Kelley Armstrong - Women of the Otherworld 2

[version history] [book jacket]

Stolen

Women of the Otherworld

Volume 2

Kelley Armstrong

PROLOGUE

He hated the forest. Hated its eternal pockets of damp and darkness. Hated its endless tangle of

trees and bushes. Hated its smell of decay—dead vegetation, dead animals, everything dying, even the

living creatures incessantly pursuing their next meal, one failure away from the slow descent into death.

Soon his body would be one more stink fouling the air, maybe buried, maybe left for the carrion feeders,

his death postponing theirs for another day. He would die. He knew that, not with the single-minded

intent of the suicidal or the hopeless despair of the doomed, but with the simple acceptance of a man who

knows he is only hours from passing out of this world into the next. Here in this stinking, dark, damp hell

of a place, he would die.

He didn't seek death. If he could, he'd avoid it. But he couldn't. He'd tried, planning his breakout

for days, conserving his energy, forcing himself to eat, to sleep. Then he'd escaped, surprising himself

really. He'd never truly believed it would work. Of course, it hadn't actually worked, just appeared to,

like a mirage shimmering in the desert, only the oasis hadn't turned to sand and sun, but damp and dark.

He'd escaped the compound to find himself in the forest. Still hopeful, he'd run. And run. And gone

nowhere. They were coming now. Hunting him.

He could hear the hound baying, fast on his trail. There must be ways to trick it, but he had no

idea how. Born and raised in the city, he knew how to avoid detection there, how to become invisible in

plain sight, how to effect an appearance so mediocre that people could stare right at him and see no one.

He knew how to greet neighbors in his apartment building, eyes lowered, a brief nod, no words, so if

anyone asked about the occupants of 412, no one really knew who lived there: Was that the elderly

couple? The young family? The blind girl? Never rude or friendly enough to attract attention, disappearing

in a sea of people too intent on their own lives to notice his. There he was a master of invisibility. But

here, in the forest? He hadn't set foot in one since he was ten, when his parents finally despaired of ever

making an outdoorsman out of him and let him stay with his grandmother while his siblings went hiking

and camping. He was lost here. Completely lost. The hound would find him and the hunters would kill

him.

"You won't help me, will you?" he said, speaking the words in his mind.

For a long moment, Qiona didn't reply. He could sense her, the spirit who guided him, in the

back corner of his mind, the farthest she ever went from him since she'd first made herself known when

he was a child too young to speak.

"Do you want me to?" she asked finally.

"You won't. Even if I want it. This is what you want. For me to join you. You won't stop that."

The hound started to sing, joy infusing its voice with melody as it closed in on its target. Someone

shouted.

Qiona sighed, the sound fluttering like a breeze through his mind. "What do you want me to do?"

"Which way is out?" he asked.

More silence. More shouts.

"That way," she said.

He knew which way she meant, though he couldn't see her. An ayami had presence and

substance but no form, an idea impossible to explain to anyone who wasn't a shaman and as easy for a

shaman to understand as the concept of water or sky.

Turning left, he ran. Branches whipped his face and bare chest and arms, raising welts like the

marks of a flagellant. And equally self-inflicted, he thought. Part of him wanted to stop. Give up. Accept.

But he couldn't. He wasn't ready to surrender his life yet. Simple human pleasures still held too much

allure: English muffins with butter and strawberry jam at the Talbot Café, the second-story balcony,

farthest table on the left, the sun on his forearms, tattered mystery novel in one hand, coffee mug in the

other, people yelling, laughing on the busy street below. Silly things, Qiona would sniff. She was jealous,

of course, as she was of anything she couldn't share, anything that kept him bound to his body. He did

want to join her, but not yet. Not just yet. So he ran.

"Stop running," Qiona said.

He ignored her.

"Slow down," she said. "Pace yourself."

He ignored her.

