“You don’t talk to my daughter,” she said. “You talk to me.” She looked from Archer to Bridget to the old woman cooing at the snake. “Is this how your coven operates? You send a child out to issue your threats? You torture teenagers and play mind games with little girls?”
I hadn’t been a little girl in a very long time, but Ali on a rampage was a thing to behold, and far be it from me to interrupt.
“You make me sick.” Ali spat out the words, and Archer faltered, his smile replaced by something uncertain, some measure of loathing for himself and what he was doing, but as quickly as the emotion had come, something else replaced it.
Anger.
Bloodthirstiness.
Disgust.
The same expression overtook the whistler’s face and the old lady’s, as potent as the fear they’d shown at Caroline’s name. The emotions writhed beneath the surface of their flesh, so vivid it looked like it might at any moment take on a life—and an agenda—of its own.
“Did Lucas do something to you?” I asked, floored by the depth of their hatred, but unable to keep the doubt that Lucas was actually capable of doing anything more than annoying them out of my tone.
“He’s a werewolf,” Archer said finally, his voice venomous, but somehow dull. “They’re animals—all of them.”
The woman with the snake shook her head. “Not natural,” she murmured. “Not animals. Worse.”
I bristled. Nobody knew better than I did what a werewolf could do, if he chose to cross that line. I’d spent my entire childhood aware that my life could have been forfeited the minute any one of them lost control. If Callum hadn’t made my safety a matter of Pack Law, I might not have survived to adolescence, and I still dreamed about the sound human flesh made when canines tore it apart.
But that kind of werewolf was the exception, not the rule. Alphas didn’t allow their wolves to run wild. We killed our own if they hunted humans. We weren’t—my family and friends, they weren’t monsters.
Werewolves were people, too.
“You’ve had a run-in with a Rabid,” Ali said, judging their reactions. “Your coven has lost someone.”
Her words were met with steely silence, and I braced myself for another attack as Ali kept pushing at it, kept pushing them.
“He or she must have been very important. You must have loved whoever it was very much.”
Bridget quivered like a rabbit facing off against a fox and then snapped. Her hand connected with Ali’s cheek with a loud crack. I was already in motion, retaliating, when Ali smiled. She’d gotten a rise out of them, and for whatever reason, she was happy about it.
Trust me, Bryn. It’s a good thing. That was the first time I’d ever heard Ali through the bond she shared with my pack, and I went into a state of immediate shock, stopping all onslaught. Being human allowed Ali to keep her bond shut, the way I had for most of my life in Callum’s pack. That she’d opened it, even for a second, told me it was crucial that I keep calm and let her continue playing her current game.
“You must have loved him,” Ali repeated. “Whoever it was that you lost. It makes me wonder, though—if a werewolf did that to someone you loved, if you hate their kind so much, why would you trust one to give you a gift? Why make a deal with the devil?”
Ali’s words didn’t permeate the loathing the trio wore on their faces, as permanent and striking as some kind of tattoo, but I registered their meaning instantly.
Shay had sent Lucas to the coven.
Lucas had said it was part of some kind of deal.
So what had the coven given Shay in exchange? And why would they have agreed to give him anything in the first place?
“We should probably be heading home,” Ali said, tucking a strand of my hair behind my shoulder, in a maternal gesture that would have been a lot more appropriate if the two of us had been out shopping. “We’ve been standing here awhile, and unless one of you is still actively blocking it, I think we’ve probably put on enough of a show for the rest of the town, don’t you?”
I glanced around and realized that more than one shop owner was watching our exchange with feigned disinterest, and a couple of people were gawking in a way that suggested they might have seen me lash out and put the newcomers on the ground.
In retrospect, it was probably a very good thing that I’d already decided to withdraw from the local high school.
“Nice meeting you all,” Ali said in a tone that suggested it was anything but.
Archer was the one to reply, and despite Ali’s warning, he directed the words at me, not her.
“Six days.”
I turned. Ali turned. We walked back to the car in silence. I knew what we were up against now, better than I had before, knew at least part of what they had in their arsenal. I’d marked the way they looked at and interacted with each other. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that they considered Caroline to be the biggest threat.
I climbed into the car. Ali climbed into the car. We shut our doors.
If anything, this recon mission had assured me that my earlier assumptions were correct. If we fought the coven, there would be bloodshed, and a large portion of it would be ours. If we gave in to their demands and let them have Lucas, he would be better off dead.
Six days.
I had less than a week to decide between two evils. Less than a week to find out what kind of deal the coven had made with Shay.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE RIDE BACK TO THE WAYFARER WAS SIGNIFIcantly quieter than the ride out. Ali seemed calmer somehow, like the interaction, which had sent a rush of adrenaline surging through my veins, had sedated whatever worries she’d been holding on to all day.
Instead of thinking about Shay, or the coven, or the partly unhinged werewolf waiting for me to save him from both of the above, I thought about Ali and the way she was handling all of this. We’d been hypnotized. A natural hunter had pulled a knife on me. Violence had been promised and there was every indication that this group, family, coven, whatever could deliver.
Ali was taking it in stride.
She’d pushed them and prodded them and borne their presence in her mind without so much as blinking. She hadn’t shown any sign of weakness, any sign of fear.
Any surprise.
People are allowed to have secrets, Bryn. Even from you.
The words Ali had said in our conversation about Chase came back to me with a vengeance. Ali was handling this well—too well—and I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was keeping secrets from me, the same way she’d never bothered to mention that Callum could see the future.