She walked back along her trail from the park far enough she judged the perfume had dissipated a little, and then abandoned her gloves to rub wood chips from someone’s garden over the bottom of her jeans to cover the last of the scent. She left the gloves buried in the wood chips and found herself a spot to watch, well away from Enrique. From her position she couldn’t see the house or the path Silver would be taking, in case Silver noticed her in turn, but she could see the main road, if the police were to arrive. Lady grant that if Silver got here, she would be able to sweet-talk the homeowners, and no police would be called in the first place.
Felicia leaned her ass on a fire hydrant and took out her phone to flip through menus at random and type occasionally like she was texting the ride she was waiting for. After all her plans, it seemed she was down to praying.
* * *
Felicia may have said she wanted to apologize, but Silver still smelled abused flowers along her trail. Death put his nose to the ground when she hesitated, and she snorted and jogged a few steps to get ahead of him. She was aware a human could follow this trail. He didn’t need to put his nose down for any trail, however difficult, anyway.
What she didn’t know was whether Felicia had been sincere. Silver supposed it didn’t matter either way. Hadn’t she already planned to let the young woman come back to a lesser punishment?
“A coward’s way, to apologize alone, so others cannot hear,” Death said. He stopped, head coming up in interest. Felicia’s trail led into one of the humans’ dens. “If you think that an apology is what she actually wants to offer.”
This time, Silver hesitated for much longer. Why would Felicia be in a human’s den? But she’d been learning with other humans of her own age recently enough. Maybe she’d had a friendship with one and turned to her when shelter was needed.
Still, Silver would be stepping onto someone else’s territory, probably that of the human friend’s parents. Best to be polite. She rapped her knuckles against the door and waited. No one came. Without Were ears, had they failed to hear her at the back of their den? She entered slowly, cautious. “Hello?” she called.
The den echoed back, empty. Things were growing everywhere, and Silver scrubbed at her eyes. Lady damn it! Was her anger at Felicia making her stop seeing clearly? Plants didn’t grow inside of dens, even she knew that.
She’d lost the thread of Felicia’s scent in the confusion, and she ventured deeper into the den in search of it. She smelled two humans, a man and a woman, but she would have said they were older. Where were Felicia and her friend?
“Watch yourself,” Death said, and Silver turned hurriedly to find the source of the threat. The man she’d smelled had entered behind her. He had black hair peppered with gray, and though he wasn’t tall, he stood very straight, all but shouting his rank.
Silver opened her mouth for a greeting, polite as she’d resolved earlier, but the man didn’t give her time to speak. He dropped what he was carrying, leaving his hands loose and ready, threatening. “Who the hell are you? How did you get in here? I’m calling—”
Silver tried not to breathe too fast as his words slipped away from her in a familiar manner. First the plants inside, and now this. She had to hang on, think through the poison’s effects on her mind. The man spoke to whoever he had named before, telling them to come quickly, and Silver looked around her. The man stank of anger, and she doubted any allies he called would wish to discuss things rationally.
Time to leave, and quickly. The man blocked the entrance, but dens never had only one way out. Silver turned and ran, deeper into the plants. Somewhere. She’d smell fresh air and find her escape.
With each step she took, the growth around her increased, grasping, gnarled roots catching at her toes, slim braches reaching for her hair. Silver snarled at them. She didn’t fear plants, even inside a den, but too late she realized that was not their purpose. No paths lay before her, no trails suggested themselves to her nose, only leaves and more leaves.
She whirled, tried a different direction, stumbled, tried another. A maze could hold her only if she let it. She thrust straight through the nearest patch of branches only to smack into the unyielding trunk beneath. The man’s anger did not need to traverse his maze to reach her, his words sliced right through. “Stop! Stop where you are!”
“Hurry, hurry,” Death mocked. Silver gritted her teeth and stopped. Thrashing in the maze served nothing. She’d wasted far too much time as it was. If she couldn’t run, she would have to show her belly to the man, emphasize her weakness until he thought her too much trouble to punish for her trespass on his territory.
