“It’s all right,” Tanner said. “I’m not a fan of were power jockeying either. Neither one of us are, really.”
Quentin studied them, his head tilted to the side. “You’ve got that in-progress look. I’m guessing you’re both still under thirty-five. Weres pretty much stick there for decades. Centuries, even, if they’re lucky and can avoid random hunters’ bullets or killing each other in an excess of alpha ego.” Quentin bit his lip. “I’m sorry. That was insensitive of me.”
Tanner set the journal on the counter, carefully not looking at Chase. “You say that as if you know something about werewolf history.”
“Not a lot. Weres are more clannish than the fae when it comes to keeping information all in the family. But I’ve heard—”
Outside, somebody howled. No, not just somebody.
Tanner faced Chase and they both said, “Jordan.”
What the hells is Jordan doing here? For that matter, how is he here?
Chase jabbed his finger toward the door. “Excuse me. I just have to . . .” At Quentin’s nod, Chase raced across the room and out the still-open door, Tanner at his heels.
Jordan was capering about in front of the cabin, and he wasn’t alone. Gage, Hector, Dakota—they were all there, although Dakota looked decidedly sheepish.
“Sorry, Chase,” he said. “I don’t know how you manage to keep him in line. I really don’t.”
Chase sighed, watching Jordan dart for the trees. “Luck, mostly. Jordan!” he shouted. “Do not pee on those trees!”
Jordan veered away and hung a U-turn. “I wasn’t.” He tried to be surreptitious slipping his belt back through its loop. He dashed to the edge of the path. “Look! A lake!” Then he backed away. “Ewww. A lake.”
Gage punched him on the arm. “Shut up. It looks awesome.”
Chase walked down the porch steps, the boards rough against his bare feet. “What are you guys doing here?”
“Are you kidding?” Jordan danced in a circle, arms pumping. “Road trip!” He grinned at a point behind Chase. “Hey, Tanner!”
“Let me rephrase: What are you guys doing”—Chase pointed to the ground—“here?”
Jordan’s manic grin faded into his version of serious, and he crept closer to Chase. “We wanted to help. You’re our pack.”
“That won’t wash. You’re from the Jackson pack. I’m Lane. We’re all from different packs.”
“Sure, later,” Jordan said, rolling his eyes. “But not now. We’re the Doghouse pack.”
Chase blinked at him. Temporary packs. Chosen packs. Why not, especially given what Tanner had learned from the journal? But regardless, this was a complication that they didn’t need right now. “Didn’t I tell you to stay at the house?”
“Well, yeah. But you can’t have meant forever. When I told the guys . . .” Jordan’s eyes widened and he cowered against Hector, peering around Chase toward the lodge. “Oh my gods. Bear!”
Chase whirled, dropping to a crouch, but it was only Ted, trotting down the path with a huge smile splitting his beard. “Q-Bert! You’re back!”
Quentin ran down the stairs to meet him, tie flapping in his hurry. Ted grabbed him in a . . . well . . . bear hug, and swung him in a circle. Then they kissed. Thoroughly.
“Hello, darling.” Quentin smoothed Ted’s hair off his forehead. “I’m sorry I didn’t get home sooner. The arbitration took longer than I expected. How are the wedding preparations going? Do we need to get over to the lodge?”
“Nah.” Ted kissed Quentin again. “The caterers told me I was underfoot—”
“I expect they were right if you were oversampling the food.”
“Hey!” Ted looked as hurt as Jordan when Chase reprimanded him about personal space boundaries. “They asked.”
“They asked last month when Cas and Rusty were choosing the menu, darling. I don’t think they intended it to be a blanket invitation.”
“There’s food?” Hector perked up, sniffing the breeze. “Wow. Do I smell mushroom puffs?”
Chase propped his hands on his hips and glared at each of the juniors in turn. “The food is for a wedding, guys. It’s not an all-you-can-eat buffet, especially not for uninvited guests.”
“A wedding?” Jordan’s gaze bounced between Chase and Tanner. “Whose? Can we come? I love weddings!”
“No, you can’t. For one thing,” Chase took Jordan’s elbow before he could dart off down the path to the lodge, “you’re not invited.”
