Twiceborn (17 page)

“
You’re
the one Jason married?” Surprise flashed across her face, then hardened into deep suspicion. Damn it. Garth made me so nervous I’d started babbling. Why did I even mention Jason?

“That traitor!” Garth rumbled.

I glared at the werewolf. “Trust me, whatever he’s done to you, he’s done worse to me.”

“You were married for five years,” Luce said. How did she know that? “You expect us to believe that in all that time you had no inkling Jason wasn’t human?”

“I don’t care if you believe it or not. It’s the truth.” It made me sound like an idiot. Hell, it made me
feel
like an idiot. How do you miss something like that? “But I don’t see what our marriage has to do with anything. Until tonight I hadn’t seen him in more than six months.”

In fact, I could have told her down to the day how long it had been: the last time had been at Lachie’s funeral. Seven months and two days ago. But she didn’t need to know that.

“But Nada accused you of working with him.”

I shrugged. “Nada didn’t seem exactly rational where Jason was concerned. I told you, I’m not working with anybody. I didn’t know any of this even existed till two days ago.”

“What did Nada think you two were up to?”

That was a tricky one. Why hadn’t I kept my mouth shut? “I’m not sure. She said Jason had killed Leandra, but maybe she thought I had something to do with it.” And maybe I did. Damn, I wish I could remember.

Garth threw his arms up in exasperation. “
Jason
killed Leandra? Do you think we’re stupid? He wasn’t even there!”

“She said he poisoned her.” She also said I’d stabbed Leandra to death. Basically, no one knew diddly-squat. Especially me. No wonder Luce and Garth were suspicious.

“Really. Then why did we find her with her chest cut open right after
you
left? You thought you’d make sure of it in case the poison didn’t work?” Garth whirled on Luce. “This is crap. There was no poison. How much more of this do we have to listen to?”

She ignored him. “The woman in the garden—what did she look like?”

Sick. Like someone dying of poisoning, come to think of it. “Elegant. Taller than me, blonde hair. She was wearing a grey business suit.”

Luce nodded. “And what did she give you?”

“An envelope. The usual sort.”
Please don’t ask me who it was for
.

“Did she say anything to you?”

Help me, Kate
. “She knew my name—but I don’t remember anything else.”

Garth loomed over me, his eyes glowing yellow again. “This whole story stinks worse than three-day-old fish. I say we kill her now.”

I shrank back in my seat, clenching my teeth on half-truths and omissions. There had to be something I could tell them to help my situation.

“She did give me something else, though.” At least, I thought she did. Where else had it come from? Hopefully it didn’t prove me guilty of some heinous crime, but with Garth so set on blood I had to risk it. “A black stone.”

Mentioning it awoke a strange longing in me. I felt the stone’s loss like a missing tooth, a space where something should be.

“A black stone.” Garth’s voice was heavy with disbelief. “Why would she give you a black stone?”

Luce leaned forward, face intent. “A stone? Or more like a disk, about so big?” She made a circle the size of her palm with her fingers.

“Definitely a stone. About the size of a marble.”

She flicked a glance at Garth. “Could be some kind of geas.”

“Do you still have it?” Garth asked.

I shook my head. “Nada’s got it.”

He rolled his eyes in another
how convenient
comment. Clearly he refused to believe anything I said.

“Never mind the stone,” Luce said, brushing his objections aside with a wave of her hand. “Earlier tonight, when I first entered your room, you said something to me. Do you remember?”

What kept you?
I wasn’t likely to forget such a peculiar experience. I’d felt so happy to see her. At last, someone I could trust! But I’d never met her before in my life.

Shame the feeling had gone. Her expression now gave me no clues as to whether she was friend or foe. At least with the werewolf I knew where I stood.

“Why did you say that?” She leaned closer, her gaze intense. This was the crux of the matter. She’d come to kill me, and those three little words had changed her mind. But if she expected rational explanations, she’d come to the wrong place.

“I’ve been having some … visions … since I, ah, met Leandra. They’re more real-feeling than dreams, and they come when I’m awake, more like memories. But they’re not. At least, not of anything that’s ever happened to
me
.

