I got the crowbar and jumped back into the hole. It was dark as the pits of hell and smelled strongly of damp earth. I struggled with the crowbar while above me the horrible crunch of the werewolf change sounded again, followed by rustling and the unmistakeable slide of a zip.
He slid down beside me, human again and fully dressed. “Here, give me that. You’ll never get it open.”
I handed over the crowbar and tried to stay out of the way, which wasn’t easy in such a small space. Eventually he growled in disgust and flung the shovels back out.
“Can’t get any leverage,” he complained. “Hop out and give me some room.”
I scrambled out again, slipping and sliding as the sides of the hole crumbled. More earth rained down on the coffin with a soft pattering. I could feel it under my clothes too, and through my hair. I was dirt from head to foot.
Down in the hole Garth grunted and swore; then, with a rush and a thud, the coffin appeared over the edge like a wooden whale breeching and slammed down on the soft earth. I stared, unable to tear my gaze from it. So small.
Garth climbed out after it and shook himself like a dog, spraying more dirt over me.
“That’s more like it,” he said and got to work with the crowbar.
I waited, heart hammering, filled with a sickening anticipation. The whole party could have turned up then with pitchforks and torches, and I couldn’t have taken my eyes from the dirty white coffin.
A sudden splintering made me jump, and Garth laid the crowbar down.
“Ready?”
I wasn’t. I didn’t want to know, and I had to know, all at the same time. But it was too late to turn back now. I nodded, trembling all over, and together we slid off the broken lid.
What did I expect to see? A skeleton, its bare skull grinning at me? My beautiful broken boy, as he’d been when I last saw him lying on that hospital bed? Some horrible mouldering in-between phase? Whatever I’d expected, it wasn’t what lay in the bottom of that coffin.
“What the hell?”
I reached in, as if touching it could make the contents into something different, something that made sense. But the sticks remained sticks, and the shrivelled round things which looked like desiccated vegetables forgotten in the bottom of the crisper for months—well, they still looked like shrivelled round things.
Certainly nothing in there had ever been human.
I met Garth’s eyes. My face must have been a picture of confusion. He, however, didn’t seem surprised.
“Thought so,” he said. “Didn’t want to get your hopes up by saying anything till I was sure.”
“Sure of what? What the hell is all this?”
“Changeling,” he said. “Jason must have faked the whole thing. He switched the real Lachie for a changeling. It’s earth magic. Goblins make them out of plants—sticks, vegetables, leaves, whatever. They don’t hold their form for more than a week or two.”
“So that means …” I sucked in a deep breath and sat down hard among the dirt. My legs simply refused to hold me up any longer. My head swam, dizzy with possibility.
He nodded. “Yes. Lachie’s still alive.”
***
Back in our tiny motel room, Garth disappeared into the shower and I flopped onto my bed, dirt and all, still torn between tears and laughter. Beyond all reason and hope, Lachie was alive—but Nada had him. The bottom dropped out of my stomach every time I wondered why. I had to rely on Jason to keep him safe, and relying on Jason had never worked out well for me in the past.
My baby was alive, and I was so excited I thought I’d never sleep. But I didn’t even last till Garth came out of the bathroom. I only shut my eyes for a moment, wrung out with emotion, and the next thing I knew Garth was offering me a choice of Coco Pops or Weet-Bix for breakfast.
Still on a high and feeling generous, I let him have the Coco Pops.
Our knees bumped under the tiny table. I couldn’t wait to get out of this cramped and dingy place. Not even a hint of natural light crept into the room, but I felt sure that outside the sun would be shining and the sky a blaze of bright blue.
“We have to find Ben,” I said. “I can’t wait to tell him the news.”
Today I couldn’t entertain the prospect that Ben might be hurt or in trouble himself. Today was a day for miracles. If Lachie could come back from the dead, anything was possible. We’d find Ben, and the three of us would come up with a plan to get my boy back safely from Nada.
Then all I had to do was get rid of Leandra, and we could all live Happily Ever After. I tucked into the Weetbix. A good breakfast was so important when you had a schedule like that for the day.
“I rang a couple of the boys while you were asleep,” Garth said. “Sent someone out to watch The Dress-up Box. He’ll let us know if he shows up there.”
“Great. We can head over to his place and see if he’s home.”
He shook his head. “Not a good idea. My guy swung past there first, and one of Valeria’s stooges was watching it. It’s you they want, you know, and they figure the best way to find you is through him. If he’s got any sense he’ll stay well away himself.”
“Right.” I grinned, feeling a flood of relief. “But that means he’s alive, and they don’t have him.”
“Not necessarily. They could have him and still be watching the place, hoping you’ll come looking for him.”
“Geez. Are you always this positive?”
“I’m just a glass half-full kind of guy.”
Jokes from Garth: what had the world come to? Seemed like everything was different this morning, and I was determined to hold on to my optimism.
Assuming he was free, where would Ben go? He had a sister in Camden, but presumably Valeria could find that out easily enough, if she didn’t already know. He could be holed up in a random motel somewhere, like us, or hiding out with a friend. What kind of resources would a herald have, anyway? I had no idea.
