Rogue (23 page)

Furry game?
Was he serious?

“That
isn’t
all you need to know. Will you—” I grabbed the handle of his suitcase in exasperation and pulled it away from him. Already strained to its limits, the zipper slid back and the suitcase popped open, spewing socks and underwear all over the bed and the floor, like an explosion from a cotton volcano. Marc growled and bent to pick up a shirt. I snatched it from his hand and held it behind my back. “Will you forget about the clothes for a minute and listen to me? Please?”

“Fine.” He kicked aside a balled-up pair of socks and folded his arms across his chest. “You want to explain? I’m listening. Explain how you somehow forgot to mention to me over the past three months that you infected your college boyfriend. Explain why you didn’t think that was significant enough to bother telling me
before
he started taking his anger at you out on other women unlucky enough to have black hair and green eyes. Not that I blame him for being pissed off. I know pretty damn well how
that
feels!”

Marc picked up his now-broken bag and hurled it across the room. I flinched as it hit the far wall, next to the window, and fell to the floor in a heap of worn leather and rumpled clothing. “You stood me up at our
fucking wedding,
and I begged you to come back. I just rolled over and took it, even though every cat in the country was laughing at me behind my back. But apparently my complete humiliation wasn’t enough to satisfy you. So why don’t you explain how you expect me to react when the entire werecat community finds
out you created a replacement for me out of some preppy, khaki-wearing college boy who’s more familiar with waiting in line for his iced latte than with the finer points of self-preservation. Explain to me just what the hell you were thinking, Faythe,” he shouted, and I winced with every sarcasm-laced barb. “I think I’m ready to hear that now.”

I took a deep breath, doing my best to remain calm and to resist yelling. He had some valid points, after all. “I wasn’t trying to replace you. And I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know what I’d done. I didn’t figure it out until tonight. I
did
bite Andrew, but it was an accident. Well, the infection was an accident,” I said, my words rushing together as I backpedaled. “I bit him on purpose. Kind of.” I flinched as the last words left my mouth, uncomfortably aware that I wasn’t helping the situation.

Marc blinked at me and his expression hardened even more, which I hadn’t thought possible. “Do I even want to know why you bit him?”

Heat rushed to my cheeks. “Probably not.”

Outside, a sudden gust of wind pelted the window with rain, drawing Marc’s attention away from me. When he met my eyes again, his were flaming in fresh anger. “Well, I gotta give college boy credit for
that,
at least,” he spat, his tone dripping with enough acid to eat through the hardwood floor. “The way Vic described him, I didn’t think he would have the balls to go for any fur-and-claws action, especially considering how much damage you can do with your
human
teeth and nails. And with your damned dagger of a tongue.”

Speaking of sharp tongues… I sighed. This was
not
going well. “I never Shifted, Marc.”

“What?” Confusion flitted across his face briefly before the
angry scowl settled back into place. “Then how the hell did you infect him? Spit in his drink when he wasn’t looking? Inject him with your blood in his sleep?”

“Ha, ha.” I perched on the end of his bed, dripping rain-water onto his comforter as I wished for my punching pillow. Alas, as luck would have it, there was nothing in the room I could hit without breaking my promise to Parker. Marc sat against the headboard, facing me. He took one look at the grip I had on his comforter and tossed me one of his pillows.

That small act floored me.

Marc was hurt, humiliated, and pissed off. He was madder at me than I’d ever seen him, and he was scared of losing me to either the council or to Andrew. And on top of that, he felt mortified by what he apparently saw as the ultimate act of cuckolding. Yet he knew what I needed and provided me with it without a moment’s hesitation, or probably even a conscious thought.

Marc was always there for me, even when he was packing his bags to leave me. He deserved to hear the truth from me, but what he deserved even more was not to
have
to hear it.

“If you’ll promise to listen until I’m done, I’ll promise not to leave anything out. But please don’t go before I’m finished, because I don’t want to wonder later whether you left me because of what you heard, or because of what you didn’t hear.”

