Apparently, keeping Archer out of my head was no protection against more mundane mind games. Even though I knew he was trying to get to me, I couldn’t help staring at the image on the wall and wondering if he was right.
“Admit it, little Bryn—they’ve done a real number on you. Not a werewolf, barely human. They took you and they raised you and they used you. You’re just a kid, and you never even had a chance.”
I wasn’t entirely sure how to reply. Blow me and screw you both seemed like strong contenders, but the peanut gallery in my head appeared to be favoring castration.
To his credit, Archer seemed to sense that it was time to retreat. “Breakfast’s downstairs in five, wolf girl.”
This time, I couldn’t help hearing the words wolf girl a little differently, but I pushed the thought out of my head and concentrated on the business at hand. If Archer was Valerie’s version of a wake-up call, it was probably safe to assume that breakfast was a thing to beware.
“Good morning.” Valerie smiled. Needle-sharp pinpricks bombarded the base of my skull—but this time, Valerie’s attempt to manipulate my emotions wasn’t my biggest problem.
Gathered around the kitchen table were the handful of psychics I’d already met and several I hadn’t. The old woman whose knack allowed her to influence animals was feeding part of her muffin to a snake. A pair of college-aged girls were engaged in some kind of staring contest, their eyes bloodshot and their irises ink black.
“Valerie, could I have a word with you? Alone?” I was tired of skirting the issue, tired of pretending that I’d come here to join the coven when both of us knew I’d come here to test my mettle against hers.
Valerie’s smile broadened, cutting through the smattering of wrinkles near the edges of her lips. Her eyes zeroed in on mine, and I felt a stab of loneliness, confusion, rage—before the sound of snapping teeth and a guttural growl pushed her back out.
Sooner or later, she’d get tired of testing me, tired of losing. I needed to make my move before that happened.
“What would you like to talk about?” Valerie asked, moving around the kitchen table to pour herself some tea.
“Shay.”
Her stride broke, just for a moment, and I knew I’d hit my target.
“Whatever you have to say to me you can say in front of everyone. We don’t have secrets here, Bryn.” Her tone sounded genuine, but her eyes were steely, merciless, hard. There were six other people at the dining room table and more coming into the room the longer I stood there, and in unison, their pupils surged.
The old woman whispered something, and her snake began writhing its way slowly toward me. The girls in the staring contest suddenly turned those fathomless black eyes on me.
“Was there something you wanted to say, Bryn?” Valerie sipped her tea.
There was a lot I wanted to say to her—once I managed to get her away from her little army of marionettes.
“Go ahead, Bryn. Say it.”
There were too many eyes on me, too much power in this room. I felt trapped, and things began to go red around the edges. The instinct crept up on me, dark and sure, and for a second, it was more of a presence in my mind than Devon, Lake, or Chase.
Trapped. Trapped. Need to escape. Survi—
“Easy there.” A strange hand clapped me on the shoulder, and without thinking, I grabbed the hand and the attached arm and moved to flip the owner onto the kitchen floor. To my surprise, the hand’s owner ducked out of my grasp and took a step back, palms held up, facing me. “I come in peace.”
His delivery of that line sounded so much like Devon that I almost smiled, and that cleared my mind enough that I was able to really look at him. My opponent was much older than I’d expected: sixty-five if he was a day, and though his eyes sparkled, I could see each one of those years literally carved into his skin.
He had more scars than anyone I’d ever seen.
“I’m never quite myself before my morning walk,” he told me. “I’m sensing maybe you’re not much of a morning person, either. Care to join me?”
It was on the tip of my tongue to say no, but annoyance flashed across Valerie’s face the moment the man extended the invitation, and that made me reconsider.
“Maybe that’s a good idea,” I said.
“Maybe it’s not.” Caroline stepped out from the shadows and made her presence known. I wasn’t the only one who turned to track her progression into the room. In fact, the only two people who didn’t react that way were Valerie, whose eyes were locked on mine, and the old man, whose weathered face softened the moment Caroline appeared.
“Rule nineteen, Caro,” he said, his voice gruff. “And for that matter, twelve.”
I got the feeling that unlike the facetious “Bryn Rules” my friends like to reference, Caroline and the old man really did have a numbered list.
“Rule seven,” the girl in question countered.
The man rolled his eyes. “Fifty-three.”
That, apparently, was something Caroline couldn’t argue with, and my companion turned his attention back to Caroline’s mother. “Don’t worry, Val,” he said, brown eyes shining against white-scarred skin. “I’ll bring our little visitor back. Scout’s honor.”
With those words, he put his hand on my shoulder again and guided me to the door. This time, I didn’t resist—not because of the way he’d handled Valerie and Caroline, but because the moment he touched me, I felt a familiar sensation, like I knew him.
Like we were the same.
He’s Resilient, Chase whispered from his place in my mind. Like you. Like me.
Like us.
I tried to remember what Valerie had told me the day before, but all I could remember was the man’s name—Jed.
The two of us walked in silence, each taking the other’s measure. Once we were out of earshot of the house, Jed spoke. “Came close to flashing out in there, didn’t you?”
“Flashing out?”
He strung his thumbs through his belt loops and kept walking. “It’s what happens when people like us get backed into a corner. Smart girl like you must realize that woman was backing you into one on purpose.”
I knew other Resilients. The majority of our pack was Resilient. But this was the first time I’d met another human whose gift was being scrappy and stubborn and coming out unscathed when other people would be dead.
“I wasn’t going to lose it,” I told him.
The man grunted.
“I’m better at keeping my head than people give me credit for.”
He grunted again. “I shouldn’t have grabbed you, but she was pushing the others, and if you’d flashed out, they would have attacked.”
“She doesn’t want me dead—not if there’s a chance she could turn me into one of her little sock puppets instead.”
My use of the phrase sock puppet seemed to throw Jed for a loop, but only for a moment. “If Val can’t get inside your head, she won’t have any other use for you. Lucky for you, woman’s not the type to accept defeat. She’s been trying to get in my head going on eleven years now. Most of the time, I shake her off. Doesn’t put her in the best mood, but as long as I keep my mouth shut about it, ’bout what she’s doing to everyone else, she lets me be.”
As I processed Jed’s words, I realized that I was talking to the one person in the entire coven who was able to insulate his emotions from Valerie’s influence. From that, I concluded two things: first, that even without the others in my head, I might be able to do the same; and second, if I wanted to figure out what was really going on in this coven, my current companion would be a good place to start.
“Eleven years—is that how long you’ve been with the coven?”
Jed shook his head. “That’s how long she’s been with the coven. She showed up on our doorstep, same way you did, with a little blonde moppet in tow. Cutest kid you’d ever seen—real solemn, except when Valerie wanted her otherwise. Two months after the two of them showed up, Valerie married Wes.”
“Wes?”
“He was a good kid,” Jed said. “Great leader. I’d been with him since he was seventeen. He was the one who talked me into finding others like us. He found them, saved them, made them family.”