by Holley Trent
“But she’s with you,” Shea said. “Surely that counts for something.”
Jody hoped so, but he also knew that grief was a powerful thing. So many people were looking for someone to blame for the disappearances of their lost loved ones, and Lora was convenient. He was a bitter pill they willingly swallowed because he was one of Ótama’s descendants. They’d accept his child, but Lora would always be an outsider.
He wasn’t going to let her become a scapegoat.
“What’s wrong?” came Ótama’s telepathic nudge. She was so tuned into the emotional state of the clan that she rarely missed a beat, though she ignored most.
She must have been taking a break from antagonizing Tess.
“We’ve got some major problems. I’ll fill you in later,” he responded.
“Are you going away?”
Jody pulled the notebook even closer and dragged a fingertip down the smudged print. “Might have to for a little bit. Yeah. Need to rally up whatever elders are left in Fallon and elsewhere. We need to convene the council before word gets out to people like Anders about what we’re about to do.”
“What can I do?” There was a determined edge in her telepathy that hinted at trouble, but Jody didn’t care anymore. He was sick of being careful, sick of trying to use a scalpel when the best tool for the job was a machete.
“Come with me.”
“Yes. Of course.”
He stood, cracked his back, and said aloud for the benefit of the people in the room, “We need to act fast. I want all the people on that list gathered up and held separately. I’ll call my uncle and—” He was interrupted by the buzz of his phone. He pulled it out of his pocket and read the screen.
It held a text message from Asher.
Tess and Nadia found Dan. Maybe you should get there. He’s at the Norseton airstrip.
This late? Doing what? Jody texted back.
Claims he was waiting on a delivery of perishables. That’s why the guard let him into the restricted area.
That guard was going to get his ass chewed out whenever Jody found out who he was, but that’d have to wait. He texted, Where is Dan now?
Your uncle went to intercept him along with the chieftains and a couple of wolves. I saw a small plane on descent right after they left. The pilot might be on the ground now.
Damn. Listen, they’re going to have to deal with it without me. Got something else to resolve right now. I’ll fill everyone in soon.
Tell me what lies to tell.
Asher always seemed to know the score.
I will. Hey—the ghost should be heading toward me. I’m at the bakery. Don’t let anyone stop her from leaving the mansion.
I’ll walk her over myself.
“Good man,” Jody muttered and put his phone away.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Keith
Keith had no independent memories of Dan Petersen from before he’d left the community, but he suddenly understood his siblings’ instinctual urges to bash his face in on sight.
He squinted through the van window with his head tilted, giving the Afótama web a mental poke. He’d never seen anything like Dan before. Not only was there a sort of invisible barbed wire around him on the web—Nan’s doing, most likely—but there was a sickish green aura in the space that reminded Keith of certain toxic plants.
Am I the only one who sees that?
“Sees what?” Harvey asked from just outside the window.
Keith grimaced and straightened up. He hadn’t meant to think out loud. He opened his window and pointed beyond the airstrip’s chain-link fence. Dan was on the other side with Ollie, Uncle Joe, a couple of annoyed-looking werewolves, and the pilot of the small plane that had just landed.
Dan probably thought Ollie was hassling him about his unauthorized use of the small airport. He was trying hard to keep the large cooler the visitor had delivered behind him and was gesticulating with the purpose of patent distraction.
Wasn’t working. Ollie was cool as a cucumber, as always, standing in silence. Giving Dan room to hang himself.
“On the web,” Keith whispered. Telepathy kept feeding the headache that wouldn’t go away. He needed a break from psychic shit. “Around him, it’s a sick color.”
Harvey gave his head a slow shake. “I’ve never heard of anything like that before.”
“But can you see the wire?”
“Yeah, I see that, but probably only because Tess does. No green, though.”
Keith gave his temples a rub. “Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I had some head trauma from the fall.”
“If you did, you would have already known. Your head scans were clear, weren’t they?”
“They were, but maybe the doctors didn’t know what they were looking for.”
Harvey leaned against the van and gave Keith a come-on-man look through the window.
“What?”
“No one ever skips right to the obvious around here.”
“What’s the obvious, brother?”
“Magic.”
Keith’s brow creased.
“Think carefully. Are you seeing that nasty green around anyone else on the web?”
“Well, I don’t know. I can’t skip around from person to person on a whim. I have to focus specifically on a person in front of me.”
“Am I green?”
“No.” Keith closed his eyes and tried to increase his concentration. So difficult with the headache. “No one I know and like. Most of those people are in the middle of the web.”
“Where’s the green?”
“On the outside. On the fringe.”
“Just where Dan is?”
Keith had to think about it. His geographic understanding of the Afótama web wasn’t like Tess and Nan’s, or even Harvey or Ollie’s, for that matter. Tess’s abilities overlapped somewhat with her men’s, and vice versa. Keith didn’t get the global overview they could easily visualize. He could only process pieces at a time. “Dan is on the edge, and… Huh. His wife is near him, maybe? But she’s not the same. It’s more like she’s standing on the green without being green.”
