Snakeroot (5 page)

“Who do you think you are to tell me what to do?” Sarah’s lip curled in a snarl that was strangely wolf-like. “Do you have any idea who you’re talking to?”

“You’re Sarah Doran. Shay’s mother.” With a smile and a shrug, she added, “I’m Sabine.”

Sarah’s face fell when Sabine spoke her name. “Sabine? You’re . . . you were one of them.”

“One of them?” Sabine was taken aback by Sarah’s abrupt shift in demeanor. She seemed almost afraid of Sabine whereas a moment ago she’d been haughty.

“A Guardian,” Sarah answered. “But you’re the one who stayed.”

Sabine nodded. Sarah’s eyes darkened with a sorrow so fierce, Sabine had to look away.

“I’m sorry,” Sarah murmured. “I’ve been terribly rude to you. It’s just . . . no one will help me.”

“Maybe I can,” Sabine said. “What are you looking for?”

“Anything.” Sarah glanced at the half-emptied shelves. “Anything about him.”

“About Shay?” Sabine asked. “I’m pretty sure his room is still intact. We don’t use it on the tour . . .” Sabine let her words trail off, not knowing whether they would be helpful.

Sarah shook her head. “No. I’ve been in his room. It’s not his things I’m trying to find. It’s information about him. About what they did to him. There must be records here. The Scribes say they haven’t found anything, but I’m sure there’s some account of his life here.”

Sabine’s chest tightened at the implication of what Sarah had said. “You think the Keepers did something to Shay.”

“They must have,” Sarah said. “Otherwise how could he have . . . why would he . . .” Sarah’s gaze became piercing. “You must understand what I’m talking about. You’re the one who stayed.”

Sabine’s mouth formed a small
o
as the meaning of Sarah’s words settled in.

“I’m right, aren’t I?” Sarah continued, seizing on Sabine’s silence as confirmation. “He wouldn’t have become one of them without some dark magic altering his being. Why would he leave us?”

“I think it’s more complicated than that,” Sabine answered hesitantly. For all she knew about Shay, the Keepers could have done something to him, but she didn’t think so. It hadn’t been Keeper magic that closed the Rift and returned the world to its natural order. Somehow in that transformation, Shay had become a wolf—a pack leader. Sabine had seen him in the forests around Haldis Cavern; Shay and all of Sabine’s former packmates. They seemed happy, and nothing about their existence smacked of nefarious forces at work.

But how could Sabine say that to Shay’s mother? Sarah had regained her son only to lose him again in the space of an hour.

“I could take you to see him,” Sabine offered. “I visit the wolves. Well, I mean I don’t actually visit them. Wolves are skittish around people. You have to watch from a distance, but . . .”

Sarah bowed her head, and though she made no sound, Sabine could tell she was crying.

REN HADN’T
forgotten who he was.

Renier Laroche, alpha wolf, who would rule the newly formed Haldis pack with his mate, Calla Tor.

His path had always been clear. His was the arrow shot straight at destiny’s bull’s-eye.

But someone had moved the target and Ren had gotten terribly lost.

And it wasn’t just because he was dead, which Ren understood that he was. He’d lost his way long before the man who had raised him, Emile Laroche—who Ren believed for so long was his father—had snapped Ren’s neck in the library at Rowan Estate.

In the days and weeks since he’d been taken from the world of the living, Ren had tried to pinpoint the moment where it had all gone wrong. It wasn’t as though he had a dearth of possibilities to choose from.

It might have been the night he left the house that had been built for him and Calla to live in. The moment he’d turned his back on the Keepers, forsaking the life he was supposed to have for one he never could have imagined. A new life that ended up being much too short.

Or it could have been when Ren watched Emile Laroche kill the man who it turned out was Ren’s biological father. Ren never had the chance to know Monroe, but at least he’d met Adne. It was no small thing to have a sister. But in the end, she’d been taken from Ren too.

Another contender had to be the night of his eighteenth birthday. Samhain was a day sacred enough to bear witness to the union of an alpha male and female and the formation of a new Guardian pack. But the ritual had never taken place. Instead, Ren had chased through the dense Colorado forest after Calla, his runaway bride. That she’d left him at the altar was bad enough, but the reason she gave was worse: that everything they’d known about who they were and the history of the war in which they’d fought had been lies. That Ren’s own mother had died at the hands of the Keepers.

And of course, there was the day that a new student arrived at the Mountain School. Seamus Doran had seemed as inconsequential as any human, but Ren’s first impression of Shay couldn’t have been more wrong. As it turned out, Shay had another name—the Scion—and while the Guardians had been fighting on the wrong side of the Witches’ War, Shay’s destiny was to be the champion of the right side. The Searchers had come for Shay and they’d taken Calla too. Calla and the life Ren wanted, because somewhere between blood and lies and choices, Calla had fallen in love with Shay Doran.

Ren didn’t like Shay. He would never like Shay. But Ren knew enough to see that his life had been thrown off course by forces greater and much more complicated than his sometime romantic rival’s appearance in Vail.

Maybe that had been Ren’s downfall—making the battle one between himself and Shay, rather than seeing how much more was at stake.

He saw all of it too well now, caught as he was between worlds. His state of unrest came with an acute awareness of the unseen forces that hovered around the living at all times, jostling each other as they searched high and low for cracks in the earth’s spiritual armor, hoping to slip in even though they’d been banished.