If only he had his phone, or I had mine. How did we ever cope in the days before mobiles? Ben didn’t even have a landline at home; he used his mobile for everything. Very convenient, as long as you didn’t lose the damn thing.
“Give me your phone. I’ll try Tanya.”
If I couldn’t go to Ben’s house myself, maybe I could sweet-talk Tanya into taking a drive over there. It was a bit of a long shot—Ben was probably smart enough to realise Valeria would be watching for him. But I didn’t know what else to do. Sydney was a big city. Finding one person among millions was too big a task for two people. And that assumed he was even in Sydney.
Tanya’s number rang and rang, then clicked over to the answering machine. Damn.
“Hi Tanya, it’s Kate. I was hoping you could do me a favour … call me back, please, on … what’s your number?” I mouthed at Garth. He rattled it off and I repeated it.
Now what? “Maybe we should head back up the mountains.”
“No point. Ben won’t hang around up there, and Luce is no help to us any more.”
“So what do we do?” I had no ideas, but I couldn’t sit still. Lachie was out there, just beyond reach.
Garth shrugged. He was used to having Luce guide him. Being the ideas man was a new experience. “Let’s go see Trevor.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
Garth turned off the engine and got out. Guess that was a yes.
Together we stood on the footpath and looked up at the house above us. Perched on a sandstone outcrop, it backed onto the bush, and its green metal roof blended into the gum trees. Four motor bikes and a beat-up Holden parked on the street suggested someone must be home, though there was no sign of life. Blinds were drawn at all the windows. Narrow wooden stairs led from the street up to a large wooden deck on the front of the house.
I followed Garth up the steps, still uneasy at meeting my former—ally? associate? I couldn’t remember Trevor, but anyone who made it to pack leader was a force to be reckoned with. Even Leandra had ha
d a healthy respect for this man. Now I needed his help, but convincing him to give it would be tricky.
In front of me Garth’s shoulders sat somewhere up around his ears, tight with nervous tension, and his eyes flicked constantly from side to side, scanning for threats. I knew he shouldn’t be here, though on that point, too, my memory let me down, and he would only mutter something surly about pack business in explanation.
I was glad of his company, though. Braving the wolves’ den on my own wasn’t my idea of a good time. They would have heard the rumours by now of my involvement in Leandra’s death, and I didn’t want to be held to account by a pack of werewolves in the mood for retribution.
Seemed like this was the last place either of us should be looking for help.
Empty beer cans littered the massive deck. A spindly plant struggled for life in a pot by the door. Garth leaned on the doorbell, and a buzzer sounded somewhere inside.
“Don’t look so nervous,” he said as footsteps approached. “Remember who you are.”
Was that supposed to make me feel better? I glared. I was Kate, mother of Lachie, and holding on to that truth as hard as I could was the only thing keeping Leandra at bay. Did he think I’d let her loose just to impress some werewolf?
A guy with more hair than Hugh Jackman in a bad X-Men wig opened the door and scowled when he saw who waited on his doorstep.
“What are you doing here?”
He had the familiar orange glow that said werewolf, but my nose could have told me so even with my eyes shut. He smelled of wet dog, though it was mid-afternoon and he must have been human for hours.
“Nice to see you, too, Jed. Aren’t you going to invite us in?”
“You do know what exile means, don’t you? Get your arse back in your car and get out of here.”
Jed started to close the door, but Garth was too quick. One hard shove and Jed was flattened against the wall inside with Garth’s muscled forearm crushing his windpipe.
“Do you think I’d come back here if it wasn’t important? Stupid kid. Tell Trevor we need to speak to him.”
He shoved the other wolf again, and Jed lurched away down the hall, still scowling. He headed for the back of the house, muttering and rubbing his throat. I caught Garth’s arm.
“Maybe slightly less violence? We are trying to ask a favour here.”
Garth bared his teeth. Perhaps he meant it as a grin, but it looked more like a snarl. Werewolves did surly much better than cheerful—at least in my limited experience.
He shut the door behind us. The hallway was dim and relatively cool given the heat of the day outside. “Wolves understand dominance.”
“Okaay.”
I followed him down the hallway, past closed doors on either side, to a big sunlit room at the back of the house. Three men leapt up as we entered, their scowls matching that of the injured Jed.
“Where’s Trevor?”
“No business of yours, Oathbreaker.”
All three were bigger than Garth, and I had to fight the urge to step back as they stalked forward. Jed smirked in the background, obviously relishing the thought of seeing us get thrown out. Or worse.
I heard the click of a door shutting in the hallway behind us, and whirled to face the new threat. A slight man with receding hair entered the room behind us.
“Stand down, boys.”
Garth’s shoulders went rigid at the sound of his voice, but the man ignored him.
“I’m Trevor.” He offered his hand and I shook it. His grip was warm and stronger than I’d expected. “And you are—?”
“Kate. Kate O’Connor. I’m a friend of Garth’s.”
And that was a sentence I couldn’t have imagined saying a few days ago. Strange as it seemed, it felt true.
“I gathered that.” He looked at Garth for the first time, and his eyes were cold. “I assume you have some compelling reason for showing your face here again. You’d better come into my office.”