“But it’s a wedding, Chase.” Jordan pulled off the hurt-puppy look better than anyone Chase knew. “The more the merrier. How else will they get a proper run after the ceremony? My brother had seventy-two wolves running him and his mate. That’s more than any wedding in years.”
“That’s right,” Hector said. “They’re still talking about it, even at our compound. My cousin was wondering how he could leak the date of his mating to pick up some more guests from across the river.”
“This isn’t a were wedding. In fact one of the grooms is a vampire.”
Jordan’s eyes rounded. “A vampire? Really? I’ve never met one. Do you think we could—”
“Whatever you’re thinking, Jordan, stop right now. You shouldn’t be here. You need to get back to the Doghouse—”
“Wait.” Tanner ran down the stairs to Chase’s side. “Is the house empty?”
“Well, yeah.” Jordan gestured to the other guys. “Road trip, Tanner. Nobody wanted to stay behind. Not after—” He flushed, then his gaze sharpened. “Squirrel!” He darted off into the trees.
“Jordan!” Chase started after him, but Dakota put a hand on his arm.
“I’ll get him. It’s my fault he’s here anyway.”
“Don’t blame yourself. Like I said, controlling Jordan is a matter of luck as much as skill.”
“Hey, Chase. Tanner.” Ted lifted a hand in greeting, his other arm around Quentin’s waist. “Who’re your friends?” He looked down at Quentin, although the two were nearly the same height. “Tanner and Chase are visiting because of you-know-what.”
A smile glimmered on Quentin’s lips. “Subtle, darling. Very subtle.” Ted just grinned back.
Chase cleared his throat. “Ted Farnsworth, Quentin Bertrand-Harrington, these are the guys from the Portland Howling Residence. Gage Kozlov. Hector Gonzales. Jordan Tate is currently chasing a squirrel, and Dakota Jefferson is currently chasing Jordan.”
Gage approached Quentin, holding out his hand, his expression awestruck. “It’s an honor, Mr. Bertrand-Harrington.”
Quentin raised a quizzical brow. “You’ve heard of me?”
“Are you kidding? You argued my pack’s case in front of the supe council when the inland enclave wanted to deny us equal votes because our forested territory doesn’t meet some arbitrary threshold.”
“Oh.” He smiled at Gage as they shook hands. “You must be from the Lincoln pack then. How is your father?”
“Great. Just great. They’re all great.” Gage rolled his eyes and backed away, muttering to himself, “Remus’s balls. Way to be a dork.”
Quentin tilted his head, studying Hector with narrowed eyes. “Gonzales. You’re Umatilla pack, aren’t you?”
Hector shared an alarmed glance with Chase. “Yeah. Is that okay?”
Then Quentin smiled and offered his hand to him. “Yes. Of course. Pleased to meet you. However lovely it is to make your acquaintance, I’m afraid today may not be quite the optimal time for an extended visit.”
Chase crossed the Jordan-trampled grass to stand with Gage and Hector. “I hope you know that this is as much of a surprise to me as it is to you. I didn’t invite them. I didn’t tell them where we were. Which”—he glared at the guys—“I still don’t have an answer for. How and why, guys? Let’s hear it.”
Gage bit his lip. “We, uh, really need Jordan and Dakota for this.”
“Yeah,” Hector piped up, “if Jordan hadn’t followed Chase when he left the house yesterday—”
“He did wha
t?” Chase barked.
Gage ignored Chase, facing down Hector. “If you hadn’t hidden your pizza contraband in Tanner’s room—”
“If you hadn’t barfed your way across Faerie back in November, Jordan wouldn’t have figured out—”
“If you hadn’t been so busy scarfing nachos and cheesy fries—”
“If you’d paid attention to what Chase said about the drinking alarm—”
“If you hadn’t insisted on the twenty-one party—”
“I didn’t! That was Jordan! And Tanner didn’t object.”
“So really—” Gage took a breath “—it’s all Tanner’s doing.” He gazed at Tanner earnestly. “If you’d finished your beer, none of this would have happened.”
Quentin snorted and turned his face into Ted’s shoulder.
Chase held on to his temper with both hands. “I still don’t know how Jordan decided that we needed help—help from all of you—in the first place.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Dakota said, dragging Jordan out of the woods by one arm. “He followed Mal, just like he always does.”
