Reflected (Silver Series) (20 page)

“Tom could be a good influence on her,” Portland suggested.

Silver gave a bark of a laugh. “If she doesn’t bowl him right over with the force of her personality. Besides, they’re fighting right now. Lady knows exactly why.” She rubbed at her temple. Maybe she should be pressing Tom for details instead of Felicia.

“Kids.” Portland laughed softly and then looked down at herself and set her hand on her flat stomach.

On an impulse, Silver let her grip on the world everyone else saw slide from her mental fingers. Trees, great and ancient to suit the Lady’s world, surrounded her, and the air smelled of the soft brightness of the Lady’s light. That brightness concentrated and curled protective tendrils over Portland’s belly. Silver set her hand over it too, and the tendrils licked pleasantly at her fingers.

She looked deeper, deeper past the light to the shadows it cast, the mortality of the child. It hardly had a shape of its own, wild or tame, just a spark of life with a spark of wild held within it, as children held their wild selves behind their eyes until it was time for their Lady ceremonies.

“His voice will not be mine soon,” Death said, soft. “If you were wondering.”

Silver wondered instead why Death was finally telling her what she needed to be able to tell Portland. Usually he avoided such reassurances, but she was not about to argue. “A boy,” she told Portland, concentrating again on the tendrils tickling her hand in light of that, as if she could find the sex herself. “Death says he’ll be healthy.”

Portland half laughed, half gasped in relief, and tears welled in her eyes. She lifted Silver’s hand and kissed it, kissed it again, until it had caught a little of the dampness from Portland’s cheeks. “Lady, you may be crazy, but I still hope you’re right.”

“Believe it hard enough, and you’ll
make
me right.” Death strode into the ancient trees and their shadows, pulling the shining reality of the world with him, leaving Silver with the flatter, more metallic smells of the path she walked between the Lady’s world and Dare’s, Portland’s.

Part of Silver mourned to see it go, but Dare’s world held Dare, and her pack, and all those she valued. She stood and offered Portland a hand up. “Let’s go try to talk your sister into going home, shall we?”

12

Felicia sniffed her wrists as she walked from where she’d parked her car in the neighborhood by the cupcake shop she’d suggested to Enrique as a place to meet. The perfume was much easier to bear now. She planned to explain it away as meant only for her pack, but she imagined he’d be much more suspicious if it was too strong for any Were to stand wearing.

When he’d suggested—or demanded—the meeting, he’d asked about a bakery, and while she thought it was odd for a shop to specialize so much, she liked the cupcake place’s frosting: not too sweet. Not that she planned to pay much attention to the food. The perfume should cover her scent enough that Enrique wouldn’t smell her resolve to work against him, and she was almost eager for this meeting. Once she discovered specifically what his plans were, she could start thwarting them.

Enrique met her outside the shop’s glass doors, a cupcake in one hand. He offered it. “I remembered how much you always loved my mother’s strawberry jam on your toast.”

Felicia’s voice tightened momentarily as she accepted the cupcake, vanilla with real strawberry pieces visible in the light pink icing and probably baked into the cake as well. She had loved that jam. She didn’t tend to think about that much, or about most of those childhood times. Even three years later she hadn’t figured out how to treasure them without them bringing up all the bad things that had made her leave Madrid.

And now Enrique was tainting them further, trying to use them against her. Damn him.

“Don’t even try the we-were-cubs-together stuff, cat.” Felicia frowned at the cupcake and considered dropping it on the sidewalk. Tantrums wouldn’t help, though, and it did smell good. She nibbled the edge.

Enrique snorted and his manner relaxed into something harder and more smug. He held out his arm, inviting her to walk along the sidewalk. He raised his eyebrows as she reluctantly fell into step beside him and he smelled her properly. “It’s to keep the others from realizing I’m lying about you.” She shoved his shoulder, hard. “So whatever it is you want from me, start talking. Fast.” Despite herself, thoughts of jam reminded her of an incident when they were young. It had been apricot jam she’d rubbed into his hair, not strawberry. She wanted to growl. Why? Why did Enrique have to turn out this way, someone who would use their shared past against her?

