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, whom 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.”
“Mrs. O didn’t say anything?�
�
“He might not have told her.” I didn’t know them well enough to guess at the dynamic of their relationship. “Some guys get off on protecting their loved ones by not telling them when they’re in danger.”
“It goes both ways. You do realize that, right?” He checked his mirrors and adjusted them for the tenth time since we got in Tallulah. The man was twitchy about his mirrors. “Women are just as bad as men at hiding things they don’t think their man will understand.”
“Yes.” I grinned at him. “But we do it for your own good.”
Zed grunted and put the truck in reverse.
Neither of us had much to say after that, so we let the radio fill the companionable silence in the cab. Our first stop was the hardware store. I grabbed the extension cord and a box of nails. Zed escorted me out when I began salivating over a cordless circular saw I couldn’t afford. Once I regained my senses, we locked those purchases in the cab of his truck then hit the grocery store. I froze with a red plastic basket slung over my arm. Aisle after aisle had been decimated.
A shrill whistle eased past his lips. “People up here sure take their storm preparation seriously.”
“Butler doesn’t have enough people to buy out a store this fast.” Okay, we did, but they would have had to all rush through with full carts since the last grocery run two days earlier. “No Pop-Tarts. No chips. No cereal. No milk.”
“The Cheerios are still here. The granola is too. Just none of the sugary stuff.” Hangdog expression in place, he patted an empty space where the Cocoa Puffs should be. “It’s like a bunch of toddlers went on a shopping spree.”
Carnivorous predators or not, Wargs ate like teenagers who couldn’t remember the last time they’d tasted food. High metabolisms were all that saved our species from becoming as round as the Oreo cookies the pack loved so much.
“This should make breakfast interesting.” I plucked a round tin off the shelf. “At least there’s coffee.”
“Evening, folks.” An elderly man slimmer than Zed ambled over to us. He wore the bright red apron with a white name tag that identified him as one of the owners. Thankfully not the same one who offered discounts in exchange for phone numbers. “Pickins’ are slim until the truck comes through Friday.” A single white nose hair tickled his upper lip, and the urge to pluck it almost overwhelmed me. “We got robbed last night. Cleaned us out of most all the dry goods.”
“Robbed?” That snapped my attention to his eyes.
“Damn strange too.” He pinched his nostrils together, the tickle of that single hair bothering him. “My wife found a note taped to the front door. I thought it might be an apology. We had that happen once. A drifter passed through, stole a few staples and left an IOU with a promise to pay us back when he could.”
An anxious twitch started in my fingers, as if I could manually lift the message from his memory. “What did the note say?”
“That was the odd part.” He huffed out a laugh, sending the nostril streamer flying. “It said ‘out of beef.’ None of the other meats are missing as far as I can tell, and we had plenty of chicken and fish in stock. Not that it matters. It’s all ruined.”
“Let me guess.” I angled my head toward the rear of the store, scenting the air without being obvious about it. “Lightning ran in and fried your cooler?”
“Well, yes.” He rubbed a finger over his upper lip. “How’d you guess?”
“We have to go.” I hooked Zed’s elbow and hauled him toward the front door.
“Miss?” The gentleman cleared his throat. “It’ll be eight dollars and ninety-nine cents if you want that coffee.”
A flush spread over my cheeks until they burned.
Zed whipped out his wallet and withdrew a ten-dollar bill. “Keep the change.”
“Thanks.” I cradled the coffee to my chest. “We need to get back to that field.”
“Whoa.” He caught me by the back of my shirt and pulled me up short. “Is that smart?”
“The fewer people who go, the fewer casualties we risk.” It would be a long night for the residents of Butler if the pack was incapacitated and fae infiltrated the town. “We have Isaac’s bracelets. He’s tracking us as we speak. He won’t be able to help himself. He’ll want to know his new toys work.”
“Wait here.” He jogged back inside the store and reemerged a few minutes later with a plastic bag in hand. “Okay. Now we can go.”
“What’s in there?” I poked it with my finger.
He passed it to me to hold. “Earplugs.”
“Ah.” I followed him to the truck. “See? What would I do without you, gamma dearest?”
“Please don’t call me that.” He visibly shuddered. “It makes me sound like I ought to be wearing pearls so I can clutch them when you get mouthy.”
Chuckling at the visual of a big, bad wolf like Zed playing someone’s grandmother, I hopped into the truck. Zed joined me, and we set out for the field.
Getting from point A to point B in Butler never took long, and this trip was no exception. Zed parked, and we exited the truck. So far, so good. A gentle wind stirred the grasses, and we exchanged a look.
