My head jerked sideways. “Katia?”
My biological aunt, the younger sister of my birth mother, had sidled up beside me. She was also in disguise: instead of her usual clinically cold, expensive clothes, she was wearing soft beige leggings and a blue cowl-neck sweater under a quilted jacket. Her hair was braided so it circled the top of her forehead, with tendrils floating loose in a romantic style. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d seen her hair in anything but a practical low bun.
I had never been so happy to see a familiar face, but I couldn’t help but say, “What are you doing here?” She wasn’t supposed to come to Colorado until a couple of days before Christmas, and that was still weeks away.
Also, we were in Wyoming.
I had been too surprised to lower my voice, but the whole audience was still buzzing and no one even glanced at us. Onstage, Morgan had taken a tiny step back from the podium to give them a moment, smiling patiently.
“I heard you could use some backup,” Katia said quietly.
“Did Quinn call you?” I whispered, not sure how I felt about the idea.
Katia smiled, showing her teeth. “No. Valerya did. She suggested I might enjoy a visit to Wyoming. Immediately.”
Ah. I nodded, understanding. Valerya was my dead birth mother, Katia’s sister. She could contact Katia in her sleep the same way Sam could contact me—at least, when I wasn’t having the Iraq nightmare. I didn’t know why we had links across the life-death boundary, and I’d never really made an effort to find out. Talking to my dead twin was only just starting to feel natural, and I’d been doing it for years now.
“What about work?”
She shrugged. “There will be other jobs.”
Well, there went my Christmas present. My nose itched, and I remembered my disguise. “You recognized me?” I asked, a little worried.
Katia grinned, a rare sight from her. “No,” she said. “When I was nearly to Boulder, I tried your phone, then Lily’s, and finally John’s. He described your new look.”
I nodded. My brother-in-law had met Katia many times, back when she was staying with me in Boulder. He knew that I trusted her.
I wanted to ask more questions, but Morgan was stepping back to the podium now, holding up her hand. I still wanted to charge the stage and beat the snot out of her, but Katia’s arrival had shocked me out of the worst of my anger. Which was probably the point.
“Please,” Morgan said placatingly, “I have no doubt that you have all heard terrible things about me, but if you’ll bear with me for just a moment, I will explain everything.”
The crowd settled down a little at that, though I saw a number of witches take out their phones, only to frown with disappointment when they couldn’t call or text anyone. I sympathized. This was big news. Big, horrifying news.
“As you know,” Morgan said, “the past eighteen years have been a difficult time for witches. We were unable to prevent the mongrels from wreaking havoc across the state, and lives were lost.” She paused with a sad smile, probably to remind everyone that her own father had been killed. God, I hated her. “Then my mother, Hazel Pellar, made a Faustian bargain with a vampire, and our people have suffered ever since. Our magic was restricted, and our leadership, well . . .” She heaved a great sigh. “I truly believe my mother tried her best, at first, but she was unable to perform the balancing act required to serve all of your diverse interests. And over time, I’m afraid she became corrupted.”
It was dead silent in the great hall then, but I could see heads turning to glance at one another—including two of the Pellar witches in the back row. “Three years ago,” Morgan continued, “I began to suspect that my mother was no longer pushing for the best interests of witches. She was far too complacent, too deferential to the vampire. But the last straw was when she welcomed a boundary witch into the clan, at Maven’s request.”
She said “boundary witch” the same way anyone else would say “flesh-eating virus.” Boundary witches had done some very creepy, very evil things during the Inquisition, and if there was one thing the entire Old World was good at, it was holding a grudge. It shouldn’t have shocked me to hear myself mentioned, but my head was still spinning.
And Morgan was just getting started. “I knew I had to do something, before anyone else in my clan could be corrupted by Maven’s influence. But what could I do? How could I stop an ancient cardinal vampire?” She held up her hands, a helpless expression on her sweet-looking face. I clenched my teeth. “Oh, she is good,” Katia whispered, so quietly I could barely hear her.
Morgan summoned a look of great sadness. “Some of what you’ve heard about me is true: I did stir up the ley lines in Boulder. My intent was to use the power boost to take my mother’s place as clan leader, and save my clan, including my own brother and sisters, from Maven’s influence.”
“Bullshit,” I muttered. Morgan was making herself sound like a crusader for good, but Hazel hadn’t done anything wrong, except raise a daughter who would make such a callous power grab. True, she had allowed me at a few clan functions, but I’d hardly been “welcomed.”
Morgan heaved a sigh. “Unfortunately, this was a mistake. There was no way I could have known that activating the ley lines would awaken a hungry creature. Or that innocent people would be killed.” She hung her head, and even rested her right hand over her heart. “For the rest of my life, I will carry the weight of those deaths. But because of my efforts to right a wrong, I was excommunicated from my clan and banished from my home. From my children.”
