The Thing About Weres: A Mystwalker Novel

by Leigh Evans

  “Not yet.”

  Mouth pulled down in a faint half frown, my twin studied Anu-the-wonder-bitch through the window. She, in turn, was favoring us with a piercing, unstinting stare. It’s unnerving, the way she doesn’t blink. The little brown wolf sat alone, ears pointed toward us, Ralph’s chain half buried in her fur.

  “Can she understand English?” I asked Lexi.

  “No,” he replied. “She speaks Merenwynian and wolf, and that is all. But I expect she will learn it quickly. She seemed adept enough at Court.”

  “I hate her.” The words, venom-dripped, gushed out of me. Flushing, I looked down at my plate. Shreds of a paper napkin formed a haystack by it. “Why did you let him bring her?” I asked in a low voice.

  “She would have been abused in Merenwyn. This is where she belongs.”

  Gee, thanks, Lexi.

  “You really are bonded to him, then?” he asked.

  “We said the words, but—” I lifted my shoulders and let them drop. “But technically, Trowbridge may have been semiconscious when he said his part.”

  Lexi picked at something on his arm. “If I asked you now, would you leave here? Tonight? Right now?”

  “Stay, I can explain.” That’s what My One True Thing said.

  For once, you better say the right thing, Trowbridge.

  I lifted Merry off my neck, placing her near her own saucer of maple syrup, which earned me the display of a double pulse of golden light. “What is the Safe Passage?” I asked, hoping to change the subject.

  “It’s supposedly a secret portal from this world to the Fae’s.” Lexi stared broodingly at Merry. “One that was never closed and wasn’t keyed to reject Were blood.”

  “Do you know where it is?” I pulled Merry and saucer closer to me.

  “That’s what I told Trowbridge.”

  “Then…” Hurt welled and my voice broke when I asked, “If you knew its location, why didn’t you come home?” I watched him, hoping for a cue, a reason, an explanation—Goddess, curse it, I’d have taken a lie. “If your life was bad, why didn’t you just come back?”

  He rubbed his face with both of his hands, then muttered into his palms, “Who said my life was bad?”

  “Does every half-breed wear a tattoo like that?”

  My brother lifted his gaze to mine. “I didn’t know how to summon any portal until a few days ago. And I needed an amulet.” He leaned forward, eyes demanding that I understand. “For once, the stars aligned for me. I found a record of the song. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I turned the page, and there it was. Music. Lyrics. Everything I needed. Then the Son of Lukynae—”

  “You mean Trowbridge.”

  “I mean the wolf whom the Raha’ells have elevated to some sort of mythic hero status.” He sniffed and wiped his nose. “The Court considers your mate as big a threat to its race as we are to his.”

  “Trowbridge.”

  “The one and only.” My brother could nod and shake his head at the same time. “He might have one or two problems reintegrating with the Creemore Weres tomorrow. He’s lost his veneer of civilization. His wolves may have regrets in the morning. Maybe even now, as we speak.”

  He’s out on a run with them. Alone, with only Cordelia for backup.

  “Tell me more about the Raha’ells,” I said sharply.

  “Of the three packs of Merenwyn Weres, they are the fiercest. I’d never venture into the woods they claim as their territory without a full company of my men. The Raha’ells know no pain. No fear. And they heal—too fast. You have to get them…” He stopped, perhaps belatedly realizing that he was dropping bombs like a foulmouthed hooker at a Tupperware party.

  Lexi braced his hands on the table to stand. “I need a pick-me-up.”

  “You just had one,” I said automatically. But my brain was busy. My brother has men. He hunts wolves. And he kept flicking hooded glances at Merry.

  I put her back around my neck, stomach tightening.

  Lexi picked up the shreds of my paper napkin and balled them in his fist. “In Merenwyn they keep the maple syrup and honey in beautiful pottery, and it’s served with much ceremony. Each diner has his own servant, and they pour your choice into your wine goblet.”

  And for fun, they tattoo half-breeds.

  “I used to watch them eat at the long table and tell my belly to be quiet.” On his way to the kitchen, Lexi checked on the ferret, who’d inexplicably chosen to go back into the mage’s bag for a snooze. “She’s curled up in a ball around my other shirt.” Anger flattened his mouth. “He’s worked her for days. Never letting her rest.”

