Scratch the Surface (Wolf Within) (12 page)

Jonathan, who sat across the table from me, directed a spiteful look in my direction. “Does she have to be here? She’s not a member of this pack.”

“I’d be happy to leave the room.” I threw down my napkin.

“Jonathan.” Callie’s voice rose above the swirling anger. “Of course she should be here. How could you even think of sending her away? Grey and Elena were her bond mates. She was falsely accused.”

“But she’s not a member of Riverglow. She has no vote, right?” Jonathan argued. “Let her sit here and listen, but she has no vote, am I right?”

“She has no vote,” Callie agreed, making him smirk across at me. “However, she can say anything she likes.”

“But we don’t have to listen,” muttered Jonathan.

“Not if we don’t want to, no,” said Callie.

Jonathan pushed back his chair, folded his arms across his chest in a classic gesture of defense and close mindedness, and feigned boredom with a yawn.

Next to him, Vaughn crumbled a piece of dinner roll between his agitated fingers. Peter’s face was white and strained.

Colin and Devon looked keenly interested but they had no emotion invested in the subject. That made them the most impartial voters at the table, a fact that seemed lost on Jonathan but was appreciated by Callie.

“It is the Council’s opinion, both Great and Regional, that Tobias Green did not willfully sabotage the car belonging to Constance Newcastle, but did, in fact, inadvertently sever the brake line which he subsequently concealed. We do not pass a sentence of death, but we do recommend exile from his pack.” Allerton had prepared me for this verdict in advance but it was still a slap in the face.

Murphy didn’t like it either by the swell of his jaw, but he said nothing. Neither did I.

“He’s an old man, halfway senile,” objected Jonathan. Tobias was his blood relation and that, in combination with his dislike of me, made him the absolute least objective person at the table. “We exile him, we might as well slit his throat. He’ll be dead in six months. Old people need the support of their packs. His hands shake so much now he can’t work as a mechanic any longer and he has no means to support himself. He’ll end up homeless on the street. For a stupid mistake. Exile’s too harsh.”

“It could be said that Constance made a stupid mistake and for that you did recommend exile,” pointed out Allerton in a neutral tone. Murphy glowered behind his wine glass. I couldn’t move. I wished I were closer to him.

“It’s a conscious decision to get behind the wheel of a car after drinking like a fish,” argued Jonathan. He did have a point. “Shaking hands and getting senile, those aren’t things you do out of choice. It’s completely different. Besides Constance—” My full name was a sneer on his lips. “—was young and could start over. My grandfather won’t last long. If we’re going to kill the poor bastard, let’s do it now and not drag it out. And if we’re not going to kill him, let’s just let him have his home and bring him groceries once a week and check on him and have a little compassion for the elderly. Just a little.”

For such an asshole, he was a persuasive speaker when he wanted to be, although I sincerely doubted he’d be the one who’d bring over groceries and check up on the old man—blood relative or not.

“You volunteer for that? Making sure he’s got food and he keeps his house? Out of your own money?” Peter wondered. He sounded extremely doubtful Jonathan would follow through.

“Yeah. Yeah, sure,” said Jonathan.

Everyone at the table knew he was a goddamn lazy-ass liar. The duty would fall to Nora. It would be her money too, and she wasn’t even at the table to agree to it.

“You can afford your house and his? And food?” Peter pressed.

“Between Nora and me, we’ll figure it out,” assured Jonathan. “I still get my pack subsidization toward my rent, don’t I?”

“Of course.” Peter looked like he wanted to roll his eyes, but he was good, he didn’t.

“Then I can do it,” said Jonathan rashly.

“It might be better if the old man moved in with you,” suggested Peter and the whole pack nearly burst into derisive laughter.

“Yeah, right,” said Jonathan with a sneer. “I haven’t got room for him in my tiny little house. There’s hardly enough room for me and Nora as it is. Be real. I said I can do it. Either you believe me or you don’t.”

“Do I understand correctly that the old man deliberately hid the fact that he accidentally severed the brake line?” Colin asked. “He knew he did it back then? He’s confessed to it, right?”

“Yes,” agreed Allerton.

“And he let Constance be blamed instead? Because he was too ashamed?” Incredulity spread across Colin’s face.

Murphy’s expression was sour. It apparently rankled that Colin defended me.

“Yes,” Allerton said. He had his fingers steepled in front of him on the table and looked very authoritarian.

Colin did roll his eyes. “Well, then, what is the issue? Is he senile? Has that been established?”

“No,” said Allerton.

Jonathan said, “The old man is losing his marbles. Just because we don’t have some doctor’s note confirming it doesn’t mean you can’t see him losing it for yourself. You don’t know him, I do.” He gave Colin a condescending smile which Colin returned with interest.

“Two years ago he was presumably more in control of his faculties than he is today,” Colin said, making people shift uncomfortably in their seats at the logic of his words. “He knew he did it, he covered it up. There’s no question what we should do. Just because he’s old doesn’t give him a pass to obliterate three people’s lives—two of them dead, one made to suffer and go without a pack for something she didn’t do. He needs to be put to death, and if the Council say we can’t do that, we have to do what we can, which is exile. If he’d been thirty or fifty or eighty years old, we wouldn’t even be arguing about this. The grandfather card cuts zero ice with me. I vote exile.”

“Are we ready to put it to a vote?” Allerton addressed the table at large before Jonathan, his face red, could say something inflammatory. One by one everyone nodded.

“Where will he go?” Devon asked, in clear distress.

