Conjuring Quantico (The Federal Witch Book 1) (8 page)

He must have started speaking because she put the phone back to her ear. “OK, this is serious Dad. Last year before school let out I was challenged in a dominance fight.” She held the phone away from her ear. Even I could hear the “What!”

“Dad. Dad. Dad! It’s fine, I won. No. No. It was Charles Winthrop. My roommate calls him Chuck. What? My roommate Agatha. Dad, we talked about this, I know I did. No I’m not imagining it. No. No. Fine! Hold on.” Cat held the phone out to me. “He wants to talk to you.”

I pointed at myself and asked. “Me? Why me?”

Cat just rolled her eyes and shook the phone. “He can hear you, you know. Just talk to him.”

I gingerly took the phone from her. “Hello?”

“Hello, Agatha is it?”

“Yes, Sir?”

“I need to ask you a few questions about my daughter. Is there somewhere you can go that she can’t hear me?”

“I can’t but hold on, I can fix it so she can’t hear.” I looked at the two Weres and smiled. I mouthed sorry to them and spoke “þegja” along with a wave of my hand.

“OK, we can talk now. I promise you that neither of them can hear a thing.”

“Who else is there with you?”

“Oh, Chuck is here too.”

“Does he live there too?”

“No. He just comes over all the time.”

“If he’s not dating my daughter or has declared her as his mate why is he there all the time?”

“He’s her bitch.” Cat’s dad snorted. I covered the phone and turned toward the two Weres who were now glaring at me. “Sorry, now you know how I feel during these conversations. What? Sorry, I forgot.” I giggled. Even I forgot I took away their hearing!

“I just heard what you said to them. How did you do that?”

“I thought Cat told you? I’m a witch.”

“Really? I knew the Witches’ Council was looking for someone for the FBI, but I didn’t know they found someone. What clan are you from?”

“Blackmore Clan. Marcella Blackmore is my grandmother.”

There was a lingering silence at the other end of the phone.

“I’m sorry to have questioned you. I’ve met your grandmother; she is very formidable.”

“If that is a polite way of saying she’s a Bad-ass then you are right! She raised me from age eight.”

“Do you know what Catherine wants to tell me? Is it serious?”

“While I’m familiar with the basics of Were society and Cat has taught me much, I don’t know all the details. She really should tell you this. Hold on a minute while I un-zap them.” I looked at the two Weres and spoke the word. “Hljóð.”

“Can you two hear me now?” They both grabbed their ears and nodded.

“Dammit Agatha don’t do that again! You just scared the hell out of me!”

I thrust the phone into her hands. “Talk to your Dad and tell him.”

She took the phone. “Dad, I’m an Alpha.”

Chapter 6

Robert Moore, Cat’s father, actually took the news rather well. His brother Marcus was the pack Alpha, after all, not Robert. Robert agreed with his daughter that she couldn’t come home for long visits as a declared Alpha, but she could come home. Marcus would allow short visits if she notified him beforehand and didn’t get into any trouble or heaven forbid try to recruit anyone. There were procedures for visiting Alphas. He told Cat he would get with his brother and set up a visitation schedule for her. He said it was a major boost in status for the family to have a rare female Alpha.

Cat had a good cry on my shoulder. She’d really thought she might never see her family ever again. She’d failed to mention to me that the entire time in South Dakota she had been pressuring her wolf to not make an appearance. The intentional loss of family was the one curse of any wolf. At the first tear I had sent Chuck off and told him we would call if we needed him. It was just us girls and Fergus.

“Cat, honey, it’s Ok: you can see your family again. Your father even said it was a great honor to the family to have a female Alpha. What’s wrong? You can tell me.” I held the small girl in my arms. Her crying had stopped, but I could sense she was still hurting. Empathy was one of the major witch powers and I had a small trace of it. I could sense the major emotions and that coupled with my telepathy gave me a sense of wrongness sometimes. It was one of the things that saved my life last year.

She pulled away from me and looked up at me. “Aggy, thank you for being my friend. I was so afraid I would have to kill Uncle Marcus just to say hello to my mother.”

“Didn’t they teach you about visitor rules for the pack?”

“Of course they did. But not what to do for visiting Alphas. That just doesn’t occur. Sure we can meet on neutral ground or at a pack gathering. But home ground or rather claimed territory is another matter. Most potential challengers don’t get twenty feet inside a claimed territory. They kill them before they can hurt anyone. There hasn’t been a clan war in over a century. Even during internment the Alpha rules applied. I was so afraid.”

“Cat, friends are the family you get to choose. I will always be your friend. I can’t speak for Fergus but he might be your friend too.”

We both heard him mumbling in his little barn. “Damn sneaky cats!”

I just had to giggle. Fergus was good for comic relief. “Let’s get cleaned up. We need to plan for tomorrow. Classes begin!” I checked the time. “It looks like we missed dinner. Want to send Chuck out for Pizza?”

“He’ll be happy I’m OK. You were right, Aggy, and I’m sorry I argued. Chuck is pack. I just didn’t see it. I hope he’s OK with it because I don’t think I can give him up, too.”

“Give him a call and order some pie’s. Tell him to get some sodas too, I think we’re out.”

