“Andrew’s been calling me.”
“What?” Marc sat up straight, almost sloshing whiskey into his lap. “Why the hell didn’t you—”
“Let her finish,” my father ordered, cutting Marc off with one raised palm. He nodded for me to continue.
I inhaled deeply. Then I exhaled slowly. “Those pops, and that sound like a helicopter’s propeller at the end of Painter’s call? They were in my last message from Andrew, too. He and Painter are in the same place.”
Marc tossed his glass back and got up for more.
“He knows what you are?” Michael asked, just as my father said, “He told you he was infected?”
“Yes. And no.” I glanced down at my hands, wishing they were wrapped around a drink, but I knew better than to ask Marc to bring me one. “He definitely knows about me. About all of us. But I have no idea how he found out. And no, he never actually told me he was infected, which is why it took me so long to figure out that he was. And I swear I have no idea how it happened.”
My father nodded, as if to say he believed me. But I couldn’t help noticing he didn’t say it out loud.
“How long?” Marc asked from the wet bar, sipping from his second glass of whiskey. “How long has he been calling you?”
I met his eyes, expecting to see pain and deep, deep anger. I wasn’t disappointed. “Once a day since Friday afternoon.”
“Three days?” Marc slammed his glass down on the bar and stomped toward me, stopping at the edge of the rug to tower over me. Michael stood, ready to intercede even though he was clearly just as mad as Marc, but a small shake of my father’s head held him back. “He’s been calling you for three days and you didn’t tell me? Why not?”
“Because I knew this would happen.” I made myself stay seated, knowing that if I stood, a fight would be inevitable. If I stayed calm—and seated—he might calm down, too. “I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew that his calling would upset you, and you’d want to go ‘take care’ of it. I don’t want you to take care of my problems. I can handle them myself.”
“Clearly.” Marc rubbed his forehead with one hand, as if staving off a headache. “You’ve done such a marvelous job of handling it that he’s now waltzing all over our territory, kidnapping strippers who bear a passing resemblance to you. Great job!”
“I didn’t know he had anything to do with any of that! I was just trying to avoid…well, this! You always do this. You take something small, something that’s really none of your business, and you twist it around to make it look like I did something wrong. But this time I didn’t. I was under no obligation to tell you anything.”
His brows arched high over eyes sparkling in fury. “You think this is small?”
“Well, obviously not the kidnapping part,” I conceded, shrugging. “But the phone calls were nothing, at least as far as I knew. And until I knew Andrew was involved in the rest of this, he was none of your business.”
A growl rumbled through the room, extraordinarily low and gravelly. His mouth never moved, but I knew it was Marc. I’d hurt his feelings, and his pride. And I’d pissed him off.
Sighing in defeat, I glanced down at my hands, where they lay in my lap.
“Well, you won’t have to worry about my nose in your business anymore.”
Movement blurred on the right edge of my vision. I turned toward it instinctively. Marc was gone. I whirled in my seat to see him disappear into the hall, his shirt a black smear passing out of sight beyond the door frame.
I was on my feet in an instant, running after him. My father appeared in front of the door out of nowhere, blocking my path. I ducked to dodge him. One iron-hard arm slid around my waist. He held me back. I kicked and fought, my legs flailing in midair. “I have to tell him I’m—”“Let him go, Faythe. He didn’t mean it. Give him some time and he’ll get over it.”
“No!”
“Yes.” And that was that. My father tucked me under one arm, in the most undignified position I could imagine. He kicked the door shut hard enough to make it rattle in the frame, then hauled me back to the small grouping of furniture, where Michael waited, his eyes wide with astonishment.
My father set me on my feet on the rug and gestured for me to sit on the couch.
I sat. What else could I do?
For a moment, he sipped from his whiskey, while my brother watched me in silence. Then, finally, my father opened his mouth…only to take another drink from his glass. Not a sip this time—a drink. More like a gulp. When he met my eyes again, determination was carved into the firm line of his mouth. “I know you’re upset, but we have to go on with this. I have to ask you some questions. Are you ready?”
