by Mary Calmes
Fuck.
“I’ve been really trying not to freak out, and people have been saying that he probably just went out with the guys and lost track of time, but I checked with everyone, and nobody’s seen him, and, God, I just don’t know.”
She was rambling because she was terrified, and I understood that.
“And I called the police, and now they’re not sure, because I think they thought he was just out doing whatever, too, but that’s not like Russ, he’s such a grown-up, you know, but now, with his car and everything, I just…. And he said that if anything strange ever happened to him, which makes no sense but it’s what he said—he told me to call you.”
“Okay. Uhm, Samantha did Russ happen to tell you where he was going the night he didn’t come home?”
“Yeah, he was supposed to go see a man named Blake… Blake Dempsey.”
I moved the phone away from my mouth and covered the receiver with my hand. “Delph!”
She didn’t turn around.
“Delph!”
Nothing.
I pulled my sock off, balled it up, and beaned her in the back of the head with it.
She turned from where she was looking outside and faced me. “What the hell are you—”
“I need you,” I whispered, hissing at the end, pointing at my laptop on my desk.
“What?” She was chuckling now because I was probably the least scary thing she’d ever seen in her life. In bed, disheveled, barely awake—baby bunnies were more frightening.
“Check the list on my desktop; see who the semel in LA is?”
“Semel in LA?” she asked, moving to the chair, pulling it out and sitting down. “Why?”
“Just do it,” I whispered.
“Jin?”
“No, no, I’m here,” I said softly. “So, Samantha, do you have any idea what Russ was supposed to be meeting Mr. Dempsey about?”
“No, he said he wouldn’t be long, had to clear up some misunderstanding with a friend of ours, Jimmy Tamaki.”
I cleared my throat. “What did Jimmy do?”
“I don’t even know, it’s all sort of fuzzy, but as far as I can tell, Jimmy and Russ went running together, and something changed, and they wound up in some weird part of town and got into a fight. Which is so weird because neither of them are, like, big he-man types, you know? I mean Russ and Jimmy work at the same animation studio, for goodness’ sake!”
I understood exactly what had happened. Russ, who had never wanted anything to do with the werepanther world, had, without meaning to, found another werepanther, and the two of them had shifted and gone for a run. Unfortunately, they had run in someone’s territory without permission and were probably in very deep trouble as we spoke.
Before the feast of the valley in the summer, Russ had gone to Los Angeles for a recruiting convention and finally landed a job at Ironwood Studios, which was supposed to be the next Pixar. He was scared and excited and most of all happy to be far away from his family. The thing about Ruslan Church, the youngest of Logan’s brothers, was that he absolutely hated being a werepanther. He felt the culture was barbaric and that everyone should just do their very best never to shift and live their lives as humans and nothing more.
And so he had moved to LA, against Logan’s express orders, and had told him that he did not want Logan to speak to or in any way alert the semel of Los Angeles to his presence there. He was not a semel, he was a normal cat; no one would know unless he shifted, and he never, ever would. When he had left, he had a shouting match with his father, and Peter struck him with the blow that this was the reason he had never even thought to ask Russ to carry on the Church line—he was weak because he hated his heritage. They had yelled some more, and finally Russ had told his father to go to hell, and Peter Church had stormed from the house. It had been quite a day.
I had followed Russ out the door, grabbed him, and turned him around to face me. After a heartbeat of time, he had dropped his bags and lunged at me, hugging me tight.
“Promise to call me,” I told him. “E-mail me and let me know what’s going on.”
“I will, Jin, but you can’t ever visit. I mean, I’m nothing, but you’re a reah, for crissakes, or a nekhene, or whatever the hell you are… but other werepanthers will know if you visit. I don’t want anyone to ever find out that my brother is semel-netjer. I’ll get sucked into all the bullshit all over again. I mean, I don’t think you even get how much I just want to be a regular guy, just some guy doing his thing in LA.”
“No, I know.”
“I hate the pit, I hate Mikhail. I—”
“You hate Mikhail?” I teased him.
