Smoke Bitten

by Patricia Briggs

  “Did she release it on purpose?” I asked.

  Aiden shrugged. “I don’t know.” He looked at me. “It isn’t out of the question.”

  4

  “Five in the morning is a crummy time for an all-hands meeting,” said Honey briskly as she came in the door.

  “Mercy wanted it to be at three in the morning,” said Aiden. “But Adam told her that he needed everyone functional.”

  He was curled up on one of the living room couches and wrapped in a blanket. He didn’t normally feel the cold, but whatever Wulfe had done to him was still lingering.

  I was pretty sure I was right that if Wulfe had done something permanent, he would have bragged about it. I didn’t think Wulfe had enough power to undo something Underhill had created—but I was less sure of that today than I would have been before last night.

  The wolves had given the blanket curious looks, but no one had asked Aiden about it. At his words, though, the stragglers who were lingering in the living room, mostly hovering over too-hot-to-drink coffee they’d gotten from the pot in the kitchen, directed appalled gazes at me.

  I hadn’t been serious about three a.m. But at two in the morning, Adam had been on the phone, on the Internet, or pacing for hours and hadn’t seemed likely to sleep anytime soon. Aiden, who had been seriously spooked by the creature he thought might be wandering around our home—and by having his magic quenched so thoroughly—had kept me company as I made cookies and watched Adam pace until I declared “enough” and went to bed myself.

  With the wee-hour light peeking into the windows, the pack accused me of torturing them with their sleep-deprived eyes, if not words. I shrugged. They didn’t need to know how wound up Adam had been about the intrusion of another pack into our territory. And his stress was not lessened by the trouble that he had characterized as a lack of control over the wolf (but his wolf seemed to think was something different). Adam would show them what he wanted them to see, what they needed to see: their Alpha strong and resolute.

  So instead of explaining, I told them, “Adam said that it wasn’t anything that couldn’t wait for the morning. It had to be early morning so that we could get the whole pack here. You can blame Auriele, who has to be at the high school by seven at the latest. Adam is upstairs if you want to head to the meeting room. He’ll start as soon as everyone gets here.”

  “Do you know what this is about?” asked Ben. He took a sip of his coffee and then exploded into expletives that had a couple of the wolves taking out their phones to look up a few of the words he used. He was British, our Ben, and had the foulest mouth I’d ever heard. One didn’t, I was pretty sure, have a lot to do with the other, but both of them occasionally required translations.

  “We are holding a meeting,” I pointed out to him when he’d calmed down enough to listen, “so we don’t have to repeat the same stuff over and over as new people come in.”

  Sherwood Post opened the door on the end of my sentence with a steaming Starbucks venti cup in one hand.

  “Starbucks is open?” asked Luke. “I could have gotten Starbucks?”

  “Hey,” I said. “Don’t diss my coffee.”

  “How’s Pirate?” asked Honey.

  Pirate was the one-eyed kitten that Sherwood had rescued. There had been a point at which we had all been certain the kitten wouldn’t make it. But as of last week, he’d been freed from the vet’s tender care.

  Sherwood nodded at Honey, which meant that Pirate was fine. Then he looked at me and asked, “What’s up?”

  “A meeting,” I told him. “So I don’t have to repeat myself over and over.”

  Ben snorted a laugh.

  Sherwood looked like a lumberjack in his red flannel shirt and khaki pants. He wore the peg leg today, so he was probably headed to work after this. The foot prosthetic was more expensive and he didn’t like to risk it. He’d just gotten a new prosthetic that looked like a modern artist decided to blend the idea of a foot with a spring. It was more useful and stronger than either of the other two, but he wasn’t comfortable in it yet, so he only wore it at home or at the gym.

  No, he hadn’t told me all of that. He still didn’t talk much—but the whole damn pack gossiped about him like a bunch of fond mamas. His facility with magic—when his wolf took over—had resulted in a betting pool about the real identity of our amnesiac pack mate. I had instituted a one-dollar limit per bet, winners split the pot. It currently stood at $187.29.

