The Burning Claw (The Grey Wolves #10)(45)

“She’s been having more and more headaches,” Stralina explained.
“Her own magic is attempting to fight off what has been done to her.”
Peri placed her hand on Sally’s head and whispered softly in her own language. Suddenly the girl’s shoulders relaxed and she dropped her hand from her forehead.
“Okay,” Sally mumbled. “Not that I’m looking a gift horse in the mouth, but that was weird.” She was talking to herself, so obviously some things hadn’t changed regardless of the altered memory. Peri stepped back and watched as Sally continued on her way.
“Can her memory be restored?” the pixie asked.
“Magic that alters the mind can be very dangerous,” Peri answered. “If tampered with by another magical being who didn’t cast the original spell, well, that can be deadly. The good news is her memory can be restored. The bad news is it can’t be restored immediately, not all at once. Her memory will have to be revealed slowly, over a period of time. And time, as always, is not on our side.”
The high fae and the pixie watched as the girl with short blonde, purple streaked hair, haunted eyes, and Sally’s face, walked away from them.
“Tell me why I am letting Costin’s mate walk away please?”
Starlina raised her shoulders to her ears and held her hands up next to them, palms up. “I got nothin’ boss.”
“You are supposed to lie to me. Give me some touchy feely pixie encouragement about how we need to handle this delicately and that we can’t freak her out and I’m doing the right thing, yadda, yadda, blah,” Peri lectured, finally looking away from Sally’s fading form.
“Okay. Yadda, yadda, blah,” Starlina said as she patted Peri’s leg reassuringly. Then she looked up at the high fae and grinned, giving her a thumbs up. “As you say, I totally got you.”
Peri rolled her eyes and placed her hand on the pixie’s head. “There was no touching in my directions. You touched.”
“You’ll get over it.”
Peri smiled to herself as she flashed them from Oceanside. The little pixie was going to do alright if she could hold her own with the likes of Perizada. 
They appeared in Jen and Decebel’s suite at the Serbian mansion. Peri knew that it would be empty. The Serbian Alpha and his mate would be on the way to their meeting with Vasile by now.
“Why are we here?” Stralina asked.
Peri’s smile was wicked as she answered. “Because this is the Alpha’s suite. It will annoy the crap out of Jen’s mate to have my scent all over his territory.” Just as quickly as the smile had appeared, however, it vanished as Peri computed all of the information she had gathered. The biggest kick to the gut had been finding out that it had been Alston who had cloaked Sally’s memory. “He was supposed to be a good guy, dammit,” Peri whined. “What is it with all these fae jumping off the good ship lollipop and hopping on to the bad ship rotten apple? Do they offer better health insurance? Perhaps, they have some company perks that the good guys just can’t compete with.” Peri ended her monologue with a very dignifying foot stomp.
She tilted her head back and squeezed her eyes shut. Sucking in a deep breath of air, filling her lungs to their maximum capacity, she held it. She held it until her body forced her to let it out. Peri managed to relieve a little of her tension but not anywhere close to all of it.
“Can I ask what we’re doing here, besides trying to annoy the Alpha?” The pixie said in a calm, soothing voice. It made Peri want to punt her across the room like a ball. She hated when others were calm when she was so far from it. But it wasn’t Stralina’s fault, so she refrained from kicking the little pixie.
“Stalling,” she answered as she began to pace the room. Her devious mind was always at work, so, as she paced, Peri touched everything she passed. Decebel was going to hit the roof. It would be hilarious. Focus, Peri, she growled at herself.
“Okay, here’s the deal,” she said, deciding that talking out loud would better keep her on task. She was pissed off about Alston, and was, for some reason, projecting her anger onto Decebel. Okay, she knew the reason, he was a butthead. Boom. Reason enough to take unwarranted anger out on him. “Sally’s memory is jacked up. It can be fixed, however.” She held a finger up. “It must be done slowly.”
“You’ve covered this,” said Stralina.
