Chapter 36

Katla

Several hours later I was sitting in the living room, it was twilight and the waxing crescent moon was just visible. Looking up and thinking about all I had learned today, I felt like it was mocking me. I was sipping hot chamomile tea, and Damien walked in with a small white rectangular box.

“I know you’re worried, but would you like to see something sort of fun?” Damien asked, giving me a lopsided smile, running his fingers through his hair.

“Sure, anything to take my mind off how stupid I was with laying the most incredibly beautiful and ancient…oh, and don’t forget magical, maybe, piece of jewelry I have ever seen laying out in the open,” it still stung to admit that.

He slid the top of the box and inside was a black rectangle. He was smiling as he plopped it out into his hand. The back was purple. “Your favorite color if I’m not mistaken?” He looked at me for confirmation, and I nodded. He flipped it over to show the smooth black screen, and pushed a button on the side waking it up.

“I’ve already put important information in the phone, so you can always contact someone. And here, this is the map. If you feel lost in the city or want to know where I am, just open it by doing this,” and he clicked the map and roads crisscrossed the screen. There were two dots at Silver Tower. One marked D and the other T. “D, I get, that’s you, but ‘T’?”

“Actually, I wanted it to say ‘TE’ for Troll Enchantress,” he said laughing. I couldn’t help the smile that spread across my face. It felt irreverent to laugh given the severity of the situation that I had created, but I didn’t realize how much I needed to laugh. I felt Damien watching me as I bit my lip while I touched the different squares on the screen.

“They found his scent,” Damien said suddenly. “Let’s go. Clarissa, stay here and wait for word from us,” he said. “I’ll let Rolf know on the way.”

“I can honestly say I add nothing to this party,” she looked at both of us, smiled, and touched her head and pointed to ours. “I think she means our mindlink,” Aurelia understood.

Damien and I walked to the elevator, and he pushed the button. The doors slid open, and we stepped inside. Damien pulled me close and kissed me, then backed me up against the wall, ran his hands down my waist, pulling my leg up at the knee with one hand while holding my face with the other. I felt the increasingly familiar rise of tension between my legs, and he nipped playfully at my ear. “There’s something about elevators,” he said as the doors slid open to the hall in the garage.

We walked to a sleek Porsche 911 that shifted between colors as we walked closer. As we approached the car, the doors clicked to unlock. “Your chariot, princess,” Damien smiled and held the door.

“Too soon. Way too soon,” I replied back, sliding in.

He jogged around to the driver side, revved the car up, backed up, and we were off, racing through the streets until we got to the dark spaces between the city and suburbs.

People were standing on the corners and sitting on stoops, largely doing nothing, some exchanging money for small bags and others with bottles in bags walking from a liquor store. There were women under broken signs walking around in skimpy clothes and cars pulling up. I felt Damien bristle and growl. “Prostitutes,” he said, “Women who sell their bodies to men.” It was a sad, broken place in the shadows of the glossy city.

There was trash piled up, graffiti, and flickering street lights. There were broken windows, and sometimes, between the broken windows and boarded doors, there were stoops that were tidy and clean, where someone clearly cared. The window boxes with flowers brought life to this expanse of concrete and asphalt. I wondered what they thought about their neighborhood and why they stayed. Maybe they had been there a long time and it had changed around them. It brought back what my father said about change, but change went both ways.

The night was clear but the stars seemed farther away, more distant and less bright here. The car purred to a stop in front of a boarded up house, and a man with straight black hair pulled into a bun, a beard, olive skin, and ember eyes stepped out of the shadows. “Good evening, Alpha, and…er,” the man looked between Damien and me not sure what to say.

“Katla,” I said, “just Katla.”

“Very well, just Katla,” he winked. “Something tells me you aren’t ‘just’ anything.” He was clearly very charming. “What is it with these Silverburn wolves,” Aurelia snickered.

“This is Gamma Lyulf, and I would trust him with my life. In fact, I have many times,” Damien said, clapping him on the shoulder.

“Alpha, we found your human assistant, but I’m sorry to say… well, you’ll see.” He led us around the back of the abandoned house. It was dark, but the sliver of moon was more than bright enough to illuminate the carnage that was once Peter.