Dead Letter Day (33 page)

He had a point. He also still had a ring in a pretty velvet box that he was holding out to me while he stayed on one knee asking me to marry him. “Are you doing this just because I’ve got your bun in my oven?” I asked.

“It certainly prompted me to consider the question, but my answer would always be the same. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Please say you’ll marry me.”

“How many kids do you want?” We’d never discussed these things and I felt we should before we made this kind of decision.

His brow furrowed. “I don’t know. Maybe two. Three
seems like a bad idea. We’d be outnumbered. One feels a little tenuous.”

That seemed reasonable. “Where would we live?”

“Melina, can we discuss this after you say yes? Something’s digging into my knee and it’s really starting to hurt.”

“What makes you think that I’ll say yes?” That was some nerve.

He stood up then. He closed the distance between us with one step, pulled me to him and kissed me very thoroughly. “You’ll say yes because you love me as much as I love you and you know it’s what you want to say. Now stop fighting it and say you’ll be my wife.”

“Show me the ring again.”

He sighed, but he showed it to me. The diamond was pretty small. Like pinpoint small. Still, it was a diamond. “Fine. I’ll do it.” I reached for the box.

He lifted his arm, holding it just out of my reach. “You’ll do what?”

“Marry you. Be your wife. Spend the rest of my life by your side. Bear your child. Okay?”

“Yes,” he said. “Very okay.”

He handed me the box. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go home and call your mother before she sics Grandma Rosie on me.”

I SPENT A GOOD PORTION OF THE DRIVE BACK TO MY apartment admiring the pretty. I liked the way the sun sparkled off the little diamond. It was probably a lucky thing I didn’t plow into a parked car.

After we went in and called my mother with the news about our engagement and spent half an hour on the phone telling her that we hadn’t made any specific plans yet, over
and over and over, it was time to get back down to business, though.

“I think I’ve got this figured out,” I told Ted.

“You want to fill me in?” he asked as he made an omelet. An omelet, I tell you! I couldn’t believe my eyes.

“Let’s say that Inge wants to make her sons into Ulfhednar so they can’t be harmed,” I posited, while trying to see exactly what Ted was putting in my omelet.

“I’m willing to stipulate to that.” He popped two pieces of bread in the toaster.

“But the Norse blood is even weaker in them than it is in her. They can’t become Ulfhednar all on their own. They need some kind of special help to make them more wolflike.” Definitely cheese. Maybe some onion. Maybe red pepper. I swallowed hard.

“You think they’re using something of Paul’s to make them more wolflike so they can become these warriors that are impervious to wood and steel?” He set the butter and a jar of apricot jam on the counter in front of me.

“I do. Look at what happened to Michael Hollinger. They bit him and maybe exchanged some blood or some saliva or something and it infected him. Maybe Inge is deliberately infecting her kids with something from Paul. Maybe Frigga made her the silver net so she could catch Paul—or any of the werewolves—and use them as an unwilling donor.”

He looked over at me. “That’s not a bad hypothesis, but you realize that would mean that she would have to know that Paul was a werewolf.”

I gnawed on the side of my thumb. “I know.”

“Do you think she could have figured that out?” He slid the omelet out of the pan and onto a plate and set the plate in front of me. Then he started making his own omelet. “Eat. Don’t let it get cold.”

He didn’t have to tell me twice. “I do. Chuck’s been saying that people have been getting suspicious of him. Maybe she’s one of those people. Plus, there’s the whole Kevin thing.”

He looked over at me from the stove. “What Kevin thing?”

“He’s got a total crush on her. Maybe he let something slip. Maybe they’re spending some time together and she figured it out.”

“Do you think he told her deliberately?”

I shook my head. “No. He’s a prickly SOB, but I felt like he was telling me the truth the other day when I followed him to his class. He didn’t want anything bad to happen to Paul.”

“So what do we do with this theory?” he asked.

“We go talk to Chuck,” I said. “Wanna come with?”

He slid his own omelet onto his plate and sat down next to me. Mine was gone along with the two pieces of toast he’d given me. “I thought you’d never ask.”

14

IT TOOK A WHILE TO GET CHUCK OUT OF THE HOUSE SO I could tell him my theory, but once we did it didn’t take long for me to lay it out for him up at the overlook where I’d talked to him when I first started looking for Paul. It took even less time for him to see how very possible it was.

“Ulfhednar?” he repeated.

I nodded. “I think so. It makes sense.”

He shot me a look. “How could that possibly make sense?”

I knew what he was saying, but I had no time to appreciate his sarcasm. “Look. The Ulfhednar are particularly associated with Odin. Inge is somehow tangled up with Frigga. Need I remind you that those two are married?”

“No. Thank you. I do have a basic understanding of Norse mythology.”

I went on. “While the berserkers that were associated with Thor took on the characteristics of bears, the Ulfhednar
took on the characteristics of wolves. Sort of man/wolf hybrids.”

“Sort of like werewolves,” Chuck said, his voice thoughtful.

“Yeah. Kind of like werewolves, but not exactly,” I agreed.

