by Kat Kinney
Then there had been Dallas’s Black Friday cat-shopping-spree. Like she needed a reversible cat bed with Fancy embroidered on one side in elegant script, and Godiva on the other. Also, no comment as to which side she preferred. Traitor. I’d done a hard eyeroll at the rhinestone studded collar and was this close to ordering a matching one in Dallas’s size just to be an ass. Except 1) I was halfway worried he’d like the idea and put it on me (not happening) and 2) then I’d opened the box containing the socks with kittens eating sushi. Fun fact: a girl can never have too many socks. Speaking of which…
“Godiva,” I sang, shaking the fish-flavored snacks and checking her favorite hiding spots one by one. Shredding the catnip mice Dallas liked to leave around my apartment to hone her hunting instincts? Which, okay, was better than her prey of choice—the couch. No tiny black shadow of a cat. Sunning herself on the window ledge? Situation catless. Leaping onto the kitchen table before slithering to the floor? Someone needed to tell her those little paws were just too furry.
Something rustled. I popped open her favorite Amazon delivery box.
Empty.
“We can keep doing this. We both know I’m going to find you.”
Silence. Apparently, we all knew who was alpha-cat in this tiny efficiency apartment. Spoiler alert: Not me.
Tossing the cat treats, I shifted into wolf form. The scent of cat was everywhere, mixed in with coconut from my latest batch of cupcakes, balsam fir, and the peppermint oil I’d been using to soothe my stomach after the unfortunate pinecone-lion-urine calamity. Thanks, Mom. I poked my nose behind the couch. No Godiva. Nosing behind the cushions produced one TV remote, thirteen cents, and zero cats.
I sniffed under tables. Behind cupboards. With oh so careful fangs, I pried open each of the Amazon boxes Godiva loved to hide in.
My phone began vibrating with Somewhere over the Rainbow, the Israel Kamakawiwoʻole version. Dallas. I padded over to the counter to peer at the screen. A rustle stopped me dead in my tracks.
No, not a rustle… a jingle.
She wouldn’t. But sure enough, two ghostly green eyes stared down at me from the uppermost branches of my Christmas tree.
Not good.
So not good.
Shifting back to human, I lunged for my phone.
Me: Situation Jingle Cat. How are your Jenga skills?
Thor: You do realize I went to culinary school?
Me: Think of this as a soufflé. With whiskers.
Thor: Be right over.
I opened a can of wet food, the irresistible siren’s call of cats everywhere. Godiva meowed mournfully. Ever seen videos where fields of snow-flocked spruce tremble during an earthquake? Picture that, but with dozens of delicate glass ornaments from Pier One toppling to the forest floor instead of icicles.
“Hey. Got your message.” Bounding into the room, Dallas took two seconds to survey the cat-ornament-landmine situation. “Okay. Yeah, this is bad. And why does it smell like Santa’s candy cane factory in here?”
I glared. “Because I can shift again, but my sense of smell is still off. And helpful much?”
“No, I mean, I was getting to that. I looked up cat-safe Christmas trees on the way over, and the internet said no tinsel—”
“And you’re just now conveying this important tip in feline-proofing?”
“Also, you should probably wrap the trunk in aluminum foil so she can’t climb.”
I bared my teeth. Growled.
“Right. So just like last time, you’re on oven mitts. I brought that fresh smoked chicken she likes. Plus the heavy-duty foil from The Spoke. Pretty sure between the two of us we can extract one four-pound kitten from a tree.”
“You realize we’re training her to misbehave for barbeque.”
Hearing her favorite word, Godiva meowed plaintively. The tree shook, a pair of red and green striped candy canes clacking together.
“We’ll get the hang of this eventually,” Dallas promised, creeping up on my Christmas tree from behind while I scrambled for the oven mitts. “One. Two—"
* * *
Mom: Going out with friends tonight. Are you working later?
Me: Sounds fun. Godiva and I are just having girls’ night.
I sent the picture Dallas captured of our crazy cat being extracted from an anaconda of tinsel by pink oven mitts and shut down my screen.
