Trial by Fire
Page 30
“You should have seen the way the other members of the coven talked about this girl, Lake.” I paused, letting my words sink in. “They’re scared of her—the kind of scared that involves pupils twice as big as they ought to be.”
Lake gave me a look that said I wasn’t doing a very good job of convincing her that playing nice with Caroline was the answer.
I tried again. “Maybe I’m wrong about this. Maybe we’ll try to talk to her and she’ll shut us down, but my gut is telling me that she’s used to living on the fringe. She’s used to people being afraid. She might even like it, but deep down, she has to be lonely or angry or bored.”
If watching Ali assess the trio the day before had taught me one thing, it was that you didn’t need supernatural powers to play off other people’s emotions. Whatever Caroline was hiding beneath that unbothered, uninvolved exterior, I was willing to bet that it ran deep, and given that she’d explicitly threatened the lives of everyone I loved, I wasn’t going to feel guilty about using that.
Using her.
It took me a moment to realize that Lake had stopped driving and that both of my friends had gone still beside me. It was several seconds more before I realized that if my alpha status had been noticeable before, I was practically bleeding dominance now.
Pack was what mattered. Protecting them. Destroying threats.
For a few seconds, I stayed there, in that distinctly alpha frame of mind where nothing and no one else mattered but protecting my pack, and then, like a drowning man coming up for air, I managed to pull myself back. We were just going to talk to Caroline, try to get some answers.
That was all.
Devon in full-on charm mode was a terrifying thing. Caroline must have thought so, too, because she avoided him, evaded him, and glared brutal, bloody murder in his direction right up until the moment the three of us sat down at her table at lunch.
“Mind if we join you?” Devon slung one arm over the back of his chair and stretched his legs out, looking for all the world like some kind of larger-than-life male model smoldering on the side of a city bus.
“It’s a free country.” Caroline met his eyes with an unnatural, absolute calm. “You can sit wherever you want.”
Most people’s bodies telegraphed their thoughts in ways that run-of-the-mill humans never noticed, but Caroline was like a blank slate. She wasn’t hiding her fear. She wasn’t deliberately communicating that she wasn’t afraid. She just sort of was.
There was some chance that this was going to be harder than I’d thought.
“You left before the real fun started yesterday.” I kept my voice casual, all too aware that the rest of the student body was watching the four of us like we were their soap opera of choice. “Your family is just a bucket of laughs.”
Caroline bared her teeth, and it took me a moment to realize that she was smiling with her mouth but not with her eyes. “The others are very friendly. Have you given any more thought to what we talked about on Monday?”
“I have.” Devon leaned forward in his chair, staying out of her personal space, but bringing the full force of his blue eyes to bear on hers. “I don’t know about the girls, but I’m having some, shall we say, doubts.”
“Doubts,” Caroline repeated.
Devon grinned. “Doubts. I could tell you that I’m devilishly handsome, have an impeccable sense of style, and am much, much stronger than I look, but I could also claim to be the reincarnation of Humphrey Bogart.” He lowered his brows slightly and played his here’s looking at you, kid face for all it was worth. “How’s a girl like you supposed to know who or what to believe?”
For the first time, I saw a chink in Caroline’s otherwise emotionless armor: she raised one eyebrow, ever so slightly, and turned to me. “Is he serious?”
“Almost never,” Lake replied. “But the boy has a point. It’s one thing to breeze into town and say you can do something. It’s another thing to put your money where your mouth is and prove that it’s true.”
“Are you suggesting that I’m not the reincarnation of Humphrey Bogart?” Devon gave Lake a disgruntled look. “I’m hurt.”
“And I’m going to finish my lunch outside.” Caroline slid her chair back and stood up. “I’d give you all a demonstration, but Bryn’s already gotten a hint of my tracking skills, and to show you the rest, I’d have to ask one of you to play the target. I doubt there’d be any volunteers.”
Devon stood up. “Where do you want me?”
“Devon.” At times like this, I really wished he had an aversion to his full name so my saying it could carry the same weight as his calling me Bronwyn.
“What?” Dev said, the very picture of innocence, all six foot five of him.
I wasn’t buying it. This is how you make friends and influence people, Devon? I asked. By volunteering for target practice?
He shrugged. What did you expect me to do, Bryn, compliment her shoes? She’s a trained killer who issues ultimatums on behalf of an entire coven of psychics. I don’t think we’d get very far with girl talk, and besides, have you seen her shoes?
I had to admit that there was a twisted kind of reason to his logic. To get any information out of Caroline, we’d have to talk her into spending more than three minutes at a time in our presence. If challenging her to show off her skills gave us more time to work our way in, it wasn’t the worst idea in the world—except for the part where Devon volunteered to be the target.
