Wellesley tapped his toe on the floor and cleared his throat. Not-staring at Asil with such intent that he might as well have his eyes locked on the other wolf. Asil’s lips curled into a smile.
“It was not I,” Asil told Wellesley clearly, catching his reluctant eye and holding him in his gaze by a willpower that Anna could feel even though she was not its focus.
“I would never willingly betray a trust given to me,” Asil said. “I told no one outside of the pack that Bran was gone.”
He hesitated thoughtfully, still holding Wellesley, made a soft sound, then continued, “I did not know Hester or Jonesy except through the stories of others. I never met either of them, though I knew they were here and approximately where they lived. I cannot recall what I have said about either of them or to whom, only that I would not speak of them in name or in any detail to anyone not in this pack.
“I would not willingly take part in any attack upon Bran’s people or upon this pack, which I now call my own. This attack was underhanded—and clumsily done. If I were to do something like this, it would have been much better handled. Five years from now, Bran would still be scratching his head and wondering what happened to Hester and her mate.”
Wellesley grimaced at Asil, then looked away from them both.
“Really,” said Anna, amused despite herself. “That’s your defense? ‘If it had been me, I’d have done it right’?”
Asil smiled at her. “And what did you hear, wolf child? Was I lying?”
Anna hesitated, then shrugged. “You could probably tell me you had four aces in your poker hand, and I’d believe you even if the ace of spades was in my hand. Sadly, I think your last statement is more persuasive to me than whether or not I could tell if you were lying.”
“Agreed,” said Wellesley.
He was being very careful to keep his gaze away from Asil, staring mostly at the wall as he spoke, but there was a confident amusement in his voice totally at odds with his body posture. “I dare you to tell that to Bran.”
“Bran would tell that to him,” Anna said with a put-upon sigh. “Bran knows Asil.”
Asil looked at her. It was a look with weight to it. She’d seen it on Charles before but not on Asil.
She raised her eyebrows in disbelief. “Really? You think I could be married to Charles and betray this pack? Charles?” And I’m not a wildling, she didn’t say, but she thought it very hard. If she thought it was just a show for Wellesley, she wouldn’t have been so annoyed. Hurt.
“I raised a witch who killed my mate,” he told her, deadly serious. “I have learned not to trust my instincts about such things.”
There was that, wasn’t there?
“Okay,” said Anna to Asil. “Here goes.” She held his eye—not that eye contact was important to a wolf who was evaluating statements for truth, most of that was their nose and hearing. But it seemed to be how they were doing this, so she could play along.
“I did not betray this pack.” She thought about the factors that spoke of betrayal, and said, “The enemy probably knows that Bran is not here. I discussed Bran’s absence with no one outside the pack. I told no one in the pack or out of it about Hester because until yesterday I had no idea who she was or where she lived.” She was getting mad, having to spell things out, so she brought it back to something simple. “I have never knowingly betrayed the pack, would never betray the pack.”
“No one not in the pack knew of Hester,” said Asil, an arrested look on his face.
“Samuel?” asked Anna.
“Oh, probably Samuel knew,” Asil said dismissively. “But to imagine Samuel betraying his father or this pack, which was once his own? I cannot conceive of Samuel’s doing such a thing.”
Anna knew Samuel, of course, but he had left the pack long before she’d joined. She’d met him now and again, but she didn’t know him well enough to say anything about him. But she trusted Asil’s judgment.
“She could not do this,” said Wellesley, waving his hand at Anna without looking at her. “She doesn’t know enough to have planned it. And no mate of Charles could be untrustworthy—Brother Wolf sees more clearly than most.”
“Agreed,” said Asil with a sigh. “Truly, it would have been too easy if it had been any of the three of us.”
“Whoever it is, they could teach the fae about deception,” Wellesley said. “Whoever it is has lived with Bran—and not betrayed the fact that they are a traitor. Never lied and yet betrayed the Marrok just the same.” He turned his head suddenly and whispered something she didn’t catch.
Anna started to ask him to repeat it, but Asil caught her eye and shook his head.
“I cannot conceive of such a thing,” Asil said.
“Gerry Wallace,” said Anna dryly, “betrayed Bran and all his kin and kind.” She might never have knowingly met him, but his betrayal still rang through the pack at odd moments. “Let’s not turn our enemy into someone who is superhuman.”
Asil gave her a sharp look.
“You know what I mean,” she said, harassed. “Of course we are, all of us, superhuman—but giving our enemy more power in our imaginations is not useful.”
“Still, it would be hard to keep an act like that going,” said Asil. Apparently, even though Wellesley had cleared himself, they weren’t going to let him in on the note Jonesy had left.
It would be a lot easier to keep a secret from Bran if you were one of the wildlings and weren’t living under his thumb on a daily basis.
As Asil had indicated as they drove here, Wellesley, with his ability to go unnoticed, would have been a reasonable candidate for their spy. Except now that she’d met him, she was pretty sure he didn’t have the focus.
“Sorry,” said Wellesley. “I’m pretty isolated. I’m not much help. Sorry.”
“Maybe, Anna,” suggested Asil, his attention on their host, “you and I should go warn the other people on the list.”
