That was much, much more than Felicia wanted to deal with right now, though. Right now, she wanted to find somewhere to park, eat dinner, watch her movie on her laptop before the battery ran out, and then maybe try to sleep.
She found a grocery store with plenty of empty spaces, parked at the edge, and came around to the truck’s canopy-covered bed to stretch out while she ate. The temperature outside was on the chilly side of pleasant as the breeze gained ground after dark, but the enclosed space was still stuffy from trapped sun’s heat. She slid a side window open wide enough for air but too narrow for a cat.
She opened the cat’s box, but it hid for a while before creeping out. It scuffled around in its litter and then came over to sniff Felicia’s knee. She eyed it. “You better not want to walk on me with those paws now.”
It curled into a circle, apparently ignoring her. When she finished eating, she stroked the fur of its flank as she would someone in wolf. It purred. Felicia supposed that was all right, then.
Enrique texted about ten minutes into the movie. Felicia stared at the words until her phone got bored and the screen went dark. He’d found a location, and he wanted to know when she could meet him there. She hadn’t expected he’d find a place so soon.
She shook herself. She had a good reason now that she couldn’t go through with the plan, she reminded herself. She texted him the location of the lot and told him to meet there instead. Better to tell him in person.
A rental car pulled up beside her truck twenty minutes later. Felicia’s lips thinned as she bundled the cat back into its box. She didn’t want it streaking off for freedom when she opened the tailgate. Then some predator really might eat it. She didn’t have Tom’s finesse, so she got half a dozen scratches for her trouble.
Felicia opened the tailgate and sat on it in the darkness, feet dangling, and waited for Enrique to come to her. The light here was an odd meeting of contrasts, a wash of orange from the light over the adjoining street, and a stronger wash of blue from the parking lot’s light. Both threw Enrique’s frown into relief as he strode over. Felicia avoided his eyes by licking away the residual blood from her healed scratches.
“What now?” He set his hand flat on the gate and leaned into the bed to look inside. Maybe he expected another Were, but the only thing there was the box jerking with the movements of the unseen cat. He straightened and raised his eyebrows at her for the blood. “Why are you here?”
Felicia shrugged, then winced when the cat lunged so violently the box tipped over. “It’s some stray that made the mistake of crossing our yard. The kids were tormenting it, so I took it with me. It’s kind of cute, in a dumb way.”
Enrique eyed her but seemed to accept that. He waited, letting silence reiterate his question.
“I fucked up.” Felicia kept her head down and tried to look panicked about him showing the e-mails to her pack because of her mistake. She was worried about that, and hopefully the perfume should cover anything else. “Silver was just … stepping on my tail again, so I mouthed off, and now she’s kicked me out of the house.”
Rather than a frustrated growl or cursing, Felicia got more silence. She lifted her head to check his reaction. He was smiling. He gave an explosive “ha!” of satisfaction and thumped his hands on the gate on either side of her knees. “It’s perfect! You’re a genius.”
Felicia stared at him. She … what? She’d expected anger, hoped that he wouldn’t be smart enough to realize she’d done it on purpose, but … celebration? “I am?”
“Of course. If you wanted to step outside the normal daily routine to take Silver somewhere unusual alone, you’d have to come up with a plausible reason. But now, if you call and arrange to meet somewhere to apologize, she won’t think twice about coming alone if you ask. I found a place and watched what time the owner came home. You can arrange to have Silver arrive around that time tomorrow to be found.” Enrique grinned at her.
Felicia took a deep breath so she didn’t scream. Lady, she tried to fix things and just made them worse. What now?
Enrique climbed up to sit on the gate beside her. “Stop moping. If you’re so set on staying here, you can go back to the pack house in the chaos after we succeed and no one will even notice.”
Felicia made a noise of agreement to make it seem like she was actually paying attention. She could break with him now, let him do his worst and show the e-mails to the pack. Maybe her father would believe her side when he got back. And maybe he’d be able to convince everyone else.
