The Trouble with Fate (26 page)

“No,” I said.

“It wasn’t a question, it was an order.”

I expressed my utter terror with a smothered snort. “And what will you do with them?”

He pushed out his chair. “Destroy them.”

“I don’t think so.”
He’ll thank me for saving his soul later
. I let the gun hang from my fingers for a moment, acknowledging its weight. Blew
some air up at a strand of hair tickling my cheek. Then I stepped back from the bar,
and pointed it at him.

“You can’t have Merry and you need to come with me.” I felt my eyes flare and knew
them to be flashing sparks of green fire.

“Jesus, you don’t bring out a gun in a—”

“Gun!” shrieked Legs.

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” Trowbridge said, holding his hands up. “She’s going
to put it away and leave.” He whipped his head back to me, and lifted up his eyebrows
in inquiry.

“Make me.”

Which, as it happens, is the wrong thing to say in a strip bar.

Chapter Fourteen

There had been an instant, before flying fists turned into flying bullets. Just a
tiny instant when my hand was caught in the nest of the brunette’s hair, and I had
glanced up, and saw him. Not as Robbie, or the Were. Not even as Trowbridge. Just
a beautiful man in glorious prime, who was weaving effortlessly around the bouncer
and some other guy who had stepped up to get an ass whipping.

“Come on, you slow bastards.” He caught my gaze, just after his head had tilted out
of the way of a blow. Over the bouncer’s shoulder, he grinned. A flash of white teeth
in a pirate’s beard.

Happy. The stupid man was happy until some movement over my shoulder caught his attention.
His face changed from happy to furious. That fast. The stripper with the bar stool
never got to use it on my spine. He was there, and then she was flying through the
air. And then he glanced back at me with a look I knew very well.

I was so surprised, I shot him.

*   *   *

“I didn’t mean to,” I said. “The gun went off in my hand.”

“That’s what they always say,” said Trowbridge sourly. “‘Officer, the gun just went
off in my hand.’”

“Why don’t you save your breath to heal?” I tenderly touched my head. Winced. “Why’s
it always my head?”

“You’re lucky,” he replied. “It’s the hardest part of you.”

“That’s why I aimed for your ass,” I snapped back. He narrowed his eyes on me. He
did that a lot, training his eyes on me like I was some sort of prey. I bent my head
and stared at him through the open car window. “Why aren’t you healing? You were shot
at the Laundromat. That bullet didn’t cause you this much trouble.”

“The last slug just blew through me. In and out of the soft tissue. This one hit the
bone. Feels like it’s stuck.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.” He tried to shift positions in the car seat. He stifled a groan for my
benefit, just because I was vertical and he was mostly not. “Okay, dial the phone
and then pass it to me.”

“I could speak to her,” I asked, spinning his coin in my fingers. He still wouldn’t
let me use the cell.

“Just dial the numbers and pass me the phone through the window.” I did both, slapping
the receiver into his outstretched palm as the call went through. I folded my arms
and leaned against the phone box. I could hear the steady drip of the coolant leaking
from the Taurus. And his breathing. And our hearts, beating. Slower now, and thankfully,
still completely out of sync, not even close to the perfect, thudding, heart-harmony
of two mated souls.

“Cordelia?” His deep voice was roughed by pain. “We need help.”

*   *   *

He’d grunted, “Fifteen minutes,” after passing me back the phone but Cordelia was
late. We sat for twenty-four minutes, parked right by the pay phone (which I found
and which did not have a nearby strip club), and I was getting tired of his remarkably
effective stifled groans. You’d think he’d just heal and be done with all the twitching,
and distended neck tendon stuff. It was tiresome and repetitive.

Almost as repetitive as the tape that replayed in my head. It didn’t matter how I
played it; backward, forward, slow motion, or fast. The sequence always ended the
same. First Trowbridge dodged the fist, then he grinned at me like we were the only
ones equipped with swords in a rigged gladiator match, and then his face grew savage.
He sent my would-be assailant across the room like a double D weighted paper airplane.
Then he looked at me. There it was. That look. The one that said “all mine.”

Dad used to look at Mum like that.

Part of me was doing the hallelujah hand jive and part of me was searching for a manhole
cover to dive down. Did he know that he’d given me “the look”?

