Death smiled and kept his own counsel.
With an hour to go, Silver read in Tom’s scent that even though Dare and her cousin had finally begun traveling, they would not arrive in time. Silver slipped away from Tom’s hovering. Susan would undoubtedly have wanted to hover also, but she had been away from her work too much already. Silver had resorted to ordering her to go.
Silver checked the wind outside for Felicia lingering too close to the den, then started walking. The girl and her pet were not in evidence, though Silver suspected she would be back soon enough to insinuate herself into the group visiting the human who would determine Silver’s sanity. She didn’t know what Felicia was up to, but she did seem to be sincere about helping. Even if that help didn’t balance out the trouble she’d caused in the first place.
Lady damn the girl. No matter her protestations now, she’d trapped Silver using her exact weaknesses. Forget finding something to keep her busy, Felicia needed to roam, somewhere far from Silver. She’d tell Dare that when this was all over. Even the thought of a break from dealing with Felicia and her contradictions and her apologies and her lies and her concealed scent lifted a weight that had been thinning Silver’s voice.
But all this was stalling, not getting her ready to speak to humans in terms they would understand. If Dare wouldn’t be here in time, she would have to find the memories alone. She would find them. She’d done it before, she’d do it again. She had to believe that.
Silver found an open space, manicured but filled with colorful places for children to climb. She leaned her cheek against the cool line of one structure and thought about the memories that she kept pushed deep, the memories that cut, the memories that burned.
But she couldn’t bring herself to touch them, having looked at their glittering, smoldering surface. This time, she had no momentum, no sense of running, panting, scooping up the memories as fast as she could, or someone would hurt, would die. Today, she had time to think. Think about the pain in store, and your body froze from sheer self-preservation, no matter how you railed at it to keep going. Silver thought about the memories, and couldn’t make herself touch them. What if this time, the pain made her lose herself completely?
“Help me,” she begged, seeking out Death where he lounged under the structure, shadows pooled like comfortable bedding around him.
“You have what you need, Selene. If you do not use it, I cannot use it for you.” Death flicked his ears, dismissing her.
Silver gritted her teeth and closed her eyes, as if sheer effort would help her. She knew it wouldn’t, that fighting such paralysis with strength would lock her metaphorical muscles even more deeply, but she didn’t know what else to do.
“Roanoke?” A new voice. Silver’s eyes popped open.
Portland’s sister ducked her head, diffident, but curiosity shone through in the rest of her body. She must have found Silver’s trail before reaching the den, because everyone there knew Silver wanted privacy and would have warned her away.
Silver laughed, jagged. “This is an extremely bad time. Why are you even still here?” She’d hoped that with her ignoring them the past several days, Portland and her beta would have returned home, but everyone seemed determined to linger in her home territory until matters were settled. Silver had known that she’d have to keep nudging the various sub-alphas along the path to calming down, but Craig still acted as if her decision would change.
Eliza opened her mouth but was unable to find her voice for several moments. “I’m sorry. I wanted a chance to speak to you privately, but I can come back at a different time—”
“Speak to me about living your sister’s life for her?” Silver knew that was too harsh, even before Death laughed. She tightened her hand around the structure she leaned against and reminded herself of Dare’s words. Listen to them whine. “I know you’re only concerned for her. But perhaps the trouble is that I don’t understand why.”
At first, Silver thought her initial answer would keep Eliza from speaking, but the woman’s voice bubbled up soon enough, offered an outlet. “It’s not just about during the pregnancy.” She gestured more widely as she warmed to her subject. “It’s the fact that the father’s not her mate, and she doesn’t seem to want him to be. I hoped when she finally made it to alpha, she’d settle down and stop chasing around, but now she’s bringing a child into that…”
“With a whole pack to raise it,” Silver countered softly, but something about how Eliza said it, so exasperated, sparked a connection.
Ares had said that to her once: “Lady, Selene. Don’t you ever want to settle down? I’m all for finding the right person, but you can hold out too long, you know.”
