Forbidden (16 page)

As a last touch, she grabbed her knife and a bandana off the dresser and tucked them in her pocket. She'd taken off the bandage because the stitches had scabbed over but she wanted to keep dirt out of it. She had a feeling she was going to be getting dirty and sweaty today.

Going down the stairs after Rachel was more painful than Claire expected—too many muscles that didn't want to flex after being motionless for hours. She had to hold her breath to keep from making little achy whimpers. She could already feel the itching from her stitches. Hopefully that meant tomorrow she'd be healed. But today was going to suck.

Outside, with the door shut quietly behind them and no lights on in the house to say that anyone had been woken up, they trotted down the barely lit path toward the feeble lights of the town far in the distance.

After a while, Rachel motioned Claire to walk beside her. Keeping her voice low, she spoke quickly. “Okay, so here's how it works. The Omega hits pretty much every house and all of the businesses in town every day. We do the stuff that normally city employees would do … if Luna Lake had any … plus stuff that people might hire out. That's how we keep outsiders from the town, reduce the risk of discovery. So the Omega is the Jack or Jill of all trades.”

“Why not tell me this back at the house? Why the big secret?”

Rachel stopped so abruptly that Claire stepped past her without meaning to. “You have good ears. Is there anyone out there? Anyone to hear?”

She was serious. Deadly serious, so Claire gave the question the weight it deserved. As though flipping a switch in her brain, she pulled in the moon, listening like a predator—for threats, for prey. She opened her ears and eyes and flared her nostrils, then scanned in a full three-sixty circle as if she was hunting. Rachel watched, arms wrapped around herself as though freezing cold.

The night wind made Claire's skin tingle, set the hairs moving like her fur when she ran. The darkness disappeared as moonlight filled her eyes; everything looked a shade darker than in the day but she could see leaves, pine needles, a mouse moving under a log, a deer bolting in the distance. She grinned, certain the animal had reacted to her scent—not that of a human, but a wolf.

Though she didn't have much magic left—not after that stunt Alek had pulled—she pushed it out in as wide of an arc as she could. It didn't go very far, not more than a stone's throw. It had taken nearly everything she had to freeze Alek and Tammy in midair. She'd been lucky vomiting was the only ill-effect; she'd heard of more than one lesser alpha whose heart had stopped after that big of an energy drain.

Rustling leaves that stopped the moment she turned toward them. Thumps of hooves that faded into the distance. But there, floating above the trees … the gentle whoosh of feathers. It wasn't just a raptor looking for a meal, not unless the neighborhood birds used shampoo on their feathers. They were being spied on. But the bird was too far away for Claire to identify even the species and it kept climbing higher until it was just a dark speck against the partial moon. She shook her head and motioned for Rachel to keep walking. More and more, she believed Rachel had good reason to be worried. But of what? And why?

Pondering, Claire was silent for the rest of the journey. When they reached the chief's office, Rachel whispered a hurried, “We'll talk more after we check in and start on our rounds.”

But the door was locked. She rattled the knob and then turned her head to Rachel. “It's locked. Should I knock?”

The woman's eyes took on the same wide terror that they used to in the caves. Her hand went to her mouth and only a whisper came out from behind it. “We're
late
. Lord help us. We're late.”

That wasn't really an answer. “So do we knock?”

Instead of answering, Rachel pulled on her arm, tugging her away from the door. “Hurry. We have to hurry.”

There was an urgency to her actions that reminded her of Dani in the car. She let herself be dragged for fifty yards before she finally dug in her heels and stopped, jerking Rachel to a stop with her. What was setting the people in this town so much on edge? “Rachel, would you just stop and tell me what's going on?” She did her best to try to push calm at the woman, much as she had in the car. Claire squeezed Rachel's hand. “Please. Try to calm down and tell me. We can go somewhere where we won't be heard.”

Finally, Rachel nodded. “Okay. You deserve that. C'mon. We'll go to the school. It's right down the road. It's usually where I start cleaning anyway.”

