Читать книгу Inside Out - Amy Lee Burgess - Страница 10

Chapter 6

“Mayflower.” My voice was mostly flat, but there was a tinge of horror buried in it. My mind reeled. Paul and Lauren had renounced me. I had no standing in Mayflower. I realized I had no idea who was Alpha and maybe that should be my next question.

“Faith Newcastle and Scott Charest are Alphas,” Allerton replied after I asked.

Faith. My cousin on Lauren’s side. Mayflower was not Lauren’s birth pack. She’d come from Aspenmoon in upper state New York. When she’d bonded with Paul, her twin sister, Lily, and her pack mate, Todd Marshall, had come to Mayflower with her. Lauren and Lily had been inseparable until Lily’s death from complications after the birth of her daughter Faith.

I’d been five years old at the time. I remembered sneaking into the room where Lily had labored. It had been a hard birth and nobody had noticed me. I’d hidden behind a chair and watched without comprehension of what was happening. I only heard my auntie scream and my mother sob. There had been a lot of blood in the bed then all the women in the room cried so hard I barely heard the thin wail of my newborn cousin.

Todd, Faith’s father, bonded with the duo who took over as Alphas, and raised his daughter with love and affection. I’d always been jealous of Faith’s relationship with her father. So different from mine. She’d never walked on eggshells the way I had. She never seemed to do anything wrong the way I always had.

From her toddlerhood, she’d adored me. She’d followed me around and, when I came into a room, her face had lit up and she’d abandon any toy or person she played with to get to me.

I had been equally smitten because she’d been a little doll of a child with pale blond hair and autumn brown eyes with the cutest rosebud mouth.

We’d grown less close as we’d matured and the five-year gap became wider. By the time I’d left Mayflower to bond with Grey, she’d been a coltish fifteen-year-old and we’d had virtually nothing in common anymore.

The passage of time seemed brutal suddenly. Wasn’t it just yesterday she was three years old and I was eight and we’d had tea parties on Grandmother Elaine’s front lawn with my dolls and her teddy bear?

“Paul renounced me,” I blurted in an attempt to drive away useless memories of a time that would never come back.

Allerton snorted. It was an undignified sound and indicative of how at ease he felt with me. The formality of our association became less each time we interacted, and I wasn’t sure how comfortable I was with that. I liked to think of Allerton as lofty and untouchable. Always in control. In charge. Vulnerability unnerved me.

“You are an Advisor to the Great Council. Whether your father likes it or not, you will have access to Mayflower or he’ll answer first to me and then to the Council. I’m relatively sure he won’t present a problem. A minor inconvenience perhaps, but only if you allow him that much. In your shoes I wouldn’t take a thing from him. You don’t have to.”

I pictured Paul’s sour lemon face when I arrived on Mayflower territory. It almost made the idea attractive.

“What’s wrong with the pack?” No more serial killers. No more conspiracy death. No more danger and drama. My heart was broken in enough pieces already.

“That’s the question,” Allerton responded.

* * * *

Faith at twenty-seven was not the same as the Faith I remembered at fifteen. Back then she’d been all skinny legs and pink-streaked spiky hair, dressed in black with her nose in a book. Anti-social and rebellious.

The short spiky, pink-streaked hair was gone, replaced by a sleek shoulder-length layered fringe with choppy bangs. She had my mother’s smile, which wasn’t surprising since Lily and Lauren had been identical twins. Instead of hyacinth blue eyes, hers were autumn-leaf brown and widely spaced—a legacy from her father.

It was a gorgeous June afternoon and she sat at one of the tiny shaded tables outside the Starbucks on the corner of Cambridge Street, an untouched bottle of water on the table before her. She played with the straps of her white purse—a counterclockwise twist and unwind followed by a clockwise twist and unwind. Silver hoops dangled from her ears and matched the bangle bracelets laddered up her bare left arm. The short sun dress she wore was multi-colored with wide swirls of black. Her flat sandals were black and studded with silver rings and beads. I’d seen the same pair for twenty bucks at Target the last time I’d shopped there for throw pillows to match the cinnamon red of my living room walls. I’d seen the dress too—twenty-nine ninety-five.

