“Of course,” he said, shooing his daughter ahead of him. “I’m hungry.” His gaze burned hot over Imogen. “Let’s have this conversation somewhere more private.”
A squirming sensation left my gut tight, fear that Imogen was entertaining him to deflect his interest in me. What had changed there? Why was she championing me now? Had I proven my dominance and settled that score? Or had she humored me and let me claim the victory for other reasons? Reasons that involved an opportunity with a male one rung higher on the pack’s social ladder.
The pair set out for the log cabin-style mansion on the rise, and I stared in the direction Emily had gone before a sharp tug at my elbow brought my attention back to Meemaw.
Wrinkles parted over dark eyes. “Do you want to give him another reason to kill you?”
“Does he need one?” Besides the fact I was fae and breathing.
Her gnarled hand gripped my jaw and hauled my face down to her level. “Imogen is in heat.”
“Heat?” Dread ballooned in my chest. “Since when?”
“Going on forty-eight hours as best I recall.” She fanned her nose, the air no doubt ripe with pheromones for those able to scent them. “She’s got her sights set on Bessemer at the moment, and he’s looking right back.” The older woman turned me loose. “Aisha hasn’t given him children, and anyone who’s seen him with Emily can tell he craves more. This is an opportunity for both of them.”
“Who is Emily’s mother?”
“Her name was Agatha. Aggie,” she amended. “She died due to complications when Emily was eight weeks old. Bessemer has been burning through females in our pack searching for a replacement ever since. This time he might have met his match in ambition.”
That explained Imogen’s change of heart, but I kept circling around to what Graeson had said about females in heat breaking up otherwise solid relationships. “How did Graeson resist?”
“Some men can think with the head on their shoulders.”
Laughter burst out of me, and I covered my mouth.
“I know my way around men.” Her eyes sparkled. “Dell would hardly be here if I didn’t.”
Nape on fire, I ducked my head and let her lead me to her home, where she hustled me and Graeson through the door. “Now.” She poured herself a mug of coffee that was two-thirds whiskey. “What brings you to the Lane?”
“The Garzas.”
After a long draw on her brew, she offered to pour some for me. I declined. I wasn’t much for alcohol…or coffee. Meemaw didn’t strike me as the type to sip chai, so I decided my thirst could keep until I got back home.
Sinking into a battered recliner, she peered at me over the steaming expanse of her mug. “What do you need with them?”
“I have a few questions about the incident at Sardis Lake.” I touched my bracelet. “I’m also hoping they might be able to help me locate someone the way they tracked the movements of Marie’s killer.”
Her eyebrows drifted upward. “Can you afford them?”
Money wasn’t the problem. This was worth splurging for. I was more hesitant to leave a paper trail with me at its head. “Will they charge for a consultation?”
Laughter sloshed coffee down the front of her shirt. “Ha.” She wiped tears. “Witches practically bill you to answer the phone. They might as well set up hotlines that charge by the minute.”
I stood, realized I didn’t know where anything was to get her a towel, and she waved off the spill. I sank down and crossed my ankles. “Dell’s been keeping an ear to the ground for me, but she hasn’t heard anything yet, and I can’t afford to keep waiting on them to grant me an audience.”
“She’s the only one outside of Bessemer or Graeson who deals with them. The young one, Enzo, is smitten with her.” Still hooting softly under her breath, she wiped tears from her eyes. “Witches consulting for free. That’s the best joke I’ve heard in weeks.”
A loud thud rattled the floorboards, and I started to rise.
“I’m okay,” Dell’s muffled voice called from deeper in the house. “That body-butter crap is slicker than a greased pig.”
“That’ll be her getting out of the shower.” Meemaw set her mug aside with a shake of her head. “She said something about shaving her legs for tonight.” A nest of wrinkles gathered on her forehead. “What are you girls up to?” Her gaze dropped to Graeson. “And are there men involved?”
Interested for the first time since arriving at Meemaw’s, the wolf slanted cool hazel eyes at me.
“No,” I spluttered, defensive.
More quiet laughter overcame my embarrassment.