Jordan yanked his arm out of Dakota’s grip. “I don’t always follow Mal.”
Hector stared at him. “Dude.”
“Okay, fine.” Jordan crossed his arms with a huff. “But it’s not like you guys don’t do the same thing.”
“We don’t,” Gage said.
Jordan blinked at him. “You don’t? Really? Because how can you resist—”
“Enough, guys.” Chase held up his hands, palms out. “Jordan, if you’ve been stalking Mal, we need to have a serious conversation.”
“I’m not stalking him. I just follow him sometimes.” Hector coughed into his hand, and Jordan glared at him. “Okay, all the time.”
“That’s kind of the definition of stalking, Jordan,” Chase said.
Jordan drooped, peering up at Chase from under his brows. “It is?”
Quentin chuckled. “I’m afraid so. But given the restrictions on juniors during their Howling, I doubt that it could be too extensive. Your shifts are monitored and controlled by quota. You’re not allowed to have your own vehicles. Besides, Mal is fae. He has access to a method of transport that you don’t.”
“Not anymore.” Jordan beamed around at them. “With the FTA, anyone can go through Faerie.”
Chase’s head was starting to pound. “How did you call an FTA driver?”
“Oh, that’s easy. I used the app!”
“App?” Quentin asked. “What app?”
“Hector wrote it over the break. We’ve been beta testing it for him.” Jordan whipped out his phone and poked at an icon—he persisted in removing the identification locks, no matter what Chase or Mal or Bryce told him. “It works on the same magical frequency that supe communication app Dr. MacLeod’s uses, and you can link it to a payment option, just like a human Uber account. See? It’s a little oak leaf. You touch the gold rune in the center and it even says the magic word for you, since I could never get it right. It’s way better than actual oak leaves.” He wrinkled his nose. “Those are so last millennia.”
Chase pinched the bridge of his nose. “Hector. You promised to give up hacking the magic grid.”
Hector winced. “Sorry? I didn’t mean to, but when Gage told us about his trip, it was obvious the system needed a major upgrade.” He glared at Jordan. “I didn’t intend to let anybody use it until after I showed it to Dr. MacLeod.”
If the Assimilation Board ever finds out how little control I really have . . . “Leaving that aside for the moment, how did you know where to go?”
Jordan snorted. “Duh. We had to activate that Find My Friends thingie on our cells as soon as we moved into the Doghouse—although, come to think of it, that’s so our pack can check up on us now and then and so you can find us, huh?” He beamed at Chase. “But it works for us to find you too.”
“Imagine,” Chase said faintly.
“Anyway, once we got your location—”
“Gods, Jordan,” Gage moaned, “don’t say ‘we.’ None of this was my idea.”
Jordan stuck his nose in the air. “I mean a general ‘we.’ Besides, you didn’t object.”
“That’s because you told us Chase and Tanner were in danger!” Gage hollered. “Of course we came along.”
“How did you know we were in danger?” Chase asked Jordan.
“Hello? Mud monsters? If that isn’t danger, I don’t know what is.”
Chase reached out for something to keep him from ass-planting on the ground. Tanner gripped his hand, then steadied him with an arm around his waist. Jordan was there in the park? When the golems attacked? “Oh gods, I’m the worst RA ever. You could have been killed!”
Jordan peered at him worriedly. “I wasn’t in any danger. Once you guys left with the human, the monsters kind of”—he patted the air —“splatted out. Mal poked at the mud piles with his sword for a bit, but then he left too.”
“I suppose you followed him again.”
Jordan screwed up his face. “Dude. I’m not stupid. Besides, since he, um, is fae, he doesn’t need to wait for an FTA driver to show up. I had to wait for twenty minutes before I could get a ride, and I kind of lost track of him.”
Quentin released himself from Ted’s embrace and stalked toward Jordan, nearly as intense as he was when he’d burst into the cabin earlier. “Regardless of how you called the FTA driver—and I suspect Bryce MacLeod will want to have a serious conversation with you about this app if it’s piggybacking on his magic frequency—you had to wait for them?”
Jordan backed away until he ran into Dakota. “Um. Yes?”
