“I suppose it is.”
“Do you know why I left Callum’s compound in the first place?”
“I don’t. He said you became difficult after you were Awakened, and not in the typical teenage ways.”
“It was polite of him to put it that way.”
“How would you put it?”
“I blew things up every full moon.”
“You…blew things up?”
Eugenia wrapped up several sprigs of lavender. “You know most werewolf teens are Awakened when they’re thirteen, obviously. Do you know what age hereditary witches come into their power?”
“I’ll hazard a guess and say thirteen?”
“Bingo.”
“So you were turned into a werewolf and had magic powers spark to life at the same time?”
She nodded. “I wanted to be a good werewolf. Ben was a natural—he took to the change right away, he showed alpha tendencies early on, he was so good at it. I wanted to be half as good as he was. The problem is, moonlight heightens a witch’s powers. So when I shifted, my magic would react, but I couldn’t control it and manage the shift at the same time. The magic lashed out, violently.”
“And stuff blew up.”
“Yep. There were about twice as many cabins on the property before I started knocking them down by accident. The first time it happened I thought it was a coincidence. After the third full moon and the third flattened cabin, I knew it was my fault.”
“So you left.”
“So I left.”
“How did you know to come looking for her?” I asked, pointing to the witch who had done an excellent job of ignoring us up until now.
“I didn’t. She found me. She showed me how to control my magic even when I’m not in control of my human form. I can’t cast spells in wolf form, but at least I don’t blow things up anymore.”
“Does Callum know you’re a witch?”
“If he didn’t at the time, I think he figured it out when I started living with her.”
For the first time during our sisterly one-on-one, La Sorcière reacted. She snorted then muttered something. It sounded French, but it wasn’t Canadian French or Cajun French, so I was screwed when it came to understanding anything.
Eugenia—on the other hand—chuckled. “She says ‘Even the most obvious answers sometimes do not bite a foolish man in the ass.’”
Oh yeah. We were related.
“I won’t force you to come back,” I told Eugenia.
“You are strong, Secret, but I have the witch on my side. You couldn’t force me.”
La Sorcière clucked her tongue and waved her cane menacingly. I couldn’t tell if she was adding a visual element to Eugenia’s threat, or if she was scolding the girl for wielding grandmotherly power like a weapon.
Either way, Eugenia ignored her and plowed ahead. “If I come with you, it will be up to you to explain to Callum that me coming back doesn’t mean I’m staying. I’ve been out of the pack a long time, and I don’t know if being a lone wolf has screwed me up more than the magic did.”
“I’ll try to make him understand.”
Then she changed the topic. Drastically. “What’s she like? Our mom.”
“How much did Callum tell you about Mercy before you left?”
“That she was complicated. Wild. I always figured I was a lot like her.” Her faint smile made my stomach hurt.
“No. You’re nothing like Mercy. You have a soul.”
That knocked Eugenia on her proverbial ass. Her expression was that of a child learning Santa Claus wasn’t real. I felt like shit for being the one to kill her fantasy of who Mercy was. But if she ever met our mother, I didn’t want her thinking it was going to be a touching family reunion. Mostly because the next time I saw Mercy I would rip out her intestines and wear them as a sarong.
What can I say? Bitch not only tried to kill me, but my mate too.
I wanted to explain Mercy without tainting the story too much with my experiences. “Eugenia, Mercy isn’t complicated. She’s very simple. She loved my father and he died. When I was born, she got it into her head his death was somehow my fault and abandoned me. Her sadness never went away, and it made her go bat-shit crazy. Since then, she continues to blame me for everything she’s lost. She tried to kill me.”
“She…you mean metaphorically?”
“No, I mean she shifted her hand into a claw and made pretty solid effort of shredding the meat off my face. That was after she held a bullet between my ribs for six hours so I couldn’t heal.”
Eugenia’s mouth formed an O shape, her eyes wide and a little wet.
Now I had not only told her Santa wasn’t real, I’d told her the Easter Bunny went on killing sprees to eat the children who didn’t find his eggs.
“But…”
“I’m sorry.”
“Maybe—”
“I don’t want to be cruel.” I stood up and rubbed my hands against my back pockets to rid myself of the film of sweat that had accumulated while I told my story. “Once, there was a good Mercy. But that girl is gone. Our mothers are the women who raised us, not the woman who gave birth to us.”
