Eventually the Jeep slowed, and Quinn reached over to touch my hand. “There’s your car,” he said softly, and I opened my eyes to see the Subaru in an empty parking lot. I breathed a sigh of relief—not just for the car, but for the fact that there were no ghosts nearby to distract me. “Any sign of Mary and Keith?” I asked. I was looking, too, but his night vision was better.
“Nope,” he said, scanning the darkness. “The campground looks deserted. It’s too cold for fragile human bodies.” He shot me a grin, trying to break the tension.
“To the motel?”
“Yes.”
We decided to drive past the place first and look for signs of occupancy. Quinn drove slowly the whole way from the campground, so we weren’t obviously slowing down as we approached the motel.
Mike’s Mountain Inn was identical to any number of mom-and-pop motels around the state: a two-story log building in an L shape, with eight rooms on each floor and a big community room on the end where large parties could gather. These kinds of motels had been replaced by big chains in most parts of the country, but they were still viable businesses in Colorado, because they could open and close with the seasons, and because they catered to the kind of people who wouldn’t be comfortable in a generic Holiday Inn—what my dad fondly referred to as the three Hs of Colorado: hippies, hunters, and hooligans.
Unfortunately, those were the same kinds of people who often left ghosts, and even without my boundary mindset, I could see four or five translucent shapes moving at the windows. I didn’t spot any sign of the living, though. A single streetlight lit the parking lot, more for security than anything else.
“Did you see that?” Quinn asked abruptly, craning his neck to look back as we went past.
“What?”
“In the big room on the end—I saw a lit fireplace.”
I turned in my seat to look. I couldn’t see anything, but I trusted his enhanced vision. “Let’s go check it out.”
Ordinarily we would have parked a few blocks away and crept in on foot, but we had no chance of sneaking up on two werewolves. Instead, Quinn did a blatant U-turn and pulled the Jeep up in front of the party room, the headlights beaming inside. Or they would have beamed inside, but the interior windows had been covered with something. Quinn and I exchanged a look and got out of the car.
“Mary?” I called, looking at the building. “It’s Lex and Quinn. We just want to talk.” I had a hand on my revolver, but kept it in the holster.
One moment Quinn was standing next to me, and the next instant he’d whipped around to face the other direction. “What is it?” I asked, glancing over my shoulder.
“Don’t run,” he said softly; then the wolf stepped out of the shadows, into the streetlight.
The sandy-brown werewolf was the biggest I’d seen yet, easily reaching my waist. Its teeth were bared, and as it closed in I could hear a low growl from the back of its throat. “Back slowly toward the Jeep,” Quinn murmured.
“That’s not Mary,” I said under my breath. And this wolf was way too big to be Keith. Had Mary and Keith been attacked? Or could they have met up with someone else from their pack?
Quinn’s head jerked sideways again, and a second, mostly gray wolf came at us from the direction of the road, snarling softly. Long ropes of saliva dripped from its mouth, and I could see blood on its muzzle. The revolver was already in my hand, but I didn’t know who to target first. In seconds the gray wolf would be between us and the Jeep, but the brown wolf was bigger and closer. I pointed the weapon at him. Quinn and I had stopped moving now, but the wolves were advancing on both sides.
“Make a run for the building?” I whispered, but then I caught movement in the corner of my eye and cursed under my breath. “Second floor,” I said, and Quinn’s eyes jumped to the snow-white wolf prowling along the upper balcony, headed for the stairs. I took an involuntary step backward, bumping into Quinn, and the white wolf crouched and then leaped over the railing toward us.
Chapter 28
The white wolf landed gracefully about four feet away from my shoes. Close enough for me to see green eyes and enormous claws. I aimed the weapon at her, but just in case, I yelled as loud as I could, “Mary! I really don’t want to shoot this guy!”
The door to the lodge’s common room slammed open. I glanced up, expecting Mary, but saw another, equally familiar, face.
“Stop,” Tobias called, his hands going out in front of him. “She’s a friend!”
The three wolves swung their heads to face him for a moment, then looked back at me. It was eerie, and I didn’t put my revolver away just yet. “Tobias?” I said. “What’s going on? Where’s Mary?”
His attention was focused completely on the wolves. “I know her! She won’t hurt you unless you hurt her,” he said urgently. “But that gun has silver; you can smell it. Back down, please.”
The three wolves’ postures shifted as they began to relax. Then, one by one, they turned and trotted back to wherever they’d come from. The white wolf that had leaped from the balcony loped toward the stairs to resume her position, and I realized she faded completely into the white walls on the second story. Smart.
Tobias lowered his arms and grinned at me. He was skinny and on the tall side with an easy smile and college-kid features, though he was probably close to my age. He wore jeans and a flannel shirt that was too cool for the weather, but wolves rarely got cold. “Hey, silver girl. How’ve you been?”