The school? Perfect! Nobody would be there for hours. It would be a good time to get the layout of the rooms.

The building was nondescript brick, like most schools Claire had seen. She remembered little of the schools in Kansas before she was kidnapped, but the one in Santa Helena in Texas was small, just like this one. She started to walk up the stairs but Rachel shook her head. “We use the back door, not the front.”

“So there are different keys?”

A raspberry noise came from in front of her. “No. But the Omega doesn't get to use the front door to any building.”

Claire waited until they were inside the darkened building before she whispered, “I'm not a very politically correct sort of person, but it just seems
wrong
that you're both a black woman and a second-class citizen who has to use the back door to businesses.”

Rachel shrugged. “It's not a race thing. Think about it. Scott was the last Omega, and you can't get more lily white than that man. Snow has more color than him. But you're right, it's
wrong
. The whole Omega system is fucked up in this town … but you didn't hear that from me.”

“So tell me about it. What's wrong with it?”

But Rachel had already walked away. Claire followed her down the dim hallway, lit only by the faint red emergency exit lights. It smelled like kids. Claire inhaled deeply and sighed. Young children and teens. Cats and birds and wolves and maybe a bear in the making. This was what she wanted. Just to inspire kids and help them become something amazing.

A bank of lockers lined each side of the short hallway and as Claire peered into rooms, they looked like any other school rooms. The younger-kid rooms had brightly colored letters pinned on the walls and small desks, while the older classrooms had maps, charts, and inspirational sayings over adult-sized tables. There was even a small science lab that included microscopes and Bunsen burners. She would have loved to have had an actual science lab in her high school. Instead, they had one of the micro lab units that did the experiments, but with none of the bubbling. Not nearly as much fun.

Rachel had stopped next to a janitor closet and was pulling out a rolling trash can filled with brooms and mops. “We'll have to talk while we work. We can't afford to not finish everything today. Not after being late.”

“What's going to happen? Is someone going to come track us down and check on what we're doing?” Claire followed Rachel's lead and started dust mopping the hallway.

The other woman stopped and turned to her. “I can't keep being vague. It's not fair to you. You didn't earn this or even deserve it. Lenny … that's the police chief, he's a bastard.”

“No duh,” Claire said under her breath.

It made Rachel smile. “Already noticed that, did you? Well, he seems to think that the only way to enforce the pack is to hurt people. Physically, emotionally, mentally; doesn't matter to him. Yes, he'll check up on you. Yes, we're both in for a beating. I've never been late enough to have the door locked, but … Scott was. Just
once.
”

The way she said that. The echo of the word hung in the air. “Bad?”

She shook her head sadly, but her fingers tightened around the handle of the wide cloth floor duster, her scent angry enough that Claire was betting she would like to use it to beat on the chief. “His leg was broken. The thigh bone—snapped clean in half. He was screaming when we found him. He'll probably have arthritis before he's thirty.”

“When you
found
him? You mean the chief just left him somewhere to suffer?”

Narrowed eyes from across the hallway told the story. “Oh, Lenny took him to the clinic all right. Locked him in tight. And then promptly went home. He didn't bother to call the healer. We had one back then. She was livid. I don't know if she quit and left town in disgust or if he buried her at the bottom of some canyon. They were constantly at each other's throat for shit like that.”

“Good God! Why doesn't the Alpha do something about him? Kick his ass or turn him in to the Council.”

Rachel started moving her duster again. “The mayor's a joke. I don't know why people keep electing him. I guess because he's no threat to anyone. But Van couldn't hurt a fly and is too loyal to Lenny to fire him or turn him in. Maybe that's normal. I don't know because I've never been part of a normal pack.” They'd reached the end of the hall and once they dumped the dust in the bin, Rachel handed her a plastic bag. “Start dumping the wastebaskets in these. I'll do this side, you do the other.”

So, I'm in for a beating. Great. As if I didn't already hurt enough.
The thought made her stomach churn. There was nothing quite like waiting for a beating. The clock always ticked slower so you got to agonize over the details. It was better not to think about it. Instead, she threw herself into cleaning. Maybe if she got tired enough, she'd be too numb to feel the pain.