He tilted his head and watched me through eyes narrowed in suspicion and dread. “Does that mean there’s more to the story than your making Andrew into a stray in some sort of furry freak-fest? If so, you should feel free to leave out the nonpertinent details.”

I smiled a little at that. I couldn’t help it. “Um, yeah. There’s a little more to it than that. And yet a lot
less
to it than
that. There was no furry freak-fest, Marc. Just normal, even average sex.”

Oddly enough, he seemed pleased to hear me describe sex with someone else as “average,” and I wasn’t complaining. Whatever made him more open to listening was fine with me.

“Talk. I might as well know what everyone else is going to be whispering about.” He pulled both of his legs onto the bed and sat cross-legged, looking amazingly vulnerable for a man of his bulk.

Marc’s new defenseless posture did little to make me want to spill my guts. Spew them, maybe. But I’d promised to explain, and I wasn’t going to pass up the chance.

“I was in human form when I bit Andrew,” I said, pulling my feet up to mimic his pose. “My teeth must have partially Shifted at the…um, height of things. It couldn’t have been much of a Shift, because there was no pain that I remember, and I didn’t notice anything different.” Embarrassed, I glanced at the pillow in my lap and discovered that I’d twisted it into little more than an amorphous bag of feathers. “Well, there was no pain for
me,
anyway. Andrew yelped as if I’d bitten his ear off, but I barely drew blood. Just a couple of drops.”

Marc frowned. “So you did break the skin?”

“Yeah.”

His arm moved faster than my eyes could follow, and another feather pillow smashed into the window before falling to rest against the broken suitcase.
Good thing that wasn’t a brick,
I thought, absurdly.

“How could you even
think
about sleeping with a human?” Marc demanded, and I tore my gaze from the pillow reluctantly and turned back to face him. “There’s a
reason
we have the rules we have, and apparently you’re it.”

I stared at him openmouthed, waiting for him to realize he’d misspoken. My irritation grew with every second that passed without a retraction. “We
don’t
have any rules against sleeping with humans,” I said, my teeth clenched hard enough to make my jaw ache. “The guys do it all the time. Most of them lost count of the notches on their belts long ago. Hell, Ethan doesn’t even bother to learn their
names
anymore.” I threw the pillow at him, and he caught it in one fist. “But when I finally get a life of my own—and keep in mind the fact that this was a mutually monogamous relationship—everyone acts like I’ve committed a cardinal sin.”

With every word I spoke, my pitch rose a little, until by the time I finished, I was screaming at him, standing on my knees on the end of his bed.

“The problem isn’t that you’ve been dating humans, Faythe,” he said, tossing the pillow aside. “It’s that you’ve been
infecting
them.”

Only one of them,
I thought, but I knew better than to say it aloud. “How was I supposed to know that was even possible?” I shouted, backing off his bed and onto the floor. “None of the guys ever infected anyone in human form, so how was I supposed to know
I
could?”

“That’s not the same, Faythe. You know human women can’t be infected.”

As a matter of fact, I did
not
know that for certain, and neither did he. But that was another argument entirely.

“I didn’t know about the partial Shift, Marc. I had
no
idea this could happen. If I had, I would never have gone near Andrew, or anyone else, for that matter.”

“Well, it’s too late for regrets now,” Marc said, his arms spread to either side of his torso. “In case you don’t remember,
since you seem to think you’re above the council’s laws, creating a stray is a capital crime. The council’s going to want your life for this. And they’re going to want
me
to bring it to them. So you tell me how the
fuck
I’m supposed to deal with that.”

S
o that’s what was wrong with Marc. He thought he was going to have to kill me.

Well, clearly that wasn’t the
only
thing bothering him, but we’d finally gotten down to the part he couldn’t get over.

“Marc, it was an accident,” I said, shifting awkwardly on a twisted lump of comforter. “The council won’t condemn me over an accident.”

“You said it yourself, Faythe. They’re going to want your head on a spike in the front yard.”

