She was scared for me.
“I told you something like this before, but you had a lot going on at the time. This time I’ve got your full attention. Right?”
“Right, absolutely, you bet.”
“As long as we understand each other.”
“Oh, we totally do,” I assured her.
“All right, then.”
“All right.”
Chapter 17
With her warning still ringing in my ears, we trooped back to the kitchen after Jeannie opened one of the dryers, groped around inside, then turned the dryer back on. “A quilt,” she explained, and I nodded just like this was an ordinary week, day, conversation, whatever.
We got back just in time to hear Lara laughing and Jessica’s “Ooof ! All right, all right, you crummy kid, you win the bet.”
Jessica, obviously the loser in a game of arm wrestling, looked relieved to see me as she rubbed her shoulder. “Ah, the Mysterioso Twins are back. What’s up?”
“Just giving her directions to the playground,” Jeannie calmly lied. “Lara, you can go, but you mind Betsy like it was me talking—you understand?”
“Yes, Mom.” Lara slid off the stool and faced me.
“Hi again,” the next Pack leader said.
“Nice pigtails,” I replied.
Chapter 18
That was how I found myself taking Lara—Michael and Jeannie’s eldest—to the nearby playground for good, clean, wholesome werewolf fun.
She was a cutie, no question. She had her father’s eyes, that odd yellow-?gold I’d seen on television nature shows—eyes the color of an owl’s, or a hawk’s. Slender and straight, with her curly dark hair pulled into pigtails. Jeans and a Hannah Montana T-?shirt. Maybe . . . six?
“—then Daddy said you were going to bring Antonia back but now you have to talk to the Council and nobody knows what will happen after that but Derik’s really upset because he loves—loved—Antonia and—”
“Where the hell is the playground?” I muttered. Lara, as far as I could tell, hadn’t taken a breath in the last eight minutes. We’d taken a path that led off the grounds and onto a small, brick-?lined sidewalk beside a bike trail. Lara had explained that it was “really close.” Sure it was.
“—had to go before the Council since Grandpa took over the Pack so nobody knows what’s going to—”
“There is no park,” I muttered. “That’s my theory. I’m trapped on a never-?ending sidewalk beside a never-? ending bike path.”
“—walk around outside?”
“What?”
“I said, how come you can come outside? It’s daytime.”
“I just can.”
“But how come?”
It sounded too dumb to say it out loud, but I did it anyway. “Because I’m the queen. Sunlight can’t hurt me. Only a knockoff shoe sale can hurt me.”
“Because I thought you’d have to sleep in a coffin but my friend said you guys have one of the guest suites and there’s no coffins in there and—”
I stopped. Lara halted beside me. We’d rounded a tree-?lined corner and suddenly the park was spread out before us. There was a large sign at the entrance that read, MICHAEL WYNDHAM SR. MEMORIAL PARK.
“Don’t tell me,” I said. “Let me guess.”
“You don’t have to guess,” Lara said, giving me a look I knew well. It was the what-?kind-?of-?moron-?are-?you look. “The sign’s right there.”
“So your dad made this?”
“No. Daddy’s the third.”
“He’s what?”
“Michael Wyndham the Third. My great-?grandpa was—”
“You know what? I’ve kind of lost interest by now.” Legacies. I should have remembered where I was. This was New England, not Minnesota. “Run along.”
So she did, heading straight for the monkey bars. There weren’t many cars in the small parking lot to the left—maybe half a dozen—and about that many kids playing. A couple of moms were sitting on benches on the far side of the park, chatting and keeping half an eye on the children.
Which left me time to think about just what the hell we were in for. For example, just what the hell was the Council? Was it as bad as it sounded? Because it sounded a bit like a trial without a jury. Or a fair-?minded judge. And what was I supposed to tell them? I hadn’t made Antonia take slugs for me, or even asked her. We walked in, the bad guy shot, and Antonia died. The end.
I prowled around the teeter-?totters and tried to think of a plan. But I had no gift for strategy—I left that shit strictly to Sinclair and Tina—and felt more out of my depth than usual. What were we doing here, anyway?
Let’s say the Council decided the vampires had screwed up. What then? They couldn’t punish us. Could they? Would that mean we’d go to war? That could be a problem—not only did I not know how many vampires were walking around on the planet, I had no way to mobilize them. And I didn’t want to. I found it completely ridiculous that I had to police adults, most of whom were far, far older than I was. And as far as siccing them on werewolves, for crying out loud? Puh-?leeze.
I kicked irritably at an errant tuft of grass, then looked up at the unmistakable sound of a child bursting into tears. A little girl—three? four?—was sprawled in the gravel, sobbing, and a bigger boy—nine, ten?—was standing over her.
“I said your turn was over,” the brat said, sounding remarkably unrepentant. I knew a few vampires like that.
The thing about being childless (as I still thought of myself, BabyJon being a relatively late arrival in my life) is you sort of freeze up when kids are acting badly. On the one hand, you know the kid’s in the wrong and you want to help. On the other hand, it’s not your kid, so perhaps it was none of your business.
The little girl was still crying. The bigger boy was now on her recently vacated swing.
I glanced over at the moms sitting on the bench and saw one stop in mid-?gossip and say in that fake “I’m trying to sound stern but I’m really proud of my big boy!” tone that I absolutely hated, “Jaaaaason! You know you’re supposed to wait your turn, honey.”
“I’m telling!” the tiny girl in the gravel sobbed. “I’m telling! Mom! Mommy, Jason pushed me off the—”
“You be nice to your little sister, Jason Dunheim?” the mom asked. Asked. Not told. Oh, God save me from overindulgent nitwits who insist on procreating but not parenting. “Jason? Okay?”
Why is she asking? I hate when parents ask. What happens if the kid says no? Then what are you supposed to do? Slink away? Have a tantrum? What?
“Mommy!”
“Shut up, bawl baby.”
“Jason? You know we don’t use that phrase in our house, Jason? Honey?”
Sigh. Well, the little one didn’t appear to be hurt (I couldn’t smell any blood on her), and if I didn’t exactly approve of a mother who so clearly favored one child over the other, there wasn’t much I—
