55. Deacon
Chapter 55
Deacon
I know I’m sobering up because that man’s been dead for a very long time. “Hey, Walt.”
“Deacon, what’s the sermon?” He comes to sit down next to me in the dirt.
“You and Finn with that joke.” I shake my head. “It’s not looking great, Walt.”
He huffs a single laugh. “That sick son of a bitch. When Ersilia said he was the one, I should have killed him and let Ansel kill me then.”
“Pft. He’s a wolf, as far as we’d all seen it. Would have been justified,” I answer but hang my head because violence isn’t supposed to be the answer. “You been haunting these guys all this time?”
“I mean, this is my home. Someone’s gotta watch out for ’em?” Walt sighs, and his brown-black hair falls into his eyes. “You gotta go pull Ben out of the bottle. He’s not gonna climb out himself.”
“Is that you telling me he’s about to drink himself to death or that he needs a friend?” My heart rate picks up .
I’m not about to let someone overdose or drown while I sit here. Not when it’s supposed to be me.
Walt tosses his head toward Ben’s cabin. “Last time I checked, he was on his side.”
“Fuckin’ hell.” I get up out of the dirt and jog down the path past the trailers to Ben’s cabin.
The back door is unlocked, and I walk into the kitchen, turning on lights as I go to the main bathroom. Ben’s boots are still on. He’s lying on the bathroom floor. Vomit all over the toilet and the floor.
“Ben!” I shout, kicking him in the shin.
He’s breathing for now, but his mess and a bottle of cheap tequila are too close for comfort. If that idiot rolls over and dies in filth like this, I’m never gonna hear the end of it.
“Fuck off,” he groans, rolling onto his back.
“Fat fuckin’ chance.” I step past his legs into the small space, grabbing hold of the front of his button-down canvas shirt. “Ansel wouldn’t fucking forgive me if I let his second-best best friend drown in his own vomit.”
“The fuck he wouldn’t.” Walt laughs, the dead man sitting on the vanity watching us. “But he’s gonna be so happy to have a brother.”
“You’re not supposed to know that.” I glare at Walt.
“Know what?” Ben growls. He manages to open his eyes, but they’re bleary.
This is what I get for being mostly sober.
“Walt’s haunting you. Don’t worry about it.” I pull him up to his feet. He’s a fucking giant, but with a tiny bit of help from him, I get him up. “Hydrate.”
Ben heads toward the kitchen.
“With water,” I stress.
Apparently, my time to be the one falling apart is over. I’m cleaning up everyone’s messes left, right, and center .
My wolf stretches out. Let’s check on Henri .
I ignore him.
Checking on Ben in the kitchen, I find him doing exactly what I told him not to do.
I pull the beer out of his hand and drink it myself.
He growls at me.
I point to the water tap. “Hydrate. You don’t wake up in a pool of your own vomit and get another beer. It’s not classy.”
Naps in thirty-minute increments are not ideal, but it’s all I’ve managed. The ancestors, Morrigan, Ansel’s pack, checking on Henri, hunting down every person Ansel has ever helped, managing communications with Finn’s brother Magnus, and making meals... it’s all I can do.
I’m everywhere and nowhere. I sleep where and when I can.
In the dead of night, I’m taking a lap past the trailers and my sleeping family members when I hear just one tiny little sniffle.
Henri. My wolf pushes.
I slide open the glass door of her cabin and find her wrapped up in the fetal position on the end of the sofa, her laptop on the seat beside her.
Fear and sadness flood the room with their acidic scents.
I know why she’s sad and scared. None of us want Ansel’s imprisonment to be the reason we’re here for this long. It’s been a week of hell for all of us. But beyond that, Henri is running out of time before her heat comes, and it scares the shit out of me as much as it does her.
Tomorrow, we find out if Ansel lives, dies, or ‘miraculously’ escapes from federal custody. And regardless of that outcome, I have to do everything in my power to get Henri back to Minnesota for her own safety. No pressure.
I move her laptop before sitting next to her on the sofa. It’s easy to pick up the little ball Henri has made herself into and shuffle her into my lap.
“Deacon,” she groans and wiggles, trying to escape. She sniffles again. “We can’t. There’s work.”
“Shut up. Be a wolf for two minutes and accept that you need physical touch,” I murmur, nuzzling my head against hers.
Her objections stop, and she sits still. Her breathing and crying regulate, but the smell of fear still clings to her.
Another minute or two passes before she whispers, “It’s not nice to tell people to shut up.”
“I’m sorry. I should have told you to suck it up, buttercup. I’m holding on to you until you’re done crying.” I squeeze her a little tighter.
She snorts, and when she tries to stretch out of my arms, I let her. Henri maneuvers off my lap until just her calves are resting across my thighs.
“Talk to me, Henri.” I run my hands up and down her shins, keeping the physical touch for both of our sanities.
Shaking her head, Henri wipes her eyes. “What if I fail?”
“Fail?” I cock my head. “What on earth could you fail at?”
