Tarnished (11 page)

“Have you seen Seattle shift?” Silver asked.

Susan laughed raggedly and shut off the car. “It sounds sort of dirty when you say it like that.”

“Not particularly.” Dare opened his door and wrangled his cane out first to take the weight as he pushed himself up. “Seeing the exact moment of shifting is somewhat intimate, but no worse than being nude is for humans.”

“I’ve only seen him shift once.” Susan hardly remembered what it looked like, either. She’d been too shocked to process any of it at the time. He’d hidden it from her since then.

Susan started extracting Edmond from his car seat before she remembered she should have unlocked the house door for her guests first. She threw them an apologetic glance. They seemed unbothered, waiting on the step. Silver had her hand tucked into the crook of Dare’s elbow. They looked fantastical with their touches of white, an ice princess and a mortal king. “You should show her a shift.” Silver smiled when Dare started.

“No.” Dare caught Silver’s eyes in some sort of staring contest. The denial in his expression softened a second later. “What good would that do?”

“You don’t need to—” Susan started, but Silver forestalled her without breaking her stare, lifting a finger from Dare’s arm to point at her.

“Don’t be so low-ranked, Susan. We’re just off the full, it won’t be much work. Shifting will be good for his back. It helps healing. And I don’t mind if he shows you.”

Susan sensed more communication between them in the shorthand that long-term couples developed. Dare snorted finally and Silver looked triumphant, though nothing more had been said. They stepped out of the way to allow Susan and Edmond up to unlock the door.

Not really living there anymore was a two-edged sword, Susan decided as she surveyed the house with eyes critical in the face of company she wanted to impress. Not much time to accumulate clutter, but since it was out of sight and out of mind, not much motivation to pick up what there was, either. Her mother would have gone into silent disapproval mode immediately, seeing the mountain of opened but not recycled mail on the kitchen table and the clean glasses still in the dishrack.

Susan pulled off Edmond’s coat, set him in front of his toys in the living room, and started a quick clutter triage. She swept the mail into stacks and gathered jackets from the furniture to hang up. The sound of happy button smashing came from Edmond’s direction. No matter how many expensive, impeccably-researched electronic development toys her parents tried to press on her, Edmond always ended up back at the board of bright plastic buttons and pictures Tracy had given him as a present to take home. It was clearly a werewolf hand-me-down, as it had teeth marks on several edges.

Dare adjusted the blinds even more tightly shut, then gave Silver a look. Susan had dated enough guys to interpret it as “Do I have to?” Silver laughed and took his cane. Susan looked away quickly as he shrugged off his shirt. He was definitely eye candy. Time in John’s house had taught her Were walked around in the nude all the time, but it felt wrong to appreciate another woman’s man too obviously. Were all Were men this hot? Susan peeked again, catching sight of a line of hipbone as Dare pulled down his jeans. He was a lot leaner than John, muscles not so defined, but there still didn’t seem to be an ounce of fat on him.

Dare folded his clothes and turned to set them on the nearest chair. Susan caught a quick glimpse of his back that made her forget about the ogling. The skin was ridged and rutted with ugly scar tissue nodules, too shiny where they weren’t white. He turned back quickly.

Then he shifted.

It wasn’t anything like the movies, and yet it was. The idea of pulling, stretching, that was the same, but Susan had always thought in the movies it looked jerky and painful: clay squeezed and pummeled by an inexpert sculptor. This was like watching someone very skilled at yoga stretching, stretching, until his body gracefully achieved a position you would have sworn was impossible. That was the difference, Susan realized. This didn’t look unnatural. It looked right. Impressive, and clearly an effort, but still right. She didn’t even notice bare skin turn to fur until it was already over, and she wondered how she could have missed something so obvious.

Dare gave a canine snort when he was done and shook himself all over. He looked like a typical gray wolf on a
National Geographic
special, only larger. His scars showed as a white band across his back, the fur coarser than that surrounding it.

Susan let out the breath she’d been holding. That had been amazing. Magical, in a way. Though they were some kind of supernatural creature, so that did make sense. She’d have to ask John to do it for her so she could watch again.

She held out a hand. “Can I pet—is that rude?”