“Oh. Oh.” It hit me. “There will be a guy there. A man, I guess. Isaac.”
Twinkles lit her eyes. “The same mighty fine specimen who delivered her to my doorstep?”
“Yes.” I linked my fingers in my lap. “He’s a good guy.”
The spark in her dimmed. “But?”
“He doesn’t stay in one place for long” seemed the least painful explanation.
“Neither do you.” She made it both question and accusation. “Yet there you are with a wolf at your feet.”
Sweat dampened my palms where they rubbed together. “We’re an accident of circumstance.”
An untethered wanderer who met a man with roots that anchored him to a past with the power to destroy him.
“That’s generally how love works,” she agreed.
Heavy and solid, Graeson rested his head on my lap, ears swiveled forward like my response might be the most interesting thing he’d ever heard.
“Uh, sure.” I fidgeted. “I guess it does.”
“I thought I heard voices.” Dell bounded into the living room, wet hair French braided away from her face, wearing cutoff shorts and an oversized T-shirt knotted at her hip with a hairband, and smiled at me. “I wasn’t expecting to see you until tonight. What’s up?”
Hating to keep pressuring her, I forced myself to ask, “Do you know if the Garzas are home yet?”
“Sorry, I haven’t gotten a response yet, and I can’t go the usual route. Miguel’s wife—Isabella—her cousin lives at their compound. Bessemer uses her like a two-way radio since mental contact with Isabella is strictly forbidden due to her health.” Dell tapped her temple. “Normally I could ring up Janice and get Miguel’s attention that way but...”
“No, Dell, it’s fine.” The weight of the favor I’d asked hit me, and I wilted. “I would never ask you to hurt yourself that way on my account. I was thinking of a more direct approach.”
“I don’t see the harm in it,” Meemaw ventured. “They’re familiar with the three of you, and Dell is one of the few who knows the way.”
Dropping into a chair, Dell tied on sneakers. “Miguel isn’t big on uninvited guests.”
“He’ll make an exception for Cord.” Meemaw leaned over to pat the wolf’s silver head. “If for no other reason than curiosity.”
I bristled without knowing why. “What do you mean?”
“Isabella is…not well. She’s frail, and changes only when the moon demands it.” Her fingers went to her throat. “He’s convinced that if not for the stress of the changes, she would recover from her illness. He’s been searching for a cure for as long as I’ve known him.”
“A cure?” Wargism was biology, not a curse. They were born, not made. “Bessemer allows it?”
“An alliance with the Garza coven is no small thing.” Her chuckle was deep, sad. “Bessemer knows as well as you and I there is no cure, so he doesn’t see the harm. It puts the most powerful coven of witches in the southeastern United States at his beck and call in exchange for a few tests run on the stronger pack members each month during the full moon.”
“That’s why he would do the favor for Graeson?” I pieced it together. “He’s volunteered before and might again in exchange for the information?”
“Graeson was opposed to the deal, and he hasn’t changed his mind.” Her wrinkled lips pursed. “The testing is brutal, and we lost a wol
f to a misfired spell last year.”
My confusion must have been obvious, because Dell stepped in to clarify.
“Cord plays guinea pig every other month. He lets the Garzas cast spells on him, drinks their concoctions, gives blood, takes injections. He’s had twice the magical exposure as the other wolves, but Miguel allows it because his wife has also been frequently exposed by his attempts to cure her, and he figures Graeson is a much safer bet for surviving his tests than Isabella.”
“Of course he has.” I glared at the wolf. “Do you have any sense of self-preservation?”
He swiveled an ear toward me.
“I’ll take that as a no.” I raked my hands through my hair. “Why didn’t you stop him?”
“Cam.” Dell laughed my name. “He’s the beta. No one stops him. No one tells him no. No one tells him he can’t do a thing he wants to do.”
“Until you,” Meemaw added.
“Until you,” Dell agreed.
Unable to resist, I massaged one of his silky ears between my fingers. “Maybe that’s the appeal.”
