Tarnished (27 page)

Andrew stood half-turned, staring after her. What had happened? He had to lock his muscles to keep from running after her. She didn’t take off often, but when Silver wanted to be alone, she wanted to be completely alone.

Tom hit the door a moment later and pounded down the path after her. Andrew caught him on the way past and got dragged along for a few stumbling steps. “No,” he said, keeping the word as controlled as he needed to be himself. Venting his frustration with not knowing what was going on would only delay him finding out.

Tom stared at him. “But she’s—”

“If anyone goes after her, it’ll be me in an hour or so, if she hasn’t come back by then. You are going to stay and tell me what in the Lady’s name is going
on.
” The volume of Andrew’s voice increased toward the end despite his best efforts.

Steps crunched on the gravel and they both turned to see Benjamin approaching at a jog. Tom gave a small sigh of relief and Andrew remembered to let go. “Rory suggested lunch early. So he can lick his wounds in private, presumably,” Benjamin said. In contrast to Silver, he seemed triumphant.

Benjamin clapped Andrew on his shoulders. “She was amazing, Dare. You’d have sworn it was the Lady herself who stood there, putting Rory in his place.” He pressed a thumb to his forehead.

Tom made the same gesture, more jerky with excitement. “She stood up behind him, right on the table, and with her white hair, and she was even using her bad hand, and—”

Andrew cut Tom off with a gesture, a suspicion forming. “Did anyone mention the Lady directly to Silver?”

Tom blinked at him. “It came up on the walk back. Why?”

Andrew twisted to look in the direction she’d gone again. Oh, Silver. Which had upset her more? The argument with Rory, or being compared to the Lady? Personally, he would have been pissed to have whatever he’d accomplished attributed to someone who didn’t even exist, but that was him. Silver believed, but she’d always said that being unable to shift made her feel cut off from the Lady. How must it feel to have people tell her that the Lady’s hand was on her when she could feel it no more than before? But he had no idea what she’d felt. Maybe he was wrong, and she’d had a religious experience like everyone else.

Andrew forced himself back to trudging to the cabin. Even now that he had more insight into what had happened, following her still wouldn’t help. “She says she feels barred from the Lady. Since she lost her ability to shift, she can’t feel Her presence.”

Benjamin’s expression tightened with worry immediately. Tom looked confused. Benjamin squeezed Tom’s shoulder. “Don’t mention it to her again,” he said, in a tone of command.

Andrew opened the cabin door for them, grateful that Benjamin seemed ready to help him keep further mentions from Silver’s ears. “So what happened, religious implications aside?”

Benjamin started the story once they were inside. The cabin was cramped with everyone, including Laurence, crowded inside, but no one chimed in. Andrew started to sit on the couch, but hearing about Rory’s trick made him want to go stomp on the man’s neck so badly he ended up pacing. Benjamin didn’t seem surprised by it and kept on with the story.

Andrew ended up on the couch eventually, head in his hands. Silver shouldn’t have had to go through telling that story, not for him. No wonder she’d wanted time alone.

“Here.” Susan lowered a cheese and salami tray into his range of vision and smiled weakly at him when he looked up. “I liberated this from the kitchen on the way out, since our timing is once more terrible for getting food.”

Andrew accepted the tray and slid it onto the nearest end table. He wasn’t hungry, but accepting the offer was the point, he supposed. Susan reeked of an impulse to help with nowhere to channel it. Andrew picked up a variegated yellow and white cheese slice and rolled it into a tube, then ate it slowly. There wasn’t much he could do to help Silver at the moment, either.

Susan picked up a piece of salami, sat down on the couch, and started peeling off the outer edge. “Tell her thank you from me, would you?” she said all at once. “I could see how hard that was for her. I’d heard bits of the story, but never the whole thing. I can’t even imagine—” She shook her head jerkily.

Andrew petted Susan’s hair and ended with his hand on the back of her neck, as he would do to soothe a Were. He might once have suppressed the impulse as too canine, but Susan was honorary Were at this point. “I’ll tell her,” he promised.

Susan nodded under his hand and ate her salami skin. He could feel the moment when her muscles tensed and she must have realized consciously what her unconscious instincts allowed her to accept. She pulled away and went to stand by John. He hesitated before setting his hand in a more human gesture on the small of her back.