I’d been spoiled by Murphy’s money and by my own—earned as an Advisor to Councilor Allerton. I used to buy Target shoes and clothes, but I was more upscale now. Department stores for clothes and trendy shoe stores for designer name shoes. I despised myself for a moment and wondered if I’d forgotten my roots.

Before I’d left the condo, I’d slipped my bond pendant around my neck and called myself a fraud as I did it. I hadn’t worn it for five weeks, but I had to if I wanted to avoid questions from Faith. I drew the line at the pack ring, though. Paddy O’Reilly was a fucking liar and I was damned if I’d wear his ring, even though I technically was still a pack member.

I couldn’t think what to say when she abandoned her purse straps and looked at me without a smile. The naked worry on her face scared me so I murmured an awkward hello, pointed at the store and dodged inside for an iced chai latte—anything to buy me a few moments to sort myself out.

Mayflower. Just the name conjured up a thousand, jumbled memories, and most of them weren’t good.

My mouth tasted sour, so I sucked a mouthful of chai latte through the straw as I walked back to Faith’s table. Faith had still not touched her water, but she’d set her purse aside and now played with the bangle bracelets on her wrist. She didn’t look up when I pulled out the wrought iron chair opposite her and took a seat.

“Nice shoes,” she said. I followed her gaze beneath the table to the black tar sidewalk and my feet.

My sandals were flat as well—tan leather gladiator style. Cocobelle Safari. A hundred and fifty bucks. Sometimes I got tired of the paint fumes in my condo and went shoe shopping. Of course each time I walked out of a store with a new pair of shoes for my ever-expanding collection, I thought of Allerton and his comment at the Paris Great Gathering. He believed I bought shoes to fill the hole inside me. Lately, I conceded he might have had a point.

Sometimes it seemed the more my shoe collection expanded, the bigger the hole inside me became. Not smaller. But that didn’t stop the mindless acquisition. I could only take so much redecorating and I had to keep busy and on the move. Otherwise I would curl up in a defeated ball and cry. Screw that.

“Why Boston?” Faith reached out for her water but didn’t take a sip. Her brown eyes were inquisitive. “After you were exiled you could have gone anywhere in the whole world. Why Boston? Why so close to Mayflower? None of us ever acknowledged you were here. Didn’t that hurt?”

“Why Starbucks? Why wouldn’t you come to meet me at the condo?” I countered.

A small smile quirked the corner of her mouth and I was reminded of my mother. Lauren had the same smile when she thought something was funny. For Lauren, this specific smile made a rare appearance.

“I asked first, Stanzie.”

Faith had dubbed me Stanzie. She couldn’t wrap her tongue around Constance when she was little and somehow she’d come up with Stanzie. Soon everyone in the pack had called me that and it had stuck. I’d made sure of it because I’d never liked Constance. The name was too formal and old-fashioned.

My father, of course, had despised the nickname. He’d taken it as a personal insult because he’d chosen my name. Supposedly, there had been a girl named Constance on the Mayflower when it had arrived in Plymouth Harbor one cold November day in 1620. Constance had had a twin brother, a father and a mother. They, and another young couple aboard, had had an inside secret. They weren’t Others—they were Pack.

Paul had spun stories for me about this Mayflower Constance when I was a little girl—about her voyage and her family and what it was like to be in a pack in Colonial Massachusetts. Whenever I was bad, he would throw this Mayflower Constance in my face and tell me how she would never have cried like a baby or begged for such an expensive toy or talked back to her father the way I did. By the time I was seven, I hated the Mayflower Constance with a passion. She was the main reason I insisted on being called Stanzie. The Mayflower Constance would never have shortened her name and would have been horrified by anyone who’d tried to give her a nickname.

I played with my straw for a moment and Faith waited, her eyes thoughtful and wary.

