The Lost Saint(79)

I gave myself a little shake—I hadn’t meant to use my powers. I picked up James, and he kicked my legs and whined for candy.

“Charity, will you take him?”

“But Mom said I could hang with my friends. I’m not the one who’s grounded.”

“Just for a few minutes, okay?” I looked up at Talbot. “We’ll be right back, right?”

“Sure,” he said, and nodded to Charity. “I just need your sis for a minute.”

“Whatever.” Charity grabbed James out of my arms and let him drag her across the street toward Gabriel—dressed like a monk—who was handing out Snickers bars from a plastic cauldron.

I slipped around the corner with Talbot before Gabriel could see me with him. “What’s going on?”

Talbot grabbed my arm. “We have to get out of here,” he said. “You and me. Right now.”

“What? Why?”

“There’s no time to explain. We just need to go.” He grabbed my arm, his hand like a vise over my elbow, and led me into the parking lot behind Lyman’s Hardware. The lot was packed with cars, but we were the only people there. “We need to get out of here before they find you.”

Talbot pulled me toward his old blue truck, double-parked under a lamppost that shone in the dusky dimness of the evening. I could see from here that the back of his truck was loaded up with what looked like camping gear. I stopped dead, digging the heels of my boots into the asphalt, and pulled my arm out of his grasp. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s going on.”

“They’re coming for you, Grace,” he said. His words sounded just like Jude when he called with his warning. “You’re in danger. The Shadow Kings are coming here. Right now. And I can’t stop them. They’ll tear this town apart until they find you. But maybe we can run. Drive as far away from here as we can get and then maybe hide out in the woods. I don’t know. We just need to go.”

“They’re coming here? Right here? I have to warn my family.”

“There’s no time!”

“My sister’s out there with my baby brother, and my parents. Not to mention the whole town. If the Shadow Kings are coming here, then I need to warn them. I need to find Gabriel or my dad.” I turned and was about to bolt out of the parking lot.

“Don’t!”

Talbot lunged at me. He grabbed my cloak and jerked me back toward him. I yelped and dropped my basket. Caramel apples spilled out around our feet.

“I don’t care about them,” he said. “You’re the only thing that matters.”

“They’re my family!” How can he not want me to warn them? And there was no way I was going to leave Baby James unprotected. I’d promised him that. “I’m not going to leave them in danger.”

“Just get in the damn truck,” Talbot said, and clamped his hand over my wrist, making my silver bracelet dig into my skin. He started to yank me toward his car, but before he could finish the movement, he yelped and let go of my arm.

I looked at his hand. A red welt the width of my bracelet blistered up on his open palm. The silver had burned him.

“Talbot?” I backed away. I’d thought all along that he was like me. An Urbat who hadn’t changed yet. Now it was clear that wasn’t true.

Talbot looked at his hand and then back at me. His eyes glinted with light from the streetlamp. A low growl escaped his lips. “Just get in the truck, Grace. I don’t want to have to hurt you.”

I took another step back. The heel of my boot slipped a bit on the gravel under my feet. “What’s going on? Who are you?”

“Someone who can’t be trusted,” said a familiar voice from somewhere nearby.

I whirled around and watched with disbelief as a tall, broad-shouldered guy stepped out from between two vans in the parking lot. He looked so different, yet so similar at the same time. His once short hair had grown out past his chin, and he had at least three days’ worth of stubble on his normally clean-cut face. It gave him the look of a house pet gone feral.

“Jude?”

Talbot let out a sudden curse and clamped his uninjured hand around my elbow. “We have to go, now!”

“Move away from him, Grace.” Jude held his hand out to me. “Get as far away from Talbot as you can.”

“You know each other?” I looked up at Talbot, who was crouched a bit, with his lips curled back from his teeth in a snarl. He looked like a wolf trying to ward off an intruder from encroaching on his prey. “You said you didn’t know him.”

“Don’t listen to a thing he says,” Talbot growled.

Jude laughed. “Talbot lies, Grace. That’s his thing. He makes you think you can trust him, but you can’t.”

Talbot’s the one Jude was trying to warn me about when he called? How was that even possible?

“He’s a real grifter,” Jude said.

My memory flashed to what that Gelal had said just before … just before Talbot had burst into the room and interrupted him: If you want to find the pack, then why don’t you ask their Keeper? He’s a real grifter, don’t you think?

Grifter? Didn’t that mean con artist? And Keeper? I’d heard that word before, too. Gabriel had said it. A Keeper was a beta of a werewolf pack.