“Anyone else around him?”
“Well, of course Erin is nearby, but she’s clean. Marty and…” He swallowed. “Mallory. They’re both clean.”
“Elliott?”
“As I said, I’m shit at this, but in my view, Elliott really isn’t connected to Dan in the same way. I think he was more before, but not now? I could be wrong. It may be that I wasn’t paying attention.” He probably hadn’t been paying good attention. He’d been so distracted. Instead of finding ways to be useful he’d been brooding, sulking.
That needed to stop immediately. Pining over Mallory and being annoyed at Asher wasn’t productive.
He opened his eyes to find that Harvey had closed his.
“No, no. I think you’re right.” Harvey’s lips compressed as he thought, eyes swiveling in his sockets as though he were frantically searching behind his eyelids. “How’d he do that?” he murmured. “Snipped the webbing between him and his father.”
“Perhaps he didn’t do it on purpose.”
“Maybe not, but the fact he can do it at all is interesting. I wonder if that ability is unique to him. Spontaneous mutation spawned from necessity.”
“We can worry about the science later,” Keith said.
Harvey nodded. “Keep thinking about whether you see any more green people in that space. Ollie is beckoning me.”
“Go on.”
Harvey sauntered past the gate attendant and casually strolled to the congregation on the tarmac.
Tess couldn’t have done better for companions, even if she’d been trying. Keith hadn’t been around for the vetting process but liked to think that if he had been, he would have approved of both. Harvey was just so fucking brilliant and Ollie was so level. They had exactly what Tess needed—what the clan needed.
Keith leaned forward, elbows to knees, and watched.
There was something fa
miliar about the man who’d brought the cooler. Keith didn’t know what, but something about the pilot stirred an old memory in him. The man’s face wasn’t especially distinctive. No, it was his clothes—his uniform, of sorts. The black button-up shirt with the cuffs folded up to his elbows. There was a company patch on the sleeve, shaped like what looked to be, from a distance, a clamshell.
That clamshell…
That was what it was. That shape, he’d seen it on clothing numerous times before he’d been incapacitated in Cuba. The context still eluded him.
He had to dig deeper and try to remember where he’d been, but later.
He couldn’t think clearly through commotion, and some was starting up on that tarmac. His spirit urged him to get out there and fight, but he’d taught himself to resist those urges. That wasn’t his battle. He’d be in the way. There were other things he could do, but he just needed to be focused and figure out what they were.
He tried to home in more closely to the discourse. Dan was yelling, apparently because one of the wolves had yanked the cooler away.
Something wasn’t right.
Any other Afótama clansman would have been suspicious of a conspiracy against him, and certainly at such close range. Keith didn’t get the sense of that off Dan. He was oblivious. He thought he’d gotten away with something.
“How?”
The wolves grabbed Dan’s arms and moved him, kicking and flailing, toward their van. A scowling Ollie followed at their heels.
Harvey stayed behind with the visitor who was backing away toward his plane and holding up his hands in the universal sign language for “I didn’t do anything.”
Harvey’s expression was placid, his body language calm. Hands in pockets. Stance relaxed.
The visitor had gotten all the way to the plane steps before Harvey deigned to move. And even then, it was just the removal of a hand from his pocket to study one of his fingernails.
Clutching his head and shouting, the visitor buckled to his knees there on the tarmac.
Looking on, Harvey chewed off a bit of his cuticle and spit it out.
“What’d you do?” Keith projected to him.
“Just a little headache.”
“Shit. Didn’t know you could do that. Can you take them away, too?”
“Why? Do you have one?”
“Yep. A screaming one.”
“I never tried, but hold on.”
Harvey was walking toward the squirming man on the asphalt, but projected back to Keith, “Is it working?”
He was about to respond no, but it was.
Some of the pressure building up behind Keith’s temples had dissipated. Where there’d been throbbing before, pleasant tingles prickled. “Huh.”
“Yeah?” Harvey hauled the man up to his feet. Apparently, there were muscles under that crisp corporate attire of his.
“Somehow, yes. Thank you.”
“Happy to help.”
Ollie rejoined Harvey and assisted him in dragging the pilot toward Keith.
One of the wolves doubled back for the cooler.
Ollie shoved the pilot into the van.
“Want to tie him up in the back?” Harvey asked him.
“Nah. You can keep him subdued, can’t you? Short ride.”
“I can, but I’m going to be tired afterward.”
Ollie grinned. “Fine with me.”
Harvey gave Keith a consulting leer. “This is supposed to be true love, and yet you see how he treats me?”
“I’m sure you give it back to him just as bad.”
“See.” Ollie pushed the pilot back down and stifled his attempt to get up from the floor. “The only person that falls for that ‘innocent Harvey’ bullshit is Ótama. The rest of us know you’re a reprobate.”
“And a tired reprobate is what you want, I take it.” Smirking, Harvey loosened the elastic band from his hair and tidied up his ponytail.
Ollie shrugged. “Managing you and Tess at the same time is easier that way.”
