Rook jerked in his chair. This was exactly the kind of assignment he needed to prove to his father that he could handle himself and lead others. Only going today was impossible, and it was his own fault. With the ketamine in his system making higher thought a challenge, he’d be useless in Connecticut. And when his father looked directly at him, obviously waiting for Rook to volunteer, he didn’t meet his eyes.
The silence lasted only a split second, but it was enough. Father didn’t comment. He had another crisis to deal with before he focused on his youngest son.
“Bishop, take four people with you,” their Alpha said. “I want you ready to leave in fifteen minutes. I’ll give you the contact information for Joe’s squad leader.”
“On it,” Bishop replied. “Dev?”
“I’m in,” Devlin replied.
The pair left as quickly as they came, back into the bustle of the auction that was continuing as usual without them. Father moved fast—one moment behind the desk, the next standing in front of Rook.
“What’s wrong with you?” Father asked.
“Long story.” Rook felt five years old again, confronted by his father after stumbling home a bloody mess. He’d tried to climb a tree he’d been forbidden to touch, because it was rotting, and he’d gone up anyway. When a branch gave out halfway up, he’d hit a lot of other branches on the way to the ground. Sharing that shame with his father had been excruciating at age five. As an adult, it was far more embarrassing.
“Knight?” Father said. “A summary, please?”
Knight explained everything as Brynn had explained it to him, presenting the evidence as it was needed: the cup holding the ring, the syringe box. Brynn didn’t move from her corner, but the sour tang of fear coming off her increased, as did the ragged sound of her breathing. Rook clasped the arms of his chair to keep still, when what he really wanted to do was comfort her. To tell her that he wouldn’t let his father hurt her for what she’d done, even though he had no idea what his father would do.
And why was he sitting there thinking about protecting her, when she was a Magi who’d just poisoned him with a deadly toxin engineered for loup garou? He should dislike her on principle. He blamed the ketamine.
Father surprised Rook by squatting in front of him, nostrils flaring hard as he scented him. “Rook, how do you feel right now?”
“Groggy,” he replied. “A little queasy.”
“Any aches or muscle pains?”
“No.”
“Dizziness?”
“I haven’t tried standing up in a while, so I don’t know.” Rook tilted his head up. “I believe her. Brynn. It was an accident.”
Father looked him in the eye, and Rook didn’t look away. He saw so many unnamed things in his father’s eyes, but one he did recognize was fear—and that baffled him. The Alpha was never afraid. “All right,” Father finally said. “But I’m giving that ring to Dr. Mike for testing. And you are getting a checkup once you’re able to walk without falling over.”
Rook nodded his acquiescence. Dr. Michael Abraham had been the town’s doctor since before even Father was born. He’d birthed most of the loup in Cornerstone, and he knew more about loup garou physiology than anyone Rook had ever met. If the ring’s poison caused any other side effects, Dr. Mike would figure it out.
Father stood and folded his arms over his chest. “Miss Atwood?”
“Yes, sir?” she replied.
He didn’t speak right away. Rook studied his expression, but saw only quiet contemplation—Father’s favorite face when he was making a decision.
“On second thought,” Father said, as though they’d been in the middle of a conversation, “Knight, can you go fetch Dr. Mike and have him come here?”
“Of course,” Knight replied.
“One moment.” Father snatched a piece of paper off his desk, wrote something down, then handed the paper to Knight. He didn’t fold it or hide the message, and Knight read it as he took it. Rook couldn’t see the words, though, just the way Knight’s eyebrows rose and some sort of understanding dawned. Knight left.
“You don’t have to hide in the corner, Miss Atwood. Please, come and have a seat.”
Brynn did, taking the chair next to Rook’s and perching gingerly on the edge. She kept her head down, hands clasped in her lap. Tension radiated from her, along with that fragrance of wild flowers he found so enticing.
“I’ve heard of your father,” his father said. “Archimedes Atwood?”
“Yes, sir,” she said to her lap.
“And you’re no longer of the impression that my son will kill him?”
“No, sir. I believe that he’s present at the time of, or immediately after my father is killed, but I do not believe that Rook is his killer.”
“What makes you so sure?”
