Chapter Six #2
“To them, we are,” Chayton commented. He had his hair pulled back in a short braid today, the new haircut already shoulder-length again, and his expression suggested he’d have liked to accessorize with a little war paint. “A few weeks ago, they would have been attacking us.”
“—so we had to come to you,” Lee continued. “But when we showed up, the aux squad here decided not to let us in, either!”
“Look at her,” Sophie said, her voice low and dangerous. “Look at her!”
“Is it that bad?” I asked Kimmie, with muffin crumbs on my face.
“Uh… no,” she said, but her eyes slid away from mine. “A little makeup, maybe—”
“And brush the hair,” Jen said. “I mean, seriously. What happened to your hair?”
“What’s wrong with it?” I asked, putting up a hand. And then paused, getting a sudden flashback to a bone-strewn cave which a dreadlocked somebody had been sharing with bats, and wondered how hard I’d gotten hit last night.
Pretty hard.
“I’m… a restless sleeper,” I said, because I had to say something.
“Well, it looks like—” Jen caught herself. “It needs some work.”
“Would you stop talking about her hair?” Sophie said furiously. “She took on most of Rand last night, along with three dark mages, and she’s lucky to be alive! She doesn’t need this—”
“Need what?” I asked, shoveling in egg. And wondering whether I should have done some damage control before answering the door. But I got only more side-eyeing in response. “Come on, out with it.”
“It’s Jace,” Noah said.
His own hair was a little unruly today, with the blond strands in clumps that looked vaguely like ears on top of his head. Wolf ears. It wasn’t a Change, even a partial one, but it said that he hadn’t taken time over his appearance this morning either, not even to run a comb through the bedhead.
“What about Jace?”
“I told him not to do it,” Chayton began, but was cut off.
“You should have done more than talk!” Lee said viciously.
“He’s right,” that was Valko, one of the quieter boys. He had the common Were coloring of dark brown hair and gray eyes, the latter so large and expressive that he talked through them more than words most of the time, but today he’d made an exception. “You should have stopped him.”
“How?” Chayton demanded. “Have you seen this place? It’s crawling with Weres, most of which hate our guts! And he was in the lobby and practically surrounded—”
“You could have come and gotten us!” Lee said. “You didn’t have to just watch him leave—”
“Leave?” I repeated, but nobody heard me over the argument that had broken out.
“How the hell was I supposed to do that?” Chayton asked angrily. “He darted out the door, and I went after him. But there were guards out there, too, and I’d just come back from a run. I was all sweaty and in stained clothes; they were about to run us both off as street people or something—”
“So you should have come after us!”
“I did. When I couldn’t talk sense into him, I came back inside—”
“You should have dragged him with you—” Noah snarled.
“In front of the guards? They were already eyeing me like I was something they’d stepped in. If I’d gotten in a fight, too—”
“There might not have been a fight—”
“Oh, there would have been a fight! You didn’t see him—”
Chayton broke off, probably because I’d finally gotten enough info and grabbed his arm. “You saw Jace leave the hotel?”
He nodded, swallowing. “I tried to stop him—”
“Where was he going?”
“I don’t know. He said—” He licked his lips and looked at the others, until I tightened my grip and growled at him. “He said this was all his fault! He said—he’s scared, all right? We all were! Last night—”
“I wasn’t,” Lee said. “I wanted to tear some ass—”
“You wanted to strain my shield,” Dimas snapped. “It was taking a pounding on one side already, and then you idiotas had to start clawing at it from the other. You’re lucky I was able to hold it—”
“You should have dropped it and let us out! Instead of putting a freaking lid on—”
“—until Lia could deal with everything—”
“Yeah! Alone! I told you—”
“Shut up!” I yelled, and for a wonder, they did, all turning to look at me. “Where. Is. Jace?”
“I—we don’t know,” Noah said, after glancing at the others. “But he blames himself for what happened—”
“How do you know?”
