“I’m not interested in your line of work.”
Cy snickered again. The hair stood up on the back of my neck. There was something seriously wrong with the guy, beyond the rampant meth use. I’d known addicts who were good, kind people just looking for a way to escape the shit of their lives. I’d chosen the Brave instead of drugs. Habitual meth user or not, Cy was not a typical addict.
“Listen, man,” Beau said, attempting his soothing tone. “We’re just here to see Ettie. She’s in trouble. We’re going to help her.”
Cy narrowed his eyes, all traces of the creepy smile and snicker suddenly wiped from his face. That wasn’t a good sign.
Unfortunately, Beau missed it. He was probably just desperate to get me out of the situation, but instead of stepping away from Cy, he stepped in and past him.
Cy pivoted, seemingly to let us by.
Beau took another step.
Cy closed the space behind us, grabbed my free arm, and yanked me away from Beau. He was slyer than I thought, going for me — the weaker link — rather than his shapeshifter stepson.
I attempted to spin away, to disrupt Cy’s footing, and slip out of his grasp as Beau had taught me. But I wasn’t remotely fast enough.
Pain exploded in my right shoulder as Cy twisted me toward him. I stumbled off the paved front path, twisting my ankle on the edge of the concrete and half-falling onto the grass.
After letting me go so I didn’t get ripped in half, Beau spun, slamming a punch into his stepdad’s gut.
Cy didn’t even grunt. He took the blow while yanking me up between him and Beau, until my right arm was twisted behind me and his other arm fell across my throat in a chokehold.
Beau faltered. His fists were raised and trained on Cy, but even as tiny as I was, I was a pretty effective shield.
Now I just had to figure out what kind of Adept took a punch from a shapeshifter tiger and didn’t even need to shake it off.
Cy snickered. Inbred asshole, indeed.
“Let’s try that conversation again,” Cy said. “I have use for someone of your … attributes, Beau. Come work for me and I won’t tear your bitch’s head off.”
“I don’t do that sort of thing anymore, Cy.” Beau was scared, but trying to hide it.
I never wanted him to hurt in any way connected to me. Yet here we were.
“It ain’t like that now,” Cy said, cajoling.
“Man, you’re a moron,” I said, reaching up to wrap my free left hand around Cy’s bare forearm. My arm-sleeve tattoos were a dark, sleek contrast to his shoddy prison tats. “Not only should you learn to shower, because you reek. But you’re dumb enough to grab and hold a person whose magic you don’t even know.”
Cy cinched his forearm tighter around my neck, momentarily cutting off my ability to insult him further. “Oh, yeah, slit? You think a little itty bitty something like you has anything that can hurt me?”
Black dots swam before my eyes. Blinking them away, I focused on the fear in Beau’s face and how angry that made me.
“Didn’t Beau tell you about me?” Cy whispered, his scummy spittle misting over my ear and neck. “I don’t feel physical pain.”
“Yeah?” I croaked out. “I’m not that kind of Adept.”
I’d never been able to practice what I was about to attempt during my self-defense training sessions with Beau, because apparently I needed to be extremely angry to wield my magic offensively. While Cy had been yammering, I focused on the feeling I got when my oracle magic flooded through my left arm and hand before I needed to sketch. “Feel this, asshole.”
Heat seared between my palm and Cy’s forearm. Mist exploded in my mind’s eye.
I caught a glimpse of something … slats of light across white-painted concrete walls … an overturned table, glass and blood littering a gray concrete floor …
And Cy bleeding from every orifice in his head —
Behind me, he screamed. His hold loosened on my neck. He stumbled away.
Beau yanked me forward. Still sightless, I tripped, tumbling onto my hands and knees in the grass.
Instinctively, I cupped my left hand around my raw diamond. Its magic soothed my tingling palm and the oracle mist faded from my mind. I pivoted on my knees to look past Beau, who was now standing between me and his stepdad.
Cy was still clutching his head and screaming.
“What the hell did you show him?” Beau asked, turning to help me to my feet.
“Something bloody.” I reached for his hand.
