Caged, page 11
There was something odd about the way she looked at Liam when she said the last part. The letter opener in her hand was motionless, but still a present threat.
“She knows about werewolves,” Peasblossom whispered, peeking her face out of my waist pouch.
Liam jerked his gaze to me, and I knew he’d heard her.
May stiffened, reacting to Liam’s sudden movement. She didn’t look at me, didn’t see Peasblossom. Her gaze remained locked on Liam, and her hand tightened around the letter opener as she shifted her body ever so slightly. Just enough to give her a smooth angle to stab outward with the weapon if she had to.
My heart pounded, and my chest squeezed tight, cutting me off mid-breath. If she was human, she probably wouldn’t be able to hurt Liam if he decided to attack. Liam wasn’t just fast, he was experienced. He was used to fighting creatures that could cross a room in the blink of an eye, and flip a car if the urge struck them. Silver weapon or no, May wouldn’t have a chance.
Unless she wasn’t human.
“We should go,” I told Liam. “The paperwork won’t start itself.” I forced a smile as I pulled a string of magic from the pool inside me, wrapping the violet strands of power around my voice. “I’m sorry you were given the sad news over the phone. That wasn’t right, and I’m sure the officer will be spoken to. I’m sorry for your loss.” I met her eyes, pouring more magic into my tone. “I want you to know, we’re going to find out where Mr. Varca got that wolf. Whoever left that animal with him is responsible for what happened, and we’ll make sure that person pays for it.”
May didn’t relax, and she still didn’t spare me so much as a glance. “Thank you.”
I nodded, turning to the door. As I did, I exhaled, letting out another puff of magic, watching it flow over the room on a silver wave. “Well, shall we go?”
Liam stared at me as if I’d lost my mind, but I ignored him, watching as my energy probed the room, searching for magic. A horseshoe I hadn’t noticed over the doorway glittered with specks of gold. A hunk of jade on a side table pulsed with violet light.
I headed for the door, trusting Liam to follow me as my mind whirled with possibilities. The silver letter opener could have been a coincidence, but the way she held onto it, the way she’d moved to face Liam when he jerked around… Instinct told me she’d viewed Liam as a threat. And I couldn’t think of a reason she’d see a lawman that way if she didn’t know more than a human should.
I tapped a finger on the truck’s door handle as I waited for Liam to catch up and let me in.
“What was that about?” he asked, as soon as we’d closed our doors behind us. “We should have looked around more. And I had more questions.”
“Did you see how nervous she was around you? The way she held that silver letter opener?”
He narrowed his eyes. “You think she knows?”
I looked back toward the Paw Patroller building, staring at the window. “We don’t know exactly what she saw when she opened the door at Varca’s. She said she caught a glimpse of the body and the wolf and shut the door, but what if she saw Paul’s clothes on the floor? What if he still had a shred of clothing on? If she suspects the truth, then she knows you’re lying.”
“You think she’d make the connection that he turned into a werewolf?” Liam asked, his voice making it clear what he thought of that idea. “That’s not usually a jump a human makes.”
I wanted to point out that he’d thought the same thing about Emma, but it seemed petty to mention that right now. “For a human, maybe. But not a witch.”
Liam had just put the keys in the ignition, but as soon as the last word left my mouth, he dropped his hand, his sudden stare pinning me to my seat. “She’s a witch?”
“Maybe.” I shifted uneasily as his aura flared, turning the car into a small oven. “Start the car and let’s get out of here before she gets suspicious.”
Liam frowned, but did as I asked.
“I don’t know if she’s a witch,” I continued. “But she had a few enchanted items inside. I couldn’t take the time to identify the specific spells without risking alerting her that I know, but either she’s a witch, or she believes in magic enough to purchase enchanted items. Either way, it makes the possibility that she believes in werewolves more likely. It definitely makes it more likely that if she glimpsed something in that room, she saw it for what it truly was.”
“She wasn’t nervous around me before,” Liam pointed out.