She held her good hand open and wide beside her, unthreatening. “I’m looking for Felicia. Is she not here?”
“No, she’s not. I’ve called the—” The same word again. His allies. “How did you get in?” The man could not snarl as well as a Were could, but he certainly tried.
Silver suspected “I walked in” would not satisfy him, so she hunted desperately for more precise words. Her heart beat too fast, drowning out her voice. The den entrance had not been blocked or guarded. But humans would not say it that way. They’d say—
A root caressed the man’s boot, the maze acting like a favored pet fawning over its master, then struck at Silver like a snake. Not a snake, a root, but Silver had been too much hurt by snakes in the past, when they writhed and bit at her bad arm. She stumbled back with a shriek. No, no, just a root. No poison to enter her blood.
She needed to keep control of herself. Whatever this man’s defenses, they were not things of snakes, of poison. But no matter what Silver did, the plants still swarmed around her, and the roots curled and wound across the ground. She needed another set of eyes, untainted, but she had only Death. “Death,” she begged, “you have to help me. What’s real?”
Death placed himself beside the human man, putting the man’s regal manner to shame with a stance of real power. “He thinks you asked him.” He tipped his head to look at the man’s expression, congealing to fearful disgust, and his laugh sliced at her. “But perhaps he does not wish to answer. Perhaps he does not understand why you asked. Few but the most weak and the dangerous must ask what is real.”
“No!” Silver shouted it at the man, at Death, forgetting that she was supposed to be weak. But she didn’t want to be this weak. Not real weakness, unfeigned. She drew in a breath of the man’s scent, and it held all she feared. He was older but still considered himself more than strong enough to physically control a woman such as her. His fear was subtle, perhaps even unrealized, fear of something so strange, so wild, you could not predict its movements. Crazy. Crazy things could hurt you badly even when you were strong.
There would be no reasoning with the man, if that was his fear. Any words would be seen as a ploy, a distraction before some more unpredictable action. Silver saw little choice left but to run.
Out, out this time, she didn’t care if the man grabbed at her. It was worth the risk. She slammed past him and he got no grip. The branches tossed violently, nonexistent wind whistling among them to make a high, wailing sound that grew louder and louder. They were angry at her escape, perhaps. Silver took it as a good sign and did not stop.
The wailing ceased as she burst through the den’s entrance. Silver did not pause, because the plants were outside the den as well, grown to jungle heights beyond the confines of the structure. One path was empty of them, one path to freedom without the roots striking at her, holding her here.
Silver released a sobbed breath. Two humans tromped up that path, heavy footed. One was more broad shouldered, the other dark skinned, but they both had a similarity of movement. Enforcers. If she ran now, they would run after, run her down. She had not the speed to escape such as these, and she knew it.
“Please,” she begged them. She feinted one direction, in case they did not know the plants’ malice for her and would believe she’d run that way. Both moved to stand loose, ready to chase.
“Ma’am. You
need to stay where you are.” The one of broad shoulders had a true enforcer’s voice: pure power without decision. His authority lay in carrying out another’s orders, making him implacable, mind never to be changed.
Silver stayed. The chief enforcer bound her wrists behind her with hard metal, but not silver. He must have noticed the way her bad arm hung dead, but he merely pulled it firmly into the binding himself. “You have the right to remain silent,” he said, and something more, but Silver missed it in wondering what he could possibly mean by the first part. Of course she could always choose to stay silent. In this situation, she planned to at least try to explain herself first—just because they were enforcers didn’t mean they couldn’t understand logic or reason. Did humans feel they must always answer any question an enforcer asked?
He touched her all over, searching for weapons, Silver supposed. He found her talisman and took it away. Silver watched tightly as the enforcer examined the small square. Dare had given it to her so she could show that she was herself, or was such a person as humans could understand. Would it calm the enforcer? He liked it enough to hand it to his partner, who spoke at a distance to someone about it, saying her old name several times.
