were fruitful, and they multiplied. A lot.” I hadn’t realized until visiting her home, seeing those rosy baby faces, that Mr. O had introduced us to a fraction of his clan. Only the ones old enough to be out and about on their own. Those with a greater chance of stumbling into a dangerous confrontation. Like Flo. “This is their home. Anywhere else they go will be cramped. Plus Mrs. O’s income is tied to the Cantina as best as I can tell. She’ll have to reopen it soon, even if she does it alone, in order to keep paying the bills.”
“Does she have family in the area?”
“No clue.” No way to find out now, either. “She didn’t mention it, and I didn’t think to ask.”
“She probably took the kids somewhere safe.” He tapped the panel once more then gripped the wheel. “Can your questions wait?”
“There’s no rush.” I had a whole lot of nothing already, what was one more sprig tossed on the pile? “Mr. O’s car is at the garage, so it’s safe for the time being.” I rolled up my window. “I wanted to ask if Mr. O and Ms. Zhuang were friends. Two business owners in a small town, they had to know one another.”
“What are you implying?” He twisted to look at me.
“Nothing inappropriate.” I held up my hands. “I was just thinking if someone skeevy had been hanging around dropping threats or acting inappropriately at either place, they might have mentioned it to the other one.”
Promise the Moon (Lorimar Pack Book 1) Page 18