Revenge and the Wild(87)
“The blue trees,” Lavina said, pointing at a line of them beside the cave. “That’s the edge of the Wintu magic ward, correct?”
“Yeah, what about it?” Westie said.
Lavina handed her lamp to Hubbard and walked up to the line of trees. Westie could just barely see the shimmering surface of the magic dome. Lavina took a visible breath, shoulders rising and falling, before stepping through the watery membrane. Nothing happened at first, just Lavina standing there, looking at Westie from the other side. Then, after a few seconds, the color drained from Lavina’s face. She bent to vomit. Her back arched like a hissing cat and she vomited black liquid that gathered into an oily pond at her feet. When she looked up, making eye contact, Westie saw that Lavina’s pupils were a murky white color, like pearls set in pools of mud.
Westie gasped and took a step back. “What the hell . . .”
Hubbard rushed to his wife’s side, helping her to stand. Once they were back in the confines of the magic ward, the symptoms quickly subsided.
Westie’s heart clenched. “You’re turning into the Undying?” She recognized the signs immediately, remembering all those people back in Kansas when they’d first gotten sick, the look in their eyes, the black vomit.
Lavina struggled to catch her breath. “Such a nasty affliction,” she said through coughing bouts.
“But how? Everyone knows eating creatures of magic will turn you into the Undying.” She wanted to ask if Lavina was as dumb as she was ugly but let that dog lie.
“Yes, well, it turns out young werewolves in human form don’t give off a musk like their adult companions.”
Westie laughed. She couldn’t help it. “You ate a werewolf?”
Lavina coughed and spit gray mucus onto the ground. “Someone likes them young,” she said, turning her glare on James.
James smiled unapologetically. “The meat is much more tender that way.”
The amusement drained from Westie when she thought about them killing and eating Isabelle.
“There’s no cure for the illness,” Lavina said, “But there’s a suppressant if caught in the early stages.”
“Magic,” Westie said, remembering the stories from her childhood.
“Luckily, the illness is gradual. James, after his time in Kansas, recognized the symptoms right away. Everyone knows about Rogue City’s magic ward and do-good Indians, and their special friendship with Nigel here,” she said, patting him on the shoulder. He looked exhausted. Westie ached seeing him sitting there tied up and beaten. She wondered how long they’d held him captive while waiting for her to return.
“We knew we only had a few days, so we hurriedly packed our things and made arrangments to leave Sacramento. Our plan,” Lavina continued, “was to move to this horrid little town before we completely turned, and live among its disgusting creatures. Then we heard about Emma. With a machine like that casting magic wards in every American town, we could live anywhere, hunt anywhere. We had the Lovett fortune and Nigel needed investors. It seemed too good to be true. Once we arrived in Rogue City”—Lavina narrowed her eyes at Westie—“I saw that it was.”
“Because of me,” Westie said, a touch of obnoxious pride twisting her lips into a smirk.
“Yes, because of you. James recognized you first and tried to warn us, but by then it was too late.”
“James?” Westie looked at him, watched his entire face transform beautifully with his cocksure grin. “But how did you recognize me unless you were there at the cabin with—”
Something about his lips, the small white scar through the bottom lip that was invisible until he smiled, brought back a memory so sharp it severed her words. It was a memory nearly covered and forgotten beneath the layers of time: Westie having a tea party with her Clementine doll on the porch of their home in Kansas, Tripp slopping through the mud in the yard. She hadn’t been paying attention to him until she heard his screams and looked up just in time to see one of the Undying grab hold of his foot. Westie had leaped from the porch and played tug-of-war with the prairie-sick man for her brother’s life until he lost his grip, flinging Westie and Tripp into the steps, where her brother busted his lip clean open.
The humor drained from his smile. “I’m hurt it took you this long to recognize your own brother.”
Thirty-Nine
“No. No. You’re not Tripp.” The circus of emotions cartwheeling through her made it hard to stand still. She didn’t know if she would laugh or cry or simply implode. “Tripp had red hair, not black. That’s not something you just grow out of.”
“Come on, haven’t you noticed the grease in my hair? Cain wears it too. Surely you’ve noticed his hair change colors.”
She had, but she hadn’t put too much thought into it. Westie rubbed her eyes with her flesh hand, trying to push away the pressure building behind them. With her machine arm she tapped her parasol against her leg.
“Tripp’s dead,” she said, blinking back the tears that blurred her vision. “I saw his leg on the butcher block next to a pot of stew.”
Lavina said, “That was the last of the stragglers from your caravan. Tripp was locked up in the back.”
Westie tugged at a strand of her hair to keep from reaching over and ripping Lavina’s throat out.