Reflected

by Rhiannon Held

  “I’m pretty sure you’ll get arrested if you try to catch one.” Felicia smacked Enrique on the shoulder. They left the ladder to the girl, now running along the windows to count every fish.

  Outside, Enrique seemed inclined to just watch the water for a while, so they climbed up to the open area on top of the fish ladder and skirted a metal curled tentacle sort of sculpture to lean on the railing together. He settled a hand loosely over her back, and when he didn’t push any further, Felicia let him keep it there. It was comfortable, standing that way.

  “So you really do like it here?” Enrique said at length. They stood far enough behind the spillway that they could hear each other, but the risk of anyone else overhearing was very low.

  “I do.” Felicia lifted one hand and set her spread fingertips on the railing. The metal had sucked up warmth from the sunlight though the air temperature was still quite mild. “Even when Father’s being so—” She growled. At Enrique’s inquiring look, she expanded. “I have to get a job or get kicked out to wander. Roam. You know, what Silver gave you permission for. I guess it’s something a lot of the North American kids do before they settle down to a job. But they don’t have Were companies here, like we did.”

  “You’re supposed to get a job dealing with humans all day?” Enrique’s eyebrows went up.

  “Everyone else has one! I’m not going to whine like some low ranker about how it’s too hard for me.” Felicia pressed her lips closed. She’d wanted someone to be sympathetic, so why was she suddenly defending North American customs? “It’s not going to kill me, it just jumped me from downwind.” She’d applied to a dozen places already. No interviews, but Susan said that sometimes took quite awhile. All she needed was for someone to call her back and then hire her before her father got home. That would show him.

  Enrique nodded. Felicia got the infuriating impression that he was agreeing that it was important to her, not that she was actually right. “I have something for you, since you’re staying,” he said and stepped away from her to swing his pack around to hang in front of his body. He rummaged around and pulled out a white stuffed canine of indeterminate species, rather gray and floppy by now.

  “Blanca!” Excitement made Felicia’s heart loud in her ears as she accepted her childhood puppy and buried her face in it. It was stupid, but she’d always felt like she could catch the memory of her mother’s scent in it, inhaling deeply in the darkness of the most lonely nights as a child.

  And now it smelled wrong. Like dust and Enrique, layered over the particular “dead” smell of possessions without owners to infuse them with their scent. Even without the hint of her mother’s scent, it should have smelled intimately of Felicia herself. Felicia clutched it to her chest as tears pricked in her eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” Enrique tried to take the puppy back so he could check it over, but Felicia jerked away.

  Felicia sniffed back moisture and tried to decide whether to admit the real reason she was upset. It slipped out anyway. “It doesn’t smell like Mama.” Something about saying it out loud connected things in her mind with a disconcerting feeling of them snapping into place. “But it never should have in the first place. I had a Blanca before Mama died, but it should have burned with her and everything else in the house.” The words came out breathy and too quick.

  Felicia held out the puppy at arm’s length. Was this Blanca a lie? She reached back to her memories, but she’d been three when she and her father returned to find their house burning with her mother inside. She remembered terror and the smell of smoke, but if her toy had been one way before and another after, she couldn’t tell.

  “Weren’t you staying with your uncle when it happened? You would have had Blanca with you.” Enrique gently pushed Felicia’s hands so she cradled the puppy against her chest again, then looped his arms at the small of her back.

  Felicia bowed her head over the toy between them as she focused all her attention on what her nose was telling her. That had been a lie her family told her, to cast guilt on her father for not running inside to try to rescue her mother. She trusted her father now, and he’d told her that he’d stayed clear because she’d been with him, been in his arms. He’d chosen to take care of her rather than throw himself away in a hopeless rescue attempt. The question was, was Enrique repeating a lie others had told him, because he didn’t know any better? Or was he part of the conspiracy to taint her father in her eyes? “You know that’s not true,” she said and then drew in a deep breath.

  Enrique’s scent soured with guilt. He knew what he’d said was a lie, Felicia was sure of it.

