He shrugged. What did you expect me to do, Bryn, compliment her shoes? She’s a trained killer who issues ultimatums on behalf of an entire coven of psychics. I don’t think we’d get very far with girl talk, and besides, have you seen her shoes?
I had to admit that there was a twisted kind of reason to his logic. To get any information out of Caroline, we’d have to talk her into spending more than three minutes at a time in our presence. If challenging her to show off her skills gave us more time to work our way in, it wasn’t the worst idea in the world—except for the part where Devon volunteered to be the target.
“You want me to demonstrate my skills on you?” The neutral set of Caroline’s features gave way to a small, self-satisfied smile.
Devon straightened his lapels. “I’d love for you to demonstrate your skills on me.”
Beside me, Lake groaned. Forget Bogart, she told me. He’s channeling rakish bad boys 101. Don’t know about you, B, but I think I’m gonna be sick.
I was right there with Lake on that sentiment. I was used to seeing Devon hop from one role to the next, but nine times out of ten, I was the target of his shenanigans, and he reverted to form the second I smiled.
But Caroline wasn’t smiling anymore. She was smirking, and I was only about 90 percent sure that Devon was playing, because as the four of us walked outside, he didn’t say a single word to me—not out loud and not in my head.
Dev, I really hope you know what you’re doing, I told him as Caroline jumped the parking lot railing and headed for the forest, the three of us on her heels.
Bronwyn, dearest, have you ever known me to charge into something blind or without a plan?
Yes, I replied immediately.
Devon’s eyes flitted from Caroline’s form to mine. Something that wasn’t your idea?
It was possible that in the history of our friendship, I’d gotten Devon into more trouble than I’d gotten him out of. It was also possible that if the roles had been reversed, Dev would have had my back, no matter what.
Fine, I told him. But if you get hurt, I’m going to kill you.
“You’re sure you want to do this?” Caroline asked. For the first time, I could sense something beyond cold detachment in her voice. She wanted Devon to say yes. She wanted to shoot him.
She wanted to hunt.
I recognized her desire. Lake recognized it. Dev had to have recognized it, too, but as he went radio silent on the other end of our pack-bond, I took the message loud and clear. I was going to have to trust him to take care of himself on this one, and I was going to have to stop thinking about the reasons this was a bad idea and start thinking about ways to make it work.
Chances were good that Caroline would assume that Devon would have the same reaction to silver that most werewolves did. Chances were also good that she wouldn’t go for a kill shot. We still had four days left on her mother’s ultimatum, and Caroline didn’t seem like the type to kill on a whim.
No matter how badly she wanted it, no matter how strong the instinct to hunt down her prey was, she was still human. She wasn’t Rabid. She wasn’t out of control. She was scarily in control, and while I had no doubt she could kill, my gut said that she wouldn’t until she had orders.
I’d spent enough time skirting Callum’s dictates to recognize when someone else had had following orders pounded into her for years.
About a hundred yards into the woods, Caroline stopped. In a slow, deliberate movement, she bent down and unsheathed a dagger strapped to her side. She turned and the weapon left her hand before I even realized she was preparing to throw it. It whizzed past Devon’s left ear, slicing through the air and making it sing, a deadly sound that stopped only when the blade cut down a bird, mid-flight, pinning it to a tree half a football field away.
“I don’t miss. You can either take my word for it, or you can start running.”
Devon grinned—and then he ran. Caroline didn’t bother tracking his movements. She didn’t move to pull out a weapon. Instead, she turned to me.
“It’s your call,” she told me. “Do I aim for him?”
No. Absolutely not. Never.
“Aim for his hair,” I told her. “He’s been going for a little more volume lately, and if you’re as good as you say you are, you should be able to give him a trim.”
Caroline nodded. She reached into her jacket and pulled out an arrow, tipped with silver, and a small crossbow, sized to fit perfectly under her jacket without being seen. The sheer number of weapons she had managed to conceal within seemingly ordinary clothes defied the laws of physics.
Devon was still visible in the distance—well outside the range in which I could have hit him, but not so far gone that she didn’t stand a chance.
“Move,” she whispered. “Run.”
Hearing her words, despite the distance, he turned at a ninety-degree angle and began running in a line perpendicular to the one on which Lake, Caroline, and I stood. His pace and motions were erratic and unpredictable.
He was fast.
Caroline didn’t lose a moment. She didn’t pause to get a feel for the wind. She didn’t narrow her eyes. She just lifted her arm and turned her head to face me, and without even looking at Devon, she fired.
This was a mistake.
I knew that when I saw the look in Caroline’s eyes: certain and satisfied and a little bit sad, like there had never been any question in her mind that she would hit him, and like she wished, on a gut-deep level, that there was.
“You got him.” Lake tried very hard to keep the admiration out of her voice. “Right where it hurts—in the hair gel.”
Dev? I didn’t have the benefit of Lake’s eyesight, and I needed to know for myself that he was okay, that Caroline hadn’t missed her target by a fraction of an inch in the wrong direction.
I’m fine, Bryn. Not quite as pretty as I was a few seconds ago, but fine.
All things considered, he was taking it well, but for some reason, Caroline wasn’t.
I assessed her reaction. “Are you upset that you hit him, or upset that it was only his hair?”
Caroline’s eyes flashed. “I don’t get upset,” she said. “I don’t lose control.”
“That the difference between you and a werewolf?” I asked.
Caroline took a step forward, closing the space between us. “I’m nothing like you.” Even though her tone never changed, the way she spaced her words did, each one issued with the weight of an entire sentence. “Any of you.”