Rook started to speak, then pressed his lips shut. It wasn’t his question to answer, and he knew he shouldn’t take it personally. Father was making certain he could trust Brynn’s word, not hinting that he thought Rook guilty of the crime.
Brynn stared at the Alpha like he’d sprouted a third eye. “Because we spoke. You understand instinct, Mr. McQueen, and my instincts tell me Rook is innocent.”
“You’ll blindly trust the word of a loup garou?”
“Blindly, no. But I trust logic. Rook gave me a new perspective on the vision, and I trust that.” She held the Alpha’s intense stare, and the fact that he blinked first increased Rook’s respect for the young Magus. She had a vulnerable side, but she wasn’t weak.
“All right,” Father said. “I hope that, under the circumstances, you’ll accept my invitation to be a guest in our home tonight.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I want to believe you, Miss Atwood, but consider my perspective. You arrive in town, my son is poisoned, and then we get word of a serious attack against another of our sanctuary towns. The timing is bad, and while I don’t want you to think of yourself as a prisoner, you are not free to leave, either.”
“I don’t know anything about the attack in Connecticut.”
“And that may very well be the truth. However, until I know who is responsible, I’m going to err on the side of caution.”
“But—”
“Do you have a cell phone?”
“Yes.” She glanced between them, then produced the phone without being asked.
His father took the phone and locked it inside of his desk. “Thank you, Miss Atwood.” To Rook, he said, “Joe Reynolds is informing the other Alphas of the trouble in Connecticut, and it will take Bishop several hours to get there. I’m returning to the floor for now. Once Dr. Mike has taken a look at both of you, you’re free to leave the office with her. Just stay close.”
“Of course,” Rook said.
After Father left, Brynn shifted in her chair to face him head-on. “Why does your doctor need to take a look at me?”
“Just being cautious, I guess.” Rook wasn’t entirely certain, either, why his father was concerned—the smell. It hit him again, with Brynn sitting so close, and in the excitement of everything else, he’d forgotten. Brynn had loup garou blood, and she’d come into contact with her own poison. His heart pounded harder as he understood the purpose of Father’s earlier note. She’d said the seizures began within thirty minutes of exposure, and it been at least that long since Rook was dosed. Would it take longer to affect her because she was a half-breed? Would her Magi blood protect her?
“What is it?” Brynn asked.
“Nothing.”
“No? Then why do you look so startled?”
He didn’t want to lie, but he also couldn’t tell her the truth. “How certain are you that the poison will only affect loup garou physiology?”
“I have no reason to doubt what I was told.”
“Weren’t you also told you’d be killed if we discovered you’d entered our town with a deadly weapon?”
“Yes.”
“Has that happened?”
She blushed. “No.”
“So how can you say for sure that it won’t affect you in some way? You had it all over your hand, too.”
She squirmed in her chair, fingers twisting together in her lap. “Why are you trying to scare me?”
“I’m not trying to scare you, Brynn, I promise. I just think that letting Dr. Mike check you out might not be a bad idea.” He stared to reach for her hand, to give it a comforting squeeze, but stopped himself. She probably didn’t want his comfort or his touch, even though he wanted hers. Wanted to know if that connection he’d felt when he grabbed her hand was a fluke. He needed it to be a fluke, because any attraction to her was wrong and impossible. “I won’t let Dr. Mike hurt you.”
Her silence worried him, and they sat that way for a while.
Rook listened to the sounds of the auction as Butch called the next lot. They’d moved along from the table items, and the auction had split. The furniture in the back row was up now, while the boxed lots in the next room were being sold simultaneously. Doubling up kept the auction from taking too long, and the target buyers for the two were usually very different. The antique furniture dealers didn’t often want the miscellaneous items thrown together in the boxed lots. The entire auction should wrap up in about ninety minutes, and then they’d begin the process of cleaning up. Buyers had two hours from the end of the auction to get their purchases out of the building—no exceptions.
The more minutes that passed, the clearer his head became. The ketamine dose hadn’t been large, but it had thrown him for a loop. Rook didn’t like the fuzzy-headed loss of control he’d felt. He had faked it well in the music scene for years, and he couldn’t imagine actually existing like that as his band mates had. He struggled every day to control his temper as a Black Wolf, and the ability to achieve actual intoxication would have made that control impossible. He’d have never survived college, never reached his dream of playing in a locally recognized band—never been so close to stardom that he could actually see it in his head, laid out for him like a fantasy come true.