She withdrew, her anger a flash fire in his brain, bright and hot, then smoldering, waiting to flare

again. He'd stopped hearing the hound, but only because his blood pounded too loudly. His lungs blazed.

Each breath scorched through him, like swallowing fire. He ignored it. That was easy. He ignored most of

his body's commands, from hunger to sex to pain. His body was only a vehicle, a medium for transmitting

things like strawberry jam, laughter, and sunlight to his soul. Now after a lifetime of ignoring his body, he

asked it to save him and it didn't know how. From behind him came the bay of the hound. Was it louder

now? Closer?

"Climb a tree," Qiona said.

"It's not the dog I'm afraid of. It's the men."

"Slow down then. Turn. Confuse them. You're making a straight trail. Slow down."

He couldn't. The end of the forest was near. It had to be. His only chance was to get there

before the dog did. Ignoring the pain, he summoned every remaining vestige of strength and shot forward.

"Slow down!" Qiona shouted. "Watch—"

His left foot hit a small rise, but he adjusted, throwing his right foot out for balance. Yet his right

foot came down on empty air. As he pitched forward, he saw the streambed below, at the bottom of a

small gully eroded by decades of water flow. He flipped over the edge of it, convulsed in midair, trying to

think of how to land without injury, but again he didn't know how. As he hit the gravel below, he heard

the hound. Heard its song of triumph so loud his eardrums threatened to split. Twisting to get up, he saw

three canine heads come over the gully edge, one hound, two massive guard dogs. The hound lifted its

head and bayed. The other two paused only a second, then leaped.

"Get out!" Qiona screamed. "Get out now!"

No! He wasn't ready to leave. He resisted the urge to throw his soul free of his body, clenching

himself into a ball as if that would keep it in. He saw the undersides of the dogs as they flew off the cliff.

One landed atop him, knocking out his last bit of breath. Teeth dug into his forearm. He felt a tremendous

wrenching. Then he soared upward. Qiona was dragging him from his body, away from the pain of dying.

"Don't look back," she said.

Of course, he did. He had to know. As he looked down, he saw the dogs. The hound was still at

the top of the gully, howling and waiting for the men. The two other dogs didn't wait. They tore his body

apart in a shower of blood and flesh.

"No," he moaned. "No."

Qiona comforted him with whispers and kisses, pleaded with him to look away. She'd tried to

save him from the pain, but she couldn't. He felt it as he looked down at the dogs destroying his body,

felt not the pain of their teeth, but the agony of unbelievable loss and grief. It was over. All over.

"If I hadn't tripped," he said. "If I'd run faster . . ."

Qiona turned him then, so he could look out across the forest. The expanse of trees went on and

on, ending in a road so far away the cars looked like bugs crawling across the earth. He glanced back at

his body, a mangled mess of blood and bone. The men stepped from the forest. He ignored them. They

didn't matter anymore. Nothing did. He turned to Qiona and let her take him away.

***

"Dead," Tucker said to Matasumi as he walked into the cell-block guard station. He scraped the

mud of the forest off his boots. "Dogs got him before we did."

"I told you I wanted him alive."

"And I told you we need more hounds. Rottweilers are for guarding, not hunting. A hound will

wait for the hunter. A rottie kills. Doesn't know how to do anything else." Tucker removed his boots and

laid them on the mat, perfectly aligned with the wall, laces tucked in. Then he took an identical but clean

pair and pulled them on. "Can't see how it matters much. Guy was half-dead anyway. Weak. Useless."

"He was a shaman," Matasumi said. "Shamans don't need to be Olympic athletes. All their power

is in their mind."

Tucker snorted. "And it did him a whole lotta good against those dogs, let me tell you. They

didn't leave a piece of him bigger than my fist."

As Matasumi turned, someone swung open the door and clipped him in the chin.

"Whoops," Winsloe said with a grin. "Sorry, old man. Damn things need windows."

Bauer brushed past him. "Where's the shaman?"

"He didn't . . . survive," Matasumi said.