“Every summer the mothers would take all of us kids to Faneuil Hall for a daytrip. We’d eat lunch at Quincy Market and walk through the stalls and vendors. We’d go outside and eat under the sun. Take walks to Paul Revere’s house and the Old North Church. Go sprawl on blankets by the river. I’d fall asleep in Lauren’s lap.”

A reminiscent smile tugged at Faith’s mouth.

“Boston was always a magical place for me. Full of potential and mystery. Joy. Plus it was one place that I’d never shared with Grey and Elena, so there were no memories here with them.”

Faith’s smile faltered and she stared at the sweating bottle of water on the table for a moment.

“I’m pregnant,” she announced, but it didn’t seem as though she expected grins and congratulations. “So maybe this is all in my head. Paranoia caused by raging pregnant-woman hormones, but I don’t think so. I didn’t want anyone to think I’d come here deliberately to see you. If someone from Mayflower spied us together, I could always say I saw you sitting here on the corner and had to stop. But if I went to your condo, they’d know I sought you out deliberately.”

It was a two-hour drive from Willoughby, the small town where Mayflower made its home. Willoughby backed up to the Wendell State Forest where the pack ran. When the pack had first formed, it had been much closer to Boston but as the land had been built up and cities and towns founded, the pack had moved toward the state forest.

“What are you afraid of?” I leaned across the tiny table and put my hand on her arm. Her skin was slightly clammy with perspiration, but it was her pulse rate I wanted to feel. It raced.

“I don’t know,” she confessed in a low, confused voice. She began to pick at the label on the water bottle and tore small strips of paper away which she rolled into little balls with her thumb and forefinger then deposited on the table.

She stared straight into my eyes. “What did Councilor Allerton tell you?”

“Not much. He wanted you to tell me. I had the feeling he wasn’t quite sure himself what the problem was, only that he believed you needed help.”

“And that’s what the Great Council is for, right? Help?” Faith didn’t sound convinced.

“Among other things,” I agreed.

“Like tribunals?” Faith watched my reaction closely and I tried not to shudder. Nearly two months had passed since my tribunal had ended and I’d been cleared of all charges. Almost three years since the first tribunal when I’d also been cleared of all charges.

“That was a low blow,” she said before I could answer. “Sorry.”

“Why? You’re right. The Councils, both Regional and Great, are responsible for enforcing our laws which sometimes means punishment instead of help.”

“Well, the ones that are punished deserve it and it could be said the rest of us are helped by that, I suppose.”

I shrugged. This wasn’t getting us any closer to the real issue and we both knew it.

“So, I’m pregnant, right?” She wasn’t asking a question, but I nodded and sipped my iced chai. My throat was dry and I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear what was wrong with my birth pack. I had a suspicion I already knew and it was last goddamn thing I wanted to deal with. The conspiracy.

“I’m three months pregnant and I’ve been Alpha for seven months. Already the pack’s talking about who should be the next Alpha pair like the minute I give birth, I’m out and they’re in.” Faith’s chin jutted and her eyes sparked with indignation and something worse—humiliation.

“That would be weird. Alphas are usually Alpha for at least five years. More in small packs like Mayflower. If you’re right, you’d have a year at best. Who’s next in line?”

“That’s just it. It’s Rachel and Mark, or at least that’s how the rumor goes. And they were Alphas before me and Scott.” Faith sat straight in her chair and her voice vibrated with resentment.

“A second chance to have a baby? Rachel’s got to be in her late thirties by now.” I did the mental math and Faith bounced in her chair.

“That’s just it, Stanzie, she has children. Twins. They’re three. She’d be Alpha again for no reason except that she wouldn’t be me.”

“Alan...” I began. I referred to another young pack member and tried to calculate his age.

“He’s twenty-one. He’s not even bonded. Also, there’s no one near his age to bond with in the pack, so when he finds a bond mate, he’s going to leave and join her pack.”

I blinked. “He’s tenth generation. There’s got to be some push back on that idea.”

“No.” Her hair fell in her eyes with the force of her headshake. “It’s the other way around. He’s being encouraged.”

