Trial by Fire
Page 24

I just loved it when my worst-case scenario went from bad to horrific. The precarious democracy in the werewolf Senate was a stick of dynamite, waiting to go off. I had no desire to be the one to strike the match.
“So in summation, his only suggestion was putting half the pack on Bryn Babysitting Duty, and he can’t do anything to help us directly without inciting a chain of events that might lead to a future he doesn’t want.”
“If it’s any consolation,” Ali said in a voice that suggested it wasn’t much consolation to her, “I think the part of him that’s actually human wishes that he could help. It’s just not a very big part. Not anymore.”
I wasn’t about to touch Ali’s Callum issues with a ten-foot pole. “In other not-helpful news,” I told her, “I got a visit from one of the psychics again last night.”
Ali’s entire body went tense. “And you didn’t lead with that?” she asked tersely. “Are you okay? What did they do to you?”
In retrospect, I had to consider the possibility that telling Ali this was a mistake. For whatever reason, psychics were a sore spot with her. I should have known she wouldn’t take the idea of a nighttime invasion lying down.
“I’m fine. One of them just has a nasty habit of showing up in my dreams. At least this time, he came alone.”
“What did he look like?” Ali enunciated each of the words, and I could tell she was fighting to keep her voice from rising in pitch.
“Dark hair. Early twenties. Penchant for sarcasm.”
That wasn’t exactly a quality description, but at the time, I’d been too busy wanting to kill the guy to take note of his features. Still, the description seemed to satisfy Ali and she let out a breath that I hadn’t realized she was holding.
“Early twenties,” she repeated.
“College aged,” I confirmed. “Maybe a little older, but not much.” I hesitated a fraction of a second but then had to ask: “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Ali said. “I’m fine. You should be, too. Entering other people’s dreams isn’t all that different from what people with open pack-bonds can do with each other, and the psychic doing it can’t hurt you. He can annoy you. He can frighten you. But that’s it.”
I decided, for the time being, not to mention that the psychic in question appeared to be able to cross that line with relatively little effort.
“You seem to know a lot about psychics.” I let that statement hang in the air, but Ali didn’t offer up an explanation, leaving me to wonder if I wasn’t the only one dancing around full disclosure.
“I don’t know enough,” Ali said instead, “and neither do you. I told Callum as much.”
“And …?” I knew by the look on Ali’s face that there was more.
“And,” Ali continued, “he said that it was absolutely crucial for me to tell you that if you go anywhere near this coven, he’d be very displeased. I believe his exact words were that you shouldn’t be poking your nose around their affairs and that he forbids it.”
Forbids it?
Forbids it?
I sputtered, “Who does he think he is? I’m not his responsibility, and he’s not my alpha. He can’t forbid anything.”
Even when I had been living under Callum’s rule, even when he’d been the closest thing to family that Ali and I had, I’d never have let him get away with being that high-handed. Forbidding me to do something was as good as telling me to do it.
Irritation mounted until I felt like snarling. Slowly, however, common sense intruded on my ire, and a little bell began going off in the back of my head.
Callum knew that telling me specifically not to do something was a surefire recipe for making me want to do it.
He knew that.
I glanced at Ali to see if she was thinking the same thing. The edges of her lips turned upward. “Callum’s many things, Bryn, but he isn’t an idiot. The only reason he’d ever ask me to tell you that something was strictly, absolutely off-limits was if he wanted to ensure that you’d do the exact opposite of what you were told.”
When it came to maneuvering around the rules, I’d learned from the master. If the Senate asked, Callum could honestly say that other than telling Ali to keep me at home and under guard, he’d done nothing. He hadn’t offered us any advice in his position as alpha, and he most certainly hadn’t suggested that if I wanted to find my way out of this situation, I’d need to investigate the coven firsthand.
“Think if I go into town alone, someone will show up to play more mind games?” I asked.
“Most psychics don’t have aggressive powers.” Ali glanced out the window. “For every person who’s good in a fight, there are twelve who are better at messing with your mind. Even if this coven is one of the more powerful ones, if you show up in town without a werewolf escort, someone will show.”
I was shocked that Ali was willing to consider the idea of me playing bait—until I realized that she hadn’t specified my going into town alone. She’d said that someone was sure to show if I went in without werewolf backup. Given that she and I were the only humans in the pack, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that she was planning on coming with me.
Knowing Ali the way I did, though, I was starting to suspect that it was more than that. Ali wasn’t just planning on coming with me—she seemed dead set on it, like she wanted to flush out the psychics as much as or more than I did. I could see the drive to do this hidden beneath the almost-neutral set of her features.
Ali didn’t just want to come with me. She needed to come with me. The only thing that wasn’t 100 percent clear to me was why.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ALI AND I STOPPED BY THE RESTAURANT ON OUR way to town. Living with werewolves meant that everyone would know the second we left the Wayfarer grounds anyway, so there was no point in sneaking around. Besides, Ali needed to drop the twins off with Mitch and check in with the older Resilients to make sure the younger ones were doing okay. There weren’t too many kids in our pack young enough to need constant supervision, but the older Resilients—some of whom were just a few years younger than me—had been taking care of the littler kids for years.
In the clutches of the Rabid, they’d been the ones to bear the brunt of the abuse.
If there was one thing that seeing Lucas had taught me, it was how lucky they all were to have come out of it with their minds and spirits intact.
“Where’d you say you’re going again?” Mitch asked. His voice was mild, but he was a Were and Ali was female, so the things he didn’t say hung in the air between them, heavy and clear.
“We’re going to town,” Ali repeated, unfazed by the question and the manner in which it was delivered. “Just for an hour or so. Think you can hold things down here?”
“I suspect I can.” Mitch paused for a split second and then he turned to me and said, “Bryn, I ever tell you that you and Ali here are an awful lot alike?”
Ali couldn’t seem to decide whether to smile or throw her hands up in the air at that, so I saved her the trouble of responding.
“I’m going to assume that’s a compliment,” I told Mitch. “For both of us.”
Mitch shook his head in consternation, and Ali reached up and patted his shoulder, in a motion that I was fairly certain she didn’t mean to look nearly as intimate as it did. “We’ll be fine, Mitch. If it’ll make you feel better, have Lake rustle up a couple of tranquilizer guns. Just make sure they’re loaded for humans, not Weres.”
Lake wasn’t the kind of person you had to ask twice for weapons, so she didn’t even wait for her dad to give her a nod before she took off out the front door of the restaurant. I gave it ten-to-one odds that she’d be back with tranq guns in less than three minutes.
Unfortunately, three minutes was all it took for Devon and Chase to show up at the restaurant and innocuously volunteer to shadow Ali and me on our trip to town. Given that the whole reason we were going into town was to flush out people who tortured werewolves for fun, I wasn’t inclined to indulge the boys’ protective instincts over my own.