Reflected (Silver Series) (26 page)

Silver stayed. The chief enforcer bound her wrists behind her with hard metal, but not silver. He must have noticed the way her bad arm hung dead, but he merely pulled it firmly into the binding himself. “You have the right to remain silent,” he said, and something more, but Silver missed it in wondering what he could possibly mean by the first part. Of course she could always choose to stay silent. In this situation, she planned to at least try to explain herself first—just because they were enforcers didn’t mean they couldn’t understand logic or reason. Did humans feel they must always answer any question an enforcer asked?

He touched her all over, searching for weapons, Silver supposed. He found her talisman and took it away. Silver watched tightly as the enforcer examined the small square. Dare had given it to her so she could show that she was herself, or was such a person as humans could understand. Would it calm the enforcer? He liked it enough to hand it to his partner, who spoke at a distance to someone about it, saying her old name several times.

Silver rolled her shoulders, hating the way her bad arm dragged at the binding. Had they told her to remain silent because they planned to ask her no questions? She tried to read the chief enforcer’s scent, and failing that, his manner. When she looked closer, shadows lurked on his arms, shadows as Silver was used to seeing on people in great pain. They moved sluggishly, and Silver was glad they hadn’t noticed her when he searched her.

Then one separated from the skin of his hand and reached out for her, as if it had heard her thought and planned to make up for the oversight. Silver flinched away, she couldn’t help herself. This was worse than any snake, this was the evil snakes carried with their poison. And yet she saw none of that evil in the enforcer’s eyes. How could that be?

Another shadow peeled away from the human and drifted toward her with malevolent interest. They weren’t
his
pain,
his
evil, Silver realized. They belonged to others and had come to rest on him like a scent. What pain must surround him for it to adhere so? She risked a glance at his partner and found he bore a burden of shadows too, now she knew to look.

“Ma’am. Calm down. Tell us what you’re doing here.” The chief enforcer frowned at her. His partner went to speak with the den owner. Silver caught his wide, angry gestures from the corner of her eye.

“My—” Silver wanted to say “mate’s daughter,” but of course she shouldn’t say “mate” in front of the humans. She knew plenty of other words, but she couldn’t
think
with the weight of the hovering shadows. “My lover’s daughter, she—”

More shadows drifted for her, and Silver jerked away from them. What would happen if they attached themselves to one as poisoned as she already was? Would they drain her dry? But she needed to explain herself. She had not meant the human harm. “She told me to meet her here, but she’s not here…”

A shadow slashed at her face and Silver cried out. “You have too many shadows, I’m just the kind of easy prey they like. Please, just let me go. I meant no harm, I hurt no one.”

The enforcers kept their distrust mostly hidden, but Silver saw its growth in the ugly purple-green bruise hue deepening in the shadows. The same fear the den owner had shown, of her unpredictability. “Shadows,” the chief enforcer repeated. He touched her shoulder, perhaps to remind her she was bound, in their power.

The shadows boiled and surged gleefully up her arm, taking the old scars as river channels, questing for her blood, her bone. “No,” Silver begged. “Death, please. Chase them away.” Death did nothing of the sort, and the enforcer’s grip tightened.

He asked her again why she was here, what she’d been doing inside the human’s den, but she couldn’t find any words to answer. She’d chosen silence after all, she supposed. She panted, knowing she was doing it, but she couldn’t stop. He wouldn’t release his grip, not now she looked ready to run from him, and the shadows swarmed over her skin. It was all she could do not to sob. “You have too many shadows! Stop touching me!”

“Merely hearing they exist has not banished anyone’s shadows yet,” Death said in her brother’s voice, gentle now. “Hold yourself together and they will find few cracks to enter.”

Silver gritted her teeth on any further outbursts. Death would not take her, she was sure of that, and any taint the shadows left behind could be exorcised later. Hadn’t Dare helped her remove the poison the snakes left in her arm, once upon a time? She would survive this.

Finally the enforcer guided her away from the den. He was taking her somewhere, and Silver smashed down the thought that the somewhere might be the source of the shadows until the accompanying panic made her heart race no more than it already was. No cracks. She would allow no cracks for the shadows.

