Reflected (Silver Series) (25 page)

Felicia took her out phone, but paused when he didn’t keep driving. “You’ll get your scent all over the trail and she’ll know something’s up.” She made shooing motions while she tried not to panic internally. Plan J or K or whatever Lady-damned letter she was up to by now was to fake a call and half a conversation, after which she’d claim Silver hadn’t been home, but if Enrique was right there, he’d be able to hear the other half of the conversation perfectly well.

“I’m in the car. And your perfume covers everything.” Enrique raised his eyebrows at her. Felicia could read his implications: if she was worried about him hanging around, she should make the call faster. He lowered his voice and switched to Spanish.
“Or I could call for you. Remind everyone about the European in their midst and everything she’s been helping me plan.”

Felicia swallowed her snarl and called Tom’s cell rather than the house phone. Maybe he’d be annoyed with her and wouldn’t answer. Or maybe he would refuse to let her talk to Silver. Felicia didn’t think either was very likely, but she was snapping her teeth at guard hairs at this point.

He answered after two rings. “Are you all right?”

Felicia clenched her jaw to avoid blurting out an honest answer to his question. Enrique watched her from the car, expression neutral now. “I’m fine. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking today, though. Can I talk to Silver? I want to apologize to her properly.”

She held her breath in pathetic hope, but after a pause, she heard him relaying that to Silver, tinny at the edge of the phone microphone’s pickup. Then the phone conveyed noises from bumps and jostles as it transferred hands.

“Felicia?” Silver always sounded confused on the phone, like she was on the other end peering into corners to find someone who wasn’t there.

“Roanoke.” Felicia closed her eyes. Lady forgive her. “I need to apologize. What I said was … well. But I hoped maybe we could talk in person? I’m not asking permission to come back to the house, but if you follow my trail from that park you like, you’ll find where I’m staying. I know I don’t really deserve the consideration, but it’s so hard to speak at a distance like this…”

“True enough.” Silver was silent for a few moments, then: “I’ll meet you there.”

Felicia hung up before Tom could come back on the line and held the phone to her chest for a few moments, cursing mentally. Why couldn’t something go wrong now that it would
help
her? She gave Enrique a sharp nod and he pulled away, going back to his earlier station with a good view of the house.

Time to let herself in, since she couldn’t think of a way out of that either with him watching. Felicia strolled up the curving driveway of their target house like she had every reason to be there. At the garage, she ducked along the side of the building, shaded by several tall evergreens that took up the space to the property line. She paused to pull on her gloves and then tugged the yard waste bin over to provide a step up to the roof. The gutter creaked worryingly when it took her weight, but she pulled herself up quickly and it didn’t break.

The house had two levels of pitch, one shallow before the second-floor windows, and one steeper above that. Felicia inched along the pitch toward a window that had been left half open to allow air flow in the summer warmth. This was the dangerous part, as the evergreens on the property would disguise her from most angles, but not straight on. Anyone walking along the sidewalk or driving past and pausing at the driveway would see her. Getting arrested herself might defeat the plan to ensnare Silver, but Felicia didn’t think she could talk her way out of breaking and entering the same way Silver might be able to talk her way out of wandering in.

Fortunately, the neighborhood was quiet, most people still at work, and Felicia worked quickly. She slit the screen with her pocket knife and took hold of the window. She’d worried about having to snap a lock with werewolf strength and the noise that would make, but the window slid smoothly up. She supposed they didn’t think that would-be burglars would bother climbing up here.

She climbed in, closed the window to its earlier position, and finally allowed herself to breathe. The room looked like a home office: a plush ergonomic chair stood in front of a desk that took up most of one wall and held the computer and printer and assorted mess. The rest of the space was filled with houseplants, tall in pots or short on tables, like a minijungle.

Felicia slipped between them without touching a leaf, conscious of not disturbing these poor people’s lives more than necessary as well as giving them nothing else to accuse Silver of. And leaving no evidence of herself for the police to find.

