“And you can’t go out in the sunlight,” Dunn added, as though accusing Quinn of a crime. “Sunrise is five hours away. You wouldn’t make it out on the dunes until sunset tomorrow night at best—and that’s assuming you have a way to travel during daylight hours.”
He was probably right. Under some circumstances, Maven would send me out alone during the day, but not if the situation involved werewolves—or something that could take down werewolves.
Dunn shook his head. “I can’t risk waiting that long, and I sure as hell am not going to sit on my ass in Cheyenne while you go after my people.” His eyes flicked to me. “I want you to come with us, as our official escort through Maven’s territory. And I want to leave right now.”
Chapter 4
Quinn looked ready to protest, so I sent him a look to say I had it under control. Dunn may have sounded pushy and arrogant, but I understood where he was coming from. We had both been in the military—Dunn as a marine, me in the army—with other soldiers under our command. I knew what it felt like to need to find your people.
Besides, I had been in the Old World long enough to know that he was really just opening a negotiation.
“We need to run this by Maven,” I said firmly. “It can be on the phone, but she needs to at least know you’re here, in case there’s trouble.” I elected not to describe what that trouble might look like. When it came to werewolves in Colorado, there were too many possibilities.
“I don’t like the idea of you going without backup,” Quinn said to me in a low voice.
“Uh, hello?” Mary said, waving a hand. “I can look after her.”
Quinn didn’t answer, but his look clearly said, You’re a werewolf. He hadn’t been in Colorado during Trask’s rampage, but he knew the stories. He probably trusted the werewolves even less than I did.
Lily and Simon had been quiet through all this, though they’d traded several furtive looks. But now Simon spoke up, his eyes on Dunn. “I’ll go with you.”
Dunn looked at Simon speculatively, as though just now realizing he was there. “You were at the hot springs with us,” he said, remembering. “You did that cloaking spell. Can you do it again?”
“Absolutely,” Simon replied.
“If Si’s going, I am too,” Lily said. “I can help keep humans away from you guys.”
I winced. “Lily . . .”
She gave me a stubborn look. “What?”
Simon did a little fishing and hiking, but Lily wasn’t really an outdoors person. “It’s December. The temperature is going to be in the teens, and it’ll be windy as hell on the dunes.”
“How do you know?”
“Because that’s how they were created,” I said patiently. “Look, we’re going to need some serious cold-weather gear, and stores aren’t open in the middle of the night. I’ve got some ski stuff, and Simon can borrow John’s.” My brother-in-law was clued in on the Old World and would help with whatever we needed. “You should stay in Boulder.”
Lily chewed on a fingernail, thinking for a moment, then gave a reluctant nod. “Fine. But I want phone calls. Lots of them.”
Dunn stood up, looming over me. “How soon can we leave?” he demanded.
Everything began to move quickly. Quinn called Maven at her coffee shop, Magic Beans, and I texted my cousins to beg off babysitting the next night. Simon found someone to proctor his exam at CU the next morning. I went to the closet in the spare bedroom to dig out my old ski gear, which was still in boxes from when I’d moved into the cabin. I hadn’t gone downhill skiing since I’d been discharged from the army. Like many veterans, I had returned with a bad case of claustrophobia, and I’d worried that donning all the ski gear would feel too confining. But I would have to suck it up for this.
While all this was going on, I was feeling a little guilty for lying. My late sister, Sam, had owned ski stuff too, and it was probably in a box somewhere at John’s. I could have let Lily come with us. But she would slow us down out there, and more importantly, I couldn’t risk involving her. Simon and Lily had been able to help me in the past because of their unique status: they were part of a very respected witch family, but they had also been the youngest and least significant members.
Now, though, Lily was the designated next heir of Clan Pellar, and anything she did to help me could be seen as a political move. I knew she didn’t care about that, but I also didn’t want her to screw up her future. And if anyone in her clan found out she was helping the werewolves, however indirectly . . . that was exactly what could happen.
While I was still packing my gear in a backpack, Quinn came in with his cell phone. “Maven wants to talk to you,” he said, holding it out to me.
I took the phone. “This is Lex.”
“I don’t like this plan,” Maven said. She was using her real voice, rather than the ditzy-hipster tone she put on for her human customers at the coffee shop. She sounded controlled and wary, like a battlefield general.
But she hadn’t said no. “I don’t either,” I replied. I didn’t need to tell Maven that the whole thing could be a trap, or a way to get her boundary witch away from her. She’d survived for hundreds and hundreds of years; she understood strategy. “But I owe Ryan Dunn a favor. Unless you forbid it, I want to pay my debt.”
“That’s the only reason I’m going to allow it. We’re already playing with political fire having werewolves in the state.”
“I understand.”
