As Genna gaped at him, Tank was grateful to see that she wasn’t trying to run away. Not yet, at least, but it gave him a chance to make something useful out of this mess.
“Are you okay?” he asked first, his voice low, the question a genuine one, and Genna looked both grateful for his concern and confused by it.
“I’m fine,” she answered quickly. Then after a pause, she asked, “What are you doing here?”
“I came to talk to you.”
She gave him a look of pure scepticism, and he shrugged, not seeing the point in hiding anything from her. “The others are waiting outside. I’m sorry I have to ask this, but… have you contacted the Noturatii again since you left the estate?” The dining room was relatively empty, the nearest other patrons two tables away, and while he knew he couldn’t discuss too much here where they could be overheard, he felt the question was important enough to ask now.
“No,” Genna replied quickly. “Doing it the first time was stupid and naïve. I know enough about them now to know they’re never, ever to be trusted. They don’t broker deals with us, they just…” She glanced at the nearby diners. “Well, things don’t go well.”
Tank nodded, relieved at the news.
“So that means,” Genna went on, “that since I’m without a decent backup plan, one way or another, I suppose I’ll be going home with you.” She sighed and chewed a nail. “I wasn’t expecting to see you again. I thought that when people like me run away…” Another stray glance at the diners. “…then more professional sorts of people are sent to find them.”
“Andre is a professional,” Tank replied. “And he conveniently lives on our estate.”
Genna rolled her eyes and swore, and Tank took that to mean she’d temporarily forgotten about Andre. “So they sent you in first to sweet-talk me into… what? What do you want from me? Why haven’t they just…? I’m a criminal, after all.”
“Is there somewhere more private we could talk?” Tank asked. Veiled references to what they really were were all well and good, but it made for a rather stilted conversation. Not to mention a very strange one, for anyone who might overhear them.
“No,” Genna replied flatly. “I figure I’m safer here than anywhere else right now.”
She had a point. “Two days ago,” Tank said, trying a different tack, “you called me on the phone and asked me to help you. So I took you home, and then, when I was in the middle of trying to do just that, you ran away. Why?”
“Trying to help me?” Genna spat at him, suddenly angry. “The first thing you did was call Sempre and work out a deal to hand me back to her! You brought her into the basement and paraded me in front of her like a prized chimp in a zoo! And now you’re surprised that I didn’t want to stick around? Are you out of your mind?”
The nearest couple were starting to take note of them, so Tank once again suggested, “Maybe we should go somewhere more private to talk?”
“Why are we talking at all?” Genna asked, exasperated. “You’ve got your bunch of cronies outside, waiting to pounce the moment I step outside the door. What else do you want?”
“We’re talking because I’m trying to help you!” Tank said, his patience running just as thin as hers. Why did she have to be so damn stubborn about everything? “We need your help as much as you need ours. Believe me, there are greater things at work here than a tiff between you and Sempre.”
Genna sighed, then looked around. “The bar should be pretty quiet at the moment. We can talk there.” Without waiting for a reply, she picked up the plate of toast that a waitress had delivered and headed out the door. Hoping for the best, Tank followed.
In the bar room, Genna sat down at a table and set about devouring her toast. Tank sat opposite her, just watching her eat. At length, he asked, “Why are you so afraid of Sempre?” He could imagine a lot of possible reasons, particularly for one so new to being a shifter as Genna, but he wanted to hear her take on the situation.
“You know how I got out of the cage in your basement?” she asked, and Tank nodded.
“We found the lock, and Sempre told us what you could do after we twisted her arm a bit.”
“I found out about it a few months ago. And then Sempre found out, and ever since then she’s been forcing me to practise. It started out with just normal stuff, small objects, short distances, then she got more and more demanding, bigger and bigger things, more complex puzzles. And eventually she started trying to make me do blood rituals like Lita used to do. You met with the pack every year. You saw what the magic was doing to her,” Genna said distastefully, and Tank nodded.
