The Thing About Weres

Patiently, and Marking Time Before Being Royally Screwed Over.

An unasked question hung heavy in the Were-scented air. What should be done with the Fae? With no immediate answer forthcoming, Cordelia had righted my chair and eased me into it. Harry had returned—he of the wicked swings—and had laid a sullen and bound Lexi at Trowbridge’s feet. The grim-faced Alpha of Creemore had rolled my brother over, and pried the Royal Amulet from his bloody hand. Ralph now hung from Trowbridge’s neck. Biggs had found a new place for himself, a little to the left of his Alpha’s shadow. And Merry had slowly— almost thoughtfully—ratcheted up her chain, until she hung like a loose choker, her pendant a warm comfort against the hollow of my throat.

I hadn’t figured out why she’d done that—at that precise moment I didn’t even like me.

True, my brain wasn’t working very well. It kept picking up stupid stuff such as that the seat cushions on the old Windsor chairs were mismatched, and that no one had ever thrown out the dead houseplant on the kitchen windowsill. The cap on the saltshaker was unscrewed, and half of the salt lay on the table. I wondered who’d done that. Mannus, always so hasty and greedy? Or maybe one of his crew? Out of the corner of my eye I saw Cordelia reach for her wig, then slap it against her knee to shake free the dust. “Biggs, sweep up the crockery,” she ordered, breaking the tense silence.

“That’s not my job,” he started to whine. But then Harry made a discreet rumble-growl low in the back of his throat, so Biggs stomped over to the broom leaning in the corner, anyhow.

The Alpha of Creemore’s back was to us—and had been for 216 “Mississippis.” Arms folded, he stood square in the back door’s threshold, silent and broody, seemingly engrossed by the awesome weed display growing on his father’s back lawn. That was another thing different about him. Before, he always leaned against something—be it a car, a door frame, or a piece of furniture. Now he was given to standing alone, legs spread and planted. Spartacus without the skirt.

Then Lexi whispered, “Ask him to let me go.”

I’d been doing a pretty good job of avoiding my twin’s gaze—I was too bruised by his sledgehammer of home truths, and too conflicted by the emotions stirred at the sight of him trussed like some turkey ready to be fed to the oven, to have the stomach to look at him.

“Be quiet,” I murmured, glancing toward the floor. Oh, what a lovely picture he was. A rope had been twisted around his torso, binding his arms behind him, and another shorter length had taken care of his legs. He lay on his side on the kitchen floor, his head lifted, anxiety and anger twisting his features. A streak of sweet-pea- scented blood oozed from the cut on his lower lip, and his usually sleepy green eyes were wilder than an infuriated tiger’s.

“He’ll do it for you,” my twin coaxed in another stage whisper.

Trowbridge stiffened, just slightly—enough to let me know that he’d heard, and processed, and already decided that the answer to that was, “Hell, no.”

“You’re only making it worse,” I muttered.

Sun potion leaked from my brother’s pores, a thin layer of too-sweet squeezed in between all those other more dominant strata of scents. He clumsily changed tack. “Hell, it’s not what it looked like. I can explain—”

“It’s not?” My frustrated instincts to right something bit at me. I replaced the cap on the saltshaker and twisted it until it was tight. “So, you didn’t steal Ralph and run hell-bent for the portal?”

He rested his head on the floor, and said hollowly, “I had a reason.”

“If you wanted to go back so badly,” I said quietly, lining the saltshaker against the pepper so they stood side by side, “you could have asked me. I would have asked Merry to take both of us through the portal.”

I brushed some of the salt into a pile, then glanced at my brother.

His expression was mutinous. Little spits of green fire circled his dilated pupils. “I didn’t steal anything. The Royal Amulet belongs to the King of the Court. I was going to return it to its rightful owners.”

Merry’s chain tightened. Just one notch.

“There’s a huge reward for the Royal Amulet,” he continued. “If I was the one to bring it back, I could write my own ticket. It could change my life for me back—”

“Home,” I said dully, feeling my cheeks flush.

My answer only served to infuriate him. He struggled against the bonds, and when I didn’t fall to my knees beside him and plead, “Please, sir, I beg of you. Untie my wretch of a brother!,” he reacted poorly.

“I can’t talk to you like this!” Lexi shouted. “Tell him to unbind me!”

I wanted to say a lot of things. Like “Don’t ask me for something I cannot give you, brother-mine.” Or how about this? “Don’t make me want to slap you and hold you and yell at you all at the same time, you broken and fouled shadow of my twin.”

But I didn’t.

“Taking the amulet was the only way I can go back,” he pleaded, his voice too loud in that pin-drop silence. “Don’t you understand? I can’t return without it.”

For a muzzy second or two, I considered the question seriously. Did I understand anything of this day? Of last night? My aching fingers crept to the peak of my ear. That’s a big fat no. “I have been near drowned in lies and truths ever since you landed here, and I don’t know what I believe or understand anymore.” I closed my eyes briefly, but even that didn’t magically reshuffle all the puzzle pieces, any more than stroking my ear soothed all the conflict inside me. How could it? My brother lay bound near my feet, and my mate stood brooding in the doorway. And I was in the middle of them. I’d always be in the middle of them.

I shook my head. “I’m so damn confused. I don’t know what to believe.”

Trowbridge slowly turned around, arms still folded over his chest. “He can’t return without the Royal Amulet, because the Black Mage sent him to steal it.”

Blue eyes watched me. For what? For me to stand up and say, “Well, that made it all clear!” I went back to herding my salt pile into a tidier mountain, thinking Trowbridge was going to have to dumb it down for me, and feed it to me in tiny morsels, because I still wasn’t connecting all the dots.

“Hell, I think one of my legs is broken,” Lexi pleaded. “It’s hurting me to be tied up like this.”

He’s hurt.

I chewed the inside of my cheek. “Does he have to be tied up?”

“Go ahead, Harry,” Trowbridge said, his face shuttered. “Untie him.”

Harry shook his head, but Biggs and he untied Lexi and propped him on the chair. My twin’s gaze darted around the room. From the window, to the door, to the knife stand, to the sharp broken shard of crockery by the Welsh dresser that Biggs had missed.

My brother was evaluating everything as potential weapon. Just like Trowbridge did. Except his jittery nerves made his thoughts transparent whereas Trowbridge’s inner mind-spin was becoming more obscure to me by the minute.

Lexi stretched his mouth, as if his lips were too dry. “You saw us come through the portal. We were running from the Black Mage. He and his men were on our heels.”

Trowbridge’s voice was completely flat, not one iota of wheedle in it. “They had horses. We had feet. They could have caught up with us at any time. The only reason we reached the portal was because the Black Mage wished us to. He needs something from this world, and he sent his Shadow to get it. I’ve been waiting to find out what exactly it was.”

Ah. That explained the little kitchen opera I’d just witnessed. All those peculiarities of logic and reaction—my former inner circle had been given a new playbook. Trowbridge had told them to let Lexi make a break for it. It was the reason why my brother had been so laxly guarded, and why Cordelia hadn’t knocked Lexi right off his feet when he stepped on her wig.

Though … Was that the reason Trowbridge hadn’t pulled the trigger right away? He could have shot Lexi. He had a clear view, a gutload of hatred, and a valid reason. It would have been one sure way of making sure my brother never crossed another portal.

I traced a circle around my salt pile, and then asked Trowbridge, “You never thought that my brother just wanted to come back home?”

To me, I didn’t add.

“No.” Trowbridge lifted his shoulders. “Your brother’s addicted to sun potion, and as he said, there is no juice in Creemore. It was a given that he was planning a smash and grab. I just wasn’t sure if there was anything