Silver rolled her shoulders, hating the way her bad arm dragged at the binding. Had they told her to remain silent because they planned to ask her no questions? She tried to read the chief enforcer’s scent, and failing that, his manner. When she looked closer, shadows lurked on his arms, shadows as Silver was used to seeing on people in great pain. They moved sluggishly, and Silver was glad they hadn’t noticed her when he searched her.
Then one separated from the skin of his hand and reached out for her, as if it had heard her thought and planned to make up for the oversight. Silver flinched away, she couldn’t help herself. This was worse than any snake, this was the evil snakes carried with their poison. And yet she saw none of that evil in the enforcer’s eyes. How could that be?
Another shadow peeled away from the human and drifted toward her with malevolent interest. They weren’t his pain, his evil, Silver realized. They belonged to others and had come to rest on him like a scent. What pain must surround him for it to adhere so? She risked a glance at his partner and found he bore a burden of shadows too, now she knew to look.
“Ma’am. Calm down. Tell us what you’re doing here.” The chief enforcer frowned at her. His partner went to speak with the den owner. Silver caught his wide, angry gestures from the corner of her eye.
“My—” Silver wanted to say “mate’s daughter,” but of course she shouldn’t say “mate” in front of the humans. She knew plenty of other words, but she couldn’t think with the weight of the hovering shadows. “My lover’s daughter, she—”
More shadows drifted for her, and Silver jerked away from them. What would happen if they attached themselves to one as poisoned as she already was? Would they drain her dry? But she needed to explain herself. She had not meant the human harm. “She told me to meet her here, but she’s not here…”
A shadow slashed at her face and Silver cried out. “You have too many shadows, I’m just the kind of easy prey they like. Please, just let me go. I meant no harm, I hurt no one.”
The enforcers kept their distrust mostly hidden, but Silver saw its growth in the ugly purple-green bruise hue deepening in the shadows. The same fear the den owner had shown, of her unpredictability. “Shadows,” the chief enforcer repeated. He touched her shoulder, perhaps to remind her she was bound, in their power.
The shadows boiled and surged gleefully up her arm, taking the old scars as river channels, questing for her blood, her bone. “No,” Silver begged. “Death, please. Chase them away.” Death did nothing of the sort, and the enforcer’s grip tightened.
He asked her again why she was here, what she’d been doing inside the human’s den, but she couldn’t find any words to answer. She’d chosen silence after all, she supposed. She panted, knowing she was doing it, but she couldn’t stop. He wouldn’t release his grip, not now she looked ready to run from him, and the shadows swarmed over her skin. It was all she could do not to sob. “You have too many shadows! Stop touching me!”
“Merely hearing they exist has not banished anyone’s shadows yet,” Death said in her brother’s voice, gentle now. “Hold yourself together and they will find few cracks to enter.”
Silver gritted her teeth on any further outbursts. Death would not take her, she was sure of that, and any taint the shadows left behind could be exorcised later. Hadn’t Dare helped her remove the poison the snakes left in her arm, once upon a time? She would survive this.
Finally the enforcer guided her away from the den. He was taking her somewhere, and Silver smashed down the thought that the somewhere might be the source of the shadows until the accompanying panic made her heart race no more than it already was. No cracks. She would allow no cracks for the shadows.
17
Felicia had to jolt her brain back onto the trail of another plan when the police led Silver away. She’d snuck in closer, hiding behind the crowd that gathered when Silver came outside and caused a scene with her ramblings. Felicia had heard weirder things from her, but they sounded so alien dropped into the mundane, human world of cops and trespassing laws.
Felicia groped after what to do next. She’d known Silver talking her way out of trouble was a long shot. Felicia should have been thinking of what to do if Silver was arrested, but she couldn’t—she didn’t—and now Silver was, and Felicia fought a rising tide of self-directed anger for her uselessness.
If TV was to be believed, Silver would need a lawyer. Felicia’s father had a Were with training back East who did wills and paperwork, but that didn’t seem like quite the same thing.