We followed him into the room he’d just left. From the corner of my eye I caught Jed’s crestfallen expression. Guess he’d been hoping for the throwing out to start straight away.
Judging by the look on Trevor’s face, it was still an option.
I took the visitor’s chair he offered in front of a big workmanlike desk. He went round to the other side of the desk but lounged against the bookshelves there instead of sitting. Since Garth had refused a seat that would have put him in the inferior position, looking up at his visitor. Stupid wolf games.
I checked his bookshelves while they sized each other up. Mainly ring binders, each labelled in neat handwriting, with a few reference books, including a complete set of Australian Accounting Standards. That’s right. Trevor was an accountant. I guess even werewolves had to earn a living somehow.
At some signal known only to them, the staring contest came to an end. Garth ducked his head in submission and Trevor folded his arms, his body language more relaxed.
“What are you doing here, Garth?” The pack leader sounded tired. “You never take the easy option, do you? You’ve always got to stir things up some more. The pack’s already on edge, and now you show up like the Ghost of frigging Christmas Past, clanking your goddamn chains in their faces.”
Garth’s face was stony. I could have told Trevor he was wasting his time with Dickens allusions. If he wanted to catch Garth’s attention he’d need a quote from Star Wars.
Garth folded his arms, mirroring the pack leader’s body language.
“Let me guess what’s got their tails in a twist. The rumours of Leandra’s death, right?”
“Rumours? It’s a little more than rumours, mate. Looks like you’re out of a job again.”
“Not quite.”
“Not quite? I heard she had her heart ripped out.”
“You shouldn’t believe everything you hear.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” Trevor flopped into the leather chair behind the desk. “Sit down, you stubborn shit, and tell me what’s going on.”
Garth flicked a glance at me. I nodded, and he took the chair next to mine. Trevor said nothing, but he looked at me with a new interest.
“You never explained who your friend is.”
“She’s a herald. I met her two nights ago at Alicia’s place.”
If he’d been in wolf form I swear his ears would have pricked up at that. “You were there when Valeria attacked?”
Garth launched into the mostly true version of events we’d agreed on before we came: how Leandra had given me a geas to deliver to Luce and Garth, which Valeria had stolen; how we’d gone to beg Alicia’s help in getting it back and been caught up in the attack; and how Valeria had kidnapped my son to try to force me to stop seeking the stone.
“Stone? I thought you said it was a geas?”
He looked sceptical, and no wonder: a geas, a kind of magically binding task, was normally inscribed on a dragon scale.
“It is,” I said. “It’s an unusual kind.”
“We have reason to believe Leandra’s still alive,” said Garth. “We think this is all part of some bigger plan of hers to win the proving.”
“You think? She didn’t tell you anything about this plan?”
Scepticism was rapidly morphing into outright disbelief.
“We’ve received messages that can only be from her.”
The creak of leather as he shifted in his chair was the only sound. The venetian blinds at the window behind him were angled to block the sun, casting the room into shadow. In the dimness his aura flared a bright orange as he regarded Garth thoughtfully. The silence lengthened as he tapped his fingers on the metal arm of his chair.
“Where’s Luce? I would have expected her to be all over this.”
“She’s still at Alicia’s.”
Briefly Garth explained how Luce had come to be bonded to Alicia, while Trevor’s eyebrows climbed higher and higher. The pack leader rose and started pacing back and forth in the space between the window and the bookshelves. Scuf
f marks on the carpet suggested it was a regular habit. Must be a wolf thing. They couldn’t bear to sit still.
“And what do you expect me to do? God, what a mess.”
“We want you to help us get the stone back from Valeria.”
“And free my son.”
Trevor laughed; a short, unhappy sound. “That’s all, is it? You wouldn’t like me to get you the winning lottery ticket at the same time?”
“Trev—”
“Don’t start, Garth. You’re out of your mind if you think I’m getting mixed up in this. What do you take me for? Is any of what you just told me true?”
Garth leapt to his feet. Looked like it was time for the staring to recommence. Between the two of them they packed a lot of testosterone.
“All of it.”
A small, reluctant smile tugged at one corner of the pack leader’s mouth. “You’re just not telling me the other half, right?”
An answering smile flickered on Garth’s face. “I wouldn’t call it half.”
Seeing them like that, shoulders squared in identical postures, the same lazy half-smile on their faces, I suddenly realised.
“You’re brothers, aren’t you?”
His own brother had exiled him from the pack? Pity I couldn’t remember what he’d done. Must have been something impressive.
Trevor frowned at me, distracted, then turned back to Garth with a sigh.
“Well, I guess I’m flattered you think I could take on Valeria. Or maybe that’s the family insanity talking. But even if you told me all the juicy bits you’re so obviously hiding, I couldn’t help you.”
“But you helped Leandra before,” I said.
“Yes, I did. And some of those boys back there”—he jerked his head toward the room where Jed and his friends waited—“think that was a mistake. They reckon I’ve made the pack a target by supporting Leandra. That Valeria will come howling for our blood now that she’s on top. They’re thinking maybe a leader who makes bad decisions like that shouldn’t be the leader any more.”
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