I laughed. “If Cassie had been here with Lucien, they would have been fully able to take care of Dallas themselves. She’s more powerful than the rest of us, even without Lucien by her side.”
Eshu smoothed my hair. “You’re more powerful than you think. Your luck isn’t just magic, it’s part of who you are, and no exploding microwave can take that away from you.”
I looked into his dark eyes and felt something beyond lust. Yes, he was funny. He made me laugh, made me dissolve into a puddle with one touch, but the gossamer strands that pulled us together had strengthened over the last few days and I realized I really wanted him by my side. Maybe forever.
Adrienne cleared her throat, yawning as I turned to look at her. “I’m beat and I need to deal with a vulture problem tomorrow. Can we get going? You guys can continue this love-fest once we’re back in town and I’m on my way home.”
I gave Eshu another quick kiss, this one on his lips, then dug my keys out of my pocket. Yes, I totally wanted to continue this love-fest, but I’d need to do more than drop Adrienne off at her car out front of my house. I’d need to call Cassie and let her know we were safe—and let her know what a complete and utter mess we’d made of things.
Chapter 17
Sylvie
“So, I really screwed things up,” I told Cassie.
We were meeting at the diner early in the morning. Cassie had her business suit on and was shoveling down a plate of scrambled eggs like she hadn’t eaten in a week. I was in my usual jeans and tank top, fiddling with a plate of pancakes that I just couldn’t muster the appetite to eat.
Eshu had done his best to quell my anxiety last night, but I was still fretting over it all. Our actions had delayed the attack on Clinton’s pack, but not stopped it. And I was sure we’d made an enemy of Dallas who, although he’d never been a huge fan before, had at least been somewhat cooperative with us.
“Sylvie, relax,” Cassie said around a mouthful of eggs. “Things have been heading in this direction with the werewolves ever since I granted Shelby asylum and protection as a lone wolf. Actually, things have been heading in this direction for over a hundred years. I’m just the first witch with the attitude to tell those furry jerks to bring it.”
“I’m worried this is going to pit Dallas’s pack against all of us. He’ll see it as us taking sides, as an attack. He said it was war.”
Cassie rolled her eyes. “The drama. Like hornet stings, wolfsbane, and bird poop are a big deal to werewolves. You said Eshu did nothing more than chase Dallas back home, so they’re fine this morning except for their pride and a few boils from the wolfsbane. If that’s enough to start a war, then I would have burned them to a crisp over the thousand bar fights they’ve started over the last few years.”
I chewed on my lip and scooted bits of pancake around my plate.
Cassie let out a whoosh of a breath. “Look, I’ll call him this morning once he’s had time to cool down. I’ll let him know that we’re not going to allow any war inside the wards, whether that’s in town or on the mountain.”
“I hate that we need to deliver an ultimatum,” I told her. “I wanted us to find a compromise, a way for Dallas and Clinton to come to an agreement and have both packs live in harmony with the rest of Accident.”
“I love that you’re so optimistic, that you’re always striving for a collaborative solution to every problem. When we were kids, you were always the peacemaker. We need that in this town, we need you. I need you. But there are times when a heavy hand is needed, and I truly think this is one of those times. I’ll get in Dallas’s face over this, and if he doesn’t back down, he’ll find that hornets and bird poop are the least of his worries.”
I understood what Cassie was saying, but I also saw the long-term repercussions of that sort of approach. There would always be an us-versus-them atmosphere between the werewolves and the rest of Accident, and it might take us centuries more to ease back from that. I’d worked so hard to understand them, to gain their trust as clients. I didn’t want to have to threaten them to achieve peace; I wanted them to come willingly to it, understanding that it was in their own best interests as well as ours.
But maybe I was a fool to want that when Dallas was so set on a violent solution.
“Stop beating yourself up over last night.” Cassie reached out and gripped my hand with hers, stilling my fork on the plate. “You saved lives, and honestly, sweetie, you didn’t make things worse. It’s all going to be okay.”