  There was, I had learned from the entries, an entire folklore about old wolves and their deeds that I had been unaware of. Being a history major, I was more than a little grumpy that no one had told me all those stories—but I was learning. I kept the betting book, and before I would write down the name, I made the wolf doing the betting tell me about their candidate for the position. Maybe sometime I’d record all the stories I learned. I couldn’t publish them since a lot of them demonstrated just how dangerous werewolves were—and we were currently trying to soft-pedal that for the humans we lived among so they didn’t decide that the only good werewolf was a dead werewolf. But still . . . someone should write them down.

  The choices for Sherwood’s real identity weren’t limited to werewolf legends, though. Five people had put their money on Robin Hood.

  If they had been older wolves, I would have been excited, but four of them were from the current generation and the other was, I think, joking. Still, Sherwood Post to Sherwood Forest made a certain amount of symbolic sense. And everyone knew that Robin Hood had lived in Sherwood Forest. So had Little John and Alan-a-Dale, Friar Tuck, and Will Scarlet. Little John had gotten two dollars. Alan-a-Dale and Will Scarlet one dollar each. No one had put money on Friar Tuck—our Sherwood just didn’t look like the friar type.

  As Kelly had pointed out when he handed me his dollar for Robin Hood, Bran seldom did things without reason. When I told him the story I’d had from both Sherwood and Bran, that he’d picked the name because Bran had had a book by Sherwood Anderson and the treatise on manners by Emily Post on his desk, Kelly had snorted.

  “Please,” he said. “Everyone knows that Bran keeps his books in his bookshelves and not on his desk unless he is actively reading. We had that from several different sources. Also, no one has ever seen Bran read Sherwood Anderson, before or since that day.”

  I blinked at him. Apparently there had been a lot more serious investigation into Sherwood than I’d been aware of.

  Misreading my expression, Kelly backtracked a little. “Elliot knows a couple of wolves from the Marrok’s pack. Luke knows a few more.”

  “Might be right,” I said. “I don’t remember.”

  Most of what I remembered about Bran’s study had to do with keeping my eyes down and pretending I was sorry (or mystified, if the evidence against me wasn’t strong) for whatever it was Bran was mad at me about. I hadn’t been paying attention to whether he had books on his desk.

  Before I took his dollar, though, I told Kelly, “You should know that historians are not sure that Robin Hood was a real person. Or if he was, if he was as significant a figure as the stories about him make it appear.”

  Kelly shoved the dollar into my hand and pointed to where three other names were behind “Robin Hood” on my notebook page. “And maybe he was a werewolf,” he said.

  When someone asked Sherwood directly about the Robin Hood identity, he hunted me down and asked to see the betting book. Sherwood put a dollar down on Robin Hood himself—and another dollar on William Shakespeare.

  “I can shoot arrows,” he’d said. “But I’d rather have been a poet.”

  I still wasn’t sure how to take that. Sherwood certainly had given no sign of wanting to be good with words. On the other hand, poets don’t need to use a lot of words to get their point across, even if Shakespeare had.

  This morning, our mysterious Sherwood gave me a nod. “Upstairs?”

  “Yes,�
� I said.

  He nodded again, this time at all the wolves gathered in the living room, raised his cup to me, and then headed up. After milling around a little more than they had been, the rest of the wolves in the living room followed him. Still wrapped in a blanket, Aiden tagged along behind. Adam had asked him to attend the meeting, too.

  Darryl and Auriele came in a few minutes later.

  Auriele brushed past me and up the stairs. She pretended not to notice me, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t embarrassment or regret or anything like that driving her. She was still mad at me.

  Darryl gave me an apologetic shrug—because he knew she was still mad at me, too—and followed her up.

  Warren was the last one to arrive.