“If you’d hug someone in human, petting’s fine in wolf.” Silver knelt in front of Dare and scratched behind his ears and into his ruff. He stayed aloof for a moment, but then he got into it, shaking his head back and forth like Silver was roughhousing with a regular dog. Susan let her hand drop. She certainly wouldn’t hug Dare as a human.

Dare licked Silver’s face. She sputtered and covered it with her arm, freeing him. He came to stand more solemnly before Susan. He turned in a wide circle, showing her all angles. He ended with his head by her hand, and bumped it up so her hand was on his ears. He looked resigned, if a canine could look resigned, so Susan didn’t so much pet as assure herself he was real. The guard hairs were coarser than those of some dog breeds, but his ears were warm and soft. Silver made a grumbling noise under her breath, and Susan removed her hand again. Fair enough.

“Woof!” Edmond fell onto his hands and crawled for Dare. When he reached the Were, he used Dare’s flank as he would a piece of furniture and pulled himself up, tiny fingers clenched around handfuls of fur. Dare yipped. Susan stepped around to pull Edmond away, but he had such a tight grip, picking him up seemed likely to end with Dare missing two patches of fur.

Dare woofed at Susan and she let go of Edmond. The boy burbled with satisfaction at the game. When she reached again, Dare shook his head, a motion that looked strange performed by a canine, but unmistakable nonetheless. Dare let Edmond cruise along his side until he got within range of Dare’s muzzle, which Dare used to gently knock the boy over. Edmond shrieked with delight and Dare nosed him, rolling him around.

Susan twisted her fingers together. Intellectually, she knew that since this wolf was a thinking person, there was even less chance he would hurt Edmond than a friendly, socialized dog would, but it was still hard to watch her son with a predator.

Silver placed her hand on Susan’s arm and Susan jumped. She’d forgotten about the other woman. “Please, let him,” Silver said in a low voice.

Susan gave Silver an incredulous look. Would Dare’s self-esteem be hurt if Susan thought him too scary to play with her child? He seemed like a big boy. Susan figured Dare could deal with it, but she did follow Silver when she tilted her head away.

Silver pulled Susan into the kitchen and out the side door into her fenced patch of yard. The careful landscaping that had come with the house was in the same state as indoors, the shapes and colors of the bushes disguised by the green legginess of the weeds springing up between. She never seemed to find time to garden, but she didn’t make enough to hire a service as her parents did for their impeccable yard.

Susan left the door open to make sure she still had a view of her son and Dare, then crossed her arms, partially for warmth. The temperature hovered on the edge of too cold to be out without a coat, but she didn’t want to bother going back in. “What was that about?” she asked with a bit of a snap. “I know Dare’s not going to hurt him, but you have to admit I don’t actually know you two that well, less than I do the rest of the pack.”

Silver ducked her head in apology, escaping white hairs puffing over her face and catching light in the cloudy brightness. “I know. It’s just— I’ve been trying to help Dare heal that too, but I haven’t been making much progress. He needs to be able to see a cub without flinching from him or her.”

“Heal what?” Susan checked through the door again. Dare had collapsed, and was letting Edmond ruffle his fur every which way. “He has a problem with kids?” He didn’t seem to at the moment. His behavior was practically paternal, if one could say that about a canine.

Silver followed Susan’s gaze for a moment and then looked away. “He misses his daughter so much sometimes, it makes me bleed inside to watch him.”

Susan froze, not quite sure what to say. Dare had a daughter? Had she died? What did you say to that? I’m sorry?

Silver saved her by continuing a second later. “I’m telling you this because I think you’re more likely to hurt him by accident, not knowing it’s there, than to use it against him. But if you do, you’ll answer to me.”

The savage way Silver said it reminded Susan all over again that these people weren’t as human as they usually looked. And Silver was one of the nice ones. Susan held up her hands. She had no wish to hurt Dare or piss off Silver.

“His wife was accidentally killed in a territorial dispute. His wife’s pack disagreed with how he chose to deal with the situation, and so they forced him out, and barred him from his daughter. He hasn’t seen her in over a decade.”

“How he chose to deal with the situation?” Susan winced. That sounded like code for something that was much more what she would have expected for a werewolf, rather than this romping with children stuff.

