14. Paul #3
Then his wife. She’d been more active in our house when my mother was alive, partially because they’d work in the garden together, partially because she gave dictation lessons to Chris, Penelope, and me when we were younger.
She was a rather severe woman, but not unkind, and had an uncanny affinity for roses.
She always said their kisses were from beings beyond or other kookie stuff that more mystically minded shifters were into.
Then there was their son and daughter, both of whom I’d never seen out of their normal uniforms. They didn’t give condolences as much as they tilted their heads and bowed, but I took it at face value.
“Did anyone think to bring gloves?” Jackson murmured quietly once they moved on. Except it wasn’t quietly enough considering we were in a cathedral full of shifters . “I feel like my palm is going to fall off if I have to shake one more hand.”
“Use your eyes,” Penelope whispered. “The line goes out the door.”
He sighed. “Such is the burden of being adored.”
Sure. That was what it was.
Strangely enough, that miniscule slice of levity helped me get through the seemingly endless slog of well-wishers. I appreciated their kind words, I really did, but it was hard not to get frustrated with them when all I wanted was for our trap to be sprung so justice could be served.
Unfortunately—or was it fortunately?—nothing happened during the guests’ arrival, and soon all the pews were filled with a couple hundred shifters and shifter-adjacent people.
Suddenly, I began to doubt our entire plan.
Surely no assassins would attack in such a large crowd!
And if the peculiar, emotionless murderer still existed and wasn’t some specter someone had summoned magically…
well, it didn’t seem like they’d just burst in either.
Perhaps I’d been so eager for some semblance of catharsis that I’d been making poor choice after poor choice. It wasn’t like the underbelly market we’d gone through was much help. In fact, we’d gotten ourselves into quite a bit of trouble there, and I was sure that there were ramifications still?—
“Condolences on what I am sure is a very trying time for your family.”
I whipped my head in the direction of a tall, willowy woman dressed entirely in white.
Absolutely not.
There was no way that the actual Whisper was at the funeral!
Shit.
Actually, one swear word wasn’t enough. Shit, shit, shit, shit!
I watched, completely and utterly gobsmacked, as Jackson said something polite to her, then she did the same routine with Penelope.
Neither of them seemed to have any inkling of who she was—why would they?
—nor did they scent my distress. That was likely because I was already exuding plenty of unhappy pheromones, and there were literally hundreds of other shifters around as well.
Finally, she reached me, and I braced myself to give the signal. Surely this had to be the Whisper making a bold declaration that she was the one responsible for the hits?
Even if that didn’t entirely make sense to me.
“Hello there, friend,” she said, her voice smooth and calm. It was strange to see such a benevolent countenance on her face when the last time I’d seen her, she’d been shrieking as Cherry set her vines on fire. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“Yes, no stranger place to be than my alpha and alpha-heir’s funeral,” I responded dryly. In my mind, however, I was rapidly deciding how exactly to play the situation. Because while I so badly wanted to send the signal and snap the jaws of our trap closed, it also didn’t feel… correct.
Maybe Cherry really was rubbing off on me.
“Truly bizarre. Especially since I did a little digging on my rude guests who left so suddenly. Do you know what I found? I found out that the alpha and the heir in those caskets are actually your blood kin. Is that not so, Christopher VanMarche, eldest surviving son of Caspian VanMarche?”
I blinked at her, wondering if she realized that the drama of her villainous reveal was quite lost on me. “I’m Paul.”
“Pardon?”
“I’m Paul. The third son. Chris is here.” I gestured to my brother beside me, who had just finished conversing with a guest.
“What about me?” he asked.
“It’s nothing,” I said. “Just catching up with a former colleague. Good chance to take a sip of water if you want.”
“Excellent idea.”
He turned to do just that, and I looked back to the Whisper, who appeared quite deflated.
“I… I didn’t find any information about any middle son. Just the heir, the second born, then the party boy with the hit and one daughter.”
I would have laughed if it were any other situation. But it wouldn’t look great for me to do so at my pack’s funeral, so instead I just shrugged. “Plight of the middle child, I suppose.”