“That’s not it at all. What I should have said—” Meemaw rubbed her jaw, “—is that he never listened. There have been plenty of females who sought to tame him, and all of them failed. He didn’t respect them, didn’t acknowledge their opinions or heed their warnings.”
“He listens to you.” Dell shook her head. “You can’t know how weird it is—was—to have him in my head day in and day out and feel his hesitation, his uncertainty where you’re concerned. He’s a good guy, but he acts like a big brother who thinks he knows best about everything. The pack is like a gaggle of younger siblings that he protects the best way he knows how, even if it means stomping on their opinions and rights as he goes.”
I found myself nodding along. “The last part is him to a T.”
The wolf snapped at me, sliding teeth over my skin without drawing blood.
“Don’t take it out on me.” I smoothed my smarting fingers together. “I can’t help it if Dell’s got your number.” Ears pinned back, he managed to look unamused. “He’s a lot more aware in there than I gave him credit for at first.”
“Graeson sees and hears everything, but it’s far away, like a dream.” Meemaw sipped her last then scratched the lip of her mug with her thumbnail. “The wolf is a simple creature. He hungers, he eats. He tires, he sleeps. He mourns, he heals. He accepts loss as natural. Even if he sings his grief in the nights, he walks in sunlight too.”
That made sense. “That’s why Graeson defaulted to wolf when the bond broke.”
“Yes.” Dell studied him. “What Bessemer did wasn’t right. Cord held on to the end. He was the last link broken. That means all that rebounded emotion—his and ours—slammed into his psyche and KO’d him.”
“Are the others recovering as well as you are?” It shamed me that I hadn’t asked after them sooner.
“Mostly.” She held out a hand and wobbled it. “It’s better than it ought to be, and I think that pisses Bessemer off too.”
“You were out of your mind for more than twenty-four hours,” I protested.
“The depth and length of the bond Graeson sustained with the others would have driven them mad if he had surrendered the burden of connection first. Only by waiting until the last did he manage to preserve their sanity.” Watery eyes met mine as Meemaw exhaled. “It was a foolish thing he did. I’ve never seen a warg come back from where he went, not even soul-mated ones.”
A bitter taste rose up the back of my throat and with it the certainty that Bessemer didn’t hate me as I first suspected. He probably loved me, fae nature and all. I was the perfect weapon, a scalpel for him to excise the troublesome wolves from his pack, starting with those who obeyed Graeson. I was the choice Graeson had made, even if I fought him at first, and the repercussions of that decision were ours to face.
Uppity beta mates a fae? Kick-start the selection and hope it kills her. Upstart beta shanghais six wargs? Snap the bond and hope their minds break too. Usurper stuck in warg form? Initiate vague ceremonial proceedings and hope he commits the faux pas of appearing wearing his fur suit instead, qualifying him for an automatic banishment.
All this back-patting was well and good, but it didn’t change the facts. “But he’s not back, is he? Not really.”
“Not yet.” Dell pushed from her chair and crossed to me. “He just needs some time.”
Thanks to Bessemer’s latest proclamation, time was the one thing he didn’t have. That none of us had.
“Give the Garzas my best.” Meemaw scowled into her empty mug before setting it aside. “Be careful. Both of you.” She waggled a finger at me. “Never accept a first offer, understand? Witches will respect you more if you haggle.”
“We won’t bargain away our firstborns,” Dell promised. “Seconds and thirds though…”
Her grandmother swatted her bottom, and I laughed, an easy sound that once would have been confined to my own living room and my own family’s shenanigans.
Strange days when I had a serial killer to thank for bringing me back to life.
Chapter 15
Fur brushed the back of my hand, a silent hello from the sterling wolf trotting at my side. I took the hint when his wet nose bumped my knuckles a second time and rubbed between his ears. Ahead of us, to the left, loped a golden-furred wolf who entertained herself by snapping at pesky mosquitos while guiding us to the Garza homestead.
