Reflected (Silver Series) (35 page)

“I could only think of showing her how angry I was. When I walked up to your house so she’d follow me, I thought she’d be embarrassed, you know? Give someone a surprise and they’d yell at her for being stupid and getting the wrong house.” Mr. Caballero’s expression was unmoved, but his wife looked exasperated, as if she recognized the sentiment exactly. Recognition didn’t mean she was willing to let Felicia off the hook for it, though.

Felicia took a deep breath. All right, here was her last possible lunge after retreating prey. “Selene shouldn’t be the one paying for this, I should. I wish I hadn’t done it, but I was mad, and sometimes you just … do things, you know? Without knowing quite why. But it was wrong, and it’s my responsibility. I don’t want her punished for me being stupid.”

“The stepparent role is difficult.” The wife caught Mr. Caballero’s eye. “And it wasn’t like Ms. Powell damaged anything inside the house. The way Ramon describes her behavior matches someone who had been misled that way.”

Mr. Caballero’s brows drew down, but Felicia’s father spoke before he could. “My daughter will be punished. I’m cutting off her allowance completely. If she can’t find a job, there are plenty of community-service opportunities to keep her out of Selene’s hair and out of further trouble.”

Mr. Caballero shared another look with his wife and then stood. “Fair enough.” He offered a hand across the desk to shake on it. “We’ll speak to the prosecutor’s office to ask them not to pursue the case, since it was a … misunderstanding.” His expression went very dry.

Felicia held herself together until the car, where she bent over her knees and pressed the heels of her hands to her temples. Lady, if that hadn’t worked …

“Where did that come from?” her father said as he started the car.

“The pictures. I think he has kids from a previous marriage.” Felicia lifted her head to draw a deep breath. No anger from her father.

“Good.” Her father concentrated on the road as they approached a stop sign and his scent gained an undertone of confusion. “Has Silver ever mentioned marriage to you?”

Felicia couldn’t help herself. She laughed, a little longer than she should have because the release of tension was so great. “No, don’t worry. Anyway, you should ask Susan. She’d be the one to know.”

Her father sank into deeply thoughtful silence, and Felicia waited with a little glee to find out what he’d say next. “I didn’t think all the human trappings, the ring and all that, would mean much to her.”

“You were married to Mama. I assume that means something to Silver.” Felicia picked at a piece of lint on the hem of Susan’s jacket. That had sounded too serious. She wanted to tease her father, not make him feel guilty. There was enough guilt sloshing around lately. “If you don’t know what she’d think of a ring, you could show her one and ask her.”

Her father reached over and shoved her shoulder without looking. “You think you’re a helpful one, don’t you?” But she could hear the resigned laughter in his tone.

25

The idea of a larger house must have been percolating in Silver or her father’s mind in the three months since Portland and everyone were tromping through the pack house, because Felicia came home from work one day to find the dining room table spread with fliers for home-construction firms.

She’d carpooled with Susan—silly not to when they worked at the same branch—but Susan was already deep in conversation with her husband at the table when Felicia returned from her shower upstairs. A customer’s perfume had lingered annoyingly in her hair today.

Felicia stepped around Edmond, who was loading plastic pigs and chickens into his mother’s kicked-off high heels, and snagged one of the fliers. It pictured in vivid color a backwoods cabin clearly made for someone who never planned to step outside its comfort into the actual woods. One might as well hang photographs instead of having windows, as far as Felicia could see.

“We probably are going to have to custom build, if we want this many bedrooms as well as decent common-living spaces,” John said, tapping a booklet full of floor plans. “If we try to remodel a hotel or something, it’s going to still feel like a hotel when we’re done.”

“If we can find adjoining properties, we could do something like a main house and a guesthouse,” Susan offered. “That’s what’s driving this, isn’t it? We’re fine here until people come petitioning the Roanokes and want to stay the night. They can walk across the yard to go to bed.”

Felicia slid into a chair down at the end with Silver. She didn’t appear to be listening to the others as she pored over one of the glossiest of the booklets. Felicia swapped for a different one and paged through. Ugh, gold-plated faucets. She scrubbed at her eyes. Lady, being pleasant to people made her tired. Susan had showed her the trick of it, but it still wore her out.