“We all make mistakes.” Anger grew in Silver’s expression, and Susan took a step back. “How would you like it? Knowing your son was alive and whole but you could never see him again? Ever?”

Susan threw a guilty look back to the house. She honestly didn’t know. Go mad, maybe. Even thinking about the hypothetical made her whole body tighten with fierce rage.

Silver took a deep breath and rubbed her palm down her thigh, calming herself. “But there’s nothing to be done about it. Lady knows we all wish it was different. He needs to learn to deal with cubs and heal that catch in his voice.”

Susan stuffed her hands into her pockets. Now she especially didn’t know what to say. Everyone’s voice broke from emotion sometimes. She didn’t understand the significance Silver’s tone had given the phrase. “He sounded okay to me,” she said tentatively. It was probably a Were thing. She had caught hints that their senses were better, so maybe a subtle break in his voice was clear as day to them.

“Not literally.” Silver crouched, hand out like it was resting on something. It seemed strange, but Susan found that if she turned so she could see no farther than Silver in her peripheral vision, it looked natural enough. “Humans might call it a soul. When we die, Death takes our voices back to the Lady. That was his punishment: he has no voice of his own, so he must collect them for the Lady, and borrow them for a while. Our voice, it’s … us.” She made a fist and held it against her core.

Something about Silver’s words in that moment, air chill and clear, clouds blanketing the sky, and background shush of traffic surrounding them, resounded with a simple spirituality equal to any she’d ever heard in a church. Susan shivered. She didn’t think much about the God of her childhood, but she knew she didn’t believe in any other. But something deep in her believed in Silver’s belief. She felt slightly shaken. She’d seen the edges of how different the Were really were, but some part of her must not have quite understood it until now.

Susan wanted to stretch the moment—there was so much still to understand—but it was almost like recognizing it started its death. The insistent sound of Dare’s ringtone from inside finished it off.

10

Andrew moved out of sight of the doorway to shift back before the call went to voice mail. When he saw
JOHN
on the screen, he had a momentary impulse to let it anyway. Was he checking on his girlfriend already? But it could as easily be something important about Sacramento. Andrew clamped the phone against his shoulder as he pulled on his underwear. He could hear Susan returning and he knew humans and their nudity taboos. “Hello?”

“Dare.” John’s tone was curt. “I found Sacramento’s trail down in Fife.”

“What—”

“That’s south of Seattle, just before you hit Tacoma.”

Andrew tried unsuccessfully to break in to explain that he was trying to ask why John was telling him this, not where Fife was. Though he didn’t know that either. Seattle had far too many associated cities he’d never heard of when he lived back East.

“It should take you about an hour to get down here, then you can help me track him.” John finally paused, but Andrew was too taken aback to jump in immediately.

“Help you? What changed your mind?”

John made a frustrated noise. “You were desperate for a shot at him, weren’t you? You’re right, this is your trouble, so you might as well be here to help deal with it.”

Andrew looked over at Silver, who raised her eyebrows and looked as confused by the reversal as he felt. Susan sat her son in front of his toys and knelt with him. She frowned at the phone, probably frustrated by hearing only half the conversation.

Andrew scrubbed at his face. “I’m sorry to have brought the trouble on you, Seattle, it wasn’t what I intended.”

“Just leave me
out
of it in the future,” John snapped, and ended the call.

His back was starting to protest, so Andrew stepped over to Susan’s couch to brace himself while pulling on his jeans. John must have reconsidered once his initial protectiveness of Susan had worn off. It really was the best thing for his pack to keep the trouble localized to Andrew. Understandable, but a lot to mentally adjust to so suddenly.

Silver set a palm against his back. “You’re not healed.”

“I’m tracking him, not fighting. Besides, John is helping.” Andrew stepped away from Silver’s touch and unclenched his fingers from the couch. It had a slipcover to protect against baby messes, but that wouldn’t prevent a Were from gouging finger marks in the foam. They both knew the fighting would come when he caught up to Sacramento. The political fallout wouldn’t be good, but now John was stepping back, it would be worse to run like a coward from the fight Sacramento was picking.