Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology (102 page)

“Hey.” I caught her chin in my hand. “It’s okay.”

She looked at me, incredulous. “It’s not okay,” she said. “There was a boy. A runaway, and I guess he thought the house looked pretty good, too.”

Blood in the foyer.

Blood on the fireplace.

Blood on the walls.

“He came too close to me, and then Griffin disappeared. I tried to get out of the house. I tried to run, but it was too late.”

“And today?” Caroline asked, her voice decidedly less gentle than it had been before.

“Today, I was hungry.” Maddy met Caroline’s gaze head-on, and for a second, I saw a flicker of the inner steel she’d always hidden beneath that quiet surface. “The baby needs meat.”

“So you went hunting,” Lake said, like it was the most natural thing in the world. For a werewolf, it was.

“I went hunting,” Maddy replied.

Not for humans. Not for pets. For a rabbit or deer, a clean kill that wouldn’t have felt any unnecessary pain or fear.

“And you?” Caroline turned her piercing gaze to Griffin. “If
you knew she had to go closer to town to hunt, why weren’t you with her? If this
invisible
killer only shows up when you’re not around, then why in God’s name would you leave her alone? Why
disappear
?”

The emphasis Caroline put on those words was unmistakable. She didn’t trust Griffin, and to her, all Maddy’s story had confirmed was that he didn’t have an alibi for the murders.

“I don’t have a choice,” Griffin shot back, his voice rising, his jaw clenched. “I’m new at this. I don’t know how it works. Most of the time, I’m here, and I can control it, but sometimes, I lose my grip, and it’s like there’s something else out there, just waiting to push me away. I fight it. I fight to stay, to keep Maddy safe, but if my attention wavers, even for a second—”

He looked at Lake. No matter who asked the questions, he always ended up talking straight to her. “It might be easier to stick around now that you’re here, Lakie.” He tried to smile, but couldn’t coax his lips into doing anything more than baring his teeth. “The baby might have brought me back, but she’s not the reason I lingered in the first place. Having you here makes everything feel more solid. It makes me feel real.”

None of this made sense to me. It wasn’t an alibi for the murders. It wasn’t an explanation. It was vague and wishy-washy and—

I believe him, Bryn
. Lake’s voice cut off all other thoughts in my mind.
We’re connected. I don’t need to be able to smell him to know if he’s lying. He’s not. If he says there’s another ghost, there’s another ghost. If he says he’s been trying to fight it, he’s been trying to fight. And if he says that having me here will help, then I’m damn well going to do whatever he needs me to do
.

She meant it, more than she’d ever meant anything in her life, and she was sure. I could feel that certainty bleeding over into my own mind, so overpowering I thought my head might explode.

She was in his mind, and I was in hers. She was asking me—begging me—to let that be enough.

“Okay,” I said, but even as the word left my mouth, I thought about Lucas, about the way Maddy had loved him and believed in him and asked me to let him in. What if I was making the same mistake again? What if being alpha meant that I could never really trust anyone, not even the people I loved the most?

He could kill you
, my instincts whispered, from somewhere deep inside my mind.
He could kill you all
.

“We need a plan in case this thing shows up again,” I said, pushing down my doubts, keeping them from Lake, who would never understand. “Right now we’re defenseless. Caroline tried to shoot Griffin, and the bullet went straight through. We have to assume that weapons wouldn’t have an effect on the other ghost, either.”

If there
was
another ghost.

Caroline didn’t seem to appreciate being reminded that she’d tried to shoot Griffin and failed, but after a few seconds, she transferred her glare from me to him. “Powers and weaknesses. Yours. What are they?”

Griff answered the question without hesitation. He swiped his left arm at the wall of the cave, and it passed straight through. “Walls aren’t a problem. Neither are doors.”

A look of concentration fell over his face, and he placed a hand on my shoulder. I jumped.

“Solidifying is hard,” he said. His touch was ice-cold on my shoulder. The place where his skin met mine felt numb. “But staying solid is easier if I’m not trying to stay visible at the same time.”

He disappeared halfway through that sentence, and the weight of his touch intensified. Beside me, I could feel Lake pushing down a stab of unwanted panic.

A second later, when her brother reappeared, Lake bit her lip.

“Don’t do that,” she said, her voice small. “Don’t ever do that, Griff.”

“Hey.” He caught her eyes. “Lakie, I’m here. I always was.”

“As touching as this reunion is,” Caroline bit in, “can we concentrate on the part where weapons go straight through ghosts? I hate to be the one to point this out, but it’s not exactly a handicap for a killer to be
more
capable of violence when he’s also invisible.”

Lake gave Caroline a disgruntled look, but the latter was clearly immune.

Jed cleared his throat—about as close to diplomatic as the old man could come. “There’s not a thing alive that can’t be killed, Caro. Dead things included.”

If Jed saw the contradiction inherent in those words, he gave no indication of it. “You just have to know where to hit it.”

Caroline’s hunter eyes appraised Griffin. Lake’s lip curled upward, her incisors gleaming in the scant light of the cave.

“No, Lake,” Griffin interceded. “She’s right. This thing isn’t going to stop until someone stops it.”

It was getting easier to believe that he was on our side, that we really could trust him. But what if that was the point?

“There’s only one thing that hurts me.” This time, Griffin directed his words at me, like he knew what I was thinking.

“What is it?” Lake didn’t give her brother a chance to reply, before fixing him with a look. “I recommend you open that mouth of yours and start talking, Griffin.”

Caroline might have wanted to know a ghost’s weaknesses so she could hunt one, but I was fairly certain Lake wanted to know what could hurt Griffin so that she could make 100 percent certain that nothing did.

“There’s only one thing that hurts me,” Griffin repeated.