Anna, who’d been lost in her thoughts, glanced at Asil, then at Wellesley. The artist was shaking a little, and sweat had broken out on his forehead.
“Oh, stay,” said Wellesley, in a low, clipped tone that was nothing at all like the voice he had been using a moment ago. “This is more interesting than anything that has happened in a while.”
Anna looked at Asil, but he didn’t see her. He was watching Wellesley like a cat watches a mouse—but more wary and less hungry.
“Let us look at the newest members,” said Wellesley, sounding more like himself. Or at least, more like he’d sounded at first. He opened his hands and closed them a couple of times as he continued, “They would have had to deceive Bran the shortest length of time.”
In another person, Anna would have taken that as a threat. But it didn’t track with what they were talking about or with the rest of his body language, which had been submissive to Asil the whole of this encounter.
“It’s not Kara,” said Anna positively.
“No,” agreed Asil. Anna noticed that Asil had seen those hands, too. He paced a little as if he were thinking, but the movement in the small room left him directly between Wellesley and Anna. “She is a baby—and we know her background. She could not lie to me, let alone Bran.” He paused. “And I’m pretty sure that she didn’t know anything about Hester. It’s not like anyone talks about the wildlings other than as a general warning.”
What was Asil’s game here? To see if Wellesley could finger one of the other wildlings?
“She could have heard something,” Wellesley said, but this time it was a soft whisper, apologetic and tentative. “Children do.” He was still bent low, staring hard at the corner of the room away from both Asil and Anna.
Wellesley shook his head violently. “That’s stupid,” he growled. “Stupid. Stupid. We have seen her when she didn’t know we were watching, haven’t we? She is weak, she is prey. We should eat her. She would taste
like the girl in Tennessee. Better maybe.”
Anna looked at Asil again, her eyes wide. She expected to see the same alarm or confusion that she felt. Or more probably anger—Kara was a particular favorite of Asil’s. He was angry enough, she saw, but there was compassion on the Moor’s face, too.
“Wellesley,” said Asil, with cool command in his voice. “You will not speak of my little friend in that way. I don’t like it.”
Wellesley growled, and Asil growled back. The artist glanced over his shoulder with wolf-yellow eyes. He was taller and more muscled than the Moor, but he backed down as soon as his eyes met Asil’s. He dropped to one knee, almost like a man proposing, his face turned again to the far corner of the room, though his body still faced Asil.
In a soft voice, he said, “It might be that someone spoke in front of her. That she told someone she shouldn’t.”
In her head, Anna heard again the voice of Wellesley’s monster saying “like the girl in Tennessee,” and wondered what Wellesley had done.
“It isn’t Kara,” Asil said again.
“If it were Kara, you could give her to me,” said Wellesley in a singsong voice.
“You go too far,” warned Asil, his lip beginning to curl.
Anna decided that if someone didn’t step in, there would be trouble. And there was no one else but her. She couldn’t risk soothing them with her Omega abilities—there was too great a chance that it would be more effective on Asil than Wellesley. Then she’d really be up a creek without a paddle.
She decided to try to distract them with words instead. Or even just Asil. There was something really wrong with Wellesley.
She had visions of Jack Nicholson in The Shining in her head. Leah had said that she had given them the most broken of the wildlings, and Asil said he’d picked the worst one first. Asil had told her Wellesley’s condition most closely resembled schizophrenia. She’d known a girl in college who coped with schizophrenia, but that girl had never been creepy.
She hadn’t been a werewolf, either, but still . . .
She didn’t know how to distract Wellesley, but Asil was easy.
“Kara talks to Asil,” she said firmly, as if she weren’t stepping figuratively between two angry werewolves. “She talks to Leah and a little to me. But with the rest of the wolves, she is really wary—and I don’t think she talks to any of the kids at school. Bran keeps getting letters from her teachers: ‘Kara is hardworking and intelligent. I am concerned that she has no friends among her peers. She doesn’t participate in group work or in any outside sports activities’—and variations of that. Leah makes her write a letter every week to her parents, most of which are four sentences long because Bran imposed that rule after her first letter was ‘Dear Dad, I’m alive. Kara.’”
Sometime during her monologue, Asil pulled himself together. More or less, Anna thought.
“It’s not Kara,” said Asil definitively—and then he put some power in his voice, and said, “Stand down, Wellesley. Leave Kara alone.” He paused. “And I better not catch your scent anywhere near her or where she has been.”
Wellesley abruptly sat on the floor, turning until his back was toward them. He nodded, showing he was paying attention to the conversation.
“Okay,” he agreed, his voice a lot more normal than his posture. Almost conversationally, he asked, “What about Sherwood? He would know about the wildlings—he was one for a while. He would know about Bran’s absence because he is in Adam’s pack now.”
“Sherwood Post?” said Asil. “No.”
Wellesley looked at Asil then, an exasperated look over his shoulder. “Well, it has got to be someone. And Sherwood is next newest after Kara and Anna.”
For a wildling, Wellesley seemed to be pretty well versed on who was who in the pack. No wonder Asil had put him at the top of their suspect pool.
