“You realize you look like an animal in a cage?”
That always happened when I was nervous. I sat down with a huff.
“The pack’s not any of my business. Not anymore. Why am I even getting involved?”
His lips curled in a half grin, like he wasn’t convinced by my arguments. Like he was about to say something snarky. “You’ve just given a dozen reasons why you shouldn’t have brought her here. So why did you?”
I shrugged. “It felt like the right thing to do? The wolf side wants to keep her safe.” I whined and squeezed my hands over my head, like I could push some sense into my brain. “You’d think after this long the wolf side would stop surprising me.”
“She’s like you were, isn’t she?”
I wanted to argue. I couldn’t possibly have been that bad, that helpless. Honestly, though, I remembered. Those early weeks, my first time meeting the pack, surrounded by wolves, I’d only wanted to know what I had to do to keep from getting hurt, from making them angry. I’d been the most submissive one in the room, to keep Carl happy, to make sure he protected me.
“Yeah. And if it weren’t for the show and T. J. and leaving, I’d still be like that. She said that’s why Carl turned her. He wanted someone like that again.”
“Jesus.” For a long moment we sat quietly, letting the doom settle over us. Then he said, “I want you to take the gun. Keep it with you. We’ll worry about the permit later.”
“Ben—”
“He’ll come after you, sooner or later. You have to be able to stop him. And don’t just keep it in the glove box in the car. Get a purse, carry it with you.”
I drew a deep, frustrated breath. “Guns aren’t always the answer.”
“Not always. Sometimes, they are.” He offered a galling smile.
“Who’s the alpha wolf here?”
“Don’t packs usually have two alphas?”
He was getting cheeky. I kind of liked it. I squeezed his hand and kissed him. “Thanks. I have to go make some calls.”
Jenny slept for ten hours. The next day, she had the look of a fugitive—sunken eyes, permanent frown. But she held herself a little straighter, and she wasn’t crying.
I knew of a couple of places where lycanthropes lived and didn’t have packs. There were werewolves there who’d look after her. They could help her find a job, get her on her feet. I’d waited until morning to call them, but I made one call before dawn. I knew at least one vampire who could find a place in her household for a wayward cub.
I’d developed this network of friends without even realizing it. Ahmed, an amiable old werewolf, and Alette, a surprisingly humane vampire, in Washington, D.C., both offered to take her in, if I could get her out there. Ahmed gave me a couple of more names, lycanthropes in Los Angeles and Seattle who would help her, if she wanted to go there instead. He said that problems like this came up fairly often, but a few people had found a way to deal with it. Battered lycanthrope shelters. Who’d have guessed?
At last, here was a problem I could fix. Here was someone I could well and truly help. When Jenny woke up around lunchtime, I presented her with a page full of names and phone numbers.
“Do you want to go to Seattle, L.A., or Washington, D.C.?”
She looked at the page warily. “What?”
I tried to sound kind. “If you don’t want Carl to be able to get to you, you have to leave town. I have contacts. The ones in D.C., I know them and trust them. They gave me these other contacts, so they’re good. You can go, and you won’t be alone. The people there are friends, they’ll help you.”
She stared at the table, and at the glass of orange juice that was all she’d wanted for her late breakfast. The finality of it must have sounded startling. I couldn’t imagine what was going on in her head, with so much to think about.
“It’s what I did,” I said. “I left. Things’ll be easier—they’ll seem clearer when Carl isn’t around.”
She swallowed, and still her voice cracked. “This woman in Washington, the vampire—you said she’s nice?”
“Yeah, she is. Maybe a little snooty, but aren’t they all? She likes taking care of people.”
“I think I’d like to go there,” Jenny said. “To stay with her.”
Alette was female, and wasn’t a werewolf. I wasn’t surprised Jenny made that choice. “Then we’ll get it all set up. See? It’s easy.”
She sniffed, and I was afraid she’d start crying again. I didn’t want her to start crying again. She was going to get me started. But she smiled, for the first time she smiled, a thin and shy expression.