“I doubt she carries the letter opener in her purse. If she was nervous around you before, maybe she just hid it well, knowing there wasn’t much she could do. And she was at a crime scene, maybe she did seem nervous but you attributed it to her having just seen a dead body. Or maybe she’s a strong witch, and she had a plan for if things got out of hand.”
I stared out the windshield, letting my mind wander over May’s behavior. “May claims she and Paul both outright refused to be part of Varca’s dream of wolf ownership, but obviously Paul had second thoughts. We only have May’s word for it that she wasn’t there from the beginning as part of whatever meeting took place.”
“Yeah!” Peasblossom climbed out of the pouch, falling out when her foot caught the edge. She landed with a grunt. “For all we know, she and Paul went there together and she saw what happened.”
“So you think Paul and May were both there, Brenna bit Paul, and May got out, then shut the door behind her to leave Paul to eat Varca?” Liam asked. “If that was true, then where’s Brenna?”
“Maybe May had control over her, and she took Brenna away and hid her and changed clothes before going back to call the police?” I suggested.
“You think she’s that powerful that she could control Brenna?” Liam didn’t sound like he believed me. “Brenna’s not a new wolf. She’s almost sixty-five, and we’re born shifters. Her control is beyond reproach.”
“Either Brenna is under someone’s control, or she’s acting on her own. So either someone made her bite Paul and then forced her to leave and they’re hiding her now, or she bit Paul on purpose, and she’s hiding from you herself. On purpose.”
I hated to point it out, but it was true. Liam’s jaw tightened. “If May was powerful enough to do all that, then wouldn’t you sense it? Isn’t there some way for you to tell?”
“The more power a witch has, the easier it is for her to hide it,” I said. “It’s the new witches that are obvious, the ones who haven’t learned to rein in their magic yet.”
We drove in silence as Liam mulled that over. I stared out my window, more to hide my face from Liam in case my facial expressions gave away the direction of my thoughts. My stomach tied itself into a knot. Either May was an incredibly powerful witch capable of dominating a werewolf, or Liam’s sister was involved in a murder. I couldn’t decide which one I hoped was true.
“Wait a minute. What if we have the right idea, wrong person?” I asked.
Liam frowned. “What do you mean?”
“What if it’s not a coincidence that May keeps a silver weapon on her desk? What if May not only knows about werewolves, she knew about Brenna?”
“Go on.”
“What if May and Paul caught Brenna, and Paul let her bite him?”
Liam’s eyes widened. “You think they cooked up some harebrained scheme to turn Paul into a wolf so he could sell himself to Varca?”
Liam’s phone rang, breaking into our conversation.
“Osbourne. What?” A pause, then Liam tightened his grip on the phone. “Just spit it out. Now.”
He was quiet for a moment, then tension seized his body. I grabbed the door handle as Liam pulled sharply to the right, stabbing the truck into a parking lot, then spinning the steering wheel to exit again, going back in the direction we’d been coming from. He ended the call and dropped the phone, ignoring it when it bounced off the gear shift and landed on the passenger side floor.
I waited, but when he still hadn’t said anything after a mile, I cleared my throat. “Bad news?”
Liam flexed his hands on the wheel, visibly fighting to calm down. “That was Blake. He’s at Brenna’s apartment.”
Another pause. This time I waited for him to speak first.
“They found lists of New Moon patients’ names, sociology texts on building tribes with notes highlighted, and observations next to different names on the lists.”
“Sounds like something any therapist might have,” I said carefully.
“No. A lot of the names on the papers weren’t her clients. And the types of notes she was taking suggest…” He trailed off, shook his head.
“Suggest?” I prompted.
“They suggest my sister was starting her own pack.”
His foot shoved the gas pedal down, hard and fast. For a moment I flashed back to that morning, sitting in Andy’s SUV, hurtling down the road while the man behind the steering wheel worked out his anger issues at ninety miles an hour. I scrawled a hasty mental note to myself to start driving separately.