“That your mom?” Across a small table for two, Dallas lifted a water glass to his lips.
Dozens of tiny tea lights floated in recesses of the curved brick cellar room of The Clay Pit, an upscale Indian restaurant in Austin’s downtown district. Long white tablecloths set off the wrought-iron accents along the walls. With only four tables downstairs, the dark underground space felt cozy and intimate.
“Yeah, she’s—”
I hesitated, stomach flipping as warm amber candlelight played across Dallas’s dark blond hair. The crisp blue button-down he’d chosen made his eyes shimmer like pools of liquid twilight. Things felt perfect when we were together. A fantasy. A fairy tale. But like all stories, this one had to come to an end. My mother and Dallas couldn’t exist in the same world. And the longer I kept putting off the inevitable, the more it was going to hurt when I ultimately had to end things.
“She’s going out with friends. Brody didn’t give you a hint about who this contact is that we’re supposed to meet with?”
“Not a clue. From what I could gather, he had to pull strings to get them to agree to this at all. Wanted a big crowd, I guess in case they need to cut and run.”
I scooped up another steaming bite of vegetable tikka masala with my naan, the rich flavor of tomatoes and cream exploding on my tongue. “I don’t like going in there blind.”
“We don’t have any choice. If we want the information, they set the terms.” Brow furrowed, Dallas pushed aside the gleaming copper dish of lamb curry. “We’ve been best friends for ten years. You picked out all the paint colors in my house. I’m psychologically pre-conditioned to hate any desserts that aren’t yours. I’ve kept that freaking orchid in my office—”
“Saffron.”
“—because it makes your face light up like a sunbeam the second you walk through my door. This not talking thing doesn’t work for me.”
“My text history begs to differ.”
“You’ve been avoiding me and I’ve been keeping tabs on you every day with BBQ deliveries. That’s not talking. Not when we’re both avoiding the elephant in the room.”
Was it true? Was it possible I’d kept myself preoccupied for weeks on purpose just to avoid this conversation we’d both known was inevitable? “Guillermo will never tell the Tracers to restore my mother’s memory. Or anyone else’s. It’s not hard to understand why. Everything the werewolf council has covered up for the past forty years has happened on his orders.”
“So we go around him. We go to River, see if we can get him to tell us the name of the Tracer who actually performed the rewrite.”
I leaned across the table. “Even if I thought River would go against your uncle, which I don’t, it’s too dangerous right now. There’s a mole on the Council. We have no idea who we can trust.”
Dallas rubbed the faint silver scar at the crease of his lip, lowering his voice until it was barely audible over the din of busboys stacking plates over by the stairs. “My goddamn uncle is the bastard in charge of this entire territory and my brother is his henchman. And damn straight I’m not going to rest until I convince them they’re wrong on this. The wolf’s out of the bag. The public knows we exist now and there’s no going back. There’s no keeping this a secret, and continuing to hurt innocent people like your mom or Hayden’s sister because we’re lying to ourselves and pretending it buys us a few more days or weeks isn’t any way I want to survive.”
I stared across the table at him, chest heaving. No way was I telling him I’d nearly gone before the full Council yesterday, tried to negotiate a deal to free my mother’s memories. I’d made it an hour south of Plano
before my phone buzzed with a pissed off text, demanding to know what the hell I was thinking. I’d pulled over. We’d talked. And what had followed had been one of the longest and weirdest conversations I’d ever had with River. I wasn’t sure what he was being forced to do on the Council. But something definitely wasn’t right.
Was it a mercy, River had asked, to be able to forget? Maybe that was what he told himself in the seconds before he stole threads of people’s lives. But memory was a hazy mirror with no sharp edges, only endless surfaces to drown in. And every time I forgot and let an oven door slam too hard, caught the shadow of an unfamiliar figure crossing beneath the awning on the sidewalk outside and heard my mother’s pulse spike, I knew. There was no forgetting. The werewolf community, in our desperation to survive the coming war with humans, a conflict in which we were far outnumbered, infinitely outmatched in terms of firepower and military might, and with no way to hide save for disappearing into crowds that would turn on us with clubs and silver-loaded firearms in a heartbeat, had failed to question whether some acts came at too great a cost. Whether at some point we’d become the monsters they’d made us out to be.