They were likely verging into the realm of TMI, but Keith was curious about how three people with such strong personalities could have such a peaceful union. On the surface, the match didn’t seem likely, but somehow, the three managed to find balance in each other.
Huh.
He rubbed his beard, pondering how they’d become a trio rather than a triangle, and wondering why he hadn’t considered that before.
There was something to that. Before Keith could do any deep thinking on the subject, though, Ollie climbed into the van and shut the door.
Joe, who’d been conferencing with the wolves ahead, hopped into the driver’s seat. “Wolves are going to take Dan directly to a cell. They’ve got one open at the opposite end of the structure from his wife. He won’t even know she’s there.”
“I demand to be taken to whoever’s in charge of this—” The pilot grabbed his head and planted his face against the floor, groaning with misery again.
“There, there,” Harvey whispered to him. “It only feels like your head is going to explode. It won’t.”
“Do you know that for sure?” Ollie asked.
Unbothered, Harvey clasped his seatbelt. “No.”
“Gods, you’re frightening.”
“Your wife electrocutes people, and yet I’m the frightening one?” Harvey snorted.
“The difference is that she doesn’t do it on purpose.”
“Neither do I.” Harvey’s grin was absolutely predatory. “It’s all accidental. See?” He tilted his head toward the pilot, who instantly started to sob.
“Stop. Please. I don’t know what you’re doing, but stop.”
Behind the wheel, Joe sighed. “I won’t bother telling you two to behave.” He got the van moving on the tail of the wolves’ vehicle.
“Where are you taking me?” the pilot asked. “I didn’t do anything. This is kidnapping!”
Something about that shell patch on the pilot’s sleeve tugged at Keith’s memory again.
Cuba…
He’d rented a boat and had been skimming along the coast. He’d expected he’d be followed. He wasn’t supposed to be there, but he’d only meant to take a quick look. There’d been a speedboat bearing down on him. His natural instinct had been to move his little boat faster, but he’d forced himself to slow down and communicate with whom he thought were Cuban officials.
They weren’t Cubans. They were faces he’d seen before during his misguided journey for new Afótama land. They’d been following him all along, from one port to the next. He’d had his head in his ass and hadn’t paid attention.
He saw what he’d thought was a gun in that upcoming boat, so he listened to instinct, turned his vessel toward the deeper sea, and jumped into the churning water.
How he’d gotten to shore, he couldn’t remember. He must have been underwater for ages waiting for the people in that boat to abandon their pursuit of him.
He didn’t remember surfacing. He only remembered being on the beach later and telling himself, “I need to find some cover.” He’d moved into the forest thinking he’d stay put until the coast was clear.
But when he’d opened his eyes on the beach, his wallet, his keys, and his dry shoes had been neatly placed next to him. He’d set himself to rights without even thinking about how those things had gotten there.
He hadn’t been alone, and he suddenly had a hunch as to how he’d made it to the shore at all.
Keith twined his fingers atop his lap and peered behind his chair at the pilot.
He was obviously still in great pain and had his forehead pressed to the floor. His body curled and writhed. But he had one eye on Keith, and there was fear in it.
Keith was starting to piece together why.
He said nothing, though. He faced front and stared through the windshield as they approached Norseton’s auxiliary gate.
That man was just a flunky. A throwaway gun-for-hire who probably had more bullets than common sense. He wasn’t the man in charge
, but he was still guilty of following his leader’s rules.
Keith was going to help Tess sort it out, but first, he had a man to see about why he hadn’t drowned on that coast.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Asher
“I thought you couldn’t swim.”
Asher stopped in his tracks in the mansion corridor, petrified with confusion and shock. How Keith could move about with so much stealth beggared a suspension of credulity Asher couldn’t manage.
He heard the creak, then, wheels rolling over that bit of hardwood floor that had settled badly.
“I thought you couldn’t swim,” Keith repeated.
Asher turned to him, bracing himself for a leer or a vicious smirk.
Neither was in play. Keith’s expression was as neutral as Asher had ever seen it. He wouldn’t by any stretch of the imagination call his expression “serene,” but for a change, it was relaxed.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Asher said quietly.
He scanned down the hall. He’d meant to see if the chieftains needed any assistance with their handling of the sudden rash of people in custody. They’d been up all night and Asher had slept a little, at least. He could do some work. They weren’t exactly expecting him, but he wanted to help if he could. The sooner the messes were resolved, the sooner they could all heal. Asher hadn’t even been in Norseton for all that long, but even he could advocate for that. He wouldn’t feel so selfish about the constant distractedness of his physical urges, and his emotional ones, too. He’d always been an approval-seeker, but never before had the desire been so urgent. If Mallory didn’t tell him soon that she forgave him, he wouldn’t get any rest. But he still wasn’t sure he’d done anything wrong. He didn’t understand human relationships, really. Perhaps that was why he couldn’t be sure.
“In Cuba.” Keith moved a bit closer. He was missing one glove. His boots were off. His pants were, for some reason, unbuttoned. “You dragged me onto that beach, didn’t you?”