In the silence of no one having any idea what to say, Laurence moved away from the wall he’d been propping up. He knelt before the couch. “Sir…”

Andrew scrubbed his face with both hands. “Get up,” he said. All this respect when he’d nearly screwed everything up and they weren’t out of the woods yet. “I agree with Silver’s judgment. What, you expect us to stake you out for the hunters after you supported us?”

He pushed to his feet and gave Laurence a hand up. “You’ll have to stay out of the Convocation, though. You screw up our numbers, and I’m sure Rory would jump on that.”

Laurence dipped his head more deeply than necessary to acknowledge the order. “I’m single, though,” he said with a light laugh. “Could be I’m here for the mixer.”

Andrew snorted and smacked Laurence’s shoulder. “Got a sudden hankering to hook up with a nineteen-year-old? I think Philadelphia brought one who must be at least twenty-two.”

With Laurence settled for the moment, Andrew looked around at everyone else. Had he missed any other reassurances he should make as an alpha? He wished Silver was here to remind him. He couldn’t leave Rory to stew for too long, or he’d risk losing the advantage that Silver had given them.

“I’ll go talk to Rory and then find Silver,” he said. If only he could have switched that order.

29

Silver couldn’t walk away from her memories, but at least among the trees no one was talking to her about them. A raven passed at a distance, a black shape about his own business. Her bad arm started to hurt again just from the movement of each step, so she finally stopped and found a place to sit. The flat rock tipped as she settled her weight on it.

“That was rude of you.” Death declined to lie down, remaining on his haunches, and Silver wondered if it was because he didn’t want to get dirt on his fur. It would remove some of his mystique, to have the depthless black given definition by a powdering of brown.

“Dare knows I didn’t mean anything by it.” Silver flexed her good hand. She’d make it up to him later even if he didn’t, but that was one of the many things she loved about Dare. He didn’t chase when she didn’t invite him to, as so many others did out of worry. At that moment, he’d been handy to be angry at, with their real opponents out of reach. But now as she calmed down, it became easier to remember that even without Dare’s—their—challenge, without Dare’s daughter, she would still have chosen to save Susan’s life.

Even sitting, the pain in Silver’s arm hadn’t lessened. The others had bound it up again so it couldn’t move, but it felt like they’d done it too quickly. She released her bad hand and carefully set it on her knee. She twitched her fingers and grinned, showing her teeth. Maybe her arm didn’t work completely, but it had worked enough to get Roanoke where she wanted him.

And they’d said she looked like the Lady. She wondered if they were right. It had been so long since she’d felt the Lady’s light in her core that the memory was crumbling into dust. Not enough of the feeling remained for Silver to form it into a woman in her mind. White-haired, certainly. But what more than that?

Of course, there was one here who knew exactly what the Lady looked like. Silver glanced at Death. He stared into the distance, more distance than Silver could ever comprehend. “Did I?”

“Did you what?”

Silver stared at Death outright now. He knew perfectly well what she meant. He never stalled that way, never cared enough to be bothered by a subject enough to avoid it. He was Death, after all. “Did I look at all like the Lady?”

Death bit her.

He sank his teeth into her bad hand and then loped off into the rocks, leaving her alone with the sharp pain. Tears beaded up in her eyes from the shock more than anything. When she examined the mark, she found he hadn’t even drawn blood. It had been a nip for a disobedient cub.

But he’d bitten her! How could he? Then again, didn’t Silver bear a great part of the blame, for pushing the question? Silver swallowed against a lump of guilt. He’d be back. She hoped. She’d apologize then. She hadn’t meant to hurt him, barred from the Lady’s presence same as her; she’d just wanted the answer so badly. If she held some part of the Lady in her own appearance, at least Silver could hold that close, with no other connection to Her.

And she had an answer, she supposed. She just wasn’t quite sure what it was. Maybe the answer was that she didn’t want the answer, something Silver was suddenly quite willing to accept.