“Tobias.” I holstered the gun and stepped forward, letting him throw his arms around me. Werewolves were into touching. He smelled like woodsmoke and marshmallow, and there was a telltale white smear on his collar. “Were you . . . making s’mores?”
“Yep,” he said cheerfully. “Sorry if those guys scared you. That was Finn, Nicolette, and Lindsay. They don’t know you yet. We’re all a little on edge, and you smell kinda angry.”
I probably smelled pretty fucking scared too, but Tobias was too polite to mention it.
Finn had to be the enormous brown wolf. “The gray wolf had blood on her muzzle,” I said.
“Nicki? Yeah, we’ve been going to town on the local rabbit population.” He gave me a wolfish grin, and I couldn’t help but smile back.
“Where’s Mary?” I asked.
“Behind the building.” He pointed with a thumb. “She was in four legs, doing a scout. She’ll be done with her shift soon. You guys want to come in?”
Quinn glanced at me, questioning. I took a deep breath, trying to swallow the rest of my flight-or-fight response, and nodded.
We followed Tobias into the lodge’s gathering room, a big space with an open ceiling and faded red carpets that had seen many pairs of rough hiking boots. Benches lined the walls, but the space was dominated by a massive fireplace right in the middle of the room, with a bricks-and-mortar ledge all around it so people could sit and warm up.
There was a person curled up on one of the benches against the wall in the back corner, now sitting up and looking at us sleepily. I recognized them from Maven’s files, though it took me a second to remember the right name: Alex.
Keith was asleep on the bench opposite Alex’s, right next to the emergency exit, and he didn’t even stir despite all the noise. His mouth was wide open, a low snore audible over the crackling fire. I noticed there was a ghost in the same corner, a very faint one.
“You guys want a s’more?” Tobias asked cheerfully. Then he shot an apologetic look at Quinn. “Sorry, dude. Forgot about the vampire thing for a second. Lex? S’more?”
“No thank you.” If I was being honest, a s’more sounded great, but I wasn’t certain we were out of danger, and I didn’t want to be covered in sticky marshmallow goo if there was a fight.
“Hey, how’s Sashi?” he asked. “Is she good? Can you say hi for me?”
“Sure. She’s—”
At that moment the emergency exit opened—they must have taped it so it could be opened from either side—and Mary prowled into the room in a long-sleeved black dress made of some kind of sweatshirt material. Her hair was disheveled and her feet were bare, but she moved toward us like she was stalking across a dance floor on stilettos. “Lex,” she said with a small frown. “How did you find us?”
“Locating spell,” I said, crossing my arms. “What the hell, Mary? I tried to protect you, and you stole my fucking car.”
Quinn gave me a sideways glance—you sure you want to do this?—but I didn’t back down. I was pissed, and apparently unable to hide it. Might as well clear the air. “Tell me again about that run-and-hide protocol?”
She abruptly stopped walking, opened her mouth. Closed it again. Then, to my surprise, her shoulders drooped slightly and her eyes went to the floor in front of me. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I wasn’t lying—there is a protocol—but it involves regrouping at one of our safe locations.” She looked around the room. “This is the one our pack used to have in Colorado, years and years ago.”
“You could have just told me.”
She straightened up. “I wasn’t sure who to trust.”
“Have I done something to make you think you couldn’t trust me?”
Her eyes narrowed. “You mean besides swear loyalty to Maven?”
Walked right into that one. Her voice was sharp, and beside me, Quinn shifted his weight. I could feel Alex’s gaze from the corner of the room, but they hadn’t risen from the bench.
Tobias, meanwhile, was looking back and forth between Mary and me like a crestfallen puppy. “You guys . . . Lex is here to help.” He gave me a hopeful look. “Right?” Before I could answer, he added to Mary, “That’s what she does. She helps.”
I blinked at Tobias for a second. His dedication to Sashi wasn’t surprising, but I hadn’t realized he thought so highly of me.
“Why don’t we all sit?” Quinn suggested. “It’s been a long day.”
It wasn’t like he got tired from standing, but I understood the gesture and allowed Mary to lead us to the empty benches at the opposite side of the room from Alex and Keith. She probably wanted to let them rest, but it came off as a small gesture of trust. Or maybe just a sign that she didn’t find me physically threatening in the least.
“Why are you here?” Mary said once we were settled. “To kick us out of the state?”
I glanced at Quinn, who gave a tiny nod, his cue that I should do the talking. I was less affiliated with Maven than he was, and he could always step in and be the bad cop if I was too permissive. “Believe it or not,” I said to Mary, “we don’t currently give a shit about you guys hiding out here. Bigger fish and all that.”
Mary glanced at Quinn, then back to me as if she couldn’t quite believe it. “What do you mean?”