Dead Heat (Alpha & Omega #4)(64)

He shut the door behind him and tried not to feel like an invading giant when the woman led them to a room with two couches and a couple of those soft squishy chairs, the kind that could unfold with footrests. Charles would let himself be shot before he sat in one of those. They always felt like they were trying to swallow him, and they were impossible to get out of quickly.

He was still trying to decide where to sit when the woman brought in a tall girl of about fourteen wearing clothes that would fit a woman twice her size. She didn’t look at any of them, just sat on the edge of one of the person-swallowing chairs, a pale-skinned, pale-haired girl who was little more than skin and bones. The word that occurred to him wasn’t “starving” but “fading.” This was why no one sent her to school. Even blind humans must be able to tell that she was mostly gone already.

Judy White introduced Marsden and Leeds but made no mention of Charles—and he was fine with that. He watched as Marsden and Leeds did a fair job of good cop/bad cop, Leeds unexpectedly playing bad cop. The girl saw them all right, but she said not a word and gave no reaction to anything they said.

She is abandoned, something whispered in his left ear. Into his right, something else said, Her true name is sorrow.

He did not always act upon the things the spirits told him. They were interested in this girl. They hovered unseen, even by him, in the air around her.

She could be anger, they told him. She could be vengeance, for she has much to be angry about, much to avenge. Those who should have cared for her acted for themselves when they rightly should have acted for her. She has been much sinned against.

This, he thought, this half child, half woman was where the sorrow that was trying to enfold this house was coming from. He’d told the Cantrip agents he wouldn’t talk, but he couldn’t let this lie. Someone needed to help her before she chose to leave this existence. He had the sure feeling that she would be needed somewhere in the future, that terrible things would happen without her. But that was not why he chose to act. Brother Wolf liked her.

He knelt on the floor at her feet, interrupting Marsden trying to coax her to speak. Judy White leaned forward as if she would have put herself between them, then paused as she realized this was no attack.

Tempering his usual fierceness not at all, Brother Wolf said, “Little sister. What makes your eyes weep with dry tears and your bold heart ache with pain? What service can we do for you? We will stand for you in any way you need us.” And because it was Brother Wolf speaking, Charles felt the words reach through the barriers she had erected between herself and the world.

She blinked at him, and no one in the room said anything as he waited for her to speak.

She cleared her throat. “I’m not your sister,” she said hoarsely.

But she was confused, not reputing them, so Charles and his wolf waited. They were here to serve her, not to pull information from her, not to take. Too many people had already taken from her.

“My baby,” she said, finally. “They made me … and I thought, what could I do with a baby? Her father didn’t want her and my parents didn’t want her. So I let them. I should have stopped them. I should have protected her. She didn’t have anyone else. She’s dead, she’s dead before she had a chance to be born and no one cares. They wanted to pretend that nothing was wrong.”

And when she said the last word, no more than a whisper, an entire shelf of children’s games fell off the bookcase they’d been on with a crash.

About an hour and a half later, Charles belted himself back in the Chevy and waited for Marsden to drive. But they just sat there with the engine running for a little.

“How did you know?” Marsden said.

“I’m a werewolf,” he told Marsden. “I know about all sorts of things. Wizards, humans who can manipulate the physical world, aren’t common, but they happen.”

“Frightening for her,” said Leeds. “To find out that when you get mad things fly around. Do you think the woman you recommended her foster mother talk to might help her?” He sounded like he knew all about being alone with funky powers.

“I wouldn’t have given her the name if I didn’t.” Charles wondered what Leeds’s fae blood had left him with as a legacy. But as long as he wasn’t stealing children, Charles didn’t care. He considered that for a moment, but he could smell Leeds’s fae blood quite clearly and it bore no resemblance to whatever had bespelled Chelsea or stolen the child.

“Fourteen,” said Marsden. He swore with feeling. “Whoever was watching out for her should have been shot.” He paused. “That baby’s father died—did you catch that? Hit by a car in a freak accident.”

“I hope it was her,” said Leeds, then, almost contradicting himself, “and I hope she never knows it.”

“That was powerful,” Marsden said. “What you did in there, Charles.” He rubbed the steering wheel. “It should have been absurd—you know. But it was powerful.”

“He is a dominant werewolf,” said Leeds. “When he submitted himself to her will … of course it was powerful. What if she had asked you to kill her parents? The ones who abandoned her, abandoned her twice, by my accounting.”

“Her name was sorrow,” said Charles. “All she needed was for someone to hear her so she could mourn.”

“But what if?”