Chapter Twenty-Six

I bolted upright in bed and panted for several minutes while my brain sorted itself.

“Tony,” I yelled.

“What is it?” His dark form materialized in the doorway. I knew he’d be in the hall, just as he said earlier before—well, I wasn’t going to think about before. I was done thinking about that.

“A-S-H. Ashland Springs Hotel. They’re going to burn down Ashland Springs Hotel. That’s what the text meant, the one on Mike Hollis’s phone.”

“Where’s your cell? We need to call Eliza, get the Special Ops on it.”

“Uh, in the pocket of my jean jacket, I think. Hollis’s phone is there, too, if we need to check it again.” I got out of bed and felt very naked in the t-shirt I’d been sleeping in. I’d neglected to pack pajamas with the other things I grabbed from Sheila’s house. I wore a long shirt, though, and it didn’t matter. He wasn’t interested and I would not waste any more time on stupid fantasies.

He canted away from me as I crossed the room. I blinked hard as tears flooded my eyes from rejection or embarrassment—I wasn’t sure which and I couldn’t spend time on it because more serious things were at stake.

I paused to pull on my jeans before grabbing the phone.

Eliza picked up on the first ring. “Hello? Julie?” Her voice came across frantic.

“We’re fine. The Eclipsers are going to burn down Ashland Springs Hotel. It’s the big one on Siskiyou Avenue, right downtown—that tall one with the colonial British feel that looks like it should be in an old movie. That’s what the A-S-H meant in the text. Ashland Springs Hotel.” I looked at the clock. “In ninety minutes, they’re going to burn it down. Seven a.m.”

“Okay. Okay. Ashland Springs Hotel. Got it. Let me tell James.”

“Wait. How’s Newt?”

Eliza didn’t answer.

“Eliza! How is Newt?”

“Not good. He’s in a lot of pain. He has another surgery scheduled for today. He keeps asking for you,” she finally said. “I have to go tell them about the hotel.”

“Right.” The connection cut before I even said the word.

I crossed my arms across my chest to hug myself after I slipped the phone back in my pocket. One of my hands slipped up to my neck and I winced as I touched the still-sore bruises. Time for more painkillers.

“Did you catch all of that?” I asked Tony. I didn’t need to look at him to know he stood in the doorway. I hoped my painful awareness of him faded quickly now that I knew he wasn’t interested.

“Yes.”

I looked back at Carson, still asleep sprawled on the bed.

“I hate this. I hate not helping. I hate not being there for Newt. I don’t want the council to fight my fight. Especially when I made it quite clear I don’t want their help protecting and raising Carson.”

Tony considered for a moment. “A rogue group of Salamanders like this threatens everyone,” he said. “They’re not just fighting for Carson. And there’s nothing you can do to help Newt, you know. He’s getting medical care. I’m sure he understands why you’re not there.”

“Eliza says he keeps asking for me.”

Tony didn’t say anything.

“I know, I know. He’ll be okay.” I stopped myself from fidgeting with my hair. “I also know I can’t run and join this fight—or go to the hospital—if I want to keep Carson safe.”

I looked at the clock again.

“I guess I’ll go make coffee. I’m not going to get back to sleep.”

“You should. You need the rest.”

I bit back my first angry reply and retreated to polite formality. “I’ll be fine, thank you.”

As I pushed past him in the doorway, Tony reached out to touch my arm. I flinched.

“Julie.”

Oh God, I did not want to have this talk. No, no, no.

“You’re doing the right thing, you know.”

“What?”

“You want Carson to grow up as a person, not a tool of the council, not a Were-shaped weapon, not an arrogant bastard who thinks he’s better than everyone else because he’s so full of power.”

I glanced back at my baby. “Yes.”

Tony gestured with one hand and I nodded, preceding him down the stairs and into the kitchen. He settled at the kitchen table, in the same chair where I cut his hair. I shook the memory out of my head and busied myself by finding the coffee supplies. Thankfully, Don Sosa had some decent beans in the freezer—if he’d been anti-coffee, I might have had to go out and purchase some regardless of the risk.

Picking up the thread of the conversation, Tony said, “Look at what happened to my family.”

I glanced at him, unsure where this headed.

“My mother loved a…a human her whole life. Not my father.” Tony’s voice sounded flat, revealing no emotion. I didn’t know how to respond, so I kept quiet and filled the coffeemaker with water while he talked.