Ren was careful not to get too close to the shades he saw passing to and fro. Along with his sense of them, he also knew somehow that he wasn’t one of them.

He was different. Exceptional. And while that sounded like it should be a good thing, Ren knew it wasn’t. He didn’t belong. He’d been caught betwixt and between, unable to return to the world but equally unable to move past it.

This wasn’t how things were supposed to be. Wolves hated to be caged.

Maybe being a ghost wolf wouldn’t have been so tedious if there were also ghost deer or ghost rabbits, but besides the shades of creatures from other realms, Ren only encountered living beings. Having no substance, Ren couldn’t hunt the woodland fauna that populated the mountain slopes outside Vail. Occasionally he had the pleasure of spooking an animal that sensed his presence, even if it couldn’t see or smell him, but he was denied the joy of the chase and the kill.

It wasn’t all bad. Though he knew he was a ghost, Ren felt much as he always had. He could shift from his wolf to human form at will, but he never grew tired or hungry. His heightened Guardian senses remained intact, plus he’d gained surprising extrasensory perceptions. In addition to his new connection to realms beyond the earth, Ren found that he could locate people from his past simply by reaching out with his mind.

He’d discovered that he could travel anywhere he wanted at will, instantly. Well, not quite anywhere. His teleporting ability seemed to be tethered to his life. He could only go places he’d been before he died, which made him doubly glad he’d gone over to the Searchers at the end of the war. When Vail became too painful, Ren slipped off to the Mexican jungle or the coast of New Zealand.

Of course, each place wasn’t entirely without bad memories. It all reminded him of what was lost.

But none of it compared to how Ren had felt when he’d encountered the pack outside Haldis Cavern.

He hadn’t been looking for them. At least Ren told himself he hadn’t been. He’d simply been following the patterns of his old life, roaming the mountain slopes in his wolf form.

When Ren realized how close he’d ranged to the cave, he couldn’t resist taking a look. He’d even wondered if the carcass of Logan’s giant spider pet was still rotting in the cavern depths.

Ren never had the chance to find out. He came to a startled halt a few yards shy of the cave’s opening. A place of the dead Haldis was not. Ren had reached the mountain heights just before sunset and the pack was gathering for a hunt.

With yips and playful barks, the wolves dashed in and out of the trees. Nev, Mason, and Ansel tussled, jumping over each other and battling for lead of the group. Bryn stood a short distance apart, wagging her tail as she watched them roughhouse.

Instinctively, Ren rushed forward, barking to announce his arrival. But the wolves continued their play as though he’d made no sound at all. Ren halted and barked again. Then he noticed the movement of the pine trees and realized he was upwind of the pack. They should have caught his scent.

I am a ghost,
Ren reminded himself, though accepting that made him feel like he’d died all over again.

That was when they emerged from the cave. A white wolf with golden eyes and a brown wolf with green eyes. Calla and Shay.

The pack rushed to greet their alphas, showing deference by staying low to the ground, licking at their muzzles. It was a scene of pure joy.

And Ren knew he would never be a part of it again. Lifting his muzzle, Ren let out a howl of rage. A howl that no one heard.

What had he done to deserve this kind of punishment? Trapped between worlds, he was alone. It made him furious.

Ren had avoided Haldis after that day. At first he’d stalked through the forests under the moonlight, trying to menace game and restore some sense of his former self. But like his packmates, the beasts of the forests paid Ren no attention.

So instead, he’d turned to shadowing his sister. Ren had thought seeing Adne, even if he couldn’t truly be in her life, would give him something of a chance to know her. He’d expected to find her happy. After all, she’d finally captured the game she’d been chasing for years: Connor—the Striker with a roguish manner and an inappropriate sense of humor. That last quality somehow made Connor both endearing and irritating; the former quality inspired Ren to track the Searcher’s movements along with Adne’s. Maybe animals couldn’t sense ghosts, but all the lore about spirits suggested that humans certainly could. The idea of haunting Connor appealed to Ren—it was certainly one way to keep his sister’s paramour in line.

But the solace Ren had sought vicariously in observing Adne’s new life proved elusive. Adne didn’t appear to be happy at all, and despite Ren’s best efforts, Connor didn’t notice he was being haunted by a wolf. Connor’s obliviousness didn’t trouble Ren, but Adne’s disconsolate mood did. A lot. Ren wasn’t sure what hindered his sister’s bliss, but she seemed . . . troubled. Deeply troubled.

Thereafter, the purpose of Ren’s watch over Adne shifted from the hope of knowing her better to the need to protect her. Something about Adne’s sorrow frightened Ren. In his disembodied state, Ren could see the emotion follow her, swarming about her like a plague of locusts. It wasn’t natural, and while Ren didn’t know what he could do to keep Adne from harm, he was determined to try.

And the pattern of Ren’s days and nights had formed. He followed Adne when she was at Rowan Estate and occasionally to the Roving Academy, though since she’d made a habit of passing her nights in Connor’s room, Ren decided against keeping an eye on her while she slept . . . or didn’t.

Ren supposed there were worse ways to spend one’s afterlife, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something more should have happened. He wasn’t the only Guardian to die in the last battle, but he seemed to be the only one still around.

There had to be a reason for that. There had to be.

Ghost or not, he was a Guardian alpha. No one could take that from him. Ren knew he’d lost his way between life and death, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t find his way back. It didn’t mean he wouldn’t keep fighting.

MINUSCULE CLOUDS
of white mist appeared as Logan’s breath mingled with the cold winter air.