“He talked some last night, but I didn’t think it was this bad. I figured he was just letting off steam. We were all a little shaken—”
“A little hell,” somebody said, but I didn’t see who, because I was already up and walking into the bedroom.
“Keep talking!” I said over my shoulder.
“There’s not much else to tell,” Chayton said, raising his voice. “I spotted him when I was coming back from my run. There hadn’t been any guards earlier, well, except for some Corpsmen, but there were a fuck ton when I got back—”
“Arnou’s forces were supposed to arrive by plane this morning,” I explained.
“—and I thought that was the problem, that he’d gotten spooked. You know how he is around clan wolves—”
“We’re clan wolves,” Noah said.
“Sure. Keep telling yourself that.” That was Lee.
“—or that maybe there’d been an incident,” Chayton said, forging ahead. “I caught his arm to ask what was up, but he shrugged me off. And when I asked where he was going, he said nowhere and to leave him alone. So, of course, I didn’t—”
“Like hell!” That was Lee.
“I didn’t,” Chayton snapped. “But a couple of the guards started forward, and Jace was pulling on me, and then he hit me and ran off. I started after him, but one of the guards wanted to know what I thought I was doing, so I had to suffer twenty questions before he’d let me go, and by then I’d lost the scent.
You know how it is in a city, with all the cars and shit—”
“Oh, hell, no!” Sophie said as soon as I walked back in. I thought she was talking about my rumpled cowgirl ensemble, which was the least dressy thing they’d bought, but apparently not. “I’ll go get Cyrus, I swear to God!”
“You’re not planning to go after him?” Jen said, staring at me.
“You can’t go anywhere,” Kimmie agreed. “You look like death.”
“Maybe some makeup will help,” I said dryly, and she made a face at me.
“You know what we mean!” Sophie said, coming around the couch. She had another cute outfit on today, which I strongly suspected had put a dent in a certain bardric’s credit card, consisting of a leopard print mini dress with a swingy pleated skirt and some black ankle boots.
“Versace?” I guessed.
“Cavalli, and that’s not the point!” She looked pissed. “You’re not going anywhere—”
“Hey,” Noah said.
“—if I have to sit on you to keep you in place! You can’t run headlong into danger—”
“And you can’t talk to a Lupa that way,” Lee informed her. “Especially not your Lupa.”
“—when you haven’t even started to heal from the last time you did that! I mean, honestly, they put us with you to learn restraint? Are they stupid?”
“The Circle?” Jen asked. “Hell, yes.”
“And don’t tell me there’s no danger, that you’re just gonna look for Jace! We are at war!”
“And Jace is out in the middle of it,” I said simply.
Which shut her up for once.
“I’ll call Caleb,” I said, talking about my war mage partner. “For backup. And I’ll take it easy. We aren’t going to get in any fights—”
“Yeah, because you hate those so much,” she muttered.
“We’re just going to find Jace and bring him back—”
“Whaddya mean ‘we’?” Lee asked. “Because that better not be just you and Caleb. That better not be excluding us!”
“You can’t talk to your Lupa like that,” Kimmie told him, causing him to snarl in her general direction and her to roll her eyes.
“—and then I’m going to have a talk with him,” I finished.
“Poor bastard,” somebody muttered, but I didn’t see who because I was in a stare-down with Sophie. Who was still looking like tattling to Cyrus was a plan.
It was not a plan.
I moved a step closer to her, putting us almost nose to nose, and while she didn’t back away, she started to look unhappy. Not that she’d been the picture of joy before. “It’ll be a quick trip.”
“With us,” Lee said, coming over.
“Yes, if you like.”
“You’re damned right I like! You’re not leaving us behind! Arnou may think we’re useless, but we’re not fucking useless!”
“Why are you mad?” Chayton asked. “She said yes.”
“How do you know it’ll be quick?” That was Sophie, looking as belligerent as Lee, but she was listening.
“Yeah, his scent has been torn apart by the wind by now,” Jason put in. “I have a good nose, but I can’t track him across a city—”
“You won’t need to,” I assured him.
“And why not?”
“Because I know where he is.”