And Silver—Selene—had said … Silver seized the trail the conversation laid into the core of her memories. Nose down, and follow. Don’t think of the pain.
She’d thrown her arms around her brother’s neck from behind, hanging her weight from his shoulders, because it annoyed him. “You’re right, I’m so incredibly ancient, I’d better settle right away.” She jerked on her hands, but he refused to be unbalanced. “I have family. I have a pack. I’ll have a mate when I’m ready.”
He sighed, and she loosened her grip and swung around to see his face. Warm blue eyes, just a hint of a beard—
—stained with blood from the cut above his eyebrow, not flowing now, because he was dead, too much poison in his veins, one of the last to be injected, should have been strongest as the alpha, but Selene was the one left, the one alive, alive to smell the blood and the silver and the death.
“Ares,” Selene whispered. Ares had a mate, Ares had children. A mate who was dead, children who were dead. Selene didn’t know how long she’d last this time as herself, whether she’d make it through the psychologist’s appointment, but all that time she’d hold her nephew and niece close, even as they choked her with the blood they bled in dying.
“I can’t be late,” she told Eliza and strode away without further explanation. She and Ares had come to this playground as children, though it had been just a swing set and a slide then, not this grand castle of brightly colored plastic and pipes. Running in the woods was more fun, but they had to learn to pass as human children at school, so they came here and practiced. That memory cut less, let her mind keep moving as she jogged back to the house.
* * *
Felicia frowned at her phone and switched back and forth between the weather report for Anchorage and the airline’s flight-status page. It was summer, for crying out loud. Her father shouldn’t be getting delayed by storms. It said he was in the air now, but no matter how many times she redid the math in her head, he wouldn’t arrive in time for Silver’s appointment. She thought they should cancel—what did it matter, anyway? Things came up. But Silver had seemed pretty sure the longer she waited, the harder acting sane would be. It was up to her and Susan, not Felicia.
Felicia returned the phone to the default clock. She’d need to make an excuse to be at the house again soon. If her father wasn’t going to be home, she definitely wanted to go along and do whatever she could to help, even if that wasn’t much. She’d parked Tom’s truck about a block away this time, but that was a bit far to see people coming out of the house and then show up before they’d already gotten into the car.
She opened the canopy and climbed out, with the gate still up to keep Morsel inside. The first person she saw was Enrique, stalking toward the truck from deeper within the neighborhood. He moved as though he was halfway to shifting through pure anger, graceless on two legs. What now?
He clumped to a stop with his feet braced like he planned to start yelling at her, but then he ran shaking fingers through his hair and said nothing. Felicia pressed her lips together and waited for him to wrestle himself under control to speak. “Madrid is … not happy. I reported what’s happened, and he seems to think you’ve been laying me false trails.”
Felicia winced, even just imagining what that conversation must have been like. Madrid could flay yo
u so quietly, so softly, just with words. Of course he’d see through her. Lady damn it. She’d begun to hope things might actually work out. “Why in the Lady’s name would I do that? You could get me kicked out of my pack in an instant.”
Enrique slashed an arm, though there was no whip in his hand. “Because you think you’re so smart. Think you can control anyone, like your father. Well, that ends now.” His lip lifted, but he didn’t voice the snarl. “When is Silver’s appointment?”
Felicia pressed her lips together, tight. Now she regretted having told him about the appointment, but when they’d last spoken, it had seemed a good way to reassure him matters were progressing, so he didn’t need to interfere. “The appointment time is none of your business. Besides, my father’s not going to make it, so they might cancel it anyway.”
“No.” Enrique grabbed at Felicia’s free wrist. He squeezed tight enough to hurt. “You’re going to make sure they go forward. You’ll go along and do something to set her off again, make sure she’s absolutely raving for the psychologist.”
