Sixpence & Whiskey

by Heather R. Blair

  “You crashed the party before everything was ready. I was going to call, you know. Set it all up properly.”

  “So sorry to blow your plans. Where’s Luna?” Yes, I want to know, but more importantly, the plan is to keep Owen talking as long as possible. The bruins swear to me they are good enough to hide their scent from the wolves, but even Georg admitted the slightest change of wind could toss all the skill in the world out the fucking window. Rochie is with them to prevent any unwelcome surprises, should anything go wrong.

  This is the wolves’ most powerful time. The height of the full moon. We have to be careful. Otherwise, Syana will die. She has to be clear of the wolves before we make a move on Owen.

  He grimaces. “Luna refused to be here for this part. I tried to insist, but she’s stubborn like that.”

  I force a smile. “Must suck to know that your mate is more powerful than you. Nails you right in the old gonads, eh?”

  A growl escapes bared teeth, but Owen holds himself in check. Several of the betas farther back shift their feet and whine, something uneasy in their shining eyes. Owen throws a snarl over his shoulder and the sounds taper off, but don’t quite cease.

  Hmmm. If he doesn’t have full control of the pack without Luna here….

  I chance a look at Jack, who inclines his head slightly. He noticed, too. And there is no doubt in my mind that behind those trees, Georg is taking it all in.

  “Believe me, Luna’s just fine with the rest of it.” Owen grins in satisfaction. “The pack needs the money handing you over will bring in…and the goodwill of powerful people. She knows that.” Heads lower, and the murmurs of discontent turn to uneasy silence. “Don’t fuss about that, though. You should be concentrating on your sister…and your poor human friend. I’m afraid she’s in pretty bad shape, but then she shouldn’t have tried to fight. Damn bitch broke my nose.”

  I laugh outright, pushing it out over the sickness in my gut. “Good for her.”

  “She’s regretting that now, believe me.” His smile slices through the night again. “I finally got a taste of her without you around to stop me. I do love the way humans scream. Too bad your sister didn’t give me that pleasure when it was her turn.”

  He bit them, the bastard bit them both.

  “You blooded Carly?” My heart nearly stops. “You fucking asshole.” I raise my hands just as Jack moves to flank me, his hip brushing mine. I can tell he thinks I’m losing it, and he’s not wrong.

  Owen’s smile is wide as he wags a finger at me. “Of course I did. They were delicious. You’ll really have to work to save the human, but the likelihood that your sister will turn is pretty slim. She’s still a witch.” He tuts when I curl my fingers into fists. “Of course, you’ll have to find her first. We left her in one of the ice caves. Had a sprite who owed us a favor take her over the water. But only I know where they went.”

  That explains Ajax’s disappearing trail. The lake is starting to freeze over, but not nearly all the way to the islands, not yet.

  “Did you check the weather tonight? Minus ten, with wind chills down to thirty below. It takes a lot to kill a witch, but that just might do it.”

  He has a point. Unconscious, bleeding out…Carly really could die. Ana’s vision makes sense now. What she saw wasn’t teeth, but ice. Row upon row of glistening white icicles. There are ice caves all over the islands that dot this part of Lake Superior, as well as along parts of the shoreline. Caverns that tourists and photographers love for their deadly beauty. One of them could be my sister’s tomb. I can’t think of that right now. I just have to tell myself she’ll be okay and focus on Sy.

  “You can spare her the pain of finding out.” Owen’s voice crawls across the sand, burrowing into my bursting brain. “Come to me, Persephone and I’ll tell the bear king where your sister is. I swear it. And I’ll let the human go, too. You know the faster she gets treatment the less likely she’ll turn.”

  I stare into the shining yellow eyes under that dark hood. What else can I do? I lower my hands and take a step toward him. Jack yanks me back. This is part of the plan, we expected Owen to try for a trade, but I can’t play this game anymore. Not with my sister’s life.

  I shoot Jack a look, letting him know I’m done, but he turns away, addressing Owen.

  “You’ll kill Seph.”

