Authors: Sierra Dean
“Who did you have to blow to get me out of here?”
Cash was busy making calls, so he’d loaned me his car to pick up Wilder, though Cash had given me a bit of attitude about it. I think the idea of spending fifteen minutes alone in the car with Wilder made him uneasy. Better me than him, I suppose.
“A lady never tells.”
He was sporting a fresh bruise on one cheek, and when my smile faltered, he said, “Deputy Anderson wasn’t too happy I posted bail.”
“Yeah, well, I think Deputy Anderson is going to be pretty happy with the settlement he ends up being offered.” I rested my arms on the roof of the car.
“I don’t want your uncle buying my way out of this.”
“And we don’t want you spending the next five-to-ten in prison, so we’ll compromise.”
“How is it a compromise if I’m still taking Callum’s money?”
“You’re not taking the money. A fine upstanding officer of the Franklinton Parish is taking Callum’s money. And in turn, you will likely have to agree to attend some anger-management classes. Or something. The finer details are still being negotiated.”
“By Cash?”
“No, Cash is working on Hank. Callum has his people…finessing your agreement.”
“So much for not calling in the big guns.”
We both got into the car, and I turned in my seat towards him. “I told you I would do whatever it took to help bring Hank home. That’s what I’m doing.”
He smiled, though it seemed to hurt him. “I know. I think we might be out of our depth. You did the right thing.”
That went a lot easier than I’d anticipated. “You’re not going to yell at me?”
“Would it make you feel better if I did?”
“Not really.”
“Then no, I don’t plan to.”
One small relief in a mountain of stress and uncertainty. “I told Callum I needed more time to investigate what was happening. He wanted to send Ben to drag me back to St. Francisville, but we settled in the middle. You and I have forty-eight hours to find a way to prove Deerling is the nutjob we know he is.”
“This will go public before then. I’m surprised they haven’t invited the media in yet. This is totally the sort of thing CNN likes to throw Nancy Grace at.”
I snorted. “It does make you wonder, doesn’t it? If their goal was to make werewolves look like villains, why haven’t they acted on this yet? Isn’t that the whole point? I’m worried they might be up to something else.”
“Or maybe they’re waiting until the sheriff has hard evidence on Hank so there’s no room for reasonable doubt.”
I started the car and headed towards the drive thru. I didn’t need to ask if Wilder was hungry. A werewolf living on county jail rations for a day? I’m surprised he wasn’t gnawing on the faux-leather interior.
“Reasonable doubt becomes trickier if Hank actually killed her. I mean, you and I know he wasn’t in his right mind, but I don’t expect a grand jury to grasp the distinction.”
We ordered several burgers, and I got a strawberry milkshake. At the last minute I decided to order something for Cash in case he felt left out when we got back with food. It wasn’t exactly fine dining, but the burgers were delicious.
Wilder tucked into his double cheeseburger with the zeal of a man coming off a life raft. For a minute there was nothing but the sound of chewing, both of us mulling over what to do next.
“So, Veronica Mars, what’s your plan?” Wilder asked.
“You’re in?”
“Well, I was informed leaving town might look bad for me while we wait for a settlement arrangement. Plus I don’t want to go anywhere while Hank is still inside. Just because he’s alive now doesn’t mean he’s going to stay that way. You know how charming he can be.”
“Honestly, jail is probably the safest place for him right now.”
We exited town onto the highway, making the short jaunt back to the motel just past the city limits. Wilder’s chewing slowed, and he became thoughtful. “We can’t dive into this without a plan. That didn’t go swimmingly for us last time.”
“I have no intention of us getting arrested again, if that’s what you’re asking. Nothing illegal.”
Wilder gave a humorless laugh. “The way I see it, we don’t need to do anything illegal to get arrested. That trespassing charge was bullshit.”
“The assault charge wasn’t.”
“Meh.” He shrugged. “I barely scratched the guy. He’s pitching a fit because he figured out we’re wolves, and now he’s pissing his pants because he thinks he’s going to turn furry at the next full moon. You know how it goes.”
“That wouldn’t even make sense if the change
did
work that way. You punched him, you didn’t bite him.”
