Undead and Underwater (26 page)

She gave herself a mental shake to get back to the present. Anyway. Her parents weren’t there, but not because they doubted her. They’d gotten themselves gone because they didn’t want to be cornered for endless rounds of, “Say, you’re alive! So you could still be running things. We’re glad you’re not dead and no offense, Michael, but
what the fuck were you thinking
?” Not that they could avoid it completely. But not being available for consultation on Lara’s first day sent a powerful message.

(“Lara’s agreed, I’ve agreed, my mate has agreed. The decision has been made,” her father said. He didn’t add,
And that’s it,
because this wasn’t the movies, it was the Pack.
And that’s it
was understood, and thus unnecessary to verbalize.

In other words, that’s how it is, and if you don’t like it, howl at the moon somewhere else.

“The other Wyndham family motto,” Sean decided.)

She’d expected to spend the day without her parents but with several Pack members, many she’d never met. She had not expected to miss three: Derik, Sara, and Jack.

Okay, the truth: she’d missed one.

Where is he?
she’d wondered, shaking sweaty hand after sweaty hand. (She was almost positive the sweat wasn’t hers.)
This is kind of Pack history in the making and they haven’t visited in two years. I know they’re here now; they’d never miss this. Why wouldn’t they come over on my first day?

She didn’t know. And suddenly being the leader wasn’t such fun after all. Not that she’d expected fun. She hadn’t. But she’d expected something.

CHAPTER

EIGHT

Lara stared down at the dead fish on the kitchen stoop and thought,
This does not bode well.

She went back inside, stubbed her toe on the doorway leading to the kitchen, and while absently rubbing her sore toe had a quiet word with Lenny, who promised to have a quiet word with Kara, the head of the kitchen staff. Then she scored the last cup of hot chocolate and sat back down at the breakfast table.
That will teach me to wander down for a bite, think,
Hmm, what smells like a dead fish?
and then go find a dead fish.

Question: How did a kitchen full of Packers not smell a dead fish?

Answer: the Atlantic Ocean is about sixty meters from the kitchen door.

Funny how this was one of her favorite rooms, even when her folks were out of town. The room was big and bright, with lots of windows and light blond wood on the walls and the floor. The table was small, but the sideboard was almost as big, and groaning with food. Even though her folks weren’t here, Sean
was
, and the kitchen staff planned accordingly.

She hadn’t slept well, again, and was sure it showed: sweat pants, battered T-shirt, hair that had yet to meet a brush that morning. Her eyes felt like sand traps. Who cared? If Jack hadn’t bothered to come around, what was the point?

Argh. That is
not
what I meant. I meant, a leader shouldn’t spend enormous amounts of time wondering if she’s pretty enough to receive. She just receives. Or not. Sweat pants or a Gucci gown, it’s all about the girl wearing the clothes, not the clothes wearing the girl.

She pulled her iPad out of her robe and unfolded it until it was about 210 mm by 230 mm: the size of a standard piece of printer paper. Not that anybody used printers anymore. Some people liked to show off by not unfolding it any larger than a pack of cards, but Lara had never been a fan of eye strain.

Data immediately began to stream across it, but she had no interest in current events. She was stuck in the past, and wasn’t sure why. Pack members weren’t prone to introspection.

She was surprised she could be lonely in a household full of at least twenty people, day or night.

Is my father lonely, even with my mother?

He
must
be. And before now she had never wondered. She had never even thought of it.
What else haven’t I thought of?

Lara wasn’t surprised she’d had another stress dream last night. She’d been having them on and off since her father had proposed his terrifying, unprecedented idea. Werewolf (oh, that silly name, but it saved time because everyone knew what it meant) dreams and stress dreams had two things in common: the dreamer wasn’t aware they were dreaming until they awoke, and they were stressful. There was, of course, good stress and bad stress.

Guess which one I keep getting?

No, the surprise wasn’t that she’d had a nightmare. The surprise was that Jack Gardner was in it, was always in those dreams.

She had dreamt of him from earliest childhood; strange! She
still
didn’t know him well. She didn’t know him and . . .

. . . she was afraid of him. And again, had been from earliest childhood.