“Your uncle can’t keep my aunt,” I said, trying to change the direction of my thoughts.
“It’s wrong.”

“I’ll make a note of that.” He ineffectually smothered a hiss as he repositioned his
leg. “While we’re on the subject of Faes and bad stuff, give me the amulets.”

“Uh-uh.”

“Do you know how many times you’ve defied me?” There was no anger in the comment;
his question had been delivered with the same tone one might use for asking, “What
year did the Maple Leafs win the Stanley Cup?”

“Lost count.”

He blew some air through his lips and I caught a little eau de Jack Daniel’s. “A team
of crack Were guns for hire couldn’t liberate your aunt, right now. He’ll have her
surrounded by layers and layers of people. She’ll be deep in his territory.”

“Don’t you have a way of sneaking in there?” I asked with a frown.

He didn’t even bother to open his eyes. The guy who’d just given me “the look” pulled
his lip down and let it stay that way.

“What were you doing here anyhow, if you have a job and life elsewhere?” I played
with the brunette-colored hair extension. “Don’t tell me sightseeing. You came here
without an invitation for a reason.”

Trowbridge’s eyelids lifted, and for a moment the interior was illuminated with a
bit of an electric-blue fire before he shut them again. He fumbled in his pocket,
but as he was reclining sideways in the passenger seat, with his blood-wet jeans clinging
to his right hip, it soon became a battle of will to pull his wallet free.

My Were-bitch was unhappy. Deeply unhappy. If she could have pissed on me she would
have. I’d hurt him. This, evidently, was a very bad thing.

“Let me help,” I said, reaching for him.

“Back. Get back.” He slapped his perspiring hand at my own. “Back in your seat. Just
stay there.” He finally got his wallet out. His fingers were bloodstained, but the
gouge on his knuckles was filling in. His thumb left a big wet spot in the middle
of his credit card. His fingers kept slipping off the piece of plastic he was trying
to pull out. “Shit.” He sighed, and passed me his wallet. “Behind the credit card,
you’ll find a folded piece of paper. Bring it out.”

Trowbridge had a credit card? He had to be in really, really bad pain. He’d just given
me his wallet. Who was the clever Were now? I unfolded the paper. It was a one-line
e-mail from Rachel Scawens, dated one week ago: “I need your help.” I read it again,
this time silently. “Rachel? Wasn’t that your sister’s name?”

His face was paper-white. “If you think the kid’s a jerk, you should meet my brother-in-law.”

“I thought all your family was dead.” Then I winced, because that sounded harsh and
unfeeling.

“Rachel was already living out of the house with Scawens.”

“Then why are you Rogue?” I frowned at the large thumbprint of mustard on the edge
of the crumpled paper. “I thought the pack chased you out. She could have vouched
for you.”

“The pack
did
chase me out of the territory.” A pause. Then softly, “But first she told me to go.”

My Were took umbrage at that. I could feel her swell inside me. “She didn’t believe
you
had something to do with killing your family.”

“It looked bad,” he said with a shrug.

“So, she believes you now? Will she vouch for you? Tell them that you’re innocent?”
I refolded the paper, and put it back in among the seventy-five dollars he had left.
“You could be celebrating Christmas with the pack.” He didn’t seem overjoyed at that.
I thought a bit, and then asked, “This e-mail … it’s not a trap, is it?”

“That occurred to me. So I called someone who I figured I could trust, before I went
to Creemore.”

“Geezer-Were,” I said.

“Huh? Oh.” He grimaced. “You saw him with me. Anyhow, I found out what she wanted.”

“What?”

“Stuart,” he said with a huff of laughter. “She wanted me to take her son away from
a bad influence.”

Impossible not to start grinning with him. “What bad influence?”

He bit the inside of his cheek before he said, “My uncle Mannus, the Alpha of Creemore.”

“And you’re giving me a hard time about
my
relatives.”

“Shut up, Stronghold,” he said without any heat.

“Back at you, Trowbridge.” But my voice had grown soft. Don’t be a sap, I thought.
Only an idiot would allow a man to court her with insults.

