by Leigh Evans
I hadn’t figured out why she’d done that—at that precise moment I didn’t even like me.
True, my brain wasn’t working very well. It kept picking up stupid stuff such as that the seat cushions on the old Windsor chairs were mismatched, and that no one had ever thrown out the dead houseplant on the kitchen windowsill. The cap on the saltshaker was unscrewed, and half of the salt lay on the table. I wondered who’d done that. Mannus, always so hasty and greedy? Or maybe one of his crew? Out of the corner of my eye I saw Cordelia reach for her wig, then slap it against her knee to shake free the dust. “Biggs, sweep up the crockery,” she ordered, breaking the tense silence.
“That’s not my job,” he started to whine. But then Harry made a discreet rumble-growl low in the back of his throat, so Biggs stomped over to the broom leaning in the corner, anyhow.
The Alpha of Creemore’s back was to us—and had been for 216 “Mississippis.” Arms folded, he stood square in the back door’s threshold, silent and broody, seemingly engrossed by the awesome weed display growing on his father’s back lawn. That was another thing different about him. Before, he always leaned against something—be it a car, a door frame, or a piece of furniture. Now he was given to standing alone, legs spread and planted. Spartacus without the skirt.
Then Lexi whispered, “Ask him to let me go.”
I’d been doing a pretty good job of avoiding my twin’s gaze—I was too bruised by his sledgehammer of home truths, and too conflicted by the emotions stirred at the sight of him trussed like some turkey ready to be fed to the oven, to have the stomach to look at him.
“Be quiet,” I murmured, glancing toward the floor. Oh, what a lovely picture he was. A rope had been twisted around his torso, binding his arms behind him, and another shorter length had taken care of his legs. He lay on his side on the kitchen floor, his head lifted, anxiety and anger twisting his features. A streak of sweet-pea-scented blood oozed from the cut on his lower lip, and his usually sleepy green eyes were wilder than an infuriated tiger’s.
“He’ll do it for you,” my twin coaxed in another stage whisper.
Trowbridge stiffened, just slightly—enough to let me know that he’d heard, and processed, and already decided that the answer to that was, “Hell, no.”
“You’re only making it worse,” I muttered.
Sun potion leaked from my brother’s pores, a thin layer of too-sweet squeezed in between all those other more dominant strata of scents. He clumsily changed tack. “Hell, it’s not what it looked like. I can explain—”
“It’s not?” My frustrated instincts to right something bit at me. I replaced the cap on the saltshaker and twisted it until it was tight. “So, you didn’t steal Ralph and run hell-bent for the portal?”
He rested his head on the floor, and said hollowly, “I had a reason.”
“If you wanted to go back so badly,” I said quietly, lining the saltshaker against the pepper so they stood side by side, “you could have asked me. I would have asked Merry to take both of us through the portal.”
I brushed some of the salt into a pile, then glanced at my brother.
His expression was mutinous. Little spits of green fire circled his dilated pupils. “I didn’t steal anything. The Royal Amulet belongs to the King of the Court. I was going to return it to its rightful owners.”
Merry’s chain tightened. Just one notch.
“There’s a huge reward for the Royal Amulet,” he continued. “If I was the one to bring it back, I could write my own ticket. It could change my life for me back—”
“Home,” I said dully, feeling my cheeks flush.
My answer only served to infuriate him. He struggled against the bonds, and when I didn’t fall to my knees beside him and plead, “Please, sir, I beg of you. Untie my wretch of a brother!,” he reacted poorly.
“I can’t talk to you like this!” Lexi shouted. “Tell him to unbind me!”
I wanted to say a lot of things. Like “Don’t ask me for something I cannot give you, brother-mine.” Or how about this? “Don’t make me want to slap you and hold you and yell at you all at the same time, you broken and fouled shadow of my twin.”
But I didn’t.
“Taking the amulet was the only way I can go back,” he pleaded, his voice too loud in that pin-drop silence. “Don’t you understand? I can’t return without it.”
