“That’s not the same, and you know it,” Malone finally said. “I’m not out to get her, no matter what you think.”
Yeah, right, you sorry bastard. I had to shove my knuckles into my mouth to keep from shouting it out loud.
“It’s my job to make sure Faythe’s hearing is fair, not just to her, but to the entire werecat community. She infected her boyfriend, then killed him to cover up her crime. She’s dangerous, whether you can see that or not, and it’s not fair to the rest of us to leave her free to do it again.”
“She killed him in self-defense, and you damn well know it.” The floorboards groaned, and I pictured my father stepping closer to Malone, invading his personal space. “Having my daughter executed won’t get you a seat at the head of the council. You must know that.”
“My position within the council has nothing to do with this. This is about your priorities, and the fact that they no longer represent the interest of the majority.”
“That’s out of line. I released Radley in hopes that he can help us. No, I’m not certain he will. But neither am I certain we can find the strays on our own before they do any more damage. Trusting Radley was worth a shot, so I took it. If it was up to you, you’d probably have had him executed.”
“Damn right. That’d be one less str—”
The bathroom door creaked open from down the hall, then silence fell, as sharp and sudden as the blade of a guillotine. I wanted to get out of bed and creep closer to the door, but I was afraid the rustle of my blankets would cover whatever happened next.
“One less what?” Marc demanded, his voice as cold and hard as steel.
Oh, shit.
“This is none of your business.” Malone wisely refused to complete his aborted thought, but I couldn’t let him get away with that. If he was going to hate Marc, he was damn well going to be honest with himself—and with the rest of us—about why.
“One less what?” I shouted, pushing myself into a sitting position with my back against the headboard. The pain in my stomach was sharp at first, but had already faded into a dull throb before my father threw the bedroom door open.
He didn’t say a word. He simply warned me with his eyes to stay out of it.
Over the shoulder of my father’s navy terry-cloth robe, I saw Malone, already fully dressed. And beyond him stood Marc, wearing only the shorts he typically slept in, his hair wet from the shower he’d just taken.
“One less what?” I repeated, narrowing my focus on Malone, wondering if he could possibly know what a complete ass he was. Surely not. Surely no one could possibly maintain such a repulsive personality without a blanket of ignorance insulating him from reality.
“One less…criminal running loose.” Malone’s face flushed in either fury or humiliation, but I didn’t know him well enough to decide which it was. “I was going to say criminal.”
“We all know what you were going to say,” I spat, tossing the covers back to expose my lower half—still clothed in the red pajama pants, thank goodness. “It doesn’t take a genius to fill in the blanks. Though apparently it takes a pedigree to get in your good graces.”
“Faythe…” my father warned, but his expression, rather than matching his carefully stern tone, was completely blank. Did that mean he didn’t really want me to shut up? Or just that I hadn’t yet reached “critical” on his internal political-disaster dial?
Malone turned back to my father, ignoring both me and Marc. “I assume you’ll let us know if Radley contacts you.”
“Certainly. And I assume you’ll let us know when you’ve agreed upon a verdict on the murder charge?”
“Of course.” Malone’s glance landed on me briefly before he stomped across the living room and out the front door.
“Get some sleep,” my father said to Marc, then he turned to me. “And you don’t overdo it today. Danny will be back this evening to see if you’re ready to Shift.”
With that, my father retired to his own rented bedroom, where he probably spent more time staring at the ceiling than actually sleeping.
The rest of the day dragged by slowly while Jace, Marc, and my father tried to catch up on sleep. Jace and Marc had been sharing one of the two upstairs rooms, but since I was awake, I let Marc borrow the spare bed in mine, for a little privacy. That left only Michael to keep me company/watch to make sure I didn’t escape, which was obviously a huge risk, considering I’d nearly been disemboweled twelve short hours earlier.
