Time Mends (4 page)

Talley looked down to where my fingernails
attempted to rip the upholstery out of her car. “Are you mad?”

I answered with a glare.

“
Good,” she said, shutting
off the engine. “That means you’re not focused on being scared
anymore.” Her door was open before I could even protest. “Let’s
go.”

About a dozen different guys loitered on the
Matthews’ front porch, and it sounded as if there were at least
that many more inside. I could put a name to most of the faces,
though I suspected many of them I had only met once or twice
before.

The moment we got near the house all
conversation stopped. I’ve been stared at my entire life, and not
in the you’re-the-most-beautiful-girl-in-the-world way. My stares
tended to be more of the hey-I-didn’t-know-the-circus-was-in-town
variety. I’m what a nice person would call “unusual looking”. The
hair hanging down nearly to my waist is a silvery blond, my skin is
a pale ivory with no hint of a peach or pink undertone, and my eyes
are the palest of azure blue, only one tiny step up from white on
the color chart. But something told me these hard looks had nothing
to do with my white-on-white-on-white color pallet.

“
Does everyone already
know?” I asked Talley quietly, although whispering was pretty
pointless. They were all Shifters, and it was the morning after a
full moon. Supernatural hearing was working at full force, a fact
driven home by my pounding headache.

Talley nodded, head held high as she kept
walking towards the mob. “Be strong,” she muttered so softly I knew
it carried only the ears of those of us who walked alongside
her.

Badass Scout. I could do that, right?

I squared my shoulders and lifted my chin,
looking at the cluster of guys about my age who sat on the front
steps making zero effort to hide the fact they were trying to
ease-drop in on our conversation. One of the younger ones, whose
name I couldn’t remember for the life of me, made a big show of
dragging his eyes down my body, pausing dramatically at the place
where the orange gauzy material stopped mid-thigh, before giving me
a grin and thumbs-up. I offered up a hand signal of my own in
response.

I marched up to the steps and waited for
someone to move so we could go inside. No one did.

“
Makya,” I said to the
largest of the group, “I’m going to need you to move out of my
way.”

Makya is, as best as I can remember, Jase’s
third-cousin. Apparently whatever genes that make Jase attractive
in that adorable teddy-bear kind of way and Charlie sexier than
should be allowed didn’t run through his part of the family tree.
Makya sports a pug nose, a protruding forehead, and zero evidence a
chin ever had an inclination to exist. The only thing he has going
for him is the mossy green eyes which mark him as a Hagan.

“
And what if I don’t feel
like moving out of your way, baby?”

I shrugged with affected nonchalance. “I’ll
let you decide. Either I can break your nose like I did at the
state Mixed Martial Arts Tournament five years ago, or I can see if
I can make you run crying to your mommy like the one and only time
you showed up at Uncle Charles’s dojo. What will it be?”

“
You think you can take
me?”

A smirk played on my lips. “I know I can,
moron.”

In all honesty, I wasn’t so sure. I spent
the last month bed-ridden and just went through an extremely
physically taxing evening without any sleep. Not exactly the best
fighting conditions one could hope for, but Talley and Jase were
right. For Christmas I received a surprise gift from Alex - one of
the few factual books on werewolves in existence. Alex understood
my need for scientific facts and reasoning when faced with the
impossible magic of Shifters. In my multiple readings I picked up
on a few of the basics of Shifter culture. Pack structure is based
on physical strength. It’s the one place where being a bully is not
only encouraged, but exalted and necessary. I needed to fight Makya
and win, but at the very least I had to fight. Getting my butt
kicked would be bad, but being a coward simply wasn’t
acceptable.

Makya slowly rose and began to move towards
me. Almost instantly, Charlie and Jase were in front of me, snarls
in their throats.

“
Boys, enough.” At the
sound of Toby’s voice, Charlie and Jase went silent and dropped
their heads, which allowed me to see the fear in Makya’s eyes. “Get
off the steps, you idiots. Let her by.”

It was like Charlton Heston parting the Red
Sea, bodies moved out of the way giving me a path to the front door
where Toby stood waiting.

