“Yet?” Susan glanced to John. The word had a dangerous overtone.
John winced. “I told you, there was always a chance that he wouldn’t inherit—”
Andrew snorted. “And by ‘always a chance’ he means ‘certain unsubstantiated rumors’ about crossbreeds—”
“You may not have planned him, but he is the Lady’s. Her light is on his face.” Silver inserted herself into the conversation as she came up to flick the baby’s cheek. “She watches over the smallest of Her children.”
“How do you know we didn’t—?” Susan’s anger turned to focus on Silver.
“Death undoubtedly told her. Come on, Silver. Stop scaring the nice lady.” Andrew patted Silver’s shoulder and she snapped her teeth at his hand. He wasn’t going to explain it in front of Silver, but it was an obvious conclusion. He doubted John would have planned to give himself the trouble a crossbreed child would cause. And he was nearly certain the man would not have lied about the chances of werewolf blood being inherited if he’d been faced with a woman making an informed decision.
Andrew moved around Silver to get a better position to smell Susan’s reaction as he asked his next question. Hopefully her confusion over Silver’s rambling would distract her and make her answer more honestly. “Did you ever tell anyone about John’s friends up in Bellingham? Doesn’t matter if you said they were human or not, just that you said they were in Bellingham.”
Susan shook her head. “I didn’t know he had friends in Bellingham.” No lie in her scent.
Andrew let a breath trickle out. That was that, he supposed. Seattle wasn’t hiding anything after all. And so the time continued to tick away without him having a real lead.
“I should go back there. Try to find the monster’s name where the memories are stronger.”
All eyes in the room turned to Silver except Susan’s. Her disgruntled expression at having no clue what was going on deepened. Silver crossed her arms, good holding up bad, and looked stubborn.
“No.” John spoke the word as Andrew opened his mouth to say the same. Andrew’s automatic instinct to oppose John whenever he tried to meddle in Silver’s business made him pause long enough to really see Silver’s expression.
She looked and smelled frightened, but not like she had been before, at the mention of the killer or going back to the scene of the crime. It seemed like fear that had been harnessed to fuel action, resolve. He frowned. “Maybe she should. There’s a lot that would help us if she could remember it.”
John’s expression started to darken. “No—”
“Death speaks to me in their voices. It’s not as if I can escape them even here. You can’t wrap me up and save me from what’s in my own head and walking beside me.” Silver tapped her temple and gestured to the area beside her feet that Death seemed to occupy most often. “Look to your own pack. Look to your child. Dare will need my help if he is to find the monster before the monster finds you.”
“So let Dare go to Bellingham, if there’s something in Bellingham.” John held the baby closer and the boy squalled at the jostling.
Silver started to shake, and Andrew caught her shoulders in case she should start a seizure, but the trembling had the same focused quality as her fear, carrying her to her goal. “Dare doesn’t know what I know. I have to help. He’d kill the baby first, you know. The monster would. That’s how he caught us. The children. Held a knife to their throats, and we all sat still for him to tie up, no fight. That easy. To save the children from harm.
“And then he killed them. For mercy. Let the Lady keep the innocent soul while he tried to save yours. Only all his knives were silver. So it wasn’t a mercy. One clean stroke, but you could see in their eyes that it burned to the last. The last thing they felt was the poison in their blood.”
Susan made a strangled, gagging noise and grabbed for her child. The boy cried louder as he left his father’s arms. John hissed a curse under his breath. Andrew tightened his grip on Silver, remembering only belatedly to think of bruises. Just when he thought he’d discovered the depth of the killer’s perversions, something shook him to the core once more. Using a pack’s children against them?
Silver switched her intense gaze to him. “You understand inaction, don’t you? Let me do something. Let me go home. Stop him before it’s someone else who is listening to silver screams.”
Andrew drew in a long breath. She was right. He understood inaction, the emotions bubbling up until they either had to be turned inward, or outward. His had been rage, not fear, but who was he to say Silver didn’t have some rage too. She had been a powerful woman and that didn’t just go away. She’d want justice even more than he did. “Give me a chance to exhaust every other lead, at least. After that, we’ll go.” There had to be something he’d overlooked. He’d do everything he could to find it, to save her the need to face her home.