  “They kept you hungry?” I repeated, in a hushed voice.

  My brother, my twin.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Every servant is a little hungry.” Lexi opened a couple of cabinets before he found the garbage. Then, tossing in my handful of napkin confetti, he added, “The morning I discovered that I could see magic, I knew I finally had something worth bargaining with.” He shook his head. “I practiced on the sly at first. And discovered that I could steal it, too—but that’s not as useful as you might expect. I can’t hold it for long. Eventually it always seeps out of me.”

  His black fitted undershirt pulled free of his belt as he arched his back in an enormous stretch. “Magic has a scent to me. I can track it using my nose, and once I’m close enough to it, I can see it—if I clear my eyes of all distraction, I can see its shine.”

  I thought about that for a second, making circles in the bottom of my own bowl with my syrup-drenched piece of bread. “Wouldn’t admitting that have been dangerous?”

  “To anyone else but the Black Mage, yes.” Cradling the knapsack like a baby, Lexi eased carefully back down on the seat. “But he was quick to realize that my gift could warn him of danger. I could warn him of any danger. In less time than it takes to birth a king, I went from eating kitchen scraps to eating at the long table.”

  In Threall, a sinister red heart winked from the interior of the Black Mage’s deep purple soul light. “Did the Black Mage raise you? Take care of you?”

  “I didn’t need anyone to raise me after that first week in Merenwyn.”

  “What did you do for him?”

  A quick shrug of the shoulders. “Whatever he ordered me to do.” Then he knuckled his lip, and looked away. “Recently, most of my time has been spent working on the Old Mage’s Book of Spells.”

  Fae Stars. To hear the book mentioned so casually, in this realm. I wiped my syrup-sticky fingers on a napkin, sorely tempted to tell Lexi that I’d seen the heavy tome with my own eyes. Instead, I feigned ignorance.

  “Who is the Old Mage?”

  Lexi snaked a careful hand into the bag. “Shh, rest easy, rest easy, I just need to get my—” He winced, and then carefully pulled out his reserve of the Fae go-go juice. “From what I’ve heard, the Old Mage was the last of the truly great wizards before he got himself into trouble and ended up with the choice of either putting himself into an eternal coma—the Sleep Before Death—or being buried in the ground to his neck.”

  “What exactly did he do?”

  In reply, Lexi held up his silver flask. “He created this and it led to civil war.”

  “Sun potion led to war?”

  “It changed everything in Merenwyn,” said Lexi as he unscrewed the cap and placed it by his plate. “Before the old man found a way to extract the magic of the sun from the Pool of Life, the wolves in the Fae realm kept to their packs, their own territories, and their own kind. They were, in many respects, more animal than man.”

  “That seems harsh.” I watched my twin fold a piece of salami and eat it in one gulp.

  Lexi shrugged and swallowed. “Not if you take into consideration the fact that there are more full moons in the Fae realm and that Weres there spend a lot more time as wolves than the packs do here.” He paused to take an appreciative sniff of the contents of his flask as if it were a very fine spirit, not a nearly colorless liquid. “Then the Old Mage�
�s daughter fell in love with the leader of the Raha’ells, and she bore him a son named Lukynae. Elorna lasted ten winters, maybe twelve, among them and then she came back with her child. No one knew where exactly she’d been—the Old Mage had come up with a story rationalizing her absence that most of the Court had swallowed. When she pleaded for his help to hide her son’s birthright, he went into his den and came out months later with the spell for sun potion.”

  I’ll bet good money that my brother doesn’t know that the edge of the Old Mage’s sleeve is more frayed on his right wrist than his left.

  “To the Royal Court, a wolf amounts to a subspecies,” he continued, oblivious. “But with just one measure of this stuff, taken before a full moon, a Were can ignore the call of the moon. He doesn’t have to transform into his wolf … and his secret can remain a secret.”

  “But a Were needs to release his wolf.”

  “Not true. In my world—” He caught himself and rephrased it. “Today in Merenwyn, few Weres answer the moon’s call.”