“That was
hyperbole.
You guys didn’t seem to think they’d execute the rogue tabby for
murder,
so why would they execute me for an accidental infection?” I reached out to touch his arm, but he pulled away as if I’d scorched him.

My eyes watered, and I stood to turn my back on him as I blinked away the tears, hoping with each passing moment that he would touch me. I wanted a hug, or even just a pat on the back to let me know he regretted pulling away from me. I would have even taken an apology. But he didn’t offer one. Not that I could blame him.

When I turned to face him, still standing in the middle of his room, I avoided his eyes. I didn’t want to know what he was thinking, but even worse, I didn’t want to not know. I desperately didn’t want to see his poker face staring back at me. So I didn’t look.

“They’re not just going to take your word for it, Faythe,” he said. “They’re going to need proof that this was an accident, and last I heard, you couldn’t give it to them.”

Still avoiding his eyes, I crossed the room and righted his suitcase in one rough, angry motion. “Well, I can sure as hell try.” Kneeling on the floor, I folded one of his shirts in a series of fuming, jerky movements. Dropping it neatly into the bag, I snatched another shirt from the floor, uncomfortably aware that I was now helping him pack. But I had to do something with my hands. “And even if I can’t do it on command, I’ve already proved it to my father, and he’ll speak up for me.” For a single heartbeat, I hesitated, my hands pausing in mid-fold. “You could do the same, if you were so inclined.”

“Oh, come on, Faythe.” On the wall in front of me, Marc’s shadow threw up its arms in exasperation. I turned my attention back to the clothes, vowing not to look at his shadow-self, either, as he gestured at me in frustration. “They’re not going to believe me for the same reason they won’t believe your dad. They’ll think we’re both lying to save you.”

Damn, were he and my father sharing a brain? Or were they just right?

I shook out a pair of jeans, my gaze centered on the worn denim beneath my fingers. If things were normal, I’d have changed out of my soaked clothes and into some of his dry ones, but at the moment, I had serious doubts Marc would want his clothes smelling like me.

“What about Andrew?” I asked, still holding his jeans. “We’ll find him and make him testify. Surely they can’t think
he
has any reason to want to protect me. If anything, he wants me dead.”

Marc walked around the end of the bed to kneel at my side. “What did he say?”

When I didn’t answer, he snatched the pants from my hands. Irritated, I met his eyes without thinking and regretted it instantly. I hated that he didn’t trust me, even though I knew he had several good reasons not to.

“He congratulated me on a life well lived,” I said, my voice heavily laced with sarcasm. Marc glared at me, and I shrugged. “Well, what the hell do you
think
he said? He’s pissed at me for infecting him, then abandoning him. He said he has something to take care of tomorrow, then he’s coming here for a reunion.”

“It’s amazing that he survived your bite, you know. Lots of strays die within a couple of days of being infected. I don’t think I could have made it through my own transition without your parents taking care of me. I don’t even remember being scratched,” he added, and I could almost feel my ears perk up, in spite of my self-centered fear. He’d never spoken to me about his attack, guarding his memories like a leprechaun guards his gold. “I just remember seeing my moth—”

He stopped abruptly and stared out the window behind my head, his mouth firmly closed.

“What’s the first thing you remember
after
being scratched?” I breathed, hoping that if I whispered softly enough he might mistake my question for a thought from his own head. No such luck.

Marc turned from the window to look at me, a ghost of a
smile haunting the corners of his mouth. “The first thing I remember is you.”

“Me?” I frowned, sure I’d heard wrong.

“Yeah. I woke up and saw you standing in the doorway, staring at me with these huge green eyes. You had a headless doll under one arm, and dirt smeared across your forehead. And all I could think about was what a beautiful child you were.”

Lightning flashed outside and Marc blinked from the bright light. And just like that, the spell was broken. “Then I passed out again, and when I woke up, your mom was there with soup.” He shrugged, and I knew he was finished talking. At least about the past.