“You want me to demonstrate my skills on you?” The neutral set of Caroline’s features gave way to a small, self-satisfied smile.
Devon straightened his lapels. “I’d love for you to demonstrate your skills on me.”
Beside me, Lake groaned. Forget Bogart, she told me. He’s channeling rakish bad boys 101. Don’t know about you, B, but I think I’m gonna be sick.
I was right there with Lake on that sentiment. I was used to seeing Devon hop from one role to the next, but nine times out of ten, I was the target of his shenanigans, and he reverted to form the second I smiled.
But Caroline wasn’t smiling anymore. She was smirking, and I was only about 90 percent sure that Devon was playing, because as the four of us walked outside, he didn’t say a single word to me—not out loud and not in my head.
Dev, I really hope you know what you’re doing, I told him as Caroline jumped the parking lot railing and headed for the forest, the three of us on her heels.
Bronwyn, dearest, have you ever known me to charge into something blind or without a plan?
Yes, I replied immediately.
Devon’s eyes flitted from Caroline’s form to mine. Something that wasn’t your idea?
It was possible that in the history of our friendship, I’d gotten Devon into more trouble than I’d gotten him out of. It was also possible that if the roles had been reversed, Dev would have had my back, no matter what.
Fine, I told him. But if you get hurt, I’m going to kill you.
“You’re sure you want to do this?” Caroline asked. For the first time, I could sense something beyond cold detachment in her voice. She wanted Devon to say yes. She wanted to shoot him.
She wanted to hunt.
I recognized her desire. Lake recognized it. Dev had to have recognized it, too, but as he went radio silent on the other end of our pack-bond, I took the message loud and clear. I was going to have to trust him to take care of himself on this one, and I was going to have to stop thinking about the reasons this was a bad idea and start thinking about ways to make it work.
Chances were good that Caroline would assume that Devon would have the same reaction to silver that most werewolves did. Chances were also good that she wouldn’t go for a kill shot. We still had four days left on her mother’s ultimatum, and Caroline didn’t seem like the type to kill on a whim.
No matter how badly she wanted it, no matter how strong the instinct to hunt down her prey was, she was still human. She wasn’t Rabid. She wasn’t out of control. She was scarily in control, and while I had no doubt she could kill, my gut said that she wouldn’t until she had orders.
I’d spent enough time skirting Callum’s dictates to recognize when someone else had had following orders pounded into her for years.
Lake gave me a look that said I wasn’t doing a very good job of convincing her that playing nice with Caroline was the answer.
I tried again. “Maybe I’m wrong about this. Maybe we’ll try to talk to her and she’ll shut us down, but my gut is telling me that she’s used to living on the fringe. She’s used to people being afraid. She might even like it, but deep down, she has to be lonely or angry or bored.”
If watching Ali assess the trio the day before had taught me one thing, it was that you didn’t need supernatural powers to play off other people’s emotions. Whatever Caroline was hiding beneath that unbothered, uninvolved exterior, I was willing to bet that it ran deep, and given that she’d explicitly threatened the lives of everyone I loved, I wasn’t going to feel guilty about using that.
Using her.
It took me a moment to realize that Lake had stopped driving and that both of my friends had gone still beside me. It was several seconds more before I realized that if my alpha status had been noticeable before, I was practically bleeding dominance now.
Pack was what mattered. Protecting them. Destroying threats.
For a few seconds, I stayed there, in that distinctly alpha frame of mind where nothing and no one else mattered but protecting my pack, and then, like a drowning man coming up for air, I managed to pull myself back. We were just going to talk to Caroline, try to get some answers.
That was all.
Devon in full-on charm mode was a terrifying thing. Caroline must have thought so, too, because she avoided him, evaded him, and glared brutal, bloody murder in his direction right up until the moment the three of us sat down at her table at lunch.
“Mind if we join you?” Devon slung one arm over the back of his chair and stretched his legs out, looking for all the world like some kind of larger-than-life male model smoldering on the side of a city bus.
“It’s a free country.” Caroline met his eyes with an unnatural, absolute calm. “You can sit wherever you want.”
Most people’s bodies telegraphed their thoughts in ways that run-of-the-mill humans never noticed, but Caroline was like a blank slate. She wasn’t hiding her fear. She wasn’t deliberately communicating that she wasn’t afraid. She just sort of was.
There was some chance that this was going to be harder than I’d thought.
“You left before the real fun started yesterday.” I kept my voice casual, all too aware that the rest of the student body was watching the four of us like we were their soap opera of choice. “Your family is just a bucket of laughs.”