As luck would have it, they lived within hiking distance of Silverback Lane. Luck and hiking distance being relative since each time Dell had ventured to the witches’ lair, she had been sent to fetch Graeson and gone on wolf paws there and back. The only person who might have offered his opinion on her route was more concerned with me itching the base of his left ear, which I had discovered was his favorite spot for me to scratch with my nails.
Being on two legs made each fumble, every heavy breath from exertion, that much louder and the trek that much lonelier. I wasn’t sure which I longed for more—for them to join me or for me to join them.
What would it be like to dissolve into a sleek wolf’s form? To shake out my fur and chase the horizon as seen through the pines guarding my home? To catch my own dinners and bump cold noses with a comrade? To hear the night’s song whispered in my blood?
Such wildness in their hearts. Such freedom under their paws. Such boundless joy they found in nature and in themselves.
As glorious as the wargs were in their wolves’ skins, all I could manage was a pale echo of their majesty. The sting of energy racing up my arm didn’t surprise me. Without meaning to, I had tapped into the mysterious reservoir of recalled magic brimming with lupine attributes that somehow had cobbled themselves together to create the fine black-tipped pelt of my warg aspect.
Sniffing me fingertips to palm, Graeson sighed happily at the change in me. He licked my wrist, leaving a cowlick set by drying wolf drool, and grinned wide, bearing lots of teeth.
Mate, he seemed to say, join us in the hunt. Good eats roam these hills, and their scents are freshest near the earth.
A shiver wracked my soul, and the prickling rose higher. My cheeks itched and forehead stung with emerging hairs. A panicked gasp caught in my throat that sounded eerily like the birth of a howl.
I swallowed hard and sank to my knees. “What’s happening to me?”
Graeson gave no answer.
Breathe in. Breathe out. In. Out.
A cold nose edged under my jaw. Dell. I wrapped my arms around myself and rocked while the wolves shared a commiserating glance.
Time passed. The sun shifted lower in the sky. The sensation of being swept through the change abated, leaving me hairless and declawed. My skin passed smooth under my palms. I was me again, the wild rattle of something other locked behind my ribs.
A damp tongue swiped over my lips, and I spat Graeson’s kiss off while rubbing my mouth with the back of my wrist.
“Are you okay?” Standing over me, Dell chewed her thumbna
il. “I didn’t know what to do.”
“Something’s wrong.” I tested my face, my neck, my arms and hands. “I shouldn’t be able to shift without blood. You’ve seen me. My recall isn’t this good.”
“Should we turn back?”
“How far is it?” Trees all looked the same after a while. “Is the trip back worse than the one forward?”
“Ten minutes. Maybe twenty.” She hesitated. “I don’t know if visiting the Garzas while you’re vulnerable is a good idea.”
As close as Bessemer watched me, I doubted I’d get a second chance to cozy up to his witches. There was nothing for it. We had to push ahead and hope for the best. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me.”
“Stay close.” A firm note entered her voice. “Give me a heads-up if you start feeling puny, okay?”
I stood on wobbly legs and lurched into motion after her. “You’re not changing?”
“I can’t shift back for a while.” Her bare feet made no sound in passing. “Besides, I can help you better in this form, and I know where we’re going without my super sniffer, if that’s got you worried.”
The hike became even more surreal as I followed the curve of Dell’s spine down the shadowy trail. “Is it kosher if you show up naked?”
“They’re used to it,” she assured me. “Miguel is married to one of us, remember?”
Based on Meemaw’s cautionary tale, Miguel spent so much time attempting to suppress his wife’s nature that I wondered if witches shared the same prejudices as fae toward wargs. Most shifters were healed by the change. What was wrong with his wife that she was deteriorated by it?
Exhaustion weighted my ankles by the time we crested a short rise and encountered the first No Trespassing sign. The trail turned to a dirt road leading toward a house. I set foot on the path, and Dell tackled me. My back slapped the ground. “Oof.”
“When they say no trespassing, they mean no trespassing.”
A scorched earth smell had me craning my neck to peer past her. Black smoke rose from the spot still marked by my boot print in the loose dirt. “They hexed the perimeter.”
Head Above Water (Gemini: A Black Dog #2) Page 17