Chapter 14: Silver in the Water

Jasper doubled the watch before my hair was dry.

I sat in the kitchen in his old gray shirt, and I listened to his boots go up and down the porch.

Every wolf he trusted stood at a door or a window.

"Faye knows by now," I said, when he came in.

"Yes."

"She can't let the test happen."

"No." He went to the desk in the hall for the guard list, and I followed him, because I did not want to sit alone.

He pulled the drawer open too hard.

Five small yellow slips fell out and scattered across the floor.

I bent to pick one up before he could stop me.

It was a visitor's pass, printed on thin paper, with a stamp across the top.

*Silver Prison, outer gate.*

The date was the day they had locked me in.

I turned over the next one, and the next.

Five slips, five different years, and every one of them was stamped on the same day.

Jasper crouched and gathered them up in his big hand without looking at me.

"Go to bed, Calla," he said.

"Jasper."

"Go to bed."

I went.

I did not sleep.

I lay in the guest wing with the door unlocked and listened to him walk the hall outside it until the window turned gray.

At first light the front door banged.

I put my boots on and went down.

The Beta stood in the hall, breathing hard, with a young sentry beside him.

"Tell it again," Jasper said.

"I saw a woman at the north fence an hour ago," the sentry said. "She had a hood up, and a gray Council coat. I called out, and she turned around."