Enrique hooked a thumb into the top of the hip pocket that showed the shape of his phone, as if she needed the reminder of what he was blackmailing her with. He switched to Spanish, perhaps for the privacy.
“We’re going to get Silver arrested and committed.”

Felicia stumbled a step over a tree-root crack in the sidewalk as the implications spread across her mind. She could see that working, all too well. Silver was crazy enough in Were terms; to a human she’d seem absolutely off the deep end.
“And then my father would be so tied up with wresting her out of the clutches of the human psychiatric and justice systems…”
Enrique had said his plan wouldn’t hurt anyone. Felicia supposed this wouldn’t, in the narrowest sense, but she could also imagine the emotional toll on everyone. And what if her father couldn’t get Silver out of the system?

Enrique must have seen some of that on her face, if not in her scent, because he exhaled slowly and smelled almost like sympathy.
“Madrid wishes her no particular harm. She’s just the best way to get a mass murderer out of power.”

“Don’t,”
Felicia said, sharp. She didn’t want to hear his justifications. She was sure Madrid had killed plenty of people in his time, and he didn’t regret the deaths the way her father did.
“What’s your cunning plan to get her arrested, then?”

“Madrid left that to my discretion. We”
—Enrique smiled over the word, emphasizing it as a correction—
“are going to figure that out now.”
He stole a fingerful of frosting from her cupcake and licked it off with a smack.

Felicia imagined smashing the thing into his face, but instead she handed it over. She wasn’t that hungry, so he could have it if he wanted. He shrugged and demolished the rest in a couple bites.
“If we could kill a human, they’d arrest her in a snap,”
he said, tone low as he thought out loud.

Felicia couldn’t stop a rolling growl from escaping. The little pussy claimed to be taking a murderer out of power but would casually discuss murdering humans to accomplish it. Like humans were worth nothing, like they weren’t also thinking beings. Maybe before she knew Susan, Felicia would have dismissed humans as being bland and uninteresting, but she’d never have considered them so inconsequential that she’d kill one because it was convenient.

Enrique laughed at her growl, and Felicia wrestled it under control. There were humans around. At least she had an obvious counter for this plan.
“They’d be able to tell she didn’t do it. Don’t you watch TV? They have computers to sniff for them. No matter how careful you were, you’d leave behind a hair, or a fingerprint, or something, and they’d find you instead.”

Enrique’s laughter faded.
“A kidnapping, then. The humans constantly seem to be all bristled up over some stolen child or other. We could steal one and hand it to her.”

“And how do we get her arrested before she retraces the trail and hands it back? Silver’s not stupid, Enrique. I can’t think of any reason for me to have a human child that she’d believe. Besides, if it’s too old, it’ll tell the cops about the first person who took it.”
Felicia started to get into the rhythm of it. Enrique proposed an idea, and she found something wrong with it. She could continue this indefinitely.

Enrique’s expression darkened, and he took out his phone and tossed it idly from hand to hand. Felicia pressed her lips shut. Fine. No more tearing down his ideas, then. But there was no way he could coerce her into giving him better ones. Even a purse dog should realize that.

“Territory trespass,”
Enrique said at length, after sliding the phone away. It sounded like he was going down a list of Were crimes in his mind, trying to match them to the human equivalents.
“The humans have that, and if she has trouble seeing new places, she wouldn’t see the markings.”

Silence fell, and Felicia managed to enjoy the scent of Enrique’s mounting frustration. Finally he looked over at her, and she raised her eyebrows. Oh, did he want her opinion now?
“Sure, she’ll be in their territory, but she’ll be looking confused and fragile, not threatening. She doesn’t pitch a fit when she’s upset about being dragged somewhere new she doesn’t understand, she goes quiet. The whole pack went to a Sounders game once, and she sort of hid against Papa and didn’t say anything.”

Enrique waved a dismissive hand.
“Not a sports game. Somewhere private. A human’s home. They would call the police if they found a stranger there, no matter how the stranger was acting
.” A grin grew as he warmed to the idea.
“If you lay a scent trail for her to follow inside, the humans won’t even know it’s there. They’ll call the police and she’ll be too crazy to explain herself.”

