The Burning Claw: Book 10, The Grey Wolves Series (27 page)

“Then I will return. Thank you for your time, Jericho.” Peri snapped her fingers and suddenly the room was filled with chatter and movement once again. She placed her hand on the pixie’s arm and flashed them from the room and back outside. She didn’t want her back to the wolf as she left the room, and she didn’t want to look like a character in a bad western by slowly walking backward to maintain a visual on him. So better to just take her native form of travel. The humans hadn’t noticed because Peri hadn’t wanted them to notice.

“What do you think?” the pixie asked once they were outside.

“I think you need to take me to where Sally lives, as quickly as possible,” Peri answered as she mulled over the things that Jericho had told her.

“Follow me,” her little comrade said cheerfully. It was apparent that the pixie was quite proud of herself.

“Stralina,” Peri called. The pixie stopped and turned to look up at her with wide eyes. “You’ve done a good job.” The pixie continued to stare at her in awe. Peri’s brow drew together. “Everything okay?”

“You’ve never called me by my name,” Stralina told her.

Peri batted a hand at her. “Yes I have.” She couldn’t have possibly been that oblivious to the little being, could she?

Stralina shook her head. “I would remember if Perizada of the high fae had called me by name.”

It hit Peri then why this was so important to the pixie. Names were powerful. To know someone’s full name meant that you could have some measure of power over them and Peri realized that Stralina had given Peri her full name when they’d first met. She’d trusted Peri that much already. She bowed her head ever so slightly at the young pixie and placed a hand over her heart. “My deepest apologies, Stralina Rivertree, you have earned my trust and therefore my confidence.”

Stralina looked as if she was going to cry and Peri really, really didn’t like it when people, or pixies for that matter, cried. “Okay, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way,” she said briskly. “Let’s go check out this chick that supposedly isn’t our Sally,” Peri snorted, thinking of how ridiculous it was that Jericho thought that he could lie to her.

She followed the pixie down the sidewalk wondering if they were going to walk the entire way. “Please tell me she lives close because my legs aren’t use to carrying around my butt across long distances.”

Starlina laughed. “It’s not far. She walks to work every day and walks home every night.”

“Great,” Peri threw her hands up. “Costin is going to love that. Not only is his mate working in a bar as a bartender, fraternizing with her coworker bartender—who happens to be a werewolf, but she is also walking at night, alone. Yep, he’s going to be doing a jig he’ll be so thrilled.”

“Actually,” Stralina corrected her. “She has an escort. One of the bouncers always walks with her.”

“Male bouncer I’m assuming?”

The pixie nodded as Peri let out a string of curses. “How many bloody males is she
hanging out
with?” She made quotations around the words
hanging out
as she said them in a tone that suggested that it was the most repugnant thing a girl could do.

Peri couldn’t fix the issue right that moment so there was no sense in dwelling on the problem of Sally’s current playmates. Starlina was true to her word and stopped in front of an apartment building on the next block. It was a quaint building with flower pots on either side of the stairs blooming…something. Peri didn’t do plants—a flower was a flower to the this high fae.

“Are we visible?” Starlina asked.

“I’m not an amateur stalker. Of course we aren’t visible,” Peri said, giving the pixie a look of indignation.

Starlina held up her hands and took a step back. “No need to get testy. I just wanted to know if I needed to be hiding my true form.”

“I totally got you.”

The pixie’s brow rose as she looked up at Peri.

The high fae shrugged. “I hang out with American teenagers. It’s like learning a foreign language.”

Peri walked up the steps with the pixie in tow, pausing before she reached the top. She felt as though, if she came face to face with Sally—
their
Sally—then everything would be real. It would no longer seem like the worst dream of her existence; it really
would
be the worst dream of her existence. But, as usual, life, AKA, the Fates, don’t give a flying fart if you need a moment to put your big girl panties on. It just shoves you right out there with your girl stuff waving at everyone.

