The Problem with Promises (36 page)

Anu coughed. I rolled my eyes her way. Chewing on her lip—she’d started that right after the Peach Pit and hadn’t really stopped since then—my niece held out her hand. She mimed placing Merry high in the boughs.

“That okay with you?”

Merry’s tepid assent wrung my heart. I handed her to Anu who stretched to set her in a narrow fork, far beyond my reach. Immediately, Merry’s gold flexed and changed shape, and by the time my niece was back onto the soles of her feet, my amulet had settled in for a hasty chowdown.

I leaned against the pine to watch her. Merry needs feeding—that’s what I’d said when Cordelia had picked up her rifle and given me a significant nod. Then I’d almost growled, “Come with me, Anu.”

I don’t growl. Not usually. My wolf is finally stepping up.

Somewhat to my surprise, Anu had trailed me outside without ferret or any further prodding, obviously as anxious to leave the house as I’d been. Biggs’s personal perfume had streamed anxiety and anguish.

Still was. I could smell it from where we stood.

A kinder or gentler person would have dealt with the situation back in the house immediately—put Biggs out of his misery—but I needed a couple of minutes to gird my loins. Or maybe it was better to say shore up my foundation, because I didn’t have a loincloth to my name.

All I had was a crumbling infrastructure.

Anu stooped to pull a long shoot of dry grass. Into her mouth it went. The kid has an oral fixation, I thought, stroking my ear.

My brain was caught on a string of four words—much like a CD that had been left to cook on the dashboard. Warped by the sun, the disc’s best track (and it was never one of the filler songs, it was always your personal fave) skipped. You got hung up on the tune’s chorus.

Here’s a killer one: Brenda had to die.

Or let’s try that again: in about two minutes or less, Brenda
was
going to die.

I checked my wrist, now encircled by the watch Knox had thoughtfully left on his bedside table. Twenty minutes before eight. How long would it take to battle our way through rush-hour traffic to Toronto? Southbound traffic would be heavy. An hour and half? More?

Cutting it close. Time to witness the deed.
My blood’s no purer than Brenda’s.
Didn’t matter. Either way, I was taking one of them to face Trowbridge’s accusers.

“He’s betrayed you,” murmured my Fae.

“Biggs lied,” I said. “To protect a girl he held above all others.”

Like I had. Like I would.

I rubbed my gritty eyes, then winced. Had I said that out loud? Anu’s gaze was fixed on me in a manner that might be best described as concerned bordering on cautious. I shrugged. “Ignore me. I’m just talking to my Fae.”

Brows raised, she took a hokey-pokey to the left.

Well, why wouldn’t she be careful? Without any language skills, how could she make any sense of the things that had happened to her over the last few days? Witnessing the events of the last twenty-four hours must have been worse than watching one of those Swedish flicks without any subtitles.

“I have a Fae inside me,” I said with a faint wince. “She talks. Also a Were. But most of the time she’s pretty quiet. Almost invisible.”

Until she took Brenda down like a summer-fattened deer.

“You know, Anu?” I murmured, rearranging my hair to hide my ears. “This wolf thing that you and I fear? It might not be a bad deal after all. I had no idea how much hunting feels like stealing.”

Her hum could have meant anything.

I nodded for her benefit and said for Merry’s, “It’s almost identical. I get the same quivery anticipation just before I boost something; the same adrenaline when I pocket it, and then precisely the same ‘life is freakin’ good’ joy when I walk away knowing it’s mine. No wonder Trowbridge likes being a wolf.”

At the mention of his name, Anu’s head canted sharply to the side.

The man collects females’ hearts as easily as my white shirt attracts chocolate stains.

“It must be a rite of passage,” I mused. “You’re right on schedule. I started obsessing over him at twelve. Though, pay attention—he’s My One True Thing, not yours.”

My finger slid behind my ear and found the peaked curve again. “You want to hear a piece of wisdom from your old aunt? Once I believed I could melt everything down to one true thing. One person to love. One to protect.” I shook my head. “I was lying to myself. But I’d lost so much … Mum and Dad … Lexi. In one night—they were just
gone.
I never wanted to feel that pain again.” I looked above to where my amulet fed. “Truth is, Trowbridge’s never going to be my
only
true thing. Merry was one of my first true things. And now I’ve got all these people…” I frowned, thinking it through. “Twined around me again.”

