Time Mends (8 page)

I didn’t have much of a choice. The three of
them looked like they were waiting to be knighted, but I seemed to
be missing a sword. I had to make do as best as I could.

Relying solely on knowledge gleaned from
movies and books, I approached the three of them. “I accept you?”
Their heads stayed bowed, so I continued. “And devote myself to
you?” Apparently that did the trick, because the three of them
stood up in unison.

“
What the Hell do you
think you’re doing?” Uncle Charles moved through the rest of the
Pack in a rage. “Are you going to turn your back on your family for
her? She doesn’t want you in her Pack. She can’t even stand to look
at you.”

“
I owe her,” Charlie
mumbled. “I took a life from her, so I owe mine in
return.”

“
Not much of a trade is
it, darling?” he asked me. “You lose your big, strong wolf
boyfriend and get this coward instead.”

My skin vibrated with anger, the wolf
clawing to the forefront. “I’d rather have him than a useless drunk
like you.” I moved between Charlie and his father. “If you want him
back, you’ll have to take him from me.”

For a second I thought he might try it, but
he finally relented. “He was nothing but a burden anyway.” He
looked over my shoulder at his son. “You have an hour to get your
stuff out of my house. Anything left, I’ll burn.”

The next few hours flew by in a haze. Talley
was also newly homeless, although her mother managed to kick her
out without making a big public display specifically designed to
humiliate her. She merely suggested Talley not be home when she
finished her meeting with Toby.

While I helped Talley throw most of her
belongings into black garbage bags, the preferred luggage choice of
displaced teens everywhere, Jase helped Charlie. Despite the
feelings of blame and betrayal still sitting heavily in my chest, I
found myself worrying about them. What if they didn’t get out
before Charles’ one hour time limit? What if other members of the
Pack decided they didn’t like the idea of them leaving?

I was simultaneously relieved and anxious to
see both Jase’s car and Charlie’s truck in my driveway when I got
home. I didn’t know what to say or how to act, but fortunately we
were too busy to do either.

We spent most of the night rearranging the
garage so we could store some of Charlie and Talley’s things, and
making room for them in our bedrooms. It was well after midnight
when I collapsed across the air-mattress I had been wrestling
sheets onto for the last twenty minutes. I was glad girls didn’t
have the same issues with sharing a bed as boys. There was no way I
had the energy to do that again.

“
Can I just fall asleep
here?” I asked no one in particular.

“
You’re the Pack Leader,”
Talley said plopping down on Jase’s bed, which proved she was a
much braver soul than me. I might be disorganized and fond of
clutter, but Jase had a tendency to grow his own antibiotics on
accident. “You get to do pretty much what you want.”

“
Yeah, about that.” I
tried to sit up, but ended up just rolling around like a drunk
turtle flipped on its back. “While I appreciate the sentiment and
am very much happy to not be exiled by my lonesome, I’m not really
into this whole Pack Leader thing.”

“
What do you mean ‘not
into this whole Pack Leader thing’?” Jase asked from his closet
where he was making room for Charlie’s clothes.

“
I mean I’m not Toby, I
don’t want be some hard-ass bossing you guys around all the time.
Can’t we be a group of equals? This is the United States of America
and the twenty-first century after all. That supreme leader stuff
went out of style like two hundred years ago.”

“
Doesn’t work that way,”
Talley said from the cocoon she had made herself out of Jase’s
vintage Spider-Man comforter. “There has to be a Pack Leader and in
this Pack that’s you.”

“
Why? How about Jase?” I
dipped my head off the side of the air mattress. “Hey, Jase! Wanna
be Pack Leader?”

The door swung open and Charlie came through
with an armload of boxes. I realized I was laying across his bed
and tried to jump up, which was impossible. I ended up on landing
on all fours directly at his feet.

“
I pledged my loyalty to
you, not Jase,” he said stepping around me. “You’re the Pack
Leader, now get off the floor and act like it.”

