Savage (11 page)

Trick had his own little house on the property. The door was locked and she thought about breaking in. Enough was enough. She didn’t care if she pissed him off. He was her grandfather’s godson; maybe he knew the truth about her family. Now was the perfect time to find out.

She had a werewolf’s strength and she turned the knob on his door too hard, breaking it. She didn’t care. She went inside and flicked on the lights, instantly enveloped by a cloud of scent — Trick’s shampoo and soap, leather and cotton, his oil paints and clay. Books were piled in towers on the coffee table in front of his movie projector, and a sketchpad lay on the couch along with a plaid throw and a pillow. Behind the black curtain that divided the large room, she crossed to the table that he used for sculpting, and saw a new piece he was working on — emerging from the hunks of gray was a bust of her. Her long neck, her hair, her eyes, a smile — her throat tightened as she stared at it. She looked pretty. No, beautiful — more striking than she was. Idealized.

He loved her.

“Trick,” she whispered, touching the clay, running her fingers over his sculpting tools. Amazed that he was a boy just a little older than she, who could do art and speak Russian and make movies and move like a trained dancer, and drove recklessly and had gone out in the snow with a posse to track a killer.

Who knew how to use a gun. How to take down something that had once been alive.

We have that in common
, she thought.

She crossed to his bed and lay down on it, resting in the indentation his body had left, pulling the sheets up to her chin. It was as if he were lying on top of her. She rolled onto her side and buried her face in the pillow, imagining his chest against her forehead, the bridge of her nose, her lips.

She didn’t know how long she lay in Trick’s bed. She didn’t want to leave, ever.

But that was a luxury she couldn’t afford. How many times had the Fenners threatened to kill everyone she loved?

As many as there had been paw prints in the snow.

And she realized then and there that she loved her grandfather, even though she didn’t know if he had killed her father. Her life was a tangle; she was overwhelmed with the chaos of her own emotions and she lay still, while her mind and heart battled for dominance. And she could want Trick for the rest of her life. Nothing had to prevent her. She could be happy that she knew what it meant to love him, even if she couldn’t be with him.

Even if Justin chose her for his mate?

No
, she thought, but the wolf in her howled with triumph.

She flung herself out of Trick’s bed and went to the door. Then she got in her car and drove, tempted to pull to the side and compose herself, except that she knew no good ever came of stopping in the woods above Wolf Springs. It was cursed land, and it had cursed her. So she drove, wondering if she would ever see her grandfather or Trick again.

It was dark by the time she made the last turn before the cabin. When she saw the porch light shining on her grandfather’s parked truck, she blinked hard, making sure it was really there. Then she pulled up behind it and scrambled out, charging up the stairs and, finding the front door locked, pounded on the door with both her fists. Her keys were in her hand, but she was too frantic to try and use them.

“Grandpa! Grandpa!” she shouted.

The door yanked open and he stood with his rifle to his shoulder. She screamed and he immediately lowered the weapon.

“I thought—” he began, and she flung her arms around him. He staggered backwards, then righted himself and shut the door behind her.

“I was so worried,” she said. “What happened? Where’s Trick? Is he all right?”

He eased her away from himself, and she was shocked by his appearance. He seemed to have aged a decade since she’d last seen him. His eyes were bloodshot and there were dark rings under his eyes. He looked like someone who had been locked up in a prison cell for years.

“He’s okay. No one got hurt. The snow came and we hunkered down, waited for it to pass.”

As she listened, she texted Trick. He didn’t reply. She punched in his name and put the phone to her ear. “Did you find anything?” she asked her grandfather.

“No. I don’t know what we thought we would find, anyway,” he replied, sounding irritable and exhausted. “Bunch of damned fools. That’s what we are.”

“I wish you’d called me,” she said. Trick didn’t answer. She figured he was out of cell reception range. “I’ve been so worried.” She hugged him again, and he cocked his head as he patted her shoulder a bit awkwardly in return. They hadn’t found a comfortable place with each other yet. She wasn’t sure they ever would. Now that she knew he was safe, her wariness of him reasserted itself.

“You really were worried,” he said in a low voice.

“I really was. Did you camp in the snow? Where did you go? Did you see anything?”

He led the way into the kitchen. “I’m cooking up some soup. There’s enough for two. And yes. We camped in the snow. Trick complained all night.” He chuckled and shook his head. “You want grilled cheese, too?”

“Sure,” she said. “I’ll make it. You sit down. I was so, so worried.” She went to the stove and stirred the soup.

“You really were.”

She looked at him. He’d been through so much. He looked exhausted. But he said, “You play poker?”

“No.”

“Good. Then I can fleece ya.” He gave her a wink and disappeared into the living room. He came back out with a big plastic wheel of brightly colored poker chips and a double set of playing cards. He set them on the kitchen table and she lifted an eyebrow.

“Aren’t you too tired?” she asked him.

He took the lid off the box of cards and gathered the two decks together. He shuffled them with the finesse of a seasoned cardshark. “I had a lot of time to think up there,” he said. “About things that matter.”

“Poker,” she said, but she knew he meant her.

He pulled out a stack of white poker chips. “We’ll start with a thousand bucks. Cheese is in the fridge,” he added.

“Right. Sorry. You must be starving.” She tried Trick again. Still no luck. Her mouth watered as she bypassed the salami and got out the block of cheddar cheese. “Mom hardly ever bought cheese, except for that six-cheese macaroni she used to make.” She stopped talking. The last time Giselle had made that dish had been the night Katelyn’s father had been murdered.

