The Problem with Promises (6 page)

I hadn’t noticed, being somewhat preoccupied by my imminent execution.

My mate broke the bag’s seal. He closed his eyes and took a long, deep sniff. “A female handled either Knox’s wallet or the bottle.” His pupils moved under his lids. “A halfling.”

Upon that pronouncement, the atmosphere in the room, already tense, tightened into a thick soup of emotions. There were battle-ready aromas streaming from Trowbridge and Harry and a spike in Biggs’s anxiety. But there … what was that? Deep disapproval. Coming from Cordelia.

Why? Was she dismayed that they’d used the word “halfling” in front of me? I’ve heard worse. To my mind it was an improvement over “mutt” or “half-breed.” There was poetic fluidity to it. I tested it in my mind, breaking it into two distinct consonants: half-ling.

“I’ve never met another halfling,” I said. “Are there a lot of us?” That question was greeted with as much enthusiasm as the trophy wife sashaying into the Old Wives’ Club.

The lines bracketing Cordelia’s mouth turned into grooves. “You’re not one of them.”

“I’m not? Then what’s a halfling?”

Cordelia turned to my mate. “You need to explain this to her, right now. It’s obscene how she and her brother were kept ignorant.”

I hate this. Being three steps behind everyone.
“Trowbridge?” I asked.

My mate rubbed his jaw, his eyes shadowed. “A halfling is sired by a Were and born of a human.”

“So there’s a subrace of half Weres, half humans?”

“No,” he replied.

“Why not?”

The fanwork of lines around his eyes deepened. “Because they die young.”

“How young?”

“For some seventeen, for others eighteen.”

Before my mouth could shape the obvious question, he explained, “They die at puberty.”

“Their puberty is delayed like ours?”

He nodded. “They don’t have enough magic in them to survive their first change. That’s why it’s drummed into you. Don’t have sex with a human.”

They died? That speculation took me to a whole other place.
Son of a bitch.
“You told me to change into my wolf.” I pointed an accusing finger. “Before you came back through the gates—when we used to meet in our dreams. You said, ‘You
must
change into your wolf.’”

“I knew you could do it,” he replied.

“You told me I
had
to try.”

“You did,” he shot back. “You couldn’t run a pack without showing your fur. And I knew you could do it because your brother could.”

“I am
not
my brother.”

“There has been some—though very limited—interbreeding between some of the Fae and the wolf packs in Merenwyn. Half-Fae, half-Were kids can turn into their wolf.”

But I can’t. That’s the malodorous statement that hovered over us like a stink bomb.

Biggs’s chair squeaked as he shot to his feet. He went to the sink, turning his back on us to stare blindly through the window. His scent leaked angst and tragedy.

“What’s up with Biggs?” I mouthed to Cordelia.

She flattened a manicured hand over her heart. Brows raised, she mouthed back, “The Chihuahua loved a halfling.” I shouldn’t have been able to follow that—that’s a lot of silent speak—but all those years of lip-synching to Donna Summer tracks had left their mark on Cordelia.

Oh.

I’d attributed Biggs’s lack of dates to his fashion choices—tonight’s shoelaces were red. It hadn’t occurred to me that he was nursing a broken heart. My memory stirred. “That’s for Becci!” he’d shouted before pulling the trigger on Stuart Scawens.

I’d forgotten he’d said it until now—it was a detail that had been hazed over by bigger tragedies. But now, I felt a flicker of shame. I should have asked him about Becci.

One day, I will.

The door opened, and Harry walked in. He took in the scene, face carefully neutral. “So, what are the two of them going on about now?”

“Life, liberty, and—” Cordelia paused for an eye roll that set her fake eyelashes fluttering. “Love with a capital
L.
Our two lovebirds seem to enjoy sparring with each other as much as they do making those bloody bedsprings squeak.”

“It’s not the bed,” said Trowbridge. “It’s the chair.”

Someone shoot me.

“What did you do with Fatso?” I asked.

Anu’s head turned as Harry said in his low rumble, “He’s hanging from a hook in the back of a refrigerated trunk that’s on its way to Montreal.” The pack’s second gave me a reproving head shake. “Now, Little Miss. I didn’t kill him. He’s mostly alive and trussed up like Big Bird. The driver said he’d put pedal to the metal until he’s over the provincial border. I told him to leave our friend somewhere inconvenient.”

