Reflected (Silver Series) (24 page)

“Good idea.” Silver folded to sit cross-legged on the ground. Death settled himself beside her and she spared her good hand briefly to set the bad on his back. When she flexed her fingers, they scritched into his fur. Best to be comfortable since they’d likely be there for a while.

*   *   *

For the first few blocks driving away from the pack house, Felicia concentrated on getting all the mirrors adjusted right, but after that her thoughts chased their own tails. If her father had been there, would he have supported Silver, or stopped her from kicking Felicia out? If she’d been similarly disrespectful to him, she didn’t think he’d have kicked her out. When she first moved back from Spain, they’d tangled plenty of times, resulting in various punishments, but nothing like this.

Maybe that was because he was her father, though. Felicia stomped on the accelerator and the pickup’s engine reluctantly growled up to enough speed to beat a yellow light. Maybe if Silver had been her mother, she would have done something different.

Of course, Silver was Lady-damned close to being her stepmother. Whatever she’d said to Tom, so long ago it seemed now, Felicia had to admit that to herself. But a stepmother was still different from a mother unless Silver tried to act that way. She’d always left Felicia to her father when Felicia got in trouble, until now.

And Felicia had no idea if she even wanted Silver to try to act like a mother. Felicia couldn’t—she didn’t know—the more she tried to grapple with the idea, the more it slipped from her grip. She’d lost her real mother so long ago, and she remembered so little—how did she know that Blanca had lost her mother’s scent, rather than Felicia forgetting what that scent was?—that it wasn’t like Silver would crowd out the memories of her. But even if she didn’t remember her, Felicia knew she’d had a mother, a mother who loved her, and she didn’t want Silver changing that. And why did she need someone in the role of mother, anyway? She was practically an adult herself.

That was much, much more than Felicia wanted to deal with right now, though. Right now, she wanted to find somewhere to park, eat dinner, watch her movie on her laptop before the battery ran out, and then maybe try to sleep.

She found a grocery store with plenty of empty spaces, parked at the edge, and came around to the truck’s canopy-covered bed to stretch out while she ate. The temperature outside was on the chilly side of pleasant as the breeze gained ground after dark, but the enclosed space was still stuffy from trapped sun’s heat. She slid a side window open wide enough for air but too narrow for a cat.

She opened the cat’s box, but it hid for a while before creeping out. It scuffled around in its litter and then came over to sniff Felicia’s knee. She eyed it. “You better not want to walk on me with those paws now.”

It curled into a circle, apparently ignoring her. When she finished eating, she stroked the fur of its flank as she would someone in wolf. It purred. Felicia supposed that was all right, then.

Enrique texted about ten minutes into the movie. Felicia stared at the words until her phone got bored and the screen went dark. He’d found a location, and he wanted to know when she could meet him there. She hadn’t expected he’d find a place so soon.

She shook herself. She had a good reason now that she couldn’t go through with the plan, she reminded herself. She texted him the location of the lot and told him to meet there instead. Better to tell him in person.

A rental car pulled up beside her truck twenty minutes later. Felicia’s lips thinned as she bundled the cat back into its box. She didn’t want it streaking off for freedom when she opened the tailgate. Then some predator really might eat it. She didn’t have Tom’s finesse, so she got half a dozen scratches for her trouble.

Felicia opened the tailgate and sat on it in the darkness, feet dangling, and waited for Enrique to come to her. The light here was an odd meeting of contrasts, a wash of orange from the light over the adjoining street, and a stronger wash of blue from the parking lot’s light. Both threw Enrique’s frown into relief as he strode over. Felicia avoided his eyes by licking away the residual blood from her healed scratches.

“What now?” He set his hand flat on the gate and leaned into the bed to look inside. Maybe he expected another Were, but the only thing there was the box jerking with the movements of the unseen cat. He straightened and raised his eyebrows at her for the blood. “Why are you here?”

Felicia shrugged, then winced when the cat lunged so violently the box tipped over. “It’s some stray that made the mistake of crossing our yard. The kids were tormenting it, so I took it with me. It’s kind of cute, in a dumb way.”

Enrique eyed her but seemed to accept that. He waited, letting silence reiterate his question.