This time the crowd’s murmur held a note of sympathy. “That’s not how it happened!” I protested to Katia, feeling the anger building in my chest. “She’s spinning everything!”
A few of the nearby witches glanced my way and Katia made a shushing motion with the flat of her hand. Onstage, Morgan said solemnly, “At the time, I thought a death sentence would have been better. You have no idea how hard it’s been to leave every person I’ve ever loved, including my own babies.”
She actually paused to wipe tears from her eyes with a quick swipe of her fingers, and Katia must have sensed my urge to scoff, because she shot me a warning glance. “But I kept an ear to the ground,” Morgan went on. “When I heard that Maven was allowing the mongrels to run amok in Colorado, practically parading their crimes under your noses, I knew it was time for me to step forward again.”
That was it. I was absolutely certain Morgan had orchestrated all this, and I wasn’t about to let her get away with this bullshit. My temper flared, and I started to step forward—but Katia was waiting for it. She grabbed my arm and dragged me back through the entryway before I could regain my balance.
“Hey!” I protested. Behind her, I could see that Morgan was still talking, though a bunch of witches in the back snuck curious glances at us. “Let me go. I have to tell them—”
“What?” she hissed, so quietly that I could barely make out the word. “That Morgan is lying? The first thing they’ll say is ‘well, how do you know?’ Then what will you do? Tell them you were there, because you’re Lex Luther the infamous boundary witch?” She mimicked Morgan’s disgusted tone.
“No,” I said, although I hadn’t actually gotten that far. Part of me knew she was right, but this was Morgan Pellar, who had seduced John and threatened Charlie and broken Simon and Lily’s hearts, not to mention Hazel’s. My chest burned with anger, and I really wanted to punch something. Well, someone. “Maybe I’ll just beat the shit out of her onstage and leave it at that. She can’t lie with a broken jaw.”
“There are a thousand of them and two of us,” she whispered matter-of-factly. “And any one of them can throw you through a skylight.”
That brought me up short. “I . . .” She was right. I just really didn’t want her to be right.
“You can’t be here anymore,” Katia pronounced, reading my face. “I’ll listen to the rest of it and meet you at your place in a few hours.”
“But—”
“Go.”
Reluctantly, I allowed Katia to push me through the double doors, where the two guards were now sitting with the table attendants, all of them chatting amiably. They looked up when I stumbled outside, and for a second I really wanted them to rush me. I was just aching for a fight.
“Everything okay?” the female guard said, sounding concerned. “You look a little pale. Do you need to sit down? Do you want some water?”
Well . . . shit. Where’s a rude, aggressive asshole when you really want one? The anger began to leak out of me like a balloon with a pinhole. “No,” I said, trying not to sound sullen. “I think I’m getting a migraine. I’m heading out early.”
They nodded, and as I began to walk toward the darkened parking area, the male guard actually called, “Feel better, miss!”
Leaving the annoyingly friendly guards behind, I stalked past the rows and rows of cars, fuming to myself. Morgan fucking Pellar. I wondered how she’d managed to set all this up. It would have cost a ton of money to rent this space and hire guards. To say nothing of the difficulty of arranging the deaths of three werewolves.
Katia had been right, though. I needed to calm the hell down and think it through before I did anything. I took a deep lungful of the crisp winter air, slowing my pace. Passing the last row of cars, I reached the end of the massive lot and turned onto the road. The sun was already down, and the remaining light was fading quickly, so I had to squint to pick out Opal’s sedan. Ten or fifteen cars were lined up behind it now—people who’d arrived after the lot was full.
I didn’t really want to trudge through the ditch in the near darkness, so I checked for cars, then began walking right down the middle of the road.
Something caught my eye, and I paused for a moment. Had I just seen movement? I looked around, wondering if someone else had left the meeting early, but I didn’t see anything in the twilight. I noticed that the vehicle next to me was the same make and model Subaru as Ryan Dunn’s, and I felt a pang of heartache as I remembered those claw marks. I couldn’t help but picture Dunn, frantic and half-changed, scrabbling wildly at the reinforced glass. I had agreed to be his escort through Colorado, and I had blown it.
I stood there staring dully at the Subaru, and that moment of melancholy probably saved my life. In my peripheral vision, I saw the shadows between the cars shift, and I managed to get my arms up and shift my weight properly just before the werewolf leaped out and attacked me.
Chapter 22
That was twice in two days that I’d been tackled by a werewolf. It wasn’t any more fun the second time.
The woman was about my height and weight, but faster—too fast, which was how some part of my brain immediately processed what she was. The rest of me was busy reacting. When she ran at me, I had just enough time to bend forward at the waist, letting her momentum roll her over my back and onto the road. Unbalanced, I dropped to my hands and knees.