“Good,” said Trowbridge, his voice clipped.

“Super,” I added, rubbing my eyes. They burned. With fatigue. Not at all because the little comet in Trowbridge’s baby blues was calling to my flare. I picked up the bag, opened the seal and took a whiff. To me, the contents smelled of Knox, blood, leather, sun potion, and … fudge. If we wanted to be specific about it, maple flavored.

Trowbridge tossed Harry the bag. “Take a whiff of this and tell me if you can recognize the scent.” Harry sampled it, and shook his head before passing it to Cordelia. She didn’t have any better luck and passed it across the table. Biggs rubbed his nose before he took a delicate snort.

“Well?” asked Trowbridge.

Biggs put the bag down on the pine table and stared at it. Silently, he shook his head.

“I hate thinking of a kid being around Knox,” I said.

Trowbridge nodded, his eyes focused on the bottle of sun potion. Absently, he flattened his hand over the scar hidden beneath his T-shirt. His thumb moved, side to side it swept, following the rough ridges of the now-healed wound.

Chapter Three

Both of the witches had long, thick auburn hair. That’s where the obvious similarities ended. The older of the two was about Cordelia’s age and perhaps four inches shorter than Trowbridge. She had an air of command to her, possibly because she was on the hefty side and her girth spoke all on its own.

Smart too, I thought, watching her size me up.

The other witch was a little taller than me. Small-boned, thin. When she’d got out of the car, I’d noticed that she’d forgotten to do up at least three of the top buttons of her chic white blouse, and somehow the way she’d arranged her arms made the cleavage of her high firm breasts look like a line that needed to be traced with someone’s tongue.

But with any luck, she’d age like her mother.

“We’re not related,” said the older witch, regarding me with some amusement. “Folks see the red hair and they generally think Elizabeth and me are kin. We’re not.” She flicked a hard glance at the younger witch. “We just haven’t resolved who has the rights to Garnier’s Deep Auburn. Tell me, who do you think looks better in it?”

I’m a liar. Part of being a successful one is knowing when to bring one out and when to shut the hell up. I did the latter.

“I’m Natasha Sedgewick,” said the older witch.

“And who are you?” I asked the younger witch.

“Elizabeth,” she replied, but she pronounced it in the French-Canadian way—
Aleezahbet.
And she directed her answer to Trowbridge with the side dish of a well-practiced courtesan’s smile.

I didn’t like her.

“There’s only the two of you?” I folded my arms over my chest. That served two purposes. Hopefully it made me look like a badass while at the same time it applied pressure to the bite mark on my arm, which had started burning again.

“The rest of our circle is already formed,” said Natasha. “Once I know exactly what your pack is interested in, I’ll phone it in.” Trowbridge lifted his brows and she explained. “Our power comes from a community of minds concentrating at the same time.”

At my cough of disbelief, she waved a vague hand toward the ground. “We use the earth’s leylines to channel our magic.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. What balderdash—that’s what I was thinking. If there had been a spiderweb of sorcery underneath the ground, wouldn’t Mum have told me about it? She was after all a
Fae,
and that trumps any mortal with aspirations of conjuring greatness.

Natasha blew some air through her nose. “So, what do you need?”

“A ward set on the property,” said Trowbridge curtly.

She lifted her shoulders. “Then how about we do a walk around the premises? I need to get an idea of exactly how large an area we’re talking about.”

The Alpha of Creemore nodded, started to lead the way, and then stopped. “Harry, you and Biggs go now,” he said.

My old second stepped out of the shadows. Rifle balanced over his arm. “You sure, boss?” It was clear that he didn’t want to leave us with the witches, but one of the sentries along the route had rung in to say that they had bikers at Cash Corners. Why that made them all nervous, I hadn’t figured out, nor did I want to know. There was only so much I could take.

Trowbridge nodded.

Harry swallowed his unease down. “Biggs,” he said, tossing a set of keys to the younger Were. “I’ll head east, you head north.”

I looked up at the second-floor windows. Backlit was the shadow of a girl.

How will I say good-bye? What will I tell Lexi? That I left his daughter in the hands of one of my best friends?

Anu yanked the curtain closed. Trowbridge had told her to stay low. I wondered how long that would last. Her father would have taken that caution as a personal challenge to his general dislike of rules and regulations.

