Wrath

misfortune (and planning how I’d get Vanessa back for this). More dead silence passed, followed by a loud ruckus with the scrape of bar stools against a wooden floor as everyone dropped to their knees, their heads down. The woman, who only a moment ago had been yelling at Vanessa, saw me and also went down.

“What the hell’s goin’ on here?” a familiar voice called out as he came from what I assumed to be the kitchen behind the bar. I had to suppress a chuckle at his seemingly standard entrance when I was around. The large man, wearing a vest that showed off his burly muscles, hurried around the bar and to my group, then also dropped to a knee. “Ms. Alexis. Surprised to see you in these parts.”

“Trevor! What are you doing here?” I asked as soon as he rose and the others in the bar followed.

“Sundae,” he said, addressing the woman next to him, “you better let me handle this.”

Her dark eyes skated over each of us, and she let out a growl before striding back to the bar.

Trevor led us to a nearby table and shooed away the guys who had been sitting there. They quickly scattered and found a new table at one end of the building, near the dartboard, but their eyes never left us. Never left me, to be more specific. Booths lined the outside wall of the place, and at the other end was the only area with much light—a lamp hanging over a green felt-covered pool table. A couple of men leaned on their pool sticks as they watched us. Well, me, again. Sometimes, like with Rick, being Amadis royalty came in handy, but most of the time, I hated it.

“I banded up with the Georgia pack,” Trevor said in answer to my question, “and opened a second shop up here. We all gotta do what we gotta do these days. So what brings you here?”

“Long story,” I said as I sat on a stool at the bar-height table. “Tristan’s on his way, but it could be a few hours.”

Trevor’s hard gaze traveled over the others, lingering on Vanessa as a low growl rumbled in his chest. He narrowed his brown eyes at Jax. “You were the Were in the Everglades last year. You met some of my boys.”

Jax gave a curt nod. “That be me, mate.”

Trevor turned back to me. “Did you really steal a ride from Sundae’s pack?”

“We didn’t know,” I answered before Vanessa could open her mouth. “We had to get out of that town and —”

“I’ll take care of it,” he said with a nod. “But keep an eye on these guys or Sundae will kick them out on their asses.”

“Excuse me?”

“Sundae, the leader of the Georgia pack. The woman you just met? My shop’s out back, but this place is hers. She and her pack don’ like outsiders, but since it’s you and all . . .” He shrugged, and then lumbered toward the rear of the building, where he’d come from.

Sundae came over to our table.

“Glad to have you, Ms. Alexis,” she said, her voice hard as she emphasized my name—delivering the message that the rest of my team wasn’t quite as welcomed. Her sweet name sure didn’t match the threat of the wolf simmering below her surface. “I apologize for my temper a moment ago.”

She didn’t sound at all remorseful.

“No, I’m sorry we took the bike.”

“Oh, please. If I had known it was you, I wouldn’t have acted like I had. My pack is always at your service.”

I somehow didn’t quite buy that.

“Don’t worry. We’re not planning to stay long,” I said as warmly as I could manage.

“You’re welcome as long as you need to,” she said, the edge in her voice softening. A little maybe. Her gaze swept over my companions. “All ya’ll. We’re not used to others, and everyone’s a little on edge with all the shit going down in Savannah.” Her eyes flicked to Vanessa. “And having a newly converted vamp around, especially her, makes us a little . . . prickly.”

Vanessa sat back in her stool, crossed her arms, and rolled her eyes. I glared at her. You can at least try to convince them, especially after stealing her bike!

She sighed and then put on a syrupy smile as she leaned toward Sundae. “You really have nothing to worry about. I’m matriarch-certified and everything. The motorcycle was a simple misunderstanding.”

Sundae’s dark brown eyes fell on me.

“It’s true,” I said. “Rina, um, Katerina assessed her. We’re all on the same side here.” I hoped. “And we can repay whatever you need for the bike.”

The werewolf snorted, dismissing my offer. “So, then, what can I get ya’ll to drink? Besides blood. We ain’t that kind of dive.”

Her newly adopted tone sounded kinder, but her words still bit—she trusted Vanessa less than I did. A tap into her mind showed me Sundae would be keeping a close eye on the vampire the entire time we were here. She made that thought loud and clear, but hid anything else she may have been thinking behind a wall of mundane mind-chatter.

That was the problem with telepathy, at least my ability. People’s thoughts didn’t come conveniently—I couldn’t exactly pick out the precise thought I needed, but could only hear what ran through their minds at the moment—and often they didn’t even come coherently. When they knew about my ability, like most of the Amadis and the Daemoni did, they carefully filtered their thoughts or found ways to obscure them. Some people had become quite good at doing so, effectively shutting me out.

Jax, Blossom, and I ate a lunch of fried bar food while Vanessa watched with her nose slightly crinkled. She didn’t need blood yet, which was good. I hoped Charlotte knew where we could obtain more mage blood, since the supply Rina had given her was somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean or smattering the shores of the Outer Banks. Gross. I’d hate to be the Normans on the beach that day.

“So you landed in a swamp?” I asked Jax and Blossom to make conversation as I eyed them. “You don’t look or smell like it.”

“Don’t you love magic? These enchanted clothes are great! Of course, I had to clean up the rest of us.” Blossom waved a French fry around her head, indicating her clean hair, and grinned. “But yeah, we did, right in the middle of a mucky old swamp. Jax gave me a ride to land. Thank God and the Angels he was there!”

“Thank God and the Angels you helped me flash,” Jax said to Blossom. Something in the way they looked at each other gave me pause. Did Blossom feel the same attraction Jax had made loud and clear to Rina?

“And Bree helped you get here?” I asked, still trying to make sense of Blossom’s earlier deluge of words.

“She gave us a message from Tristan,” the witch said. “I guess the faeries in the Otherworld felt bad for us or something, since we had no way to contact each other. They allowed her to come to our world and help out.”

“Hmm . . .” I wasn’t sure what to think about that. Bree, a faerie, had done us a favor. Would we have to pay her back now, too? Or did we get a free ride with her, considering Tristan’s her son? Thinking about faeries brought Lisa and Jessica to mind, and I patted my leather jacket. The jar they’d given me for Kali’s soul remained tucked away inside, seemingly intact. Good. Because Kali was going to pay for this. All of it.

We still hadn’t heard from Tristan by the time we finished eating, so I asked Sundae if she had a quiet place Blossom and I could go to try her spell once again. We followed the Were through the kitchen and into a small office with a window that looked toward the side of the property. I thought there’d been a lot of bikes out front, but there were dozens more out here, perhaps over a hundred. Several mind signatures floated in the rear building, which apparently wasn’t part of the bar, but not enough for all of those motorcycles.

The desk in the office overflowed with paperwork, but a small couch against the wall provided the space Blossom and I needed. She pulled out her scrap of Dorian’s blanket, and I pulled out my own, just to smell it. To inhale his scent, which, admittedly, wasn’t that of a little boy anymore and normally not the best smell in the world. But it brought me closer to him somehow.

“Let’s begin,” Blossom whispered, her voice thick with sadness. I chose to hold onto the wrath instead. If I didn’t—if I let the grief take me—I’d break. And a Broken Alexis would be useless. Even Psycho Alexis was better.

I closed my eyes and opened my mind to Blossom’s. Once we had a connection, I took my mind farther out as she chanted her spell under her breath. Nothing nudged us north or in any other direction. My mind expanded more, reaching out as far as I could go, skipping over the thousands of mind signatures in all directions. Blossom’s