“Like I’d trust you to do that,” Isaid.
“Everest goes with you.” Was Jeb afraid I’d make a run forit?
The thought had crossed my mind, but another one had quickly taken its place: Evelyn wouldn’t be able to run. Besides, where would we go? I had never made good enough friends I could phone for help. I’d tried back in middle school, but kids found me odd and kept away. I remembered wondering if they could somehow sense what I was, smell what I was the same way I could smell their acne serums and tinted lip balms. I’d never dared ask Mom. I was afraid she’d burst into my school and punch the kids for shunning me, which wouldn’t have improved my socialstatus.
Evelyn, Everest, and I went upstairs, and then we came back with the taco dish. While Evelyn warmed it in my microwave, I packed. Gathering everything I owned took me fifteen minutes and two blue Ikeabags.
“That’s it?” Jeb picked up one of the bags and tried to wrestle the second one from my hands, but I held ontight.
“That’sit.”
As Jeb and I walked to the black van with the golden Boulder Inn logo, we discussed my last rental payment and the cost of a new window, and then he asked if I had a car, and I shook my head. I didn’t even have alicense.
“A boyfriend or friends to say goodbyeto?”
I thought about my drug-dealing admirers and the sympathetic prostitutes for all of a second. “No.”
“Really? Noone?”
His concern surprised me. I supposed acting as though I hadn’t had a life here wouldn’t servehim.
“I have Evelyn,” I ended up saying so he would stop pityingme.
Lucy and Everest were sampling the tacos when we returned. Evelyn offered my uncle a plate and watched as the tangy goodness vanished down histhroat.
“If all your food tastes this good, you won’t have to worry about job security,” he finallysaid.
Evelyn smiled at me, and her expression dissolved some of the tension that had gelled inside my veins since I’d busted open my front door and set eyes on thepast.
A past I dreadedrevisiting.
Chapter One
one month later
The inn waspacked.
Brawny men of all ages had arrived sometime before lunch, alone or accompanied by their wives, girlfriends, orsons.
I recognized many of the men, but they didn’t recognize me. In my gray housekeeping uniform, I blended with the rest of the staff. Every time someone looked my way, I disappeared into the kitchen where Evelyn was cooking up a feast, or entered one of the unoccupied bedrooms I’d helped prep for theoccasion.
Energy crackled in the carpeted hallways, in the living room with its high-beamed ceilings and two-story glass panes, and in the tartan-covered adjoining dens. Every Adirondack on the sprawling porch held a reclined body. Voices chirped. Laughter rang. It was as though the Boulder Pack hadn’t come together in years. But I knew for a fact they met once a week. Well, the men did. The women and children were not invited to regular packgatherings.
“If you go at it much longer, the metal will startpeeling.”
I froze, and the feather duster I’d been using on the sconce next to the elevator tumbled onto the burgundyrunner.
Thatvoice…
Deeper, but nonethelessfamiliar.
Slowly, I turned to face Liam Kolane, one of the men who’d opposed my plea to join the pack the day my father was shot. I wasn’t short for a girl—five-seven like Mom—but I still had to crane myneck.
I hid my loathing for him underneath a smile. “Sometimes the filth is not visible to the naked eye, but it doesn’t mean it’s notthere.”
A small crease appeared between the dark brows shadowing his reddish-browneyes.
I picked up my feather duster and continued down the hallway, swiping the long gray feathers over the othersconces.