The artist’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully at Asil. “You did know him before the witches got to him and took his leg and his memory. Who was he?”
Asil frowned, then shook his head. “It doesn’t matter now. It is highly unlikely that he’ll remember who he once was. No matter what Bran thinks. But the core of him is the same: he was the champion of underdogs. He would never facilitate an attack on someone vulnerable. No. It is not Sherwood. Besides, he only knew that Bran was gone while they were out rescuing Mercy. As far as I know, no one who is not pack knows Bran is still gone.”
This conversation was pretty weird even by werewolf standards. She wished she’d grabbed Asil and left when he had suggested it. The echo of “that girl in Tennessee” kept the hair on the back of her neck up and her wolf restless.
“It has to be someone,” said Wellesley. Then he paused. “Maybe not. What about some sort of electronic spyware? It could be something planted in the Marrok’s house—or even on a person who didn’t know about it. I’ve read about things that people swallow, and they listen to everything.” The artist had his face pointed back toward the corner of the room, so he didn’t see Asil’s thoughtful look. “Maybe I read about it,” Wellesley muttered. “Or maybe someone did that to me. I forget. Stupid.”
“Not stupid,” Asil disagreed. “There is still a bill out in Congress suggesting that all werewolves should be implanted with a tracking device, but it’s stalled because they can’t come up with one that survives a shift,” said Asil.
And part of the weirdness of this whole conversation had to be the way Asil mostly ignored Wellesley’s strange actions and talked to him as if they were having a normal interchange. Well, she could do that, too, if it was useful.
“As Charles demonstrated how technology explodes during a change,” said Anna.
Asil gave her an interested look.
“When we were working with Cantrip and the FBI in Boston,” she clarified. “Charles said he didn’t think it would work, and he was happy to demonstrate.”
“Charles is witchborn,” said Wellesley dismissively. “He could blow up any technology he chose.” Then in that odd voice, the one that had spoken of killing young women, he said, “Witches are evil.”
Anna chose to continue to follow Asil’s lead and react only to the normal things Wellesley said. “If it helps anyone be less paranoid,” she said, “Charles told me that he was pretty sure that their device wouldn’t have worked even if he hadn’t helped it along. As for electronic spyware at the Marrok’s house—Charles does a sweep for them a couple times a week.”
She left the witchborn comment where it was. It was true. In this company, there was no profit in dwelling on it.
“Paranoid bastard,” said Asil, with something that sounded oddly like affection.
“He finds listening devices and cameras once in a while,” she told them. “Usually during the Changing moon in October, when we have so many strangers.”
“Werewolves bring spying devices?” asked Asil with soft interest.
Anna shook her head. “Not on purpose, we don’t think. So far it’s all been on werewolves who admit what they are to the world. The kinds of things Charles has found have been bugs on cars, clothing, or luggage.”
“Then why doesn’t the human world know about Aspen Creek?” asked Wellesley.
“They do,” Anna told him. “They don’t know about the Marrok, we don’t think. But they have known about Aspen Creek since the 1970s at least, probably earlier than that. A select group of ‘they.’ That was one of the things that drove Bran to bring the werewolves out into the open. Secrets are only useful as leverage as long as they are secrets.” That last sentence was an almost-direct quote from Bran.
“Then why doesn’t everyone know about Aspen Creek?” Wellesley asked again.
“Bran doesn’t want the tourist trade,” Asil said. “And he’s managed to convince the people who do know that it would be a bad thing to bring out into the open.”
“The monsters need somewhere to run,” Anna
said.
Wellesley rose easily to his feet. “Indeed,” he agreed.
“You made a valid point, Asil,” Anna said firmly. She wasn’t sure that Wellesley’s rising to his feet was anything good. Her wolf was beginning to get agitated. Which valid point had she been talking about? She grabbed one at random, jumping back twenty minutes of conversation to do it. “I mean, when you noted that you’d have done a better job of the mess at Hester’s. If the intent was to abduct Hester.”
“Interesting,” said Asil. “What other intent could they have had?”
“They could have wanted her dead—and muddied the waters of motivation by implying that it was a bigger operation than a simple assassination,” Wellesley offered. “Or they could have wanted Jonesy dead.”
“Or they could have wanted to know where all our lone wolves, our powerful and vulnerable damaged wolves are,” said Anna slowly. They were asking about the wildlings, Jonesy’s note had said. Charles had told her that there were wolves out here that had dangerous knowledge—things other people would kill to know. “Surmising that we would have to go out and warn them.” It only made logical sense, as long as you knew enough about how the pack worked, how the wildlings worked to know that a phone call was probably not going to do the job.
“We weren’t followed,” said Asil.
“On NCIS, they use satellites and can pick out individuals in guerrilla-troop ground movements,” Anna told him.
“What is this NCIS?” asked Asil.
“They also have a mass spec that can look at a clump of mud off a shoe and tell Abby the cross street it came from with no error. And it only takes five minutes,” said Wellesley dryly. “Mass specs don’t work like that.”
Apparently, Wellesley watched TV. And knew what a mass spec was and how it worked. This conversation could not get more surreal.