You’re thinking about this to avoid thinking about your new role, about the dead fish, about the dead bat Dad didn’t tell you about
.
It’s chickenshit.
She knew it. She wouldn’t hide from it. Because it was also a matter of fear, and hiding from that? Also chickenshit.

* * *

She dreamed of him, but told no one—not even Daddy, who she could tell anything. He might not love her as much if he knew she was a stupid scared cub.

She wasn’t alone in that, either, which should have made her feel better but didn’t. Some of the other cubs, they’d expressed fear through anger and she wasn’t sure they knew it.

When the adults were out of sight and smell, the other cubs would pick on Jack and bully him, and he’d either hold his own—he had their strength, if not their other gifts—or retreat. Then he’d be gone again, no one knew for how long, and it was funny how that just made the other cubs more afraid.

Their parents had a name for Jack Gardner, a name said with such distrust it sounded like a swear word: incomer.

She’d never heard the word before. And they’d almost . . . they’d almost
spat
it. Like it was a swear, a really bad one.

So she borrowed her mother’s old iPad, a clunker that didn’t even fold, and looked it up. The definition didn’t seem terrible. An incomer was someone who moved to a place he wasn’t born. Heck, her mom was an incomer. So was Jack’s mom. And Jack’s dad,
her
dad’s best friend. Derik had to take off and live entire months—sometimes years—in places her dad
wasn’t.
Or they’d kill each other. Not in the silly play-fights humans were so fond of (“I can’t stand that guy, I’m gonna kill him, he took the last donut!”). In an I’m-afraid-I’ve-killed-your-husband-but-I’ll-make-sure-you-and-the-cubs-are-taken-care-of way.

That wasn’t especially scary; that’s how things were. Alphas were rare, and they didn’t live together for long. Couldn’t. So Jack being an incomer, that was okay. It wasn’t scary or weird. Lara was so, so thankful her brother had zero interest in running the Pack, that she was the only alpha of her generation.

So Jack was an incomer: so what? She looked up the antonyms, too; she knew from Miss Berrin, her least favorite English teacher, that antonyms could help you figure out strange words. So she checked out related
words, and some of those were fine and some of them were
scary, a little.

Refugee. Relocatee. Foreigner. Those words made it sound like an incomer had things done to them, things they couldn’t help. Things that made
her
want to help
them
. Those words made her mad that the other cubs were being mean about Jack.

Migrator. Pilgrim. Pioneer. Those words made her proud that Jack was (sometimes) a neighbor. Lara had grown up less than thirty-three miles from Plymouth Rock.
Pilgrims
sought new challenges, wanted better lives for their families.
Pilgrims
braved hardship that would kill those who had stayed behind.
Pioneer
wasn’t just a good word, a
pioneer
was brave and sought new territory so they and their cubs could have better lives;
pioneers
were to be respected and revered.

Exile. Illegal. Alien. Those were scary. Those made Jack sound like he wasn’t just different, but that he could do things to them. Pol Pot and Idi Amin were exiles. (Cubs learned early what humans were capable of doing to their own packs. If she hadn’t seen the footage, she would never have believed they were capable of such utter insanity.)

Illegal
made it sound like Jack was doing bad things, breaking Pack laws and other ones, too. And
alien
 . . . that made it sound like he was strange and frightening and could do things no one else could.

Like his mother.

The sorceress.

The Pack was afraid of her, too, but that was a whole other thing, and it had nothing to do with why the Gardner litter had to move around so much.

Usually when Lara researched something, even when she found out bad or scary things, she felt better for
knowing
. After looking up incomer, she felt worse.

* * *

“This is gonna sound weird given that if you fall out the right door in this place you’re actually in the ocean,” her brother announced, slouching down the stairs, “but what smells like dead fish?”

Firmly back in the present (for the moment), Lara watched him come, amused enough to almost cheer up. Only Sean could make slouching an
active
verb. He was so laid back he almost came down the stairs lying down.

“You’re right,” she replied, “it sounds weird. Is this the part where I pretend you’re not down here to check on me because you and dad found the bat? Thanks for telling me, by the way. I know why Dad didn’t.”