I survived the drive to Brenna’s apartment.
Barely.
My hand was shaking by the time I groped for the door handle, and it was only through the grace of the Goddess herself that my legs didn’t give up and spill me onto the pavement the second I stepped out. To say Liam was upset was an understatement. A big one.
Brenna lived in an apartment building with no crumbling brick or broken shingles. But the parking lot had been patched to within an inch of its life, and I wasn’t sure a non-werewolf female would be comfortable walking through the alley between this building and the next without an escort. Or a gun.
Liam bolted from the truck so fast I didn’t even bother trying to keep up. Let him run and get there ahead of me. Chasing him wouldn’t do any good until I calmed my nerves and assured myself that he wouldn’t drive like that to get back to the center.
“We’re taking a cab next time,” Peasblossom gasped.
I glanced down at the pouch where she peeked out a gap in the zipper. It said a lot that Liam’s driving had driven her back inside after she’d made such a fuss the first time. “Are you okay?”
“No,” she snapped. “I need honey. Lots of honey. One for every year of my life he’s frightened off.”
Considering Peasblossom was the next best thing to immortal in terms of a lifespan, that didn’t worry me.
“I’m fine too, if ye were plannin’ to ask,” Bizbee’s annoyed voice announced from deeper inside the enchanted pouch.
“Sorry, Bizbee.” I sighed and closed the truck door behind me before trudging up to the building. I walked slowly so I could finish my internal lecture to Liam in my mind before the urge to say it all out loud to his face became overwhelming.
Liam hadn’t mentioned which apartment was Brenna’s, so I walked through the building until I found the open door. I’d figured Liam wouldn’t take the time to close it, not with the mood he was in. Peering inside, I found Blake and Sonar standing in the center of the room, watching silently as Liam raged like a small tropical storm from one end of the living room to the other. He snatched up books and papers, glaring at them before slamming them back down and stalking to the next piece of evidence.
I approached Blake cautiously, careful to stay out of Liam’s way.
“So,” I said quietly. “You think she was starting her own pack?”
He hesitated so long that I thought he wouldn’t answer. Then he sighed. “Sort of. I think—”
Liam stalked past, and Blake stopped talking, waiting to see if his alpha would give him an order. When Liam passed without a word, he continued, still in a low voice. “I think she was helping Stephen build his own pack,” Blake finished.
My jaw dropped. It was one thing when Liam had suggested his sister might be starting her own pack. But if she was helping Stephen… “Why?” I sputtered after I’d found my voice. “Why would she do that? Isn’t he…” I floundered for the word. “Isn’t he still in trouble?”
“He was stripped of his rank, dropped to the bottom of the hierarchy so he needs to work his way up again,” Blake said grimly. “He’s not allowed off the property, and he can’t run in wolf form unless Liam’s with him. Or I am. So, yeah, he’s still on probation.”
“Who’s going to follow an alpha who left his pack under probation?” Peasblossom scoffed. “It won’t work.”
“The right message at the right time to the right people can put the wrong person in a place of power.” I bit my lip and looked around the apartment. “I believe she could do it, especially if she’s compiling psychological profiles to build a strong tribe based on established patterns of behavior and group dynamics. The real question is, why would she do that? If she wanted to start her own pack, why not lead it herself?”
“Brenna’s strong, but not that strong,” Blake answered. “Females on average are smaller than males. A skilled female can beat an unskilled male, but if skill levels are even, then bigger wins. And Brenna didn’t have the temperament.”
I skirted around where Liam stood at Brenna’s desk, a fistful of notebook pages in one hand. He’d knocked a couple books on the floor, and I bent to pick them up and read the spines. Sociology texts about building tightly knit groups, and a couple texts on starting a business. A book on conflict management. I had to give Brenna credit, she was doing her due diligence.
