White Winter (The Black Year Series Book 2) (31 page)

Twenty minutes in, she settled down. Her eyes were her usual hazel green again, except like all werewolves the iris filled most of her eye, with a heavy black rim. He caught her looking his way a few times. Finally, she sighed, and said, “Jonas?”

“Yeah?” he said, looking at her.

She sagged in her seat. “I…”

He leaned forward. Kieran reached over and pushed him back against his seat as Amelia’s jaws snapped shut where his face had just been.

“I hate you, Jonas,” she said, sitting back.

His pulse was pounding in his ears.

“How did you know?” she asked Kieran.

“You haven’t learned to control your scent yet,” Kieran answered.

“Hmm.” She gave her handcuffs an experimental tug, then spent the rest of the ride staring at Jonas again.

♘

Jonas walked up to the front of the house. He could feel Amelia’s eyes boring into his back. She hadn’t lunged at him again, hadn’t tried to break free. He kept expecting her to. In a way, that made it worse.

Kieran growled. Jonas followed his gaze. Someone had sprayed painted “VAMP LOVERS” on the wall to the left of the door. The lettering was faded from someone scrubbing at it. Jonas shook his head. As if the Macreadys didn’t have enough problems.

He knocked. A few seconds later, Leticia opened the door. “Hi, Jonas, good to see you! Kieran said-” She sniffed and her eyes locked on Amelia. “No.”

Jonas sighed. “She needs to learn how to be a werewolf. You’re-”

“She’s tainted.”

Jonas bit his lip. “Leticia, please-”

“She’s not coming into my house!” she said, her eyes wide.

“No, she’s coming into my mom’s, remember?” He pushed his way through the door. Leticia followed at his side.

“Why would you do this to us?” she said. “People might think she was part of our pack. You never would have-”

Jonas stopped and looked at her. “You knew.”

She flinched. She opened and closed her mouth, searching his eyes, then she dropped her hands to her sides. “He’s gone, isn’t he?”

Jonas balled his hands into fists. “I can’t believe it.
You knew!
”

“Of course I knew,” she said, her eyes unfocused. “As if I wouldn’t recognize my husband.”

“Mom? What’s wrong?” Kieran said.

“He killed your father,” she said.

“Hah,” Amelia breathed.

Jonas glared at Amelia, then looked back at Leticia.

“What is she talking about, Jonas?” Kieran said.

“It wasn’t Phillip,” Jonas said. “It was just some of his memories.”

“And you didn’t tell me?” Kieran asked.

Jonas couldn’t understand why they were being so selfish about this. “He was taking over my mind! I barely got him out.”

“You killed him,” Leticia said, holding her arms.

“Damn it, I didn’t-”

“The library,” Kieran said, blinking. “That’s how you did it. You made me
help
you.”

“Nell!” Jonas said, raising his voice. Everything was silent. “Nell, come down here. I know you’re listening.”

The stairs creaked, and Nell walked down into the entrance hall. She looked at her mother, at Kieran; she frowned at Amelia. “Yes, clan leader?”

“Do you still want lead this pack?”

“I… I’m not sure I’m ready for-”

“Take it or leave it, Nell. If you can’t do it, I’ll give it to one of your brothers.”

She glanced at her mother. Leticia didn’t respond. “I’ll take it, clan leader.”

“Good. Your first task is to take your new pack member, Amelia, and teach her how to behave.” Leticia sucked in a breath. He ignored her. “If she resists, do what you have to do, but don’t kill her, understood?”

“Yes, clan leader. What do I do with… what do I do with my mother?”

Jonas looked at Leticia. She was staring at the floor, unresponsive, like his own mother had been for the year after his dad disappeared. It made his chest hurt. “Take care of her. She’s not herself, but she’s still family.”

Leticia looked up, her mouth working soundlessly, then she nodded and looked back at the floor.

Jonas headed for the door. “Are you staying or coming, Kieran?”

Kieran looked at Amelia. She snarled at him. “I’m coming, clan leader.”