“Your mama had some odd notions about food,” her grandfather said as he pulled out a stack of blue plastic discs. “These are worth the most. It goes blue, red, white. Got that?” He began dividing them into two stacks.

She had so many questions. She wanted to talk about John McBride. And her father. And all the silver bullets. But she wanted this moment even more. She might have lost him. Lost her grandpa.

He stopped as she tried Trick again.

“He’s probably asleep,” her grandfather said.

“Oh.” It seemed odd that he wouldn’t call her right away. Maybe that was the reason. She began to slice the cheese. “I was kind of hoping he’d come home with you.”

“His folks wanted to see him,” her grandfather said, and she thought a moment. When she’d broken into Trick’s room, the rest of the property had seemed deserted. She pictured Trick home alone, wondering who had broken into his little house, and felt a twinge of guilt. The last thing she had wanted to do was freak him out.

“You get by okay without your grandpa around?” he asked her, stirring her from her reverie. Mordecai’s tone was deliberately casual, but she detected the uncertainty.

“Of course not. I forgot how to drive my car and I starved to death.” She smiled gently at him and turned on another burner on the stove. She set a small frying pan on the burner. “But I missed you. It scared me when you all went out like that.”

“Scared me, too, danged fools. Half of ’em would shoot their own shadow if they could get it to hold still long enough.”

She smiled. “They didn’t have you to teach them.”

“Katie . . .” He searched her face. Then something changed in his eyes, and he turned away from her. “After the blue ones, the reds are the ones you want.”

“Got it.” She buttered two slices of bread and put them face down in the frying pan. She covered them with pieces of cheese.

He began to deal the cards. A text message came in, but it was from Justin, not Trick. It said:
HUNTERS R BACK?

Why bother asking? He already knew the answer. She finished making the sandwiches and flipped them.

“Hands are dealt,” he said. “I’m going to wash up.”

She heard him go down the hall to the bathroom. A call came in on her phone. Jumping, she took it.

“Katelyn, it’s me,” Cordelia said. “Are you all right?”

“So far,” Katelyn replied, realizing that sounded cryptic. “I’m fine. How are you?”

“Dom found me. He was slashed in the fighting but he’s going to be okay.” She lowered her voice. “What happened with Magus?”

“He told me more about their history. He’d been to your house, Cordelia. Your grandfather, Tommy Ray Fenner, attacked his great-aunt. Did you know that?”

“
What?
”

“Yes. She wasn’t a werewolf yet,” she began, then realized what she was saying. It was against pack laws to attack humans. “Listen,” she began, as she heard the door to the bathroom opening—”

“My grandfather did
not
attack humans,” Cordelia interrupted. “Ever.”

“Okay, okay,” Katelyn said. “But there was another mauling tonight.”

“Oh, God. They can’t find out about us. Or about the mine. My daddy said it’s got piles of silver bullets. Silver knives.”

Like the silver knife her grandfather had.

“We have to find it first,” Cordelia went on. “You have to find it. Then no Fenner will dare lay a hand on you.” She exhaled. “Or on
me
.”

“We could make the peace happen,” Katelyn said hopefully. “Us two.”

“We’d definitely have a shot at it,” Cordelia agreed. “Promise to keep looking?”

“I do.” Katelyn’s grandfather walked into the room. “So, yeah, they’re all back and safe,” she said into the phone. “Bye, Beau.” She disconnected. “School friend,” she told her grandfather.

He raised his brows and nodded at the stove. “Sandwiches are burning.”

She whirled around. A column of smoke was wafting from the pan. She groaned and lifted it off the fire.

He walked up beside her with a fork and inspected the underside. “It’s just a little singed,” he said. He looked at her. “Everything all right?”

Katelyn nodded, but she was replaying her conversation in her head. She realized she hadn’t told Cordelia about Wanda Mae. But she also realized she’d had no plans to. Everyone in Wolf Springs had secrets. Maybe that was the nature of life. The secret of surviving in this world, or any world. There were things you could never tell anybody. You just had to find out what they were.

“Everything is fine,” she told her grandfather.

You had to keep secrets, and you had to lie.

Trick didn’t show up at school until Wednesday. Katelyn spotted him climbing out of his Mustang in the school parking lot and rushed over to him. He looked worse than her grandfather, his green eyes flat and lifeless, his cheeks hollow.

“Trick, what’s wrong? Why haven’t you called me?” she asked.

He looked at her hard. She blinked, waiting for his answer.

“I was sick,” he said. “I lost my phone.”

All the blood in her body crept up her neck and spread to her cheeks in a hot, angry flush.

“Are you kidding?” she said, as they faced one another beside the open door of his Mustang. “You can lie better than that. You could have reached me if you’d wanted to.”

He remained silent, and she was stung. Deeply hurt, she took a step away from him, and he didn’t make a move to close up the space. He bit his lip as if he were considering what to say to her, then gave his head a little shake and closed the door of his car.

“What is going on?” Then a light went on. “Hey, so, I was the one who broke into your room. I’m sorry. I was so worried.”

“Okay.”

“
Okay?
Just ‘
okay
’?” She reached out a hand. He visibly stiffened, and she pulled it back. “What happened out there? What’s wrong with you?”