The Twiceborn Queen (The Proving Book 2) (15 page)

“Told you we should have got a lawyer.” For once Ben took no pleasure in being right.

That would teach me to stop trying to talk my way out of situations. Now I’d dug a deeper hole.

I sat down and let my head fall back against the back of the lounge. What an awful day.

“And you know what else? If they find out Valeria was at the Toaster on New Year’s Eve, and they think to check the concierge’s visitors’ log …”

Garth groaned. “Your name will be on it.”

Mac did return, but she spent the evening in her room, and I didn’t see her again until lunch the next day.

It was a subdued group around the kitchen table, just me, Garth, Ben and Lachie. We ate in shifts. Alex and Steve had already eaten, and were out doing a regular sweep of the street, checking for anything that looked suspicious, anyone who seemed too interested in the house. Being in the heart of the tourist district of Sydney gave them some advantages, since they could blend into the ever-changing crowds. Unfortunately some of the locals were starting to catch on to the same faces doing regular patrols. The guy who owned the café across the street was convinced some major actress lived here, and didn’t mind sharing his views with half his customers.

Eric and Rob would be in shortly. They’d been watching the back lane all morning and making sure the boundaries of the property were secure. Then it would be the turn of Dave and Thommo to take the outside shift.

And apart from Mac, that was the sum total of my group.

“Mum?” Lachie watched me with a thoughtful expression, his salad abandoned on his plate.

“Mmm?”

“Who killed Jerry?”

“I wish I knew, honey.” I had no answers myself.

“Why are people attacking us?”

I blew out a frustrated breath. “A couple of reasons, but the main one’s that my mother’s not very happy with me killing Valeria.”

His eyes widened. “
Grandma’s
attacking us?”

“No!” Good God, no. The thought of my respectable suburban mother being tied up in this was enough to lighten my dark mood. I still hadn’t told her about Lachie’s miraculous resurrection. God, I was a bad daughter. She
would
kill me when she found out I’d kept that news from her. “No, I meant my dragon mother, Elizabeth.”

“How come you have a dragon mother now?”

“It’s a long story, but you’ve seen me turn into a dragon. That happened when a dragon called Leandra started sharing my body.”

“Is she still in there? Can I talk to her?”

“It doesn’t work like that. We’re kind of one person now. But anyway, it’s her mother, the queen, who’s unhappy with me. In fact, her whole family was unhappy with me.” Fortunately most of them were now dead. “They’re not very nice people.”

“Can’t Dad help us? You said he was a dragon too.”

I sighed. How do you tell your child his Dad’s not a very nice person either? In fact, that double-cross of Carl Davison seemed just Jason’s style. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if he’d been involved.

“Dad’s not really on our side. But no one knows where he is anyway.” And that was about the best spin I could put on it. I indicated his plate. “Are you trying to distract me from the fact that you haven’t touched your salad? Because it’s not working.”

“I’ve eaten heaps!” His little face twisted into an outraged expression. He shoved another forkful into his mouth and chewed ostentatiously. “See?”

“That’s great work. Keep it up.”

Ben’s plate also sported a suspicious amount of salad, though, like Lachie’s, it bore no trace of the spaghetti bolognaise that had come with it. I gave him a meaningful look.

He rolled his eyes, but started crunching dutifully on lettuce leaves. What did men have against vegetables?

Lachie pushed cucumber around his plate, trying to hide it under a lettuce leaf, but his mind obviously still dwelt on our conversation.

“I wish we could find Dad. I bet he’d help us if I asked him.”

I paused, my fork halfway to my mouth. “I wish we could find him too, Monster.”

Just not for the same reasons.

When Mac walked in I did a double take. She’d hacked her hair off short in a kind of demented pixie cut, messy and uneven. She looked like she’d been attacked by a blind man wielding a pair of garden shears. A bare patch at one temple suggested she’d started shaving and then thought better of it. A shocked silence fell over the room.

“What happened to your hair?” Lachie asked. When even the attention of a ten-year-old boy is caught by a haircut, it’s got to be pretty drastic.

“Felt like a change,” she said, lifting her chin.

She was a wreck. Her eyes were puffy from crying, and huge dark circles underneath them showed how little she’d slept. With her hair so short she could have passed for fifteen. A lost and broken fifteen. My heart went out to her.

