Norseton
Mallory
Mallory, Keith, Asher, Vic, and Elliott reached home late at night. Mallory had slept most of the drive back, having been slammed with an overwhelming surge of exhaustion that she figured out too slowly had to do with Elliott. His grip on her wrist had been unceasing for the entire drive, and touch tended to strengthen psychic connections in their kind. He was emotionally chaotic. His thoughts were a wild tangle, and she was having difficulty picking apart her thoughts from his.
She didn’t want to tell him to let go, though.
She knew what it felt like to be odd and to not be able to talk to anyone except Marty about the things she saw and heard. Elliott had been on his own for too long. She wasn’t surprised that he’d cling. She would have been needy, too.
“It’s always so pretty this time of night,” Vic whispered and nodded toward the darkened community as they approached. “Especially with the desert in the background.”
“Yeah,” she said, just as quietly. She didn’t want to wake Elliott. Keith, in the row behind her, was either asleep with his head against the window or pretending so no one bothered him. Asher, in the shotgun seat, was already awake and was peering back at her in the dark, fairy eyes glinting like the surface of a clear pond. “There’s a certain peace about the desert,” she said.
She rooted her phone out of her bag and one-handedly sent a text to Marty.
On approach. Vic’s about to turn at the gate.
Much to Mallory’s surprise, Marty sent an immediate response.
I’m up. Tell Vic to park behind the bakery. We’ll meet you there.
To Vic, Mallory said, “Marty says to park behind the bakery.”
“Did she say why?”
“Give me a moment.”
Why? Anything wrong? And who else is with you?
Nothing is wrong. Will and Chris thought it would be best to exercise an abundance of caution. Erin’s up, too. We’re trying to muddle our section of the Afótama web so Dan doesn’t immediately catch on that Elliott is here.
“Ah.” She caught Vic’s gaze in the rearview mirror. “They’re being careful in case Dan’s awake and gets some psychic niggling that Elliott is closer. I think their plan is for me, Marty, and Erin to clump around him tonight so Dan can’t sense him.”
“You think that plan is going to be sustainable?”
“No. It’s stopgap, at best. There are ways for people like us to occlude our psychic buzz, but suffice it to say that none of the Petersen kids are any good at it. It may be a skill that only the Halls are proficient at. I happen to know that Tess does it all the time when she’s about to do something she knows will get her in trouble with the chieftains. Muriel is pretty good at it, too, but I guess she’d have to be. She monitors the emotional health of the community, and I imagine nobody particularly needs a window into that turmoil.”
“You may not be good at it,” Keith said in a thick, tired voice, “but if one of us is nearby, we can fog the web…in a matter of speaking.”
“What do you mean?” Asher asked him.
Keith straightened up, pulling his head from the window and adjusting the Velcro closures on his gloves. “Perhaps no one else in my family has put the pieces together of our effect on the web. I didn’t notice myself until I was away and had far too much time to think.”
Vic stopped at the gatehouse and rolled down his window.
His father stalked up to the van door with his cell phone in hand. “All right?”
“Yep,” Vic said. “Marty said to take him to the bakery.”
Adam handed him the phone. “Grab a picture of him for me. Other guys should know what he looks like before he starts walking around the community.”
“Got it.” Vic took the phone from his father, and Marty took it from him since she had a better angle.
She patted Elliott’s hand and waited for him to stir.
He startled upright, blinking several times, breathing erratically.
“It’s all right,” she said. “We’re still in the van. I need to take your picture for the security guys, okay? Wouldn’t want any of them to think you were a threat. We don’t get many outsiders here.”
He dragged a hand down his face and sat up straighter, nodding.
She turned on the flash and took the picture, and then a second one because she didn’t like how frightened he looked in the first. Perhaps he was frightened, but she didn’t want the first glimpse of him the rest of the wolfpack got was to be of a man at his worst. He deserved dignity, even if he didn’t know he did.
“There you go.” She handed the phone back to Vic who handed it to Adam.
“Give me some idea of where he’ll be staying as soon as you know,” Adam said. “We’ll do what we can to shunt Dan away from wherever he is. My old lady’s got some ways of distracting Dan for an hour or two since she works with him. Plus, I’m sure she’d love to participate in any scheme you’ve got planned.”
Mallory snorted. Technically, Mrs. Carbone covered the hours that Dan wasn’t in the kitchen, but she’d noticed early on that the man had a nasty competitive streak. The folks at the mansion loved her hearty home cooking and appreciated all the love she put into the snacks and treats she left on the counter at the end of every shift. But sometimes, she snuck in at off-hours to re-feed the crew after Dan had done his job. Too often, the big Vikings in residence were still hungry because Dan had very specific ideas of what counted as food, and the residents didn’t always agree.
“It’s hilarious,” Asher said to Adam. “I think Dan installed some sort of alarm in the kitchen. Every time I’ve gone down there to fetch something, he’ll turn up a few minutes later asking what he can help me with. I think he worries about being pushed out of the job.”
“The Halls would prefer that he think it’s due only to his job performance and not because he’s being investigated for clan treason,” Keith murmured.
“I assure you that the rest of the Petersens would prefer the same thing,” Mallory said without looking at him. Elliott squeezed her hand and gave her a curious look. She realized that he didn’t know the things that Dan had done in the community and that someone—her, probably—was going to have to share them. “I’ll tell you in the morning,” she said to him and then groaned softly. “Maybe. There’s so much stuff to tell you. I don’t know what’s important. Hell, people are still teaching me stuff. I’ve only been here since spring, myself.”
“Hey. We’re all newcomers,” Vic said. “Except for Keith.”
Saying nothing, Keith closed his eyes and put his head back against the window.
She wished he’d say something—anything to soothe the collective fears of the group—but he was disappointingly silent as always.
Why are you like this? Why are you so cold?
As though he could hear her query he glanced her way only to sigh wearily and turn right back to the window.
She didn’t get him. She also didn’t know why she cared that she didn’t, only that that static between them didn’t feel right. It seemed forced, and not by her doing.
Adam raised the gate.
Vic drove through and put his window up. “Damn, I hope they’ve got coffee on.”
“You can go to bed, Vic,” Mallory said. “I’m sure one of the other guys will take over in the morning.”
“Nah. Now that we no longer have to work in wolf pairs, all us guys have specific lists of tier one people we’re assigned to. We rotate a bit to fill in for whoever’s taking time off and such, but mostly, we aim for consistency.”
“I had no idea you guys were so organized. Who are you assigned to?”
“Technically, I’m assigned to you and Keith, but there’s sometimes overlap because Darius has Marty.”
“Wait,” she put up her hand to stop him from saying more, realizing the meaning of something he’d said. “We’re tier one?”
“Yep.”
“Why? Because our father is a threat?”
Keith snorted. “No.”
“Why then?”
No response from either.
She gritted her teeth.
There had to be some keep your enemies close strategy there. She and Marty liked to think amongst themselves that they were important, but, in the scheme of things, they were just commoners trying to live normal lives…within the scope of what was normal for witches, anyway.
She turned to Keith, insistent. “Why, then?”
No response, except the very unsubtle rolling of his eyes.
Jerk.