  “Everyone else is here,” I told him. “But you have fifteen minutes before the meeting starts.” Something struck me suddenly. “You know? This is the most punctual group of any I’ve ever seen.”

  “Adam,” Warren said, taking off his hat and tapping it against his thigh, “appreciates promptness. He explained that by holding meetings every four hours until the whole pack managed not to be late. It took two days and nearly resulted in Paul’s death when he was late for the next-to-last meeting.”

  Paul had died by other means. We both sucked in a breath before I said, “I could see that. Punctuality was never really his thing. It is yours. Usually you aren’t the last to arrive.”

  Warren was wearing jeans and boots, as he had since I met him. But his jeans now fit with an edge that said designer, and his shirt was a polo that clung to the muscles of his shoulders. His clothes had been getting an upgrade lately. In well-fitted, flattering-colored clothing, Warren looked pretty good except for the drawn face and circles under his eyes that were due to more than a single early-morning meeting.

  “I would have been here sooner, except the case I’ve been working has me pinched for time,” he explained. “It’s a rough one.”

  “A case for Kyle?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he answered, and there was a little smile on his tired face as he started for the meeting room. “For Kyle.”

  Kyle was his boyfriend, though that didn’t quite encompass what they were to each other. They hadn’t taken the final step—the human final step—of getting married. But Adam had told me that they were mates. I couldn’t read the pack bonds that well, but I trusted that Adam could.

  Kyle was very human and a divorce lawyer—and was more than likely responsible for Warren’s wardrobe’s improvement. Warren worked for him as a licensed investigator who doubled as protection and intimidation where needed.

  I’ve always heard it said that it wasn’t wise for people who were involved romantically to work together, especially when one of them worked for the other. But it seemed to be a good thing between Warren and Kyle.

  I didn’t ask Warren what Kyle had him doing—Kyle didn’t believe in gossiping about clients. If there was something they needed from the pack, I’d hear about it. If not, it might show up in the nightly news.

  Warren paused on his way up the stairs and gave me a long look. Then he walked back over, wrapped his arms around me, and kissed the top of my head. He was tall, made of whipcord and rawhide, my foster father would have said. He smelled like himself and a little like a new cologne or bodywash. I sank into the uncomplicated embrace; I hadn’t realized how much I needed a hug.

  “Heard about Auriele,” Warren told me when I finally stepped away. “That woman is going to get herself killed trying to protect Christy from things she don’t need protecting from.”

  “Truthfully,” I told him, “I’m more worried about Wulfe.”

  I told him about my new stalker in as few words as I could manage. Warren knew Wulfe, so that cut down on unneeded explanations.

  “A hobby, eh?” he said, the words casual enough, but there was a harsh edge to his voice.

  “That’s what he said,” I agreed.

  “That kind of hobby could get a vampire taken out of this world—you say he was immune to Aiden’s fire?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And he was able to stop Aiden from being able to use his magic. And he can come into our house. When Ogden brought him here the night of the zombies—I don’t know that he was invited in, Warren. I think he just came.”

  Warren’s mouth tightened, but what he said was, “Well, don’t that beat all. Guess you should have a conversation about him with Stefan.”

  “That’s the plan,” I agreed. “I have a call in to him, but I expect that he won’t call now until tonight. We should go up so Adam can start the meeting.”

  The door to the meeting room was shut, and Jesse, waiting just outside her bedroom door, flagged us down before we could go in.

  “What’s the meeting about?” she asked.

  “Jesse doesn’t know?” Warren asked.

  “Jesse was a smart person,” I told him. “She came in and went to bed last night so she didn’t hear about how we found a nasty creature that might be some sort of boogeyman for the fae and another nasty creature who has decided to take up stalking me for a hobby. If she’d gotten up earlier this morning, I would have told her all about it then. But now we have to go have a meeting.”

  Jesse raised her eyebrow in interest.

  “Don’t worry, though,” I said, even though I’d made the whole situation sound funny so she wouldn’t be worried. “The stalker saved me from the evil nasty.”