It wasn’t. No matter what Cassie or Eshu said, I had a horrible feeling in my gut that it wasn’t going to be okay. At best, the werewolves would chafe under the threat of our combined might, taking pot shots at each other and continuing to do what they’d always done even farther from our gaze. I wanted a solution. I needed a solution. But Cassie was resigned to her course, and Eshu kept telling me to trust whatever, and that everything would work out in the end.
He wanted me to have faith, but after my death, I didn’t have faith—not in me, not in anything.
I glanced down at my watch and pushed my plate away, sliding my hand from under Cassie’s. “I’ve got to get going. I’ve got a client to meet this morning.”
At least I thought I had a client to meet this morning. Tink might not show up if Dallas had told her what happened last night. Either way, I needed to be at my office, just in case.
“You didn’t eat your breakfast,” Cassie said, waving away my attempt to put some money on the table for the bill.
“I had a big dinner,” I lied. Then I gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek and headed out for my office, hoping that Tink would show up and that maybe after our session, I could convince her to let me know Dallas’s mood and whether or not there was any hope in salvaging this huge mess I’d helped create.
Chapter 18
Sylvie
“You’ve got to tell me what happened Monday at the mediation.” Tink giggled and folded her legs up crosswise on her chair as she sipped her drink. “Dallas came home totally unnerved, covered in icing.”
She’d showed up at my office right on time for her appointment with no mention whatsoever about what had happened last night. I guess Dallas had decided to keep that as well as my part in it a secret, and that he’d showered before coming to bed or Tink would be wondering why he was covered with hornet stings and bird poop.
“We met at a McDonald’s playroom,” I told her. “There wasn’t supposed to be anyone there, but things got screwed up and in came this birthday party with a dozen kids. Let’s just say chaos ensued and there was a bit of a disaster with the cupcakes.”
Tink threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, Lord. Dallas don’t like human kids at all. He don’t like human adults either, but he’s especially afraid of their kids.”
I shook my head. “Not all werewolves are so nervous around humans, are they? I heard that you go outside the wards sometimes and don’t seem traumatized when you get back.”
“Oh, the first time I was scared to death, but it got easier each time afterward. You just have to get used to the humans and how they do things. It’s different here in Accident, and it’s really different in the compound up on the mountain. Most of us don’t come into town all that often, and a good many of us have never been outside the wards in our lives. We’re raised with stories of humans killing us or locking us up until we go moon-crazy. They’re our boogieman stories, and unless a werewolf gets out and actually sees the human world, that’s what they believe.”
I shook my head. “So, what’s your impression of life outside the wards?”
She shrugged. “I like humans. They’re crazy and unpredictable and dangerous, but I like them. They’ve got good ideas, and some really good shopping and art, and I like how they live their lives. I kinda wish we could make the pack more like human life, but too many werewolves are stuck wanting things the old ways. Too many are afraid to change.”
“Like Dallas?” I suggested.
She shot me a naughty grin. “O
h, Dallas is more open to change than he lets on. He mated me knowing what a total train wreck I am. He compromises on lots of things and is pretty intrigued by modern life. But he’s alpha to a pack of traditionalists, and he feels like he needs to represent them. Plus, he doesn’t like being wrong one bit, so you have to word things so they sound like they’re his idea and that they’ll benefit the pack. And he is afraid of humans. I don’t think he’s been outside the wards more than a dozen times in his life. I aim to change that.”
I had no doubt in my mind that Tink would in fact change that. I thought about what she said and wondered if there was a way to spin this thing between Dallas and Clinton where they both could compromise a bit, and no one would end up in a humiliating position.
Tink and I had a nice long session about the very unusual kink she’d read about somewhere, which frankly I did not quite understand. We finished up our session with a brainstorming session of less extreme, fun sexy-times things she could surprise Dallas with, then we both settled in for a cup of tea and a nice long gossip.