“Some seriously disturbing stuff, right there,” he agreed.
“So I put her off as long as I could, made excuses, created distractions, but in the end, she wouldn’t take no for an answer.” Genna glanced up, and by her reaction, Tank realised he must have been looking fairly horrified. “I didn’t do it!” she protested quickly. “She wanted me to kill an owl. I couldn’t. It was just too cruel, and people say that Sirius himself casts out those to do things like that. But then she locked me in a cage, and she wasn’t going to give me any food or water until I did as she asked. So I ran away. And then Feriur tried to stop me, and I ended up killing her, so if Sempre ever gets her hands on me again, then slow starvation is really going to be the least of my worries. She needs my abilities to shore up her own authority. And now that Feriur’s dead, her hold on the pack is weaker than it’s been in a long while. If she got me back, I’d become her prisoner and her slave.”
Tank could hardly believe what he was hearing. “The gifts of Sirius are a sacred responsibility,” he began, but Genna cut him off.
“You’re preaching to the choir. Believe me, I know. But the whole pack is under Sempre’s thumb. We’re all terrified of her, and there’s no one else with enough power or support to challenge her for alpha.”
That much Tank could believe. But not everything Genna had told him was quite so believable. “Okay, so Sempre’s a problem,” he summed the situation up neatly. “We can all agree on that. But as far as the others are concerned, that’s not the real issue here. So level with me, Genna,” he said, watching her evenly. “What happened with the meeting with the Noturatii? The truth this time.”
Genna snorted. “The truth isn’t going to help any of us. You can put me down, if you want to blame me for it all, but Sempre’s still going to be a thorn in your side, even if you get the Treaty back on track. Sempre and everyone who kisses her arse to get ahead are a scourge on our people. They have no morals, and they tread on anyone who opposes them. They defy the natural order and bring shame on the House of Sirius. None of that is going away in a hurry.”
Tank was silent for a long moment, reflecting on the idea that Genna found Sempre’s faults to be of even greater concern than the Treaty. He didn’t think it came from a lack of perspective; Genna seemed well and truly aware of how seriously the Treaty was taken. But she also seemed to have a strong sense of justice and an even stronger respect for the laws of nature and of Sirius.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said in the end. “So just for argument’s sake, let’s look at it this way: even if Sempre didn’t directly order you to meet with the Noturatii, then the way she treats the pack, or at the very least, her negligence in training you, could be argued to have led you to make a bad decision. We’re calling in a number of other packs of the Grey Watch to form a panel who will hear the case and make a judgement on it. And there are a number of angles we could use to build a case, depending on our objectives. The Council wants the truth. Sempre wants something that gets her out of trouble, while letting her retain her power. You want Sempre to stop destroying your pack. Caroline and Baron want peace, so that we don’t all end up killing each other. But none of that can come about if we don’t start with what actually happened.”
Genna said nothing, and Tank sighed. “You trusted me enough to call me and ask me to help you,” he pointed out, running out of arguments and knowing he was close to failing Genna once again. “I’m asking you to trust me now. I have a lot of influence with Baron and Caroline, and they, in turn, have a lot of influence with the Council. But I can’t help you if I don’t know what I’m working with.”
Genna peered up at him, suspicion and curiosity warring on her face. “That sounds a lot like a conspiracy to me,” she said, choosing her words carefully so as to avoid admitting to anything. “Aren’t wolves supposed to be known for their scrupulous honesty and loyalty? You said the Council wants the truth, but isn’t that what everyone wants, in the end?”
Tank barked out a laugh, then apologised for it when Genna looked offended. “Sorry, I’m not laughing at you.” He looked her in the eye, choosing his words as carefully as she had hers. Implying a thousand things, yet admitting nothing. “Loyal, we may be, but also cunning, devious, intelligent. Wolves should be known for their guile, as much as for their loyalty.”