Cy darted toward us. He was moving way too quickly for someone whose only talent was feeling no pain.
I shouted, “Beau!”
Cy crashed into Beau, who rolled to the left instead of attempting to block or counter his tackle. Probably in order to not crush me underneath them. Beau tumbled across the lawn away from me.
Cy, barely on his feet himself, went after Beau, kicking him over and over again in the chest and head. He was salivating and shrieking incomprehensible obscenities.
Beau curled into a fetal position to protect himself as I scrambled to my feet.
A neighbor across the street glanced out her front door. Then, apparently completely pissed and totally unconcerned, she ducked back inside with a slam. What the fuck?
Cy stumbled a few steps away from Beau. His breathing was ragged.
I ran toward them, tripping over the other side of the front walk as I crossed it. My chin smacked into the dead lawn, but I didn’t feel it as I lifted my upper body off the ground, trying to get my feet underneath me again.
Cy did an odd skip, jumped into the air, and slammed his steel-shanked boot down onto Beau’s ankle.
Something nasty snapped.
Beau screamed.
I threw myself between them, sprawling across Beau but facing up and glaring at Cy.
He stepped back from me, trying to get his breathing under control. Blood dripped from the corner of his eye, but as far as I’d seen, Beau hadn’t laid a hand on him.
I sneered at him. “Took the juice out of your buzz, did I?” I raised my hands before me. “Let’s go another round.” Yeah, I was a great poker player. Or I would be if I knew how to play.
Beau tugged me back toward him, attempting to clear me to the side but not wanting to simply toss me there. I could hear him panting in pain, but I had to keep my focus on Cy.
I evaded his grasp, rolling forward into a crouch so I could dig my toes in and spring forward if necessary.
“I’m tired of this shit with you, Beau,” Cy said. “My job offer is legit. You don’t want to be messing with me anymore. For your own safety.”
Beau laughed, a hacking, nasty noise that made me shudder.
Cy pulled out a gun that had been tucked underneath his wifebeater in the small of his back. He wasn’t wearing a belt.
“Real?” I whispered to Beau.
“Real.”
Cy’s silver handgun, a snub-nosed six-shot model, stared me straight in the face.
Like in the movies.
Not a vision. Not a hallucination. Not the time to be observing and gathering clues.
I froze.
Beau froze.
“You’re just going to shoot me here? On your front lawn?” I asked, completely incredulous when I should have been utterly terrified. “With your neighbors watching?”
Cy grinned. “How many reports do you think the police have on you, Beau? How many complaints? And that last time? I filed a restraining order. I guess you didn’t get the notice, being out of state and all.”
“What does that mean? That he can just kill us?” I asked Beau without turning away from Cy.
“Depends on what the neighbors see,” Beau answered. “And what they’re willing to testify to.”
“After we’re already dead, you mean.”
A car door slammed nearby, then someone crossed the street. Their footfalls crunched on dry grass as they stepped off the sidewalk.
Cy and I continued to stare at each other.
The gun leveled at my face still didn’t seem real to me. Stupid, eh? Probably. But after years of suffering what I thought were debilitating hallucinations, maybe it just took more than threats to rattle me.
“Interrupting a cozy family reunion, am I?” Kandy drawled from the direction of the sidewalk.
“None of your business, bitch,” Cy snapped without looking at the green-haired werewolf.
I straightened, raising my eye level closer to that of Cy’s. I’d lost my sunglasses in the tussle. Even though he kept the gun steady, he flinched. It was just a twitch of his face, but I saw it.
Kandy glanced between Cy and me. Then she laughed. A low, rumbling, humorless sound. “But it is my business, asshole. We’re pack.”
Cy glanced over at her for the first time.
Kandy smiled at him. Or, rather, she bared her teeth.
“Werewolf,” Cy snarled.
“Bing, bing! The idiot gets it in one.” Kandy lifted her arms, sunbursts glinting off the gold cuffs on her wrists. Two-inch wolf claws grew out from the tips of her fingers. “I hear the oracle has a nasty touch, but she’s a sweetheart in the depth of it all. How about you and I tangle? Adult to adult.”
