by Lisa Edmonds
“Wow, look at this space!” My voice echoed through the empty rooms. “Is your client looking to buy the house and put in a good security system?”
He nodded. “Why don’t you take a look around while I make some notes?”
I explored while he inspected doors, windows, and the outside of the house. The upstairs featured a lovely renovated master suite and two other bedrooms, plus a fourth room that could be used as an office or workout room.
Downstairs, the living room was huge, with tall windows on two sides. Off the living room was a study with floor-to-ceiling built-in bookcases. My favorite part of the house was the enormous kitchen, which had also recently been remodeled. Beside the kitchen, I found the laundry room and a door leading to a small basement. Basements were unusual in the area, but maybe this one had once been used for storage.
There was a deck out back and a two-car detached garage with a large storage building next to it. I opened the patio door and stepped out onto the deck, where Sean stood.
“What do you think?” he asked, tucking his phone in his pocket.
“It’s a great house. Lots of sunshine and space, neighbors far enough away that you won’t see or hear them very much. Remodeled kitchen, master suite, and bathrooms. Plenty of room for hosting get-togethers if you wanted to have friends over…or an entire werewolf pack.” I turned to look at the trees and grassy field. “I think you should tell me why you really brought me out here.”
He took my hand. “Am I busted?”
“Totally busted. What were you doing on your phone while I was looking around? Not taking notes about a security system, that’s for sure.”
“Online word game. Ben is beating me like a drum.” He tugged on my hand until I turned to face him. “I want to go to bed with you every night and wake up next to you every morning.”
“We pretty much do that already,” I pointed out.
“I’d like to wake up with you in our home. My house is just a house. I’ve owned it for fifteen years and it’s been fine, but it’s never been my home, not really. I thought it was feeling more like home recently, but then I realized it doesn’t feel that way when you aren’t there. Home is not a place for me anymore; it’s with you.”
When I didn’t say anything, he went on. “Your home is your home, your space. You share it with me and I love being there with you, but I don’t think you’d ever be able to think of it as ours, not really. When I’m there, I’m staying over at your house. When you’re at my house, even if I think of it as our room and our bed, it still feels like you’re staying over with me.”
I wanted to argue with him on that point, but he was right.
“What I want is a home for us—a place that’s ours, not yours or mine. I also want a new home for our pack, instead of a house where we meet. Karen and Cole’s place is that for us now, but their family is growing and it’s not Karen’s responsibility to provide us with that anyway—it’s mine. No one has ever said anything, but they know my house hasn’t ever been a den for the pack like Henry’s home was. But that’s not my primary consideration; you are.” He squeezed my hands. “Let’s live here, Alice.”
“Even after everything I told you in the car, you still want to live together?”
“I didn’t turn around and drive back home, did I?”
“How long have you been thinking about this?”
“Off and on, quite a while. Seriously since we got back from the Bahamas. I had to find a house that met our needs and budget and wait until I thought it was the right time to bring it up. Every time I hinted at the idea, you shut down, so I knew it was going to be a tough sell. This house came on the market a few days ago. If I’ve learned anything from everything we’ve been through, it’s that nothing is guaranteed, and if you want happiness, you need to grab onto it when you can.”
I let go of Sean’s hand and headed off across the yard. He stayed on the deck and let me walk.
I looked around. The house was beautiful. The location was fantastic. That kitchen was to die for. There was a garden tub and a large custom shower in the master suite. The basement was small, but still large enough for Malcolm and me to work on spellwork. I couldn’t find one fault with the house, except that it didn’t have five years’ worth of wards protecting it.
What did my wards protect, exactly? The house? It was just a house, truly, though I was proud of it because it was the first thing I’d ever had that was mine. I’d always thought of my wards as protecting me, but the truth was they didn’t, not unless I hid behind them. Except for the wards, there wasn’t much keeping me tied to that house. Everything else could be relocated, even my man-eating garden.
Once I admitted my wards didn’t really protect me, I had to grapple with the real reason I was reluctant to move in with Sean: fear. Fear he would find out who I was and end our relationship; fear I would bring harm to him and his pack if Moses found me; fear I’d lose my courage if Moses did come looking for me and I’d have to break Sean’s heart by disappearing. And now the fear that Valas would find a way to turn our deal against me and I’d end up fighting her for my life and my freedom, a cause Sean had just said he would die for. All of those fears were lead weights in my gut.
But none of them would worsen if we bought this house. I’d have all the same fears, but I’d have them in a home I shared with someone I cared deeply about, and who loved me with all his wolfy heart. Malcolm and I could build new wards fairly quickly to protect the house and those inside it.
When Jack had prevented me from seeing Sean and tried to find the cuff before I did, I’d done what I had to in order to hang on to the one chance at happiness I’d ever had. I’d made deals, died, and risked everything, and I’d done it without a second thought. If I’d been willing to do that, I could put on my big-girl Spider-Man panties and do this. Home-buying could be a long, tedious, expensive, and soul-sucking process, but it couldn’t be worse than dying, right? Not even in this sellers’ market.
I turned around and marched back to the deck, where Sean waited. I didn’t even get to say anything. He picked me up and spun me around. I laughed and kissed him thoroughly as he held me with his hands under my butt.