“So now we know why they didn’t fight,” John said, rage in his voice sliding into desperation. “Lady’s light in Her realm above. Using the children. But how does that help us?”
“We know it could have been one man alone,” Andrew said, pinching the bridge of his nose as he tried to think. He was no detective—as enforcer, he put his nose to the trail of the perpetrator, and found them for punishment. Easy, clear-cut. “We know he could have been a stranger…” He repeated that to himself a few times and got no farther.
What he needed was a fresh perspective. He got out his phone and nodded to John. “I’m going to make some calls.” He headed for the stairs. This time, it was less important if someone overheard. It might strengthen the impression their alpha was accomplishing something, even, when he really wasn’t. At the head of the stairs, Andrew drew in a deep breath until he found the direction with the strongest scent of John. Silver verified that clue by turning that way without stopping after she climbed the stairs behind him.
John’s former room was reasonably spacious, though a lot of that room was taken up by his king bed. A flat-screen TV spanned the entire wall between the windows opposite it. Even with clean sheets on the bed, the place still stank of John in a way that suggested his dirty clothing hadn’t often made it into a hamper in the closet. Silver jumped on the bed immediately, pulling over a pillow to lean on.
Andrew remained standing as he dialed Benjamin. The older alpha waited patiently after they exchanged greetings for Andrew to get to his real point but Andrew couldn’t think of a way to phrase his question without sounding weak. When the silence drew out a bit too long, he started with the easier thing first. “Any news on that lone of yours?”
“Nothing yet.” Again, Andrew got the sense Benjamin suspected there was more to this call than that, and was waiting for Andrew to get his act together.
Better to just say it, then. “I don’t know where to pick up this scent, Benjamin. I’m reduced to backtracking, but I keep feeling like there’s something I’ve missed.” He summarized all he’d found for Boston. Laid out, it seemed so little. Probably Were, could have been someone alone since he’d controlled the pack with threats to the children.
“Have you called your contacts in Europe to see what they can add? I know it’s not anything you’ve seen before, but the use of silver remains.”
Andrew drew in a deep breath against the familiar surge of anger. Why couldn’t anyone leave it alone? Of course he hadn’t.
“You should have seen him the last time someone mentioned his past,” Silver remarked, coming into range of the cell phone’s pickup. “You’re smart to stay out of reach to bring it up.”
“Leave it alone.” It was hard for Andrew to get the words out with his jaw clenched.
Silver cocked her head in a listening posture. “Death wishes to point out that you’re avoiding your memories as much as I am.”
“You’re the one who just finished saying you didn’t have any idea for what to do next.” Benjamin’s tone took on a paternal flavor of exasperation. “What, you called thinking I’d give you permission not to do what you’re avoiding so hard? No such luck.”
“Of course not. But I’m still not going to.” Andrew put his hand on Silver’s shoulder to shove her aside and out of the conversation, but she proved surprisingly resistant, bracing herself on both feet.
“Death says your wife wants you to man up and stop being such a coward.”
Andrew shoved hard enough to throw Silver off balance this time. She smirked and pressed right back into his personal space. “Come. I can take you down easily.” She brought up her hand to make a “bring it on” gesture. It was so incongruous, laughter bubbled up from somewhere. Andrew had no doubt that Silver could hold her own in a conflict, but it would be from knowing not to start a head-on fight. This was playacting.
He snorted, and took her good wrist, holding it tightly enough that she couldn’t move her arm. She kept her eyes on him calmly, as if she was waiting for him to think it through now that she’d freed him from his immediate, unreasoning anger.
“They wouldn’t tell me anything anyway. If they did, they’d lie.” It came out as a snarl. He dropped her wrist.
Silver stepped away this time. “You still need to try.”
Rich laughter came from the phone. “Well, well.”
Andrew snarled again. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Benjamin gave a last chuckle. “It means good luck. Tell the young woman I’m impressed.” With that, Benjamin ended the call.
“I’m hungry,” Silver said with the bouncy tone she’d used the last time she used the announcement as a stone thrown to disrupt the growing tempest of people’s moods. “I’m going to get some dinner. Do you want some?”