“Marc, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” As the last raindrops pattered against the window, I closed my eyes, trying to decide how best to express my own regret. “I never meant for any of this to happen. I really, truly didn’t. But I can’t change anything now, and I understand if you still want to leave—”

He shook his head slowly, as if in defeat. “I’m not going anywhere. Greg wouldn’t let me leave in the middle of an investigation, anyway.”

“Really?” I fiddled with the still-damp, frayed hem of my shorts, unable to look at Marc as I offered him a way out. He deserved at least that much from me. “Because Daddy would probably let you go if you push the issue. He always sides with you over me, anyway.”

“Are you trying to convince me to leave?”

I glanced up at him, already shaking my head in denial. “No. Absolutely not. But I want you to understand what you’ll be getting into if you stay. It’s going to get worse from here, not better. We have to find Andrew, which means that even
tually you’ll have to be in the same room with him. Without killing him, if I have any hope of him talking to the council.”

Marc laughed ruefully. “I won’t hurt him unless I have to. You’ve already done enough to punish him for sleeping with you.”

I glared at him, my fists propped on my hips. “How many times do I have to tell you it was an accident? A freak accident I probably couldn’t repeat if I
tried.
”

He held up both hands, as if to ward off a blow. “All I’m saying is that he got more than he bargained for with you.”

“I got more than I bargained for with him, too. Much more. I know he’s completely different now, but he was really nice and funny when he was human. But apparently his manners didn’t survive the transition.”

Marc smiled. “Yeah, well, yours didn’t survive puberty, so you can’t really talk.”

I opened my mouth to rebut, but Ethan cut me off, calling to us from downstairs. I hadn’t heard him come into the guesthouse, maybe because the rain was too loud. But more likely, Marc and I were too busy yelling at each other to notice. “If you guys have come to some sort of truce, Dad would like to speak to you both in his office. If it’s convenient with you, that is.”

I laughed. There was no way on earth my father had mentioned our convenience. But sending a message with Ethan was like looking into one of those old funhouse mirrors. Everything got distorted.

“We’re coming,” Marc called in Ethan’s general direction. To me, he extended his right hand. “Truce?”

“Absolutely.” I took his hand and shook it, expecting him to pull me into a hug. But he didn’t. On the way out of the room, Marc held the door open for me. But he didn’t grab my
ass as I walked through ahead of him. And though I understood his reason, I couldn’t help but be hurt that he stayed several steps behind me on the stairs. I was disappointed, but not surprised. I couldn’t really expect things to go back to normal just like that. Of course, “normal” for me and Marc was a relative term, anyway.

To say that Marc and I tended to run hot and cold would be like saying it’s a little chilly at the North Pole. I didn’t know how to deal with Marc’s new lukewarm presence. I’d never known him to demand anything less than all of my attention, and I didn’t recognize this polite, courteous behavior. It was too distant, too cold. He was acting as if we were strangers. Or worse,
just friends.

Downstairs, Parker gave me a hesitant smile, and Vic and Jace avoided my eyes entirely. But Ethan had never been one for subtlety. Or for tact. “So, did you guys break up, or what?” he asked, popping the tab on a can of Coke at the kitchen island.

Marc glanced at me with an arched eyebrow and a wry smile. I shrugged. I would have liked to know the answer to that one myself.

“Sounds like you should learn to listen better,” Marc said, stuffing his hands into his jeans pockets.

Ethan grinned, unfazed. “Jace’ll fill me in later.” He was shirtless, as usual, and damp from the rain.

Ignoring them both, I pulled the front door open and stepped onto the rain-slick porch, beyond caring whether or not anyone followed me.

Ethan jogged after me, sloshing soda onto the porch without bothering to clean it up. “Come on, Faythe,” he said, throwing one arm around my waist as I stomped through the soggy grass, my newly wet hair already clinging to my face.
He obviously wasn’t still mad about my right hook connecting with his jaw. “I’ve got twenty bucks riding on this. Did he forgive you?”