  “Lady,” Felicia hissed. She tore out of his arms and stomped away.

  “Wait!” Enrique’s stride was longer, so it took him fewer steps to eat up the distance to put a hand on her arm. “Yes, I heard everyone talking about your father’s version of events when they came home from the Convocation without you three years ago. But I don’t want to spoil your puppy for you, Felicia.” That all tumbled out in one breath, and he only paused to draw a new one when she didn’t go any farther. “I think—I’m not sure, I was only five or six—but I think they wrapped the new one in a forgotten coat of your mother’s every night to try to make it smell right.” He gave an awkward huff of laughter. “I didn’t see why you should get so much attention, but then you were so sad, it broke my voice even then.” He reached out and petted Felicia’s hair.

  Felicia allowed it for a few moments, turning the idea over in her mind. She hadn’t imagined it, then. Blanca really had carried her mother’s scent and thus a small part of her. Not a lie. She was embarrassed by how much that cheered her. She knocked away Enrique’s hand. “I’d have been much less sad if they hadn’t thrown my father out soon after, so I lost both parents.”

  Enrique’s expression darkened and he slipped his knocked-away hand into his pocket with exaggerated care. “He killed seven Barcelona Were after they surrendered. Madrid was right to revoke permission for him to stay in our territory.”

  “And they killed Mama! You think he lives a single day without thinking about that mistake? I’ve lived with him for three years, Enrique.” Felicia balled up the hand not holding Blanca. “It … drives him in a way I’m not sure I even fully understand, but it makes him a far more honorable man than Madrid—either the former one who kicked my father out, or the current one who decided to use me as a pawn in his territory-expansion games.”

  “That’s not what Madrid meant.” Enrique’s scent was such a mixture of annoyance and guilt and concern by then that Felicia couldn’t separate out what applied to his current statement.

  The two of them were fast running out of path in the park before it turned into a regular city sidewalk at the top of a flight of stairs. Felicia considered continuing, but back across the locks was the only path over the water to their car without traveling far out of their way to the next bridge. She turned and stalked back the way they’d come. Enrique followed. “Oh, so when he told me all about how terrible my father was, and then brought me along to snarl in his face and distract him at a crucial moment, that wasn’t a calculated strategy? It wasn’t a strategy, that moment was when he was about to unite North America so they were strong enough they might be a threat to European packs? It was all just coincidence?”

  “But you chose to stay,” Enrique said with amusement sharp on his face. “Whatever Madrid’s motives, I’m sure he didn’t expect that.” He kept his pace slow, and Felicia finally slowed too so as to not leave him completely behind. “Can I ask why?”

  The change in Felicia’s pace made it a little easier to think. “Why I stayed?” She didn’t wait for his confirmation. “Because Father wasn’t lying. He loved me. No one could have saved Mama, and he stayed out of the fire to hold me.”

  “How do you know?” Enrique’s tone was gentle, not challenging, so Felicia only growled instead of punching him.

  “Because his actions matched. Like Silver says, it’s easier to lie with words than actions. Peop
le just … follow him. They also believe he doesn’t lie.” Felicia sorted out Blanca’s legs as they crossed over the locks so she could cradle it like a real puppy. “I’m not coming back, Enrique.”

  “I know.” Enrique patted Blanca’s head. “If I end up back there anytime soon, I can pack and mail the rest of your stuff.”

  Felicia snorted. “All my clothes are from when I was fifteen. I don’t think they’d fit, even if I wanted to wear them.” She looked down at herself. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she’d lost some puppy fat since she’d moved to North America. “My jewelry, though…” Her jewelry was all recent stuff without too much meaning—anything she might have inherited from her mother had burned with her—but Felicia was curious what Enrique would do. Would he get it for her? She wouldn’t actually mind having the pieces that were gifts from her uncle and Madrid.

  “Of course.” When she hesitated in the gardens, Enrique held out his arm to invite her in the direction of the car. “C’mon, I have an idea for what to do next.”

