The second:You volunteered to be hisSecond! Are youinsane?!
The third:Why did you leave withLiam?
The third:Callme.
The fourth:I’m worried. Pleasecall.
I was touched she was concerned considering she’d lost her uncle today. I should’ve been the furthest thing from her mind. I pressed on her phone number, then held the phone to myear.
Bigmistake.
Her voice poured out of the receiver so shrilly I winced. “What the hell, Ness? You’re going to duel Cassandra Morgan?AndJustin? Did you see how he was looking at you? Like he wants to kill you, that’s how he was looking at you! And knowing him, he’ll try! I know I said I wanted Liam to take over the packs,but—”
“Sarah!” I spoke her name sharply to make her stop yelling. “Your mom was Julian’s Second, and she’sfine.”
“But Julian’s not! He’s not fine! He’s . . .” A sob lurched out of her. “He’s dead. Julian is dead.” Another sob. “Oh, God . . . I think I’m going to puke again.” Her words were muffled, as though she’d clapped a hand over hermouth.
“Is someone withyou?”
“Yeah. Robbie and Margaux. We’re going to the . . .” She sniffled. “To our old headquarters.” She blew her nose. “We’re holding a vigil forJulian.”
“Oh,sweetie.”
“I can’t believe he’s dead. Ican’t—”
A thought occurred to me. “Sarah, did your pack have a stock of Sillin?” The word tasted bitter, because the anti-shifting drug had caused so muchharm.
First at the Alpha trials, when Everest blackmailed me into entering the last duel so he could steal the Boulder’s stock from HQ. Then, when he’d reneged on his deal to sell the pills to the Creeks, and Alex Morgan drove my cousin’s Jeep off theroad.
The night I decrypted his last voicemail and found the Boulder’s stock—minus one packet—under the loose floorboard of my childhood home, I hadn’t felt any pride or relief. Just despondency, because it had been too late . . . my cousin was already goneforever.
Werewolves possessed magic, but resurrecting the dead wasn’t part of ourarsenal.
Unless the fable Liam had told me of the wolf resurrecting her mate with a love bite was true, but I doubted fangs sinking into flesh could do much else than stop a heart. It was a pretty legend,nonetheless.
“Robbie says we have some,” Sarah answered just as Liam walked out of his kitchen, toting two plates andsilverware.
He set everything down on his wrought-iron coffee table, then took the two bottles of water he’d secured underneath his arm and placed them on top of a huge glossytome.
“Before you go to the wake, can you grab them and hide them?” I askedSarah.
As he sat in the armchair across from me, he lifted aneyebrow.
“We’ll go get them now,” Sarahsaid.
“Thankyou.”
“If you need anything else, Ness, anything at all, callme.”
I smiled in spite of the hellish day I’d had. In spite of the hellish days to come. “Is the wake open to otherpacks?”
“If Cassandra shows up—” Sarahstarted.
“I was asking becauseI’dlike tocome.”
“Oh.” She paused. “You don’t need to,Ness.”
“I never do anything I don’t want todo.”