“Yes! I hate them all! I hate Yuri! I hate Markel and Ivan, and I hate Logan, and I know you love him, but fuck! I hate gatherings, I hate the hunts, and I hate my father preaching the fucking law. Most of all, the fact that we can never have someone in our lives who is not a werepanther is fucked up. I want to meet a nice girl, marry her, and have very normal, very boring, very healthy, and very without-teeth-and-claws babies. I just want to be human.”
“I know.” I smiled at him.
“You get it ’cause you used to want that too.”
“Yes, I did.”
“So I’m gonna find a girl and never see my stupid family until they can accept me for who I am, and that’s it.”
“Are you done?”
He smiled at me. “I’ll really miss you.”
I hugged him again, and he put his head down on my shoulder when he embraced me.
“You always smell so good,” he growled, and I shoved him off me.
“I’m not saying I wanna sleep with you or anything.”
I nodded.
“But see, I could get hurt for wising off to the mate of my brother.”
“No, you couldn’t.”
He grunted, threw the last of his bags in the front of his Audi, and drove away, the U-Haul trailer he was pulling following behind him. I had sent Crane to his new place a month later and got video of a very nice loft that he shared with the lovely Samantha, who was a computer programmer. They kissed for the camera, Crane had given me an eyebrow waggle, and that had been it. When Crane got home from his secret mission, we did not mention it to Logan; he reported that Russ looked happy, was happy, and that everything was going well. Russ didn’t come home for Christmas; they went to see Samantha’s family instead, but Eva and Delphine and Markel went to California for New Year’s and took enough food and goodies to feed an army. Samantha had apparently loved her gifts and loved Russ’s mother, sister, and brother-in-law. They stayed only three days. It was as long as Markel felt was safe. Russ had told them not to mention one word about werepanthers. And now, less than three weeks later, he was missing.
“So, Jin, do you think you could come and help me find Russ? The police have no idea what to even do.”
“Of course I will.”
“Oh God, thank you so much. I mean, you and his mother and his sister, you guys are the only ones he talks about when he talks about home, you know? I would love to visit, but he won’t… and I am in this with him, he’s so beautiful and smart and funny and ohmygod, if I lose him, I—”
“I’ll fix it, don’t worry.”
“Oh, thank you.”
“I’ll call you when I get there.”
“Thank you, Jin,” she said and hung up.
“I’m sorry, where exactly are you going?” Delphine scrutinized me.
“Your brother’s in trouble.”
“Which one?”
“Ruslan.” I smirked at her.
“Oh shit.”
“Oh yes,” I groaned, getting out of bed, striding across the room to stand over her.
She pointed at the screen. “It looks like you’ve got a Miguel Garza there in LA.”
“Garza? Not Dempsey?”
“There’s a number here. I can call his sylvan.”
“Forget it, just pack.”
“Pack? Me?”
“Yeah. You an
d I are going to LA.”
“How?”
“What do you mean how?”
“I mean how do you plan to get off the grounds?”
“You—”
“Not me,” she said with a grin. “I can leave whenever I want. You’re the one who’s under house arrest, dear.”
“But us getting out of here starts with you,” I assured her.
“How?”
“Just put on your gym clothes and drive out the front gate.”
She stared at me.
“I’ll pack a bag and drop it off the balcony, and then I’ll go down for a run. When everyone’s trying to figure out who’s gonna go with me, you get the bag and throw it in the back of your car. Once we’re off the grounds, we’re out of here.”
“Jin, they’ll never let you off the grounds, honey. They’ll follow you and—”
I arched an eyebrow for her.
“Oh,” she said, nodding, “right. They won’t even be able to keep up.”
“Taj is the only one who can keep pace with me, and he’s gone.”
“Logan can too.”
“For a short time.” I swallowed down my heart.
She nodded. “Okay. How far down do I meet you?”
“A mile.”
“How fast can you do that?”
I waggled my brows for her, and she giggled.
“He’ll skin us both, you know.”