Chuck was good with going for food. He was much like Fergus in that he was a movable stomach.

~~~~

According to my schedule, I had law enforcement procedures followed by basic martial arts training this morning. After lunch was intro to firearms. I wasn’t starting my own class as a teacher until tomorrow. That gave me a day to make up some handouts. Both Cat and I had a hard time waking up. We were up late talking with Chuck about how Packs are put together and how to form a basic one. Ironically, Chuck had been aware that he was in hers.

“Chuck, how did you know?”

“As you might know my father, Charles Winthrop Senior, is the money man behind Volf Advertising. In our family Pack he is a Gamma wolf. He has never been a dominant wolf in our pack. One of the reasons I’m here is that I am more powerful than he is and he didn’t want to see me die in constant dominance battles. I guess I should stop saying our pack when I talk about them... Unlike you, Cat, I really can’t go home. I would be challenged within a mile of home, especially now that I smell different.”

This puzzled me for a moment. “Chuck, what did you do over the Winter this past year? I mean I stayed here, and I didn’t see you.”

Chuck shrugged. “I didn’t know I wasn’t Pack until my father met with me, but I spent it at the beach. Dad didn’t really want to head home, so he met me in our family’s condo down in Florida at the beach. One sniff was all it took for him to tell me to not come home again. Fortunately, PC beach is neutral territory or my own brothers might have fought me.”

“Chuck, I’m so sorry I did that to you! I had no idea I was taking your family away from you!”

“But you didn’t. My brothers are assholes! They are enforcers for the Pack and think they know best. I agreed to Dad’s idea of being an FBI agent because of the neutrality of the office. I won’t be targeted by them or anyone else. My Dad takes everyone to the beach every Winter. I can still see them then. I won’t give up this pack for anything!” Chuck clutched his hands in front of him.

I spoke to him gently. “Chuck, I think Cat is afraid you will either leave or take it personally that she forced you into a Pack.”

He looked at the both of us. “I checked with human resources when I realized what had happened. The FBI has specific rules for its agents when it comes to Pack membership. Most of the rules are about assignments and getting involved in politics. Pack matters are secondary to the FBI in all things and we are allowed to join them.”

“That much I knew. What about Alphas?” Cat looked really anxious.

“They don’t have an issue with that. We are supposed to be neutral parties. I know of at least one Alpha Agent. You should be OK. We just have to register our mini-Pack with the administration here on campus but we can call ourselves a Pack. If we let in new members, we should be selective. There are some real losers here.”

That much I could agree on, too. Most of the other shifters stayed away from me, but I knew they were here because they had little or no prospects back home. The lure of being neutral was a strong draw.

At least Cat felt better after talking to him. They agreed to a basic format for their small Pack and Chuck took the position of Beta. He was fairly dominant. Both of them told me that no matter what, I was an honorary member of the Pack. So now I’m in a WereCat Pack! I sent Grams a text message, and she laughed at me.

We started the day off right: late and racing to class! Oversleeping just sucks. I hope that law enforcement procedures gets more interesting because the first day was one of the most boring classes I have ever had. Maybe martial arts would be more interesting.

That class was taught in the main gym area. We were all instructed to change to workout clothing or at least loose clothes. Our instructor was a large, well built human. I did a small scan spell that one of the Council teachers had showed me. He was ninety percent human. Ten percent was troll which really surprised me. The how of it had me so distracted I missed his calling my name.

I blinked my eyes a few times as I heard my name being called. “Agatha Blackmore?”

“Here. I mean present.” I raised my hand.

“Nice of you to join us, Miss Blackmore. I asked you a question. What martial arts do you already know?”

“Sir, I have trained in Krav Maga.” Grams got me a teacher when I was ten. She wanted me to not have to rely on my magic to protect myself until I better understood how magic worked.

“What belt are you?”

“Sir, I’m unofficially ranked Orange.”

He peered at me closely. “P two or three?”

“P three” my instructor last tested me two years ago.

“Why did you not compete and are you still in practice?” The whole class was staring at me now.

“I still practice the Kata’s daily as part of my workouts. My roommate helps with them as well. I didn’t compete as I was both a private student and not associated in any way with the normal community.”

“Who is your instructor?”

“Haim Levine from Portland, Maine.” Haim was one of Grams oldest friends.

He was nodding. “I know the man. I was unaware that he did private lessons.”

“My grandmother obtained his services for me. He owed her.”

Thor, our instructor, made a come on motion with his hands. “Who is your grandmother?”

“Marcella Blackmore.”

“OK! I can see that. I may use you for class discussions, Miss Blackmore. Be prepared for that.”

Thor proceeded to quiz all my classmates on what techniques and practices they had experience with. Out of the class of twenty, over half had some sort of belt in a half-dozen different techniques. The rest were MMA fighters or those with street fighting experience. This was going to be a fun class.

I caught up with Cat and Chuck for lunch in the cafeteria. They had pretty much the same classes as I did except they had martial arts first thing followed by law enforcement. We all had weapons training together and were looking forward to it.

The cafeteria was packed today. It was a shock to see it full of people after months of no one but the staff and I. I grabbed a tray and went through the line. Many of the servers called me by name and knew what I liked before I pointed. I smiled at the cashier and thanked her as I swiped my student card. Chuck was easy to spot as he stuck up higher than most of the other students.

“How was your class?” I sat down next to my friend Cat and smiled across at Chuck.

“Oh. My. God. Is that class boring or what? I thought I was going to fall asleep like twenty times!”

“You did.” Chuck had his head down and was eating a massive amount of what looked like Tikka Masala.

“I did? When?” Cat was looking at him with a funny look on her face.

“About halfway, when he started in on local law enforcement rules versus federal. You drifted right off. I caught you just as your head hit the desk. I asked you for a pen remember?”

“I was sleeping? Really?”

Chuck laughed. “Yeah, you were. I figured my Alpha should stay awake for at least the first day of classes.”

She turned her head and glared at me. “This is your fault!”

“My fault? How? I’m not the one who ate three whole pizza pies almost by herself!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”