Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson(79)

“I know,” he said, because it seemed like she needed a response.

“There’s something—” She hesitated. “Look, this might not have been the best idea.”

He was losing her again. He had to breathe deeply to keep the panic from his voice. “Why don’t you tell me about it anyway? Do you have something better to do?”

“I remember that,” she said. “I remember you doing that with Mom. She’d be hysterical, throwing dishes or books, and you’d sit down and say, ‘Why don’t you tell me about it?’”

Did she want to talk about her mother now? About the one time he’d needed to be calm and had failed? He hadn’t known he was a werewolf until it was too late. Until after he’d killed his wife and the lover she’d taken while David had been fighting for God and country, both of whom had forgotten him. She’d been waiting until he came home to tell him that she was leaving—it was a mistake she’d had no time to regret. He, on the other hand, might have forever to regret it for her.

He never spoke of it. Not to anyone. For Stella he’d do it, but she knew the story anyway. She’d been there.

“Do you want to talk about your mother?” he asked, his voice carrying into a lower timbre, as it did when the wolf was close.

“No. Not that,” she said hurriedly. “Nothing like that. I’m sorry. This isn’t a good idea.”

She was going to hang up. He drew on his hard-earned control and thought fast.

Forty years as a hunter and leader of men had given him a lot of practice reading between the lines. If he could put aside the fact that she was his daughter, maybe he could salvage this.

She’d told him she ran a foster agency like it was important to the rest of what she had to say.

“It’s about your work?” he asked, trying to figure out what a social worker would need with a werewolf. Oh. “Is there a—” His daughter preferred not to talk about werewolves, Clive had told him. So if there was something supernatural, she was going to have to bring it up. “Is there someone bothering you?”

“No,” she said. “Nothing like that. It’s one of my boys.”

Stella had never married, never had children of her own. Her brother said it was because she had all the people to take care of that she could handle.

“One of the foster kids.”

“Devonte Parish.”

“He one of your special ones?” he asked. His Stella had never seen a stray she hadn’t brought home, animal or human. Most she’d dusted off and sent home with a meal and bandages as needed—but some of them she’d kept.

She sighed. “Come and see him, would you? Tomorrow?”

“I’ll be there,” he promised. It would take him a few hours to set up permission from the packs in her area: travel was complicated for a werewolf. “Probably sometime in the afternoon. This the number I can find you at?”

•   •   •

Instead of taking a taxi from the airport, he rented a car. It might be harder to park, but it would give them mobility and privacy. If his daughter only needed this, if she didn’t want to smoke the peace pipe yet, then he didn’t need it witnessed by a cabdriver. A witness would make it harder for him to control himself—and his little girl never needed to see him out of control ever again.

He called her before setting out, and he could tell that she’d had second and third thoughts.

“Look,” he finally told her. “I’m here now. Maybe we should go and talk to the boy. Where can I meet you?”

•   •   •

He’d have known her anywhere, though he hadn’t, by her request, seen her since the night he’d killed his wife. She’d been twelve and now she was a grown woman with silver threads running through her kinky black hair. The last time he’d seen her, she’d been still a little rounded and soft as most children are—and now there wasn’t an ounce of softness in her. She was muscular and lean—like him.

It had been a long time, but he’d never have mistaken her for anyone else: she had his eyes and her mother’s face.

He’d thought you had to be bleeding someplace to hurt this badly. The beast struggled within him, looking for an enemy. But he controlled and subdued it before he pulled the car to the curb and unlocked the automatic door.

She was wearing a brown wool suit that was several shades darker than the milk and coffee skin she’d gotten from her mother. His own skin was dark as the night and kept him safely hidden in the shadows where he and people like him belonged.

She opened the car door and got in. He waited until she’d fastened her seat belt before pulling out from the curb. Slush splattered out from under his tires, but it was only a token. Once he was in the traffic lane, the road was bare.

She didn’t say anything for a long time, so he just drove. He had no idea where he was going, but he figured she’d tell him when she was ready. He kept his eyes on traffic to give her time to get a good look at him.

“You look younger than I remember,” she said finally. “Younger than me.”

“I was thirty-five or thereabouts when I was Changed. Being a werewolf seems to settle physical age at about twenty-five for most of us.” There it was out in the open and she could do with it as she pleased.