  Teeth shine in the darkness. “Of course I will. Right here and now, Frost. The bounty is dead or alive. I prefer dead. Why do you think Luna chickened out? She wanted to turn the witch in alive, but that’s too risky.” The werewolf turns back to me. “I will go to Kivistö and tell him where your sister is. Scout’s honor.” He laughs softly. “After.”

  “Not happening.” Before I can move, Jack picks me up and pivots, throwing me at the trees. Georg steps out, catching me as neatly as if they’d rehearsed this. Which of course they have, if only in their heads. I slam into a rock-solid chest hard enough to knock the wind from my lungs, but that doesn’t keep me from screaming at Jack, who ignores me, his eyes on Owen.

  I kick and buck at Georg, but he just squeezes his big arms, pinning my hands so tightly to my sides I can barely wriggle my fingers. Anger is growing inside me, turning into something icy that drives away my fear for the first time since I got Thomas’s text. It’s not like I’m anxious to die, but I need to know where my sister is. Jack and Georg know this—so what the hell are they doing?

  Owen’s eyes widen at the sight of the bruin king, looking uneasy. “You promised to stay out of this.”

  “No, I promised you safe passage.” Georg’s words rumble over the beach. “Which, considering I was lied to, is hardly what I consider a binding agreement.”

  “You know what happens if you break an oath with us, Kivistö?

  “I don’t really care.”

  “But she cares. You kill me, and her sister is a dead woman. You won’t find her without—” Abruptly Owen stiffens, and in the same instant so does Georg.

  The bruin inclines his head to whisper in my ear. “They have Syana. Ajax says they’re clear. She’s alive, but in bad shape. They’re heading back to the Den to get her to a healer.”

  I slump briefly at the surge of warm relief, even though I know if Owen really bit Sy, she’s hardly out of the woods yet.

  Owen shakes his head, slathering, his rage evident. He obviously got the same word that Georg just did. For an instant the wolf flashes over the human, then Owen is back, his eyes paler than ever. He whips up a warning hand at Jack. “So you got the human free, Persephone. I still have your sister. You’re trapped, and you know it.”

  That something slithers inside me again, cold and dark and hungry. “Am I? Here’s what I know, Owen. You’re so hyped up to snag me and get that bounty—a bounty raised because certain people are scared shitless I might go all psycho evil queen on their ass. And yet somehow it slipped your tiny mind to be afraid of pissing me off.”

  Let go. Now.

  At the thought in my head, innate magic surges over my skin in a cascade of sparks. Georg drops me at once, his huge arms shaking as if he just hugged a transformer. Shocked, he staggers as I dance out of reach.

  I raise both hands to the stars, “Sing a song of sixpence…”

  Magic hums down my arms. For the first time in hours my heart’s not pounding frantically. In fact, it barely feels like it’s beating at all. I feel so calm, it’s almost scary.

  Owen backs away, looking skittish. “You’ll never find her without me.”

  “Oh, you’ll tell me where she is. You’ll tell me everything.”

  The dark expanse of water starts to boil and roar behind him. Owen turns to Jack, but Jack is staring at me, his expression utterly blank. Because the lake isn’t responding to him, it’s responding to me.

  I hold my breath as I watch the water forming into a wall of ice that rises and rises into a glittering tower behind the wolves. It’s beautiful, backlit by moonlight as it sways and creaks. Far below, the wolves whimper, cringing in that monstrously gorgeou
s shadow, but unable to leave their alpha. Owen is stunned immobile, his mouth half open as he looks up in disbelief.

  “You can’t—”

  But I can.

  With a roar, the towering monolith breaks over the beach. The sound of shattering glass blots out everything, even the end of my rhyme. But I don’t need it for this. Furry bodies bolt left and right, the lucky ones leaping clear. The not so lucky are left shredded and bleeding on the frozen sand, whining pitifully.

  Owen tries to run, but with a flick of my wrist, the magic snakes out like a lavender whip, catching his foot even as that foot turns into the hind flank of an enormous yellow wolf. A wolf that is tossed into the air like a child’s stuffed animal, howling, his hood falling back to reveal amber eyes marbled with pearlescent white, the mark of moon madness.