My brother spent the entire day on the couch next to me, his laptop balanced on both knees, clacking away at the keyboard as if there weren’t a real world all around him, ready and willing to keep him busy.Fortunately, he didn’t want to talk, so I had plenty of time to catch up on my reading. As luck would have it, during one of Michael’s two short bathroom breaks, the cabin’s landline rang for the first time all day, and there was no one else around to answer it. I dropped my novel on my lap and carefully stretched toward the end table, hoping to reach the phone before it woke anyone up.
“Hello?” I gritted my teeth as the pain in my stomach faded.
Naturally, it was my mother, since there was no one around for me to pass the phone to. “Faythe, dear, how are you feeling?”
“Like a pincushion. How ’bout you?”
To my surprise, she actually laughed. “Well, you sound good. And I’m fine. We’re all doing very well, in fact. Manx finally decided on colors for the baby’s first picture outfit. We’re going with stripes in cornflower, periwinkle, sapphire and midnight.”
“Lovely.” I couldn’t help rolling my eyes. “And…monochromatic.”
“I know.” My mother chuckled again. “She’s still insisting on all blue.”
Dr. Carver had confirmed the unborn infant’s gender a couple of months earlier with an after-hours ultrasound at his office. Far from being disappointed with another boy, Manx was thrilled. She was determined that regardless of her own fate, this baby would live, and that the world would welcome him in spite of his gender. Unlike his brothers. And to prove her point, she and my mother were knitting the poor thing an entire closetful of hats, sweaters, mittens and blankets in every shade of blue imaginable.
My mom talked my ear off for the next five minutes, telling me she’d finally met Angela, Ethan’s girlfriend, and how often Manx’s baby was kicking now. Owen had sold the last of the season’s hay, and Vic and Parker were doing regular patrols. The only one she didn’t mention was Ryan, perhaps because nothing had changed with him, in his basement prison cell. But more likely, she was still trying to pretend her favorite-son-turned-traitor had never returned. And I could hardly blame her for that.
When Michael emerged from the bathroom, I tossed him the phone, mouthed the word Mom, and went back to my book.
“Hello?” he said into the mouthpiece, already heading into the kitchen to scrounge up some lunch.
I didn’t even pretend to read as I eavesdropped. My mother hadn’t asked me about the hearing, though I knew damn well that was why she’d called, probably hoping I’d be the one to bring it up. But that wasn’t my style. If she wanted to know something from me, she’d have to ask.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t her style. My mother was more the hint-dropping type, at least with me.
My mother and I had never been the best of friends. She was grace, and tact, and poise, while I was bruised, and blunt, and loud. But despite our differences, I’d recently discovered that she was the source of my steel backbone, and quite possibly the root of my own stubbornness—discoveries that both surprised and pleased me.
Still, she was more comfortable discussing serious things with Michael, and, sure enough, as he dug through the freezer, Michael fended question after question, leaving me to puzzle out her side of the conversation on my own, because the rumbling of the ancient refrigerator blocked most of it out.
“Guilty.” He held up a box of frozen lasagna and a pepperoni pizza, asking me silently to choose. I pointed to the pizza, and he shoved the lasagna back into the freezer. “Not yet. Uncle Rick’s buying us more time.” Another pause as he closed the microwave door on the pizza and pressed some buttons. “Yeah, she did. It was really…interesting. Didn’t look much like the last time.”
She was asking about the partial Shift—not my favorite topic at the moment. Fortunately, when the microwave dinged, Michael begged off the line, promising to have our father call her back later.
While we were eating, Jace padded downstairs, clad only in a pair of blue plaid pajama bottoms cinched around his narrow waist. He mumbled a groggy hello on his way into the kitchen, where he nuked five frozen burritos and started a fresh pot of coffee, his eyes still half-closed. Minutes later, the scent of coffee brought Marc out of his coma, looking irritatingly fresh and alert.
I’d slept ten out of the last twenty-four hours and still felt like crap thanks to painkillers and the constant throbbing in my stomach. Marc had only had four, and looked like he could climb Mount Everest without breaking a sweat. The claw marks on his arm were little more than puffy red scars now that he’d Shifted into and out of cat form twice.