I didn’t have to be told twice.
“What are they?”
“Human.”
“What else are they?”
Lucas took a breath and then he shrugged. “I don’t know if there’s a word for it,” he said. “If there is, I’ve never heard it. They’re just humans who can … do things.”
“Things like what?” Lake asked, and I could tell it was taking everything she had not to make the question any more leading than that.
“All of them are different,” Lucas said slowly. “They each have an … ability. One of them gets inside your head. He can make you see things that aren’t there, make you feel them. They feed you silver, make you think it’s chocolate.”
I thought of my dreams: the throbbing in my temples, the tone in Archer’s voice—pleasant, but deadly underneath.
“There’s a woman, an old woman. She’s got a way with animals, a way of making them do things. She likes snakes, and if you’re a werewolf, she can force your Shift.”
I really, really did not like the sound of that—not that being mentally set on fire was a walk in the park.
“What else?” I asked. Since he hadn’t yet referenced someone with Caroline’s power, I knew he hadn’t told us everything, and I wanted to save my ace in the hole for after I’d squeezed everything out of him that I could myself.
“There’s another woman, her name is Bridget, and she does this … whistling thing. It makes you forget. It’s like one second you’re there and you’re fighting, and the next, you can’t fight. You just listen. Even if they’re cutting you open, even if you can feel it hurting, you can’t do anything but listen.”
I waited to see if Lucas would say anything else, trying not to fully digest the horror of what he’d already said.
“They told me that they had someone who’s really good at finding things when they go missing.” Lucas laughed, and it was a miserable, hair-raising sound. “I guess they were telling the truth.”
“You came here knowing they could track you?” I couldn’t help the exasperation in my voice. “And you didn’t think it was a good idea to give us any warning that someone might come after you? Even after we specifically asked you who that someone was, you didn’t think it might be pertinent to mention that they have about a thousand ways of killing people that normal humans don’t?”
You’re getting off track, I told myself. Yelling at him doesn’t get you answers. He’ll either shut down or expect you to beat them out of him.
That was what any other alpha would do—except for maybe Callum, who was all the more lethal for how seldom he resorted to using brute force.
Think, I told myself. What would Callum do?
My brain wasn’t forthcoming with answers, so I decided to focus on my pack’s own particular strengths. It was time to bring in the big guns.
“Lucas, would you like something to drink?” The change in tactic took the Were completely off guard. Unbeknownst to him, however, that was more of a by-product than the point.
“Drink?” Lucas repeated dumbly.
“Like a milkshake or a soda or something?”
Mitch caught my eyes from across the table, and it was clear that he knew exactly what I was doing.
Careful, Bryn, he warned. The other alphas don’t know about Keely. If you send this boy back and he ends up tipping Shay off, we could all be in for a world of hurt.
I knew as well as Mitch did that most alphas wouldn’t take kindly to the idea of a human who could loosen lips just by brushing up against someone or looking them in the eye.
She does it all the time, I responded, sending the words from my mind to Mitch’s. And nobody’s figured it out yet.
People—even the kind who turned into wolves on occasion—expected bartenders to be good listeners. Keely just lived up to that expectation—and then some.
“Maybe some lemonade?” Lucas asked tentatively, and I tried to digest that the source of all of this trouble was the type of person who, when asked if he wanted something to drink, requested lemonade.
In Shay’s pack, Lucas had never stood a chance.
“Keely?” I called. She’d done a good job making herself scarce, but Keely was a smart woman, and I doubted she’d gone far. She probably knew as much about werewolf politics as I did, and she’d been the human equivalent of truth serum all her life—the moment Chase had taken the little ones out, Keely had to have known that her services might come in handy.
Sure enough, a few seconds after I’d bellowed, Keely sauntered out from the kitchen and leaned across the bar. “You rang?”