A shudder tore through me, and her eyes filled that fast as I allowed her, for a second, to feel the breadth of my pain.
“Oh, Jin,” she whimpered.
I took a deep breath to calm my racing heart. “He left me here, and all I wanted was to go to Crane. He forbade me from going with him. And I understand why, I do, but staying here… I—I will go right out of my mind. And Russ needs us. If Logan’s gonna save Crane, then you and I, we’re saving Russ.”
She nodded, taking a breath. “Okay.”
“Aren’t you worried about him? Don’t you think we should go?”
“I do.”
“So let’s go.”
She turned for the door.
“Shit.”
“What?” She looked back at me.
“Markel.”
“Oh, no, it’s okay; he’s working on a new piece for his gallery opening next week, so he’s at his studio morning, noon, and night.”
“So he won’t even notice you’re gone.”
“Probably not.”
“Good. We’ll be gone; he’ll have more time without you bugging him to have sex.”
“Exactly.”
We had a pact.
And two hours later, our escape was seamless. I met her, alone, in her Lexus, a mile away from the front gate of our home. She had clothes and shoes for me and a big smile. Ivan, who was at the front gate, had let Delphine leave to go to the gym without question. He didn’t even check to see how many bags there were in the trunk of the car. But why would he have?
I had shifted, ostensibly to exercise, and Artem, Yuri’s second, and three others had started the run with me. I left them after five minutes, and they never caught up.
At the airport, I paid for the one-way tickets to Los Angeles in cash, having taken a wad from the safe in my bedroom and given it to Delphine. Once we were taxiing down the runway, I felt like I could breathe.
THE cold January air smelled good, faintly of the sea, which soothed me, and it was not nearly as freezing in Santa Monica as it was in Nevada. Delphine had used her phone and booked a room at the Surfrider Motel, which was on Ocean Avenue, and I drove us there after we used her card at the rental-car counter. Once we had checked in, each of us claiming one of the twin beds, we left our bags and Delphine navigated to Russ’s loft.
He lived off Fourth Street, and Delphine told me that once we found him, we should all go for crêpes at this place that he had taken her the last time she visited. There was no question in her mind that everything would turn out fine. At six that evening, we knocked on Russ’s door.
The woman who answered was breathless. “Hello?”
“Hi again.” Delphine smiled, pushing around me. “Remember me?”
“Ohmygod,” Samantha sighed, lunging at Delphine. “I wanted to call you so bad, but Russ was very specific and told me that if anything ever happened that I should call Jin, not you, and I don’t know why, but he was so—so adamant, and now… ohmygod, thank you so much for coming!”
The two women hugged tight, and slowly, Samantha calmed enough to meet me. Her eyes took me in. “It’s so good to meet you. Russ always goes on and on about you.”
“Well, I kind of like him a little bit too.”
She nodded fast, eyes filling. “I don’t know what to do.”
But I did. “Samantha, could you tell me and Delphine where Russ went to meet Mr. Dempsey?”
“Of course.”
After we left the apartment, promising Samantha to call and give her an update in a couple of hours, I told Delphine that now was the time to scrutinize the list for Los Angeles again.
“It’s a huge city,” I told Delphine when we were back in the Dodge Neon with me driving this time. “I bet the semel here has a maahes and several akers below him, it’s the only way.”
“Oh, Jin,” she said, grimacing. “I have no idea what you just said.”
“About what?”
“What’s an aker?”
I shot her a look.
“What?” she snapped at me. “We just––our tribe wasn’t like that, Jin, you know that. And especially me and Koren and Russ, we didn’t receive any formal training in werepanther law at all. Only Logan got that, and even he didn’t get enough. Until Logan made Domin his maahes, I had no idea what that even was.”
Domin.
“He’s gonna kill you when he finds out you left.”
“So guess it’s lucky for me that he’s not living at the house anymore.”
She made a face. “I miss him.”
“Me too.”
“I hate this.”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“Just say it.”
“No, I—it just sucks.”
“What does? Domin and Koren?”