“I didn’t know if you were going to say yes,” he said. “I thought I maybe had a fifty-fifty chance at best. Judging by what I was sensing from you, your deliberations were going the other way for a while.”
“They were.” I took his face in my hands. “But what you said there at the end clinched it for me. If we want happiness, we have to grab it and hang on with everything we’ve got.”
“I’ve got happiness right here in my hands, quite literally,” he said, his eyes twinkling as he gave my butt a squeeze. “I’ll call the realtor right now.” He lowered me to the ground.
“Hang on one minute,” I protested. “Have we seen the inspection paperwork? What’s the fair market value for this property? How old is the plumbing? When—”
He kissed me hard. “I have everything in the briefcase in the car,” he promised me. “Alice, if there’s a happier werewolf around, I don’t know who it would be.”
“Maybe Ben or Karen,” I suggested.
“Maybe, but I bet I could give either one of them a run for their money right now.” He slid the patio door open for me to enter and gestured gallantly. “After you, my lady.”
“Thank you, my kind sir.” I stepped inside. “Get your briefcase and let’s get to work.”
“First time I’ve ever been excited to go through that much paperwork.” He kissed my forehead and headed out the front door, humming as he walked. It sounded like a slightly off-key rendition of “Take Me Home Tonight.”
I smiled and leaned against the kitchen counter. Definitely our song, I mused.
15
“So you may have pissed off Dracula, got a mysterious warning about powerful forces being at work, granted mercy to the woman who got you hexed, finally told Sean about your deal with Valas, and decided to buy a house? Does that about cover it?”
Malcolm asked dryly.
I thought about it. “More or less.”
We were in the living room at Sean’s home. He’d left early for his dinner with Lily’s father since he’d needed to swing by work on the way. I’d summoned Malcolm after he left to catch him up on recent events.
He sighed. “I leave you alone for five minutes and you turn everything upside down. How did he take the news?”
“Which part?”
“All of the above.”
“Better than I’d expected. Better than I’d hoped, actually.”
“I know the Valas thing has been weighing really heavily on you. It’s got to feel better to get that off your chest.”
“It does,” I confessed. “Though now he’s carrying some of the weight too and I feel bad about that.”
“That’s the point of being together, though, right? Sharing the load? Lean on me, when you’re not strong,” he sang, not especially tunefully. “You might consider unburdening yourself of some more of those secrets. If telling him about Valas felt good, imagine how amazing you’ll feel when you tell him the rest.”
“The rest of what?”
He rolled his eyes. “Seriously, Alice. The rest of everything. Who you are, where you come from, why you came here, who you’re hiding from, why your blood magic has purple in it when no one else’s does, why you prefer Boo Berry over Count Chocula like some kind of psycho.”
“Boo Berry is much better than Count Chocula,” I said huffily.
“I rest my case, you loon.” He grew serious. “I mean it. Whatever’s in your past, he can handle it. So can I, for that matter. We’re on Team Alice.”
“Thanks, Malcolm. I appreciate that.”
His mouth turned down. “But you’re not going to spill the beans.”
“It’s a lot of beans. A lot of really dangerous and awful beans.”
“Now I’m picturing a bunch of shark-toothed beans running around with pitchforks.” He waved his hands. “Look, I know it’s bad. He knows it’s bad. We know you used to belong to a cabal and it doesn’t get any worse than that. You did a lot of things you’re ashamed of and you feel guilty about. Join the club. You know I’ve done just as bad. You think Sean doesn’t have those same kinds of memories?”
“I know he does. He’s told me about some of them.”
“Well, let me ask you this: If you told him everything tonight when he got back from dinner with Lily’s father, what do you think he would do? Be honest.”
I said nothing.
He floated over to where I sat on the couch. “You know as well as I do that he’d accept it. He might struggle to process it, he might need some time to come to terms with it, but there is no way that man would love you any less. Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t believe that.”
“I don’t believe it,” I said tonelessly.
He flitted back. “You can’t be serious. After everything you’ve gone through and as well as you know him, you still think he’d be so horrified by your past that he’d end your relationship? How could you think so little of him? I know you’re struggling with whether you love him, but surely you don’t think he’s some kind of a monster.”
“No, but what if he thinks I am?”
He threw up his hands in disgust. “You know what I hear? Poor me, I’m such a monster. Nobody can love a monster. I knew you heaped guilt and blame and anger on yourself every chance you got, but I didn’t realize you wallowed in self-pity too.”
“I don’t,” I snapped. “I’m not feeling sorry for myself. I’m realistic. You don’t know everything I’ve done, all the lives I destroyed.”
“No, I don’t, because you won’t tell me!” he said, exasperated. “And even if you did, you didn’t do it because you wanted to—you did it because you had no choice. If you can’t see the difference, then maybe that’s why you don’t think we could either. But I know the difference because I lived it, and Sean knows because he’s lived it.”
He pointed at me, the tip of his finger an inch from the end of my nose. “I got news for you, Alice. Sean knows damn well what you’ve done and he loves your sorry ass anyway. All you have to do is let him. For the life of me—or the death of me, whichever—I don’t know why that’s so hard.”