He’d have never had to humiliate himself and let his band down—giving it all up to keep the secret of his loup garou heritage.
Brynn’s anxiety compounded with each silent minute that ticked by, marked by the antique Coke clock on the wall. She didn’t understand why Rook had put those doubts into her head. Doubts about the toxin and its likelihood of affecting not just loup, but her as well. Why would her father have designed a ring that distributed the toxin in such a way if it wasn’t safe for Magi? Rook’s concerns were illogical, and yet his sincerity made her doubt herself.
By the time Knight returned with the doctor, Brynn was ready to climb the walls. She twisted around in her chair to observe the oldest man she’d ever seen in her life walk into the office. He was completely bald, with layer after layer of wrinkled, leathery skin that nearly hid his actual facial features. Sharp eyes peeked out through the folds and from beneath two bushy white eyebrows. He was thick, without being overweight, and his ancient body still hummed with the power of his loup garou blood.
“Hello, young one,” he said. “Dr. Michael Abraham, but everyone ’round these parts calls me Dr. Mike.”
Brynn stood and forced herself to shake his outstretched hand, not surprised by the strength of his grip. “Brynn Atwood. A pleasure, Dr. Mike.”
He held her hand a bit longer than necessary, and the way his nostrils flared betrayed the fact that he was smelling her—something she’d come to expect from the residents of Cornerstone. They probably didn’t get a chance to sniff a Magus very often. Dr. Mike released her hand, then moved to stand in front of Rook.
“All right, son, present yourself,” Dr. Mike said.
Rook stood up slowly, using the arm of the chair for support. “Knight fill you in?”
“That he did, yes. And if it was ketamine in the syringe, then the logic is sound.”
“It was,” Brynn said. Her annoyance level rose at the constant questioning of the syringe. She had been nothing but honest and cooperative for the last hour.
“We’ll see. Knight?”
Knight placed an old-fashioned black doctor’s bag onto the desk, and Dr. Mike snapped it open. Brynn took the opportunity to approach the window and watch the auction for a while, keeping half of her attention on the things being said behind her. The sale seemed to be winding down, the crowd thinning out and dividing up, and she was sorry to have missed so much of her first auction. She’d like to know more about how Rook’s family business was run. History and its artifacts fascinated her—it was one of the reasons she’d become a teacher.
“I’ll have to do some blood work to be certain,” Dr. Mike said, “but you seem to be just fine. The ketamine will be out of your system soon, and barring any unknown side effects of the poison, you should be in top form again by tomorrow.”
“Good, thank you,” Rook said.
“Your turn, young miss.”
Brynn turned—too fast, she suspected, because the room tilted. She grabbed the window ledge with her left hand, and pressed the palm of her right to her forehead. A warm body appeared by her side in an instant.
“Brynn?” Rook said. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, fine.” She blinked hard, surprised by the dark spots floating in her vision. “I just got dizzy for a moment. I moved too quickly.”
“Okay. Come sit down.” He slipped an arm around her waist, and Brynn didn’t push him away. She clung to his warmth, and the strength of the muscles that shifted beneath his t-shirt. Her skin didn’t crawl from contact with a loup. It tingled in a pleasant way. This close, she could smell him—the musk of his aftershave, the sharpness of sweat, and the deeper, damp leaves scent of his loup garou nature. She had never smelled anyone so acutely in her life. Of course she’d spent almost her entire life around other Magi. Perhaps the loup simply had stronger body odor?
The silly thought almost made her giggle.
He helped her sit on the edge of the desk, but the faint dizziness didn’t dissipate. Dr. Mike held her chin loosely in his hand and looked into her eyes. She stared back at him, alarmed and confused and somewhat loopy.
“Her pupils are dilated,” Dr. Mike said. “Are you feeling any sort of numbness or shortness of breath?”
“No, just dizzy.”
“Heart palpitations?”
“Not really.”
Dr. Mike took her wrist and held it, then glanced over his shoulder at the clock. “Your pulse is close to one hundred. That’s much too fast for a woman your age at rest.”