Downstairs, she dodged a few more scattered plants and studied the front door. Just a dead bolt, nothing she could pull closed while Enrique watched and have it lock without the key. Lady damn it. Felicia’s voice was twisted up tight in her throat. She didn’t want to linger in the house any longer than she had to, certainly not long enough to come up with another idea.

She unlocked the dead bolt and let herself out, once again like she had every right to be here. So far, no one seemed to have noticed, though of course someone could have seen her climbing around and called the police and they just hadn’t gotten close enough for her to hear the sirens yet.

At the bottom of the driveway, she took out her perfume bottle and gave a good spritz in the direction of her ankles, as Enrique was undoubtedly watching for her to do. There would be two paths for Silver to find, one leading her to the side of the garage, so Enrique had wanted to be very sure that the one he needed Silver to take stank so much there was no question of following the other.

She walked reluctantly up to the house, stepped inside, and then let herself out for a last time, walking precisely over her trail. Coming or going, it didn’t matter, now the scent was double strength.

She walked back along her trail from the park far enough she judged the perfume had dissipated a little, and then abandoned her gloves to rub wood chips from someone’s garden over the bottom of her jeans to cover the last of the scent. She left the gloves buried in the wood chips and found herself a spot to watch, well away from Enrique. From her position she couldn’t see the house or the path Silver would be taking, in case Silver noticed her in turn, but she could see the main road, if the police were to arrive. Lady grant that if Silver got here, she would be able to sweet-talk the homeowners, and no police would be called in the first place.

Felicia leaned her ass on a fire hydrant and took out her phone to flip through menus at random and type occasionally like she was texting the ride she was waiting for. After all her plans, it seemed she was down to praying.

*   *   *

Felicia may have said she wanted to apologize, but Silver still smelled abused flowers along her trail. Death put his nose to the ground when she hesitated, and she snorted and jogged a few steps to get ahead of him. She was aware a human could follow this trail. He didn’t need to put his nose down for any trail, however difficult, anyway.

What she didn’t know was whether Felicia had been sincere. Silver supposed it didn’t matter either way. Hadn’t she already planned to let the young woman come back to a lesser punishment?

“A coward’s way, to apologize alone, so others cannot hear,” Death said. He stopped, head coming up in interest. Felicia’s trail led into one of the humans’ dens. “If you think that an apology is what she actually wants to offer.”

This time, Silver hesitated for much longer. Why would Felicia be in a human’s den? But she’d been learning with other humans of her own age recently enough. Maybe she’d had a friendship with one and turned to her when shelter was needed.

Still, Silver would be stepping onto someone else’s territory, probably that of the human friend’s parents. Best to be polite. She rapped her knuckles against the door and waited. No one came. Without Were ears, had they failed to hear her at the back of their den? She entered slowly, cautious. “Hello?” she called.

The den echoed back, empty. Things were growing everywhere, and Silver scrubbed at her eyes. Lady damn it! Was her anger at Felicia making her stop seeing clearly? Plants didn’t grow inside of dens, even she knew that.

She’d lost the thread of Felicia’s scent in the confusion, and she ventured deeper into the den in search of it. She smelled two humans, a man and a woman, but she would have said they were older. Where were Felicia and her friend?

“Watch yourself,” Death said, and Silver turned hurriedly to find the source of the threat. The man she’d smelled had entered behind her. He had black hair peppered with gray, and though he wasn’t tall, he stood very straight, all but shouting his rank.

Silver opened her mouth for a greeting, polite as she’d resolved earlier, but the man didn’t give her time to speak. He dropped what he was carrying, leaving his hands loose and ready, threatening. “Who the hell are you? How did you get in here? I’m calling—”

Silver tried not to breathe too fast as his words slipped away from her in a familiar manner. First the plants inside, and now this. She had to hang on, think through the poison’s effects on her mind. The man spoke to whoever he had named before, telling them to come quickly, and Silver looked around her. The man stank of anger, and she doubted any allies he called would wish to discuss things rationally.

Time to leave, and quickly. The man blocked the entrance, but dens never had only one way out. Silver turned and ran, deeper into the plants. Somewhere. She’d smell fresh air and find her escape.