I thought of River’s warning. Don’t defy the Council. You don’t know what you’re playing at. You’re like a sister to me. I wouldn’t want to see anything happen to you.
“We should wait, talk to your brother before we do anything.”
Dallas frowned, but nodded. “Okay. I’ll follow your lead. And if that means you and I have to stay a secret for the time being, to make things safe for Juliet, then we’ll do whatever it takes. I just want to be with you, Lacey.”
He stroked my fingers, the bond humming between us. Pulse quickening, I stared at the flickering tea lights, heart hammering in my chest. “We wouldn’t tell anyone, you mean.”
“It wouldn’t be like that. My family would know. The pack would know.”
I balled my cloth napkin into a knot under the table. Dallas could be so blindly hopeful sometimes, and right now, all he was seeing were the possibilities. A way we could finally be together no matter how improbable or fraught with risks that solution might be. Not me in five years, still sneaking out of my studio apartment for late-night hookups. Not me lying to my mother just like I did now while he got to tell his family the truth. Christmases and birthdays spent apart. Me, watching the town’s Fourth of July fireworks display alone from my mother’s picnic blanket, while pretending not to notice Dallas and his brothers sitting a few yards away with boxes of fried chicken and buttery corn. A future without any possibility of children, shared homes or shared lives. Without any possibility of us.
And I knew in that instant if I said yes, it would always be this way. Sneaking around. Lying. Being Dallas’s dirty little secret.
Just like I’d been Ethan’s.
“I don’t want to keep living a lie. I want it to be real.”
All the candles in the room seemed to flicker at once, a cold draft ghosting in from the open fire escape in the corner leading up to the street.
Dallas leaned across the table, biceps stretching the expensive fabric of his dress shirt. “It wouldn’t be forever. Just until we can figure out a way to bypass the Council.”
The condensation edging my water glass began to blur, and I realized with a start I was crying. Dallas swore.
“Lacey—”
He rose from his chair, forced to duck under the low ceiling as he came around the table towards me. I shook my head, needing to get out of there, needing to breathe.
In the restroom, I pressed cool paper towels to the back of my neck, trying to calm down. My phone chimed. I blinked back a fresh wave of tears and swiped the screen, assuming it was Dallas.
But it wasn’t.
West: You okay? Sorry I didn’t call earlier. Picked up that thing you asked for. You’re welcome, btw.
Me: I am officially your cupcake wench.
West: Like you weren’t already.
Three blinking dots appeared.
West: But just between the two of us, I think you’d feel better if you told him.
My pulse picked up. Swiping a hand under my eyes, I tapped out a reply.
Me: I have to be sure. And you promised not to say anything.
Grabbing a last handful of towels from the dispenser, I cleaned my face and pushed out into the restaurant, but not before one last message came in.
West: I won’t. Just be careful. Secrets have a way of coming out. And in this family, never in a good way.
* * *
Hipster college town Austin, Texas was famous for its quirky traditions. People swam in all-natural Barton Springs even when it was freezing out. University of Texas students lit the Tower orange every time they won a football game. The white squirrels on campus were not only considered good luck, they had their own social media following. The only fast food Austinites possibly liked better than breakfast tacos? That would be the local Whataburger.
Zilker Park sprawled over multiple acres right where the river wound lazily through the middle of town. Featuring botanical gardens, fields for kite flying and soccer, playgrounds and even its own train, it was beloved for Saturday afternoon cookouts and free community theater performances every summer on the hillside. Built on one of Austin’s historic moon towers, every December the Zilker Park tree was strung with over three thousand electric bulbs suspended on streamers, fanning out to a diameter of over one hundred and twenty feet at their base.
Y’all know the saying. Everything’s bigger in Texas.
Dallas and I edged our way through a sea of thousands of people watching a giant yule log spitting tongues of orange sparks up into the night sky. A fleet of food trucks was set up in a wide circle, the smell of funnel cakes, powdered sugar and roasted corn so thick in the air it made my mouth water. The tree loomed ahead in the distance, the brilliant star at its peak beaming out over Lady Bird Lake.