Felicia kept up her casual ambling steps down the sidewalk, though something inside of her stilled like at a flashed glimpse of some prey. As far as Enrique knew, Silver would be too crazy to explain herself. But Felicia knew better. She knew Silver could be perfectly sane when she needed to be, and she hadn’t let that slip to Enrique yet. Sane explanations wouldn’t get her out of an accusation of murder or kidnapping, but they might get her out of having wandered into someone’s home.

But Felicia didn’t want Enrique to see her jump at the idea.
“Lady, Enrique. You should leave Silver alone. All of this—it’s so prey-stupid.”
Hopefully that sounded too heated, like she was retreating in the face of an idea that sounded to her like it would work.

Enrique smiled like he’d taken it that way. He stopped them on the path, under the drooping branches of one of the sidewalk-buckling trees. He turned Felicia to face him, hands on her shoulders. “She won’t get hurt,” he said again, trying to be gentle. “Look, I hate that I had to force you into this. I really do just want you come home, when our mission for Madrid is done, so things can be how they were.” He smoothed a lock of hair behind her ear and Felicia had a split second of intuition that froze her. Surely he wasn’t going to—

He kissed her. Her body tried to react once more, but the rest of her emotions washed right over that. She wrenched away. “Damn you,” she said, panting, because rage made her want to snarl. “Don’t be like Madrid, who tells himself he cares for people even as he manipulates them, hurts them, to accomplish his goals. Threaten me, threaten my relationship with my pack, but don’t try to tell yourself or me that you care for me while you’re doing it.”

Enrique’s face had gone a little blank in shock, and Felicia stared at him as she fell silent. He didn’t try to touch her again, and gradually her rage ebbed. Did he really care for her, or was all this just another way to control her? She’d decided Madrid had cared for her, despite what he’d done, but that was after three years to think. She didn’t know what to think about Enrique now, and the Lady as her witness, she didn’t
care
why he was doing it, just that he was.

“Fine.” Enrique shrugged. He sidestepped downwind, so she couldn’t read his scent. Felicia’s stomach wavered with nausea. Had she gone too far? Would he go and show everyone the forged e-mails now? She mentally cursed herself. Speaking her mind for a few moments wasn’t worth getting kicked out of the pack forever.

“I’ll get a rental car and scout for the right place, then call you to lay the trail,” Enrique said and turned back toward the shop and whatever bus stop he’d presumably arrived at. “You’re in this deep, Felicia. Remember that.”

“I know.” Felicia watched him walk away. A surge of relief that he wasn’t going to use the e-mails lasted maybe a second before she remembered that she’d still have to make sure that things went according to her plan, and Silver didn’t get arrested. Worry settled heavily around her voice.

But deep was where you had to be to do any sabotage.

*   *   *

Silver heard running, bouncing footsteps from halfway across the den. Tom, with good news, she presumed from the gait. The rest of the afternoon had been quiet, all the guests chased out of the den for the moment. Even Felicia had disappeared off somewhere, smelling of flowers that had been lightly abused rather than tortured. Silver supposed she should have demanded the young woman show progress finding work before she let her go, but having her out of the way was easier at the moment. Death looked bored, as much as he allowed himself to appear anything so undignified. He lay across her feet, muzzle down on his paws, only his eyes moving to follow any action.

Tom bounded into the room. “It’s Dare!”

Death laughed and rose smoothly to avoid being jostled off when Silver shoved to her feet. She smiled even though her mate couldn’t see it. “Dare?”

“Silver?” Dare’s voice came indistinctly, clearly from very far away indeed. Silver frowned to cut through the intervening fuzz of noise. She wished his voice was rich, rich enough she could close her eyes and wrap it around her.

But even indistinct it was much better than nothing. “Lady, it’s good to talk to you,” she said, laughing awkwardly. She became aware of Tom hovering, unsure whether to go. She gestured him to stay and removed herself instead, striding toward their bedroom.

“And you. I’ve missed you, Silver. How are things there? Is Felicia behaving herself?” Dare’s tone turned wry at the end.

“A better question would be, can you control her all by yourself?” Death said, matching and effortlessly exceeding her pace.

Silver gritted her teeth as she mentally chewed over her answer. She’d told Dare she could handle Felicia, and now he asked to speak to his daughter at the worst possible moment, when all Silver had was questions: about the roamer, about the abused flowers.