“Yeah,” she sighed, finally turning to look at me from staring out the window. Her eyes were red-rimmed.
“Awww, sweetie, don’t cry; they’ll figure it out.”
“Oh, Jin, I don’t give a shit. If we’re being honest, I hope Koren gets home from one of his many business trips and finds out that Domin’s mated and adopting babies. It would serve him right to lose the love of his life because he’s too big of a coward to claim him.”
I snorted out a laugh. “Really? This is your brother you’re bashing.”
“I know, but look at my brothers: I have Logan, who knows exactly who he is and what he’s about, and Russ, who’s the same kind of guy, if you think about it, and then we have… Koren,” she finished, disgust dripping from her voice.
I started laughing.
“Who is a wishy-washy pansy piece of crap!”
“He does love Domin.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Delph, you know he does.”
“If he did, he would be able to make a commitment.”
“He’s bisexual and he’s not sure what he wants.”
“The bisexual has nothing to do with anything and by the way––bisexual, my ass! I have never seen the man light up like he does when Domin walks into a room. He melts like butter. I don’t even make cow eyes like that and I’m a girl!”
“Are you sure?”
She smacked my leg really hard, which just made me laugh harder.
“Ohmygod, Jin, how stupid is Koren? He knows who he wants to screw him and that’s about it,” she said irritably, obviously disgusted. “He’s so fuckin’ scared of taking a chance, he’s terrified of what my father will really think, and he’s worried about missing out on some perfect picture of the perfect family that he’s got stuck in his head. He’
s absolutely terrified of making a choice one way or another just in case it’s wrong, so he’s not; he’s just dog-paddling on the surface and not diving deep.”
“Huh, how very profound of you.”
She growled at me. “I’m just saying, he’s scared of standing up like Logan and saying fuck you all, this is who I love, step up or step off.”
“Now you’re gangster?”
“God, I hate you right now!”
I laughed harder and she shoved me, which was dangerous with me driving. “Speaking of Koren,” I said, “where was he when you left?”
“He wasn’t there. Isn’t he out of town?”
“No.”
“Oh, that’s right, if Logan is, he can’t be.”
I nodded. “Like the president and the vice president, can’t have them in the same place at the same time or both not at home. Somebody has to be protected and safe, either the semel or the heir.”
“But where was Koren, then?” she asked me.
I had no idea. I had not even thought about him when we were plotting our escape, and why was that? Why didn’t I….
“Oh, I know,” she said quickly. “He had to go to Avery’s mating ceremony, remember?”
“Shit, that was tonight,” I groaned, only then remembering that Christophe Danvers, the semel in Reno, had invited Logan and me to attend the mating ceremony of his sheseru, Avery Cadim.
“I know Avery wanted you and Logan there, but since Logan was gone and you were on house arrest, Domin had to go, and Koren would have had to go too….” She trailed off, wincing.
“I bet they’re sitting there in silence glowering at each other.”
“Or Koren’s dancing with all the pretty young things and Domin is just sad.”
And suddenly I understood what she had been saying earlier. I didn’t want Domin to be sad or alone. He didn’t deserve to be waiting or cast aside. He didn’t. I wanted him to find the guy, the smart guy, the strong guy, the guy who could deal with his bullshit and not break. I had thought it was Koren, but apparently I was wrong. We all were. And now I wanted a prince for the prince of my tribe.
“I hope he’s not sad.”
But I had bigger concerns. I knew Domin well enough to know that the man had a self-destructive streak in him a mile wide and that he liked to test his limits. I had talked to Ivan, his former sylvan, and Markel, and understood the level of bad boy that Domin had once been. I didn’t want him slipping down the rabbit hole into danger; I didn’t want to lose the man that Logan had created, just because his heart was broken. When I had seen him the few times in the fall, at Christmas, New Year’s, and one other time a week or so ago, there was a hardness in him that I had seen when we had first met but that had been missing for so long. I had been worried, and then he had come with me and Yuri and Logan to the morgue, and he seemed grounded. I wanted to talk to him, but really, we had never been friends.