"Dogs," Tucker added.

Bauer shook her head and kept walking. A guard grabbed the interior door, holding it open as

she walked through. Winsloe and the guard trailed after her. Matasumi brought up the rear. Tucker

stayed at the guard station, presumably to discipline whoever had let the shaman escape, though the

others didn't bother to ask. Such details were beneath them. That's why they'd hired Tucker.

The next door was thick steel with an elongated handle. Bauer paused in front of a small camera.

A beam scanned her retina. One of the two lights above the door flashed green. The other stayed red

until she grasped the door handle and the sensor checked her handprint. When the second light turned

green, she opened the door and strode through. The guard followed. As Winsloe stepped forward,

Matasumi reached for his arm, but missed. Alarms shrieked. Lights flashed. The sound of a half-dozen

steel-toed boots clomped in synchronized quickstep down a distant corridor. Matasumi snatched the

two-way radio from the table.

"Please call them back," Matasumi said. "It was only Mr. Winsloe. Again."

"Yes, sir," Tucker's voice crackled through the radio. "Would you remind Mr. Winsloe that each

retinal and hand scan combination will authorize the passage of only one staff member and a second

party."

They both knew Winsloe didn't need to be reminded of any such thing, since he'd designed the

system. Matasumi stabbed the radio's disconnect button. Winsloe only grinned.

"Sorry, old man," Winsloe said. "Just testing the sensors."

He stepped back to the retina scanner. After the computer recognized him, the first light turned

green. He grabbed the door handle, the second light flashed green, and the door opened. Matasumi

could have followed without the scans, as the guard had, but he let the door close and followed the

proper procedure. The admittance of a second party was intended to allow the passage of captives from

one section of the compound to another, at a rate of only one captive per staff member. It was not

supposed to allow two staff to pass together. Matasumi would remind Tucker to speak to his guards

about this. They were all authorized to pass through these doors and should be doing so correctly, not

taking shortcuts.

Past the security door, the interior hall looked like a hotel corridor, each side flanked by rooms

furnished with a double bed, a small table, two chairs, and a door leading to a bathroom. Not luxury

accommodations by any means, but simple and clean, like the upper end of the spectrum for the

budget-conscious traveler, though the occupants of these rooms wouldn't be doing much traveling. These

doors only opened from the outside.

The wall between the rooms and the corridor was a specially designed glass more durable than

steel bars—and much nicer to look at. From the hallway, an observer could study the occupants like lab

rats, which was the idea. The door to each room was also glass so the watcher's view wasn't obstructed.

Even the facing wall of each bathroom was clear Plexiglas. The transparent bathroom walls were a recent

renovation, not because the observers had decided they wanted to study their subjects' elimination

practices, but because they'd found that when all four walls of the bathrooms were opaque, some of the

subjects spent entire days in there to escape the constant scrutiny.

The exterior glass wall was actually one-way glass. They'd debated that, one-way versus

two-way. Bauer had allowed Matasumi to make the final decision, and he'd sent his research assistants

scurrying after every psychology treatise on the effects of continual observation. After weighing the

evidence, he'd decided one-way glass would be less intrusive. By hiding the observers from sight, they

were less likely to agitate the subjects. He'd been wrong. At least with two-way glass the subjects knew

when they were being watched. With one-way, they knew they were being watched—none were naive

enough to mistake the full-wall mirror for decoration—but they didn't know when, so they were on

perpetual alert, which had a regrettably damning effect on their mental and physical health.

The group passed the four occupied cells. One subject had his chair turned toward the rear wall

and sat motionless, ignoring the magazines, the books, the television, the radio, everything that had been

provided for his diversion. He sat with his back to the one-way glass and did nothing. That one had been

at the compound nearly a month. Another occupant had arrived only this morning. She also sat in her

chair, but facing the one-way glass, glaring at it. Defiant . . . for now. It wouldn't last.

