Time Mends (21 page)

Charlie cocked an eyebrow.

“
Let me guess,” I said,
“this where the getting killed part comes in.”

“
Harboring a banished Seer
or Shifter is considered an act of treason.”

“
Charlie, either I don’t
understand the definition of ‘treason’, or that makes no sense
whatsoever.”

“
In a way, it does,”
Charlie said, leaning back in his chair once more. “Anyone banished
is considered an enemy of the Alpha Pack. Helping your government’s
enemy is pretty much frowned upon in any society. What do you think
the charges would be if we were housing a known member of Al
Queda?”

I hated it when he made sense. “So, what?
They have to go all lone wolf?”

“
You do know we’re
coyotes, right?”

I tossed the salt shaker at his head, but he
just plucked it from the air.

“
Yes, they go all lone
Shifter,” he said, placing the salt shaker back in the center of
the table. “And it’s not exactly easy. Most reasonable spots for a
Shifter to live are already claimed. I’ve heard some parts of major
cities have even been claimed as territory for business reasons.
That means there isn’t anywhere really for a Shifter to go without
being Challenged.”

Which would mean a life of fighting since
they couldn’t claim the territory as their own, even if they won.
No matter how strong you are, you can’t survive long like that.

“
And the Seers?” I
asked.

Charlie looked at the table.

“
Charlie, tell me what
happens to the Seers.”

“
In one aspect, it’s
easier, because they can’t be formally challenged…”

“
But?”

“
But they’re seen as
tainted. Dirty. Other Shifters and Seers will go out of their way
to pull the usual Mean Girl and Asshole routine until she leaves
their territory.” He picked at an imaginary something or another on
the table. “Gramma Hagan once told me a lot of them commit
suicide.”

“
This is ridiculous!” My
knowledge of blood pressure is fairly basic, but I’m pretty sure
mine was through the roof. “The whole freakin’ Shifter world is
freakin’ ridiculous!”

“
I know it seems extreme,
but Shifter customs—”

I held up a hand. “Stop right there. I don’t
want to hear about your traditions and customs and how sacred they
are, because you know what? They’re misogynistic, fear-mongering
crap.”

“
Gee, Scout, why don’t you
tell me how you really feel?”

“
What I don’t understand
is why the Seers haven’t revolted,” I continued on, gaining steam.
“I mean, you say you revere them and couldn’t exist without them.
You tell them they’re second in command, and then you treat like
cattle or slaves or enslaved cattle. That whole ‘most respected
member of the Pack’ crock is just to keep them in line so they’ll
do whatever you want them to do.”

“
Hey, wait. I
never—”

“
Talley is the very
definition of innocence, and look what your stupid Shifter rules
have done to her. First, she gets tossed aside and sold to the
Hagan Pack by her father because he thought she was broken, unable
to See anything. Then, once she becomes Senorita Sees A Lot, she
has to worry about being spirited away by a bunch of men who think
they own her somehow. And now, just because I don’t know when to
shut my mouth, she’s going to be forced into an unbreakable mating
with Jase. What the hell is wrong with you people?”

“
Did you just
cuss?”

“
Answer the damn
question!” I said so loud all movement in the house
stopped.

“
Scout,” Charlie said
slowly, his voice soft and calming as if he was talking to a
skittish animal. “I didn’t make the rules. None of us did. I don’t
know who made them - George Washington, Napoleon, old Mrs. Faye
from down the street, or someone equally ancient I’m sure - but it
wasn’t me or Jase or any member of the Hagan Pack. Heck, we’re
coyotes. No one asks our opinion on anything, so you can tone down
the righteous anger a couple of notches.

I knew he was making sense, but aiming all
that anger at the male Shifters was preferable to admitting I had
just ruined my brother’s and best friend’s lives. “Surely you
realize how horrid these stupid traditions are, right?”

“
Traditions make us who we
are.”

“
Where did you pick that
up? Find it in a fortune cookie?”