“I fucked up.” Felicia kept her head down and tried to look panicked about him showing the e-mails to her pack because of her mistake. She
was
worried about that, and hopefully the perfume should cover anything else. “Silver was just … stepping on my tail again, so I mouthed off, and now she’s kicked me out of the house.”

Rather than a frustrated growl or cursing, Felicia got more silence. She lifted her head to check his reaction. He was smiling. He gave an explosive “ha!” of satisfaction and thumped his hands on the gate on either side of her knees. “It’s perfect! You’re a genius.”

Felicia stared at him. She … what? She’d expected anger, hoped that he wouldn’t be smart enough to realize she’d done it on purpose, but … celebration? “I am?”

“Of course. If you wanted to step outside the normal daily routine to take Silver somewhere unusual alone, you’d have to come up with a plausible reason. But now, if you call and arrange to meet somewhere to apologize, she won’t think twice about coming alone if you ask. I found a place and watched what time the owner came home. You can arrange to have Silver arrive around that time tomorrow to be found.” Enrique grinned at her.

Felicia took a deep breath so she didn’t scream. Lady, she tried to fix things and just made them worse. What now?

Enrique climbed up to sit on the gate beside her. “Stop moping. If you’re so set on staying here, you can go back to the pack house in the chaos after we succeed and no one will even notice.”

Felicia made a noise of agreement to make it seem like she was actually paying attention. She could break with him now, let him do his worst and show the e-mails to the pack. Maybe her father would believe her side when he got back. And maybe he’d be able to convince everyone else.

Or maybe she’d get kicked out of the pack for good, or maybe everyone would go around muttering about Europeans behind her back for the rest of her life. Maybe Tom wouldn’t speak to her again. And either way, she’d definitely have hurt Silver, and hurt her father by doing it. Felicia finally realized that to her, hurting Silver was bad enough. Silver had been kind to her, kind when she’d been defiant and scared and hardly trusted even her father.

Felicia yanked herself out of all the maybes. Silver hadn’t said she
couldn’t
be sane for a while again, just that it would be difficult and risky. Even if she was just her normal self, how bad could she really be? Humans acted plenty crazy all the time and didn’t get themselves locked up in institutions. And with the financial support of all of Roanoke behind him, it wasn’t like her father couldn’t hire the very best lawyers. How serious was trespassing, anyway? It wasn’t like framing Silver for murder.

“I’m sure it will all work out, and then you can go home the victorious alpha,” Felicia said, throttling down her irony until it escaped near the end.

Enrique laughed, her sharpness rolling off him. “I want to move up in the pack, like every Were.” He looked up into the soft overcast of the sky, lit at the horizon by the city’s light pollution. “Madrid will see I’m the one to help lead us out of this mess.”

Felicia looked up at the sky too. Lady damn Enrique anyway, but she found she still wanted to
understand
somehow, even though she knew that was stupid. “Why do you care what Madrid thinks? If it’s so bad at home, why even go back?”

Enrique looked over at her in surprise, ran fingers through his black locks while he found words. “Because Madrid’s my alpha.”

Felicia turned sideways and tucked one leg up so she was facing Enrique. “But he sent you here, at no small risk. If Papa got home unexpectedly, or anyone else figured out who you were, or if I’d turned you in, you’d have gotten a hell of a beating.” She lifted a hand to forestall Enrique. “And I know it’s an alpha’s job to risk his Were sometimes, but for
what
? For petty revenge? What does it matter what North Americans are doing when, as you say, Madrid’s fight is at home? He’s using his position to make you do things for his own selfish goals.”

Enrique’s stubborn expression made Felicia want to snap her teeth at him. She bet he hadn’t processed a single word of that. She’d known that before she said it, and here she’d proved herself right, and she still wanted to punch something.

“Not all of us can leave everything that makes us who we are so easily, Felicia.” Enrique made her name as flat and American as possible, drawing out a
sh
in the middle.

Felicia did snap her teeth at him then. “I suppose that’s all you’ll ever be, then, Enrique. Spanish.”

Enrique sighed and looked away. “You say like it’s an insult, but it’s not.”

