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I’d also taken Ben aside to explain what had really happened, not wanting to break that new to him in front of Wilder or the others. It might not have sunk in yet, because he really didn’t have much to say about hearing our mo
ther was alive.
By the time the sun started going down, there was almost no sign of what had happened. The smoke-stained buildings had been washed and repainted where necessary, and charred boards had been replaced with new ones. The only indication of what had been was the burnt out area of lawn where the bar had once stood.
If I knew Callum, he would have the entire space re-sodded by the time we were back in St. Francisville in a week or two.
Part of me, the part that had spent much of my childhood and late teens at this house, wanted to stay longer. I felt tethered to the space, and wanted to be near the comforting orbit of Lina in the kitchen, and even near Callum’s surly, booming voice.
This was home, in its own way, but also not. Not anymore.
My real home was with my pack, and that was back in the city. I’d been out here too long already, staying an extra day where there wasn’t an extra day to be had. While I trusted my friend Magnolia to run things in my absence and keep the pack appeased, she wasn’t an Alpha wolf. She didn’t have the genetic makeup to be my proper second in command, because other wolves could sense she was subservient and would eventually walk all over her.
As much as I wanted to give her some elevated pack status, she was more of an assistant than anything else.
She didn’t mind, I knew that. Werewolves grew up understanding their place in the pack, and Mags had always known she’d never ben a power-player. She never aspired to it. But that just made me want to give her more authority.
What she did do remarkably well was keep my schedule in order, field calls and requests from the pack members in the city, and generally just help me maintain the slightest sliver of sanity.
So, I knew I had to go back because my lovely, calm, collected friend had already sent me a dozen texts wondering, politely, when I might be returning. Which meant she was probably being bombarded by every manner of harassing phone call and visit from my wolves.
Wilder, sensing my desire to be on the way, went to get the car as soon as dinner was over without having to be asked. Likewise Callum, who understood the pressures of being a leader, didn’t invite me to stay.
He did, however, pull me aside as I waited for Wilder at the front door.
“If your mother is back, you understand what trouble we’re all in, don’t you?”
There had been a pall of silence over the dinner table that evening as each of us present had thought about this danger to some degree. Ben, Callum, and I knew the truth, whereas the rest of the wolves just knew something was terribly wrong. Wilder, who understood my mother was back, hadn’t been around for her first reign of terror, so while he knew the truth he couldn’t possibly understand what it meant for us.
“She is back,” I told Callum solemnly.
“Do you think…” his voice drifted off and he looked around the foyer, trying to think of the way to say what he was thinking.
I did it for him. “We don’t need to involve her.” The her in this case wasn’t my mother, but rather my sister.
Callum frowned. “Are you sure?”
“Secret has her way of dealing with things, and while I love her dearly, I don’t know that it’s the right move to bring her in on this. For one thing, she’s human now, and what is a human going to do against that?” I pointed out the back door, visible from the foyer, where the charred lawn was easy to see still.
This statement wasn’t fair to Secret at all. My sister, who had once been a genetic anomaly: half-vampire, half-werewolf, now found herself entirely without either of those traits. Human for the first time in her life. That didn’t make her helpless by any means. She spent most of her time working within a special branch of the FBI, striving to improve human and supernatural relations. When she wasn’t doing that she was still off killing rogue monsters that threatened to upend the uneasy peace between the different groups who now co-existed together.
Last I heard she’d been in Bolivia, hunting a vampire who was pretending to have god-like powers.
So yeah, Secret could still handle a single werewolf.
But this particular wolf wasn’t just any stray.
I chewed the inside of my cheek. “We’ll tell her when it’s done, or when we think she and her people might be at risk. But for now, Mercy is here, and she seems to be focused on us. If we bring Secret into the mix don’t you think that will just make things worse?”
There was no one on this earth, as far as I knew, that Mercy hated more than her first-born daughter. She had tried to move heaven and earth to murder Secret, and that was precisely why Secret had been the one to lob her head off all those years ago.
It wouldn’t exactly make the greatest scenario for any of us if we were to reunite mother and daughter.
Callum nodded. “All right, we’ll leave it for now. I’ll have a watch out overnight, and we’ll search the property again in the morning.” An earlier sweep of the woods had yielded no sign of her, but Callum and Ben had both agreed they could smell someone familiar. The empty grave, too, had proved disconcerting for my uncle.
Wilder had parked my Dodge Dart out front and was standing next to the passenger door waiting to let me in.
Callum stopped me, placing his big, warm hand on my shoulder to keep me in place before gently using it to cup my cheek. I was so unaccustomed to physical tenderness from him I jumped slightly before settling into the comfort of the gesture.