*   *   *

Andrew felt like a coiled spring as he waited on the doorstep of Roanoke’s cabin, sound of his knock fading. What if Rory had Madrid with him? What if Felicia was there? He could smell only ephemeral traces of the Spanish Were, but the wind was going the wrong way and they hadn’t left any windows open. He watched out of the corner of his eye as the number of Were making their way back to cabins or eating outside the main building doubled. Everyone loved a show.

After all his anticipation, it was Ginnie who opened the door, and he could smell only Rory and his wife inside. The girl had shot up another inch since the last time he’d seen her. She gave him a wide grin that still seemed like it should be missing a few teeth, though that had been years ago. She must be nearly ten by now.

Her grin dimmed as she seemed to remember something. “My dad’s pretty mad at your mate,” she said, confidentially. Andrew almost chuckled, punchy. An understatement, he suspected. “I wasn’t there, I was here with Mom, but he said she used silver on him. Isn’t that supposed to be evil?”

Andrew considered mentioning the irony of the fact that Rory had allied himself with foreigners who considered the use of silver on other Were to be quite necessary. Rory was undoubtedly listening. But Ginnie deserved better than to be a conduit between two fighting alphas. “She has to, sometimes. Since she’s weak in other ways, she uses it to make sure people don’t take advantage of her.”

Ginnie drew herself up. “Good!” she declared. This time, Andrew allowed himself the chuckle. Rory was raising himself a little alpha. But of course the trouble had never been that he didn’t do everything possible for his daughter, it was that he couldn’t balance her with the rest of the Roanoke sub-packs. And that he got mean when he felt insecure in his power.

“I do need to talk to your father,” Andrew said, pushing the moment of humor away. Ginnie stuck the tip of her tongue out at him and scampered back into the farthest bedroom, shutting the door behind her. Raised right in another way: she knew when to stay out of pack business.

Conscious of his audience, Andrew chose to stay in the doorway. Better to use the fact that this was occurring in front of everyone and their omega to his advantage. Rory would have a much harder time wiggling out of it if there were witnesses. “We have a challenge to settle, Roanoke.”

Rory stepped from the other bedroom into the living room, a clone in both floor plan and furniture to Andrew’s cabin, and stopped a few feet back from the threshold. He was hulking enough in the first place; he didn’t need to push any closer to be physically intimidating. His lip lifted in a silent snarl. “How about now? Or are you too afraid you won’t be able to shift fast enough in the new?”

“You disrupted the Convocation enough already by inviting Europeans to interfere in North American business.” Andrew raised his voice a little, playing to the crowd. He’d be fighting Rory physically, but the more psychological support he could rob him of, the better. “I’m not going to break the rules even more by shifting and then fighting on Convocation ground. We can wait two days until it’s ended, and then we’ll fight.”

Rory’s gaze moved out past Andrew, probably judging reactions. “In two days,” he said, voice just as ringing. He lifted his hand like he was thinking of offering to shake on it, but he must have read Andrew’s expression because he dropped it again. Andrew didn’t trust his control if he let Rory get in punching distance, never mind touched him.

“In the meantime, perhaps we could talk privately.” Rory lowered his voice. He gestured for Andrew to precede him and stepped out of the cabin. Apparently he meant off in the woods. Andrew supposed that made sense, though they’d have a fair hike to make sure no one could hear.

Andrew drew a deep breath to try to read Rory’s intentions. His muscles were all wound as tight as Andrew’s felt and his scent was mostly composed of that sense of keeping a tight hold. On what, was the question. This stank, metaphorically. What could Rory possibly have to say to him? He knew Rory—he’d worked for the man for nearly a decade—and if there was one thing Rory trusted, it was his own physical strength. Fear of losing the challenge wouldn’t be making him want to talk Andrew out of it. And what else would he possibly want to talk about?

Andrew backed up onto the path, and made no move to follow Rory. “Do I look stupid? Private with me and you and my in-laws, all ready to get a few licks in, three to one.” That wasn’t Raul’s style, but it was Arturo’s. Andrew’s brother-in-law had trouble dealing sometimes, and took out his frustration by hitting whoever had upset him. Andrew suspected he’d fit that definition for the rest of his life now.

“Pussy,” Rory snarled, then his face blanked as he perhaps realized that he’d just verified Andrew’s guess by not being surprised by the idea.