  Wolf Owen slams into the beach, gaining his feet faster than I thought possible. My magic is faster. In seconds I have him wrapped in thin lines that slice and burn both fur and flesh as he twists on the sand. The smoke drifts into the air in spiky coils as I approach. “Tell me where she is, Owen.”

  He makes a sound that wavers between laughter and a high-pitched howl as his body shifts back and forth. Wolf, man, wolf, man.

  I’m killing both. And I don’t care, because Owen is beyond my reach.

  He won’t tell me, I can see the truth of it when I look into those gleefully mad eyes. He’s aware of what I did to his pack, and no matter what, he is an alpha. My mistake is going to cost me more than I can bear. I don’t want Owen’s soul, but I take it anyway, tearing it apart with my teeth, hating the taste of him, desperately hoping I can catch a glimpse of where Carly is. My sister’s name pounds over and over in my head. I may never see her again. Because of this monster.

  With a scream, the lines of my magic burst apart, ripping Owen’s body into pieces that fly across the sand, scattering blood and bone in their wake.

  I fall to my knees. Barely aware as Georg cautiously approaches. In the corner of my eye, I can see Jack still standing there. He hasn’t moved. There is something dark and fathomless in his eyes. Almost resigned.

  “Seph.” Georg’s low voice brings my attention back to him.

  “Sy’s at the Den now, Seph. She’s fine, or they think she will be.” He clears his throat, and I know he’s trying not to draw attention to the fact my friend was bitten—by a psychopathic werewolf at the height of the full moon. Fine is probably not the best word to describe what Sy is right now. “Dominic says she hasn’t let go of Ajax since they found her. I think it’s best if you leave her where she is for now.”

  I nod, my insides shaking, but Georg’s words pull me out of the lethargy caused by Owen’s death. Sy’s alive. That’s something, a big something, no matter what may come later. And not everyone who is bitten turns.

  “Does Syana know anything about Carly, Georg?”

  He shakes his head, eyes blank as he communicates with his men, long, golden-brown hair dancing over his face in the rising wind. “No. She didn’t even know they had Carly until she heard you screaming at Owen just before the twins grabbed her. She never saw your sister, only the betas Owen passed her off to. And we won’t get anything out of them. Unless you can raise the dead.” He indicates the bodies around us. If any wolves survived my assault, they’ve cleared out. I stare at the blood-soaked sand, unable to absorb the fact that I am now a mass murderer. I know it will hit me later, but right now Carly’s life is the only one I can think of.

  I should’ve let Owen kill me.

  Georg clears his throat. “There’s a dozen or more ice caves along this part of the shore, three times that many on the islands. Even Frost can’t search them all fast enough. And that’s a storm rolling in, looks like a bad one.” He points at a billowing grey curtain coming down over the inky night, erasing the lake mile by mile. “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing else we can do, Seph.”

  It’s not Georg, but Jack who catches me when I fall. My sudden weakness has nothing to do with the magic I unleashed. Magic doesn’t exact that kind of toll, but the knowledge that I’ve just sentenced my sister to death does.

  Jack doesn’t speak on the way back to the car. His jaw has been locked since he watched the lake rise at my command. He keeps to a pace I can tolerate, his arms solid and warm around me, but he doesn’t say a word.

  The only noise is the whistle of the wind and the tinkle of Rochie’s wings. She rejoined us sometime after helping the twins get Syana to the Den. I don’t know how much she saw, because the fairy isn’t talking either. The silence makes my ears ache.

  That’s why I’m startled when Jack lets out a disbelieving curse seconds after slowing to a normal walk yards from where we left my car. I lift my head from his chest, then give a gasp of my own. Followed by a scream that brings Georg back from his boundary at a run.

  My scream isn’t one of fear. It’s pure joy.

  Styx is standing next to the Fiat, my sister in his arms.

  25

  It takes me all of a minute to heal Carly’s wounds. She’s already laughing at something Styx is saying. I can see her curls flash through the window as I tell Georg good-bye. I can barely take my eyes off her.