A bunch of thyme hung loose in her hands, perilously close to slipping to the floor. Eugenia turned to La Sorcière. “Did you know?”
The witch shrugged.
“Of course you knew. You know everything.” The girl sighed. Shaking off the stupor, she finished wrapping twine around the herbs. Once she had set the bundle in a basket with the others, she placed her hands in her lap and took two deep breaths. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I’ll come with you.”
I had to sit down again.
“You’re right. The one who raised me is my real parent, and it wasn’t Mercy, it was Callum. I owe it to him to go back and try to be part of the family he made for me. And you risked your life to come here to ask me to come with you, not to force me… So yeah, I’ll come.”
La Sorcière tapped her wooden spoon against the side of the cauldron then teetered away from it. I assumed she would go to Eugenia, but instead she walked up to me. She was so small her height standing was still shorter than mine sitting. She grabbed my hands, turned them palm up and gave them a thorough once-over, dragging her fingernails over every bump and groove.
She paid extra attention to the lifelines, her nail skating along one, then the other, and then back to the short one. A low whistle escaped her lips, and her shocking blue eyes met mine. They were so, so blue. Finished with my hands, she allowed them to drop to my lap before she reached to my neck.
I flinched, my hand going protectively to the tiger’s iron I wore.
The witch slapped my hand gently, and I let her unclasp the necklace. I huffed out a breath and said, “Go ahead. It’s faulty anyway.”
La Sorcière shook her head then spoke in perfect English. “Nothing this stone can do will turn away the evil eye on you.” She slipped the tiger’s iron into a pouch on the front of her dress, then touched one finger to my forehead, grimaced and walked off muttering in her weird French dialect.
Eugenia looked confused.
“What did she say?” I asked.
“She said ‘Only when you know the way, will you be out from under the cloud that follows you.’”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The Mercedes was still parked outside Arnie’s slanty shanty. Guess he hadn’t had a chance to find a willing chop shop to come drag it away. I wanted to burn his shack to the ground with him inside it. I wanted to take him in his stupid skiff and abandon him on the island with the Loups-Garous with a sign around his neck that said, Will be your butt buddy for food.
I wanted to kill him.
He had abandoned us there, and I couldn’t fathom what kind of deal he’d worked out with the ferals, but he knew Holden and I weren’t coming back alive.
But he was human, and a long time ago I’d promised myself I wouldn’t kill any humans.
It didn’t mean I couldn’t fuck up his life like he’d tried to fuck up mine. I went to the Mercedes and popped the trunk. Inside was a spare gas can, and in the emergency kit I found matches.
All the commotion of slamming car doors brought the ancient old man out onto his deck.
He caught a glimpse of me—hair still caked with mud, my tank top sprayed with blood from my fight with Carn—and he crossed himself.
I shook my head and brought the gas can over to his skiff. “No one upstairs is listening to your fucking prayers, old man.” I dumped out half the gas on the wooden boat then threw a lit match on top. It went up with the gusto of a Roman candle. Old wood always burns best.
I walked over to him, and he began to tremble when I was inches away. I held the gas can up so it was in his line of sight. “Ours was the last tour you’ll ever run. If I find out you left anyone else out there—and I will find out—the next fire I light is your bed. With you in it.”
His knees buckled, and he sagged to the deck, staring at his boat and weeping.
He deserved worse, but he believed in a Christian God, so he knew he’d be getting his in the end. There was a level in Hell for liars and murderers. I hoped it involved lots of flaying.
Holden was leaning against the driver’s side, his hands on the roof and his chin resting on top of them. Eugenia watched with open-mouthed horror. She was probably reconsidering her decision to come with me, now.
“Hell hath no fury like a Secret screwed over,” Holden muttered.
I put the gas back in the trunk. “Let’s get the fuck out of here. I never want to see a goddamn swamp again for as long as I live.”
One of my greatest skills has to be my ability to make one hell of an entrance.
The whole pack—minus two kings—was at The Den when we returned. You could have heard a pin drop when I walked through the door, mud-caked and bloody.
Hank was the first person to speak, and I was ever so happy he was.