Sighing, Peri continued on. As her foot hit the top step, the door directly in front of her opened and Peri was face to face, give or take a few stairs, with Sally—
their
Sally. And Jericho was right, she didn’t have long brown hair. She had chin length, purple streaked hair.
And the kicks just keep on coming
, Peri thought. Guess there’s no reason to pull your big girl panties up if the Fates are just going to keep planting their foot on your backside.

“Whoa,” Peri said, stumbling backward and nearly falling down the stairs. She watched as Sally dug through her purse, oblivious to the two supernatural beings staring directly at her.

“She doesn’t look like she did before,” Starlina said.

“So she didn’t have chin length hair with blonde and purple streaks in it?” Peri asked, unable to take her eyes off of their lost healer.

Starlina shook her head slowly. “Definitely didn’t have that.”

Even with such a radical change in her appearance, there was no denying that they’d found Sally Miklos. But this girl clearly didn’t know that she was mated with a new child. “She’s in for a shock,” Peri muttered to herself as they watched Sally head down the stairs.

Just as she was walking past Peri, Sally stopped. She put her hand on her head as though she was in pain. The high fae leaned forward and took a breath, about to whisper to her. But the scent that hit her nostrils gave her pause.
It couldn’t be,
she thought. Needing confirmation, Peri, in her invisible state, placed her hand on Sally’s shoulder. Some magic coated the young healer like an oily film and it was all too familiar—Alston. She concentrated on the way it felt and searched her memory, attempting to determine the exact type of magic he’d used. But it was unknown to Peri. Whatever it was that Alston of the high fae had cast over Sally, it was beyond Peri’s power to undo, at least not immediately.

Peri swallowed down the massive lump that had formed in her throat at the discovery of her comrade’s betrayal. She’d deal with him. Before the magic settled and the air cleared, Peri would strip him of his power. She had a fate worse than death in mind for the fae scum. He would become like the humans. He would know illness; he would know wounds that would not heal. He would experience growing old and then he would do the one thing that fae didn’t do—Alston would die a natural death.

Sally’s movement caught Peri’s eye and the fae snapped out of her revenge plot.

“She’s been having more and more headaches,” Stralina explained.

“Her own magic is attempting to fight off what has been done to her.”

Peri placed her hand on Sally’s head and whispered softly in her own language. Suddenly the girl’s shoulders relaxed and she dropped her hand from her forehead.

“Okay,” Sally mumbled. “Not that I’m looking a gift horse in the mouth, but that was weird.” She was talking to herself, so obviously some things hadn’t changed regardless of the altered memory. Peri stepped back and watched as Sally continued on her way.

“Can her memory be restored?” the pixie asked.

“Magic that alters the mind can be very dangerous,” Peri answered. “If tampered with by another magical being who didn’t cast the original spell, well, that can be deadly. The good news is her memory can be restored. The bad news is it can’t be restored immediately, not all at once. Her memory will have to be revealed slowly, over a period of time. And time, as always, is not on our side.”

The high fae and the pixie watched as the girl with short blonde, purple streaked hair, haunted eyes, and Sally’s face, walked away from them.

“Tell me why I am letting Costin’s mate walk away please?”

Starlina raised her shoulders to her ears and held her hands up next to them, palms up. “I got nothin’ boss.”

“You are supposed to lie to me. Give me some touchy feely pixie encouragement about how we need to handle this delicately and that we can’t freak her out and I’m doing the right thing, yadda, yadda, blah,” Peri lectured, finally looking away from Sally’s fading form.

“Okay. Yadda, yadda, blah,” Starlina said as she patted Peri’s leg reassuringly. Then she looked up at the high fae and grinned, giving her a thumbs up. “As you say, I totally got you.”

Peri rolled her eyes and placed her hand on the pixie’s head. “There was no touching in my directions. You touched.”

“You’ll get over it.”