“The FTA service level agreement states that a driver will arrive within ten seconds of the spell invocation, provided their arrival won’t violate the Secrecy Pact. Supe lives could depend on it. Are you saying there was a delay?” Jordan tore his gaze away from Quentin’s glare, whining low in his throat. “Answer me, please. If the driver failed in their duty, there could be serious repercussions.”
Jordan was trembling in earnest now. Chase stepped forward to place one hand on Jordan’s shoulder. “Tell Quentin the whole truth, Jordan. I’ve never known you to lie.” He smiled wryly. “Skirt the issue at times. Redirect. Obfuscate. But never outright lie, especially when somebody else could be hurt as a result.”
Jordan sighed, his shoulders sagging. “Okay. So I didn’t leave right away.” He looked up at Chase pleadingly. “Mud monsters, Chase. I had to check it out. Surely you see that. I mean, I’ve never seen anything like them, and who knows when I’d see anything like them again.” He wrinkled his nose. “But they weren’t any different from the rest of the ground.”
“Tell me you didn’t dig a hole through one,” Dakota muttered.
“What if I did?” Jordan raised his chin. “It was for science.”
Quentin had lost his fierce advocate scowl—I wonder if I could imitate it once I get out of law school?—and now looked as if he were trying not to laugh. “So the delay, the reason you didn’t stalk Mal”—Jordan whined again—“was because you were . . . investigating the scene? Not because the driver was dilatory in arriving?”
Jordan glanced at Chase. “‘Dilatory’?”
“It means slow.”
“Oh.” Jordan brightened. “Then no. I mean yes. I mean, what was the question?”
“Never mind, Jordan.” Chase patted him on the shoulder. “I think we get the picture. But do I need to tell you that you need to stop following Mal?”
Jordan sighed. “I know. I’ll try. But I might need reminding sometimes.”
“I’m sure we can handle that.”
“Thanks, Chase. You know I don’t mean to lose control, but sometimes it’s really hard.” He perked up, smiling. “Oh. I almost forgot. I picked this up while I was, um, investigating. Hold this.” Jordan thrust his cell phone at Tanner, then dug into his pocket and pulled something out. “You dropped this.” Jordan opened his fist to display Tanner’s ring.
As Tanner held out his other palm, Chase’s hackles rose, his fur threatening to burst through his skin. “I don’t think—”
“Stop!” Mal’s shout startled Jordan so that he snatched his hand back, dropping the signet into Tanner’s hand.
And the ground exploded.
A golem sprouted practically under Tanner’s feet, knocking him on his ass and sending the ring flying off into the weeds. Mal came pounding down the path from the Faerie threshold, sword in his hand, and Chase was suddenly there, helping Tanner to his feet.
“There are so many of them,” Tanner wheezed, still trying to catch his breath as Chase yanked him out of range of the golem’s grab. The rocks embedded in its muddy arm were almost like claws. “Why are there so many?”
“Why are they here at all?” Chase gasped, ducking under a second golem’s clumsy swipe.
Mal stepped in front of them, lopping off three of the four arms with lightning strikes of his sword. “They’re after Tanner.”
“Me?” Tanner backed up as the golem lumbered toward him. “How? Why?”
“Don’t ask questions. Just get off the fecking battlefield.”
“But I can help. I—”
“Go!” Mal roared. “They’ll keep propagating as long as you’re here!”
As much as it went against Tanner’s instincts to leave his friends, if his absence would stem the attack, he only had one option. He turned and raced into the forest, dodging through the underbrush, following his own and Chase’s scents through the trees. Mal knew the golems would rise again. He’d shouted at Tanner just before they’d materialized. He must have uncovered something after they’d left him in the park. But what?
Who cares? What mattered was his friends’ safety, Chase’s safety. He stumbled to a halt and peered back the way he’d come. He couldn’t see the lake through the trees, although he could still hear shouts from the fight.
Maybe I need to get farther away, just to be sure. He glanced down at his hand—he was still clutching Jordan’s cell phone. Jordan said that the golems had dissipated after Hugh had led Tanner and Chase into Faerie. With Hector’s app, I can call an FTA driver myself. If that had worked once, surely it would work again. But did he need to be in a particular spot to invoke it?
Howling on Hold Page 21