For a muzzy second or two, I considered the question seriously. Did I understand anything of this day? Of last night? My aching fingers crept to the peak of my ear. That’s a big fat no. “I have been near drowned in lies and truths ever since you landed here, and I don’t know what I believe or understand anymore.” I closed my eyes briefly, but even that didn’t magically reshuffle all the puzzle pieces, any more than stroking my ear soothed all the conflict inside me. How could it? My brother lay bound near my feet, and my mate stood brooding in the doorway. And I was in the middle of them. I’d always be in the middle of them.
I shook my head. “I’m so damn confused. I don’t know what to believe.”
Trowbridge slowly turned around, arms still folded over his chest. “He can’t return without the Royal Amulet, because the Black Mage sent him to steal it.”
Blue eyes watched me. For what? For me to stand up and say, “Well, that made it all clear!” I went back to herding my salt pile into a tidier mountain, thinking Trowbridge was going to have to dumb it down for me, and feed it to me in tiny morsels, because I still wasn’t connecting all the dots.
“Hell, I think one of my legs is broken,” Lexi pleaded. “It’s hurting me to be tied up like this.”
He’s hurt.
I chewed the inside of my cheek. “Does he have to be tied up?”
“Go ahead, Harry,” Trowbridge said, his face shuttered. “Untie him.”
Harry shook his head, but Biggs and he untied Lexi and propped him on the chair. My twin’s gaze darted around the room. From the window, to the door, to the knife stand, to the sharp broken shard of crockery by the Welsh dresser that Biggs had missed.
My brother was evaluating everything as a potential weapon. Just like Trowbridge did. Except his jittery nerves made his thoughts transparent whereas Trowbridge’s inner mind-spin was becoming more obscure to me by the minute.
Lexi stretched his mouth, as if his lips were too dry. “You saw us come through the portal. We were running from the Black Mage. He and his men were on our heels.”
Trowbridge’s voice was completely flat, not one iota of wheedle in it. “They had horses. We had feet. They could have caught up with us at any time. The only reason we reached the portal was because the Black Mage wished us to. He needs something from this world, and he sent his Shadow to get it. I’ve been waiting to find out what exactly it was.”
Ah. That explained the little kitchen opera I’d just witnessed. All those peculiarities of logic and reaction—my former inner circle had been given a new playbook. Trowbridge had told them to let Lexi make a break for it. It was the reason why my brother had been so laxly guarded, and why Cordelia hadn’t knocked Lexi right off his feet when he stepped on her wig.
Though … Was that the reason Trowbridge hadn’t pulled the trigger right away? He could have shot Lexi. He had a clear view, a gutload of hatred, and a valid reason. It would have been one sure way of making sure my brother never crossed another portal.
I traced a circle around my salt pile, and then asked Trowbridge, “You never thought that my brother just wanted to come back home?”
To me, I didn’t add.
“No.” Trowbridge lifted his shoulders. “Your brother’s addicted to sun potion, and as he said, there is no juice in Creemore. It was a given that he was planning a smash and grab. I just wasn’t sure if there was anything else he wanted.”
Ow.
Stubbornly, I said, “Still, he could have just come to see what—”
“No one with any Were in them would take traveling through those gates casually,” Trowbridge said harshly. “It’s like a whack
ed-out ride at Wild Water Kingdom. Except the walls are made of water not fiberglass. And instead of sliding down, you’re being pushed upward by a wind. Everything’s blurry, but … there are people on the other side of the wall. You can see them. All tight together, twisted, pressing against the surface on the other side. I’m not sure if they’re dead or alive. Their eyes…”
He shook his head. “In some places the passage gets real tight, and then it seems to split into two, sometimes three channels. If Merry hadn’t led me, I’d have…” His lips tightened, then he dismissively lifted his shoulder. “It’s a fucking nightmare in there. Your sense of time is shot. Your wolf wants you to change, and you’re worrying how it will react to all the things it hears and sees. Last thing you want to do is go down one of those blind alleys.”
I gazed at him, remembering how I had sent a half-conscious man through the gates and seen a wolf leap through the other end. Another sorry to add to the list. Another thing to thank Merry for.