Dave paused in loading the dishwasher, taking in her woebegone appearance. He was a short, stocky man, about Garth’s age, with an open, friendly face. Already he treated Lachie like a favoured nephew, and I could see an urge to take Mac under his wing too in the softening of his expression. “There’s spag bol here.”

Dave was a firm believer in the power of a full stomach to improve any situation. Must be his Italian heritage. Though he was as handy with a gun as any of the other guys and had a mean right hook, he did most of the cooking. The only thing he liked better than cooking was opera, and he could often be heard singing at the stove.

No one was singing today, of course.

“As long as you’ve got a strong stomach,” Garth said, scraping up the last bits of sauce with a hunk of bread.

“Didn’t stop you coming back for seconds,” said Dave. “Don’t listen to him. Italian mothers have begged me with tears in their eyes for this recipe. But did I give it to them? No way. Best spag bol you’ll ever have, trust me.”

He plonked a huge serving on a plate and handed it to her. She sat next to Garth and got stuck into it. Grief obviously didn’t affect her appetite. That was werewolves for you—walking stomachs.

They could have been father and daughter sitting there together. I had no idea how old Garth was. Somewhere in his early forties, maybe. Though his body was fit and strong his short military-style hair was greying at the temples, and lines of experience cut deep grooves into his face. He looked like a guy who worked out a lot, with muscles on his muscles and the thickest neck I’d ever seen. Went with his stubborn thick head.

Shame he was probably too old for her. Apart from the stubbornness thing, and of course the frequent bouts of grumpiness, he was a great guy. I wouldn’t exactly say his bark was worse than his bite—he was a dangerous man—but he certainly improved as you got to know him. He should be making some lucky werewolf lady happy by now.

He looked up from his now gleaming empty plate, as if sensing my gaze on him. Wolves hate to be stared at. It’s a dominance thing. His eyes were a clear grey-blue in the light from the window, and probably his best feature. For all that I snarked about his monobrow he wasn’t a bad-looking guy.

Guiltily I shifted my gaze. Now was not the time to be thinking how hot my employees were. Actually, there was never a good time for that. Ben was my partner, and he was enough for me. Damn Leandra and her oversexed dragon urges.

I focused on Mac’s sad face instead.

“I’m glad you came back,” I said, “but are you sure you want to stay? Maybe you should take some time to think it over.”

She laid her fork down. “Why do you keep asking? You think because I’m young I can’t hack it? You saw what I did yesterday.”

She cast a sidelong glance at Lachie, and I was glad she didn’t go into detail in front of him. The image of her feral grin as she stood over the body of the man she’d just killed, knife dripping, was still crystal clear in my mind.

“I’m not questioning your ability.”

“What, then? Is it because I’m gay?”

I blinked. Didn’t see that one coming. Lachie’s ears pricked up. Garth stared down at his empty plate as if it were the most interesting thing he’d ever seen. You could have heard a pin drop.

“Oh. You didn’t know? I thought Trevor told you.”

“No, he didn’t.” And neither had Garth. I cast him a reproachful look.

Suddenly it all made sense. Big macho werewolves were notoriously homophobic. If she and Jerry were more than friends, some of the guys in the pack would have made their lives hell. However strong a leader Trevor was—and he ran a very tight pack—he couldn’t be everywhere at once, and a certain amount of bullying was a natural result of the hierarchical structure of pack dynamics anyway.

No wonder they wanted out.

“So what’s the problem? It’s not as if you can afford to turn anyone away. You need all the help you can get.”

“That’s true. Forget I asked.” Sometimes I still thought too much like the old Kate, worrying about people’s feelings. That kind of thinking would get us all killed. “I’m glad to have you.”

She nodded and went back to shovelling spaghetti. Already her plate was nearly empty. The clink of her fork against the plate filled the silence.

Lachie watched her, speculation in his eyes. “Do you like Lego?”

Silly me. Here I’d been, imagining he was pondering her sexual orientation, when he’d already dismissed that and moved on to something
really
important.

“Let Mac finish her lunch in peace.”

“No, it’s all right.” The poor girl was probably glad of the diversion. “I don’t mind. What sort of Lego?”