  “What?” Felicia pulled out her keys as they crossed the tracks. “In human, or in wolf? You don’t want to go to the Space Needle, do you? There are other things in Seattle, you know.” She shook her head. “I was going to try to get at least one more application out today, anyway. Maybe you should keep going on your own.”

  “And if you don’t send it today, you’ll miss a deadline? Come on, you need a break. Ever been drunk?” Enrique grinned at her over the top of the car, showing enough teeth for it to be a challenge. It took Felicia powerfully back to when they were kids, just after their Lady ceremonies. He’d grinned like that before daring her to outrun him, or catch the rabbit before him, or dart over the border with Barcelona’s territory farther than him.

  Felicia narrowed her eyes at him. What was he up to now? “It’s too much of a pain in the ass for a werewolf to get drunk. We metabolize it too fast. Why bother? I’ve been buzzed, sure, but—”

  “That’s true if you try to get drunk on wine. There are other ways.” Enrique laughed. “I’ll show you. Trust me.”

  Felicia pulled out her phone to check the clock. She supposed that application could wait until tomorrow morning. Besides, she’d lied to get a chance to spend time with Enrique, so she shouldn’t waste it. “Why not? Try anything once.” It piqued her curiosity, anyway. Humans made so much of drinking, and all she’d ever gotten out of it was a little warmth and light-headedness. She got in and tucked Blanca away in the center compartment between the seats before starting the car.

  At the store, Felicia accepted the large bottle he handed to her and read the label while he considered his own choice, frowning deeply over all the American brands. Citrus vodka. Enrique tapped the cap as he passed. “I think you’ll like it. Better for a first-timer than straight whiskey.” He selected his own bottle and headed for the cash register.

  Felicia grabbed at his arm as she remembered something. “Do you have ID? Mine says my real age, so they won’t sell it to me.”

  Enrique stopped and frowned at her. “You’re eighteen, aren’t you? My math isn’t that wrong.”

  “It’s twenty-one in America.” Felicia laughed at Enrique’s wince, because of course he’d heard that before, she guessed. The United States caught her in weird ways every so often, even now.

  Enrique dug out a driver’s license and handed it over. She examined it carefully and held it up to the light. “New Mexico?”

  “It’s what they offered me.” Enrique shrugged. “I know it’s not as nice as yours probably is, but it has worked so far.” He took it back and held it with two fingers in the same hand as the bottle. “You are lucky I’m twenty-one.”

  The clerk glanced at his license only long enough to match the picture with his face and check the date. They waited to open the bottles until Felicia drove them back over the lake to the east side. Apparently being drunk was more fun when you could shift if you wanted, and they’d planned to end up in wolf eventually anyway. She was most familiar with which parks would be empty enough for that near the house. She considered taking him to the pack’s hunting lands, but that was still too connected in her mind to what happened to Tom.

  She pulled off the road at the park she’d chosen as the sun grew low in the sky. She took her bottle and leaned against the trunk of the car to watch the sunset. The road formed a gap in the tall trees wide enough for them to get a good view. Even in summer, cloudless skies were worth appreciating. Enrique joined her in leaning, posture gorgeous and confident.

  Felicia sipped from her bottle and coughed. “That’s strong,” she said. It did sort of taste citrusy, but wow.

  “That’s the point.” Enrique relaxed into Spanish. “You don’t get drunk if it’s not strong enough. C’mon, drink up.” He tapped the bottom of her bottle and hovered his hand nearby until she lifted it for another swig. This time, she was expecting it, so it went down a little smoother.

  By the time Felicia got halfway through the bottle, everything was warm, delightful, and hilarious. She returned the favor by pestering Enrique until his bottle was similarly low. He got more and more relaxed, rather than silly like her. Felicia laughed at the way he oozed deep into his lounge against the car, then tucked herself against his side. She didn’t care if she was being silly. This was fun.

  “So is Silver really as crazy as all the rumors say she is?” Enrique asked. He settled his bottle against his chest and looked up at the Lady’s face, comfortable.

