Chapter 6: What Mark Wrote

Jasper took the page out of my hand and read it three times, standing in the moonlight with his back to me.

"It proves nothing," he said.

"It says her blood doesn't match my father's."

"It says a clerk-in-training copied a number wrong. Mark was twenty-three. He made mistakes every week."

"He wrote 'tell Calla first, before her father.'" I got to my feet. "Why would he go to me before the Alpha who owns the pack?"

"Because Faye turned him down once, and he held a grudge."

"Faye never told me that."

Jasper's mouth shut.

"Mark and I were friends," I said. "He wasn't sulking over a girl. He was scared for me."

"Stop."

"He didn't trust my father with it. You shouldn't either."

"That's a guess."

"Then check it." I held his eyes. "Did anyone ever check where she really was?"

"The log says the library."

"A log is something a clerk can write."

He stood very still.

For a moment I thought he would give me something.

Then he folded the page in half, and in half again, and put it in the breast pocket of his shirt.

"Get out of his room," he said.

"Jasper."

"Get out."

I got out.

I did not sleep.

I lay on the guest-wing bed, because I had learned to, and I turned my wrist over in the dark.

The place where his thumb had been still felt hot.

Twice I heard his boots stop outside my door.

Both times they went away again.

By morning the sky was white over the ridge, and I was at the woodpile with the axe before the kitchen woman lit the stove.