His face brightened. Ben rolled his eyes, well aware of the dangers of encouraging Lachie to talk about Lego, and we shared a grin. She could be there for hours.

“Star Wars is the best …”

“Hear, hear,” said Garth, our resident Star Wars freak. Today was actually the first time in three days he wasn’t wearing a Star Wars T-shirt.

“… but I like all sorts. Ninjago, Lego City, Power Miners …”

He reeled off a whole list while she finished her food. A wave of love surged through me. His little face was so animated, and his skinny arms described big enthusiastic patterns in the air as he talked. I could still hardly believe he was here, alive and whole. I wanted to touch him constantly, as if to reassure myself that it wasn’t a dream. He was the sun my world revolved around.

As soon as Mac laid down her fork he leaned forward confidentially.

“I have this app on my iPod. It’s awesome! I can make Lego stop-motion animations with it. If you like, you can help me make one.”

Okay, so maybe he was a tad obsessed, but the kid had a heart of gold. I’d told him we all had to be extra nice to Mac because she was so sad about her friend. In his mind, he was offering her a huge treat.

“That’d be cool,” she said.

Though her smile didn’t light her sad blue eyes, he didn’t notice. She got up and allowed him to tug her from the room with his usual impatience to get started on the latest creative masterpiece. Every member of the team would be expected to admire it the minute it was finished.

“That’s the last we’ll see of Mac for a while,” said Garth, a satisfied look on his face. I could tell he was worried about her too.

“Why didn’t you tell me she was gay?” I asked.

He shrugged. Sometimes he could be so infuriating. “Don’t care who she sleeps with.”

“Well, neither do I, but I feel like an idiot for not realising Jerry was her partner.” And I’d even been imagining her matched up with Garth. I wasn’t usually so unobservant—there were just too many demands on my attention lately.

“Poor girl,” said Ben.

“What’s with the haircut?” Dave asked as he cleared away the last plates.

My turn to shrug. “Maybe it’s a kind of tribute to Jerry? Keep her memory alive kind of thing?”

Garth raised a sceptical eyebrow.

“Well, I don’t know. I’m no psychiatrist. Grief can make you do crazy things.” That much I did know. Plenty of experience there.

Eric and Rob came in, bringing the scent of outdoors and rain-washed air with them. I glanced out the window and saw that the day had turned grey.

“Something smells good,” Eric said. “What’s for lunch?”

“Dave’s special spaghetti bolognaise,” said Ben. “Apparently it makes Italian mamas weep.”

“Hey! That’s not what I said,” Dave protested, but he was already on his way out the door to find Thommo. No one ever slacked off on their shifts under Garth’s watchful eye.

The two men were soon tucking in with enthusiasm. I lingered over my coffee and watched them. Rob was the baby of our team. His face still bore traces of acne, and he tended to communicate in grunts. The only time you heard his voice much was when he and Eric talked guns, which was a favourite topic for both of them.

“Saw Mac going off with Lachie,” Eric said, pushing away his empty plate. He ate with the same efficiency he did everything, in small economical movements. He wiped his mouth with a napkin, then folded it neatly and centred it on the plate. “She all right?”

“Probably not,” I said. “But she’s putting a good front on it. Nice shooting yesterday, by the way.”

“Thanks.” He shrugged off the compliment as if it meant little, but above his neat beard his cheeks coloured slightly. Not many people could shoot as well as he did at the best of times, much less under fire themselves. If he hadn’t taken out two of our opponents so quickly Jerry might not have been the only person we were mourning today.

It was a good team I had here, despite its small size. But it wouldn’t be enough on its own.

“We need to stop chasing our tails, guys. Every man and his dog is out to get us. Even the police are joining in the fun. We have to stop reacting to things and take the initiative.”

“What do you want to do?” asked Ben.

“We should move.” Garth jumped in before I could answer. “We’re too exposed here. This place is barely defensible. The street is on our doorstep, the lines of sight are bad, there’s buildings overlooking us. It’s a nightmare. And if that idiot in the café keeps mouthing off we’ll have paparazzi thrown into the mix as well.”

He had a point. We’d stayed here initially because it was handy to Royal North Shore, and more secure than a hotel, but it wasn’t ideal. Unfortunately, neither was our other main option.