I was a dumb-ass.
“You’re Jonas’s son?”
“His one and only heir,” Clay said, pushing to his feet. “Your time here is over. I’ve seen enough to know that you’re not strong enough to hold on to the valley. It’s time for a new pack, a stronger pack, to take over. You have three days to clear your ragged excuse for a family out of our new home. Otherwise, people will start getting hurt.”
“People are already getting hurt.” I grunted.
He smiled, his teeth tinged an awful red. “No, this is minor damage. I mean, really, truly hurt. Throats ripped out. Paws missing. How’d you like to walk out of your cozy little house to find your mother, your grandfather, one of those little brats, dead and cold on your doorstep?”
“Why are you trying to provoke me?” I demanded, shoving at his shoulders. “You are not this guy.”
“You don’t know what I am!” he shouted, shoving me back.
“Look, I can’t change what happened—” When he looked vaguely bored, I slammed his head against the wall. He snarled, and I grabbed his chin, forcing him to look me in the eye. “Listen to me. I am sorry for what was done to your pack, but you will not threaten my fucking family and make it sound like a Sunday picnic, do you hear?”>Well, screw that, I was Maggie Graham. I wasn’t scared of anything.
Squaring my shoulders, I strode through the front room to the kitchen. Flour was spilled across the counter. A jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread sat open near the stove, with sticky slices strewn on the floor. I stepped around the corner and saw faded pink slippers on still, splayed feet. Billie was on her side, wearing her favorite blue plaid housecoat. There was a kitchen knife just out of her reach, by her right hand. Her hair was matted with red. The corner of the counter near the fridge was crusted with dried, brick-colored blood.
“Oh, no,” I murmured. “Oh, no. Aunt Billie, no.”
I dropped to my knees. I clasped her wrist in my fingers but found no pulse. The body was still warm, but her eyes were open, fixed on the ceiling. There was no spark. There was nothing to be done for her.
I laid gentle fingers on her eyelids and closed them. I leaned over, my forehead almost touching her hands. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
She’d hit her head. That much was clear. Had she passed out? Tripped? Pushed? Where was Alicia? Why wasn’t someone with her?
I kneeled there for what felt like hours. I heard chatter from just outside the back door. Alicia was leading the boys up the stairs. I ran for the door. “Keep the boys outside,” I told her.
Alicia blanched at my tone. “What’s going on?”
“It’s Billie . . .” I said, glancing down at the boys, who were clamoring for juice and SpongeBob.
The color drained from Alicia’s face. “No. I just left for a few minutes. I took the boys out to play. The weather was so nice for once. And she was taking a nap. I thought it would be OK.”
I put my hand on her shoulder and offered her a reassuring squeeze. “She must have gotten up. She was in the kitchen.”
Alicia seemed to be gasping for air as tears welled in her eyes. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t—”
“Don’t.” I squeezed her shoulder and shook it gently. “You took good care of her, Alicia. Why don’t you take the boys to my mom’s? I’ll stay here. You call Dr. Moder.”
“I think I should stay—”
“Alicia, you did everything you could for her. Let me take it from here. That’s my job. Get the kids away from here. You don’t want them to see this.”
Alicia nodded, robotically leading the boys down the front steps. Dropping to my knees, I sat next to Billie and waited.
I SAT AT my desk, staring into space. I kept waiting for tears or sweet, clarifying anger. But I was numb. My brain had shut down all emotional responses in some sort of survival mode. All I could do was list the dozens of things I needed to do.
I needed to call Matthew, Billie’s great-nephew. I needed to go through Billie’s papers and try to figure out what accounts needed to be closed, whether she had a will. We needed to plan the service. Mom had stepped in to pick the music and the flowers. Samson and Clay had volunteered to make the casket, which was a pack tradition. We used a were-owned funeral home to sign off on the arrangements, so we didn’t have to worry about the state looking too closely at death certificates.
Dr. Moder had taken the body to the clinic. She said Billie had hit her head against the corner of the counter with enough force to break her neck. As if that wasn’t enough, the fall also cracked Billie’s skull, causing a hemorrhage that would have been fatal. The only good news was that the broken neck most likely prevented any suffering. The doc couldn’t tell me how Billie had fallen, but given the state of the kitchen, she’d probably been in the middle of an episode and either lost her balance or passed out. As much as I wanted to blame Billie’s death on some unseen intruder, Dr. Moder said it was more likely that she’d simply fallen hard enough to do that sort of damage. As strong as we are, our bones can only stand up to so much as we age.
I made a mental note to pick up some calcium supplements for Pops.
Suddenly, all of the weird occurrences seemed silly by comparison. I felt indulgent and paranoid for trying to find hidden dangers while missing out on the real threat Billie posed to herself.
For the fourth time in an hour, I picked up the phone to call Matthew. As alpha, it fell to me to inform Billie’s kin of her passing. These were the rare times when my job sucked ass. I’d left three voice-mail messages, but by now, I knew the best method was to keep calling until he picked up. This time, in a near-miraculous show of cell-phone mastery, Matt managed to pick up before it went to voice mail. He chattered from the other end of the line about births and matings in his own pack, physically incapable of letting someone else enter the conversation until he had to take a breath.
“Look, Matt, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but Billie is gone.” Blunt, yes, but necessary if I wanted to shut him up for a minute. “We’re not sure what happened, but it looks like she fell and hit her head in the kitchen.”