Winter Lost

And it had been an argument, hadn’t it? I wondered, briefly, if it had something to do with Jesse’s eggplant hair.

But I was more concerned with my brother.

“If he was catatonic,” I asked, “why is he in the cage?”

“Dad called you,” Jesse said, “and right in the middle of that he jumped up like a jackrabbit. We’d wrapped him in a blanket. He sat up and the blanket sort of trapped him. He panicked.”

“I came in about the same time,” Tad said, “so it could also have been my arrival.” He looked at me. “Smelling like I do, yeah?”

Fae, he meant.

“We’re not sure,” Jesse added. “Because neither Dad nor I heard when Tad came in, and Tad didn’t see Gary jump up.”

I glanced at Adam, because not hearing Tad’s entrance was weird. Particularly if Adam had been revved up from a fight with the wolf near the surface.

He shrugged. “The wolf part of me stopped noticing Tad’s movements a while ago. Not enemy. Not pack. Not dangerous to us.”

I nodded.

“I heard Tad come in,” Adam clarified, “but I didn’t pay attention to him. I was more concerned about stopping Gary from jumping out the big plate-glass window. I caught him, but he’s as quick as you are. If I hadn’t been moving and close, I wouldn’t have.”

“He’s scared, Mercy,” said Jesse. “Really scared.”

“It took Adam and me both to get him down here without hurting him,” Tad told me. “Though once we got him inside the cage, he just collapsed.”

Tad had been slouched back in the chair since I’d gotten there, but I’d been distracted by my brother. I finally took note of the deceptive casualness in Tad’s pose that was designed to hide that he was ready for action.

I’d known Tad since he was nine. He’d worked with me in my garage until he’d found a better-paying position as an undercover bodyguard. That meant he was going to school with Jesse, because being the daughter of the Tri-Cities’ own Alpha set her up for nastiness no one would have dared to take against a real werewolf. He’d moved into my old house across the back fence from us a few weeks ago for added security for our home.

Tad wasn’t a werewolf. He didn’t look like a badass. He looked like a nerd, complete with stick-out ears and a big, goofy smile. But looks were deceptive. He was the half-human son of a powerful and grumpy fae. He could take care of business.

I wondered why he thought he should be worried about my brother, who was looking pretty helpless just now in a cage designed to keep werewolves trapped.

“I called Honey,” Adam told me. “She should be here shortly.”

I glanced up at him in surprise.

He smiled faintly. “I’m not oblivious.”

“Peter’s only been dead a year,” I said. Peter’s ghost still followed Honey around, a faithful attendant to his living mate.

“Honey and your brother have been talking,” he told me. “Texting, mostly.”

I frowned at him. “Honey didn’t say anything to me.”

“Honey didn’t say anything to me, either,” he said. “I have ways.”

“Our wolf pack gossips like nobody’s business,” observed Jesse.

I decided I’d gotten as much information out of them as I was going to. Time to deal with my brother.

I tried his name again.

“Gary?”

He didn’t respond to my voice, which wasn’t a surprise. I’d been down here for a while now, and he’d had plenty of time to react to me. I took a deep breath, but the overwhelming smell of sweat and fear made it difficult to get anything more subtle.

“You think it could be magic?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Adam said.

“Maybe,” Tad said slowly. “But it’s nothing I’m familiar with—and I can’t read anything through that cage.”

I gave Tad a surprised glance. Silver shouldn’t have any effect on fae gifts.

“Sherwood’s been playing with it,” Adam said with faint disapproval.

Sherwood, our no-longer-amnestic werewolf, had some unusual magic at his beck and call. He could remember who he was now, but he still had a lot of holes in his memory—and his magic. It made for some interesting times.

If Sherwood had a go at it…I decided—without much basis for my judgment—that he wouldn’t have done anything that would hurt anyone. I reached through the bars to touch Gary. I wasn’t a werewolf, so the silver didn’t bother me. But my arm wasn’t quite long enough from this side of the cage. I crawled to the side nearer to Gary and tried again. This time I managed to get my fingertips on his shoulder.

He jerked as if startled, even though we’d been making a lot of noise. After a bare instant he rolled over and up, until he was crouched over his heels. He grabbed the hand I’d had on his shoulder before he’d moved and brought it to his face, inhaling deeply.

He made a garbled sound that tried and failed to be a word. He followed that with a dozen other noises that also might have been words. I didn’t think they were, though. There was something about them that felt wrong—the opposite of communication.