  Lexi’s mouth turned down as he stared at the flask in his hand. “Lukynae was the first to be offered the choice to hide his wolf. He could have continued taking his sun potion before every full moon, and no one would have known who or what he was.”

  “But Lukynae chose to release his wolf.”

  “Even ten years among the Raha’ells was enough to leave its imprint. When Lukynae grew up, he stole the spell and left the Court, and suddenly, the Fae could no longer count on trapping wolves during full moons. And worse, tribes that had previously acted as separate packs began functioning as one rebel group led by a man called Lukynae.”

  Lexi lifted a shoulder. “Eventually the Royal Court discovered the Old Mage’s treason. They appropriated his spell for sun potion—which created a new class of servants—and sentenced him to the Sleep Before Death.”

  “Servants? You’re confusing me. I got the impression that the Raha’ells lived in the hills.”

  “You know that after the war between the Fae and the wolves of Merenwyn, a treaty was signed.”

  “Yes, the Treaty of Brelland. All but one pack of wolves signed it and accepted exile to this realm. Which confuses the hell out of me because you keep talking about three packs.”

  “The Kuskadors chose to remain and submit to subjugation to the Fae rather than accept exile. They were tied too closely to their farms to leave.”

  “Then what is this about the Raha’ells—”

  “Most of them were captured and exiled with Lukynae. But some escaped before the net fell and took to the hills. They’ve bred over time. There are not a lot of them, but there are enough to be a nuisance.” A bitter smile narrowed his mouth. “They’re rebels, and they must be hunted to the ground.”

  He lifted the flask, his gaze on Anu. “She was raised as a Kuskador house servant.”

  “You drink a lot of that stuff.”

  “No more than I need.” My brother’s body tensed up, anticipation poised for the moment, then he tilted back his head and swallowed. A pause to savor it. “Anyhow, the old man hasn’t got much longer. I’ve seen his body.” Lexi’s eyes fluttered closed for a moment, then he continued, his voice dreamy. “They keep what’s left of the Old Mage in a special room in one of the older wings of the castle. His bed is high on a dais, and the bedding’s made from the finest silk.” A ghost of frown. “He’s got long white hair and his eyes are half open—that gave me a scare when I entered the room. The old man’s in some sort of coma. If he was aware of me, he didn’t show it. I waved my hand in front of his face and he didn’t even blink.” Lexi absently rubbed his jaw, using the backs of his fingers. One long stroke, then another.

  Lexi had found his own way to self-soothe.

  He looked at me with drugged dismay. “I wouldn’t want to live like that. Neither alive nor dead. He’s lost most of his toes and fingers. They look like they’ve been chewed on by rats.”

  I pushed the bread around the bottom of my plate, sopping up the syrup, while thinking about wind-nibbled trees in Threall.

  My brother wiped his mouth. “It’s made my job easier.”

  “How?”

  “Before he went to his sleep, the Old Mage put protection spells on every page of his spell book.”

  Yes, and he forced a young mystwalker to serve his life sentence with him.

  “Those wards make tinkering with his incantations dangerous and reading them next to impossible,” said Lexi. “And it’s made me practically indispensable to the Black Mage. I’m custom-made for his needs—the thief who can see magic.” He flexed his hand, a self-mocking expression twisting his features. “The Old Mage is on his last legs. And once he’s gone, all the wards he placed on the book will crumble.” Lexi rubbed his chest, smiling with eyes that suddenly looked content and slumberous. “It must have pleased the Old Mage to imagine his spells blowing up in his assistant’s face—I heard that they didn’t get along. Too bad he couldn’t live forever.”

  “But you’re working on the book,” I said slowly.

  Lexi’s head bobbed languidly. Crap, he’s wasted.

  “I can see the lock right on the page—as if the magic were layered over it like a gossamer veil,” he said slowly, pride swelling in his voice. “All I have to do is figure out how to lift it free. I study the edges, figure how thick it is, and then I steal it. My talent gives the Black Mage total access to whatever is on the page. With me by his side, he looked powerful.” An ugly smile. “But now, his true colors will show.”

  Helzekiel’s ambition and greed?