17

Felicia had to jolt her brain back onto the trail of another plan when the police led Silver away. She’d snuck in closer, hiding behind the crowd that gathered when Silver came outside and caused a scene with her ramblings. Felicia had heard weirder things from her, but they sounded so alien dropped into the mundane, human world of cops and trespassing laws.

Felicia groped after what to do next. She’d known Silver talking her way out of trouble was a long shot. Felicia should have been thinking of what to do if Silver
was
arrested, but she couldn’t—she didn’t—and now Silver was, and Felicia fought a rising tide of self-directed anger for her uselessness.

If TV was to be believed, Silver would need a lawyer. Felicia’s father had a Were with training back East who did wills and paperwork, but that didn’t seem like quite the same thing.

But Susan was human. She’d know how to get a lawyer. Felicia almost dropped the phone in her relief as she fumbled it out. Better call quickly, before Enrique stopped congratulating himself and came over.

“I’m at work, Felicia.” Susan’s voice when she answered wasn’t precisely angry, but it wasn’t welcoming either.

“I don’t know what Silver just … she must have seen something, she was coming to meet me, she took a wrong turn and went into someone’s house. I think they called the police, because they showed up, sirens and everything, and arrested her.” Felicia allowed her real panic into her voice to make it fast and hopefully confused enough to hide any details that didn’t match up.

Something clunked down and then a door slammed, like Susan had shut herself in an office to take the call. “She went—what? What the hell is going on?”

Felicia repeated herself and then listened to silence for several seconds. Susan finally blew out a breath. “She’ll need a lawyer. Things are going to be bad enough without her getting any old public defender.” Susan paused a beat, like maybe she expected Felicia to contribute, but Felicia didn’t want to reveal she’d had time to think about it. She made a helpless noise and Susan continued. “My coworker, her brother is in family law, so he can’t help, but hopefully he’ll know someone. I’ll get the number before I leave. If they don’t put her in jail, she’ll need someone to pick her up. Where are you? I have to figure out which station they’d take her to.” Susan hung up after Felicia gave her the address.

Felicia stuffed the phone away when she spotted Enrique coming toward her, beaming. He didn’t seem to notice it. “Perfect! It’s like she figured out the worst possible way to act. The only thing better would have been if she’d fought them.”

Felicia gritted her teeth and punched his shoulder, hard. “Looking as weak as she does, that would have raised dangerous questions for all of us.”

Enrique acknowledged that with a grimace, then shrugged. “Anyway, it’s done. Now, we wait and let the human justice system do its job.” He grabbed her hand and tugged her back in the direction of his car.

Felicia planted her feet and refused to be tugged. “If I don’t show up, all apologies for misleading the alpha and concern for her, they’re going to figure I did it on purpose. I want to stay in this pack, remember?”

Enrique growled softly in frustration. “Yes, all right. Good luck.” He dropped her hand and strode off for his car.

Felicia hugged herself, momentarily overwhelmed by her situation once more. But she didn’t indulge it for very long this time. She wanted to be at the pack house when Silver and Susan arrived. She couldn’t go in, but she could park down the street and wait.

When Felicia reached the house, one of the spots on the street in front of the house was open, so she pulled in and watched the road in her rearview mirror. Something thumped in the back, but Felicia couldn’t think of anything Morsel could damage, so she left the cat to it. It had food, water, and litter, and the small sliding window was still cracked.

Susan’s compact pulled up over two hours later. Felicia stumbled on the long step down out of the truck’s cab and arrived at the car as Susan opened the passenger door for Silver.

Silver didn’t look good. She was white lipped, and her bad arm dangled free, which Silver never let it do when she could help it. Worse, she wasn’t holding herself like an alpha. She clutched a piece of paper and a card to her chest, and once she stepped out of the car, Susan started coaxing them out of her hand.

Susan checked the card—the nondriver ID her father had gotten Silver, Felicia realized—and handed it back. She kept the paper and read it, eyes flicking quickly down the sheet. “Burglary,” she said in Felicia’s direction, pointedly. “It’s got her court date on it. I thought she might have to stay in jail until they set bail tomorrow, but I guess they decided the case wasn’t strong enough to need that.”