“Don’t listen to him,” Lexi said in a soft hiss.
“Just for once, shut up,” I said.
“You don’t forget what it felt like,” said Trowbridge. “And you don’t look forward to doing it again. Your brother had already traveled through once. He knew what to expect. Add that to the fact he’s half juiced on sun potion ninety-nine percent of the day … The trip here was hard.” He lifted his gaze to mine and held it so I could read the truth. “Your brother was sent on a mission. I could only think of two things that the mage would consider valuable. One of them was the Royal Amulet.”
“What was the other one?” asked Biggs.
“Hedi.” A muscle moved in Trowbridge’s cheek. “That was one thing your brother didn’t lie about—there aren’t a lot of mystwalkers in Merenwyn. They’re right up there with the Sasquatch. I didn’t know if he knew that Hedi was a mystwalker right up to ten minutes ago.”
Just what every girl wants to hear—being compared to Bigfoot. I drew a moat around my small salt mountain. “Why’s Ralph so important?”
He walked over to the fridge and leaned against it. “It has another name—the Opener of Doors. Doesn’t mean shit to me. All I know is that the Black Mage wants it, and as long as I’m Alpha in this world, he’s not going to get it.”
Lexi saw the last boat sailing away without him. “He’s trying to poison your mind, and you’re letting him. Don’t you see? He hates me because back in Merenwyn, I’m a somebody, and he’s worth less than a farm animal!” Lexi groped for my hand, and when I pulled it away and tucked it in my lap, he exploded into full rage. “He didn’t even want to come back to you! Remember, I had to ‘sweeten the pot’ before he’d agree to a deal!”
Trowbridge pushed away from the refrigerator. Standing alone and tall again. “I am—was—the leader of the Raha’ells. I owe them. If there was any way I could get them through the Safe Passage, I had to try.”
“I can’t deal with this,” I said numbly, covering my face. “I can’t think anymore.”
“Hell, don’t let them do this to me,” my twin threatened. “I’ve got to go back. You don’t understand—I’ll die without the juice.”
My twin, the drug addict.
“Here’s the sum of what I understand,” I said, my voice cracked and low. “You’re wearing your lying face.”
“You whoring bitch,” my twin hissed.
“That’s it.” Two red spots on Trowbridge’s cheeks. “Lock him in the room downstairs. We’ll figure out what to do with him tomorrow.”
Suddenly, Lexi sprang up—like hell he had a broken leg—and overturned the table in my direction. I dove for the floor and cried out when I landed on my burned hand. Trowbridge let out an ungodly roar and threw a roundhouse punch into my brother’s face. Lexi went stumbling backward, tripped over my overturned chair, and fell on his hip. The Alpha of Creemore was on top of him before he’d even had a chance to roll. Trowbridge caught Lexi’s collar in his bad hand, and he went to town on Lexi’s face with his left.
Blood flew, and the scent of pink sweet peas blossomed again.
When a splatter of the red stuff hit the cabinet, something broke inside me. I screamed. Sharp and shrill. I kept it up until Cordelia had pulled my face into her lumpy breast. “Hush, hush,” she murmured, rocking me.
“Don’t let them do this,” I heard my brother call to me. “You don’t know—” Another smack of fist on flesh made me tremble and cringe. I turned my head to watch as they carried Lexi past me—the Alpha of Creemore and his trusted second, Harry. And it was hard not to remember another kitchen—this one in flames—and another time when my twin was carried away from me. But this time, in this homey kitchen, when everything had given over to ruin—through the destructive flames of home truths and broken loyalties—our gazes held.
Betrayer, his said.
A little part of me turned to stone. I crawled away from Cordelia’s embrace and kept going until I hit the corner. There I crouched, a hand pressed against Merry. She wrapped a tendril of ivy around my thumb as doors were shut, locks were turned, and my brother’s cries were finally silenced.
* * *
By the time Alpha and crew came upstairs, I felt leaden. I rocked on my heels, staring at the blister, now fat and yellow, on the web between my finger and my thumb.
Ugly.