“
How are you doing,
Scout?” he asked when I was standing in front of him.

How am I doing? Every
single bone in my body has been broken multiple times in the past
twelve hours. I’ve had muscles rip themselves into shreds and then
reform. My skin feels like I laid in the tropical sun for hours
upon hours without sunscreen and then poured acid over it. My
brother almost killed me a month ago. My boyfriend was murdered by
your brother, the only boy I’ve ever loved besides Alex. And now
I’m a Shifter. How the Hell do you think I am?!?!

“
Fine.”

To Toby’s credit, he obviously didn’t
believe me.

“
Hungry?”

My stomach answered for me.

“
Come on, then. We’ve got
plenty to eat.”

Toby moved back and held the screen door for
me. Everyone inside the house, who tended to be in the
Toby-to-parent age spectrum, stood perfectly still, except for one
tiny old woman.

“
There you are.” Gramma
Hagan wrapped her pudgy arms around me and squeezed with more
strength than I would have believed a woman of her size and age
possessed. “Oh sweetie, you’re so thin. I should have brought you
more food. I meant to, of course, time just got away from me with
Phyllis’s hip-replacement surgery.”

Gramma Hagan is one of those grandmothers
everyone wishes they had. She bakes, knits, and holds to the firm
belief her grandchildren are the most perfect creatures to have
ever lived. I was included in that bundle of perfection, even
though she was the mother of Jase’s father and, therefore, no
relation to me whatsoever. After I was finally released from the
hospital, Gramma Hagan came to our house with what can only be
described as a sampler of casseroles. There were seven different
pans of food, each enough to feed our family of five for multiple
days, and they all operated under the instructions of, “Take out of
freezer and place in a 350-degree oven. Bake until bubbly.”

“
You brought more than
enough food, Gramma.” Gramma Hagan was always on me about being too
thin, which was certainly not the case. I’m a very average sized
girl, in no way the skin-and-bones look of models or actresses.
Even with the weight I lost over the past month, I am still within
the normal range. I just didn’t look it at the moment. “I just
haven’t felt like eating much.”

She patted my cheek, the highest point she
could reach on me. “That’s going to change now. I imagine you’ll be
starved after this whole ordeal, aren’t you, sugar?”

“
Yes, ma’am.” The smell of
food from inside overpowered all my other super-senses. I was half
dizzy from it. I had a brief moment of insanity where I thought
about pushing Gramma aside so I could get to the
kitchen.

She chuckled in that cute way old women do.
“Well then, Tobian, I think it’s time you let your Pack eat.”

Toby nodded and the Shifters all stood up
and began arranging themselves into some sort of line. The younger
guys from the porch were mostly towards the back, although Makya
seemed to be somewhere squarely in the middle. Jase stood behind
Toby and Charlie behind him.

I stood more than a little awkwardly off to
the side.

“
If this is some sort of
canine instinct thing, I haven’t developed it yet,” I said. “Where
am I supposed to be?”

Toby looked down the line at his Pack
members, meeting each of their eyes before turning back to me. “Why
don’t you go ahead and get your food, Scout?”

There was a smattering of grunts and gasps.
I don’t know what their problem was. Yes, I understood there was
some sort of Pack social hierarchy at play, but Toby was still
mostly human and a product of Gramma Hagan’s raising. I was
technically a guest and most assuredly a female, as Toby liked to
point out in the most demeaning fashion possible. Toby might be a
giant pain most of the time, but he does know how to use his
manners. Anyway, it wasn’t exactly like I could eat everything all
by myself, although I was half tempted to try. I settled on loading
up two plates with heaping helpings of eggs, pancakes, potatoes,
bacon, sausage, and donuts. And, God bless Mrs. Matthews, I even
had a salad bowl full of Cap’n Crunch.

There was only one place in the Matthews
house where I could escape the cold stares of the Hagan men. As an
added bonus, it was also where I could find some pants.

I was able to enjoy my breakfast in a
sanctuary of complete privacy and near silence. Talley owned a pair
of super-expensive headphones which miraculously blocked out all
the annoying background noise, which was annoying even if it wasn’t
the complete sensory overload it had been.