My parents didn’t have a problem with the
addition of two new kids in their house. Charlie and Talley both
spent more time at our house than theirs most summers anyway. I’m
guessing they didn’t see it as a big change. Dad simply re-assigned
household chores, and Mom promised to buy more groceries on her way
home from the hospital. Neither questioned why they were there or
how long they intended to stay. Maybe they realized they would
really rather not know.

After they both scuttled off to their
respective jobs, I was left alone with my new Pack and one very
hyper little sister.

“
Angel, could you please
go upstairs and play?” I asked the prima ballerina jumping and
spinning around the table on which I was trying not to lay my head
down and go back to seep. I’d spent most of the previous night
listening to Talley snore while growing a ginormous crop of
ulcers.

Angel pirouetted into the refrigerator,
knocking several magnets to the floor. “No,” was her very succinct
answer.

“
Please? We need to have a
grown-up conversation.” And my nerves were going to be non-existent
if she didn’t stop moving around so much. We were just two days
past the full moon. My wolf-y sense were still tingling, and Angel
was causing a sensory overload.

“
You can’t have a grown-up
conversation. You’re not grown-ups.”

“
Angel—”

“
I’ll let you play my
X-Box,” Jase said, bringing her to an abrupt stop.

“
Can I play a shooting
game?”

“
Yes,” he answered right
over the top of my “no.” Angel raced up the stairs, only hearing
the answer she wanted.

And then there was complete and utter
silence as Jase, Charlie, and Talley all looked at me expectantly.
I cleared my throat and searched for something profound to say.
Nothing came.

“
So, what now?” I asked,
sounding exactly like the strong, all-knowing leader I
was.

“
First,” Jase said,
pointing across the table at Talley, “she goes and pledges herself
back to the Hagan Pack. With any luck, she’ll get there when Toby
is in a forgiving mood.”

“
You don’t give orders,
Jase.” Talley’s voice was even and calm, but I could see her
fingernails digging into her palms. “I’m staying here. End of
story.”

“
No, you’re going back to
where you belong.”

“
I belong with the Pack
Leader I swore allegiance to.”

Jase half-rose, his arms braced on the table
in front of him. “You don’t get that choice. Now go home before
it’s too late.” The cords on his neck stood at attention,
threatening to break through the skin. I was more than a little
afraid for Talley’s well-being.

“
Jase, sit. Now.” He
scowled, but obeyed. “Now, explain,” I said, certain I was missing
some very important piece of information.

Jase and Talley were too busy glaring at
each other to respond, so I forced my eyes to the one place I’d
been training them not to look all morning.

“
How much do you know
about Seers?” Charlie asked, barely looking up from his fifth cup
of coffee.

I shrugged. “The basics, I guess. Girls with
special gifts, passed from mother to daughter. They work with
Shifter Packs…” Something occurred to me. “Hey, you’re like my Vice
President,” I said to my best friend.

“
Exactly.” The death-glare
she leveled on Jase turned into a smirk. “And I say I’m
staying.”

At that Jase really did explode. He was
around the table and in Talley’s face before his chair smacked the
tiled floor with a deafening thwack. “What the hell is your
problem? Do you want them to drag you back to that backwoods
mountain and force you to squeeze out a litter of pups? Is that
what you want? Do you want to go back there?” Jase’s body was
literally vibrating with anger.

“
Sit!” I commanded, moving
between my brother and a now sobbing Talley. “You.” I pointed at
Charlie. “Explain. Now.”

“
Seers are bound to the
Pack their born into. Usually, it’s not a big deal. It’s where they
grew up, where they belong.” He gave Talley a small, sad smile and
I began to see where this was going. “Talley, however, was born
into the Matthews Pack, but grew up with the Hagan Pack. She was
originally supposed to go back to the Matthews Pack on her
fifteenth birthday, but —”

“
But her powers hadn’t
developed yet.” I handed Talley a paper towel, unable to locate a
tissue.

“
Yeah. They still wanted
her, but since she wasn’t able to See, they didn’t fight too hard
when Toby petitioned to keep her. In the end, they accepted a
monetary compensation for their loss.”