I have to stop looking for the Lexi in her.

*   *   *

The fat witch stood on the little wedge of cliff, overlooking the fairy pond. “It’s larger than I remembered,” she said when Trowbridge shone his torch toward the end of it where the lily pads and bulrushes grew.

I’d stood here, not six hours ago. Sat underneath the tree to my left and held my dying brother in my arms. Unbelievable.

This will work. It will all work.

Across the way, past the still water, past this place, and this patch of earth, was the Stronghold ridge, where once a home of gray brick and faded blue siding had stood. The pack had removed most of the traces of it. Someone had carted away all the brick and taken away the burned timbers of the home that once housed me, my brother, my mom, and my dad. All that was left of that family home was a foundation and the tall dried bones of an old maple tree that once was alive and thick with leaves and now was dead and bare.

A trailer sat beneath that old tree. Its silver skin gleamed under the waning stars. I had the sudden cowardly wish to slink back to the sanctuary of that silver bug. To shut the door to the little room I used to find claustrophobic. Zip myself up into the sleeping bag and cover my head with my old pillow.

The one that didn’t smell vaguely of dust mites and Mannus.

Cordelia must have read my face, because she whispered, “Buck up, buttercup.”

And least that’s what I thought she said.

“Ça sera très cher,”
murmured Elizabeth, her head swiveling as she took in the area we wished enclosed. Then for us Anglophones, she enlarged. “Magic over water?” She garnished that inconceivable problem with a very Gallic shrug. “It is very difficult. This will cost you much.”

All said in a charming Francophone accent.

I really don’t like her.

A thought that grew when Elizabeth’s gaze flitted from the terrain to my mate’s damaged hand. Her attention focused on it for a beat, telling me in no uncertain terms that in her books, a man with blue eyes, a fairy pendant, and a few scars was a hell of a turn-on.

And bing!—I shuffled the little French witch out of my “dislike” column into my “despise” column.

Oh. Joy. Apparently, besides walking around with a cue ball lodged in my vocal cords, within forty-eight hours of my mate’s return to kith and home, I was suffused by jealousy. Just another one of those wolf bitches who eyed every other female as a challenge to her claim to her mate.

Swallow that down too. Maybe the instinct will drown in the stomach bile I’ve got going on.

Cordelia placed her gas lamp on a stump. “Shall we get on with it?”

“I want the ward to be drawn all the way around this pond.” Trowbridge illustrated what he wanted, using his scarred finger to trace the surrounding ridges. “It’s got to enclose it completely. Make it tall, too. Like a dome. And we’ll need a trapdoor that will open with a password.” Trowbridge thought for a moment. “We’ll use the word ‘strawberry’.”

“Where?” Natasha asked.

I shouldered between Elizabeth and my guy in order to slap the tree under which Lexi had fallen asleep. “Here.”

The younger witch flicked me a disinterested glance, then bestowed upon my mate a charming shrug. “It can be done, but as I said, it will be very expensive.” She dragged out the
r
in “very” so that we could get just a feel for how pricey such a request would be.

“How much?” I asked bluntly, already tired of them.

Elizabeth’s blouse gaped as she used both hands to push her hair off her temples. “This is not of the ordinary, you understand?”

“How much?” asked Trowbridge tersely.

“Well…” The younger witch glanced again toward her silent companion.

Natasha’s bonhomie disappeared so swiftly, so completely, that I realized that whatever pleasantry she’d offered us before had been of the false variety. Round and podgy can look surprisingly hawklike when the mask of good humor is tossed aside. “You don’t have enough money in the world to pay my coven to put a ward around this pond,” she said as if she was speaking the opening line of the dialogue of incoming doom.

“Calmes-toi,”
Elizabeth said in a soothing voice.
“C’est une bonne idée de réfléchir avant de refuser.”

Trowbridge’s expression darkened. “Speak in English.”

“Allow me to translate,” Cordelia drawled. “This pretty bird wants the other one to stop and think before refusing our offer.”

In response to Cordelia’s language skills, Elizabeth used a French word that caused my BFF’s right eyebrow to lift in a way that usually had me running for the hills. The contest of wills between Elizabeth and her was over in an eyeblink. Cordelia was a full-blown Were, and she’d held the title of Toronto’s Best Drag Queen for five years in a row back in the late eighties.