“If I could explain the inner workings of the redneck mind to you, sweetheart, I would. But thankfully I have never plumbed those depths.”
“Don’t call me sweetheart.” I parked in front of the motel. I’d arranged with Callum to have a room booked for Wilder next to mine and Cash’s. Now I was regretting the proximity.
“All right, Princess.”
I wanted to scold him, but that particular nickname didn’t bother me.
“Your boyfriend is sort of the jealous type, is he?” He got out of the car before I could answer, and I was forced to scuttle out the driver’s door to make my response heard.
“No, but I don’t think any guy is going to be happy when he finds out his girlfriend got arrested with another man.”
Wilder tossed the bag of burgers to me and grinned. “Probably ’cause he knows we were having more fun than if you had stayed home with him to watch C-SPAN or something. What do lawyers do for fun anyway? Chess? Backgammon? Dog shows?”
I rolled my eyes, and we walked towards the strip of concrete in front of the motel doors. Each room had a wooden chair near its door, and a few ashtrays were scattered around to compel smokers not to break the no-smoking rule. Judging by the burn marks in our carpet, I was guessing it didn’t work all that often.
“He’s trying to get your brother out of jail. Could you at least pretend to play nice? You guys don’t need to be best friends, but things would go a lot more smoothly if you weren’t a dick to him.”
“I can’t help it.” He popped a fry in his mouth and chewed it slowly before speaking again. “I don’t trust a man who has a girl like you and doesn’t get jealous. It means he doesn’t appreciate what he stands to lose.”
Wilder didn’t bother to wait for me to say anything, which was good because I
couldn’t
say anything. He grabbed his own room key out of my hand, gave a nod and walked to his door. Before he popped inside he called back, “Come see me. We’ll work out what to do next.”
God, I hoped he was talking about clearing his brother’s name.
Wet hair brushed my cheek, and I batted it away, curling my arm over my face so I could ignore the interruption to my sleep.
Warm droplets splattered on my arm, followed by the cold brush of fingers over my shoulder and down to my elbow. Every inch the fingers traversed, goose bumps rose to follow.
Wake up. Wake up. Wakeupwakeupwakeup.
The nagging voice of reason in my head was screaming at me. Something was wrong, very wrong, and yet my sleep-addled brain wanted nothing to do with logic.
“Dry off in the bathroom, Cash.” I squished my face into the pillow. Why was he coming in here and dripping all over me post-shower, anyway? Rude.
Nails, too sharp to be Cash’s, dug into the meat of my arm. I went from zero to wide awake in a split second, sitting bolt upright in bed. The room was dark, darker than it should be even in the thick of night. I blinked, hoping I could chase the blackness back, but I would have been better off having my eyes closed still.
“Cash?”
The hands were gone from my skin, but the dampness of whatever had been dripping on me remained. I touched my fingers to my cheek, and they came away wet. When I sniffed them, I recoiled.
Blood.
“
Cash
.”
An eerie croaking sound, like a frog but deeper and slower, came from mere inches in front of me. I recoiled into my pillow, scuttling back so I was up against the headboard.
The space in bed beside me was empty. I was alone here with whatever this was, no trace of Cash to give me comfort.
“
Wilder.
” I hoped he might hear from the next room. If Cash wasn’t here, I wanted someone to help me. I didn’t care who it was.
“
No,
baby,
no no no.
” The voice was rough, like a zipper being pulled apart forcefully, metal teeth gnashing. It was harsh and raspy and sent chills through me that made me question my mortality. In those few words I felt hope drain out of my body, as if a phrase alone could compel me to give up on everything.
Anyone standing on a ledge would be talked in jumping without a second thought. That was how much it evoked a dreary despair, making me cold down to my bones.
“Go away,” I pleaded.
“Don’t you missssssss me?” Fingers brushed my face again, and I sucked in another breath, resisting the urge to scream. Tears of panic welled in my eyes, and it was taking all of my willpower not to lose my mind right then.
The voice was female and sounded like my own, or Secret’s, if I was listening to us through a blender. When it dawned on me whose voice it was, I let out a mewl of fear.
“Mom?”
