Chapter 20: The Empty Fund

Cador read the email twice, then held the phone out so I could read it too.

Repayment of the deposit in full within thirty days.

Or the developer files against the pack, and puts a lien on the Point.

"He signed as Beta," Cador said. "For the pack. So it's the pack's debt."

"And Clement?"

"Clement's got nothing. That's the point of Clement."

He put the phone face down on the nightstand.

For a second neither of us moved.

The moon was gone from the ceiling. The light was gray and cold, and his arm was still under my head.

"Good morning," he said, very quietly.

"Good morning."

"I'd like to have had about ten more minutes of it."

"So would I."

He kissed my forehead, and then he got up and found his jeans.

Merryn was in the kitchen when we came down.

She'd let herself in at six. She was frying eggs in her cardigan with her braid over one shoulder.

She looked at the two of us coming down the stairs together.

She looked at the eggs.

"I made four," she said. "I'm a very good guesser."

The elders called the whole pack to the union hall at two.

It was fuller than the night of the Choosing.

People stood in the aisles and along the back wall in their church clothes and their work clothes.

The notice board in the vestibule was empty except for four pinholes.

Clement sat alone in the front row.

Nobody sat within three chairs of him.

He'd shaved, and put on the navy suit I'd let out twice. He looked old in it.

Tressa wasn't there.

The senior elder read the numbers from the pack books, standing up.

Three hundred and eighty thousand dollars gone from the widows' fund in two years.

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