“Right. Well…” She cleared her throat and glanced at the line behind her. “We will speak later then, Paul. I really did come to pay my respects. I’d rather be an ally than an enemy.”
“I’m guessing my family name has something to do with that?”
“Of course. Powerful friends in high places and all that.”
“Naturally.”
With one last shake of my hand, she continued on to Chris. I wondered what Cherry thought of that interaction, if she’d even seen it.
She was our one floater, the unfixed point of our arrangement.
With her ability to see people’s emotions, she needed to move about as she pleased, taking in any abnormalities or clues the rest of us couldn’t see.
It was an essential part of the plan, but I couldn’t deny that I missed her.
Even just having her beside me felt like it would make some of the deep dourness ebb.
Which was a hell of a thing to think about a woman I hadn’t even known for two weeks.
Still, we all had to do our best to give her as much time as possible to roam and investigate, so I kept shaking hands, kept hearing endless platitudes, and tried not to look like I was plotting anything.
By the time the procession of well-wishers had dissipated, we were all exhausted, and the funeral was just about to begin.
“Positions?” Jackson whispered, again too loud, but at least it sounded as if he was asking if we were starting the ceremony.
“Not yet,” I answered. “Quick refresh in the standby room.”
“Right, right. I forgot.”
Fair enough. It was a small step in the plan, so I couldn’t blame him. But with our metabolism, it was best to force a deep drink, a quick snack, and a few moments to properly transition into possibly the worst part of our entire day.
Giving speeches.
For a family that all took public speaking at various times in our life, none of us liked it, a solid zero out of five. Well, four now, I supposed. Bad luck on that part, but at least we weren’t completely out of our depths. We just weren’t going to enjoy that depth.
I looked for Cherry on our way to the standby room but didn’t spot her pale pink hair anywhere.
I did, however, spot the extra security we had hired.
At least that choice wasn’t suspicious. It was perfectly normal for one of the three head shifter families on the East Coast to have a lot of protective personnel for such an event.
I was just grateful any of them wanted to work for us after what had happened to my father’s personal security detail.
We did what we had to do in the standby room, regrouped, then headed out to start the ceremony.
An elder spoke first. The retired alpha from the McElroy pack was pushing hundred-and-seventy. We shifters were long-lived, but that was considered quite old for us. He said some kind and encouraging, albeit hard to understand words, then the priest took over.
We weren’t exactly religious, especially not in the ways of our ancestors and the two-faced or wolf deities they worshipped, but we weren’t not religious either, so I found some comfort in his eulogy.
And then it was our turn.
Chris went first, as he was now the eldest of our line, and the one most were expecting to take over as alpha of the pack—although I was sure challengers would come forward in the next year or so.
I just hoped they waited until the investigation was over.
Granted, most of them didn’t even know there was an investigation going on.
“Thank you all for coming today. I wish that our meeting was for more auspicious reasons, but I am grateful for your presence, nonetheless.
“My father, Caspian VanMarche, has led this pack through forty-three years of peace and prosperity. I, for one, will always speak of that legacy with pride and plenty of reverence…”
Chris’s speech was much kinder than I expected. Not that I thought he would go out of his way to be cruel or rude, but I didn’t expect the warm anecdotes or him to appear so vulnerable. Had Penelope helped him write it? Cherry? Or did I know Chris as little as I had known Luther?
A disquieting thought, but I didn’t have long to linger on it before it was my turn to speak.
The walk up to the podium seemed endless, with hundreds of eyes on me, each one boring their own little holes in my person. It was a trypophobic nightmare, and I would rather have been anywhere else.
But I couldn’t be. And not just because of some abstract plan. But because it was my last goodbye to my father and brother, and even the threat of someone trying to wipe out our line wasn’t worth losing that moment.
“Thank you all for joining my family in our mourning today,” I said, looking out at all the faces.
One part of my mind marveled at the community on display, the other wondered if anyone here had torn my family apart.
It didn’t make for a pleasant combination.
“Today, you’ll no doubt hear many people talk of the amazing accomplishments and accolades of my father, as well as the growing list for my brother, Luther, but there is something else I wanted to discuss. ”