“Ahh, you remember, you remember. You all forget so easily. Your sister.” A snarling noise of disgust followed the mention of Secret. “Your brother. Your father.”
My eyes widened. My father? This was hardly the ideal time to start begging for details, since I wasn’t entirely sure she was real. I might be losing my damned mind, and what good would answers from my own fractured psyche do me? But I’d seen too much in my life to dismiss her presence. I’d assumed this was a nightmare. Now I wasn’t so sure.
It seemed almost too convenient, her showing up at the same time as the charred woman who was following me everywhere.
Unless…
“Have you been following me? I…I’ve seen you.”
Her hand pulled back, but my cheek was still wet. I felt coated in sticky fingerprints, as if she were a child covered in melted chocolate, but the iron-scented tang of blood was everywhere now, totally inescapable. The sheets and I probably looked like a macabre Jackson Pollack painting.
“I am everywhere, but nowhere. You can only see me when I want to be seeeeen.” Her voice was pinpricks all over me. I wanted to throw up in my mouth. I wanted to cover my ears and blot it all out until the mercy of silence remained.
Mercy. What a joke.
Mercy McQueen was sitting right in front of me, and the only reprieve I could imagine was her being gone. Perhaps mercy was the last thing I wanted.
“If you’re not following me, who is?” The common sense part of my brain told me I was insane for engaging her in conversation. Every consonant and vowel out of her mouth pushed me closer to the cusp of an imaginary ledge. Somewhere there was an invisible line between sanity and madness, and I was blithely skipping towards it.
“You were my favorite. You were the daughter she never was. I wanted to keep you.”
I may not have ever met Mercy, but I’d heard my share of stories—none of them good—about what happened to her to make her the way she was. Amelia had sworn that Mercy, though difficult, had been a loving girl once. She’d loved a human boy, and he’d gotten her pregnant. Then that human boy stopped being human. He was turned by a vampire, and when he rose, he attacked Mercy in a fog of vampire hunger. In order to save her from his own attack, he gave her some of his blood.
She’d been nine months pregnant at the time.
Both Mercy and her baby survived, but her child, my sister Secret, was born…wrong. Her werewolf DNA and the vampire blood made her something unique, something impossible, a hybrid of both monsters.
Mercy thought Secret was a freak. She abandoned her baby, and spent the next two decades cultivating the be all end all of grudges against her child. She drove herself mad and blamed Secret for ruining her life. In the end, Mercy’s need for revenge pushed her so far, Secret had no choice but to push back.
No matter how human we pretended to be, in the world of monsters it sometimes came down to kill or be killed.
Mercy’s head was delivered to Callum in a box.
So I never got to meet her. I never got to ask her who my father was or why Ben and I had been left behind. Maybe she thought she was doing right by us. Maybe she knew she couldn’t be a proper mother. I didn’t regret the life I’d been given, but there were times I’d needed answers only she could provide.
Was my need so deep I was conjuring her ghost now?
Or was I totally insane? Like mother like daughter.
I didn’t love either of those options.
“Who’s following me?” I demanded.
“You’re so like your father.” Icy, verbal claws dug into me, dragging me along on this story whether I liked it or not. She had me hooked. “So alike, so alike. Killers, the both of you.” The croaking sound followed this proclamation.
“W-what?”
“Quite a family of killers I’ve managed to create. I expected it from your demon-seed sister. Not you though. You were my favorite.”
She had to stop saying that. It was hardly a compliment to know your homicidal-maniac mother was super keen on you.
“I’ve never killed anyone,” I insisted.
As far as I knew, it was true. I’d used some nasty magic against the
Loups-Garous
, a pack of renegade wolves who shared the Maurepas Swamp with
La Sorcière
and me, but I hadn’t killed any of them. No matter how much those sickos might have had it coming. Murder wasn’t in my wheelhouse, and I wanted to keep it that way.
“Ssssssure you have,” she hissed. “She’s following you for a reason.”
“She?” Now I didn’t care so much who my father was, though the revelation he was a killer wasn’t promising. I was much more focused on finding out who my mother thought I was responsible for killing. “Mercy, who are you talking about?”
“Go…go find her. She wants to say hello to you. Wants to say so many many many things.”
“She
who
?”