Like the tipping point into wolf after a long, hard new moon struggle to shift, seeing Enrique’s selfishness triggered something in Felicia. No. Too much. She’d played along with this for fear of Enrique’s threat for too long. She was already barred from the house anyway. Better to be kicked out of the pack completely and know she’d kept some honor. She wasn’t going to hurt Silver.
Any more than she already had.
“I don’t have to do a Lady-damned thing!” She tore her wrist away from his grip. “In fact, I’m going to do everything I can to help Silver get through this.”
Enrique snarled audibly this time. “So you’re ready for them to find out about how you’ve been loyal to Madrid all along?”
Felicia pushed forward into Enrique’s face. “I’d rather be kicked out of Roanoke than live in Madrid, Enrique. The lowest member of Roanoke has a hundred times the honor of Madrid himself, and you can’t make me work against them any longer. Madrid disgusts me, and now you’re modeling yourself on him, you disgust me too.”
Only worry about her voice carrying to the house kept Felicia from shouting by the end. Enrique stared at her, incomprehension in his face. Felicia tipped her chin up and showed him her teeth in a sharp smile. “So show the pack your clever forgeries. Tell them how I lied for you, how I let you get information out of me. Those were my mistakes, I’ll own it. But you can crawl back to Madrid with nothing to show him all on your own.”
Enrique reached for her, she could see in his face he planned to shake her savagely, but Felicia didn’t let him. She stepped back and knocked away his hands each time he touched her. Bruises rose and faded on both their arms.
Enrique finally jerked away, panting. “Your honor is worth less than a whisper in the void. Let North America keep you, and may they enjoy you.” He stalked away into the neighborhood, leaving Felicia shaking.
Thoughts of what might happen now tried to crowd into her mind, but Felicia didn’t let them. First, she needed to make sure Silver got through this. Then she’d worry about herself.
19
Selene turned a corner onto their street and saw Felicia and the young man of a roamer—Enrique—parting as if after a scuffle, Felicia for the pack house, Enrique in Selene’s approximate direction. He saw her before she could think of detouring to avoid him. He smiled, still too oily to be handsome, but the stink of rage hovered around him. He overbowed, extravagant respect wobbling on the edge of mocking. “Roanoke. I hear your mate’s daughter arranged you some difficulties. I hope they are quickly resolved.” He emphasized “arranged” viciously.
Chile, he’d said. That popped into Selene’s mind out of nowhere, drawing a new, sharp meaning with it. She remembered Chile, or at least South American countries in general. The accent there was different from that in Mexico or Puerto Rico.
Or Madrid.
Selene had heard that accent before, or Silver had. In several voices, in fact: Madrid and his beta when they arrived to cause trouble three years ago, and in Felicia herself when she got angry or upset. She’d not call herself an expert, but she was familiar enough to recognize it now. Silver could have too, if not for the fact that Chile and Madrid both were so far outside the web of people she mapped her conception of the world onto. Far was far, and why distinguish direction?
If Enrique was from Madrid, why was he here? Selene mentally cursed herself for missing it before and continued the cursing when she realized she’d gone too long without answering.
“Nothing for you to worry about,” she told Enrique, smiling to show her teeth. She strode off without another glance at him.
No time, no time to figure out what Enrique’s plans here might be, whether he was involved with Felicia leading her into that human’s house. Selene tried to follow even a simple trail of conclusions leading away from her realization and lost it at the first turn. She didn’t have the mental strength to do that, and hold on to herself, and hold the memories back, and remember what her story should be for the humans. It would have to wait, she had no choice.
As if to prove her point, thoughts of Enrique’s plans brought with them more painful connections. Selene’s foot caught on her next step and she stumbled. Enrique couldn’t catch this pack off guard the way that monster had, wouldn’t even get the chance to torture them the way the other had. But the blood filled her mind anyway.
She made it as far as the car and panted there, palm against the metal, holding back sobs. Sun had warmed the metal, but it was still a grounded sensation, smooth and hard and slightly dusty.
