“Sit,” Ivy breathed, and this time Nick did, taking Jenks’s spot beside me and putting Jenks’s coat on the chair beside Ivy. “Where did you find that?” she muttered.
“It’s mine.”
I shifted in my chair, smelling our food coming. The woman didn’t look at anyone as she placed the food down and left. The tension was so thick, even she could sense it. I stared at my plate. There was my fabulous burger, oozing juice, with lettuce, onions, mushrooms, cheese, and, oh God, there was bacon on it too. And I couldn’t eat it because we had to argue about Nick’s ugly statue first. Well, to hell with that, I thought, removing the top bun and picking the onions off.
Ivy refilled her glass from the pitcher, a growing rim of brown around her pupils. “I didn’t say whose is it. I said, where did you find it?”
Nick pulled his plate closer, clearly wanting to ignore her but making the healthy decision not to. “I can’t believe you brought it here,” he said again, motions jerky as he rearranged his pickles. “I sent it to Rachel so it would be safe.”
Ivy glared at him. “If you use smart people in your takes without telling them, don’t complain when they do the unexpected and ruin your plans.”
“I thought she was dead,” Nick protested. “I never expected anyone to come help me.”
I ate one of Jenks’s fries. There wasn’t any ketchup on the table, but asking for some would get us thrown out. Humans blamed the Turn on tomatoes, but they were the ones who had done the genetic tinkering. “And why are they willing to pack up to get ahold of it?” I asked.
Nick looked ill. “I don’t have to tell you anything.”
My lips parted in disbelief, and I turned to Ivy. “He’s still running his scam.”
“I’m not.” His eyes were wide in an innocence that couldn’t reach me anymore. “But the Weres can’t have it. Don’t you know what it is?”
His last words were a hushed whisper, and Ivy glanced past me to the door as three underdressed, giggling women pranced in. Immediately Becky started in with a high-pitched chatter, her eyes tracking to Jenks. I think she had called them about fresh meat.
“I know what it is,” Ivy said, dismissing the women. “Where did you find it?”
One of the guys at the bar was humming. While we sat hunched over our food and argued, Jenks had some guy at the bar singing about a tanker that had sunk forty-some years ago. Shaking my head in wonder, I returned my attention to Nick. “We’re waiting,” I said, then wrangled my burger to my mouth. My eyes closed as I bit into it. Sweet bliss, it was good.
His eyes stressed, Nick picked up one of his burgers, leaning his elbows on the table. “Rachel, you saw how there were three packs on that island, didn’t you? All working together?”
I scrambled for a napkin. “It was freaking weird,” I said around my full mouth. “You should have seen how fast their alpha Wered. And they were nasty too. Like alphas without the restraint. Cocky little bastards…” My words trailed off as I took another bite.
“That’s what it does,” Nick said, and Ivy swore under her breath. “I found it in Detroit.”
“Then it’s the focus?” she whispered, and I waved a hand for their attention, fry weaving between the two of them, but they weren’t listening to me. “That thing can’t be the focus,” Ivy added. “It was destroyed five millennia ago. We don’t even know if it even really existed. And if it did, it sure as hell wouldn’t be in Detroit.”
“That’s where I found it,” Nick said, then took a bite. A small moan came from him. “You can’t destroy something that powerful,” he mumbled. “Not with rocks and sticks. And not with magic.” He swallowed. “Maybe with a car crusher, but they didn’t have them back then.”
“What is it?” I insisted, only marginally aware of the flirting going on across the room between the stanzas of men dying on the waves. Get a clue, Jenks.
Ivy pushed her untouched plate with her burger away. “It’s trouble,” she said. “I was going to make him give it to the Weres, but now—”
“Damn it!” I shouted, and the three women ogling Jenks giggled and jiggled—in that order. I lowered my voice. “Someone tell me what I have sitting on my lap before I explode.”“You’re the professor,” Ivy said bitingly to Nick, taking a fry from Jenks’s plate. “You tell her.”
