Julio peeled off his shirt, and Carmen helped him tie it into a makeshift bandage around his wound. «What will he tell the others?» she asked.
«He’ll figure something out. McNeely’s quick on his feet.» The truck swerved as Alec took a corner too fast. «There are a few like him scattered across the city. Your brother probably knows.»
«Like hell,» Julio said. «If there was some sort of underground supernatural cover-up system in Charleston, no one ever clued me in.»
Ahead of them, Diane flipped on the ambulance’s siren, clearing a path. Alec frowned as he took the next corner. «Maybe Reed takes care of it.»
«No idea.»
It could be a measure of how far out of the supernatural loop Julio stayed — or an example of just how much Alec did in New Orleans in the absence of any official leadership. «I can’t even worry about any investigation right now,» Carmen whispered. «I only need them both to be okay.»
«I know, honey. I didn’t get a look at Franklin.» Tension threaded Alec’s voice, and true concern. «How bad is it?»
«His legs were broken. He’ll need surgery.»
Another soft curse. «I stay out of the clinic as much as I can. I don’t know who to call. Who we need.»
Neither would Wesley Dade, who had no doubt funded this other clinic, as well. «I know an orthopedic surgeon we can call. If it’s for Franklin, she’ll drop everything. There should be space where we can set up an OR, but I’ll have to make some calls, see if we can find a spell caster who can negate his healing while we work on him.»
«My phone’s in my pocket. Jackson’s on speed dial — number three. He’s got magical contacts. And he can round up Kat. Someone needs to track down Franklin’s kid, and Kat’s the one she’s most likely to listen to long enough to realize she needs to get her defiant little ass back to New Orleans.»
«Franklin gave me her number.» She reached into his pocket and retrieved his phone. «I can handle the call.»
Alec’s voice turned rough, tension bleeding through. «Don’t call Sera from my phone. Her prick of a husband will make them both disappear if he thinks anyone knows where they are.»
Her hand found his knee, seeking to soothe more than anything else. «I’ll do it in a little while, when I know what to tell her.»
«All right.» He glanced past her, at Julio. «You holding together?»
«It’s a scratch,» he answered simply. «I think it’s already knitting up.»
A quick check under the bandage revealed as much to Carmen. «I’ll still have to check it out.»
«Yeah, I know.» He went back to staring out the window.
Cold certainty settled over Carmen. «You knew, didn’t you?»
Julio grimaced. «Knew what?»
«What was going to happen.» More than anything, she remembered the fear that had paralyzed her. «When you got out of the car, it was because you knew.»
His skin had gone ashen. «Not soon enough,» he whispered, a small sound full of self-recrimination.
He’d seen it in time to stop her from walking up to the clinic doors. In her mind, she traced her steps, tried to judge how close she would have been to all that jagged, flying glass if Julio’s terror hadn’t frozen her in place. «I could have been killed.»
Alec’s low, furious growl rumbled through the cab as the truck lurched. He bit off an angry noise and steadied the vehicle. «Precognition?»
Her brother snorted. «You have no idea what I’d give to be rid of it sometimes.»
A familiar lamentation, one Carmen had heard from their mother dozens of times over the years. Even when her visions encompassed something she could change, a course she could alter, the lingering images had given her nightmares, sometimes for months.
Alec’s fingers tightened on the wheel. «I don’t want to ask this. I really don’t.»
Julio turned his head suddenly, his expression set, his gaze angry. «We were supposed to be at Cesar’s hotel. A meeting, me and Carmen, at eight sharp, not a second later. He said that — not a second later.»
A sob rose before Carmen fully processed his words. «What?»
Alec’s quiet, vicious curse cut through the cab. More alarming was the way his anger and worry circled inward, vanishing like water from a tub after someone pulled the drain. In moments, he was shut off from her. Quiet.
His voice was quiet too. «That’s it, then.»
«No.» Carmen repeated the denial, shaking her head. «Cesar wouldn’t have gone that far. Peyton could strip him of his council seat for something this careless, and you said it yourself, Alec. They won’t jeopardize their positions because they have too much to lose.»
«There’s one fatal flaw you’re missing in that equation. The one that got Noah Coleman killed and opened up this damn Conclave seat to begin with.»
«He’s not human, Car. None of us are.» Julio sounded as bleak as he was pissed off. «You can’t say Uncle Cesar wouldn’t have done it because he might have. If your boss challenged him enough, he could have completely lost it.»
Worse, Alec didn’t disagree. «We can plan. We can plot. We can have all the best fucking intentions in the world. If someone pushes the wrong button, none of it matters. We’re monsters when it counts.»
Any other time, Carmen would have tried to deny it. Now, she closed her eyes. «If Cesar did this, he’s going to pay.»
Alec’s steely façade cracked — just for a moment — and she felt the vastness of the rage gathering inside him. «I’ll add it to his bill.»
She wished she could feel more from Alec than blankness with the occasional flash of anger and pain. More than that, she didn’t want to face the fact that he’d pulled away from her again, or the possibility that this time he might have done so for good.
Chapter Seventeen
Nicole Peyton was five feet of snarly alpha wolf who looked nothing like her identical twin. Oh, on the surface Michelle and Nick shared similar features — big dark eyes, long brown hair and their mother’s slight stature — but Alec had never seen anyone mistake one for the other.
Maybe it was the clothes. Nick arrived at the block of mostly vacant warehouses in jeans and tiny little tank top that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a hip college kid. Or maybe it was just attitude. The Seer had spent years trying to fade into any background she could, but when Nick entered a room, you knew it.
Her husband herded Kat and Miguel toward the other end of the warehouse, to the bare-bones clinic where Carmen had begun organizing chaos through steely willpower alone. Alec gestured Nick over to the folding table where he’d spread out every cell phone he could get his hands on, along with his list of contacts.
Her frown deepened. «You look like hell, Alec.»
«You’re a ray of sunshine as always, Peyton.»
«I’m not here to blow smoke up your ass. I’m here to help, and I’m starting off by saying you look like you’re barely hanging in there.»
At least one thing in his life hadn’t changed — she was still an obnoxious alpha bitch. The constancy was almost soothing. «I’m trying to figure out how to challenge Cesar Mendoza without ending up with a council seat I don’t want.»
To her credit, she didn’t look surprised. «It’d be tough to pull off, especially if you expected the council to leave you any autonomy in New Orleans. They’d see denying the seat as weakness, for sure.»
«And if I leave another hole in the Southeast council, God knows who’ll fill it, or which one of those bastards will use the advantage to climb over the rest and onto the Conclave.»
«An unenviable position.» She sat on the edge of the table and nodded toward the other side of the cavernous warehouse. «Is that her? Carmen?»