Byron actually materialized in front of Graham at the table, in his full demon glory, and said in his low, delicious voice, “Your grandmother was my apprentice, Graham. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Oh…shit.” Graham’s eyes struggled with his first sight of a full demon. The wings, the tail, the horns. Putting the two men side by side just reminded me why I had to attend anti-demon sex seminars. Demons in their full glory were so yummy.
“So there are two ways this can go…we can compete…or we can cooperate,” Byron said.
Thank goodness the Sullivan brothers went back to Massachusetts, I thought. This is complicated enough.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Jasper
“WE’VE GOT your roof all patched up, Miss Olcutt. But you are going to want to try and get it replaced…if you can.” I knew that the young woman couldn’t have much money. Wolf shifters were generally not known for their high-powered jobs and this girl was literally barefoot and pregnant, living in a log cabin.
“You can just call me Lucy,” she said, shaking her head with a shy grin.
Jake was hustling down the ladder behind me. “Lucy,” he said, giving her a little lift of his cap, but he seemed more absent-minded than usual. My brother could be such a flirt even with a married woman, and he liked barefoot and pregnant, I suspected. He just liked to be the kind of guy who brings home a deer, chops firewood while his wife stands in the doorway watching him as she stirs cake batter, and teaches his kids how to whittle. “Did Jasper tell you it’ll just be fifty today?”
“That’s really kind,” Lucy said. “Too kind. I know you had a long drive.”
“We help our own,” I said.
The door of the cabin creaked open and a wizened, squinting old woman peered out at us. “Send them in,” she told Lucy.
“Grandma, are you sure?”
“Send them in.”
Jake had taken off his Red Sox cap to wipe sweat off his forehead but now he just tossed it in the back of the truck with a bit of, Aw, damnit, we don’t have time to have tea with old grandma, we need to get back.
However, we were still wolves and we respected the hierarchy of a clan, even if it wasn’t our own. You had to be respectful to old people, no matter if they were getting senile and smelled weird.
The cabin was typical of a werewolf home, small and rustic, just a place to lay one’s head surrounded by acres and acres of woods. If a family had been around a long time, they had an old cabin, and newer clans usually had trailers. We had built our house ourselves so it was above the usual standard, but I liked these old cabins. A fire was crackling in the cookstove and all the furniture was old, solid wood stuff, with wool blankets and needlepoint pillows to soften the rougher logs. A ladder led up to the sleeping quarters.
The old woman sat down in the rocking chair. “You’re the ones I need to tell,” she said.
“Shoot,” Jake said, taking it in stride, as he did most things.
“I do not claim to be a true diviner,” the woman said, “but sometimes I see things. And I have seen things, this week. Oh, I have seen things.”
“Right, and you saw us?” I asked, feeling a little nervous. This was getting weird awfully fast.
“I did not see you. I just feel that you might be the strangers I need to speak to. I saw a girl with long blonde hair and an expression of defiance. Do you know any girls like that?”
Jake looked at me. The girl we hadn’t said much about since I kissed her. The girl we were both trying to forget. “Yeah,” he said. “Is she all right?”
“I saw this girl holding in her hands a great treasure of Sinistral. It glowed with a light so bright that I could not help but sense when it was awake. If I sensed it, I am afraid I’m not the only one. It’s only a matter of time before others realize what she has and try to take it from her and destroy it.”
“Great…so what is it?” Jake asked, and he sounded like he was humoring her. I frowned at him. He could at least pretend, a little more convincingly, that he believed in random visions.
“I don’t know…”
“Of course you don’t,” he whispered.
“This seems to be a joke to you,” the old woman said. “But it’s always up to you whether you want to heed my warning!”
“We don’t know you at all,” Jake said, which was not what you said to an elder, but my twin wasn’t always the most mannered guy around.
“It’s not a joke to us,” I said. “Jake’s just…Jake. Please go on.”
“You’re the good one,” she said, pointing at me with approval. “I can tell.”
Yeah, yeah, I was the good one. I made a real mistake in childhood when I decided to not be the snarky brother, because it seemed like Jake had an edge on me, but that was why I didn’t let Helena go without kissing her first.
“Seers are limited in our vision because the will of the spirits must still be done,” the old woman said. “We mortals are not given all the answers. We have to still use our heads and our hearts. But she will know what it is. I sensed that I should tell you this, and it’s up to you what to do with the information.”
“That was weird,” Jake muttered, as he waved at Lucy’s kits. They were both little, running around and testing their wolf forms. As humble