Jonas closed his eyes as the noonday sun reflected weakly off the snow. The wind stirred the bare tree branches like rattling bones. When he heard the front door click shut, he took the ward off his hip and tossed it to Kieran. “Hold this for a second,” Jonas said. He put his hand on his jacket, over the pendant, and thought,
Madoc? I need to see inside the building.

♘

With as light a touch as he could manage, Jonas skimmed Nell’s mind.

Nell and Amelia stared at each other without blinking. Leticia just stood there, slowly collapsing into herself.

“Mom?” Nell said, without taking her eyes off Amelia’s.

“Yes, Nell?” Leticia said, looking up.

“I’d appreciate it if you gathered the others downstairs. We need to tell them what’s happened.”

“I… Of course, pack leader. I’ll do it now.” She dipped her head and hurried away. A door opened and shut.

“It’s just us, now. You can drop the act,” Nell said.

Amelia pulled her lips back from her teeth. “Why don’t you uncuff me,” she said. “Then we can introduce ourselves.” The chain on her handcuffs clicked.

Nell shrugged. “I don’t need to. All you have to do is calm down and you’ll turn human. They’ll slide right off your wrists.”

Amelia’s eyes gleamed. She smiled in triumph. Her body straightened and shrunk, filling out into a smooth-skinned, young woman’s figure. The cuffs fell to the floor. Amelia’s eyes rolled up into her head, and she fell on her side.

“Of course,” Nell continued, “the sudden swing from your sympathetic to your parasympathetic nervous system will knock your crazy ass out for a couple hours. Guess you didn’t know that, though.” She looked down at Amelia’s unconscious body. Only her hair was still the wild tiger striped pattern. Her skin was mottled, large swathes of pale skin alternating different tones of brown. In some places, the patches were broken by spots of their opposite, like paint spatters. It was beautiful. Nell instantly resented her for it, but Black Alice’s son said the bitch had to live. Nell picked Amelia up, slinging the naked body over her shoulder like a sack before heading upstairs.

♘

Jonas let go of the pendant.
She’ll be okay.
He extended his hand toward Kieran, who threw him the ward. Jonas clipped it to his belt.

They made their way down the asphalt walkway, through the woods, and over the wooden footbridge without exchanging a word.

Jonas reached for the back door of the van.

“If it’s all right with you, clan leader, I’m going to ride up front.”

Jonas felt his eyes prickle, but he squashed the emotion down. “Do what you want,” he said.

Kieran’s fist landed squarely on his jaw, knocking him into the van with a dull clang. The werewolf was breathing fast, pain twisting his face. Then he shook his head, looked at his hand, frowning, and said, “I’m sorry, clan leader. I don’t know where that came from.” He circled around and climbed into the passenger seat.

♘

The door slid open. Eve looked at him, her eyes red. She smelled like paint. “I’m sorry, Jonas. I just can’t, right now. I can’t.”

The door slid shut.

He rested his forehead against the cool metal.

♘

An hour or two later - he couldn’t tell - his door slid open.

“Jonas? What are you doing in the dark?”

She slipped her shoes off and sat next to him. He was hugging his knees to his chest. He’d been there so long he felt frozen in place. She put her arm around his shoulders and leaned her head against his; the smell of lotion and plain soap filled the air.

You all left,
he sent her. His ward was lying somewhere in the room, where he’d thrown it.

I know, sweetie. I know. I’m sorry.

She stroked his hair. The boundary between their minds collapsed, and the tears finally came.

She’s scared
, he realized. Of depending on someone, of feeling obliged to help, of how much their memories overlapped… He buried the thought; it wasn’t something she’d meant him to see.

CHAPTER 30

Jonas walked into the ops center, thermos in hand. A few of the operators looked up from their terminals and smiled. He knew most of them by name by now. “Hi, Chief.”

Chief Grady looked up from his desk. He looked tired. “Good morning, sir. Is that blood?” he asked, glancing at the thermos.