“I had this one about you. I don’t remember much now, but you were in an old warehouse. Your face was swollen and bruised, and you had … burn marks.” I swallowed. Remembering the damage to the delicate creature in front of me made me feel ill. That much of the vision was still crystal clear. I could recall the emotions, but not the details.

“I had the feeling I’d been searching for you for a long time. I was desperate, but I wouldn’t give up hope. And then I found you, and there was so much blood … I thought you were dead.” Like a broken doll abandoned on the concrete floor by some careless giant’s child. “But you opened your eyes, and whispered ‘what kept you?’ and I had to laugh. And then you started laughing too, and … and that’s all I remember. The feeling of relief. It seemed so real, even though it wasn’t my body in the vision—like in dreams, where you can be someone else, but it’s still you inside. And then tonight, when I opened my eyes and saw you, the feeling came to me again from the vision, of how thankful I’d been to see you … and I guess it just slipped out.”

Wow, that sounded lame even to me. I didn’t need to look at the werewolf to know how impressed he’d be.

Luce’s poker face was much better. They could have invented the word “inscrutable” for her.

“That was Leandra,” she said, and her voice wasn’t quite steady. Maybe not so inscrutable after all. “Leandra found me, when I’d given up hope.”

“So what?” Garth, of course, was still spoiling for a fight. “She could have heard it anywhere. It doesn’t prove anything.”

Luce didn’t even spare him a glance. Her dark almond-shaped eyes never left my face. “I’ve never told anyone that story, and I’m pretty sure Leandra didn’t either. No one else knows.”

She stood and turned away, as if she’d caught Garth’s restlessness. I watched her pace, horribly aware my life depended on her. There wasn’t much I could do if she decided to let Garth have his way.

Suddenly she whirled and caught Garth’s arm. I jumped, heart hammering, but she only tugged him into the bathroom with her.

She shut the door to keep their conversation private, but insulation isn’t a huge priority in cheap motels. Though she kept her voice down I still heard her words, echoing off the tiled walls.

“I believe her.”

Garth started to argue, but she cut him off. “Even if she did hear that story somewhere, why would she say ‘what kept you?’ now? She had no way of knowing what that moment meant to us. It was as if Leandra spoke to me!”

“Leandra could have told her about it before she was killed,” Garth protested.

“For heaven’s sake, Garth! You’re so set on revenge you’re not using your brain. ‘Please, dear herald, delay stabbing me to death for a moment while I tell you this deeply personal and entirely irrelevant story from my past.’ Is that how you think it went down?”

Whatever Garth thought, I didn’t get to hear it as she ploughed on. “I think you’re right. Leandra did tell her, but as a kind of password, because she needed a way to let me know I could trust this woman that wouldn’t be obvious to others.”

“Like who?”

“Like Jason, or whoever really did kill her. I think this stone she gave her is a geas, her last message to us.”

“Geez, Luce, you’re going too fast for me.” Welcome to my world, buddy. It’s confusion city here. “A geas? But they’re always on scales.”

“Well, maybe some kind of trigger spell. I won’t know until I see it.”

There was a long silence. When the big werewolf spoke again, it sounded as if every word was dragged out of him against his will. “I guess we need to find it then.”

For once we agreed on something. Every time someone mentioned that damned stone I felt a hollowness like a gnawing hunger. It could be a geas—whatever that was—or a piece of bloody unobtainium for all I cared.

I just knew I wanted it back.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I slept fitfully for the remainder of the night, fully clothed on the queen bed, Luce stretched out next to me. I wasn’t used to sharing a bed with another person any more, and I woke up every time she rolled over. Under the bandages my shoulder itched like crazy. Hopefully that was a good sign.

Garth slept on the floor by the door, curled up with his tail tucked round his nose. I contemplated a bathroom break sometime in the small hours but the instant I swung my feet off the bed he came awake, yellow eyes gleaming in the dark. He growled, an ominous sound which raised the hairs on the back of my neck, and I decided I could wait till daylight after all.

The sound of the TV woke me. I’d fallen into a deep sleep at last, and it was nearly two o’clock in the afternoon according to my watch. Two talking heads discussed the highlights of the Sydney Festival in bright happy tones while Garth, human again, crunched his way through a bowl of Coco Pops. Guess he’d slept late too. There was no sign of Luce, which made me nervous. No one wants to be alone with a homicidal werewolf.