“She didn’t marry him, though. Peter. His name was Peter Ramirez. She couldn’t face the pack, what they’d say and think if she chose to mate with a non-Were. So she married my dad, who’d been crazy about her since they were in middle school.”

I already knew how this story ended, but I waited.

“When my father found out she’d been seeing Peter for many years, for the entire length of their marriage, he lost it. My sister Rebecca is Peter’s child. She’s four years younger than me, six years older than Dave…was. She’s a dark moon wolf and when she reached eighteen without changing, the whole marriage fell like a house made of straw. You probably know what happened.”

I nodded, but he continued anyway. “My father murdered Peter Ramirez in a fit of rage—about more than my mom having an affair. Because she chose Peter, a human, over him, rejecting everything about pack life. That’s how my father saw it. My mother killed herself. I—I found her.” His voice caught and I clenched my hands into fists so I didn’t reach out to him. He would have been twenty-three at the time, five years ago. Werewolves didn’t die easily; I could only imagine what he found. “I was with her when my dad came home and saw…then he tore away. Drove off a cliff.”

The kitchen counter pressed into my back so hard it hurt, but I relished the focus, needed to feel anything besides the emotion evoked by what I saw on Tony’s face.

“Rebecca hates the pack, because they forced my mom—and my father, too, I suppose—to make such choices. She hates the pack for the contempt she saw in every Were’s eyes once they realized she’s a dark moon.”

I nodded in complete understanding.

“Dave loathes—loathed—all humans because he found it easier to blame Peter Ramirez than my parents or the pack. I think he helped the mafia with those twisted experiments to turn regular humans into Weres because he actually thought that was the right thing to do. Like missionaries who kill heathens in their best interest.”

I’d seen the pitiful creatures that resulted from those experiments; I still saw them sometimes in my dreams. I’d also heard the fervor in Dave’s voice when he tried to convince us he’d been doing the right thing, that human lives had no inherent worth, that the larger goal of creating Weres was worth any cost.

After a moment, I asked, “What about you?”

Tony’s mouth twisted bitterly, but when he spoke, his voice was clear. “I spent five years as a wolf in order not to think about any of it. Something has to change, Julie.”

What he said supported my choices, my desire for Carson to bridge the gap between Were and human. But I heard something else behind his words: Weres didn’t marry someone who wasn’t pack. No matter what the personal cost. Better not to love in the first place, because a relationship between a Were and a human could never work out. I wasn’t sure if he intended me to hear the message, but it came through loud and clear, and spiked the rejection swirling inside of me with a dash of anger.

We drank our coffee in silence, mostly because we found nothing left to say. I kept glancing at the clock, very aware of our seven a.m. deadline, wondering if the Salamanders and Special Ops even now surrounded the hotel, if any tourists would die this morning because of my stubbornness.

I set down my mug and stood up. “I can’t take this. The waiting is worse than anything else.”

“What do you propose? A game of Scrabble?”

I had to glance at Tony before I knew he joked. Even then, it felt more like mockery than anything else. I couldn’t trust any of my emotional reactions where he was concerned.

“I need to call Sheila.”

Tim answered the phone on the second ring. “Julie? Where the hell are you and what the hell are you doing? Why are you calling at six thirty in the morning?”

That quickly, my anger drained, leaving a residue of exhaustion, worry, and fear. Six-thirty. Thirty more minutes before a hotel full of Shakespeare Festival tourists either burned to the ground or didn’t.

“I’m fine. I’m all by myself—well, almost—defying the entire Were structure and a bunch of crazy Eclipsers about to burn down a hotel. I know it’s crazy, but it’s right.”

There was a beat. “That’s exactly what Sheila says. Eliza called us last night.”

“Oh my God, can I talk to her? How is she?”

“She’s good, Julie. She’s doing really, really well. The doctors are amazed at how well she’s healing, thanks to Tessa White.”

I sent silent thanks up to the universe. “I’m so glad.” An understatement.

“You know what she said after Eliza tried to convince us to talk sense into you? She said—and this is a quote—‘That’s our Jules. Damn, I love that girl.’ ” Tim’s voice sounded bewildered, but the affection for Sheila shone through.

“Can I talk to her?”

“She’s asleep, but I can have her call you later.”

“Oh. Okay.” I tried to shrug off my disappointment.

I finished my coffee, glanced up at Tony who sat on the other side of the kitchen table. I found myself unable to break the silence, which seemed like a tangible object between us in the room. When Carson stirred upstairs, I jumped up, happy for the excuse.