Take them away and maybe I’d discover that I’m hollow.

My stomach squeezed. “I take lousy care of the people I love. Last night, my actions left Lexi in a special kind of hell. Tonight, I lost one of ours.” My voice hardened. “And in two hours, I’m going to sacrifice Biggs after I watch him break the neck of the girl he loves.”

I’m committed to seeing it to the end but—oh Goddess—am I right? There is so much collateral damage.

My gaze slid away to the ground.

“All this morality crap might come naturally to others, but you’ll have to trust me on this—it’s a relatively new preoccupation for me.”

Pinecones rested near the foot of the evergreen. Small ones. Within them, the seeds of future evergreens, if they could only take root. It would take a lot for them to sprout. The right water. The right sun. The right nutrients in the ground. So many variables to consider, so many things to provide. I bent to retrieve one.

It smelled like Creemore and home.

“I’m going to leave you here now.” Scales layered the cone. Hard. Woody. “You’re going to stay and watch Merry. Because she needs to feed and because you’re not going to witness another death.” I tossed the cone, then looked up, giving her a stare that promised all kinds of hell if she disobeyed. “Not today. Not if I can help it. Goddess, you’re only thirteen.”

She let out a trill of Merenwynian.

“Sorry, Anu. I don’t understand.” Hard to smile but I gave it a weak try. “Do you think my stellar skills at language might be a problem when I get to Merenwyn? Maybe just a bit, huh?”

Frustration tightened her features and she unleashed another torrent of words.

With a sigh, I closed the gap between us. Reached out, took her hand. It was cold and larger than mine. “There are a lot of things I’d like to tell you. But if there was one thing I could make you understand—just one—it would be about Lexi.”

Anu flinched.

Ah. She recognizes his name too.

“I know you hate and fear him. And maybe you should. I don’t know how really corrupted he is, any more than I know the sum of the damage he’s left in Merenwyn. But I do know that some portion of the brother I loved is still there, buried inside him. He cares about you. He brought you back here. Do you understand me?”

Perplexed, she shook her head.

“Your father brought you back to me.” Perhaps it was my tone because she shrank away and I had to tighten my grip lest she peel off before I’d said everything I needed to. “He knew you stood a better chance here in this realm. Lexi brought you here and asked me to make sure the bitches and bullies wouldn’t make you miserable.”

And I’m pretty sure I can’t.

Her eyes were wide. Green as the crest of a sunlit ocean roller. “He’s not a terrible man,” I whispered. “I wish you could know that.” I gave her fingers a final squeeze and released them, then made a fork with mine. I pointed to my eyes and then to her, and finally to Merry. “You. Stay. Here. Guard her.”

I said it one final time. “Stay.”

An order that was drowned under a piercing screech.

*   *   *

The bird was neither hawk, nor sparrow, but a known enemy. He rode the air currents, tipping his dark wing ever so slightly—the fighter pilot with the lightest touch—to change his course.

Liam had found us. How? We’d hidden the truck inside the garage.

Crap. Change of plan.

“Run to the house, Anu!” I shouted, pushing her in its direction. I then ran to the birch. “Merry, we’ve got to go!”

In response, my amulet sparked orange-red fire from her heart.

“Liam’s come. Drop to me!” She needed no further enlargement on the subject of danger, danger, danger! Vines whipping, Merry fell into my palm. I took off at high speed across the field, well behind Anu, whose longer legs had already carried her to the back porch. She held the door open and shouted a warning to the others.

In Merenwynian.

The kid had to learn English.

I was twenty feet from the house when the raven came hurtling down from the sky. Though I was panting, I could still hear the wind whistling through the feathery fingers of his wings. So I turned, quickly, to take a look, because that’s what you do. You turn. You look. And whatever forward momentum you had slows. Because you’re thinking of impact, so you cover your head, because the portion of your mind concerned with self-preservation is decidedly worried about those hooked claws and that long curved beak.

I zigged. He zagged.

Anu screamed. My heart thudded. Liam flapped his wings—
there’s the stuff of a new nightmare
—and the porch never looked farther away.

Until Cordelia stepped out.