“Go ahead.” Andrew tipped his chin to the door and she let herself out. Someone downstairs could certainly find her something. He didn’t want to deal with people in his current mood. He couldn’t hear anyone in the adjoining rooms, so the pack must be giving him privacy, which was nice given the turn the phone conversation had taken.
Andrew stared at his phone for a while and then threw it down on the bed. Benjamin was right, of course. Not about wanting permission for cowardice, but about the necessity of it. That’s what he had been promising himself earlier, wasn’t it? He’d do anything to save Silver the trip home. Well, this was part of that anything. He glowered at the phone.
Silver returned with takeout Chinese. The bag looked deflated around the three or four cartons inside, so Andrew assumed she’d taken the remains of the household’s larger order. She left the bag on the floor, selected one carton, and settled herself cross-legged on the middle of the bed. She drew out food piece by piece with her fingers. She licked her fingers after a broccoli chunk and made a forestalling noise when Andrew picked up his phone.
“Eat first.” She left her carton where it was and leaned perilously over the edge of the bed to grab him another. He came to take it quickly so she didn’t fall.
“What, now you’re telling me to put it off?” Andrew opened the carton and looked inside. It wasn’t the highest quality Chinese food but it did smell edible at a time when his instincts were waking up to remind him that his last meal had been breakfast several shifts ago.
He rustled in the bag for a plastic fork, too concerned with speed to bother with the chopsticks, and dug into the sweet-and-sour pork. Silver had chosen well. No extraneous vegetables to slow him down in that. He sat on the edge of the bed.
Silver grinned and returned to her carton. She sat cross-legged facing him and continued eating with her fingers. “You’d have been gnawing on
my
leg soon, the way you were acting. Not the mood to go into a tricky conversation with.” She wiped up a drop of sauce on her thigh with one finger. John’s bedspread was doomed. “Besides, eating helps nearly all bad moods.”
“You sound like my mother,” Andrew said, pausing for breath now that his tines scraped the container’s bottom. He checked the other cartons to find the rice and then levered in a thick raft to soak up the sauce. “She was always pushing food on people any time it looked like there might be a fight.” He frowned in memory. “It worked more often than not, too, I suppose. I was a morbid kid so I was more interested in watching the fight happen. I stomped off to find my own pack fairly early.”
“Like my brother,” Silver agreed. Andrew caught himself before he tensed, worrying about the memory’s effect on her, but she seemed mellowed by the food also. “He started planning his rise to alpha before our Lady ceremonies.” She paused a beat and then laughed. Andrew presumed that Death had offered some comment.
Andrew moved on to the remaining General Tsao’s. “I was a little shit, really.”
“Not little anymore,” Silver said, and then leaned backward when he made a threatening movement with his fork.
As pleasant as it was feeling full and relaxed, it didn’t take much longer to finish up all the food and clear the cartons into the wastebasket. Andrew picked up his phone and stared at his in-laws’ address book entry for a while, making sure the number was correct. He checked his watch. Five
P.M
. That would make it one
A.M
. in Spain. Pushing it a little, but Andrew suspected Arturo would still be awake.
Enough delay. He punched in his brother-in-law’s number. When Arturo answered in Spanish it took Andrew’s brain a moment to dig out a long-disused fluency. The pause stretched long enough the man growled in annoyance.
“Yes? Who is this?” Arturo asked again.
“I am out of practice,” Andrew said in Spanish, feeling out the words. “It has been a long time.”
This time, the silence was resounding. Andrew grimaced, wishing that he had Arturo’s scent to clarify his reaction. Was it rage? Indifference?
“Dare?” He pronounced it with Spanish vowels, dah-ray. Still no hint of his emotions in his voice.
“I need your help.” It didn’t bode well for the conversation ahead that even those simple words were hard to say. At least his Spanish was coming back to him. “We have a killer—”
“And it’s somehow our fault? Not all evil comes from Europe, Dare.” The hostility in Arturo’s voice was almost a relief to hear.
“It does when he’s so well-versed in the more perverse uses of silver, Arturo.” He flattened the name with ugly American vowels, a familiar swing in a half-remembered pattern of blows. That was the way it had always been with his brother-in-law.