  It seems Ana found Styx about an hour after Jack and I left. He’d been the one that dropped Carly off, a few blocks from home, something I gather they’d been doing for awhile now. Of course, he had no clue the wolves were about to strike. Reading between the terse lines of the brief explanation Styx deigned to give me, I gather that finding out what happened made him a little psycho.

  I really want to ask what the hell’s going on between him and my sister, but I give him a pass. He’s earned it.

  Ana scried for me and was able to describe to Styx the beach we were on perfectly. He arrived on the lakeshore just in time to hear Owen’s speech about the ice caves. Since the whole of Lake Superior is basically his element, he reached out through it and found her almost immediately. Unfortunately the power he released to do so caused the storm, and Styx brought her here to wait for us.

  I really don’t give a troll’s hairy ass about the details, I just want to keep watching my sister. Forever.

  I don’t know how we all manage to fit in my tiny car, even after the bears relieve us of the tequila in the back. I let Georg have it all, of course. Along with one hell of a kiss. I don’t even care that Jack was watching. Not that he appeared to notice.

  Jack is lost in his own world, one I don’t even attempt to draw him out of, because I’m scared of what he’ll say when he does. We both know I touched elemental magic tonight. I don’t know how, and I’ve no idea how to repeat it, but touch it, I did. And it made me into a monster. Whatever he’s contemplating, I don’t want to hear it, not yet.

  I’m on his lap, bent almost in two by the Fiat’s roof, but we might as well be miles apart. Rochie is glaring at me, but I don’t care. She drew me aside before we left, her little face drawn up tight.

  “Did you forget what I said?”

  “About what?” I was busy trying to keep my sister in sight, until Rochie smacked my face. Fairies may be tiny, but they pack a big punch. Reluctantly, I gave her my full attention.

  “About Jack being in trouble. What happened tonight sure as hell isn’t going to help him any, Seph.”

  “Then why is he here, Rochie?”

  She lifted a teensy eyebrow. “Why indeed? You might want to ponder that question when you have a little time to yourself.”

  I will, but not yet, I tell myself as Styx pulls down our street. The storm Styx caused is well behind us now and the sun is just coming up. I want to push it all away, just for today at least. Jack. The Dark Council. Dealing with whatever happened on that lake. Luna. Merry.

  I just want to believe that Carly is right and everything will work out in the end.

  There’s no place like home, and all the shiny, happy things, right?

  And maybe gnomes will spout fairy wings and shit glitter rainbows while we’re tapping our ruby red fuck-me
heels together, too.

  Jack stops when we reach the door, the arm that I’ve been unconsciously holding in a death grip sliding out from under my hand, leaving me unbalanced, stumbling on the steps.

  He leans forward before I can fall, steadying me with a grip like steel. His lips brush my ear, the bristles of his stubble rough against my cheek. His words are quiet, meant for my ears alone. “They’ll be coming for you now, princess. You haven’t seen anything yet.”

  My sister is still chattering along happily, chased by the murmur of Styx’s deeper tones as they move through the door.

  “And whose side will you be on, Jack?”

  “The one I’ve always been on. My own.” His expression is cool, careless. It slicks my insides with ice. That perfect smile with just a hint of teeth, the one he uses to break my heart. “I did warn you, Persephone.”

  Oh, that smile.

  But I remember that kiss on our drive last night and what he said to me. It gives me the strength to laugh in his face.

  “You’re so full of shit, Frost.”

  When I turn away, Styx reaches to shut the door, frowning as he looks from Jack to me and back. Out of the corner of my eye, I think I see Jack’s expression flicker, but then the door closes and it doesn’t matter anymore.

  I can’t meet Styx’s curious gaze, and I can’t fall apart, my sister needs me. Taking a deep breath, I lace my arms in both of theirs and tug them into the sunshine-filled parlor. It’s only when they stop in their tracks that I see it.

  Ana’s on the floor. Covered in blood.

  In the corner, draped in morning shadows, is Thomas, his big hands clenching and unclenching over his knees. The shock of white in his hair is more prominent than ever and he looks half feral, his eyes not on us, but on Ana.