“I half expected you wouldn’t come today,” I confessed.
She grinned. “Because of what happened in the woods? Dallas didn’t tell me about it, but I saw the bunch of them going out and I figured they were going to do a raid on Clinton’s compound. When they all came running back, full of wolfsbane boils and covered with bird poop…well, it doesn’t take a genius to realize witches were involved.”
“You don’t blame us? Because Dallas sure does.”
She shrugged. “You didn’t kill anyone or hurt them bad, and Dallas needs to know that he’s not the big wolf he thinks he is. Yeah, I’m sure he’s mad, but that’s mostly ‘cause he’s embarrassed.”
“I really screwed stuff up last night, didn’t I?”
Tink looked at me over the rim of her mug. “I don’t know. You did get them to turn back from attacking Clinton.”
“And now they’re focused on us witches. What’s going to happen, Tink? You know the werewolves and Dallas better than I do. Are they going to cut themselves off even more from the rest of Accident? Declare the mountain a sovereign nation behind the wards? Attack us?”
She sat down her tea and eyed me for a long moment. “Are we still bound by all that privacy stuff?”
I scooted forward in my chair. The session was over, but I’d be happy to extend it and the confidentiality it ensured if it meant Tink would tell me something I could leverage to fix this mess.
“Yes. What you tell me stays between us.”
She took a breath, blushing a bit. It made me wonder if we were going to discuss something weirder than lemon zesters and hemorrhoid cream.
“Dallas don’t know what to do. He’s stuck, Sylvie. He needs a way out, and if someone don’t give it to him, he’s gonna have to make a stand against you witches as well as keep on with this war against Clinton.”
“I tried, Tink. I tried at the mediation session to find a solution between the two of them, and it didn’t work. When I asked him where he’d be willing to compromise, he wouldn’t budge. The closest he came to it was saying Clinton could come back and be disowned and punished, and of course Clinton wouldn’t go for that.”
“You need to give him the way out, Sylvie.” She picked up her mug again and fiddled with it. “Dallas can’t propose the solution because he looks weak if he compromises. The only way he can back down on this is if he’s doing it to protect his pack against a bigger threat or as a boon because someone did something that went above and beyond to help the pack.”
I thought of Eshu last night on the mountain. “Like if Clinton and his pack joined Dallas to fight off a pack of lions or save them from an erupting volcano or something,” I mused.
“Exactly.” She shifted in her chair, blushing again. “With Dallas, it’s always a bit of carrot and stick. The carrot alone don’t work, and the stick alone don’t work. You need both.”
He was already mad at me and Adrienne. It was logical to think the solution was for us witches to attack so Clinton and his father could bond over fighting us off, but I didn’t want to go there. I didn’t want to further fracture the relationship between the werewolves and us, and I didn’t want the packs to withdraw even further from Accident as a whole. No, we needed an exterior threat for them to come together over.
And it would help if it wasn’t just Clinton and his pack that helped, but us as well.
“Dallas doesn’t want to kill Clinton. He doesn’t want to go to war against you witches. He knows there’s people in the pack that want things different, but he doesn’t know how to give it to them without appearing weak. He’s stuck, Sylvie.”
“He’s the alpha. Can’t he just say he’s changing things and that they need to deal? Isn’t that pretty much what he did when he took over from Old Dog Butch?”
She flushed again. “It was easier to change things when he was the brand-new alpha. If he changes them now without a solid reason, he looks like he’s weak. Dallas can’t look weak. He needs to appear strong, confident, inflexible, wily, generous to those who are loyal, and protective of the pack.”
I thought for a second, musing over what I could possibly do to give Dallas the out he needed.
Tink set down her mug and leaned forward. “It’s exhausting for him. Always needing to be on, always needing to be the strong one. When someone gives him an opportunity to relax, to not be in charge for a few moments in private or behind the scenes, he’s thrilled. He just can’t have that sort of thing public, if you know what I mean.”