When Claire tried to turn the knob to the next room, it just jiggled. She called out across the hall. “This door is locked, Rachel. Do I skip it?”

“No,” came the shouted reply. “That's the office. It has a separate key.” A ring of keys sailed out from the doorway to land on the floor near her feet. “It's the one with the yellow jelly around the top. There's a trash can for each desk. Make sure you get them all. The principal gets freaked out if his basket isn't emptied.”

The office!
Could it get any better? She unlocked the door and made sure to lock it again once inside. She limped around the room emptying the baskets as fast as she could, and then glanced out the window set in the door to make sure Rachel wasn't watching. The coast was clear.

There were more than a dozen matching gray file cabinets—far too many for a school this small. Especially since the school had only been in existence for a decade. She started opening filing cabinet drawers quickly, trying to be as quiet as possible. Squinting in the dim red light, it looked like this cabinet had the accounts payable files. She quickly moved to the next drawer. Same. Third drawer. Nope. Standardized tests. Same for the fourth. By the time she got to the second cabinet, it was too far away from the
EXIT
sign to read the file labels and she didn't dare turn on the lights.
Crap. Tomorrow I need to bring a penlight with me.

A sudden tapping on the glass and rapid jiggling of the knob made her start so hard she nearly slammed the drawer shut. “You okay in there, Claire? Is that stupid door stuck again?”

It sticks? “Yeah. I'm so sorry, Rachel. I didn't realize I locked it.” She spoke intentionally loud to cover the tiny metallic click of the drawer shutting. Shifting sideways to the door made a sharp pain travel from her hip all the way up to her neck. She jiggled the handle with her hands like Rachel had, then began to pull on the locked door as though she couldn't open it.

“Try turning the knob and lifting the whole door just a fraction. The building settled wrong. They didn't compact the ground right when they built this place. Don't yank it when you lift. One time the window glass shattered.”

Claire turned the knob while simultaneously twisting the lock mechanism, and then lifted so the door visibly raised up. Another flash of pain in her shoulder nearly made her let go of the handle. But she managed to hold it long enough to slowly pull it inward. The door opened easily.
Oh, this will come in really handy.

“
Voila!
” Rachel said with hands spread. “Sorry, I meant to tell you about that.”

“Thanks for the lesson. I probably would have broken the door.” They were several steps away from the door when Claire nearly slapped her forehead.
Fingerprints! Duh!
She turned in a panic, causing Rachel to turn too.

“What's wrong?”

What could she say? She should have left her trash bag, but it was right in her hand. “I forgot the principal's basket!”

“Oh! Crap, better get that one. I'll meet you in the boys' bathroom at the end of the hall. It's always a mess.”

If Rachel could smell the lie, she didn't say anything. She raced back into the office, pulled a few tissues out of the nearest box, and squeezed some antibacterial alcohol gel from a pump dispenser near the door onto the paper. She used it to quickly wipe away fingerprints from the handles of the cabinet and then tossed the tissue into her trash bag. The alcohol would dry in minutes, and should remove her scent. Better safe than sorry.

Rachel had been right about the boys' bathroom. She smelled it before she made it inside the room. “Man! It smells like a stray tomcat sprayed urine on the ceiling.”

“Not a stray, but yes. The Kain twins strike. They're bobcats in eighth grade and are getting territorial.” She handed Claire a scrub brush on a long pole and a bottle of industrial cleaner.

“Gawd, that's horrible!” The combination of scents filled her nose and made her eyes burn. She waved a hand in front of her face but it didn't help. The longer she stayed in the room, scrubbing the walls, the worse it got. “It's like cat and skunk mixed with gasoline.”

“Yeah, it's probably worse for you. My nose isn't that powerful. I got the eyes, but not the nose. Why don't I finish up in here and you do the girls' room? Then we just have the locker room and we'll head to the next stop.”