“Like you can hurt me, gash.”
“He’s got some kind of invulnerability,” I said. “He doesn’t feel pain.”
“And he’s fast. Too fast,” Beau said. “And unusually strong. Caught me by surprise.”
“Beating you down is old news, Beaumont,” Cy said. “But now I know how to keep you there.” He moved the gun a few inches closer to my face.
“It’s the meth,” I offered, ignoring the shit spewing out of Beau’s stepdad’s mouth.
Kandy tilted her head, regarding Cy like he was a bug. “That’s okay with me. I was never a big fan of simply causing pain.”
“You wouldn’t talk such tough shit if you knew what I was into,” Cy sneered.
Beau snorted.
“I bet I can rip your head off before you blink,” Kandy said, super casual while discussing murdering Cy to his face. “What do you think, Beau?”
We all stared at Cy.
He widened his eyes, attempting to not blink. Consciously or subconsciously.
“Yeah,” Beau drawled. “You’re faster than him. Drugs or no drugs.”
“But where would we hide the body?” I asked.
No one answered me. Which was fine, because it was a weird, creepy question anyway.
“Let’s see you try it with a couple of bullets in you.” Cy swung the gun halfway toward Kandy, then checked himself and trained it back on me.
I understood suddenly that I had seriously weirded him out if he perceived me as the bigger threat. It was probably a bad sign how that pleased me on such a visceral level.
Kandy’s voice was a low growl. “I’m an enforcer of the West Coast North American Pack, bearer of the cuffs of might that were gifted to me by one of the nine most powerful beings in the world. You think bullets can slow me down?”
Cy eyed Kandy, then looked at the gold cuffs. Sunlight danced across the diamonds and the inscriptions decorating the wide bracelets. His face stretched into a pained, vicious grimace. He lowered the gun. “Fuck you,” Cy snarled. “Get off my fucking lawn.”
He turned and walked toward the house.
“Move, Rochelle,” Kandy said brusquely.
I shifted out of her way. Making sure to face the house, she hunkered down by Beau’s broken ankle and prodded it.
He winced. “It’s not so bad.”
“Right,” Kandy grunted. Then she placed one hand on Beau’s foot and the other on his lower leg. Before I could stop her — or even figure out what she was doing — she twisted Beau’s ankle abruptly.
Beau whelped, but he held back the scream I was sure he needed to voice.
“What the hell?” I cried.
“You a doctor now, oracle?” Sarcasm laced Kandy’s pissy tone.
“Are you?”
“Physiotherapist. Plus I’ve been dealing with shapeshifters since the day I was born.”
Well, that effectively shut me up. I gnashed my teeth together and paced, glancing up at the house. I couldn’t see where Cy had gone, so he wasn’t in the living room. But I was certain the confrontation wasn’t over.
Beau tried to catch my eye and smile, but I shook my head at him. I needed my anger if I was going to get through this without melting down. I’d just had a gun, along with a wallop of background information about Beau, metaphorically shoved down my throat.
Kandy prodded Beau’s ankle and foot again.
“Bearer of the cuffs of might?” he asked teasingly.
The werewolf snorted. “The guy’s a moron. I could make up shit all day and he’d eat it. Let’s go. I’ll get you into the RV.”
“It’s okay for him to walk?” I asked.
“Not yet, but I can’t exactly carry him out in the open.”
“Cy was just waving a gun around.”
Kandy shrugged. “Yeah, that’s just regular human garbage. Me carrying Beau would make a bigger splash on YouTube. Then we’d be in real trouble.” She grabbed one of Beau’s arms. “Get on his other side, oracle. I’ll do the lifting, but you can make a show of it. Don’t put any pressure on your ankle, kitten.”
I hunkered down to get Beau’s arm across my shoulder, but Kandy was already lifting him up. I tried to pretend I was holding weight that I actually wasn’t as we shuffled toward the door of the RV.
“That was a quick trip to New Orleans,” Beau said.