“
I got if from you,
actually.” I raised a pair of dubious eyebrows. “Last May. I didn’t
want to walk in graduation. You told me I had to because it was
tradition, and, I quote, ‘Traditions are important. They make us
who we are.’”

If Charlie’s Scout imitation was to be
believed, I sound an awful lot like Angela Lansbury.

“
This is different,” I
countered. “This isn’t wearing a burnt orange polyester monstrosity
for a few hours to mark an important rite of passage. This is Jase
and Talley spending their lives in a loveless marriage because
they’re worried they’ll get sentenced to a life of abuse followed
by an early grave.”

Charlie leaned further across the table,
eyes narrowed in a challenge. “How do you know it will be?”

“
How do I know what will
be what?”

“
The mating. How do you
know it will be loveless?”

I tried to think of a way to word what I
wanted to say without being too Scout-like about it, but was having
trouble when the answer to his question walked into the kitchen,
her swollen eyes and tear-stained cheeks leaving no room for
argument.

“
Talley, I…” What could I
possibly say to her? “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what I was doing,
which is really no excuse—”

“
It’s okay,” she said,
cutting me off short with the wave of a hand. “It was a smart
strategic move. Any Pack Leader quick enough to think of it would
have done the same thing.”

I hated the way her voice sounded like she’d
swallowed a load of gravel. I hated the way her eyes glowed blue in
a sea of red. I hated the way she talked about herself as if she
was a crate of semi-automatic rifles or strip of land. And I hated
myself for jerking her out of the frying pan only to throw her into
a pot of boiling water, right along with Jase.

Charlie cocked his head at Talley. “You
doing okay?”

“
Uh-huh,” she said a bit
too enthusiastically for someone who had a single tear sliding down
her cheek. Charlie got up and gathered her into his arms, squeezing
her for all he was worth. When she pulled back, a shaky smile
rested on Talley’s mouth. “I missed you,” she said.

Charlie blinked hard. “I missed me,
too.”

“
You know it’s still going
to be hard, don’t you?”

“
I never expected anything
less.” He kissed her forehead before contorting his mouth into a
huge yawn.

Talley’s voice took on a distinctly Mrs.
Matthews tone. “When was the last time you slept?”

Charlie glanced at the digital clock on the
microwave. “That depends. What day is it?”

Talley disengaged her arms from his waist so
they could cross in front of her chest. “Bed. Now.”

Right on cue, he yawned again. “You know,
that’s not a half bad idea.” Then, as if his abrupt exit wasn’t
enough, he mouthed, “Talk to her,” over Talley’s shoulder.

Great. No pressure or anything.

When Charlie left, I resumed my efforts at
making amends. “I’m going to find a way to fix this. I swear, Tal,
I’m going to make it right.” She didn’t even look at me as she
ventured over to the fridge to forge for something to eat. “I mean,
there has to be a way out of this. I’m not going to let you become
a roaming vagabond—”

“
Stop. Just stop.” She was
still focused on the contents of the fridge, but I figured she was
talking to me instead of the Welch’s grape juice. “I don’t want to
talk about it, okay?”

“
But Tal—”

“
Scout, no.” When her eyes
found mine they were full of conviction. “Just leave it alone. I
can’t deal with this right now.”

I acceded to her request, convinced she
would eventually talk to me about it, but it didn’t take long for
hope to fade on that front. The week drug on, but she never once
approached the topic and was quick to redirect anytime I tried to
subtly bring it up. It made things between us a little awkward, but
not nearly as awkward as things between her and Jase.

According to Charlie, it was important for
them to appear to be a mated, or soon-to-be-mated, couple. I
started feeling less like a Pack Leader and more like the marketing
agent behind some Hollywood super couple. I had to figure out
strategic places for them to be seen by large groups of gossipy
people getting as snuggly as two people who won’t touch each other
could. Working around their work schedules and Jase’s continued
grounding made things extra fun. I realized my life was beyond not
right when Ashely Johnson called to confirm whether or not they
were dating and I did a fist pump.

When Talley and I finally did have a heart
to heart, it wasn’t quite what I expected.