“Shh,” Peri snapped. “Don’t mess with my mojo. In order to uncloak her memories, we will need to take our time. If Costin finds out that we’ve found her, he won’t give us the time we need. He will simply follow his instincts and go take back what is his. So, Costin cannot know. Now—” Lowering her finger she tapped her chin thoughtfully. “The question is, who do we tell, if anyone at all?”
“Do you think it wise to keep this information from Vasile and Decebel?” Lucian’s voice rumbled in her mind. “I understand why you can’t tell Costin. But the Alphas will be very angry if you keep the location of a lost pack member from them—not to mention her two friends.”
Peri was well aware that Jen and Jacque were going to have a barbeque featuring her as the stuffed pig when they found out that she hadn’t told them where Sally was or what had happened to her.
“The more people that know, the greater risk that Costin will find out. If he tries to get to her while her mind is still so heavily affected by the magic, he could kill her,” she pointed out.
Peri could feel Lucian’s frustration at the situation. He didn’t like the idea of two powerful Alphas angry with his mate.
“Go to the meeting and feel them out. Perhaps, you should gauge their ability to handle the information before you decide what to reveal.”
“I will likely find that their ability to act rationally about their lost friend and healer is about as likely as your ability to do a striptease while wearing a tutu. Then what should I do?” She felt his amusement at her which brought a much-needed smile to her face.“You might find that I’m perfectly capable of doing a striptease while wearing a tutu. But just because I’m capable doesn’t mean I’ll do it. You might find the same situation there. If they are not in a state to be helpful, then I suppose you should sit on the info for a few days. Decide if you should tell Vasile or Decebel in private. Vasile, certainly, can keep a level head.”
“Fine,” She huffed at him. “We’ll do it your way but in exchange I expect that striptease. You better get to finding a tutu, Wolf.”
“As my lady commands,” he responded in that slow, sexy, voice that he knew made her want to kick saving the world to the curb and go home to him.
“Play fair,” she growled at him.
“Then I’d never win.”
She laughed out loud as she felt him pull back from her mind. He was wrong. Her mate was cunning and patient. All he had to do was wait for her to make a mistake in whatever little game they were playing and then he’d make his move. He only cheated because it amused her and he liked pleasing her.
“So have we got a plan now?” Stralina asked her.
“Was it that obvious that I was having a conversation in my mind with my mate?” Peri asked the pixie.
Stralina lifted one shoulder. “Well, your face sort of moves around. Like your eyebrows raise, or your mouth tilts up or down. Your forehead creases and occasionally you huff or roll your eyes. So it’s like you are responding with your face to something no one else can hear.”
Peri stared down at the little female for a few seconds before shaking her head. “You could have just said yes. I didn’t need the play by play.”
“Since you talked to your mate, do we have a plan?” she asked Peri again.
Peri held her hand out and tilted it from side to side. “Meh, we have a loosely thought out next step.”
“So, a plan,” Stralina added.
“A plan implies that you have looked at all of the other available options and decided the best possible action based upon likely results. We have not looked at all of the other available actions and we have no idea of the likely results,” Peri countered.
“What’s another option?”
“Going home and making wild monkey love with my mate.”
“And another?” Stralina asked again, un-phased by Peri’s response.
“Repeating the aforementioned option,” she answered without pause.
This time the pixie laughed. “Right, so we aren’t going to look at any other available options. I think we’re good where we are.”
Peri nodded. “I sort of thought that would be how you felt.” She placed her hand on the pixie’s shoulder once again and flashed them to Vasile’s office. 
The normally calm, organized room was a big, loud chaotic mess, and Peri briefly wondered if she’d somehow flashed them to the wrong house. But then she heard Jen’s voice.
“Us standing around like a bunch of yapping hyenas isn’t helping us find him,” she growled at her mate. Decebel snarled back so viciously that Peri took a step toward the couple as though she needed to protect Jen from her mate. Which was ludicrous because Decebel, nor any mated male, would never intentionally harm their mate. They’d sooner rip off their own man parts.
“I know what I need to do in order to find my Beta, female,” Decebel said to Jen with amber eyes lit up like Christmas lights. “I do not need you pointing out the obvious to me.”