Chapter 2 He Knew My Name

I stood in the hallway for a long time after he went into his room.

The corridor was narrow and cold, with a runner on the floor that had worn through at the edges, and the wall sconces threw yellow light on the paneling. Somewhere below, a door closed. Somewhere farther off, a wolf laughed at something and then stopped laughing. My hands were shaking, and I put them in my pockets so they would not do it where anyone could see.

He had known from the start. From the steps. From before the steps. The whole performance, the cedar and snow, the breathing, the way I had held his hand and let him kiss me in front of his pack, all of it had been theater for an audience that had already read the script.

I went back down the stairs.

The main hall was empty now. The fire had burned down to red coals, and the tall windows showed nothing but black and the reflection of my own pale face. My boots were by the door where I had left them. I picked them up and sat on the bench to pull them on, and my fingers were clumsy on the laces.

"Leaving so soon?"

Mara stood at the bottom of the stairs with a mug in her hand. Her black hair was still pulled back, but she had taken off her jacket, and I could see the shape of her arms, the muscle in them. A knife hung at her hip in a leather sheath. It was not decorative.

"I forgot something in the car," I said.

"You walked here. I watched you come up the drive at four in the afternoon with snow on your shoulders and no car behind you."

I finished the laces and stood. "Then I forgot something on the road. Are you going to stop me?"

"I am going to watch," she said. She took a sip from the mug. "Go on. The door is not locked."

I looked at her for a moment. She looked back with those amber eyes, and there was no threat in her face, and that was somehow worse. A wolf who threatens you wants something. A wolf who watches you wants to know what you will do.

I put my hand on the iron latch and lifted it.

"His name is Ozan," Silas said from the top of the stairs.

I did not turn around.

"He is your Gamma, or close enough to it. He has been waiting for you in a motel outside Lake Placid since Tuesday. He signs his messages with a small circle, the way a boy draws a sun. When he is nervous he says the phrase 'in any case' before he gives bad news."

Mara had gone still. I heard her set the mug down on the table.

Silas came down the stairs slowly, one hand on the rail, bare feet on the wood. "The girl is called Nell. She is twenty-four years old, and she is in the Ashfall infirmary, in the east ward, in the fourth bed from the window. The fever has not broken since the spring. She writes to you in pencil because the pen hurts her hand."

The latch was cold under my palm. I could push it. I could open the door and walk out into the snow and be three miles gone before the moon was up, and I would never have to hear the rest of this.

"You have four vials of her medicine left," Silas said. "The fifth is in Rennick's keeping. He has told you it will be released when the job is done, and he has not told you what the job actually is."

I let go of the latch.

"How," I said. My voice came out rough. "How long have you known?"

"About you? Three weeks. The Council writes to me every month, and Rennick's letters have a habit of mentioning wolves he thinks I should be grateful to meet. He wrote that a young broker from Ashfall might be willing to help me with a problem. He wrote that you were the best in the territory." Silas reached the bottom of the stairs and stopped. "About Nell? Two days. My elder has a cousin in the Ashfall infirmary who owes her a debt."

Mara picked up her mug again. "He told me tonight," she said. "Before you walked in. He told me to watch you and see what you would do."

"And I did not do well," I said.

"You did what any wolf would do." Silas tilted his head. "You tried to leave. A broker who stayed would have been a fool, and I do not think you are a fool."

I sat down on the bench again. There was no point standing.

"So this is a trap," I said. "You brought me here to catch me and now you will make an example of me, is that it? You will call the Council and tell them their broker failed, and then you will send me back to Rennick in pieces."

"No."

I looked up.

"I brought you here because I needed a bond-broker," Silas said. "Rennick was good enough to send me one without being asked. I am not going to waste the favor."

Mara made a small sound, something between a cough and a laugh. She set the mug down harder than she needed to. "You did not tell me that part."

"I am telling you now."

"You told me to watch him. You did not tell me you were going to keep him."

"I am telling you now," Silas said again, and there was something in his voice that made Mara close her mouth.

The fire shifted in the grate. A log broke and sent a spray of small orange sparks onto the hearthstone. Nobody moved to sweep them up. I watched them go dark one by one.

"You want to hire me," I said.

"I want to use you," Silas said. "There is a difference, and you should hear it clearly before you agree to anything. I am not offering you a wage. I am offering you a way to keep your sister alive that does not end with Rennick holding her medicine over your head for the rest of her short life."

The words landed somewhere in my chest and stayed there.

"What do you want me to do?"

Silas walked past me to the window, and his reflection hung in the black glass, clouded eyes and silver temples. "I want you to finish what you started. I want the pack to believe in the bond. I want Rennick to believe you are still working for him. And I want you to do it well enough that nobody in this house, including my Beta, can tell the difference."

Mara set her mug down on the table and walked to the door. She opened it herself and let in a wedge of cold air that smelled of pine and old snow. Then she looked back at me over her shoulder.

"There is one more thing," she said. "You should know that the last broker who came through this territory did not leave it. He went into the mine, and he did not come out. I am telling you so you understand what the job is worth around here."

The door closed behind her.

I sat on the bench and listened to her boots crunch away across the gravel.

"Second door on the left," Silas said. "You will want to sleep. Tomorrow the elders will want to meet my mate properly, and you will need to be convincing."

He went back up the stairs. At the landing he stopped and said, without turning around, "Do not try to run in the night. If you do, I will have to explain to my pack why my mate left me on the first night, and I am a poor liar."