  “She’s not crazy! Well, she is. But it’s this weird not-crazy kind of crazy.” Felicia gestured with her bottle and made it slosh. She giggled. She’d spill it if she wasn’t careful. “When she’s at home or somewhere familiar, you’d never be able to tell. And she gets really uncomfortable when she’s somewhere new or complicated, but she’s still supercreepy. It’s like she can’t see the world, but she can see people extra well. You can’t get away with anything. Seriously.”

  “But she can’t really fight, can she? I noticed she didn’t use one arm, even though Madrid said she did at the Convocation.”

  Felicia grinned, thinking back to when she’d watched Silver do that. “She can move her fingers, if she wants to. That’s what she did when she held that silver chain on the former Roanoke.” Felicia curled her own fingers halfway to her palm to illustrate. “She can’t shift. But you’re underestimating her if you think she can’t fight just because she can’t shift. She’s got creepiness on her side.” Felicia giggled again. “Never underestimate the power of the creepy.”

  “So creepiness makes her the mate of the alpha of all North America?” Enrique shook his head. “I don’t even understand how that works. How does one alpha control that many people?”

  “Two.” Felicia held up two fingers and her bottle sloshed around more as her grip loosened. She switched to holding them up on her other hand and tipped the bottle up to drink. “Two alphas. And the sub-alphas are the key thing. Papa and Silver don’t have to keep track of every single Were themselves, they just make sure that all the sub-alphas do. It works pretty well, actually. Papa’s good at it.” Felicia frowned. “Even if he’s infuriating.”

  “You just called him Papa,” Enrique noted. He looked up at the moon again, so Felicia couldn’t tell if he was teasing her for being too old to call her father Daddy, or if he was confused by it. She was a little confused by it herself. It had just slipped out. She’d better not ever let her father hear her say it, though. He was too infuriating for that.

  “So?” she said to Enrique, trying to sound nonchalant. “I’m drunk.” She grinned at him. “I don’t know even half of what I’m saying right now.”

  “So I guess you get along with him, then? Even when he makes you get a job or go roaming?”

  Felicia kicked at a rock, part of the gravel they must have put under the road surface. “I think everyone expects me to roam. I don’t really want to go to a stupid job all day all the time, no, but it’s not like I want to travel around with everyone snarling at me b
ecause I’m some evil European, either. I earned my place in this pack. I want to stay.”

  Enrique reached over and tilted her head so he could kiss her hair. “You’re not evil. North Americans are just rabbits.”

  Felicia shoved his shoulder, and he shoved back, developing into a brief tussle like they were children again. She was no rabbit. She stole a swig from his bottle and he pulled it back out of reach. She liked the taste of hers better anyway.

  The talk of Europeans made a question that had been nibbling at her float back to the surface. “Are you seriously here because you think you can talk me into coming home, Enrique? Tell me the truth.”

  “The truth? Can you keep a secret?” Enrique waited while Felicia pressed her thumb to her forehead as a promise on the Lady, then swigged from his bottle and sighed. “All right. Yes, I want you to come home, but not just because everyone misses you. Madrid has made some decisions I don’t agree with. I think he’ll listen to me and maybe change course if I prove myself by bringing you back. And he’ll listen to you, if you support me.”

  Felicia twisted to face Enrique and wished she hadn’t. Better not to move too quickly right now. “Decisions?” Anger bubbled up that Enrique thought she’d support him just like that, but it did depend on what kind of bad decisions her former alpha was making. She nodded to show she’d hear him out at least.

  “I know I said it wasn’t bad for most of us at home, but it was enough to drive me mad. One of the fighters is always there, always watching you. I can take care of myself, I should be one of the fighters, but there’s no room for advancement with everyone always in the city, never out on patrol. Some of the families with young kids even joined Barcelona to keep them safe, so there are fewer people to protect too. We need to take the fight to Barcelona, not keep letting them bully us, but Madrid won’t hear of it.”