Chapter 111 – Pot's Empty

Heidi

"Twenty-two years old and the best shot in the history of the hunters," Hennessy says, for the third time since I put the coffee on, "And he turns into a fairy and hands all that potential to an animal. It sickens me."

Moving back home after the break-up is only temporary, but tonight I wish I’d just found another apartment immediately.

Hearing all this is making me feel sorry for the man who trampled on my heart.

It’s also making me drift even further from the doctrine I was raised with.

The hunters are supposed to be the good guys, but everywhere I turn there’s more evidence of their failure as not only protectors, but human beings.

Since I’m here, I may as well hear what they’ve got to say.

I carry the pot over and refill his cup. Smile. Say nothing.

That's my station tonight.

Three council men are in our kitchen and as the daughter it’s my duty to smile prettily and serve them.

Everything in its place.

"Gavin offered to see to it himself," Danny Pruitt's uncle says. "His own son. Say what you want about the man, that's spine."

Jesus. Spine. That’s what they’re calling offering to kill your own child for stepping out of line.

Not that they use those words.

They like the violence, but they won’t put it in plain terms.

See to it. That's how they’re phrasing it. Like cleaning out a clogged gutter.

They've been at this an hour.

Wolf-lover.

Disgrace.

Whore.

Cast out, name off the rolls, families notified, and every fourth sentence somebody shakes his head like it's a ballgame he had money on.

Dad shakes his right along with them.

My father, who toasted Noah at Christmas. Who told me, back when we got together, that I couldn't have chosen better.

Who continued singing his praises even after we broke up and it was clear my heart was pulverized.

Not they all hate him.

Congratulations to me.

I win.

"You're well out of it," Hennessy tells me, kindly, catching me looking. "Lucky escape."

"So lucky," I say, warm as anything, because a lifetime in hunter society taught me exactly what is expected of me.

"Was there ever anything off about him?" Pruitt's uncle leans in, eager.

"Anything you noticed? Anything you maybe should have reported now that you know the truth?"

The werewolf boyfriend. That was probably it.

"He was always very private," I say.

Also, none of your business, and I hope your coffee's too hot and scalds your tongue.

"Private."

He repeats it to the table like I've handed over evidence.

"There you go. Keeping secrets. That's how it starts."

They go back to the photograph.

The passionate kiss.

Pruitt's uncle describes it with relish and disgust in the same breath, in way more detail than he needs to, twice.

I leave the kitchen and lean against the wall around the corner, thinking about the actual afternoon Noah stopped lying to me.

The way he said it's real, like the words cost him a rib each.

Whatever's in that photograph, I already know what it looks like.

It looks like the thing I never got from him.

“Heidi! Pot’s empty!” my dad shouts, not realizing I’m just out of sight.

"I’m good," Hennesy says, and the others all agree they’ve had enough coffee.

I don’t bother going back in.

Nobody notices. The men have it handled.

Leon's sitting on the fourth stair in the dark, elbows on his knees.

Of course he is. Our walls are paper. He hears everything in this house, always has.

"They're saying he's a traitor," he whispers.

"They're saying a lot of things."

"I knew about the wolves."

His hands are white around each other.

"Since the skeleton. I never told anybody. If they find out I knew they’ll say I’m one too-"

"They won't find out."

"You don't know that."

I’m not sure what I’m going to say next is in his interest in the long term, but it’s true.

Maybe it’s time we had a generation of hunters who think for themselves based on evidence, instead of acting like they’re in a cult and accepting every decree as right and just, simply because that’s what they’ve been told.

"Leon."

I sit down beside him on the stair.

"Noah saved you. Then a wolf helped you out of the ravine. Putting them in danger would be a bad thank you for that. You haven’t done anything wrong."

"Are you going to tell me to stop being mad at Noah?"

"No. Be as mad as you want. I still am."

I bump my shoulder into his.

"Mad is allowed. Just aim it carefully. There's a lot of it flying around at the moment and most of it's aimed wrong."

He doesn't answer. Some of the white goes out of his knuckles though.

I'm halfway up the stairs when he whispers, "Drive safe."

I never said I was going anywhere.

Upstairs, I sit on my bed for exactly two minutes before I admit I'm not staying in this house.

Because there’s one sentence that’s been driving around my head all evening, the one with my fingerprints on it.