A light slowly came on in Genna’s eyes, though distrust still lingered. “You’ve told me what everyone else wants: me, Sempre, the Council. But what about you? What do you get out of all this?”
It was a good question, and one that Tank had no simple answer for. “I’ll admit that I’ve never been a fan of Sempre,” he said, “and seeing her neatly moved out of the way would be no small pleasure. But I’d also have to say I have a soft spot for the underdog.” All underdogs in general, but also this one in particular. From the blush that coloured Genna’s cheeks, she’d picked up on his meaning. And then Tank had the stray thought that it would be nice to be in a situation where he could allow himself to be distracted by the thoroughly endearing way it made her look.
Maybe some other time.
“What has Sempre said about it all?” Genna asked next. Finding her own solid footing before launching herself into his care. A wise move.
“Not much. She’s denied knowing anything about the meeting and said that she’ll give us any help needed to track you down. Aside from that, she’s given us no extra information at all. Miller – the man from the Noturatii – is the only other witness. He says he only met with you, so if there were other things going on behind the scenes, he didn’t know about them, and so he can’t help you.”
Genna nodded, but said nothing more, and Tank ground his teeth in frustration. How the hell was he supposed to pull a convincing cover story out of his arse if he didn’t know what really happened? “Look at it this way,” he said, putting a little more pressure on. “If Sempre really was behind it, then it’s your word against hers. So you would have to convince Baron, Caroline, the Council, and a sizable portion of the Grey Watch that your version of the story is the truth. How confident are you that you can pull that off alone?”
More silence, and then… “I did it,” Genna murmured, so low that Tank barely heard her. “Dee had come to our camp, and we found out she was Fenrae-Ul, and it was all people talked about for weeks. Sempre was furious. Lita was cursing the spirits for sending an abomination to us. Everyone was on edge. I didn’t know about the Treaty then. You can believe me or not, but that’s the truth. If I’d known, I’d never have done it. But no one had told me, and our pack hated yours anyway, and it seemed like a simple way to solve the problem. If the Noturatii could kill Dee, then she couldn’t kill us. I didn’t find out about the Treaty until later, and then I didn’t know what to do. It was too late, and anything I said was just going to make it worse, so I kept it a secret.”
“So why did you bring it up now?” Tank asked. There was no anger in his voice, no calling her twelve kinds of idiot or denouncing her as a traitor to their species. She had been young and scared, and from the sounds of it, genuinely trying to do the best thing for her pack. “Why tell me Sempre did it when I met you, rather than just letting it lie and asking for help to defect from her pack?”
Genna shrugged awkwardly. “Our pack doesn’t trust yours. I didn’t know if you’d help me, or just send me back to the Watch. I needed a reason to make you let me stay. And in the end, your Noturatii friend would have outed me anyway, so I’d say it’s just as well that I got the jump on him.”
Tank sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “For the record, we’d have helped you defect for no better reason than that you asked. But you’re right, Miller would have brought it up in the end anyway.”
“So what do we do now? I still have to come back with you. Are we going to keep trying to blame Sempre, or do I just have to take one for the team?”
Tank sat back in his chair. He let his eyes roam over Genna’s face as she stared at the table. She was thin, gaunt, her eyes had dark shadows under them and her hands and wrists lying on the table seemed all skin and bone. And yet there was something about her, a lightness and purity, as well as a haunted look that drew him to her now as much as it had the first time they’d met.
“Lita’s dead,” Tank said, as a plan began to form in his mind. “And according to your story, she was the only other person privy to this supposed plot between you and Sempre, right?”
“Right,” Genna confirmed.
“So what it really comes down to is your word against Sempre’s. And from an outsider’s perspective, one would have to ask which of you has the greater reason to lie.”
“But that still leaves the problem of convincing a whole room full of wolves that I’m the one telling the truth.”
“But truth is a funny thing,” Tank said, a smile tilting his lips. “It has a way of blurring the lines, adjusting itself to fit the circumstances…”