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“Is this because of the conversion?” The weight of what had happened threatened to drop me to my knees. I shouldn’t have gone through with it. Duncan had been right.
“I think so,” Jaysa admitted, moving closer to the lifeless forms. “But I’m not completely sure.”
“How can you not know for sure? What else could have given me the ability to do that to another person?” I certainly hadn’t killed people by touching them prior to yesterday.
She shrugged. That was it. No explanation. No elaboration. Just that damned shrug and a bewildered look on her face.
“What did you do to me? Do you even know? Were you just throwing darts at the board?” I said, pushing her for answers she either didn’t have or wouldn’t give.
“I usually have pretty good luck at winging things,” she said.
Loud footsteps sounded, filling the air and vibrating the ground under my feet.
“Do you hear that?” I asked.
“Hear what?” She looked around.
I shook my head. If I had to explain, she couldn’t hear it.
The steps grew louder and louder, and a chill blew over the area. A feeling of frost settled on my skin, and the sense of something “other” lingered in the air.
“What is it?” Jaysa asked, sensing something was off but not feeling or hearing it.
“I don’t know,” I whispered, feeling as if my words were being heard by more than the living—and the dead.
“Whatever it is, you don’t have time to worry about it. Your number one problem right now is cleaning this mess up. When these two don’t come back, Groza will send someone looking for the bodies. You can’t have them found like this, with your scent all over the scene.”
The feeling of unease, ofother, slowly faded away. The steps were gone. The only thing left was my reality.
“Piper, what are you doing? You need to get it together and act. You’ve got to clean this up,” Jaysa said, moving to stand in front of me.
I shook off the last of the feeling, returning to the mess that I was now in. She was right, I had to do something, but what? How did I fix this?
“What do I do? I don’t even have a shovel, and they’d see a grave anyway.”
Jaysa looked at the bodies and shook her head. “No. That won’t work.” She walked around the crime scene, her fist on her chin as she stared intently. “We have to get rid of your scent.”
“How do I do that?” It wasn’t like these were normal conditions. Kicks had smelled my pheromones.How much easier was it going to be for the pack to smell my panic?
“Fire.” She uttered the word as if merely saying it would set the forest ablaze. She stared at me with a determined look in her eyes.
“You want me to light the forest on fire? What if it takes out the community? We’re not that far away.” She was crazy. If I hadn’t suspected it before, this was pretty much a red stamp on her forehead that readCERTIFIABLE.
“If you don’t burn them, she’ll burn you,” Jaysa said, her eyes growing wide.
Groza wouldn’t do it. She didn’t like doing her own dirty work. She’d send more of her goons after me. Unless this scared her off…
“I just took out two of her head henchmen. She might not. Maybe she’ll be afraid to send more after me?”
“She won’t have to send anyone.” Jaysa walked over and stood in front of me, her eyes murderous. “If you don’t get rid of these two bodies, she’ll drag them back to the pack and hang them up so all can see what kind of monster you are. She’ll tell them you’re a fraud, a usurper who stole my power and tricked them all. She won’t have tosendanyone. The entire pack will hunt you down and rip you apart.”
The woman knew how to get a point across.
“There’s got to be another way. What if I drag them to the nearest lake or something?”
Just then, the sunny day seemed to darken, and a loud bolt of thunder sounded in the distance.
“It’s going to rain.” I put my palm out and let my head fall back to stare at the sky. A single drop grazed my cheek. “That should help, right? If it gets rid of my scent, no one will believe I could’ve done this.” Not me, the helpless little human.