Tess, the one research assistant Matasumi had brought to the project, stood by the defiant

occupant's cell, making notations on her clipboard. She looked up and nodded as they passed.

"Anything?" Bauer asked.

Tess glanced at Matasumi, shunting her reply to him. "Not yet."

"Because she can't or won't?" Bauer asked.

Another glance at Matasumi. "It appears . . . I would say . . ."

"Well?"

Tess inhaled. "Her attitude suggests that if she could do more, she would."

"Can't, then," Winsloe said. "We need a Coven witch. Why we bothered with this one—"

Bauer interrupted. "We bothered because she's supposed to be extremely powerful."

"According to Katzen," Winsloe said. "If you believe him. I don't. Sorcerer or not, the guy's full

of shit. He's supposed to be helping us catch these freaks. Instead, all he does is tell us where to look,

then sits back while our guys take all the risks. For what? This?" He jabbed a finger at the captive. "Our

second useless witch. If we keep listening to Katzen, we're going to miss out on some real finds."

"Such as vampires and werewolves?" Bauer's lips curved in a small smile. "You're still miffed

because Katzen says they don't exist."

"Vampires and werewolves," Matasumi muttered. "We are in the middle of unlocking

unimaginable mental power, true magic. We have potential access to sorcerers, necromancers, shamans,

witches, every conceivable vessel of magic . . . and he wants creatures that suck blood and howl at the

moon. We are conducting serious scientific research here, not chasing bogeymen."

Winsloe stepped in front of Matasumi, towering six inches over him. "No, old man, you're

conducting serious scientific research here. Sondra is looking for her holy grail. And me, I'm in it for fun.

But I'm also bankrolling this little project, so if I say I want to hunt a werewolf, you'd better find me one

to hunt."

"If you want to hunt a werewolf, then I'd suggest you put one in those video games of yours,

because we can't provide what doesn't exist."

"Oh, we'll find something for Ty to hunt," Bauer said. "If we can't find one of his monsters, we'll

have Katzen summon something suitably demonic."

"A demon?" Winsloe said. "Now that'd be cool."

"I'm sure it would," Bauer murmured and pushed open the door into the shaman's former cell.

DEMONIC

"Please tell me you don't believe in that stuff," said a voice beside my shoulder.

I looked at my seat-mate. Mid-forties, business suit, laptop, pale strip around his ring finger

where he'd removed his wedding band. Nice touch. Very inconspicuous.

"You shouldn't read crap like that," he said, flashing a mouthful of coffee stains. "It'll rot your

brain."

I nodded, smiled politely, and hoped he'd go away, at least as far away as he could on an

airplane flying at an altitude of several thousand feet. Then I went back to reading the pages I'd printed

from the believe.com web site.

"Does that really say werewolves?" my seat-mate said. "Like fangs and fur? Michael Landon? I

Was a Teenage Werewolf?"

"Michael . . .?"

"Uh, an old movie. Before my time. Video, you know."

Another polite nod. Another not-so-polite attempt to return to my work.

"Is that for real?" my seat-mate asked. "Someone's selling information on werewolves?

Werewolves? What kind of people would buy crap like that?"

"I would."

He stopped, finger poised above my papers, struggling to convince himself that someone could

believe in werewolves and not be a complete nutcase, at least not if that someone was young, female,

and stuck in the adjoining seat for another hour. I decided to help.

"For sure," I said, affecting my best breathless blond accent. "Werewolves are in. Vampires are

so five minutes ago. Gothic, ugh. Me and my friends, we tried it once, but when I dyed my hair black, it

went green."

"That's, uh—"

"Green! Can you believe it? And the clothes they wanted us to wear? Totally gross. So then, like,

Chase, he said, what about werewolves? He heard about this group in Miami, so we talked to them and

they said vampires were out. Werewolves were the new thing. Chase and I, we went to see them, and

they had these costumes, fur and teeth and stuff, and we put them on and popped these pills and presto,

we were werewolves."