Thus acknowledged, Felicia dared to come closer. She craned her neck, but Susan smoothed the paper with a jerky, frustrated movement and held it too close for Felicia to read. Burglary, wasn’t that worse than trespassing? Lady.

“I’ve got her a rush appointment for tomorrow morning with a lawyer my friend knew.” Susan was looking at Felicia when she said it. Felicia didn’t understand why Susan was telling her anything, but she realized suddenly that Susan was stressed enough to feel the need to tell
someone,
and Silver wouldn’t follow.

“The lawyer can defend her from that, right? Convince them it was a mistake?” Felicia bit her lip. She should have paid more attention to the lawyer TV shows as well as the police ones.

“Well, if it was you,” Susan said, spearing Felicia with a look that made her want to flinch, “I’d say that it wouldn’t be too big a deal, because I presume she didn’t take anything, or touch anything. But I really don’t know. How the hell is Silver going to speak in court?”

Silver shook herself as if returning from a great mental distance and put her hand on Susan’s arm. “I’ll speak when I need to. The shadows will not catch me off guard again.” She seemed to rebuild the alpha piece by piece, starting with her shoulders, traveling through her body in both directions, and ending with a tilt of her chin. “After a meal.”

“Oh, of course.” Susan bustled Silver into the house, leaving Felicia standing on the driveway. She hadn’t missed the way Silver’s eyes had skipped right over her. Clearly, she was being pointedly ignored, but at least she hadn’t been chased off.

Morsel came forward to put her nose to the breeze as Felicia opened the canopy, but she shooed the cat back and managed to get inside without any escapes. She settled in, opened a package of beef jerky, and ate her own dinner.

Afterward, out of sheer frustration with having nothing of substance to do, Felicia decided to start accustoming Morsel to wolf forms. Maybe it didn’t matter since she was just going to give that cat back to the shelter, but being friendly with large dogs should make it more adoptable later, shouldn’t it? She was doing it a favor.

The cat went all puffy tailed when Felicia disappeared and a big canine appeared in her place, but Felicia flumped down and waited with her head on her paws. Morsel cautiously approached, sniffing, then danced back. A few more rounds of that and it bapped Felicia on the nose with no claws. Felicia surged to her feet and nosed the cat onto its back, where it went after her with all four paws and teeth, delighted by the game.

Felicia had to admit it was at least a little bit fun for her too, like playing with the kids in wolf. When she tired of the game, she curled up in the corner of the truck bed still in wolf. That form was better for sleeping comfortably on hard surfaces anyway. Morsel washed itself for a while and then came to curl against her side.

She dozed until someone knocked against the canopy. People had been coming and going intermittently, so she hadn’t particularly noticed someone approaching the truck.

Morsel blinked sleepily at her as she shoved it far enough away to be able to shift back. She pulled on her shirt so she would appear decent to anyone on the road, bundled Morsel into its box, and then opened the canopy while leaving the tailgate up.

Silver waited there, calmly blank faced. Her hair seemed almost to glow in the lowering sun, white drawing in the diffuse light.

Lady. Felicia barely prevented worse curses from making it out of her mouth. “I … should get dressed if you want to talk,” she said, and Silver nodded silently. She shut the canopy long enough to wiggle into the rest of her clothes, then opened the tailgate and sat on it. Silver leaned her ass on it beside her.

The silence stretched longer and longer, and finally Felicia couldn’t take it anymore. “I’m sorry! For earlier, and now this. I didn’t mean…” Felicia bit her lip. What
had
she meant? To protect her own place in the pack at the expense of someone else? What kind of pack member did that make her?

“Didn’t you?” Silver looked up into the sky, though the Lady’s face was hidden in another direction at this hour of the evening. “Are you loyal to the Roanoke pack?”

Felicia’s head snapped up from where she’d dropped it anticipation of scolding. “Yes,” she said, trying to put every ounce of sincerity she’d felt in her life into her eyes to support the word.

“Are you loyal to me as alpha of that pack? Do you mean me harm?”

“Yes. No.” Felicia had meant to stick to the simple syllables, but more words came tumbling out after. “When I saw you go in there by mistake, I thought maybe you could talk your way out of it.” Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that she’d hoped that, hoped with all her strength. After all, Silver had told Felicia’s father that it was hard to be Selene, but not impossible. Right?