Nick washed a bite of his first burger down and hesitated. “Vamps can either be born or bitten, but the only way to become a Were is to be born one.”
“Duh,” I said. “Witches are like that too, along with most of Inderland.”
“Well…” Nick paused, his eyes flicking everywhere. “…the Were holding that thing can make a Were by a bite.”
I chewed and swallowed. “And they want to kill you for that?”
Ivy brought her head up. “Think about it, Rachel,” she cajoled. “Right now, vampires are at the top of the food chain.”
I made a telling face at her as I took another bite, wrangling a piece of bacon.
“What I mean is we have more political power than any other Inderlander species,” she amended. “Because of how we’re structured, everyone looks to someone else, the top vampires owing so many favors that they’re as effective as a political house member. It’s a tight web, but we generally get what we want. Humans would get itchy with their trigger finger except that our numbers are held static by only the undead being able to infect a human with enough virus to make it even possible to Turn them.”
I stole another of Jenks’s fries, wishing I had ketchup.
“Weres, though,” Nick said, “don’t have political power as a group because they won’t look to any but their pack leader. And their numbers can’t increase any faster than their birthrate.” Leaning forward, Nick tapped the table with a swollen finger, his entire mien changing as he became the instructor.
“The focus makes it possible for the number of Weres to increase very quickly. And the multiple packing you saw on the island is nothing to what will happen when it gets out that the focus is intact. Everyone will want a part of it, merging their pack into the one that holds it. You saw what they were like. Can you imagine what would happen if a vampire ran into a pack of Weres acting like that?”
Jenks’s half-eaten fry dangled from my fingers, forgotten. Slowly it was starting to sink in, and it didn’t look good. The problem wasn’t that the focus would allow Weres to pack up. The problem was that the focus would keep them packed up. Worried, I glanced at Ivy. Seeing me understand, she nodded.
The island Weres had been together for days, maybe weeks, and that had been with only the promise of the focus. If they had it, the round would be permanent. I thought back to the ring of Weres surrounding me on the island, the three packs united under one Were holding the strength of six alphas. Their cocky, savage attitude had been shocking. Walter had not only drawn his dominance from them, but also channeled it back into every member without the tempering calm and moral strength that all alphas had. That wasn’t even bringing up how fast they could Were if they muted each other’s pain. Add to that their new aggressiveness and a resistance to pain?
I set Jenks’s fry down, no longer hungry. Weres were fairly submissive in Inderland society, the alphas the only ones having enough personal power to challenge the vampires’ political structure. Remove that submissive posture, and the two species were going to start clashing. A lot. That’s probably why the vamps had hidden the focus in the first place.
Crap, if the vampires knew about it, they would be after me too. “This isn’t good,” I said, feeling ill.
Making a puff, Ivy leaned back. “You think?”
From across the bar, Jenks finished his song, immediately falling into a sleazy version of “American Woman,” gyrating his hips and making the three women and one of the truck drivers cheer and whistle. Jax was above him, making sparkles. I wondered if anyone had any inkling the world was changing, starting right here in this little bar.
Wiping my fingers clean, I reached for the bag on my lap. “It can shift the balance of Inderland power,” I said, and Ivy nodded, the tips of her hair swinging.
“With the explosive destruction of dropping a tiger into a dog show,” she said dryly. “It’s believed that Weres used to have a political structure very similar to that of the vampires. Better, since Weres never betrayed another as vampires are known to do for blood. Their hierarchy revolved around who held the focus, and eliminating it shattered the Weres’ social structure, politically castrating them and leaving them squabbling in small packs.”
Nick started on his second burger. “They were going to forcibly convert humanity, according to the demon texts,” he said, taking off the top bun to eat it like an open-faced sandwich. “Those who wouldn’t voluntarily become a Were were killed. Entire families whelped or murdered in the name of Were conquest over vampires. They would have had a good chance of succeeding but the witches crossed from the ever-after about that time and sided with the humans and vampires. Using witch magic, we beat them back.”