I was less interested at this point in what she was doing than why she was doing it, so I headed for the bedroom. That would be the most telling. I looked in the usual hiding places, her underwear drawer, back of the closet, under the dresser. There were no secret boxes of mementos, no hidden letters from a lover.
My bladder chose that moment to remind me I’d drank a very large glass of Coke, so I headed into the small bathroom and closed the door. The room was small, with a standing shower and no bathtub. I glanced in the small trashcan beside the toilet, noting the rolled up sanitary pad. Not pregnant then.
Then something caught my eye. Beneath the toilet paper wrapped sanitary pad, there was a flash of white and the orange-red of a prescription bottle. I finished up and retrieved the bottle from the garbage.
“May Lin.” I stared at the name. “This is May’s prescription.”
“Did you say May Lin?”
I jumped at the sound of Liam’s voice on the other side of the door. It wasn’t even the anger that startled me, so much as the reminder that werewolf hearing was just that sensitive that he’d hear everything that happened in the bathroom, even with the door closed. Brilliant.
I unlocked the door and opened it, holding up the small prescription bottle. “I know where the wolfsbane came from.”
Chapter 11
“What is that?” Liam took the bottle from me, careful to hold it by the very top and very bottom to avoid smudging any surviving fingerprints. He read the label and his brows furrowed. “What is this?”
“Traditional Chinese medicine. It has aconite in it.”
“Wolfsbane.” Liam stared at the prescription bottle, then at me. I watched the struggle play out over his face. Watched him fight to find an explanation that didn’t involve his sister being in possession of the poison that had killed not one, but two of New Moon’s clients.
I didn’t say anything when he set the bottle on the bathroom sink. Blake looked at me from his position across the hall. He’d heard everything. And he had the same look on his face as Liam.
Denial.
I trailed after Liam as he strode to the bedroom, wincing as he ripped the comforter off the bed and clutched it to his face. He threw it down in disgust and grabbed the sheets, jerking so hard the mattress left the bed before slamming down and landing askew. He sniffed the sheets, then threw them to the side as well and dropped to the mattress, taking a deep breath. When he stood, I caught a hint of gold in his eyes.
“St. John,” he hissed.
He bolted out the door.
“Shit.” Blake grabbed his phone and punched in a few numbers before holding it to his ear, his eyes on the door where his alpha had vanished. “Ruth? Liam’s on his way. And he just found out St. John was sleeping with Brenna.” He hesitated, then added. “Also, we found wolfsbane in her apartment.”
I heard Ruth’s reaction even from a few feet away, and I winced. She knew what was coming.
“You’re going to need a ride,” Blake said as he ended the call.
I bent down and picked up the papers Liam had dropped when he saw the book. “Liam told me Brenna was feeling conflicted about how he handled the situation with Stephen. I didn’t realize just how conflicted he meant.”
“I don’t think he knew. I sure as hell didn’t.”
“And you had no idea she and St. John were…close?”
Blake frowned and turned to the door. I thought he wouldn’t answer, but after a bark from Sonar, he sighed.
“No.”
I gathered all the papers I could, along with a couple books that had notes jotted down in the margins. Blake glanced back at me, then held out his hand. “I’ll take those. I want Ruth to look them over, see if she can provide any insight into what Bren was thinking.”
“I’d imagine it’s tough, though, being the alpha’s little sister.” I handed Blake the evidence and followed him out of the apartment. “Her dating life couldn’t have been easy.”
Again Blake didn’t seem to want to answer, and again a bark from Sonar made him talk. I glanced down at the shifter glamoured to look like a German Shepard and wished she was a real dog so I could reward her with a treat. She gave me a look that warned me not to try it.
Blake locked the door behind him, then reluctantly turned back to me. “Bren and Liam had the same issues any big brother and little sister have. And yeah, it probably was intimidating for any men who wanted to date the alpha’s little sister.” He started down the hall. “But Bren wasn’t one to let a few complications get in her way. She found ways to make it easier. And a few ways to get around her brother.”