  Lexi’s gaze was heavy-lidded, his eyes glazed. It bothered me to see him like that. Yeah, he’d just come home. He had a right to celebrate in his own way. But I didn’t like it. Even if part of me wondered if being tanked on sun potion was any worse than some of the local boys getting together for a case of Creemore Springs beer.

  My twin slumped a little lower into his chair.

  I pretended to be preoccupied with sopping up every drizzle of syrup while my mind spun around the answer to that puzzler. Casually, I asked, “You feeling better now?”

  “The buzz doesn’t last anymore.” Lexi frowned at the moon, then reached for the cord to the blinds. “Not like it used to, anyhow.”

  “There are no other amulets over in Merenwyn that will open a portal, right? Right, Lexi?” I watched him fumble with the sides of the carefully pressed curtains. “Stop tugging them like that. All you have to do is unhook the tieback.”

  Lexi gave up on the curtains and threw back his head in a huge yawn.

  “Only one that I know of and it’s held in the Royal Vault. The Queen’s crown jewels have less protection,” he said. “My mage’s going to be shit out of luck because his spell-catcher has flown away, and the Old Mage’s Book of Spells is going to crumble to dust before he reasons out how to break the wards on the page he wants.”

  Don’t call him your mage.

  My brother’s eyes drooped to half-mast, but still, I knew his gaze was fixed on my hands, as I carefully cleaned off Merry with a napkin. A thought came to me, and I froze.

  “Lexi,” I said. “What page?”

  “Huh?”

  “You said the page he wants—is there a page about amulets?”

  He favored me with a slow smile. “Amulets, and portals, and everything else.”

  “The Safe Passage, too?”

  “You ask a lot of questions, runt,” he said, studying the ferret.

  What would happen if the Black Mage were able to lift those wards? Would he come here? Would he—“Lexi, there’s no way he could lift the ward off the page without you?”

  “He’d be risking destroying it.” He flipped his hair back over his shoulder with a languor that set my teeth on edge and then stretched his arms along the back of the seat. “The Black Mage’s time is coming. No matter what he thinks. I don’t care how many mystwalkers he discovers.”

  He leaned his head back. Two minutes from passing out.

  “He
’s training mystwalkers?” I asked casually as Merry shifted inside my blouse.

  A slow nod. “He’s always so optimistic when he finds one…”

  “How many are there in Merenwyn?” When he didn’t answer, I kicked him and yelled, “Lexi!”

  He stirred and favored me with a heavy frown. “Stop shouting.”

  I repeated my question.

  “They’re all dead except for the one he’s training now. And that never goes well.” He yawned. “It makes him look bad, you know? The Old Mage was really good at training his mystwalkers.” Then, with a contented sigh, “He’s so fucked.”

  “How?” Tension set my teeth to the ragged edge of my thumbnail.

  “The Court hasn’t got a seasoned mystwalker and his apprentices keep dying on him.” He rubbed his chin on his shoulder, then looked at me with a sly smile. “And now, he’s having a hard time finding new recruits. Every time he hears about some kid who walks in dreams, he sends me out, but most of the time, it turns out to be nothing. Just some villager starting a false rumor. Maybe the talent for it is dying out among the Fae.” He shook his head. “Good riddance. No one should be able to fuck with your mind like that.”

  I tore off my nail and spat it out. “How does he train them?”

  “I don’t want to talk about them anymore,” he mumbled.

  “Just—” I reached over and gave him a prod. “Answer that last question.”

  “Mind exercises.” Lexi tried to rub his nose, and missed. “The hard part isn’t teaching them to cut their soul free from their body—it’s getting them to return home. He sends them to Threall and they never come back.”

  Lexi’s eyes drifted shut.

  My mouth opened and then slowly closed.

  * * *

  Four hours later, I found myself in my bed, listening to Lexi search for a comfortable position in the bunk over my head. He’d taken a long nap on that narrow dinette seat—mouth open, neck bent awkwardly—and had roused only when I scolded the ferret for key theft. After rescuing his new pet, he’d wandered down to the bathroom. There, he’d stayed in the shower until the hot-water tank was dry and the ferret had knocked over every single thing on the counter. Then I’d heard the medicine cabinet open and close, the drawers slide open, my brush (or for that matter, possibly Cordelia’s) clatter in the sink.