I sat up. His bowl brimmed with little brown balls shedding their chocolate coating into a sea of rapidly browning milk. Pure sugar masquerading as breakfast cereal. The last person I’d seen tucking into it with such gusto had been Lachie, but he’d had the excuse of being five years old at the time.

“What?” Garth grunted. “Did you expect me to eat raw meat for breakfast?”

I shrugged. I hadn’t given much thought to the typical werewolf diet, but I would have expected a little more protein. He’d be high on a sugar rush in twenty minutes.

“Where’s Luce?”

“Out.”

Guess he didn’t like breakfast conversation.

In the bathroom I finally gave in to the maddening itch and peeled the bandage back to check my shoulder. I stood there so long, staring at my arm, it was a wonder Garth didn’t burst in, thinking I’d somehow escaped.

How was this possible? I ran a tentative finger over the fine white scars on my arm. No bleeding, no scabs—not even reddened, healing skin. These scars looked as if I’d been clawed years ago. Hurriedly I checked my stomach, checked everywhere, but it was the same story. Less than forty-eight hours had passed, but I could barely see the place on my stomach which had hurt so much. The scar had faded to such a thin white line it took some finding.

Wow. I stared at my reflection. The mirror was spotted with age and the light from the single globe was dim, but it sure looked like me staring back. Only I’d never had super healing powers before.
Supernatural
healing powers.

Back in the main room Garth resolutely watched TV, pretending I wasn’t there. I studied the back of his head. I’d never seen exactly where Ben’s bullet took him, but it had brought the werewolf down and stopped him dead in his tracks. I shuddered, remembering the hideous thing sprawled on my kitchen floor among the broken plates. He’d certainly
looked
dead, at least for a little while. Must have been a shot to the heart, or somewhere equally vital, for an effect like that. Yet he sat there eating Coco Pops as if nothing had ever happened.

Supernatural healing powers indeed. Was Ben’s friend wrong? Was I turning into a werewolf after all? I tried a snarl, wondering how it would feel to have a wolf’s teeth, a wolf’s jaw.

Of course Garth picked that moment to look around.

“What the hell is your problem?”

I blinked. “Need caffeine. Want some coffee?”

He glared. Did all werewolves have a monobrow like that? “The only reason you’re still alive is that Luce reckons we need you. You’d be dead already if it was up to me. So forget coffee and chit chat.”

Something inside bristled at his tone. Stupid dog. Always the threats and the one-track mind. “You’re not a morning person, are you? Do you want coffee or not?”

He turned back to the TV with a growl. They were on to the weather now. Some blonde was all breathless and amazed at how many days in a row the temperature had hit the high thirties lately. Had she forgotten it was summer? Happened every year. The media had been at their usual fear-mongering for weeks, reporting the build-up of fuel with morbid glee. There was always some expert warning this year could be the worst bushfire season for years. They said it every year.

I made coffee and chose a little box of cereal for myself—one with a lot less sugar than Garth’s. I watched him as I ate. He wore a black T-shirt with Darth Vader on the front and the words
World’s Greatest Dad
. His hair was military-short and greying at the temples. I was rubbish at picking people’s ages but he could have been in his early forties, though his body was in such good shape it was hard to tell. No flab hiding underneath Darth Vader. Had he been a werewolf all his life? I knew nothing about him. Why, for instance, was he so intent on avenging Leandra? I knew all about the pain of losing someone important to you, but even though I hated Jason, murdering him had never occurred to me.

“So … Leandra.” I said. “She was just your boss? Or a friend?”

He gave me a look of disgust and kept on shovelling Coco Pops.

“What will you do now she’s gone?” I persisted. Were there werewolf accountants? Shop assistants? “Will you work for Valeria or Alicia, or do something else?”

“Work for Valeria or Alicia?” He laughed, a short, bitter sound. “They wouldn’t have me even if I wanted to.”

“Why not? Jason changed sides, didn’t he?”

“Dragons can get away with things wolves can’t.” His bitter tone spoke of experience. “But Alicia’s a loser and Valeria’s a prize bitch—I wouldn’t be caught dead round either of them.”