“Silver?” Tom’s voice nearly squeaked with his worry as he hurried over from the house. He started to nudge her aside and open her door for her, and Selene smacked him back and opened it herself. She needed that. Door handle, lock, mechanism she could hear lifting the latch. Details of this world.
“I’m going to have to talk enough when we get there,” Selene said and punched the radio on the moment he climbed in and inserted the key. She tried to make her voice kind, but she had not enough of that for herself at the moment, none for anyone else. The words on the radio helped her focus: Middle East, mortgage, Internet, Congress. Concepts to wrap her mind around and hold on.
The back door opened and Felicia climbed in silently, slamming it after her. Tom, already twisted in his seat to back up the car, frowned at her. Selene growled until his attention switched back to the road and he pulled them out. “Let her come.” When later came, she wanted Felicia very close, to explain what in the Lady’s name was going on.
Felicia swallowed audibly. Perhaps Selene’s tone worried her. Selene listened to the radio and decided that suited her purposes just fine.
In the psychologist’s office, robbed of the radio, Selene tried to focus on details of her surroundings, but the building made it hard. They parked below the high-rise, floor numbers in cheerful colors doing little to distinguish row upon row of concrete columns and low, claustrophobic ceilings. The office itself had glass doors and waiting chairs of curved light wood and neutral upholstery. The prints on the walls showed soothing brushstrokes too soft for Selene to find a grip on. One was splashed with red, so she sat as far from it as possible after speaking to the receptionist.
Felicia sat on one side of her, in the next chair in an attached row, too close for what Selene would have predicted human comfort to be. Tom sat on the other side, separated by an end table covered with magazines. He and Felicia eyed each other across Selene, he suspiciously and she balefully. Selene desperately wanted to leave them behind and pace, but she suspected that a patient pacing the waiting room was the kind of thing psychologists took note of.
She snatched up a magazine with enough violence to crinkle the back page and read about celebrities entering rehab or hiding possible pregnancies. Names, names, none of them that mattered. Those worked much better than the stupid art to concentrate on.
And then they called her. Selene sat for a moment, gathering herself. Norma
l. Be normal. Forget the blood, forget her brother, forget the one who’d killed her pack. She was Selene, a normal human whose boyfriend’s daughter had played a nasty trick on her. She left the others and walked into the hallway to the individual offices.
“Welcome. Selene Powell? I’m Dr. Doyle.” The psychologist came forward with his hand outstretched to shake as she entered his office. He was African American, but otherwise looked nothing like Boston, leaner faced and much more solemn. Still, something in the timbre of his voice reminded her of the Were. She clung to that. Talking to Boston was nothing to fear.
Dr. Doyle gestured for her to take a seat on a couch opposite a chair. It had several pillows, but they weren’t placed with the precision decorative ones usually were. They looked slightly smushed and bowed in places, like people actually used them. Boxes of tissues stood on tables at both ends of the couch, their sheets pulled tall, crisp, and inviting. Selene glanced at the art, a couple of shore landscapes, and then away. She should keep her attention on the psychologist.
Better to hurry things along. She didn’t want to lose the battle of endurance, if this became one. “I’m not crazy,” she told him. “I know I was stressed out, and I have the stupid memory thing—” She wiggled her fingers near her temple. “But it’s not really that bad. I knew what I was doing, I just didn’t realize my boyfriend’s daughter didn’t know those people—”
The psychologist nodded, expression neutral. Selene imagined him smiling as Boston would have, but it didn’t help. “Don’t worry, that’s what we’ll figure out. Ms. Terrell shared some information with me, but can you tell me your side of the incident?”
Selene nodded. She was ready for this, at least. She’d thought over how to explain it. “My boyfriend’s daughter—Felicia—is eighteen, and her father told her to get a job or go to school, we’d even help her with the cost. But he had to leave on a business trip to Alaska, no cell reception. It seemed like she was working on it, filling out job applications. But now there’s some new boy she’s chasing and suddenly she’s disrespectful all the time. We fought, and she stomped out.”
Reflected Page 22