She took out her phone and brought up Tom’s entry in the address book and stared at it for a while. She’d followed her father’s orders and hadn’t even e-mailed him for three months. She liked to imagine what she’d say to him every so often, though. Well. Frequently. No more than once a day.

“Felicia!” Her father’s tone told her that wasn’t the first time he’d called her name. While she’d been lost in her thoughts, they’d cleared away all the other fliers, and people were getting up. Her father leaned back in his chair, encompassing everyone in werewolf earshot with his next comment. “I had an idea for something a little different instead of hunting tonight. A surprise, if Felicia’s willing.”

That sounded ominous. Felicia frowned deeply at her father, but he just winked and held up his hand for her to wait a moment. “Go ahead, everyone. We’ll catch up to you out there.”

Felicia had to sit on her curiosity as all Were past their Lady ceremonies got themselves organized, deciding who would ride in which car and who would watch the children—Susan as usual, since she couldn’t shift anyway. It seemed to take a Lady-damned long time before she and her father were alone downstairs.

“You kept Enrique’s whip, didn’t you?” Her father seemed completely nonchalant about the question, but Felicia’s heart picked up speed. He knew she had. She hadn’t done anything wrong. They’d relieved Enrique of all his weapons before shoving him on the plane, of course, and Felicia couldn’t bear to see such a well-crafted, expensive weapon go in the trash. It was stuffed as far back under her dresser as she could shove it.

“Calm down.” Her father stood up and came to set his hand against the back of her neck. “I was thinking. I doubt this will be the last time we tangle with Madrid or his people. This pack should learn how to defend themselves against those kind of tactics. You learned defensive techniques, right?”

Felicia licked her lips. Her immediate reaction was that her father should leave well enough alone and let people forget what she could do with a whip. She opened her mouth to say that, but then her mind started to actually work it through. If people worked with whips a little, maybe the weapon wouldn’t seem so scary. “The unarmed defensive techniques mostly revolve around getting the other person’s whip and using it. But yes.”

Her father gave a low chuckle. “True.” He squeezed her neck. “Consider it a project. Getting everyone willing up to Spanish defensive standards.”

Felicia twisted around. “What do I need a project for? I have a job!” Parents were infuriating.

“And you’re moping. You need a challenge to keep you occupied.” Her father kissed the top of her head and retreated immediately out of smacking range. “C’mon. Get the whip, they’ll be waiting for us.”

Felicia only realized the big weakness of her father’s idea when they got to the pack’s hunting lands. “If I’m demonstrating how to defend, someone needs to attack me with the whip,” she called after her father, who was striding off up the vehicle track to the gathering in the cleared space behind the gate where people usually parked. Her father had had everyone pull off along the driveway this time. The ground was moist, but it hadn’t been raining hard enough in the past week to make everything into a mud puddle. The sunlight was fading fast, but the light pollution was confined to the horizon, so werewolf eyes could adjust properly.

“I’m rusty, but I’m sure I can manage. I reached the level of not embarrassing myself, when I was there.” Her father planted himself and held out his hand for the whip. Felicia had been keeping it minimized, coiled tightly down by her hip, almost behind her back. The pack fidgeted and a few whispers started at sight of it out in the open, but her father ignored their reactions, and she tried to do the same as she handed it over.

“Okay.” Felicia blew out a breath and stepped away from her father. “As a werewolf, the basic strategy to counter someone with a whip is to sacrifice a little arm skin to get a grip on the weapon. It’ll heal fast enough, after all. Then you either pull it away, or use it as a handle to pull your opponent closer.” She had no idea how she was supposed to teach people who were nearly all older than her, but she tried to channel her father’s tone when he was instructing people. It seemed to at least mostly work. Several of the pack members stopped glowering off in random directions like they were imagining their escape and started watching her.

Her father took a few practice flicks well to either side of her, and then nodded. She watched him, and as the lash fell, she held up her arm so the tip wrapped around several times. She hissed with the pain. She was badly out of practice, if that little graze threw her off.