“I needed to get all those letters and testimonies together. What if it wasn’t enough? What if we didn’t coach the people on how to write them good enough?” She draws a deep breath. “What if—”
I nod and try to reassure her, squeezing her legs. “You’ve been throwing yourself into your work here. But what you haven’t seen, outside of these four walls, is those letters pouring in. The people of Nameless have all written letters, and they’re signing their kids’ names, hell even some dogs and cats and horses’ names to them too. That all happened because of you. You and this campaign were not the only ball in the court. You’re not the only player on the team.”
Henri nods. “But —”
“No buts.” I shake my head and reach over, wiping a tear off her cheek. “Cade has more legal staff, attorneys, lobbyists, senate pages, and other lawmakers working on this too. If tomorrow doesn’t go exactly in our favor, it’s not going to be because you failed to get people to write letters or because you didn’t get Ansel’s reputation and image to shine like a star. You did more than enough.”
With a few deep breaths, Henri answers. “Okay.”
I pat her legs and go to move them off me, but she grabs my sleeve.
“I’ll be out of pills by morning,” she admits. “Morrigan’s pills.”
“I know.” I squeeze her calf. Though I’m not sure how she figured out they were Morrigan’s. I probably only have twenty - four hours to get her home. “How are you feeling?”
“So far so good.” Henri tries to make me believe there’s nothing wrong when we both know she’s lying, and I hate that she lies to me, but at least she has the decency to be bad at lying.
“You’re already feeling warm and anxious and wanting to be someplace safe,” I infer.
Biting her bottom lip together, she doesn’t say anything.
Correction, I have less than twenty - four hours to get her some place safe. She’s metabolizing the pills too fast.
“I’ll see if I can book a flight out of Salt Lake City immediately after court. It’s only a two-and-a-half-hour flight back home. Then the hour drive to the house.” I look at the screen saver on her computer with the time. Fuck, that’s a minimum of thirty - two hours. I try to infuse as much confidence into my voice as possible. “It’ll cut it close, but we’ll get you where you need to be.”
“Okay.” She gestures to the computer. “I’ve gotta...”
“Get back to work. I’m gonna go coordinate a flight. It’s safer to put you on a flight with the Corinth agents.” When I lift my hands off her legs, Henri kicks them down to the floor, and I’m free to move. “I’ll sort it. You get everything you can done.” With my finger under her chin, I make sure she’s looking into my eyes. “But remember, this isn’t all on you.”
Henri looks away, back at her computer, and I go to tell Cade I’m taking his favorite staff member from him.
Cade’s sitting at Ansel’s kitchen table, glaring at his computer screen like it’s going to give him different answers. It’s where he is sixty percent of the time, so I’m not surprised to find him in the first place I look.
Listening, I hear Thalia’s voice up in the loft above, which makes me think Dinah and Lena are up there with her. The door to Ansel’s bedroom is closed, so it’s hard to know for sure where Morrigan is. But this isn’t private enough for me to talk to him about what I need to ask.
“Cade.” I draw his attention from the computer.
He raises an eyebrow at me. “Can this wait?”
I shake my head. “Really can’t.”
He growls, The Leviathan trying to intimidate me into backing down.
I let my wolf rise to the surface, the bastard staring The Leviathan down and letting out an animalistic snarl.
That gets Cade’s attention.
“Quick walk around the house.” It comes out as an Alpha command, and it won’t do anything to him, but it furthers Cade’s skepticism of me and the situation.
“What?” Cade growls .
“I swear, two minutes.” I raise my hands, trying to surrender, falsely, to the aggression.
It’s weird having a changing wolf within me. All this new pull. I don’t love it, but it’s got some perks.
The chair objects loudly, scraping on the floor as Cade pushes it back to stand.
I lead the way out through the sliding glass door, and it isn’t until Cade has drawn a few deep breaths of fresh air and is reminded that he’s a wolf, not a human pushing buttons on a keyboard all day, that I get a real answer from him. “Sorry, what’s up, Dea?”
“Between the two of us, Henri is going into heat.”
I let those words sink in, the gears turning in his brain practically visible through his eyes.
“Fuck,” Cade groans. “How did this happen?”
I roll my eyes. “The deadweight wanted to service her through heat, and the reason she left was that he tossed her suppressants.”
“Okay. Can you handle getting her on a flight? She needs to be at home where she’s safe and can be taken care of.” Cade runs his hand back through his hair.
“No work went into making someone that vile.” Just thinking about Nathan has my wolf’s hackles rising.
Cade locks eyes with me. “The calls and texts are still nonstop. Clearly the message wasn’t received.”
“I’ve been working on it. But it’s complicated.”
The sliding glass door opens behind us, and Thalia peeks her head out. “Your phone literally will not stop making noise, and it won’t let me answer it.”
“On it.” Cade pats my shoulder. “Tell me what you need, and as soon as I have a second, I’ll make it happen.”
“I’ve got it for now,” I assure him, but he’s halfway up the deck stairs.