“Coffee,” Jonas said, wagging the thermos. “Costa Rican micro-lot. Tart, green apple notes, with a hint of walnut, and a cleansing finish.”

“I miss coffee,” Grady said, yawning. “Hearing you kids talk about it like it’s wine is new, but I could use the caffeine.”

Jonas grinned. “How long have you been pulling the day shift?”

“All week,” Grady said. “One more day to go, and I can get some decent sleep. Did you need something, sir?”

“Just the rundown, Chief. I’ve been either training or in the library for the past two days; wanted to see if anything had changed.”

Grady nodded. “Why don’t you step around, sir? I’ll show you the handover for the night duty officer.”

Jonas walked around the desk. Grady hit a few keys, and the weekly statistics popped up on his screen. Burglaries, robberies, and assaults were up all over the city and the boroughs. The police had even cautioned people against being outside past midnight north of 109th Street. “So, why is this happening?” he asked.

“Hold on a second, sir.” Grady opened a different folder and pulled up a chart. “The red line is thousands of pounds of meat flowing into the city. We add up the data from farms, slaughterhouses, butchers, and shippers all over the State.”

“We eat 600,000 pounds of meat a day?”

The ops chief shrugged. “Three million people on the island during the work day, sir. Werewolves tend to have a large impact, though.”

It’s all about the food supply
, Jonas said to himself, taking a sip from his thermos.

“Best we can tell, the lycanthrope population started climbing in mid-December,” Grady continued.

“After Temperance.”

Grady nodded. “That’s when rumors about a winter wolf in New York leaked. It was small numbers at first - visiting family members, individuals or well-off packs visiting in the city. A week later, consumption starts climbing faster, but look at this, sir.” He clicked a drop down, and a second, green line overlaid the first. It was mostly flat, until it started to dip around the same time consumption rose rapidly. “It’s the average price of the meat being sold. We get that from a clerk in the State Department of Taxation and Finance and a formula to account for unreported sales.”

Jonas leaned forward, trying to wrap his head around what Grady was showing him. “So, consumption shoots up but the average price goes down. The werewolves are poor?”

Grady beamed. “Exactly, or they’re bringing their whole families when they can’t afford to.”

Jonas looked at the chart again. Consumption had dropped and prices rose over the last week, since he’d spoken to the Council. “And now they’re leaving,” he said, feeling relieved.

“Not quite, sir. Our informants say they’re still coming in. It’s the dregs, now - mutants, clanless, illegals, anyone who couldn’t afford to drop everything and come. They don’t eat as much meat, but consumption should be rising. There just aren’t enough trucks. Combine that with the break-ins shutting down some of the butcher shops and the rising price, I’d say we’re looking at a shortage. There are about 15,000 werewolves in the city and the poorest of them are going to be getting desperate.

“The worst news is, the humans are starting to catch on. Newspaper subscriptions canceled, temp job postings climbing like mad… I’d say 100,000 people have just walked away or are staying with relatives for a while. Someone’s going to start asking why.”

“You get all that from charts?”

“Charts, reports, conversations… we can’t all be enforcers, sir, but we try to do our part.”

Jonas turned to tell him he did more than his part, then saw the wry grin on Grady’s face. “We each have our superpowers. Thanks, Chief.”

“You’re welcome,” Grady said. “And sir, you’ll be happy to know Mr. Sorensen should be out of the vat by next week.”

That must be Micah,
Jonas thought. “That’s great, Chief. I’ll be on the roof for a bit if anyone needs me.”

Grady nodded.

Jonas walked out, feeling more unsettled than when he woke up.

♘

Jonas shifted onto the head-high wall that ringed the roof, then sat facing inward. The rooftop of 845 3rd Ave wasn’t much higher than most of the surrounding buildings, and much shorter than some, but it still felt more open than being at street level. Phillip had liked it, and while Jonas was sure he’d stamped out that part of the werewolf’s mind, he’d started to use the place more often while the Agency was crowded with visitors.