He killed another growl. “You don’t need to be talking to him. Nothing good will come from it.”
“No, you are right. You are totally right. Let’s not talk to the enemy we are all going to fight at some point.” She shrugged her narrow shoulders. “Let’s not try to figure out how he thinks or what weapons he might use. Honestly, Derek? You did all that spy stuff for Jim for years. I can’t believe you.”
“Believe it.”
“I know!” She clapped her hands together. “Maybe we could all go into battle blindfolded.”
He had an urge to pull her off her horse and shake her until some sense appeared in her brain.
“I can sew you a cute grey blindfold with some little scars on it—”
“He’s a homicidal tyrant who’s been alive for five thousand years!” he snarled.
“Six. Longer, probably, but he admits to six.”
“Do you honestly think he’s going to let you see anything he doesn’t want you to see?”
“There are things he can’t hide from me. Things that only I can see.” She leaned forward. “He’s teaching me, and that means I’m learning how he thinks. Someone has to talk to him, Derek. Kate isn’t going to. That leaves me. I’m learning. I can make my own incantations now. I know how to build them and infuse them with power. That’s something Kate doesn’t know how to do.”
“Incantations?” She was out of her mind. “Have you used one in an actual fight?”
“Not yet. It’s dangerous.”
“So he’s teaching you something that may or may not work.”
She glared at him. “It will work. I haven’t used it yet, because it takes a crapload of magic. It’s my last resort, and I haven’t needed it.”
“Kate doesn’t need to incant. She uses power words.” He had no idea how they worked. He knew only that they came from an ancient language and commanded the magic.
“That’s what you think,” Julie said.
“That is what I think. He’s grooming you for something.”
“Don’t you think I know that?”
“Okay.” He spun around and walked backward facing her. “Tell me one thing that you’ve learned that we don’t know. One thing. Go.”
“Okay. Do you know what he did to Hugh d’Ambray?”
“He exiled him. He should’ve killed him and saved us the trouble.”
“No,” Julie said quietly. “He purged him.”
“What does that mean?”
“He took away his immortality. Roland was everything to Hugh. Father, mother, teacher. God. For sixty years, since he was a kid, Hugh did everything Roland asked exactly as he was told. All his life he tried to make Roland proud. And Roland cast him out. He stripped the gift of his magic from him and severed all magic ties between them. Hugh can’t feel Roland anymore, Derek.”
“And?”
“‘When God shall remove all his presence from a man, that is hell itself,’” she quoted. “Hugh is in hell. He’ll feel himself age slowly and know that eventually he’s going to die.”
“Good.” He had no problem with that. Hugh had tried to kill Kate, he’d done his best to murder Curran, he’d almost started a war between the People and their vampires and the Pack, and he’d kidnapped Kate and nearly starved her to death, all in the name of trying to force her to meet with her father. The man’s list of transgressions was a mile long, and Derek would happily take a payment in blood for every single one. If Hugh happened to step out of the shadows now, only one of them would leave this street.
“It would’ve been kinder to kill him,” Julie said.
“Why are you so concerned about Hugh?”
“Think about it,” she said, her voice sharp. “It will come to you.”
He mulled it over. She was right. It came to him. “You are not Hugh.”
“I am. I’m bound to Kate by the same ritual Roland used to bind Hugh.”
“You’re nothing like Hugh, and Kate is nothing like Roland.”
Julie turned in the saddle and pointed to the northwest. “I can feel her. She’s there.”
He tried not to lie to her, so he said the first thing that popped into his head. “That’s creepy.”
“It is.” She put a world into those two words.
“But creepy or not, you know Kate won’t do what Roland is doing to Hugh. Roland doesn’t love Hugh. She loves you. You’re her child.”
She sighed. “I know she loves me. That’s why I’m worried. Derek, she still hasn’t told me that I can’t refuse her orders.”
Alarm dashed down his spine. He hadn’t realized she knew. “How long?”
“Roland told me months ago,” she said.
“She hasn’t told you because it’s hard.”
“I know,” she said. “She tries not to order me around. She’ll start to say some Mom thing and then stop, and you know she’s rephrasing it in her head. It’s kind of funny. Instead of ‘Stop stealing Curran’s beer out of the fridge and wash the dishes’ it’s all ‘It would make me a lot happier if you stopped stealing Curran’s beer’ and ‘It would be great if you did the dishes.’ She probably thinks she’s subtle about it. She isn’t.”
He didn’t see anything funny about it. “What are you going to do?”
“It’s not a problem now,” she said.
“And if it becomes a problem?”
“I’ll do something about it.”
He didn’t like the sound of that. “Still, you should stop talking to Roland.”
She sat up straighter. “Will you stop bossing me around?”
“Stop doing stupid crap, and I’ll stop.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Eat my horse’s ass.”
Ugh. No thanks. “What, was Desandra at the house recently?”
“I don’t need Desandra to teach me insults. And what the hell is it with all the comments about what I’m wearing? There’s nothing wrong with these shorts.”
“Don’t you own any jeans?”
“I do.”
“You should wear them.”
“Why? Is the sight of my legs disturbing you, Derek?” She stopped Peanut and stuck her left leg out in front of him. “Is there something wrong with my legs?”
There was nothing wrong with her legs. They were pale and muscular, and men who should know better noticed them. He was not going to notice them for a list of reasons a mile long, starting with the fact that she was sixteen, and he was twenty. He sidestepped her leg. “The more protection between your skin and other people’s claws, the better.”
“I took down a werejackal. I’m not the one bleeding.”
“I’m not bleeding.”
“You were. And there is a rip in your hoodie where he got your shoulder.”
He looked at her.
“Was I not supposed to mention it?” She put her hand to her chest. “So sorry, Sir Wolf.”
“In a few hours I’ll heal. You wouldn’t. If you got cut up by a cat’s claws, you would bleed unless we treated the wound. It would make you weak. Hours later you could reopen your wound if you turned the wrong way. Cats are filthy animals, and they carry all sorts of shit on their claws. You could die from an infection.”
They made a right onto Birch Road. To the left the ruin of the mall spread out. During the mall’s life, a narrow strip of lawn had ringed it, dotted by ornamental trees. Now the trees had grown, and thorny bushes sprouted between the trunks, forming nature’s answer to a barbed wire fence and offering only glimpses of the mall beyond. Most of its buildings had long since crumbled into dust. The rains had washed it away, and an occasional sign was all that remained of the shopping center. He read the names—Burlington Coat Factory, PayLess Shoe Store, Ross . . . They meant nothing to him.
“Did you share this cat view with Curran?” Julie asked. “Or are werelions slightly less filthy than other cats?”
He refused to take the bait. “A wound that’s a minor inconvenience to me could be a death sentence for you.”
Julie sighed. “Do you really think that if a wereleopard attacks me, jeans would stop him? Clothes don’t have magic powers, Derek. They don’t mystically protect you from three-inch claws, rapists, or murderers. If someone decides to hurt you, they will do so whether or not you have a thin layer of denim over your skin. Lighten up.”
“It’s better than nothing.”
She narrowed her eyes, looking sly. He braced himself.
“I saw a picture of Hugh when he was your age,” she said.
“Mhm.”
“Hugh was a hottie.”