Chapter 9: The Moon-reader's Porch

"Paid him with what?" I said.

The old Alpha only smiled and turned away.

He walked back through the ring of torches, and a hundred wolves closed around him.

Rowan gave me one long look over his shoulder.

Anders was the last to go, and he looked back twice.

By dawn the yard was empty and the grass was black with burned-out torch ends.

Ash made coffee, and neither of us said much.

He didn't ask what his father's words had done to me.

He put a hand on the back of my neck while the kettle boiled, and left it there, and it was enough.

At nine I drove the Honda to the Moon-reader's house alone.

Ash had wanted to come.

I told him she'd said porch, and child, and she hadn't said anything about a Thorsen.

He took it with a nod, and a dry look I liked more than I should have.

The house sat at the end of a dirt lane behind the pack hall, small and crooked, with woodsmoke coming out of the chimney.

She was sitting on the porch in a rocking chair with a blanket over her knees.

"You came early," she said. "Good. I wanted you before your father's people woke up."

"You told me to come."

"I did." She patted the step beside her chair. "Sit, girl. This will take a while, and I'm too old to stand over you."

I sat.

The wooden step was cold through my jeans.

She took a long time to begin.

"The Stone has one rule," she said. "It lights white under the hand of the Garrick heir, and under no other hand, ever."

"It has been that way since before the town had a name."

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