"Uh, really?" he said, eyes darting about for an escape route. "Well, I'm sure—"

"We could run and jump around and howl, and we went out hunting, and one of the guys caught

this rabbit, and, like, I know it sounds gross, but we were so hungry and the smell of the blood—"

"Could you excuse me," the man interrupted. "I need to use the washroom."

"Sure. You look a little green. Probably airsickness. My friend Tabby has that real bad. I hope

you're feeling better, 'cause I was going to ask if you wanted to come with me tonight. There's this

werewolf group in Pittsburgh. They're having a Grand Howl tonight. I'm meeting Chase there. He's kinda

my boyfriend, but he switch-hits, you know, and he's really cute. I think you'd like him."

The man mumbled something and sprinted into the aisle faster than one would think possible for a

guy who looked like he hadn't exceeded strolling speed since high school.

"Wait 'til I tell you about the Grand Howl," I called after him. "They're so cool."

Ten minutes later, he still hadn't returned. Damn shame. That airsickness can be a real son of a

bitch.

I returned to my reading; believe.com was a Web site that sold information on the paranormal, a

supernatural eBay. Scary that such things existed. Even scarier was that they could turn a profit;

believe.com had an entire category devoted to auctioning off pieces of spaceship wrecks that, at last

count, had 320 items for sale. Werewolves didn't even warrant their own classification. They were

lumped into "Zombies, Werewolves, and Other Miscellaneous Demonic Phenomena." Miscellaneous

demonic phenomena? The demonic part kind of stung. I was not demonic. Well, maybe driving some

hapless guy from his airplane seat wasn't exactly nice, but it certainly wasn't demonic. A miscellaneous

demonic phenomenon would have shoved him out the escape hatch. I'd barely even been tempted to do

that.

Yes, I was a werewolf, had been since I was twenty, nearly twelve years ago. Unlike me, most

werewolves are born werewolves, though they can't change forms until they reach adulthood. The gene is

passed from father to son—daughters need not apply. The only way for a woman to become a werewolf

is to be bitten by a werewolf and survive. That's rare, not the biting part, but the surviving part. I'd lived

mainly because I was taken in by the Pack—which is exactly what it sounds like: a social structure based

on the wolf pack, with an Alpha, protected territory, and clearly defined rules, rule one being that we

didn't kill humans unless absolutely necessary. If we got the munchies, we pulled into the nearest

fast-food drive-thru like everybody else. Non-Pack werewolves, whom we called mutts, ate humans

because they couldn't bother fighting the urge to hunt and kill, and humans were the most plentiful target.

Pack wolves hunted deer and rabbits. Yes, I'd killed and eaten Bambi and Thumper. Sometimes I

wondered if people wouldn't consider that even more shocking, in a world where a dog thrown from a

car garners more media attention than murdered children. But I digress.

As part of the Pack, I lived with the Alpha—Jeremy Danvers—and Clayton Danvers, his

adopted son/bodyguard/second in command, who was also my partner/lover/bane of my existence. . . .

But that gets complicated. Back to the point. Like everyone else in the Pack, I had responsibilities. One

of my jobs was to monitor the Internet for signs that some mutt was calling attention to himself. One place

I looked was believe.com, though I rarely found anything deserving more than a dismissive read-over.

Last February I'd followed up something in Georgia, not so much because the listing sounded major

alarms, but because New York State had been in the middle of a weeklong snowstorm and any place

south of the Carolinas sounded like heaven.

The posting I was reading now was different. It had the alarms clanging so hard that after I'd read

it Tuesday, I'd left a message for the seller immediately, and set up a meeting with her in Pittsburgh for

Friday, waiting three days only because I didn't want to seem too eager.