Tear the wall down.

That's what I told him at the coffee shop, jabbing a pen at him like I knew things.

Don't you dare do to him what you did to me.

And apparently he listened.

Now his father wants him dead and other hunters are downstairs calling it spine.

I told him to tear it down. Look what came through the hole.

I need to see Maxim.

Okay. Think this through.

I don't think it through.

I take my keys and go out through the mudroom, closing the door behind me gently.

I push open the door and the first person I run into is Mervyn.

"You again," he says, sounding less than overjoyed to see me.

He turns and walks away before I can think of a follow-up.

The bar’s busy. Filled with the kind of clientele I’d expect at a place like this.

Hipsters and businesspeople, all talking in low voices, drinking expensive wine and swaying along to the jazz band playing quietly in the corner.

Maxim knows how to create ambiance.

He’s behind the bar, drawing frequent glances from both men and women, his long blond hair falling forward as he listens to something a customer is saying.

That arrogant smile fixed to his face.

Until he looks up and sees me.

His eyes flare and he steps out from behind the bar to greet me, leaving the woman who was talking to him staring daggers at me as he abandons her mid-conversation.

"Miss Sweeney. I presume you’re here because of the hunter?"

"You've heard."

"I hear everything in this town eventually. This I heard within the hour."

He leads me to a table that’s fairly private and pulls out the chair for me.

He doesn't ask if I'm all right, and I could kiss him for it.

Metaphorically. Obviously.

Maxim cranes his neck and snaps his fingers at Mervyn, holding up two fingers.

"Some of the councilmen were at the house tonight," I say.

"They called Noah a disgrace and an animal's whore. My father agreed with every word."

"Of course he did."

No softness in it at all.

"Your father is a middling man in a hard institution. Agreement is what keeps his chair at that table. Were you expecting him to surprise you?"

"No."

Mervyn arrives with two glasses of wine.

“Bring us a bowl of the Castelvetrano olives as well and make sure nobody bothers us,” Maxim tells him.

“Yes, master,” Mervyn says, looking like he’s about to orgasm from the joy of being of service.

Maxim’s jaw sets like granite, but he doesn’t say anything, simply flicks his wrist at Mervyn in a shooing gesture.

He turns back to me.

"Then you've lost nothing tonight except an illusion, and those weigh less every year.”

I take a sip of my wine and suppress a moan.

How expensive does wine have to be to taste like this?

"The exile is public. What the council does next won't be. They punished what they could prove, and now they're hungry for the rest, and hungry institutions dig. If you keep pulling at your grandfather's numbers, mind whose attention you attract. The council isn't the only body in this town keeping books. The coven's grown very interested in its neighbors this season. A subject for another evening."

The coven.

Something to add to the pile of sentences I'll be lying awake with.

It's getting to be a tall pile.

"I'm not here about the numbers tonight."

"No," he says. "You're here because you intend to do something unwise, and you wanted an adult to know where you went."

I open my mouth to argue and close it, because lying to him has never once worked.

"He's at the reserve. Isn't he?"

"Of course. He's been going there in secret for months. Now he doesn't have to leave."

Maxim watches me over his glass, and something moves behind the amusement.

"The hunters are watching that road in a variety of ways. You know this better than I do. A council member's daughter, driving out to a wolf gate to see the man the code just threw away is going to draw attention."

"I still need to do it."

"Yes." He sets the glass down with a click.

"You have a very commendable moral code. It’s the right thing to do. Go, before I develop opinions about it."

The last part comes out cold and fast.

His face shuts down after it. I know better than to ask what’s behind it.

Mervyn arrives with the olives just as I get up to leave.

The drive out of town is short and I spend all of it being extremely calm.

If my father knows by morning, then he knows.

Let him explain me over the good cups.

I'm done pouring the coffee like a dutiful daughter.

The trees open up and the reserve gate stands in my headlights, taller than I expected.

Somewhere behind it is Noah, the wall I told him to tear down, everything our world threw him out for.

I turn in.

*Author's Note: I just want to thank all of you who are so passionately supporting the story. The comments prop me up when I'm having a bad day. To everyone supporting by gifting gems, THANK YOU!!! It makes a huge difference to the ranking and how often the book gets promoted. All of your support, in every way, shape and form, means so much to me. Just wanted you to know none of it goes unseen or unappreciated.