Or maybe she’d get kicked out of the pack for good, or maybe everyone would go around muttering about Europeans behind her back for the rest of her life. Maybe Tom wouldn’t speak to her again. And either way, she’d definitely have hurt Silver, and hurt her father by doing it. Felicia finally realized that to her, hurting Silver was bad enough. Silver had been kind to her, kind when she’d been defiant and scared and hardly trusted even her father.
Felicia yanked herself out of all the maybes. Silver hadn’t said she couldn’t be sane for a while again, just that it would be difficult and risky. Even if she was just her normal self, how bad could she really be? Humans acted plenty crazy all the time and didn’t get themselves locked up in institutions. And with the financial support of all of Roanoke behind him, it wasn’t like her father couldn’t hire the very best lawyers. How serious was trespassing, anyway? It wasn’t like framing Silver for murder.
“I’m sure it will all work out, and then you can go home the victorious alpha,” Felicia said, throttling down her irony until it escaped near the end.
Enrique laughed, her sharpness rolling off him. “I want to move up in the pack, like every Were.” He looked up into the soft overcast of the sky, lit at the horizon by the city’s light pollution. “Madrid will see I’m the one to help lead us out of this mess.”
Felicia looked up at the sky too. Lady damn Enrique anyway, but she found she still wanted to understand somehow, even though she knew that was stupid. “Why do you care what Madrid thinks? If it’s so bad at home, why even go back?”
Enrique looked over at her in surprise, ran fingers through his black locks while he found words. “Because Madrid’s my alpha.”
Felicia turned sideways and tucked one leg up so she was facing Enrique. “But he sent you here, at no small risk. If Papa got home unexpectedly, or anyone else figured out who you were, or if I’d turned you in, you’d have gotten a hell of a beating.” She lifted a hand to forestall Enrique. “And I know it’s an alpha’s job to risk his Were sometimes, but for what? For petty revenge? What does it matter what North Americans are doing when, as you say, Madrid’s fight is at home? He’s using his position to make you do things for his own selfish goals.”
Enrique’s stubborn expression made Felicia want to snap her teeth at him. She bet he hadn’t processed a single word of that. She’d known that before she said it, and here she’d proved herself right, and she still wanted to punch something.
“Not all of us can leave everything that makes us who we are so easily, Felicia.” Enrique made her name as flat and American as possible, drawing out a sh in the middle.
Felicia did snap her teeth at him then. “I suppose that’s all you’ll ever be, then, Enrique. Spanish.”
Enrique sighed and looked away. “You say like it’s an insult, but it’s not.”
Felicia scooted to sit straight, legs over the edge again. Silence stretched painfully—briefly broken by an experimental yowl from Morsel—until Felicia got so tired she couldn’t sustain the frustration and let the silence become resigned instead.
“I do care about you, Felicia.” Enrique looked away as he said it. Maybe he was picturing her as a child with jammy fingers, the same as she did him sometimes. A shame those memories hadn’t stopped him from blackmailing her in the first place.
Felicia couldn’t muster her earlier anger this time. Everything was too snarled and fucked up. “Shut up.” She sent a brief prayer to the Lady that she’d made the right decision i
n not breaking with Enrique. Now she needed privacy to plot new ways to sabotage the plan. She thought hard about how tired she was, and a yawn came almost naturally. “Go on, get out.” She shoved Enrique’s shoulder until he jumped off the gate.
“My hotel’s only about ten minutes away. You should follow me back.” Enrique pointed in the vague direction of the highway.
“Oh, I didn’t know him until he showed up the other day, but now I’m staying in his room.” Felicia made her voice singsong for the imaginary conversation. She glared at Enrique and went back to her normal tone. “They’ll totally believe that. Besides, hotels don’t take cats.”