The posting read: "Werewolves. Valuable information for sale. True believers only. Two

homeless killed in Phoenix 1993-94. Initially believed to be dog kills. Throats ripped. Bodies partially

eaten. One oversized canine print found near second body. All other prints wiped away (very tidy

dogs?). Zoologist identified print as extremely large wolf. Police investigated local zoos and concluded

zoologist mistaken. Third victim was prostitute. Told roommate she had an all-night invitation. Found

dead three days later. Pattern matched earlier kills. Roommate led police to hotel used by victim. Found

evidence of cleaned-up blood in room. Police reluctant to switch focus to human killer. Decided third

victim was copycat (copydog?) killing. Case remains open. All details public record. Check Arizona

Republic to verify. Vendor has more. Media welcome."

Fascinating story. And completely true. Jeremy was responsible for checking newspaper

accounts of maulings and other potential werewolf activity. In the Arizona Republic he'd found the article

describing the second kill. The first hadn't made it into the papers—one dead homeless person wasn't

news. I'd gone to investigate, arriving too late to help the third victim, but in time to ensure there wasn't a

fourth. The guilty mutt was buried under six feet of desert sand. The Pack didn't look kindly on

man-killers.

We hadn't been worried about the police investigation. In my experience, homicide detectives are

a bright bunch, smart enough to know there's no such thing as werewolves. If they found mauling with

canine evidence, they saw a dog kill. If they found mauling with human evidence, they saw a psychopath

kill. If they found mauling with both human and canine evidence, they saw a psychopath with a dog or a

murder site disturbed by a dog. They never, ever, saw a partially eaten body, footprints, and dog fur and

said, "My God, we've got a werewolf! "Even wackos who believed in werewolves didn't see such

murders as werewolf kills. They were too busy looking for crazed, half-human beasts who bay at the full

moon, snatch babies from cradles, and leave prints that mysteriously change from paws to feet. So when

I read something like this, I had to worry about what other information the vendor was selling.

The "media welcome" part worried me too. Almost all believe.com listings ended with "media

need not inquire." Though vendors pretended the warning was meant to discourage tabloid journalists

who'd mangle their stories, they were really worried that a legit reporter would show up and humiliate

them. When I went to investigate such claims, I used the guise of being a member of a paranormal

society. This time, since the vendor had no problem with media, I was pretending to be a journalist,

which wasn't much of a stretch, since that was my profession, though my typical beat was freelancing

articles on Canadian politics, which never included any mention of demonic phenomena, though it might

explain the rise of the neo-conservatives.

***

Once in Pittsburgh, I caught a cab, registered at my hotel, dropped off my stuff, and headed to

the meeting. I was supposed to meet the vendor—Ms. Winterbourne—outside a place called Tea for

Two. It was exactly what it sounded like, a cutesy shop selling afternoon tea and light lunches. The

exterior was whitewashed brick with pale pink and powder blue trim. Rows of antique teapots lined the

windowsills. Inside were tiny bistro tables with white linen cloths and wrought-iron chairs. Then, after all

this work to make the place as nauseatingly sweet as possible, someone had stuck a piece of

hand-markered cardboard in the front window informing passersby that the shop also sold coffee,

espresso, latte, and "other coffee-based beverages."

Ms. Winterbourne had promised to meet me in front of the shop at three-thirty. I arrived at

three-thirty-five, peeked inside, and didn't find anyone waiting, so I went out again. Loitering in front of a

tearoom wasn't like hanging around a coffee shop. After a few minutes, people inside began staring. A

server came out and asked if she could "help me." I assured her I was waiting for someone, in case she

mistook me for a vagrant soliciting leftover scones.

At four o'clock, a young woman approached. When I turned, she smiled. She wasn't very tall,

more than a half-foot shorter than my five-ten. Probably in her early twenties. Long curly brown hair,

regular features, and green eyes—the type of young woman most often described as "cute," that catch-all

description meaning she wasn't a beauty but there was nothing to drive her into the realm of ugliness. She

wore sunglasses, a brimmed hat, and a sundress that flattered the kind of figure men love and women

hate, the full curves so maligned in a world of Jenny Craig and Slim-Fast.