  “That’s just wrong,” Jesse said with a grin.

  “I know, right?” I shook my head. “But that’s not why the whole pack got called in. Or that’s not the only reason why. There’s a strange group of wolves nosing into our territory.”

  Warren stiffened. “Invaders?”

  I shrugged. “Looks like. Adam’s been on the phone to various old friends all night putting together a possible list of suspects. He plans on introducing our guests to all of us digitally before we meet them.”

  “Aiden went into the meeting,” Jesse said carefully.

  As a rule, pack meetings were for pack members only. Aiden was there so he could inform the pack about our escapee from Underhill.

  “Since the pack is the reason you had to shuffle your life around,” I told her, “I’d guess that you have a place in our meetings. Come on in if you want to—it will save me having to tell you everything again, anyway.”

  “Awesome,” she said.

  Warren looked at Jesse and gave a solemn shake of his head. “I thought you had more sense. I, for one, have always been grateful for the meetings I have not attended. But if’n you want to come in with us, I guess I’m a big enough shield that none of the others will try to drive you out.”

  “Except Dad,” she said in a small voice.

  I narrowed my eyes at the door. “He’s abject in misery and wallowing in guilt after falling into Christy’s”—I glanced at Christy’s daughter and exchanged “trap” for—“situation. He won’t object.”

  She looked down at herself. “I’m in pajamas.”

  “Go change,” I said. “We’ll wait.” I glanced at my watch. “You have three minutes.”

  She jumped into her room and shut the door.

  “Why?” Warren asked me.

  “She deserves to be involved,” I said. “She’s making life-defining decisions because of the pack. Likely all three of our current crises will affect her one way or the other.”

  “And because it will drive Auriele to distraction,” said Jesse, emerging from her room now clad in jeans and a shirt sporting a cat with an innocent look and a tail emerging from its mouth with the words Got Mouse? underneath. “Mercy is sneaky that way. Maybe I am, too.” She twirled. “Do I look ready for the vengeance games?”

  I decided that the mouse T-shirt was calculated. Though we weren’t going to play cat-and-mouse games with anyone. I was not unaware that Auriele was going to squirm at the sight
of Jesse, but that wasn’t the reason I’d included her.

  I couldn’t stand to see her isolated. Not this morning, anyway.

  Warren looked at me.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, and opened the door with fifteen seconds to spare.

  And if I found Auriele’s face before I stepped aside so Jesse could enter? Maybe making Auriele squirm a little didn’t bother me at all.

  From the front of the room, Adam looked up from his notes. He saw Jesse—and smiled at her. His smile widened when he saw me. Like Warren, he looked worn-out. I was pretty sure that he hadn’t gotten any sleep at all last night.

  “By my count, that’s all of us,” I told him.

  “George isn’t here,” said Elliot, one of the more dominant wolves in the room. He was a big man, massive if not as tall as Warren. Like several of the other wolves, he worked for Adam’s security company. Ex-military, I knew, but I didn’t think his military service had been in the last hundred years.

  Elliot had bet one dollar on Sherwood being Rasputin, the mad monk of Russia. Which was ridiculous because there were photos of Rasputin and he didn’t look anything like Sherwood. Which I had told him at the time.

  Elliot had grinned at me. “It’s the eyes,” he’d said. “You can tell by the eyes.”

  Which meant that he was, like several of the others, putting out bets to tease Sherwood. Sherwood, when he’d seen it, had grunted, then said something in Russian. I’m not sure what it had meant, but it had sounded exasperated.

  Unlike others, I didn’t put any stock in Sherwood’s prowess in Russian being a clue to who he had been. Adam spoke Russian, and he’d been born in Alabama. Bran, as far as I could tell, spoke every language on the planet—if sometimes in archaic versions. Living centuries gave a wolf plenty of time to become fluent in any language they wanted to make the effort to learn.