“She is Samuel’s mate,” Auriele said. When Christy looked blank, Auriele added, “Samuel is Bran’s other son. Samuel is a werewolf, but she’s coping okay with that. However, it is still an effort for her to be around any of the rest of us. Asking her about a giant dog killing people might just knock her right back off her applecart. Not only would that be unkind to do when we don’t even know if she would have useful information, but she’s a power in her own right. If she goes nuts, I don’t want to be anywhere in the vicinity.”
Ben took a second helping of lasagna, and said in a contemplative voice, “I keep having nightmares about that night when she alternated between doctoring my wounds and wanting to kill me.”
“Tad said he’d see if he can get a message to Zee,” I said. “If it is fae, Zee will know what it is.”
“I thought you said it wasn’t fae.” Auriele’s voice was neutral.
“It didn’t smell fae,” I said. “But some of the half-breeds don’t smell fae to me, for whatever reason. And Zee is old. He might have some idea even if it isn’t fae at all.”
“Did you tell that to the police?” Christy looked at me brightly. “That you wouldn’t have been able to tell if it had been a half fae?”
“No,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because,” I said gently, “there are a number of half-blood fae around here because of the local reservation. Most of them don’t have enough magic to light a candle. Humans don’t have a habit of treating the people we are scared of very gently. No sense getting people killed unless they are actually guilty of something.”
“Mercy did the right thing.” George was the fourth werewolf on duty. He was also a Pasco police officer, which lent validity to his opinion even if the kill had been out of his jurisdiction. He had that whole “I was a Marine” thing going that stiffened his posture and made even his casual movements have a certain purpose to them. “Police need the real information, not something that will send manpower off chasing rabbits when they should be hunting bigger prey.”
As soon as he quit speaking, he returned to his plate. He ate with no wasted motion, and he didn’t look up from his plate while he did so. George was fairly far up the pack hierarchy, but the only wolf he outranked at this table was Ben. It was safer for him to keep his head down, so he did.
“What about the new wolf?” asked Jesse. “He could have done the killing before he joined the pack.” Unlike the police, she knew enough to understand that he couldn’t have done it once he was bonded.
“The first victim might have been before Zack joined the pack,” I told her, “but the others were more recent.”
“The killer isn’t Drummond,” Adam told her. “I called his last Alpha, who regretted losing him. Zack stayed for six months or so, then got restless. Warren says he’s pretty soft-spoken and quiet, as submissive wolves tend to be—and definitely not our killer.”
“Serial killers who move around are less likely to get caught,” said Jesse.
Ben shook his head. “I was over at Warren’s last night. If you’d ever met Zack, you wouldn’t have proposed him as your killer.” He fidgeted a little, and reluctantly said, “Is there something more we can do for him? Maybe a different job? Something with more of a future.”
“What’s he doing?” asked Auriele.
“Dishes,” I said.
“Dishes suck,” said Jesse, with feeling. She was working as a waitress for running-around money and had done a couple of stints on the dishes when someone else missed their shift.
“I’d rather wash dishes than pick apples,” said George in tones of non-nostalgia.
The talk around the table turned to “worse job” stories.
I excused myself when the conversation drifted to some funny event that happened back when Christy was Adam’s wife, well before the pack had moved to the Tri-Cities. Even Adam got into it, had everyone in stitches about trying to find a bathroom for his very pregnant wife at 2:00 A.M. in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico. It wouldn’t have bothered me if he hadn’t given Christy a tender look as she threw her head back and laughed. She had a beautiful laugh. I got up from the table, taking my plate and glass.
“Didn’t you like dinner?” asked Christy as I passed her, drawing everyone’s eyes to my almost-full dinner plate.
“I had a late lunch.” I continued on to the kitchen. “And then there were all those dead people afterward. Hard to keep the smell out of my head.”
That shut her up. I think that all the talk about the dead bodies really had bothered her. I was letting her make me petty.
I kept my movements slow and even as I scraped my plate off into the garbage. I loaded my dishes into the dishwasher and walked with deliberate steps up the stairs; by then Darryl was carrying the narrative. I didn’t run, didn’t even move with speed, but every step was in as direct a line with my bedroom as I could manage. I shut the door behind me and caught a deep breath.
If her stalker didn’t kill Christy soon, she might just drive me to it. At this point, I wasn’t even certain how much of it was her fault and how much of it was me being jealous. Not of Adam, Adam belonged to me, soul and wolf. If it were just Adam, I’d have more control. It was the pack.
Pack magic, I’d learned, was real. And if enough of the pack wanted you to do something, it was difficult not to do it. When I hadn’t been aware of it, some members of the pack had made Adam and me have a fight. They couldn’t do that anymore, but I could feel them pressing upon me. I suspected that if enough of them wanted me out of the pack badly enough, they would succeed. What I didn’t know was what that would do to Adam, but I was certain it wouldn’t be good.
I walked over to my chest of drawers and unfastened the chain around my neck and set it down, so I could look at it. It had been a graceful piece of jewelry when I’d only had the lamb on it. Even my wedding ring—which I wore on my finger only on formal occasions because I didn’t want to lose a finger when something caught on my ring while I was at work—was beautiful. The engagement ring had a single, large, pear-cut diamond. My wedding ring was plainer, just two small yellow topazes Adam said were the same color as my eyes when I went coyote. The rings had been brazed together so that the topazes flanked the diamond.
It was the dog tag that turned the necklace from jewelry to statement. The tag hadn’t been pretty to start with, and after nearly four decades of wear and tear, it was battered and rough. Adam wore the other tag at all times.
Symbols.
I closed my hand on Adam’s dog tag as the door to the bedroom opened and quietly shut again. Adam’s arms came around me, and he bent so he could put his head on my shoulder. There was a mirror on the top of the dresser, so I could see his face—and his eyes in the mirror met mine.
“Thank you,” he said.
“For what?”
He smiled, a peaceful expression that lightened suddenly with mischief. “For keeping the peace. You don’t think that I don’t know you could wipe the floor with a lightweight like Christy? You battled with Bran when you were just a kid and came out on top. Christy? She’s not a tithe on Bran.”
I snorted. “I don’t know where you get your information, but I didn’t win any battles with Our Lord and Master Bran Cornick who is the Marrok. No one does. That’s why he’s the Marrok.”
He snorted back. “That’s not what Bran says.”
“Then he’s doing it for his own reasons,” I told him. “Don’t put too much weight on his stated opinion. More than likely he’s just trying to get you to do something you don’t want to do.”
“Peanut butter,” Adam said, deadpan.
“He made my foster mother cry,” I said.
“Eggs.”
“That didn’t work so well,” I told him. “But I did learn not to arm my enemies.”
“Shoes.”
Shocked, I turned around, so I could see his face instead of just the reflection. “No one knows about the shoes. Bran doesn’t know.” I hadn’t thought that Bran knew about the shoes.