“That’s none of your business.” I pulled his arm up by his wrist and ducked beneath it. In one smooth move, as fat droplets plopped down on us both, I stepped behind him, twisting his arm back and up, until his fingertips brushed his own shoulder blade.

Ethan’s howl of pain brought a satisfied smile to my face. I should probably have felt at least a little guilty about getting the better of him twice in less than an hour. But I didn’t. I still owed him a few hard knocks from childhood.

“Hey, thanks,” Marc said, plucking the half-empty Coke from Ethan’s free hand as he passed us. He drained the can, then crushed it in his fist, sparing a grin for my brother as he took off toward the main house, jogging ahead of us in the rain.

“Damn it, Faythe, don’t make me hurt you,” Ethan said through gritted teeth, pulling against me to free his arm.

I tightened my grip. “Who’d you bet against?” I asked, shoving him forward until he had to either start walking or fall on his face in the wet grass. “Jace?”

“Hell no. Leave me out of this,” Jace muttered, passing me from the left. “I didn’t want anything to do with his dirty money. It was Vic.”

I glared at Vic, and he shrugged.

“You’re both assholes.” I let go of Ethan’s arm, and gave him another hard shove, for good measure. “You have no business sticking your noses into our personal lives.”

“There’s no such thing as privacy around here.” Vic stomped off through the rain with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans.

Parker held the door open for us, and we tromped into the house one at a time, tracking water and clipped grass blades onto the tile in the back hall. On the way to my father’s office, I ducked into my bedroom to change into dry clothes and towel-dry my wet hair. Then I headed back down the hall.

In the kitchen, the guys—all but Marc—were gathered around several half gallons of ice cream, each shoveling indiscriminately with his own spoon. I smiled at them, then turned toward the office. My fingers had just closed over the doorknob when it turned on its own.

The door swung open and Marc stepped out, his hands curled into fists at his sides and his eyes blazing. He paused just long enough to meet my eyes, then brushed past me and stomped off down the hall and out the back door.

All commotion from the kitchen ceased. Then, after mere seconds of silence, Ethan became the first to break it. As usual. “What crawled up his ass?”

In his office, my father looked up from his desk at the sound of Ethan’s voice. But his eyes settled on me instead. “No sense standing in the doorway, Faythe. Come in and sit down.” He glanced over my shoulder and across the hall at the guys in the kitchen. “The rest of you put up the ice cream and get in here.”

As I plopped on the end of the couch closest to him, tucking my feet beneath me, he stood and crossed the room to his armchair without waiting to see whether or not his orders were followed. He still wore his suit jacket, but his top button was undone and his tie was gone. It lay draped over the back of his empty desk chair.

With the exception of the occasional postbedtime emergency, when my father came to his office still in silk pajamas
and a matching robe, I couldn’t remember ever seeing him work in less than a full suit. It was disconcerting. And a little disorienting.

“What’s wrong with Marc?” I asked, eyeing my father in suspicion.

He watched me for a long moment, his lips pressed into a firm, straight line. “I split the two of you up.” He crossed one ankle over his knee, waiting for my reaction. He wasn’t disappointed.

I sat up straight and my heels hit the rug a little harder than I’d intended. “You what?”

“Not as a couple,” he said calmly, his hands folded in his lap. “As field partners.”

Did that mean Marc would be taking his vacation, after all? I wrapped my hands around the scrolled arm of the couch, sinking my fingers into the cool, smooth leather. “Why? We work well together.”

“Not on this assignment. You’re clearly better equipped than the guys to find and question Andrew, but I don’t want Marc anywhere near him. We need Andrew alive, and not just on the off chance that he might be able or willing to testify about his infection in front of the council. We have to know what happened to the missing strippers, and where they are, and we need him for that. Unfortunately, I’m not sure Marc can deliver him intact.”

“He promised he would.”

“And I don’t doubt that he meant that when he said it. But the fact that you needed a promise from him should say something. We can’t afford for him to accidentally go too far with Andrew.”

“He won’t—”

“It’s done.”