Between Love Passion and Power

3 Give Her One More Mounth

"There was a girl."

"At the library."

"Yes."

"Did she see Vance."

"She saw all of it." Henry's voice was very quiet. "She saw me drive the spear in. She saw me lift the body. She saw my face. She screamed."

Tony went still.

"That is not possible," he said. "You cast the veil."

"I cast the veil. A full one. I felt it set. No mortal in that building should have been able to perceive a single second of what happened in that aisle. The cameras would have shown nothing. The other patrons, if there had been any, would have walked past as though nothing was there." Henry's jaw worked. "She walked into the aisle and she saw."

"A witch, then. Or a hunter."

"She did not feel like either." Henry's reflection in the glass tightened its lips. "She felt like nothing. That is what unsettled me. There was no signature on her at all. No magic, no spirit, no scent of the supernatural. She felt like an empty room. And yet she saw through a veil that would have hidden me from a mid-rank vampire."

Tony lowered himself slowly back into the armchair. He laced his fingers together.

"Henry."

"Do not."

"Henry."

"I said do not."

"The girl in your dreams."

Henry's shoulders went rigid.

The room was very quiet for several seconds. Outside, somewhere far below, a siren rose and fell.

Tony pressed on, gently. "For four months you have been dreaming about a girl. A girl with dark hair and tea-colored eyes. A girl whose face you can never quite hold on to when you wake up. Four months ago you started going to that library, every other afternoon, sitting at the same corner table for hours. You do not read. You watch the front desk. You tell yourself you are watching for a target." He paused. "Tell me the girl in the library tonight. Tell me she did not look like the girl in your dreams."

Henry did not answer.

His hand on the windowsill closed slowly into a fist.

'She is the girl,' he thought. 'I knew it the moment I looked up and saw her standing there in that absurd oversized cardigan. I have been pretending all afternoon. I have been pretending for four months. The dreams led me to her. Tonight I finally looked at her and the dreams have a face.'

But aloud he said, "She was not the girl."

Tony tilted his head.

"Are you certain."

"I am certain." Henry turned away from the window. His eyes had gone hard, the silver in them banked down to a cold pewter grey. "The Moon Mother spoke to my mother on the night of my birth. She said my mate would come from far beyond Denver. From a place I would have to travel to, search for, suffer for. That girl has worked at that library for the last six months. She lives in this city. She was born in this country. She is not my mate. She cannot be."

"And yet you have been going to the library every other day for four months."

"To watch for a witch we suspected was operating out of that branch. Nothing more."

Tony said nothing. His silence was eloquent.

Henry walked to the side table, poured himself two fingers of something dark and amber, and drank it in a single swallow. The glass clinked softly when he set it down.

"Find out who she is," he said. "Quietly. Her name. Her parents. Her medical records. Where she came from before she came to Denver, if she came from anywhere. I want to know everything by tomorrow night."

"And then."

Henry's silver eyes flicked to the wrapped body still lying in the foyer.

"And then," he said softly, "I will decide what to do about a mortal girl who can see through veils that should not be possible to see through. Whoever she is, she is dangerous. To me. To the pack. To everything we have built in this city."

Tony stood, retrieved his coat from the back of the chair, and started toward the door. He paused with his hand on the knob.

"Henry."

"What."

"If she is the girl in your dreams. If the Moon Mother was wrong, or you misheard, or your mother misheard, or there is something here none of us understands."

"She is not."

"If she is."

Henry did not answer.

Tony stepped out and closed the door softly behind him.

Henry stood alone in the dark living room for a long time, listening to the rain, his reflection in the window staring back at him with eyes that did not quite belong to him anymore.

***

In a quiet house on the other side of Denver, a girl in an oversized cardigan sat on the edge of her bed, knees drawn up to her chest, staring at her own hands as though she had never seen them before.

Downstairs, William and Margareth Whitmore sat at the kitchen table in absolute silence. Margareth's tea had gone cold. William's hands were folded so tightly that the knuckles had turned white.

"It is starting," Margareth whispered, finally.

"I know."

"We have to tell her."

"Not yet."

"William, she saw through a wolf's veil. Do you understand what that means. She is eighteen. The seal is failing. If we do not tell her soon, someone else will find her first, and they will not be kind about it."

William closed his eyes.

"One more month," he said. "Give her one more month of being ordinary. Please. After that, we will tell her everything."

Upstairs, Olivia lay back on her pillow and stared at the ceiling.

Outside her window, somewhere very high above the clouds, the moon was full, and for the first time in her life she could feel it, faintly, like a hand pressing very gently against her chest.

She did not yet know what it meant.

But somewhere, in the deepest hidden chamber of her blood, something old and patient and astonishingly powerful had begun, very quietly, to wake up.