"Elena?" she asked, her voice a deep contralto. "Elena . . . Andrews?"

"Uh—yes," I said. "Ms. Winterbourne?"

She smiled. "One of them. I'm Paige. My aunt will be along shortly. You're early."

"No," I said, returning her smile full-wattage. "You're late."

She blinked, thrown off by my bluntness. "Weren't we supposed to meet at four-thirty?"

"Three-thirty."

"I was sure—"

I pulled the printout of our e-mail correspondence from my pocket.

"Oh," she said, after a quick glance. "Three-thirty. I'm so sorry. I must have jotted it down

wrong. I'm glad I stopped by early then. I'd better call my aunt and tell her."

As she took a cell phone from her purse, I stepped away to give her privacy, though with my

heightened auditory senses I could have heard the murmured conversation a hundred feet off. Through

the phone, I heard an older woman sigh. She promised to join us as soon as possible and

asked—warned?—her niece not to start without her.

"Well," Paige said, clicking off the phone. "My apologies again, Ms. Andrews. May I call you

Elena?"

"Please. Should we wait inside?"

"Actually, it's a bad place for something like this. Aunt Ruth and I had coffee here this morning.

Food's great, but it's much too quiet. You can hear conversations from across the room. I guess we

should have realized that, but we're not very experienced at this sort of thing."

"No?"

She laughed, a throaty chuckle. "I suppose you hear a lot of that. People not wanting to admit

they're into this kind of stuff. We're into it. I won't deny that. But this is our first . . . what would you call

it? Sale? Anyway, since the tearoom turned out to be a bad choice, we had some platters made up and

took them to our hotel. We'll hold the meeting there."

"Hotel?" I'd thought she lived in Pittsburgh. Vendors usually arranged meetings in their

hometown.

"It's a few blocks over. An easy walk. Guaranteed privacy."

Big warning bells here. Any woman, even one as femininity-challenged as me, knew better than

to traipse into the hotel room of a stranger. It was like a horror movie where the heroine goes alone into

the abandoned house after all her friends die horrible deaths and the audience sits there yelling, "Don't go,

you stupid bitch!" Well, I was the one shouting, "Go on, but grab the Uzi!" Walking headfirst into danger

was one thing; walking in unarmed was another. Lucky for me, I was armed with Supergirl strength. And

if that didn't do the trick, my Clark Kent act came with fangs and claws. One glance at this woman,

barely five-two, nearly a decade my junior, told me I didn't have anything to worry about. Of course, I

had to fake concern. It was expected.

"Umm, well . . ." I said, glancing over my shoulder. "I'd prefer a public place. No offense . . ."

"None taken," she said. "But all my stuff is back at the hotel. How about we stop by there, and if

you still don't feel comfortable, we can grab my things, meet up with my aunt, and go somewhere else.

Good?"

"I guess so," I said, and followed her down the street.

TEA

The hotel was one of those old places with a ballroom-sized front lobby, glass chandeliers, and

elevator operators dressed like organ grinders. Paige's room was on the fourth floor, second one left of

the elevator. She unlocked the door and held it open for me. I hesitated.

"I could stick something under the door to prop it open," she said.

Her face was all open innocence, but I didn't miss the mocking lilt in her voice, maybe because I

was much taller and in better physical condition. Even without werewolf strength, I could take her in a

fight. Still, that wasn't to say there wasn't some ape with a semiautomatic lurking behind the door. All the

muscles in the world won't stop a bullet to the head.

I glanced around and stepped inside. She took a pad of paper from the table and held it up,

gesturing toward the closing door.

"That won't be necessary," I said.

"The phone's right here." She lifted the receiver so I could hear the dial tone. "Would you like me

to move it closer? I'm pretty sure Pittsburgh has nine-one-one services."

Kelley Armstrong - Women of the Otherworld 2 - Stolen

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