With her rifle.

Liam the bird evidently shared brains with Liam the bad guy. He wheeled off, with one quick tilt of one long wing. Five powerful flaps carried him swiftly skyward.

Cordelia pulled the trigger. The weapon flashed and a single feather fell. The raven flapped a tad harder and Cordelia swore. Virulently, with adjectives that sounded plummy but meant nothing to me. In her frustration, she’d reverted to the drag slagging for which she’d been famous.

Out of range, the bird of prey circled high above us.

And that’s when—over the sound of my own harsh breathing, and Cordelia’s curses, and Anu’s panting, and Biggs’s “shit”s, and Brenda of the Big Eyes’s whimpers—I heard the rumble of motorcycles coming from the west. We all spun, heads cocked.

“How far away are they, Cordie?”

“Sound travels in the country,” she replied. “A couple of kilometers at the most. There’s time to run, though I don’t how far we’d get. We’d have to head east over the dirt roads and where they’d take us—”

“It’s a kilometer to the highway,” said Biggs. “On these roads that will take a couple of minutes even with the pedal to the metal. Then two more kilometers to the next town.”

“If we leave now,” said Cordelia, “we might make it, but it’s a long chance. Liam could have them coming for us from both directions…” Her mouth twisted then she shrugged. “We’d have to go now.”

Brenda tugged Biggs’s sleeve. “Are they wolves? Will they hurt me?”

His jaw hardened as he stared into her pleading face. “I can lead them away,” he said, his gaze jerking to mine. “They’ll be looking for Rachel’s truck, not Brenda’s car. We’ll take the truck—the windows are tinted, they won’t be able to tell that there’s just the two of us. And with the dust kicked up from our tires … I can do this. Give us a chance.”

All eyes were on me.

Let them both go and I won’t have a witness to bring forward to support my claims to the council. Don’t let them go and I have a good chance of losing it all here.

Screw it. I’d rather die beside Trowbridge.

“Cordie, grab the rifles and the keys to Brenda’s car. Take Biggs and the others into the garage. Start pouring gasoline on anything and everything flammable while I get the iPad and evidence.”

Never have I been so efficient. Merry scuttled to my shoulder as I hurriedly tucked Knox’s tablet under my arm and grabbed the basket of bottles. No time for the mailing labels or the rest—not if I was heading to the portrait room.

Executive decision made, I was out of that bedroom faster than you could say “Haul ass, baby, the bad guys are coming.”

I made a very swift detour into the kitchen, grabbed a knife, and bolted back down the hall to the spare room. One quick stab to pierce the tight canvas, four ruthless slashes, and my brother’s face was cut out of that disturbing painting. All it took was five tearing seconds, then I was whipping out of there, intent on making it to the garage before (
a
) Liam decided to change from a bunch of feathers into a guy with a wicked smile and a grudge, or (
b
) the dudes in leather showed up with their weapons and total lack of moral fiber.

Either way, we were screwed. Unless I stepped up. Thought badass. Used wiles while there was still “a while.” Goddess, I’d spent my formative years outthinking a Fae aunt and a dozen employers. I could outthink a bird.

Merry pinched me as I loped down the hallway toward the back door. Really, really hard. Grabbing that little soft swell of flesh that was neither breast tissue nor underarm—the flub that spilled over the side of my bra.

I skidded to a halt. “What!”

She jabbed an urgent pincer toward the kitchen.

“Fuck!” I said, spinning on my heel. Then because I didn’t have the wit or the time to form a complaint, I repeated the same verb over and over again. All the way to the little box nailed to the wall beside the gas stove. “Fuck!” I said again, snatching up three wooden matches. And finally one last “Fuck!” when we breached the back door again, and I heard the sound of those twin-stroke bike engines.

Overhead, Liam wheeled.

Would he follow their car? Be faked out by the dark windows?

I darted across the lawn. Cordelia slammed the door behind us. The garage smelled of gas, exhaust, and worried Were. Brenda and Biggs were already in the truck, engine running. Brenda’s old Subaru was idling. Cordelia hurried back to the double doors where she’d piled drenched rags and chair stuffing. Anu’s ferret chattered at me as I slid past them.

I crouched by the pile.

My hands trembled.
I hate matches. I hate fire.