“
You bought
her?”

“
The Hagan Pack bought
her,” Jase answered, still fuming. “And it was a conditional
purchase. She was to stay in the Hagan Pack. Now that she’s left,
they’ll see the contract as null and void—”

“
And they’ll want her
back, Super-Seer skills and all.”

Jase’s smile wasn’t pleasant. “You always
were the smart one.”

I looked down at Talley, who was finally
pulling herself together. “Are they exaggerating?”

She shook her head, eyes downcast.

In all the years Talley and I’ve known each
other, I’ve met her father exactly once. There were about three
years where Mr. Matthews decided he wanted his daughter to spend
six weeks of the summer with him in addition to the week she spent
in Eastern Kentucky every Christmas. At the age of eleven, six
weeks seemed like a lifetime, and I was convinced I would shrivel
up and perish while she was away. My parents, being the kind of
loving folks who don’t want to see their child die from loneliness,
arranged a family vacation touring the eastern half of the state
with a special stop in Frenchburg to visit with Talley.

Angel was a baby, so Mom stayed in the motel
room that smelled like rotten eggs while Dad drove Jase and I out
to the Matthews’ compound. It was unlike anything I had ever seen
before. The whole family lived in a cluster of houses at the end of
a road that wound between two mountains. Talley said they called it
Matthews Holler, and I wondered if it was because all you had to do
was holler out your door to talk to any of your family members.

Mr. Matthews was a rough looking man. His
hair was dark and wavy like Talley’s, but it looked like someone in
a bad mood attacked it with kitchen shears. His face was
weather-worn and etched with a hundred tiny lines. Talley always
said her dad was old, much older than her mom, but I never imagined
him to be grandpa old. Yet, despite his rough appearance, his blue
eyes shone with kindness as I ran up the porch steps and flung my
arms around my long-lost best friend.

While Mr. Matthews seemed to like me and my
dad well enough, he had very little patience for Jase, who grew
fidgety the moment we stopped the car. He refused to sit down,
preferring to pace around, constantly looking over his shoulder
like he thought a black bear was going to come charging down the
mountainside at any given moment. The second time Mr. Matthews
snapped at Jase, Dad announced it was time to go.

We took Talley out to dinner at a local
restaurant called “Cantuckee Cookin’”, the purposeful misspelling
causing major annoyance on my part. Surprisingly, it was Jase who
spent the majority of the meal trying to talk our parents into
taking Talley back home with us. He was convinced she didn’t belong
in that world. Dad patiently tried to explain that just because
Appalachian culture was somewhat different than what we were used
to, it wasn’t necessarily wrong.

In the end we dropped Talley off at her
father’s house, she and I in tears and Jase pouting in the
backseat. When Talley told him goodbye, he wrapped his arms around
her in a bone-crushing hug and said, “You belong with us, not
them.”

At the time I thought he was being really
sweet, telling her we were her true family. Of course, I had no
knowledge of Shifters, Seers, and Packs at the time. I didn’t
realize he was talking about her as if she was a piece of
property.

Crap. I honestly didn’t know what we were
dealing with, but I did know my best friend wasn’t something to be
owned.

“
Tal, where do you want to
be?”

“
Here.” Her chin rose a
fraction of an inch. “I want to be here with you, in your
Pack.”

“
Good.” Because there was
no way I could handle Jase and Charlie, especially Charlie, without
her. “Then you stay.”

Jase growled. “And what do we do when the
Matthews Pack comes to take her back? There is, what? Twenty?
Twenty-five of them?”

“
Eighteen are Changing,”
Talley answered. “There are four little boys, but none of them will
be Changing for at least another three or four years.”

“
Eighteen versus three. I
might not be a math genius, but those sound like some sucky odds to
me.”

I found my way back to my chair and
half-collapsed into it. “What are our options?”

“
Send her back to Toby
where she belongs, or get ourselves slaughtered by a Pack of
hillbillies.”