Caroline bared her teeth, and it took me a moment to realize that she was smiling with her mouth but not with her eyes. “The others are very friendly. Have you given any more thought to what we talked about on Monday?”
“I have.” Devon leaned forward in his chair, staying out of her personal space, but bringing the full force of his blue eyes to bear on hers. “I don’t know about the girls, but I’m having some, shall we say, doubts.”
“Doubts,” Caroline repeated.
Devon grinned. “Doubts. I could tell you that I’m devilishly handsome, have an impeccable sense of style, and am much, much stronger than I look, but I could also claim to be the reincarnation of Humphrey Bogart.” He lowered his brows slightly and played his here’s looking at you, kid face for all it was worth. “How’s a girl like you supposed to know who or what to believe?”
For the first time, I saw a chink in Caroline’s otherwise emotionless armor: she raised one eyebrow, ever so slightly, and turned to me. “Is he serious?”
“Almost never,” Lake replied. “But the boy has a point. It’s one thing to breeze into town and say you can do something. It’s another thing to put your money where your mouth is and prove that it’s true.”
“Are you suggesting that I’m not the reincarnation of Humphrey Bogart?” Devon gave Lake a disgruntled look. “I’m hurt.”
“And I’m going to finish my lunch outside.” Caroline slid her chair back and stood up. “I’d give you all a demonstration, but Bryn’s already gotten a hint of my tracking skills, and to show you the rest, I’d have to ask one of you to play the target. I doubt there’d be any volunteers.”
Devon stood up. “Where do you want me?”
“Devon.” At times like this, I really wished he had an aversion to his full name so my saying it could carry the same weight as his calling me Bronwyn.
“What?” Dev said, the very picture of innocence, all six foot five of him.
I wasn’t buying it. This is how you make friends and influence people, Devon? I asked. By volunteering for target practice?
He shrugged. What did you expect me to do, Bryn, compliment her shoes? She’s a trained killer who issues ultimatums on behalf of an entire coven of psychics. I don’t think we’d get very far with girl talk, and besides, have you seen her shoes?
I had to admit that there was a twisted kind of reason to his logic. To get any information out of Caroline, we’d have to talk her into spending more than three minutes at a time in our presence. If challenging her to show off her skills gave us more time to work our way in, it wasn’t the worst idea in the world—except for the part where Devon volunteered to be the target.
“You want me to demonstrate my skills on you?” The neutral set of Caroline’s features gave way to a small, self-satisfied smile.
Devon straightened his lapels. “I’d love for you to demonstrate your skills on me.”
Beside me, Lake groaned. Forget Bogart, she told me. He’s channeling rakish bad boys 101. Don’t know about you, B, but I think I’m gonna be sick.
I was right there with Lake on that sentiment. I was used to seeing Devon hop from one role to the next, but nine times out of ten, I was the target of his shenanigans, and he reverted to form the second I smiled.
But Caroline wasn’t smiling anymore. She was smirking, and I was only about 90 percent sure that Devon was playing, because as the four of us walked outside, he didn’t say a single word to me—not out loud and not in my head.
Dev, I really hope you know what you’re doing, I told him as Caroline jumped the parking lot railing and headed for the forest, the three of us on her heels.
Bronwyn, dearest, have you ever known me to charge into something blind or without a plan?
Yes, I replied immediately.
Devon’s eyes flitted from Caroline’s form to mine. Something that wasn’t your idea?
It was possible that in the history of our friendship, I’d gotten Devon into more trouble than I’d gotten him out of. It was also possible that if the roles had been reversed, Dev would have had my back, no matter what.
Fine, I told him. But if you get hurt, I’m going to kill you.
“You’re sure you want to do this?” Caroline asked. For the first time, I could sense something beyond cold detachment in her voice. She wanted Devon to say yes. She wanted to shoot him.
She wanted to hunt.
I recognized her desire. Lake recognized it. Dev had to have recognized it, too, but as he went radio silent on the other end of our pack-bond, I took the message loud and clear. I was going to have to trust him to take care of himself on this one, and I was going to have to stop thinking about the reasons this was a bad idea and start thinking about ways to make it work.
Chances were good that Caroline would assume that Devon would have the same reaction to silver that most werewolves did. Chances were also good that she wouldn’t go for a kill shot. We still had four days left on her mother’s ultimatum, and Caroline didn’t seem like the type to kill on a whim.
No matter how badly she wanted it, no matter how strong the instinct to hunt down her prey was, she was still human. She wasn’t Rabid. She wasn’t out of control. She was scarily in control, and while I had no doubt she could kill, my gut said that she wouldn’t until she had orders.
I’d spent enough time skirting Callum’s dictates to recognize when someone else had had following orders pounded into her for years.