But Susan was human. She’d know how to get a lawyer. Felicia almost dropped the phone in her relief as she fumbled it out. Better call quickly, before Enrique stopped congratulating himself and came over.
“I’m at work, Felicia.” Susan’s voice when she answered wasn’t precisely angry, but it wasn’t welcoming either.
“I don’t know what Silver just … she must have seen something, she was coming to meet me, she took a wrong turn and went into someone’s house. I think they called the police, because they showed up, sirens and everything, and arrested her.” Felicia allowed her real panic into her voice to make it fast and hopefully confused enough to hide any details that didn’t match up.
Something clunked down and then a door slammed, like Susan had shut herself in an office to take the call. “She went—what? What the hell is going on?”
Felicia repeated herself and then listened to silence for several seconds. Susan finally blew out a breath. “She’ll need a lawyer. Things are going to be bad enough without her getting any old public defender.” Susan paused a beat, like maybe she expected Felicia to contribute, but Felicia didn’t want to reveal she’d had time to think about it. She made a helpless noise and Susan continued. “My coworker, her brother is in family law, so he can’t help, but hopefully he’ll know someone. I’ll get the number before I leave. If they don’t put her in jail, she’ll need someone to pick her up. Where are you? I have to figure out which station they’d take her to.” Susan hung up after Felicia gave her the address.
Felicia stuffed the phone away when she spotted Enrique coming toward her, beaming. He didn’t seem to notice it. “Perfect! It’s like she figured out the worst possible way to act. The only thing better would have been if she’d fought them.”
Felicia gritted her teeth and punched his shoulder, hard. “Looking as weak as she does, that would have raised dangerous questions for all of us.”
Enrique acknowledged that with a grimace, then shrugged. “Anyway, it’s done. Now, we wait and let the human justice system do its job.” He grabbed her hand and tugged her back in the direction of his car.
Felicia planted her feet and refused to be tugged. “If I don’t show up, all apologies for misleading the alpha and concern for her, they’re going to figure I
did it on purpose. I want to stay in this pack, remember?”
Enrique growled softly in frustration. “Yes, all right. Good luck.” He dropped her hand and strode off for his car.
Felicia hugged herself, momentarily overwhelmed by her situation once more. But she didn’t indulge it for very long this time. She wanted to be at the pack house when Silver and Susan arrived. She couldn’t go in, but she could park down the street and wait.
When Felicia reached the house, one of the spots on the street in front of the house was open, so she pulled in and watched the road in her rearview mirror. Something thumped in the back, but Felicia couldn’t think of anything Morsel could damage, so she left the cat to it. It had food, water, and litter, and the small sliding window was still cracked.
Susan’s compact pulled up over two hours later. Felicia stumbled on the long step down out of the truck’s cab and arrived at the car as Susan opened the passenger door for Silver.
Silver didn’t look good. She was white lipped, and her bad arm dangled free, which Silver never let it do when she could help it. Worse, she wasn’t holding herself like an alpha. She clutched a piece of paper and a card to her chest, and once she stepped out of the car, Susan started coaxing them out of her hand.
Susan checked the card—the nondriver ID her father had gotten Silver, Felicia realized—and handed it back. She kept the paper and read it, eyes flicking quickly down the sheet. “Burglary,” she said in Felicia’s direction, pointedly. “It’s got her court date on it. I thought she might have to stay in jail until they set bail tomorrow, but I guess they decided the case wasn’t strong enough to need that.”
Thus acknowledged, Felicia dared to come closer. She craned her neck, but Susan smoothed the paper with a jerky, frustrated movement and held it too close for Felicia to read. Burglary, wasn’t that worse than trespassing? Lady.
“I’ve got her a rush appointment for tomorrow morning with a lawyer my friend knew.” Susan was looking at Felicia when she said it. Felicia didn’t understand why Susan was telling her anything, but she realized suddenly that Susan was stressed enough to feel the need to tell someone, and Silver wouldn’t follow.
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