I was having one of my Alex dreams. We were
sitting on the beach, a good two feet of rocks and sand between us,
talking about the whole mate situation. It was only the second
meeting since I up and realized he wasn’t really there. Both times
we kept more distance from each other than before. I missed the
contact - the feel of his skin, the taste of his mouth - but knew
it was for the best. I couldn’t literally keep clinging onto a dead
boy and hope for things to get better inside my head.

“
I still contend this is
your fault.” I watched the tiny waves lap at my toes and tried to
ignore the fact I could actually feel the cool water.

“
My fault?” Alex’s
eyebrows hid behind his bangs. “What did I do?”

“
You told me to ask Jase
about Talley and mates.”

“
Ask
Jase about Talley and mates. That is not the same thing as
making Jase swear an oath that he would take Talley as a mate.” He
leaned back on his elbows, his profile outlined by the rising
sun.

“
Well, if you would have
just told me about mates in the first place instead of delegating
all the giving actual helpful information duties to others, I
wouldn’t be in this mess. Knowledge is power, Alex.” If I sounded
petulant and annoyed it was only because I was.

“
I want to tell you stuff.
Promise, I do, but I can’t. That isn’t the way things
work.”

“
Because I can’t tell
myself stuff I don’t already know?”

“
Or because I was allowed
to come to you as a guide, not a leader. If I start telling you too
much they’ll yank my visitation privileges.”

Oh goodie. Rationalization for my
craziness.

After five minutes of debating my sanity,
things got weird, which is saying something when you’re sitting
around arguing with your dead boyfriend. It started with a
heaviness in my chest. Then my throat closed up and I couldn’t get
enough air, no matter what I did. I knew the feeling - it was a
panic attack, but it was ten times more severe than anything I’d
experienced before.

Just about the same time Alex noticed
something was wrong with me, the world ripped in two. Honestly,
there is no other way to describe it. The view in front of us, the
same old boring stretch of lake, tore away as if it was a giant
backdrop being blown apart by the wind. Behind it lay a field that
wasn’t in Western Kentucky, the trees much too tall and skinny and
evergreen to be growing in Timber. A stream of sorts divided the
field in half. On either side grew tall weeds, and in the tall
weeds there were people covered in blood. Every eye, save those who
would never see anything again, were trained on a standoff going on
several feet from the carnage of what had to have been an epic
fight.

The woman on the left was tiny, probably
less than five feet tall, and utterly beautiful. The hair falling
thickly down to her waist was the same rich black color as her
eyes. Her warm brown skin was flawless, as was her petite figure.
Despite her size, she radiated power.

The girl on the left was tall and looked as
if all the color had been bleached from her, expect for the places
where blood stained her hair and skin. I’m not sure what had
happened to the other me, but I looked more than half dead. I’m not
even sure how I was still standing.

Words were spoken, though I couldn’t hear
what they were. Then the beautiful woman lunged forward. I didn’t
see the knife until the moment before it planted into my other
stomach.

I jerked up in the bed, a scream ripping
from my throat.

“
Scout?” I was just able
to make out Talley’s face by the light of the alarm clock. Tears
were streaming down her cheeks.

“
Bad dream,” I said
between pants. My lungs felt as if I’d ran a mile.
“You?”

“
Horrible
dream.”

We sat there in silence for a moment, each
of us trapped in our own heads. Once my heart slowed down enough I
could do something other than attempt to catch my breath, I laid
back down on the bed.

“
Tal?”

“
Yeah?”

“
Would it be weird if we
snuggled for a little while?”

She answered by latching
onto my arm, squeezing it tight. As soon as she made contact, I
heard her faint voice in my head.
“I won’t
let you die,”
she said in the same sultry
tone I heard during the full moon. And then I saw a flash of what
happened after the knife dug into my belly. My knees folded, my
body went limp as it knelt before the other woman. I would have
been on the ground if she hadn’t been holding me up with the
knife.
“It’s not going to happen,”
Talley’s voice said in my head.
“I will not let you die.”