Felicia scooted to sit straight, legs over the edge again. Silence stretched painfully—briefly broken by an experimental yowl from Morsel—until Felicia got so tired she couldn’t sustain the frustration and let the silence become resigned instead.

“I do care about you, Felicia.” Enrique looked away as he said it. Maybe he was picturing her as a child with jammy fingers, the same as she did him sometimes. A shame those memories hadn’t stopped him from blackmailing her in the first place.

Felicia couldn’t muster her earlier anger this time. Everything was too snarled and fucked up. “Shut up.” She sent a brief prayer to the Lady that she’d made the right decision in not breaking with Enrique. Now she needed privacy to plot new ways to sabotage the plan. She thought hard about how tired she was, and a yawn came almost naturally. “Go on, get out.” She shoved Enrique’s shoulder until he jumped off the gate.

“My hotel’s only about ten minutes away. You should follow me back.” Enrique pointed in the vague direction of the highway.

“Oh, I didn’t know him until he showed up the other day, but now I’m staying in his room.” Felicia made her voice singsong for the imaginary conversation. She glared at Enrique and went back to her normal tone. “They’ll totally believe that. Besides, hotels don’t take cats.”

Enrique leaned in to pointedly sniff the side of the truck, though of course he must have gotten a good idea of the scent when inside. “So you’d rather sleep in your boyfriend’s truck? I suppose that makes sense. Is your boyfriend going to be joining you?”

Felicia bit back a correction about Tom not being her boyfriend, but only barely. Enrique was baiting her, but he knew enough to bait effectively. “I refuse to believe you’re worried about competition.”

Enrique snorted. “Maybe if I
could
seduce you, you’d come to your senses and come home, but no. You’re too damn … infuriating, same as you were as a child.”

Felicia kicked out, missing him by a mile. She smiled, though it felt hollow underneath. It would be nice to fall into this teasing again, but she knew better.

“Is he the reason you’re so loyal to North America?” Enrique was abruptly serious. When Felicia frowned at him, he slapped the side of the truck to make it clear he meant Tom. “First love is all very nice and all, but you can’t be a puppy about it.”

Felicia opened her mouth for the automatic denial of that too but stopped for a different reason. Did she love Tom? She’d put her emotions aside after their earlier conversation, but now she couldn’t avoid them. She didn’t know. Was she too young to know?

But that was still not something she could deal with right now. She wouldn’t have anything at all with Tom if Silver was arrested or she was kicked out of the pack completely. She pointed. “Go,” she ordered Enrique. He held up his hands, grinning, and went.

When his car turned out of the parking lot, Felicia shut herself up under the canopy again and got Morsel out. She hugged the cat, tight, until it stopped squirming and relaxed. Felicia waited, and eventually Morsel went back to sleep. The twitch of an ear here and there brushed its ear feathers against Felicia’s skin and tickled. She imagined curling up with Tom instead.

Then Felicia put him out of her mind and concentrated on what she had to do to make sure Silver stayed safe. One step at a time.

16

Felicia walked by the house Enrique had chosen several times as the afternoon mellowed into evening, fingering the cheap winter gloves in the pocket of her windbreaker. She’d had to get them at a thrift store this morning since none of the regular stores stocked them in the summer. Used things always smelled so weird. She didn’t plan to get far enough to use them, but if things kept going wrong, she didn’t want the police using her fingerprints to catch her.

When she turned the last corner, she could see Enrique’s car. He sat inside, apparently texting but really keeping an eye on things. This circuit, he looked up and nodded encouragingly. Felicia squashed an impulse to snarl at him and kept up her meander. She’d laid a childishly easy trail to here from Silver’s favorite park, and Enrique had timed her for that, but he had only the estimate she’d given him of the time from pack house to park. She hadn’t been able to underestimate much without it seeming outlandish, but if traffic was good, maybe the owner of this house would arrive before Silver. Especially if—Felicia didn’t look at her phone clock, because Enrique would notice—she kept stalling and didn’t call Silver until too late.

Enrique started his engine, pulled alongside her, and rolled down the passenger window. “You better call her now if we want her here in time for the owner to walk in on her.” He leaned to see her better, hand on the shoulder of the passenger seat.