Enrique leaned in to pointedly sniff the side of the truck, though of course he must have gotten a good idea of the scent when inside. “So you’d rather sleep in your boyfriend’s truck? I suppose that makes sense. Is your boyfriend going to be joining you?”
Felicia bit back a correction about Tom not being her boyfriend, but only barely. Enrique was baiting her, but he knew enough to bait effectively. “I refuse to believe you’re worried about competition.”
Enrique snorted. “Maybe if I could seduce you, you’d come to your senses and come home, but no. You’re too damn … infuriating, same as you were as a child.”
Felicia kicked out, missing him by a mile. She smiled, though it felt hollow underneath. It would be nice to fall into this teasing again, but she knew better.
“Is he the reason you’re so loyal to North America?” Enrique was abruptly serious. When Felicia frowned at him, he slapped the side of the truck to make it clear he meant Tom. “First love is all very nice and all, but you can’t be a puppy about it.”
Felicia opened her mouth for the automatic denial of that too but stopped for a different reason. Did she love Tom? She’d put her emotions aside after their earlier conversation, but now she couldn’t avoid them. She didn’t know. Was she too young to know?
But that was still not something she could deal with right now. She wouldn’t have anything at all with Tom if Silver was arrested or she was kicked out of the pack completely. She pointed. “Go,” she ordered Enrique. He held up his hands, grinning, and went.
When his car turned out of the parking lot, Felicia shut herself up under the canopy again and got Morsel out. She hugged the cat, tight, until it stopped squirming and relaxed. Felicia waited, and eventually Morsel went back to sleep. The twitch of an ear here and there brushed its ear feathers against Felicia’s skin and tickled. She imagined curling up with Tom instead.
Then Felicia put him out of her mind and concentrated on what she had to do to make sure Silver stayed safe. One step at a time.
16
Felicia walked by the house Enrique had chosen several times as the afternoon mellowed into evening, fingering the cheap winter gloves in the pocket of her windbreaker. She’d had to get them at a thrift store this morning since none of the regular stores stocked them in the summer. Used things always smelled so weird. She didn’t plan to get far enough to use them, but if things kept going wrong, she didn’t want the police using her fingerprints to catch her.
When she turned the last corner, she could see Enrique’s car. He sat inside, apparently texting but really keeping an eye on things. This circuit, he looked up and nodded encouragingly. Felicia squashed an impulse to snarl at him and kept up her meander. She’d laid a childishly easy trail to here from Silver’s favorite park, and Enrique had timed her for that, but he had only the estimate she’d given him of the time from pack house to park. She hadn’t been able to underestimate much without it seeming outlandish, but if traffic was good, maybe the owner of this house would arrive before Silver. Especially if—Felicia didn’t look at her phone clock, because Enrique would notice—she kept stalling and didn’t call Silver until too late.
Enrique started his engine, pulled alongside her, and rolled down the passenger window. “You better call her now if we want her here in time for the owner to walk in on her.” He leaned to see her better, hand on the shoulder of the passenger seat.
Felicia took her out phone, but paused when he didn’t keep driving. “You’ll get your scent all over the trail and she’ll know something’s up.” She made shooing motions while she tried not to panic internally. Plan J or K or whatever Lady-damned letter she was up to by now was to fake a call and half a conversation, after which she’d claim Silver hadn’t been home, but if Enrique was right there, he’d be able to hear the other half of the conversation perfectly well.
“I’m in the car. And your perfume covers everything.” Enrique raised his eyebrows at her. Felicia could read his implications: if she was worried about him hanging around, she should make the call faster. He lowered his voice and switched to Spanish. “Or I could call for you. Remind everyone about the European in their midst and everything she’s been helping me plan.”
Felicia swallowed her snarl and called Tom’s cell rather than the house phone. Maybe he’d be annoyed with her and wouldn’t answer. Or maybe he would refuse to let her talk to Silver. Felicia didn’t think either was very likely, but she was snapping her teeth at guard hairs at this point.
He answered after two rings. “Are you all right?”