“Yeah, he’s weird like that, what with loving you and not wanting you to worry on your first day and hoping it was some dumb coincidence. He mentioned his suicide theory, and I have to say, I was skeptical. I’m pretty sure that bat was murdered.”

“Makes two of us.” She stared into her cocoa. “I guess whoever it is left it on the kitchen stoop because there are a zillion scents around here at any time, especially the kitchen area, and it’s the busiest part of the house. It’s risky because someone might catch you sprinkling bat bits on the front stoop, but if no one does see you, it’s not likely to be discovered right that second so you’ll have time to . . . I don’t know. Get away? Get back to work? Is it supposed to scare me? I’m more annoyed than afraid. I told Kara I’d take care of the fish but she said not to worry about it. And I’m really not.”

“That’s the spirit. And to answer your question, no, this is the part where I pretend you’re not drinking the last of the cocoa, you heartless bitch. What?” he yelped, scanning the sideboard. “You scarfed all the juice, too? Green tea?
That’s
what’s left? Why don’t I just drink a nice cup of dirt? Huh? Is that what you want, Lara? For me to drink a cup of dirt? Will that make you happy?”

“Nice try, but I’m not distracted. Not much.” She sucked down more hot chocolate with a loud slurp. “Ahhh! Nectar of the gods.”

“Don’t blame you. People like us—”

“Here we go.”

“—who turn into wolves once a month and rut and poop on beaches and dig through the garbage dump are not known for our subtlety.”

“That’s true.” Lara smiled at him over her cup of delicious, delicious hot chocolate. “We’re not.”

“So who’s doing it? And why?”

“Extrapolate, Holmes.”

“No more word-of-the-day toilet paper for you. Listen, if somebody’s pissed about you running things, they can just roll on up and Challenge you. Now is the best time: you’re still feeling your way around, but you’re the boss now. If someone wants your throat, Dad can’t stop it. In fact, if someone wants your throat, and tears it out, Dad not only can’t stop it, he’s gotta pay fealty to the new Pack leader. Instead of leaving grotesque hope-you-fuck-up-the-new-job-bitch! gifts on the back steps, they should be kicking the door down and wanting to make with the rumble.”

“Rumble?” She almost laughed.

“Watch an old movie. Just once. That’s all I ask. Once. And you know I’m right; you know a Challenge works way better than a gut-laden welcome mat. You’re still thought of as an annoying little kid even though you’re an annoying adult. So what’s with the dead pets? It’s so dumb.”

“Not pets. A bat and a fish.”

“No, Lara. A pet fish and a pet bat.”

Shit.
“I didn’t think of it like that.”

“That’s okay.” He yawned, grabbing a double handful of bacon from the sideboard. The breakfast room was splashed with so much sunshine Sean’s eyes were almost closed in a squint. He’d worn sunglasses every day for a month until their father had had enough and banned them. “You know we don’t keep you around for your great big brain.”

“So . . .” She pushed her mug over to her brother, staring at her iPad while he gulped the last three scalding mouthfuls. “Do I call Dad first, or them?”

Sean didn’t say anything, which she should have guessed. He’d tease, they’d banter, he’d make pointed remarks about her dreadful clothes or morning breath or lack of boyfriends, but for a real question? He knew it was her call. Literally her call.

She opened her mouth to make it, but cut herself off.

He’s here!

“Lara?” Debbie, one of the kitchen staff, poked her head around the corner. “We got that mess on the step cleaned up—sorry we didn’t catch it.”

“Never apologize!” Sean’s voice was muffled with bacon. “You had two hundred bacon strips to fry. That comes before
everything
.”

Debbie laughed at him; she’d been working in the Wyndham kitchens since their father was Sean’s age, and feared none of them. “Listen to you, boy. Slow down! Lara, hon, Jack Gardner’s here to see you. And, Sean? We can put on a new pot of cocoa if you like.”

“No, my sister’s backwash dregs are all I’m gonna need. So it goes for Pack peons. Hmm, I might have to start a club. The PPs. We’ll need a kicky slogan, though. Wait, what? Jack’s here, finally? Lara, that’ll put a smile on your hideous ugly face! I know you were wondering why they didn’t stop by yesterday.”