She hadn’t lost her skills entirely yet, though. She clamped over the whip’s tip with her free hand and yanked. A little blood oozed up, but not enough to even threaten her grip. Her father let the whip go without much resistance, probably to help her better demonstrate the principle. “See? Simple.”

Felicia would have never admitted it to him, but the physicality of the task did help her in a way the endless talking to humans at the bank hadn’t. She began to feel a more satisfying fatigue as she either swung the whip for others to catch, or caught it to sneak in a few pointers for how to swing once they’d gotten the whip away.

The routine of it came back to her, the rhythm, and Felicia let her world narrow to her target. She needed to aim her strokes so that even if her current opponent, Pierce, didn’t catch it right, he wouldn’t be badly hurt.

Then the wind changed and brought her Tom’s scent. She started, sure she was imagining it, but there he was: lanky, light hair more shaggy than ever, and his expression wavering on the edge of an easy, good-natured smile. That was the Tom she remembered from before, perpetually smiling or ready to smile.

Surprise made her screw up the next stroke, though fortunately Pierce had already stepped back, knowing when to fade into the background. On the backstroke, the whip kissed her cheek. The scratch healed as easily as any of the others, and she scrubbed away the blood with the heel of her hand. It seemed almost fair that Tom should cause her to take a few extra licks or get in a few of his own. She offered out the whip. “Did you want to practice too?”

“Felicia, no.” Tom flinched from the whip and only took it to toss it aside. His smile disappeared, but he smelled concerned, and maybe frustrated, not angry. Not betrayed. Felicia groped after all the words she’d planned over the past few months, but she couldn’t find a single one. “I don’t want to risk hurting you.”

“I hurt
you,
” Felicia said, soft.

Tom pressed his lips together and looked out into the trees, though they’d been making enough racket no animals or birds were hanging around to be seen in them. “You made me very angry. I’m not an angry person, and I don’t want to become one, and I’ve sort of … found my way back to that, these past few months.”

Felicia nodded, completely at a loss. That was true. Another thing to blame herself for. But how would an apology for that be better than any of her others?

Tom licked his thumb and swiped the rest of the blood off her cheek. “We can’t—I don’t want us to have that kind of accounting. You hurt me, I hurt you. It’s unhealthy. You have to do everything in your power not to hurt each other, and figure it’ll happen anyway sometimes, no matter what you do.”

Tom ran out of steam and looked down at his hands before starting again somewhere else. “I’ve actually been in town for a little while, but I didn’t want to ambush you at work or at the house, and you haven’t gone anywhere else.” He laughed awkwardly. “Roanoke Silver told me she thought your father had something planned that would bring you out here, though.” He took a deep breath. “I talked to the Roanokes about other stuff too. They told me why you did what you did.” He eyed her from under his bangs. “That was prey-stupid, you know.”

Felicia laughed, hysteria threading through it. “I know.” Tom slipped his arms around her, and she held tight, tight as she could. “You said ‘we.’ And ‘us.’ What about my father’s orders?”

“There’s a time to fight the tide and a time to swim with the current.” Felicia’s father wandered up, and she flushed, suddenly acutely aware of the pack around them. No one was looking, but not-looking was its own kind of pressure. “Don’t be any more stupid than you can possibly avoid. Either of you.” His tone was firm, but humor lurked somewhere underneath. He walked off before Felicia could pin it down.

“So we can. If you want to try fresh.” Tom pulled back far enough to look at her but didn’t let go. “No accounting.”

“I swear on the Lady.” Felicia freed a hand to press her thumb to her forehead.

Tom laced his fingers with hers and tugged them toward the trees, away from the bulk of the gathered pack. “We could go run, or something.” His grin at her was vintage Tom, but the assurance with which he pulled her along was something new. “Personally, I’m in favor of ‘or something.’” He waggled his eyebrows.

Felicia followed before he could change his mind. Silver was right: she didn’t deserve this second chance, but it was a gift she wasn’t going to refuse. A laugh bubbled up. “Sounds good to me.”

TOR BOOKS BY RHIANNON HELD

Silver

Tarnished

Reflected