She Killed Me Once, So This Time the Whole Pack Is Watching novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Porch Visits

Bram tends her burn and believes her, the Alpha will only act on proof by dusk, and Tobin admits he handed Linnet the key to the silver cabinet.

Tobin caught up with us at the door of Bram's lodge.

"Rosalind, get back to the house. Mother is crying."

"Is she?" I said.

Bram stepped between us.

"She's staying here until the ceremony."

"This is a family matter, Bram."

"Then the family can send someone who looked at her hand."

Tobin's mouth opened and closed.

He looked at the burn, and then he looked away from it.

"She'll regret this," he said, and went back down the path.

Bram shut the door.

He sat me at his kitchen table, ran cold water over a clean cloth and wrapped it around the blister.

His thumb pressed against my wrist while he held it there.

My wolf, who had been silent since I woke, lifted her head.

"I felt that," he said quietly. "Not the whole thing. The back of my own hand started stinging an hour ago, and I put the cedar down and started walking."

"You felt it through the mate pull."

"I always feel it. I never knew what it was before today."

I looked at his hand over mine.

"Then you've been feeling every shove and every kettle."

"The pull is faint before the ceremony. I thought it was my own bad luck." His jaw moved. "Tell me everything, Rosalind. From the start."

So I told him.

I told him about the blade, the floor, my mother's voice saying no healers, and the way Tobin had stood by the door with his hands in his pockets.

I told him I had died there, and woken an hour ago with a cup of tea coming at my face.

He didn't interrupt once.

When I finished, he said, "What time does she come?"

"A little before midnight. I was asleep. She came through the door, not the window."

"With what?"

"A silver knife. I never saw where she got it."

He nodded slowly.

"Another question. Why do you think I'll believe a story about a second life?"

"Because I don't have a reason to lie," I said. "And because I'm not asking you to believe in the second life. I'm asking you to believe in tonight."

He was quiet for a moment.

"Linnet's link with me," he said. "She told your family I never closed it."

"She told me too."

"I closed it two months after I opened it. The healer was in the room and watched me do it."

"I know."

"She still comes to my door every few weeks. I let her sit on the porch and I never told you." He met my eyes. "The healer asked me to be kind to her. I thought that was all it was."

It hurt more than the tea had.

I didn't say so. I said, "Six years of porch visits, and I never heard about one."

"I should have told you."

"Yes."

"I'm telling you now."

"Good," I said. "Take me to your father."

The Alpha's study smelled of pipe smoke and old paper.

He listened to Bram for a full minute, then to me, and then he took off his reading glasses.

"Odette Greer has sat at my table for twenty years. Her husband is my Beta."

"Her adopted daughter put a hot cup in my face this morning," I said.

"Your family has a healer's word that the girl is ill."

"Then ask the healer to look at my hand."

"Rosalind." He said it kindly. "You are asking me to believe that a girl in my pack will murder you tonight, on the strength of a dream."

"It's not a dream."

"Then give me something I can put in front of the elders. A knife. A witness. Anything that isn't a family argument."

Bram said, "Father."

"I am not finished." The Alpha looked at me for a long time. "If you bring me a reason by dusk, I will put two elders in the upstairs hall tonight. They will stand where they can see her door."

"What counts as a reason?"

"A weapon in her hands, or her saying out loud what she means to do."

I nodded.

"I'll have it."

"You have until dusk."

We walked out into the afternoon light.

Bram's hand was warm against my back.

"We could just lock her in," he said. "Right now. Tell your father it's for her own safety."

"They'd let her out in an hour and take me home to apologize."

"Then what do you need?"

"I need her to walk into that room with the knife in her hand, and I need the elders watching her do it."

Someone was coming up the path.

It was Tobin, walking fast and angry.

"You told Father she's dangerous?" he said. "She is sobbing in her room. She asked me for one thing today, one small thing, and I'm going to tell you what it was so you can see how little she wants."

"Tell me."

"She wanted the key to the ceremony cabinet. She said she wanted to polish the silver knife for you, for tomorrow, as an apology."

My stomach went cold.

"Tobin. Did you give it to her?"

He lifted his chin.

"Of course I did."

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