Chapter 17: Pecking Order

"I'm not standing behind her," Calvin said. "I'm standing next to her. There's a difference."

"Not in my kitchen."

"It isn't your kitchen."

I should have stepped between them. I was still holding a coffee mug.

Eamon crossed the floor in two strides and took Calvin by the front of his jacket.

Calvin hit him.

It was a bad punch, low and wild, and it caught Eamon on the cheekbone.

The sound it made was small.

The silence after it was enormous.

Eamon touched his cheek with two fingers and looked at the blood on them.

"That," he said softly, "was the first honest thing you've done in seven years."

"Out," I said. "Both of you. Out of my kitchen."

Neither of them heard me.

They went through the back door together in one tangle, and the screen door slapped against the wall.

I followed them onto the porch with my mug.

It was a full waiting room day.

A line of patients stood along the side of the clinic in the morning sun, the way they did every Thursday.

There was a man with a wrapped hand, and a woman with a feverish toddler on her hip.

A teenager had a broken wrist in a splint of two paint sticks.

An old rogue sat on the steps with a cane across his knees.

Every face turned toward the yard.

Eamon had Calvin by the collar, and his nails were black and thick.

Calvin had Eamon's wrist in both hands and was hanging on to it, gasping.

"You put her in the ground!" Calvin shouted.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Staged My Funeral, Now His Wolf Howls at My Door from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.