I couldn’t think of a response that wouldn’t irritate him more, so I headed to the kitchen. “I’m making more coffee.”
“I thought you were going to get some cheese to go with your whine.” His tone was dry. “How long will Sean be gone?”
“Probably quite a while, he said. He was expecting to be there several hours at least. He said he’d text when he was on his way home.”
“You want me to stick around?”
“No. I’m fine here.” I picked out some fancy coffee beans and poured some into the grinder. “How’s the spellwork coming along?”
He sighed. “Very slowly. I’ve been at it most of the day and haven’t gotten anywhere. But I guess if it was easy, someone else would have figured out how to do what we’re trying to do already.”
I fired up the grinder. When the racket subsided, I said, “Let me know if you have any breakthroughs or anything weird happens at the house.”
“Anything weird, or anything weirder than just normal weird?”
I smiled. “Anything weird. We have to be on guard, despite the Court and the Council backing us up. If you feel anything at all that you think feels remotely like an attack on you or an attempt to recall you back to Bell, jump to my bracelet.”
“I will.”
“And hey, Malcolm?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for the tough love. I’ll think it over.”
“You know I’m right. Just save us both some time and admit it.”
I flicked a dish towel at him. He flitted back. “Let me know what goes down at Sean’s meeting and if you want me to go haunt Lily. I’ve been working on some new nightmare forms and they’d be perfect.”
“Thank you. Maybe some other time,” I told him.
He vanished with a tingle of magic.
When the coffee was ready, I poured a cup, added cream and sugar, and took it back to the living room.
I glanced at the clock. Sean and Lily’s father were having dinner now. I hoped their discussion would go as smoothly as Sean said it would.
My thoughts drifted back to Malcolm’s assertion that Sean knew what I had done. He certainly wouldn’t know the particulars, but if he knew I’d run from a cabal, he could probably guess and hit pretty close to the truth.
I sighed and drank my coffee. “I hate it when Malcolm’s right,” I told Rogue, who was sleeping on his bed by the window. “That seems to happen a lot. Do you think people get wiser after they die, or is all of this just painfully obvious to everyone but me?”
The dog chuffed and got up to stretch.
“Is that a yes that it’s obvious? It is, isn’t it?”
Rogue sneezed and moseyed into the kitchen. I heard him drinking noisily from his bowl. When he came back, he went to the door. I let him out into the yard and watched him as he peed, chased a couple of insects, and barked at the neighbor’s cat, who hissed at him from her perch on a fence post. When he went back to chasing insects, I closed the door and headed for the stairs, intending to take a bubble bath and try to relax.
My phone beeped with an incoming message just as my foot touched the bottom step. I was surprised to see it was from Sean. Dinner must have ended early. I wondered if that was good or bad.
When I opened the message, however, I got a surprise.
Wolf: Pack emergency. Meet me at the pack land ASAP. West gate on Duncan Road. Will explain when you get here.
Me: On my way.
I put my coffee cup on the dining table and grabbed my keys and bag on the way out the door.
The pack owned a large piece of land outside the city. They used it on the full moon, when all werewolves were in wolf form from sunset to dawn, and anytime they wanted to run or hunt as wolves, as Caleb, Ben, and
the others had done after the pack meeting. I’d only been out there once, but I remembered how to get there. It was about a twenty-minute drive from Sean’s house if I ignored speed limits, which I did.
As I drove, I wondered what might have happened. Sean was probably dealing with the problem, but someone else might know what was going on. I called Ben. The call went straight to voice mail. That made me put the phone down and drive even faster. I just needed to get there and find out what was going on.
When I got to the gate, it was open. I drove through and followed the track to the little gravel parking area about an eighth of a mile past the gate.
I expected to find several cars and at least several members of the pack there, but instead the only other vehicle was an unfamiliar black Toyota.
Frowning, I parked and got out. “Sean? Ben?” I called.
My phone beeped with an incoming text message. Wolf: We’re in the woods.
I spotted movement in the trees to my left. I stuck my phone in my back pocket and jogged in that direction. “Sean, where are you? What’s going on?”
My phone rang. Wolf Calling. I answered and put it to my ear. “Where are you? Whose car—”
“Where are you?” he interrupted. “I’m in a bad coverage area and your text just came through. You said you were on your way. On your way where?”
I skidded to a stop just inside the tree line. “To meet you at the pack land.”
“Alice, I didn’t tell you to meet me,” he said urgently. “I’m still at Zachary’s brother’s house. Get out of there now.”
Something hit me from behind with enough force to knock the phone from my hand. I screamed as razor-sharp teeth shredded my right shoulder and a huge black wolf took me to the ground. I landed on my stomach and my forehead smashed into an exposed tree root, leaving me dazed.
The wolf’s jaws closed on my shoulder again and shook me viciously. The bones in my shoulder and upper arm broke with an audible crunch. My scream turned into a shriek of pure agony. I got a glimpse of torn flesh and muscle and white bone as my arm flopped on the ground, blessedly numb. I felt dizzy but clung to consciousness. If I passed out, I was dead.