My mouth dropped open. This was definitely not standard operating procedure for Mayflower. It went against all tradition.

“That’s why I wanted you. I need you to investigate this because you know Mayflower. You understand how freaky proud we are of our heritage, our status as the third-oldest pack in America. Alan is from one of the oldest families we have. Everyone should be falling over themselves to find him a bond mate who wants to join us.”

I nodded because it was true.

“You know Paul renounced me, right?”

Faith waved that away with an irritated movement of her hand. The Mayflower pack ring, a band of twisted gold and silver, flashed from her finger. The story went that Paul Revere himself had designed the ring. That part of it I might believe. The part where Paul was a member of the pack was not quite as believable, but it was the sort of rumor people from Mayflower didn’t discourage if it made the rounds at Regionals and Great Gatherings.

“Scott wonders if they don’t like us because we’re first generation and we have no history.” Faith’s shoulders slumped and a surge of anger pumped through my veins.

“New blood is vital for continuation. Otherwise you’d end up bonding with your cousin or uncle, for Christ’s sake.”

“All I ever heard growing up was that I wasn’t true Mayflower. Not like you.” Faith stole a look at me through her long lashes and I sat back in my chair, disturbed and astounded.

“You were the perfect child and I was the rebel. Be more like Stanzie was a constant refrain through my childhood. Until you shifted with that German boy in New Orleans.” Faith’s tone had started out aggrieved, but turned happy. “I was so proud of you for that, Stanzie. I never thought you had it in you. And then you gave the whole pack the finger and ran off with Grey Owens and joined Riverglow. God, I was jealous.”

“I was always envious of the way Todd doted on you. Paul never did that with me,” I confessed.

We exchanged rueful looks. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, for sure.

“When Alan was born, Todd wanted me to feel special.” Faith’s smile was affectionate and grateful as she thought of her father.

“Alan was Shane’s son, not Todd’s,” I said.

“But Todd was still in Shane and Samantha’s triad. Spare to the pair. He probably knew how it felt to be a little bit on the outside looking in. Although the three of them have been happy all these years, I wonder how different things would have been if my mother had lived.”

Lily’s face, the carbon copy of my mother’s, flashed before my eyes. Unfortunately, in my mind her face was contorted with the agonized screams of labor gone wrong.

“I want you to come to Willoughby. Come see our pack. I’ll say it’s a family reunion. We ran into each other by accident in Boston and decided together you should visit. I’ve made you reservations at the Wishing Well Motel. You can check in anytime after three today.”

Motel? I wasn’t welcome to stay with her and her bond mate? I guess it made sense since there was something wrong in the pack, but it still stung. Maybe she was mad I’d left Mayflower even though she said she was proud of me? Faith was the closest thing to family I had left. It was hard not to feel rejected.

Stanzie. Get a grip. You’re an Advisor on a job. Act like one.

“Do you have a car?” Faith’s loaded question broke into my self-pitying reverie.

I bit my lip. Technically, the answer was yes. The Prelude was parked in the tiny driveway on the side of the condo. The downstairs neighbors had no car so I got the space by default. Murphy had parked it there after we’d returned from Bethany’s funeral. I hadn’t been near it since.

“Yes, I have a car,” I said.

Faith plucked a pad and pen from her purse and scribbled down a number. She ripped the page out of the notebook and slid it across the table toward me careful to avoid the wet spots of condensation from our drinks. “My cell number. Call me when you’re settled. Bring your bond mate. I hear he’s an Advisor too.”

“He’s in Dublin right now.” My smile was evasive. Her eyes narrowed but she didn’t say anything.

After a swig of water, she shouldered her purse and rose to her feet. The June sunlight illuminated her blond hair and turned it golden.

“Thank you, Stanzie. I feel better already.”

I sucked down chai tea and watched her walk down Cambridge Street—a young woman in a short sun dress with blond hair and cheap Target sandals. Men drivers craned their necks to watch her go but she was oblivious. They were only Others, after all.