Suddenly I did know what she meant. “So, you and Dallas…you both…?”
She nodded and shot me a sheepish grin. “I’m in charge in the bedroom. I plan everything. I tell him what to do, and he does it. It’s glorious. And he loves it, but no one can know.”
Male sexual submission was a common kink, but I’d honor confidentiality on this just as I always did with my clients because I could see how this wouldn’t be acceptable in werewolf culture, especially with their alpha.
“If you can think of a way where Dallas owes you one, or owes Clinton one, or needs to unite with both Clinton and the witches to fend off a bigger foe, he’ll jump at it.” She picked up her mug of tea and finished it off. “Give him an out, Sylvie. He doesn’t want to kill his son or other werewolves. He doesn’t want a war with the witches. Give him an out.”
Chapter 19
Sylvie
“I don’t know.” Cassie eyed me. “It sounds pretty convoluted. If they find out it was us that staged this whole thing, we’re even more screwed then we already are. And I don’t like the idea of using Eshu.”
I glanced over at the demon, who was rooting through Cassie’s kitchen cabinets in search of a snack. He didn’t seem to care that my sister was referring to him as if he wasn’t even in the room with us.
“The werewolves know Lucien, Hadur, and Nash,” I argued. “They don’t know Eshu, and he can stage the attack so it doesn’t blow back on us.”
Her eyebrows went up. “This is Eshu we’re talking about here. Something’s going to go wrong. With Eshu, something always goes wrong.”
“But then it always goes right,” I insisted. “Well, maybe not in the third circle of hell, but other than that, things always seem to turn out right. Plus, I get the impression it doesn’t really matter if Dallas thinks it was us or not. He needs an out. He’s stuck and he needs us to provide a solution where he saves face and doesn’t have to go to war with anyone or kill his son.”
She nodded slowly. “Kind of like what happened with Tink.”
“Exactly.”
She let out a breath and sent the demon an annoyed glance. “Stop going through my kitchen cabinets and come over here. I need to know what sort of creatures or beings you can shapeshift into.”
I winced at her tone. Cassie was always a bit bossy, but I really didn’t like how she was speaking to my boyfriend.
Yeah, he was my boyfriend. And the thought made me all warm and tingly.
“I can take the form of anything,” Eshu replied, starting to pull handfuls of spices out of a cabinet and putting them on the counter.
“It has to be something scary enough for the werewolves to need to work together and for them to want to accept our help,” I mused.
“But it can’t be a dragon, or a manticore, or a chimera, or anything we’ve got living in Accident,” Cassie added. “I don’t want any of the residents implicated in this.”
Yeah, it wouldn’t be good if Dallas came storming into town and accused Fernando of getting his dragon kin to attack them.
“Why can’t I just be a demon?” Eshu had moved on to the cabinet with the boxed goods and proceeded to empty that one as well.
“Because then the werewolves will think Lucien is behind it,” Cassie snapped.
I saw the mischievous glint in Eshu’s eye, quickly hidden as he shoved his hand into a box of Cocoa Puffs and crammed the cereal into his mouth. I knew what that glint meant, and although it would be funny if he impersonated Lucien and got the other demon into trouble, it wouldn’t help our cause one bit.
“Let’s think of something more interesting for you to shapeshift into,” I told him. “How about a phoenix? Or a djinn—”
“Too much like a demon,” Cassie interrupted.
“Or a fire elemental—”
“They’ll think it’s an ifrit.”
I threw up my hands in exasperation. “An alien? A dinosaur?”
Cassie snapped her fingers. “A dinosaur. A big T-rex. That will work.”
I wrinkled my nose, wondering if it really would work or not. I mean, there were no dinosaurs. Wouldn’t the werewolves assume magic was involved if a T-rex stormed into the compound, and that we were involved?
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