Peri smiled to herself as she flashed them from Oceanside. The little pixie was going to do alright if she could hold her own with the likes of Perizada.

They appeared in Jen and Decebel’s suite at the Serbian mansion. Peri knew that it would be empty. The Serbian Alpha and his mate would be on the way to their meeting with Vasile by now.

“Why are we here?” Stralina asked.

Peri’s smile was wicked as she answered. “Because this is the Alpha’s suite. It will annoy the crap out of Jen’s mate to have my scent all over his territory.” Just as quickly as the smile had appeared, however, it vanished as Peri computed all of the information she had gathered. The biggest kick to the gut had been finding out that it had been Alston who had cloaked Sally’s memory. “He was supposed to be a good guy, dammit,” Peri whined. “What is it with all these fae jumping off the good ship lollipop and hopping on to the bad ship rotten apple? Do they offer better health insurance? Perhaps, they have some company perks that the good guys just can’t compete with.” Peri ended her monologue with a very dignifying foot stomp.

She tilted her head back and squeezed her eyes shut. Sucking in a deep breath of air, filling her lungs to their maximum capacity, she held it. She held it until her body forced her to let it out. Peri managed to relieve a little of her tension but not anywhere close to all of it.

“Can I ask what we’re doing here, besides trying to annoy the Alpha?” The pixie said in a calm, soothing voice. It made Peri want to punt her across the room like a ball. She hated when others were calm when she was so far from it. But it wasn’t Stralina’s fault, so she refrained from kicking the little pixie.

“Stalling,” she answered as she began to pace the room. Her devious mind was always at work, so, as she paced, Peri touched everything she passed. Decebel was going to hit the roof. It would be hilarious. Focus, Peri, she growled at herself.

“Okay, here’s the deal,” she said, deciding that talking out loud would better keep her on task. She was pissed off about Alston, and was, for some reason, projecting her anger onto Decebel. Okay, she knew the reason, he was a butthead. Boom. Reason enough to take unwarranted anger out on him. “Sally’s memory is jacked up. It can be fixed, however.” She held a finger up. “It must be done slowly.”

“You’ve covered this,” said Stralina.

“Shh,” Peri snapped. “Don’t mess with my mojo. In order to uncloak her memories, we will need to take our time. If Costin finds out that we’ve found her, he won’t give us the time we need. He will simply follow his instincts and go take back what is his. So, Costin cannot know. Now—” Lowering her finger she tapped her chin thoughtfully. “The question is, who
do
we tell, if anyone at all?”

“Do you think it wise to keep this information from Vasile and Decebel?”
Lucian’s voice rumbled in her mind.
“I understand why you can’t tell Costin. But the Alphas will be very angry if you keep the location of a lost pack member from them—not to mention her two friends.”

Peri was well aware that Jen and Jacque were going to have a barbeque featuring her as the stuffed pig when they found out that she hadn’t told them where Sally was or what had happened to her.

“The more people that know, the greater risk that Costin will find out. If he tries to get to her while her mind is still so heavily affected by the magic, he could kill her,”
she pointed out.

Peri could feel Lucian’s frustration at the situation. He didn’t like the idea of two powerful Alphas angry with his mate.

“Go to the meeting and feel them out. Perhaps, you should gauge their ability to handle the information before you decide what to reveal.”

“I will likely find that their ability to act rationally about their lost friend and healer is about as likely as your ability to do a striptease while wearing a tutu. Then what should I do?”
She felt his amusement at her which brought a much-needed smile to her face.

“You might find that I’m perfectly capable of doing a striptease while wearing a tutu. But just because I’m capable doesn’t mean I’ll do it. You might find the same situation there. If they are not in a state to be helpful, then I suppose you should sit on the info for a few days. Decide if you should tell Vasile or Decebel in private. Vasile, certainly, can keep a level head.”

“Fine,”
She huffed at him.
“We’ll do it your way but in exchange I expect that striptease. You better get to finding a tutu, Wolf.”