There was a long pause, and then Maven added, “For what it’s worth, I did some background research on Dunn and his pack, to make sure he wasn’t another Trask.”
“And?”
“Dunn gives every impression of being a solid man and a good leader. I’m inclined to believe he’s being straight with you.”
I glanced through my open doorway and down the hall, to where an amused Ryan Dunn was crouched down petting a completely blissed-out Dopey. “So am I.”
“Then go give him a hand,” she said, as though I were about to hold a ladder so Dunn could clean out gutters or something. “I’ll take precautions here. Keep Quinn informed. Oh, and Lex?”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful with Simon Pellar.”
My brow furrowed. What was she implying? “I trust Simon.”
Maven let out a short laugh. “No, I mean don’t let anything bad happen to him. I have enough tension with the witches as it is.”
Okay, that made more sense. “Yes, ma’am.”
We discussed carpooling—the Boulder desire for energy efficiency runs deep—but after some uneasy debate, everyone settled on the werewolves driving Dunn’s Forester to the Dunes, while Simon and I rode down in Maven’s tricked-out Jeep. Both vehicles were outfitted with bullet-resistant glass and a few other safety precautions, and if something violent had happened to the Ventimiglias . . . well, I’d rather have all the protection we could handle. Dunn and Mary also wanted the option to go straight back to Wyoming, hopefully with the other two werewolves in tow.
Quinn drove my car to Magic Beans to discuss things further with Maven while Simon and I took Simon’s Chevy to John’s to pick up his cold-weather gear, including ski goggles. I felt bad about dropping by in the middle of the night, but at least I called ahead—first to John, and then to Charlie’s vampire bodyguard, Clara. My niece is a null, a valuable commodity in the Old World, and Clara kept an eye on her during the night hours as part of a complicated deal I’d made with Maven.
Clara was, unsurprisingly, the one who answered the door: a tall, broad-shouldered, Nordic-looking woman, who always seemed like she should be on a stage singing opera with a horned helmet. Except for her mouth, which was a rosy pink bow that currently frowned down at me. “It is late,” she said disapprovingly. Lots of vampires used old-fashioned syntax, from a time before contractions were common, but Clara also had an Eastern European accent that reminded me of the few times I’d heard my birth mother, Valerya, speak to me in my head. She and Katia had been born in the Ukraine, although Katia had lost her accent.
“It couldn’t be helped,” I told her, keeping my voice stern. I’d found that talking to Clara was kind of like talking to my dogs: the more confident and commanding I sounded, the better it would go.
Clara made a “hmph” noise and stepped aside so Simon and I could come into the foyer. John was just stumbling down the front stairs, wearing boxer shorts and a white undershirt, his eyes crusty with sleep. “Hey, Lex. Simon.” John was human, but given Charlie’s age and the previous attempts to kidnap her, Maven had given me special permission to tell him about the Old World. He and Simon had met a few times, usually when John picked up Charlie from my house.
“Hi, John,” Simon said, reaching out to shake hands. “Thanks for this.”
“Yeah. Sure.” John’s black hair was sticking up at all angles, and he ran a hand through it, which somehow made it even messier. I smothered a grin, but I did feel bad. John was a single parent to a four-year-old; he needed all the sleep he could get. He turned around and led us through the house to the garage, yawning.
“You need me?” Clara called after him.
John waved a hand over his shoulder. “Nah, go back to studying.” Belatedly, I saw a pile of textbooks and a laptop computer spread out around the armchair in the living room as I passed by.
To Simon and me, John added, “Storage tubs are in the garage. You guys go ahead. I’m going to stop in the spare bedroom to grab some books and stuff we brought back from the Dunes last summer.” He pointed down the hall, toward the garage door.
We went through the interior door into the garage, circling John’s hybrid SUV to reach a massive rack of plastic tubs. John was a little fanatical about organization, and the bins were labeled with dry-erase tape. It took about twenty seconds to find the one marked “Ski Stuff.”
“He went to the Dunes?” Simon said as I pulled the tub down and began pawing through it.
“Yeah, I forgot that he took Charlie for a couple of days.” I tugged out a pair of goggles and handed them to Simon. “Try these on.”
The goggles made him look like an enormous man-bug. “Have you gone to the Dunes before?” the bug asked me.
I grinned at him. “Once, when I was a kid, my folks took us camping there. I remember swimming in a creek and getting covered in sand. Not much else.” I glanced down and saw that he was wearing Chuck Taylor All Stars, the official shoe of the professional nerd. “What’s your shoe size?”
“Uh, thirteen.”
“Hmm. John has winter hiking boots, but he’s an eleven.” I didn’t have to check sizes—I had grown up with John. I pulled out a hat and thermal BUFF scarf. “You’re gonna have to get sand in your shoes, I guess.”