“And you think Kevin is somehow involved?”

I hesitated. “I don’t know. I know there’s something between him and Inge. I don’t know if she figured it out from proximity or he said something that made her suspicious or what. I do think he knows more than he’s letting on. After all, he’s the one who should have told you about Hollinger and McMannis weeks ago.”

“So you think he withheld that information from me?” Chuck’s voice was calm and even, but his fists were clenching and unclenching.

“I don’t know, Chuck. You’ll have to ask him.”

“Let’s do that then.”

We trooped back down the hill. Chuck sent Sam to get Kevin and we spent a very uncomfortable half hour waiting for him as Chuck’s anger grew visibly.

By the time Kevin arrived, Chuck was pacing while Ted and I tried to stay very still and quiet in our chairs. Every once in a while he’d pause as if something had suddenly occurred to him, then he’d continue pacing.

Kevin walked in with Sam behind him. Chuck stopped pacing, took one look at Kevin, pulled his arm back and socked Kevin in the chin with a blow that would have sent me flying into the next room. It only knocked Kevin to the floor.

“What the hell?” He stared up from the floor, rubbing his jaw.

Chuck put his boot on Kevin’s chest and pushed him down. “Did you tell Inge what we are?”

“No! I would never have done that. She knew already. She’d guessed,” he protested, cowering now.

“But you confirmed it for her.” Chuck backed away. “You pathetic idiot. You’re sleeping with her, aren’t you? Four hundred years old and still being led around by your dick.” He shook his head.

Ted looked at me, forehead lined with confusion. “I don’t get it. If she had Kevin in her bed, why did she need to kidnap Paul?”

I turned back to Kevin. “Out of curiosity, if Inge had started asking for blood donations from you, would you have given them to her?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“So you knew what she was doing? You knew she was turning those boys into warriors when there was no one to fight? Couldn’t you see it would all end in disaster?” Chuck shut his eyes and shook his head.

“I didn’t know. I suspected. I thought she’d get past it. We’d get Paul back. He’ll survive this. He’s tough.” Kevin scrambled to his knees.

I turned back to Ted. “See? She knew she wouldn’t get a willing donor. She had to wait until she could take someone. This was never about Pack politics. It was never about getting Paul out of the way. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Ted let out a low whistle. “Talk about bad luck.”

“I think it’s time for that luck to turn,” I said. “I think I know where she’s keeping him.”

Chuck stared at me. “You are full of surprises today, Melina. Where?”

I twisted my hands together in front of me. “Where were you before you moved here, Chuck?”

“About ten miles southeast of here, near Jackson. Why?” He was answering me, but he was still looking at Kevin.

“Did you have basically the same setup there as you do here?” I asked.

Now he glanced over at me. “What do you mean?”

“I mean like the place where you held Michael Hollinger. Did you have something like that at your old place?”

“Of course. It’s important to be able to contain a wolf that is out of control.” The look he gave to Kevin was quite meaningful.

“Is it still standing?” I asked.

“As far as I know.” He stared at me. “You think that’s where Paul is?”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense to me. Where else do you think you’d be able to contain a werewolf?”

He stood up. “What are we waiting for, then?”

WE MADE THE RIDE TO JACKSON IN GRIM SILENCE, EACH of us with our own private thoughts. Mine ran very dark. Were we too late? What kind of shape would Paul be in? What kind of protections would Inge have?

Chuck glanced over at me. “There’s a back way in,” he said, simply, knowing I would understand.

A lot of ’Canes built their places with escape in mind. One never knew when the villagers might actually show up with pitchforks and torches. Or some modern day equivalent of the same. Any way you sliced it, it was best to have a Plan B at the ready.

“What kind of back way?” I asked. Some were more accessible than others.

“A tunnel,” he said simply.

I sighed. “So it’s underground.”

“Well, that’s generally where most folk keep their tunnels, Melina,” he said mildly.

As much as I appreciated the inappropriate humor, I still wasn’t happy. I don’t like underground places. They’re usually dirty and there are often insects involved. I’m not going to squeal and run if a spider runs across my hand while I’m crawling through a dank hole in the ground, but it doesn’t mean I like it. “Fine. How long a tunnel?”

He shrugged. “Long enough.”

“I’m trying to figure out how far I’m going to have to crawl,” I prompted.

Everyone in the car got very quiet. “You’re not crawling anywhere, Melina,” Chuck said, his voice still mild.

“Then how am I supposed to help get Paul out of there? Am I supposed to be the distraction at the front entrance, then?”

Ted leaned forward from the backseat and said, “You’re waiting in the car.”

My mouth dropped open. I have played all kinds of roles in all kinds of situations. It’s part and parcel of the part-and-parcel-carrying business. But I have never been relegated to the role of the person who waits in the car. “I am not.”

“Yes, you are.” Chuck glanced back at Ted. I didn’t care for the way they were exchanging glances, as if this had already been discussed between them. When had they done that? During one of the six thousand times I’d had to pee before we left? “You can’t risk getting bitten.”