Lake didn’t seem to appreciate his stalling. “What?”

He gave her a weak smile. “When something hurts you.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

H
OURS LATER, WITH THE STORM RAGING OUT ON THE
mountain, the seven of us were still crowded into the tiny cave. We’d settled into a loaded silence, the heat of our bodies fighting back the wind and brutal rain, neither of which showed any signs of stopping.

Our cell phones—not shockingly—had no reception, which meant that I hadn’t been able to get in touch with Callum. I was hoping that once I did, he’d be able to call off the Senate and keep Shay and the others from coming after Maddy. That was the one good thing to come from this.

One way or another, our killer wasn’t a female werewolf.

The killer wasn’t even alive.

If that wasn’t enough to stay the Senate vote, I wasn’t sure what would be. Glancing at Maddy out of the corner of my eye, I wondered what her response would be if Shay and the others really did start making their way here.

The only way to prevent them from trying to claim her by force would be for me to reinstate our pack-bond, but I wasn’t sure she’d want that, either. The reasons she’d had for leaving were still reasons. Lucas was the elephant in the room, even now, one that made the already crowded quarters that much more claustrophobic.

If Callum could call off the rest of the Senate, I wouldn’t have to press the issue. But if he couldn’t—

I tried not to think about it, tried not to ask myself what the right thing to do would be, if she didn’t want me in her mind, but giving her what she wanted put her—and her baby—at the mercy of men none of us could trust.

And if the baby really was female …

That wasn’t supposed to be possible. It wasn’t possible for human mothers carrying a werewolf child, and it wasn’t possible for female Weres. Girl pups never made it to term. Not on their own.

But Maddy was different. The same way that I was different, the same way that Lily and Phoebe and Sage were different. They were werewolves, but they’d been born human. They were Resilient. Maybe Maddy’s baby wasn’t a girl. Maybe she was wrong. But if she wasn’t, and the other alphas found out about it, my pack would be even more in their sights than it was now. Having a surplus of female werewolves was bad enough. Having girls in my pack who might be able to give birth to female pups—whatever alliances were brewing in the Senate,
whatever plans Shay was cultivating, the second they got wind of it, the onslaught and machinations would increase tenfold.

For most of the Senate, there probably weren’t many things that would be worth risking Callum’s wrath—but that might be one.

Borrowing trouble?
Chase’s voice was calm in my mind, and I wondered how he could just look at me and know.

Am I that obvious?
I asked.

There was a sound halfway between a snuff and a snort, more animal in my mind than it would have sounded out loud.
You
are
trouble
, he said.
It’s part of your charm
.

Maybe, but I had to admit that he was right: at the moment, we had enough on our plates already. The future—as tenuous and terrifying as it might be—would have to wait.

Okay
, I thought, as much to myself as to Chase.
Griffin says his weakness is Lake
.

If Griffin was telling the truth—about everything—what did that mean for our killer? What was his weakness? Or, more to the point,
who
?

Assuming the killer was a werewolf—and based on Maddy’s descriptions and the crime scenes we’d seen, I was betting he was—did that mean that this monster had a twin, too? Or was Griffin a special case? Maybe this ghost wasn’t tethered to a person. It could be a place, or an object.

It could be anything.

Or anyone.

I didn’t want to look at Maddy, and I didn’t want to look at her stomach. I didn’t want to think about the child inside—the one who’d somehow brought these specters to life.

I’d done things that dogged my dreams and chipped away at whatever humanity I had left. I made the hard choices so that other people didn’t have to, but I had a line, and this was it.

Nothing was going to happen to that baby. Not if Griffin was telling the truth and not if he wasn’t. Not by my hand, and not by anyone else’s.

“Rain’s clearing up.” Jed’s tone was mild, but all of us snapped to attention like he’d barked out some kind of command.

First order of business was getting off this mountain and back to the real world. With cell phone service, I could call Callum. If we were lucky, maybe in addition to putting out political fires, he’d be able to tell us something about ghosts.

Something that gave me more than Lake’s assurances and Maddy’s blind faith in Griffin to know that he was on our side.

“We should go,” I said.

“No.” Maddy’s voice was loud, borderline hysterical. It cut through me, like a knife to the gut. The Maddy I’d known was quiet, self-contained, controlled. This Maddy was just as strong, but on edge.

So on edge that if we weren’t careful, she might fall. “I can’t leave.

I can’t go anywhere.” She ran a hand through her hair, and her voice settled down into a steadier pitch, low
and even, sure. “If I go somewhere, that thing is going to follow me. I have to stay here.”

“No.” I was surprised by how calm I felt, how naturally I could just step back into the role of giving orders, without questioning for one second that they would be obeyed.

“You don’t get to decide,” Maddy told me, the tone in her voice closer to heartbreak than defiance, like there was a part of her that wished I could.

“Maddy, if you don’t leave, I
can’t
.” In my mind, it was as simple as that. Until I got word from Callum that the others weren’t coming for her, I couldn’t take the chance of leaving Maddy here alone. “If I can’t leave, I can’t call Callum. If he can’t tell the rest of the Senate that he’s heard from me personally, he might not be able to stop them.”

Maddy’s eyes narrowed in a way that reminded me that I wasn’t the only one who’d gotten through the dark parts of life by sheer force of will. I could outstubborn most people, but not her, not once she made her mind up about something.

“I think it might be okay.” Griffin inserted himself into the conversation, walking
through
me to stand by her side. “Lake’s here now, Maddy, and I feel …” He searched for the right word and seemed to find it in the expression on Lake’s face. “Solid. I feel solid.”

Griffin had a way about him that made it easy to believe what he was saying. I could see his words weakening Maddy’s resolve. Was he comforting her—or trying to lull
her into a false sense of security, so she’d go closer to town?