“First sign of trouble, we get out of there.” I waded in, the heels of my boots sinking into the soft ground. “We need to get out of sight and shift.”
“Should we both shift?” He kept pace beside me. “The truck is the fastest way home if this blows up in our faces, and I don’t know about you, but I can’t reach the pedals with my paws.”
“The fae attacked your wolf. I vote you stay human.” I hesitated in front of the barbed-wire fencing. “The one thing I do remember is my wolf saving my bacon. She had more immunity than me. She’s the best candidate for this scouting trip.”
“The first time might have been a fluke. Luck might not be on your side twice.”
“I have to try.” I ducked through the wire, careful not to let the sharpened points tear my clothes. “Two lives are at stake.” Assuming we were very lucky and the fae had kept its victims alive. “Besides, humans may be quick to look the other way, but the blinders will fall off eventually. Two popular restaurants are closed. Who knows how many folks in town have heard Mr. O’Malley and Ms. Zhuang are missing. “Factor in the grocery store robbery, which blows their previous MO to hell, and time is ticking. We have to solve this, and quietly. We can’t risk human law enforcement getting involved.”
“Fine.” He gripped one of the fence posts. “I’ll be here if you need me. One sniff of trouble and I want you to turn tail and run. Got it?”
“Wow. You’re bossy for a guy who hasn’t accepted my proposal yet. Dare I say gamma levels of bossiness?”
I trudged off into the grass before he talked himself out of staying behind. I didn’t bother folding my clothes. Jeans and T-shirts don’t give two figs about being balled up and tossed in a heap. I sat on the ground naked, grass tickling my butt, and let the wolf take me.
Painful moments later, I rose on four legs and trotted back to Zed, who dutifully stuffed my ears with balls of wax warmed in his hand. The wolf balked at her muffled senses, but I held her steady until she comprehended the necessity. That didn’t stop her from prancing around, attempting to shake off the tracker. Not until she hooked her teeth in the leather did she catch a whiff of sautéed electrical wiring and calm.
With both halves of myself in harmony, I began the slow process of stalking my prey. Last time I made the mistake of rambling around, thinking I was alone to hunt. Now I knew better. I walked on soft paws, head down beneath the level of the grass, and picked my way toward the stone cottage. Abandoned or not, it was my best lead.
All the instinctive flicking and pivoting of the wolf’s ears as she strained to catch a thread of sound popped one waxy plug loose, and I had no way to stuff it back in her ear canal. As much as I hated running into any situation half-cocked, it couldn’t be helped now.
No one jumped out of the bushes or zapped me from across the field. No peculiar odors tickled my nose, and no sou
nds set my blood racing. I was on top of the cottage before the prickling sensation lifted the hairs down my spine. This time, I noticed a sleek red bike leaned against the nearest wall. More proof they had made contact with Ms. Zhuang. Not that the connection was in doubt at this point.
Nestled low in the grass, I made myself as small as possible while I waited for the source of my unease to reveal itself to me. A single giggle belonging to a joyful child perked my ears, snatched by the wind, before two hushed voices reached my hiding spot.
“We need more supplies. The wee ones are starving.”
The feminine voice carried a lilting accent I had never heard before, not even among the deserters.
“Town is dangerous,” a young man replied with a rasp. “We must flee while we still can.”
“And go where?” Bitter laughter shattered that first lovely titter. “Where can we go? Home? No. Not there. Never there again.”
“We’re hurting them, Leandra.” A tender note turned his words beautiful. “We swore to be better than this, if the gods gave us the opportunity. We have to—”
A smattering of childish babble cut short their confidences. The chaos peaked quickly, a dozen speakers talking over each other, clapping and joking and squealing.
“Sing,” they chanted merrily. “Sing. Sing. Sing.”
The young man with the tired words chuckled at their antics. “All right. One song is all I have left. You’ll hear it, and then you’ll go to bed. All of you. Agreed?”
“Yes,” they gushed in unison.
The first note in his lullaby unfocused my eyes. The gentle cadence set my mind buzzing, and the tattered edges of the scene blurred at the corners. Sleep teased my eyelids, and my head dipped, my chin hitting my forelegs and sticking there. I was halfway to unconsciousness when the veil of grass in front of my muzzle parted, and a pudgy hand emerged to pet my head.
“Doggy,” a baby cooed. “Doggy. Doggy. Doggy.”
Utter silence followed the child’s pronouncement.
Dog Eat Dog World: Limited Edition Bundle (Black Dog) Page 187