Trowbridge came to me directly. No detours, no pausing to judge the relative dangers of the kill zone. The Alpha of Creemore sank onto his heels, his knees bracketing mine. We were so close I could have counted the lines radiating from his solemn eyes, if I’d had the time or a piece of paper to tally up the numbers.
He’d buried the loneliness. There wasn’t any whiff of it in his gaze.
But he hadn’t figured out how to hide his bone-deep fatigue.
It aged him.
I’ll never catch up to him. I don’t even want to anymore.
“Are you all right?” His scent spoke to my Were. Told her that his protective urges were hanging on to control by a very thin thread.
A regretful thump of a tail, low by my spine.
“I hate this kitchen,” I muttered. “It smells of death like the rest of the house.”
“This is your home.” His voice was a low rumble. Lids lowered, gaze fixed on my twisting hands. “I’ll have them scour it from top to bottom and put flowers in every room. It will be cleaned before the sun goes down.”
“I don’t think Lexi knows where the Safe Passage is.” Trowbridge visibly tensed as I tested the edges of my blister with my nail. “If that’s why you didn’t shoot him.”
So fragile, I felt. Poised on the edge of either violence or another meltdown.
Let it be violence. Don’t let me cry in front of them again.
“Can I see your hand?” he asked, choosing to ignore the Lexi reference.
“No,” I said flatly. He had a little piece of something green caught in his beard. Was it a bit of Merenwynian fern? I focused on it—not on the slope of his hard shoulder peeking through the dreads or the way the denim stretched over his thighs or the fact that a tiny smear of my brother’s blood was glistening on top of his arm hairs, right by his elbow.
Cordelia cleared her throat in a meaningful way. Then I heard Harry say, “We’ve got some cleanup to organize. Biggs, bring the girl.”
“Are you serious?” he whined.
“I could neuter you with one twist of my wrist, you featherbrained Chihuahua,” said Cordelia.
I heard Biggs sigh and then we were alone.
Trowbridge hadn’t moved a muscle during all this and I found myself thinking that he must be a good hunter. Able to pick his prey and wait for the right moment to pounce.
Don’t pounce. I’m not prey.
He waited for a beat and then said tersely, “You’ve got to stop messing with that blister. It’s driving me crazy to watch you hurt yourself.”
Don’t do that, Trowbridge—don’t get all tender with me—I’m not ready.
I folded my arms—awkwardly, s
ince a blistered mitt is resistant to being tucked under an elbow. It sent prickles of pain messages.
He stared at my pose for a moment or two, decided not to go for the challenge, then let out some anxiety by blowing a stream of air through his teeth. “I knew Lexi didn’t know the location of the Safe Passage,” he said heavily. “If Lexi had known its location, he would have used it himself so that he could have avoided the Black Mage and collected the bounty for the Royal Amulet. I knew that, Hedi.” The general shape of his mouth got lost in his thick beard as he scowled.
Not a good look for you, Trowbridge.
“There really is a mother of a reward for the person who returns that pendant to the King of the Court,” he said. “But your brother ran for the fairy pond, which meant he had to be bringing it back to the Black Mage.”
“Ralph’s a person, not a pendant or an ‘it,’” I corrected darkly. Though His Nastiness sure looked like some sort of quasi-Celtic piece of flummery, resting placidly on Trowbridge’s manly chest, his stone not sending up one tiny spit of light. Why was that? I needed tongs to handle Ralph in a pissy mood and now he was all cheery blue stone, content and smug. “I don’t know why he’s not throttling you.”
Trowbridge lifted his eyebrows. Tested the emotional climate with an experimental waggle of them. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend?”
Probably more a case of like recognizes like. I mentally shrugged, dismissing the Ralph puzzle. There were more pressing questions to pose than the motivations of an Asrai amulet, and answers that might prove as painful as the blister I couldn’t leave alone. “Once you figured that out, why didn’t you just pull the trigger?”
He stared at my mouth for a moment, either gobsmacked by its lushness, or killing time as he tried to figure out what he should and shouldn’t tell me.