“It’s nearly nine,” Dallas shouted into my ear over the hum of the gas generators.
“We’ll be fine.” I pulled the red and white striped wool hat from my bag and tugged it on, pretty sure at five foot nine and with my black sweater, leggings and fur-lined boots, the pompom made me look ridiculous. But it was how Brody’s contact would identify us.
At the edge of the field used for wall to wall parking, a line of lush green balsam fir had been set up to conceal the portable toilets. A community band was warming up on a side stage, the trumpets practicing their horse whinnying while the bassoonists twined sparkly holly garlands around the tops of their instruments. In the main circle beneath the tree, hundreds of couples towing children and dogs on leashes spun around us. Between the crush of bodies, the noise from the loudspeakers and the generators, and the sickly-sweet smell of carnival food and diesel, it was no wonder my stomach was doing flips.
Dallas leaned in, breath instantly freezing in the icy night air. “Guess it’s time. Hot chocolate?”
“Make it a cider,” I shouted back.
Alone, I pretended to check my phone and silently tested the air. Human sweat. Wet dog. At my feet, a wrinkly basset hound was sniffing out dropped pieces of funnel cake in the fresh hay that was spread half a foot thick beneath the tree. In wooden gingerbread houses around the perimeter of the circle, Sleigh Ride was jingling loud enough to make my ears ring. Mixed in with all of it, I caught the faint scent of werewolf.
I rotated slowly, trying to seek out its source. A tall man with glasses stooped to lift a little girl with pale blue mittens to twirl beneath the lights. A woman in a dark wool coat kissed her girlfriend as they took a selfie. I glanced up and immediately regretted it, the lights swirling overhead in a dizzying spiral. Staggering back, I rubbed my temples.
“You okay?” Dallas appeared at my shoulder with our drinks, brow furrowed in concern. “What happened?”
“Nothing.” Taking the paper cup of spiced apple cider, I sipped it slowly. “I’m fine.”
“Wow.” Swirling the contents of his cup, Dallas took a sip and p
ulled a face. “Don’t tell Ethan, but he’s kind of ruined me for cheap buck fifty cocoa.”
“Mine’s off, too.” Pouring it out in the hay, I stuck my empty cup under his. “Do you see anyone—”
A group of teenage girls elbowed past us, scrolling through their phones. The woman in the navy knit hat appeared out of thin air, materializing where the group of teens had stood only seconds before. Slight with angular features, I doubted she was much past five foot three even in those chunky boots. Her fitted cargo pants and cropped canvas jacket looked like she’d picked them up at a thrift store and although her platinum blonde hair had been tied back and stuffed into the collar of her jacket, there was no mistaking the former Alpha of the North Austin pack.
London Blake.
“We don’t have much time.” She strode over to us without preamble, gaze flicking over my shoulder to check out the stage. “I had to lose two tails on my way here.”
“Way to make an entrance.” From everything I’d heard, London was your typical Alpha’s daughter. Raised without rules or limits, the wild socialite with a weakness for designer labels thing was just a bonus. She was also one of the youngest shifters to ever take command of a large urban pack. Had to give her that. After her pack had been proven to be behind the plot to abduct and traffic humans over to the vamps, she’d been summarily stripped of her title as Alpha by the Council. She’d escaped during the subsequent raid of her pack house, and the Tracers had put a bounty out on her head.
“And why the hell hasn’t Brody turned you in?” Dallas added.
Her green eyes grew hard. “You want the information or not?”
“Yeah, we want it. What did the undeads hit Lacey with, and who’s behind it?”
“The vamps are calling this Project Eclipse.” London shoved half-gloved fingers into her pockets. “My intel is sketchy. The best we have to go on is that we think the bloodsuckers were originally trying to develop a drug that would spike viral loads in our people. Something that would drive werewolves mad at the full moon and cause mass chaos in the process. Maybe even be the catalyst that turned some of them permanently feral.”