“Francois was out of town. His beta met me in Jackson. All is not well with the Gulf Coast North American Pack. They’re investigating the deaths of two of their younger wolves, possible drug overdoses. Which just doesn’t happen. I’m a complication. They want me gone, and quickly.”
Beau grunted. “Happy to oblige.”
We reached the door to the Brave, then awkwardly dragged Beau up the steps. He was suffering in silence, but it was obvious we were causing him more pain in the process.
Once inside, Kandy took over. She stuffed Beau in the far corner of the dinette, then lifted his injured leg at an angle that let him rest his calf on the edge of the opposite bench. I had to be careful not to bump his foot when passing through.
“Painkillers?” I asked Kandy as I opened the door of the bathroom.
The werewolf shook her head. “He’d have to down the bottle to make a difference, even if that was enough. We’ll hit the nearest gas station for ice.” She glanced at Beau.
“Two rights, three lefts,” he said wearily.
Kandy nodded, crossing to the door. “Rochelle, you follow me.” She took a step down out of the Brave, but then paused. “And Beau?”
“Yeah?”
“That wasn’t meth.”
Beau swallowed, closed his eyes, and rested his head against the wall. “Yeah, I could smell it.”
Kandy nodded curtly, not at all happy. She shut the door to the Brave behind her. I locked it, then stepped back to keep an eye on the house through the window over the dinette while Kandy darted across the street to her SUV.
“I’m so sorry,” Beau murmured.
“There’s nothing to be sorry about.”
“Rochelle …”
“No, Beau. I dragged you here. I feel like a complete asshole for bringing you back.”
He shook his head. “I left Ettie here. With them. I took off the second after I graduated. I barely made it out of school or out of town. You heard Ada. Even now any attention from the police would be … extra shitty. That’s who I am.”
“Beau …”
Outside, the SUV started up. I glanced out the tiny window over the sink, tracking Kandy as she executed a U-turn, then pulled forward to idle in front of the Brave.
“Go,” Beau said. “I just need a nap. Fuck them anyway. We get Ettie and we go. End of sob story.”
I climbed into the driver’s seat, buckled in, and started the Brave. “Beau?”
“Yeah?”
/> “What could you smell? If not meth?”
I pulled away from the curb, following Kandy’s SUV down the street. Beau didn’t answer until a block later.
“My mother. He smelled like my mother’s magic.”
“What do you mean? Like they’d been in contact? That makes sense doesn’t it?”
“No, not like that. I don’t know. It was like he was sweating my mother’s magic. I doubt Kandy could pick it up the same way, because she doesn’t know Ada. But that’s what it smelled like to me.”
“Is that … how could that be possible?”
“I don’t know.”
Carefully navigating the tightly parked streets to the gas station, I replayed pieces of the conversation with Cy. I was trying to tie something he’d said, or anything he’d done, to my vision of Ettie lying dead on the sun-softened blacktop.
“Beau?”
“Yeah?”
“Who’s Byron?”
He didn’t answer. I couldn’t look back at him and drive, so I elaborated. “Cy asked if Byron had sent you.”
“I know.”
I stole a glance over my shoulder as I rolled to a stop at a corner. Beau’s head was tilted back and his eyes were closed. I felt bad for poking at him when he was in pain.
“Just some asshole drug dealer who we’re going to stay as far as fuck away from as possible,” he said. “If Cy is on the outs with him, then that’s why Ettie’s in trouble. Asshole probably owes Byron money. He’s probably using what he’s supposed to be protecting.”
“Meth? Or whatever you smelled?”
“Yeah …”
Beau didn’t sound so sure, but I let the conversation drop. We weren’t there to rip open old wounds. I wanted to be gone even quicker than we’d arrived.
CHAPTER SIX
“Cy is a piece of shit. Too stupid to even deal,” Beau said. “His limited magic makes him valuable to the local dealer as a meathead. Nothing else.”
“That didn’t look like nothing,” Kandy said. “And it didn’t smell like nothing either.” She placed an entire bag of gas station ice on Beau’s leg, having bought three bags in the time it took me to park in the empty lot beside the station.
“It has nothing to do with why we’re here,” Beau said.
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