I nodded. Of course I was ready. I was an adult who’d had a fight with her boyfriend, not a traumatized child.
“Did you ever Shift in front of Andrew, or have any contact with him at all in cat form?”
My jaw dropped. Literally. My mouth hung open, and I stared at my father like a drooling idiot, stunned into silence by a question so serious and insulting it bruised not just my pride, but my heart. I’d expected a real bitch of a question, but not that. Never that.
My father was practically accusing me of infecting Andrew. Of committing a capital crime—one of the most serious we recognized. If I admitted guilt, the Council’s law required him to have me put to death. Not locked up. Not declawed. Not put on display in front of my fellow werecats with a scarlet A on my chest.
Executed.
How could he even entertain such a thought? My shock gave way to anger that my own father could know so little about me. That he could accuse me of infecting someone. Anyone. Much less someone I’d once cared about.
“Fuck you!” I shouted, jumping to my feet as outrage surged through my veins, a thousand times hotter than blood.
My father—no, my Alpha—nodded to Michael, and he stood calmly, crossing thick arms over a broad chest. “Sit down,” Michael said. He didn’t tell me to watch my language, which said more than I could ever have hoped for.
I hesitated, standing only because sitting would be admitting defeat, no matter how minor.
“Sit, Faythe, and rein in your temper,” my father said. He drained the last of the whiskey from his glass and leaned forward to set it on the table at my end of the couch. When he leaned back, his eyes were calm, and still determined. “I have to ask. You know that. So just answer the question.”
“Fine, but I’m not going to sit.”
He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
Damn it. Standing with his permission didn’t satisfy my massive need to piss him off in return for insulting me. Stupid reverse psychology. I sank back onto the couch, and Michael followed my lead.
“Hell no, I never Shifted in front of Andrew. And he never saw me in cat form, either. To my knowledge, no human has ever seen…” My words trailed off as I realized I’d been about to lie. Accidentally, of course, but that wouldn’t matter.
A human had seen me in cat form once. A hunter, three months earlier. Nothing had come of it, other than a series of Bigfoot-esque news reports on the local stations, but I wasn’t about to bring up something I hadn’t been accused of. No sense borrowing trouble, right? Besides, some of the guys would get into trouble along with me. Ethan, Jace, and Parker had all promised Marc they wouldn’t tell.
“No, he never saw me in cat form,” I finished weakly, meeting my father’s gaze to lend credibility to my statement and distract him from what I’d almost said.
His eyes narrowed, but if he suspected anything, he’d either decided to let it go, or to address it later, because he didn’t challenge my statement. “To your knowledge, has Andrew ever come into contact with another werecat?”
“Yes,” I said, without thinking. The answer seemed pretty clear to me, but based on Michael’s surprised expression, my phrasing needed serious work. “He’s obviously come into contact with a cat,” I amended. “Unless the ‘virus’ is now airborne, in which case public panic seems inevitable.”
My father nodded again, this time with a hint of a smile. That hint—that tiny upturn of one corner of his mouth—set me at ease as no mere drink could ever have done. He would never have smiled if he were planning to have his own daughter put to death.
“Yes, clearly he has come into contact with a cat. I meant to ask if you know the identity of that cat.”
“No.” I shrugged, rolling my head on my neck to release some of the built-up tension. “I have no idea. And just to speed things up, I’m not intentionally withholding any information from you. Well, no information pertinent to this case, anyway,” I corrected myself. And there was that tiny smile again. “I don’t know who infected him. Or when or how it happened. Or how long ago.”
“And he’s called you three times?”
I shrugged, trying hard to appear casual. “Yeah. He was really angry, which I understand now. And he seemed to think I already knew he’d been infected, though I have no idea why he would thi—” My hand flew to my mouth, cutting off my words even as I choked on them. My heart slammed against the inside of my chest as a sudden realization singed through me like an electrical shock, setting off pain sensors I hadn’t even known I had. My skin tingled. My head ached. My stomach heaved. I clamped my jaws shut to hold back half-digested halibut and scalloped potatoes.