“Wow,” Robyn whispered from behind me, and I nearly dropped Drew’s body in surprise. Her stealth was rapidly improving. “What’s the plan?”
“I don’t know. I guess we go the long way.”
Justus growled and shook his head. Then he stepped out of the brush onto the wide, paved walkway.
“Justus!” I hissed. But he only padded silently toward the party spilling onto the concrete in front of the reptile house. “What the hell is he doing?”
“Creating a distraction,” Robyn answered softly. “He’s got your brains and my sense of adventure. Admittedly a dangerous combination.”
“Okay, when this is all over, we’re going to have a talk about how you’re smart, and I’m exciting, but for now—”
A woman screeched. All laughter and drunken conversation died, leaving the music playing for a crowd that had stopped dancing.
They’d spotted Justus.
My brother stared at them, growling. His tail swished. He paced to the right, and panic washed over the crowd. Girls screamed. Guys dropped their inflatable animals. People ran in every direction, digging phones from their pockets.
In seconds, there wasn’t a party-goer in sight.
“Come on!” Robyn called as she stepped out of the bushes onto the path. “They’re all calling 911.” Just as she’d predicted they would.
Justus raced after her, and I took up the rear, weighed down a little by Drew’s corpse. My brother jumped over the fence with no problem. Robyn stared at it for a moment, then leaped several feet in the air. She landed less than a foot from the top, and while she climbed over, I contemplated the dead weight of the murderer I still carried like a sleeping child.
“I’m going to have to throw him over,” I said at last. “So either get ready to catch him, or stand out of the way.” The shuffle of shoes away from the fence told me which she’d chosen.
I sucked in a deep breath, then heaved Drew over the fence with as much height as I could give him. His jacket snagged at the top and a patch of material tore loose. But he made it over and crashed to the ground with a sickening thud.
I snagged the torn material on my way over the fence, then picked up the corpse and followed Robyn and Justus toward Spencer’s car. Robyn got behind the wheel while I stored the body in the trunk, in a roll of plastic kept just for that unfortunate possibility—a tip from Faythe and Marc. Justus lay across the backseat, no doubt exhausted and starving from his shift.
“Where to?” Robyn asked as she pulled out of the parking lot into a long line of fleeing college kids. None of whom should have been driving.
“Home. I’ll call Jace on the way.” As she pulled onto the highway, I twisted in my seat to look at my brother, who lay with his muzzle resting on his folded front paws.
“We have a lot to explain to you, and it’s going to come fast and hard. And the only thing I’m sure of right now is that the council’s going to want your head. But I’ll be damned if I’ll let them take it.”
Robyn
“You think they believe him?” Knox set a pesto, provolone, and mozzarella grilled cheese sandwich on the bar in front of me, cut into two triangles. On a paper plate. It smelled better than any three a.m. snack I’d ever tasted, but I had no appetite, despite the fact that I’d shifted two hours earlier and had yet to replace the calories that had burned.
“I don’t know.” Titus had been on a call with the council for more than an hour. Because they were gathered for Isaac and Melody’s wedding, he’d caught several of them in one place and the others were all conferenced in, and everyone wanted a chance to talk. To yell. To make demands. To ask questions.
“Even if they don’t believe him now, they will once they meet Justus,” Lochlan said, cutting into a fresh omelet. “Drew’s scent is on him, plain as day. They can’t possibly think Titus infected anyone after that.”
“Yeah, but that’s part of the problem.” I picked up half of my sandwich and truly contemplated taking a bite. “I think he’d rather take the blame than let them hurt his brother.”
“How could they possibly hold Justus responsible for what he did, after Drew manipulated him?” Naveen demanded as he dumped a splash of whiskey into his coffee in lieu of cream. Or sugar. Or more coffee. They’d started drinking the minute they saw Drew’s corpse and smelled Justus’s scent, yet not one of the enforcers had so much as slurred a single word. Difficulty achieving intoxication was one of the benefits—and drawbacks—of a shifter’s insanely quick metabolism.
“The same way they held me responsible,” I told Naveen. “But since Justus isn’t a woman, they have no reason to offer him the ‘mercy’ they offered me.” And for the first time since my sentence had been handed down, I realized what a mercy it truly was.
Titus was afraid they’d execute Justus. Swiftly. The council needed me, but they neither needed nor wanted another male stray they weren’t sure they could control. A stray who’d infected four people, including a woman who’d died from scratch fever. They had no reason to let him live.
My gaze fell on Justus, sleeping off his pre-dawn breakfast in clean clothes on the window seat at the back of the kitchen. He was only three years my junior, but he looked so much younger and more vulnerable than I’d ever felt, even after everything that had happened to me over the past few months. Justus was less than two years out of high school. He’d lost his parents. And in a way, he’d lost his brother, when Titus was infected and began putting distance between them in an attempt to protect him.
And if Titus couldn’t pull off a miracle, he’d very soon lose his life.
TWENTY-FOUR
Titus