I was just slurping the last of the sugary
milk from my bowl in the most unladylike fashion imaginable when
someone invaded my Fortress of Solitude. I’m not sure how I knew he
was behind me. I just know one moment everything was fine and
dandy, and the next the little hairs on the back of my neck were
standing on end as I began to mentally review defensive
strategies.

I slid off the headphones and turned to find
Layne, Toby’s tween-age son, standing in the doorway of Talley’s
bedroom.

“
You’re not supposed to be
in here,” he said. “This room is off limits.”

“
This room is off limits
to boys.” I dabbed at a spot of maple syrup I spilled onto Talley’s
bedspread and prayed Mrs. Matthews wouldn’t notice. “I can come in
here whenever I want. I even have my own drawer full of clothes and
a toothbrush in the bathroom.” It was an arrangement our parents
came to when we were seven and started demanding weekly sleepovers.
Talley had a drawer of clothes and a toothbrush at my house
too.

Layne wasn’t impressed. In fact, he seemed
to be a bit angry. “You’re not special, you know. You’re a freak.
Something is wrong with you.”

I made a display of smelling the air even
though I recognized his scent the moment I stepped into the house.
“I hope you thanked him for saving your life.”

“
He’s the Pack Leader and
my dad. It’s his job.”

“
I wasn’t talking about
your dad, moron.”

Layne was visibly shaking. “There is
something wrong with you. My dad is going to kill you and put you
out of your misery, you know.”

I showed my teeth. “I’m going to rip you
apart and enjoy watching your blood leave your body.”

The moment the words were out of my mouth I
wished I could stuff them back in. Yes, Layne was an annoying brat
and someone needed to put him in his place, but it was mean of me
to purposefully scare him. He was still a kid, a point driven home
by his quivering lip.

“
Layne, listen…” But he
didn’t want to. He darted down the hall before I could even think
of the right words to apologize with.

Crap. Now I was going to have to chase after
the little monster.

It quickly became evident the good people at
Bose were geniuses and the sound-proofed headphones were worth
every single penny. They had managed to completely block out the
sound of twenty Shifters and two Seers engaged in a shouting
match.

“
And I’m telling you, nice
little girls don’t just up and turn into Shifters,” Uncle Charles
was saying. For once, his face was red from emotion rather than a
few dozen too many drinks. “That thing is an abomination. A
monster.”

He was calling me a monster? That was rich
coming from a man who liked to use his son as a punching bag.

“
She’s not a ‘thing’.”
Talley’s eyes glowed with a manic rage. It was the first time for
me to see her truly angry in nearly eighteen years. “She has a
name, or is your memory slipping along with your ability to
Shift?”

I saw Uncle Charles’s hand ball into a fist,
but was too shocked to do anything. Luckily, Jase wasn’t frozen to
the spot. He grabbed the older man’s elbow and jerked him back
before he could swing.

“
Call my sister names or
even think about touching Talley again, and I’ll end your miserable
life. Do you understand me?”

“
She isn’t your sister,
whelp. The sooner you remember that, the better off you’ll
be.”

“
Enough,” Toby said,
taking a single step towards his father and cousin, but that was
all it took. Jase went back to leaning on the counter while Uncle
Charles retreated to the leather Lazy Boy recliner. “We’re not
going to go around accusing anyone of anything until we have
proof,” the Pack Leader said, leveling Uncle Charles with his eyes.
“And we’re to respect our elder Pack members,” he said to both Jase
and Talley.

If I were Toby, Jase would have been
strangled over his salute. The arrogant Pack Leader merely nodded
as if he was truly a commanding officer and Jase didn’t reek of
sarcasm.

“
Listen, Toby, it doesn’t
matter if she’s a saint or a demon. The fact is, an arctic wolf is
going to attract a lot of a attention around here,” one of Jase’s
older distant cousins chimed in. “Especially after what your boys
pulled last month. Every redneck with a gun thinks it’s open season
on coyotes. Add a dangerous non-indigenous wolf to the mix and
they’ll be shooting at anything that moves.”