“You can abstain from voting, my dear,” said Allerton. “He’ll be taken from this state. That much we’ll arrange. We can make sure it’s a warm climate. Florida, perhaps? So if he does end up homeless, he won’t be likely to freeze to death.”

“No, just starve,” sniped Jonathan.

Devon sighed—an unhappy, anguished sound. She looked pleadingly at her bond mate and he gave her an encouraging nod as if to tell her she could do it—it wouldn’t be pleasant, but she could do it.

I thought about a fatal glass of warm milk. No matter which way they voted, Grandfather Tobias was not going to leave this safe house alive.

“Do we want to do this anonymously or out in the open?” Allerton looked at everyone around the table, skipping no one, not even me and Murphy.

“In the open,” decided Callie for everyone. “There are too many secrets in this pack as it is.”

Jonathan grimaced. “I know how you’re going to vote anyway. And where the hell is Nora? Doesn’t she get a vote or are we going cheat?”

“We’ll get her in the event of a tie breaker, how’s that?” Callie asked him, her mouth twisting with impatience.

Jonathan grumbled under his breath.

Allerton took that to mean he had no serious objections and said, “All right then. All in favor of exiling Tobias Green for his role in the tragic accident that took the lives of Grey Owens and Elena Demetrius, raise their hands.”

Colin’s hand shot into the air. Pale but determined, Callie raised hers. She looked directly at me and I knew she’d voted for exile in an attempt to right the wrongs she’d done to me personally. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, except that it stained my hands with the old man’s blood just as much as it stained hers.

Vaughn raised his hand next. He kept his head down, eyes fixed to the table.

I knew Jonathan would vote against, I wasn’t sure of Devon. I also knew Peter would vote against exile. His arms were folded across his chest and he made no move to raise his hand.

It wasn’t surprising he’d be lenient. He’d suffered the most during my interrogation. He’d been very reluctant to accept the idea I’d been drunk and I knew it had killed him to turn against me. He was the kind of man who found spiders in the house and brought them out to the backyard to free them. He fed the stray cats in the neighborhood even though none of them would allow him near. His wolf never killed anything—not a squirrel, not a rabbit. Hell, not even a beetle.

Now for the first time, I wondered if he’d voted against kicking me out when my fate had been put to the vote.

My heart slammed against my ribs even though I knew Grandfather’s Tobias’s real future.

“Oh, Lord,” cried Devon in an agony of indecision. But then suddenly, she put her hand up.

It was over then. Jonathan picked up his fork and threw it down on his plate.

Allerton still called for the nays and, rolling his eyes, Jonathan raised his hand. So did Peter. He wouldn’t look anywhere near my direction.

“Exile it is,” declared Allerton. “I’ll arrange for him to be taken to Florida. As of the date of the next birthday of a member of this pack, Tobias Green is no longer a member of Riverglow or any other pack and he cannot petition for membership in an existing pack, form his own, or bond with another person of the Great Pack for a period of two years. So be it by order of the Great Council, in concurrence with the New England Regional Council and by vote of the Riverglow pack of Connecticut.”

It wouldn’t become official on paper until the next birthday a pack member celebrated, but it was in effect with Allerton’s words. That’s how it had been with me.

They’d voted to kick me out of the pack and the official date had been Jonathan’s birthday, which fell in October. However, I left Connecticut three days after their vote. It hadn’t even been September yet. I’d stayed only as long as it had taken me to arrange the journey and clear the bank account.

Allerton and Kathy Manning got up and left the room together.

A moment of profound silence was broken by Jonathan, who said, “What a crock of shit. Hope you’re happy, Stanz, good going. You killed an old, senile man. What a coup.”

“She didn’t say a word.” Peter defended me.

Jonathan threw him a contemptuous look. “She didn’t have to. Just the fact she’s sitting here was influence enough. She was planted here so you idiots would turn against Grandfather Tobias all according to plan. You were played and you don’t even have the smarts to figure it out. Jesus. What a crock of shit.” He pushed back his chair, his handsome face flushed with bad temper.

He got to his feet and pointed a finger at me. “Hey, Stanz, you owe me eight hundred bucks. I had to repaint half the walls and ceilings in your goddamn house and steam clean the hell out of the carpets after you just walked out and left everything a friggin’ mess. As it was, I didn’t even get the deposit back from the landlord because you broke the goddamn lease. You had a hell of a nerve leaving it like that and you know it.”

That was typical. I was supposed to pay for the destruction of my own things. I’d cleaned up all the broken, destroyed belongings because I didn’t want any of them touching Grey’s things or Elena’s, even if they were ruined. But I admit I did nothing to attempt to clean the ketchup and mustard stains off the walls, ceilings and carpets. And I’d broken the lease? Why? Because I’d been kicked out by him and the rest of the pack and forced to leave the state.

Before I could say all the scathing things I wanted, Murphy was on his feet and everyone, especially Jonathan, braced for violence.

All Murphy did was take his wallet out of his back pocket. He pulled out a sheaf of bills and began to count them out.

Although I argued against it, Murphy always had at least a thousand dollars in cash on hand. I don’t know why he refused to use credit cards like normal people. Or at least get a debit card. Murphy insisted on cash.

So I wasn’t surprised when he came up with eight hundred dollars, although the rest of them were a bit flabbergasted. It made Murphy look a little arrogant, but I’m sure he didn’t give a shit.

“Eight hundred, you said?” Murphy walked to Jonathan’s side of the table and extended the cash. Jonathan took it.

“Now you can shut the fuck up, you greedy bastard.” Murphy’s Irish brogue was very much in evidence and I knew that meant he was pissed off.