With each step she took, the growth around her increased, grasping, gnarled roots catching at her toes, slim braches reaching for her hair. Silver snarled at them. She didn’t fear plants, even inside a den, but too late she realized that was not their purpose. No paths lay before her, no trails suggested themselves to her nose, only leaves and more leaves.

She whirled, tried a different direction, stumbled, tried another. A maze could hold her only if she let it. She thrust straight through the nearest patch of branches only to smack into the unyielding trunk beneath. The man’s anger did not need to traverse his maze to reach her, his words sliced right through. “Stop! Stop where you are!”

“Hurry, hurry,” Death mocked. Silver gritted her teeth and stopped. Thrashing in the maze served nothing. She’d wasted far too much time as it was. If she couldn’t run, she would have to show her belly to the man, emphasize her weakness until he thought her too much trouble to punish for her trespass on his territory.

She held her good hand open and wide beside her, unthreatening. “I’m looking for Felicia. Is she not here?”

“No, she’s not. I’ve called the—” The same word again. His allies. “How did you get in?” The man could not snarl as well as a Were could, but he certainly tried.

Silver suspected “I walked in” would not satisfy him, so she hunted desperately for more precise words. Her heart beat too fast, drowning out her voice. The den entrance had not been blocked or guarded. But humans would not say it that way. They’d say—

A root caressed the man’s boot, the maze acting like a favored pet fawning over its master, then struck at Silver like a snake. Not a snake, a root, but Silver had been too much hurt by snakes in the past, when they writhed and bit at her bad arm. She stumbled back with a shriek. No, no, just a root. No poison to enter her blood.

She needed to keep control of herself. Whatever this man’s defenses, they were not things of snakes, of poison. But no matter what Silver did, the plants still swarmed around her, and the roots curled and wound across the ground. She needed another set of eyes, untainted, but she had only Death. “Death,” she begged, “you have to help me. What’s real?”

Death placed himself beside the human man, putting the man’s regal manner to shame with a stance of real power. “He thinks you asked him.” He tipped his head to look at the man’s expression, congealing to fearful disgust, and his laugh sliced at her. “But perhaps he does not wish to answer. Perhaps he does not understand why you asked. Few but the most weak and the dangerous must ask what is real.”

“No!” Silver shouted it at the man, at Death, forgetting that she was supposed to be weak. But she didn’t want to be this weak. Not real weakness, unfeigned. She drew in a breath of the man’s scent, and it held all she feared. He was older but still considered himself more than strong enough to physically control a woman such as her. His fear was subtle, perhaps even unrealized, fear of something so strange, so wild, you could not predict its movements. Crazy. Crazy things could hurt you badly even when you were strong.

There would be no reasoning with the man, if that was his fear. Any words would be seen as a ploy, a distraction before some more unpredictable action. Silver saw little choice left but to run.

Out, out this time, she didn’t care if the man grabbed at her. It was worth the risk. She slammed past him and he got no grip. The branches tossed violently, nonexistent wind whistling among them to make a high, wailing sound that grew louder and louder. They were angry at her escape, perhaps. Silver took it as a good sign and did not stop.

The wailing ceased as she burst through the den’s entrance. Silver did not pause, because the plants were outside the den as well, grown to jungle heights beyond the confines of the structure. One path was empty of them, one path to freedom without the roots striking at her, holding her here.

Silver released a sobbed breath. Two humans tromped up that path, heavy footed. One was more broad shouldered, the other dark skinned, but they both had a similarity of movement. Enforcers. If she ran now, they would run after, run her down. She had not the speed to escape such as these, and she knew it.

“Please,” she begged them. She feinted one direction, in case they did not know the plants’ malice for her and would believe she’d run that way. Both moved to stand loose, ready to chase.

“Ma’am. You need to stay where you are.” The one of broad shoulders had a true enforcer’s voice: pure power without decision. His authority lay in carrying out another’s orders, making him implacable, mind never to be changed.