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Chapter 15
Day 159 of the re-emerged Hat Island pack, Wednesday, Nov. 13, Penticton
Jessie Nickerson surveyedthe huge white house that belonged to Duncan McKenzie. Dennis had brought them here, got them inside the gated wall that surrounded it, and then got a phone call. Trouble, Jessie assumed, but she checked her mate bond. Nothing seemed wrong there.
“They’ve found more women,” Dennis said tensely, as he handed her the keys to the house. “Get ready.”
And he’d left her here, with four traumatized women and Titus. Titus was tense, and she couldn’t blame him. They were woefully under-defended.
The house reminded her of an extensive version of the Vancouver pack house — the original section, not the parts that Chen had added on to it. Colonial style? Was that what it was called? People interested her more than architecture. But the house was two stories tall, with black shutters at the windows. The front door had some kind of decorative thing over it — she couldn’t call it a porch, because she didn’t see how it would keep anyone dry. It did serve to say this was the door, not just another window, because the windows were all equally tall and narrow.
Jessie wondered when the house had been built. A century ago? Probably at the same time as the Vancouver house.
She just hoped it had running water and bathrooms. She rolled her eyes; she was sure it did. Duncan McKenzie didn’t seem like a man who would forgo creature comforts.
It was commendable that he was willing to move out and let it become a place for these women who needed to heal, she conceded. He made her wary, although she couldn’t say why —the fact that he was a member of this pack was reason enough. But he must have rattled around in here something fierce.
“Well, let’s go explore,” Jessie told the other women who huddled around her. They were seeking the comfort of touch, as if they were a small pack in and of themselves. She frowned at that. Were these women still Vancouver pack? Or had those bonds broken, like hers, when Chen fell? How could the Vancouver pack have not felt their suffering? She patted their shoulders and arms absent-mindedly.
Well,shehadn’t felt it, she realized. And she had been Vancouver pack. Chen must have severed their pack bonds when he sent them out here. She shook her head. Most of the things she’d been taught about shifters and packs were wrong. Or at the very best, over-simplified. Like a child’s drawing of a house, with its front door and a window on either side, a chimney on the roof, compared to this place —which also had a front door, windows on either side and a chimney on the roof. She laughed to herself as she pictured the drawing — with a yellow sun in one corner of it — against the reality of this place.
And her image of the shifter world was just as simplified. She made a mental note to talk to Benny about that. It seemed a Benny kind of question. She snickered at that. At Margarite’s, there’d been Benny questions and Cujo questions.
Well, she’d met Cujo, and thought he was scary enough to handle those kinds of questions —usually about defense and killing people.
She was learning Benny was just as lethal in his own way. He wasn’t just yoga classes and talk therapy.
She shook her head and focused on the house before them. “Let’s go inside.”
Titus hesitated. “Do you know for sure that it’s empty?” he asked softly.
She stared at him. “How would I know?” she demanded.
“Can you sense another wolf? Or pack?”
Jessie chewed on her cheek. She let that shifter sixth sense expand, seeking out signs that shifters were within range. She didn’t feel anything. Looking inward, she inched up the plexiglass wall that divided her from pack. She didn’t sense any pack nearby either.
“I think we’re alone,” she decided, and slammed that wall back into place before anyone could take advantage of it. Titus nodded, and Jessie’s eyes narrowed as she looked at him. He’d known that, she thought, and used this as a teaching moment. She wouldn’t forget she could check for herself.
She used the keys and let them inside.
The house was magnificent, Jessie conceded. The entry was two stories tall with parquet flooring and a large circular staircase that led to the second floor. She had this notion that Duncan was into real estate. Had he designed this place?