Felicia clenched her jaw to avoid blurting out an honest answer to his question. Enrique watched her from the car, expression neutral now. “I’m fine. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking today, though. Can I talk to Silver? I want to apologize to her properly.”
She held her breath in pathetic hope, but after a pause, she heard him relaying that to Silver, tinny at the edge of the phone microphone’s pickup. Then the phone conveyed noises from bumps and jostles as it transferred hands.
“Felicia?” Silver always sounded confused on the phone, like she was on the other end peering into corners to find someone who wasn’t there.
“Roanoke.” Felicia closed her eyes. Lady forgive her. “I need to apologize. What I said was … well. But I hoped maybe we could talk in person? I’m not asking permission to come back to the house, but if you follow my trail from that park you like, you’ll find where I’m staying. I know I don’t really deserve the consideration, but it’s so hard to speak at a distance like this…”
“True enough.” Silver was silent for a few moments, then: “I’ll meet you there.”
Felicia hung up before Tom could come back on the line and held the phone to her chest for a few moments, cursing mentally. Why couldn’t something go wrong now that it would help her? She gave Enrique a sharp nod and he pulled away, going back to his earlier station with a good view of the house.
Time to let herself in, since she couldn’t think of a way out of that either with him watching. Felicia strolled up the curving driveway of their target house like she had every reason to be there. At the garage, she ducked along the side of the building, shaded by several tall evergreens that took up the space to the property line. She paused to pull on her gloves and then tugged the yard waste bin over to provide a step up to the roof. The gutter creaked worryingly when it took her weight, but she pulled herself up quickly and it didn’t break.
The house had two levels of pitch, one shallow before the second-floor windows, and one steeper above that. Felicia inched along the pitch toward a window that had been left half open to allow air flow in the summer warmth. This was the dangerous part, as the evergreens on the property would disguise her from most angles, but not straight on. Anyone walking along the sidewalk or driving past and pausing at the driveway would see her. Getting arrested herself might defeat the plan to ensnare Silver, but Felicia didn’t think she could talk her way out of breaking and entering the same way Silver might be able to talk her way out of wandering in.
Fortunately, the neighborhood was quiet, most people still at work, and Felicia worked quickly. She slit the screen with her pocket knife and took hold of the window. She’d worried about having to snap a lock with werewolf strength and the noise that would make, but the window slid smoothly up. She supposed they didn’t think that would-be bur
glars would bother climbing up here.
She climbed in, closed the window to its earlier position, and finally allowed herself to breathe. The room looked like a home office: a plush ergonomic chair stood in front of a desk that took up most of one wall and held the computer and printer and assorted mess. The rest of the space was filled with houseplants, tall in pots or short on tables, like a minijungle.
Felicia slipped between them without touching a leaf, conscious of not disturbing these poor people’s lives more than necessary as well as giving them nothing else to accuse Silver of. And leaving no evidence of herself for the police to find.
Downstairs, she dodged a few more scattered plants and studied the front door. Just a dead bolt, nothing she could pull closed while Enrique watched and have it lock without the key. Lady damn it. Felicia’s voice was twisted up tight in her throat. She didn’t want to linger in the house any longer than she had to, certainly not long enough to come up with another idea.
She unlocked the dead bolt and let herself out, once again like she had every right to be here. So far, no one seemed to have noticed, though of course someone could have seen her climbing around and called the police and they just hadn’t gotten close enough for her to hear the sirens yet.
At the bottom of the driveway, she took out her perfume bottle and gave a good spritz in the direction of her ankles, as Enrique was undoubtedly watching for her to do. There would be two paths for Silver to find, one leading her to the side of the garage, so Enrique had wanted to be very sure that the one he needed Silver to take stank so much there was no question of following the other.
She walked reluctantly up to the house, stepped inside, and then let herself out for a last time, walking precisely over her trail. Coming or going, it didn’t matter, now the scent was double strength.
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