*   *   *

The Taurus was getting cool. Thirty-two minutes had elapsed. He was still hurting
and flaring Alpha blue whenever he opened his eyes longer than five seconds. He’d
refused to wear Bob’s wraparound large sunglasses because of their smell. He had no
problem, however, confiscating my own glasses.

And then, to make my evening complete, Lou came calling. A slip. A suck. A slide into
her world.

*   *   *

Mannus Trowbridge’s shoulder-length gray mane is combed straight back. His clothing
barely registers on me, other than it is comfortably rumpled. The calculation in his
faded blue eyes is at odds with lips that seem permanently set on the edge of a smile.

Time hasn’t been kind.

He approaches at a slow amble, his mouth moving to an audio I can’t hear. I sit behind
Lou’s eyes, and feel her fascination and trepidation stir as he comes closer.

He puts his hand on her arm, hands that have never used a shovel. No calluses. No
roughness. Square-shaped, with nicely proportioned fingers. The middle-aged skin is
smooth and unmarred except for the ink spot staining the pointer finger.

That ink-stained finger can’t seem to rest. It moves on her skin, stroking in a circular
pattern that soothes the craving and adds to the ache.

And then the quality of the touch changes. She looks up at him. His mouth is still
moving, still talking, still wheedling. But I can feel her fear begin, just a tiny
spark of it, low in her belly, as the nail on that finger begins to elongate and sharpen
on her arm. It keeps moving, in the same circuit on her pale flesh, but as it turns
it leaves a trail, first of skin whitened, and then of skin brightened by blood.

Fear turns to terror.

“Kid?”

I could feel her scream bubbling up in my throat. Run. Escape!

I shoved the car door open, and streaked across the street, completely ignoring Trowbridge’s
command to stay. Someone slammed on their brakes, but I kept going, even as Trowbridge
yelled, “Jesus, you almost got nailed! Come back here, right now.” I skipped over
the road like a squirrel trying to outrun a semi, and I didn’t stop until I found
a stop sign to hold on to.

I could feel the ground under my feet again. Oh Sweet Heavens, Lou’s dreams were getting
sharper. What if there was a hole in one of them? I’d find myself yanked straight
back to Threall. I tightened my hold on the traffic sign. I was safe. The post quickly
heated against my bare hands.
It’s the iron in it.
My lids drooped. There wasn’t enough ferrous in the steel to make me ill, but the
alloyed metal made me feel—I cracked a huge yawn—like I’d swallowed a sedative. A
snooze-coaxing one at that.
I should let go.
But no … clinging grimly to that pole, with my feet sunk deep into this world’s wet
soil reminded me where I was. Earth’s realm.
Here,
I wasn’t going to find myself stalked by a morally bankrupt mystwalker.
Here,
I was safe. I pressed my forehead against the rain-beaded sign.

Stay far from me, Mad-one.

“Stronghold, get back here now!” Trowbridge roared.

I lifted my head.

There was a burned-tire smell coming from the white 4x4 Jeep that had skidded to a
stop dead center on the road. A tall woman got out of the vehicle, and I had a quick
impression of shoulder-length red hair and a thin build stacked on a pair of heels.
My nose crinkled at the scent of her—Were mixed with Obsession. Her back was to me
as she leaned into the Taurus, revealing a bony ass that I wanted to kick. I straightened
my spine, and scowled.
Turn her back on me as if I didn’t count?

She looked over her shoulder with a severe frown and then said something to Trowbridge
in a low, husky voice, before she straightened up, adjusting the hem of her jacket.

How many women truly sway? Trowbridge’s Cordelia did. She didn’t walk, or mince: she
slinked, weaving like a vertical cobra, across the street, her silver slingbacks clicking
on the pavement, and her head held strangely immobile and high. Not a drunken sway,
no: a graceful, hip-generated one that said the owner of the shoes had all the time
in the world, that nothing, short of breaking one of those glittering three-inch heels,
would make this woman lose her grace or composure.

I’m a girl, I couldn’t help it. I checked her body over as critically as if she were
Miss Southern Ontario and I was the squinty-eyed judge with a cellulite issue. Okay,
she had me on height—who didn’t? But I won in the curves arena. Trowbridge’s Cordelia
was a thin rectangle on very long legs. Her boobs looked wrong. Silicone, I thought,
feeling a small measure of good will.

Had he ever given
her
“the look”?