Page 15 of Woodland Web

Killian had set the table and placed a netted hood over the cake and compote to keep the cats out. Lemon poundcake or fish sticks, Klaus tried to eat it all. We had to watch him around human food. I opened the bottom drawer of the sideboard and brought out a stack of board games. We usually stuck with two or three each game night, but it was always nice to have a choice. The timer went off on the stove and as I turned it off, the doorbell rang. After I took the lasagna out and set it on the table, I answered the door.

“Tally, Les, come on in.”

“It smells wonderful,” Tally said, giving me a hug. She wasn’t as tall as Killian, but she was athletic. She was shorter than her brother, lanky and lean. Her hair was light brown and her eyes were also green. She had angular features that seemed almost sharp, and her movements were fluid—she was as graceful as she was in wolf form.

Les was the opposite. He had dark hair that hung to his shoulders, and vivid, dark eyes that gleamed with gold flecks. He had been the assistant to the Pack’s shaman until they moved here, and even though he had given up the mantel of the job, he still radiated shifter magic. The shamans were the few magical members of the Packs, and they were both highly feared and respected. Les was as lean and lanky as Tally, though, which gave him a hungry look.

He, too, gave me a hug and a grunt, then headed over toward the table. “Ooo, you came through on the lasagna. You’re the best sister-in-law, ever!”

Tally followed him, her eyes on the food. “I never seem to eat enough lately. Victoria and Leanna keep me so busy following them that I never have time to sit down. Thank gods for my mother.” She reluctantly left the table and came over to sit by me in the living room. “Did I tell you that I got a job as manager of the Red Rock Café?”

“No, when did that happen?” The Red Rock Café was a new restaurant that had opened up down by the shore. It was somewhere between a diner and a fast-food joint, but the food was good and the décor was pleasant enough.

“I just got the call yesterday,” she said. “I start in a week. That gives me time to prepare. I’m only working twenty-five hours a week. I wanted to pay Mom for her time. She told me under no circumstances is she charging me, but I don’t want her helping out for free. I finally agreed, but we’re planning on buying her a monthly gift certificate to a day spa. A standing monthly appointment.”

I knew how expensive that was going to be, especially since Les and Tally were on a tight budget. “What about if Killian and I help you out on that? We can afford it, and they’ve done a lot of nice things for us, too. We can go half on the gift certificate and make it a full day of beauty for her.” If Killian or I made the arrangements, we could get away with telling Les and Tally that it cost less than it did, and not wound their pride.

Tally glanced at Les. He caught my gaze and I realized he knew what I was doing, but he just smiled and nodded.

“I think that’s a great idea, honey. Thanks, January, for wanting to be part of it,” he said, sitting opposite her. I brought ice and sparkling water to the table and began to pour all around as Killian appeared.

Tally jumped up to hug him, and Les gave him a hearty handshake. As we gathered at the table for dinner, I realized this was what it felt like to have some sense of normalcy in a family. I felt it now and then, like when we hosted Thanksgiving, but not often. Then again, what constituted a normal family? The answer was: family looked different to everybody. No single definition worked for all.

Shrugging, I stopped thinking for the evening and began dishing out the lasagna. As we fell to eating, I told them about going back to work and we settled into comfortable dinner conversation.

* * *

By eight-thirty, I had just won my second game of Trivial Pursuit—thanks to my ever-present curiosity—when my phone rang. I glanced at the caller ID. It was Val.

“Go ahead and play. I need to take this,” I said. I moved to the living room so I wouldn’t disturb them as they shifted over to Scrabble. “Hey, Val,” I said, curling up on the couch as I answered the call.

“Hey, yourself. Okay, I have information.”

“Let me guess: the sluagh is in Devil’s Gulch?”

Val sputtered. “What on earth gave it away?”

“A murder,” I said. “Millie called me this morning.”

Val grunted. “Well, then that lines up with what I found. I sent a couple of my men out. They damned near didn’t come back. They got word through the grapevine that there was something going on in the gulch and so they went to check it out. Sure enough, there’s something there and it’s deadly. I’m guessing, by their description and by yours, it’s the sluagh. By the way, if you would tell that damned Fae dandy that he needs to keep a tighter rein on his underlings?—”

I snorted. “Not on your life. You tell him, if you want to chew him out. I’ve learned the hard way just how frightening the Fae are and I’m in no hurry to make enemies.”

“Woman, you stab me in the heart,” Val said, laughing. “Okay, so what I can tell you is that, though the gulch runs for several blocks, the creature seems to have made its lair near a culvert smack in the middle of the ravine. You won’t notice it at first, but if you pinpoint where the runoff meets Devil’s Creek, you’ll find it. Be cautious, though,” he said, his voice sobering. “The creature is more powerful than I think you realize.”

I could hear the danger through his voice. Part of me wished that his men had taken it out themselves, but I fully understood that they didn’t want to get involved in Fae politics. That was never a good thing. “Thanks, Val. Did your men actually have to fight it?”

“January, the minute they saw it, they ran. And you know my men, my people—vampires—we don’t run from much. The sluagh seems to have an aura that stirs up fear and it works on vampires. They couldn’t get out of there fast enough.”

I thanked him and hung up. We knew where it was, now we just had to prepare to destroy it. As I dwelled on the thought, I returned to the dining room where Killian had just won the game. Talley was two points behind him, and Les, forty behind both.

“Who was it?” Killian asked.

“Oh, just a friend,” I said. Right now, just for tonight, I didn’t want to think about the task in front of us, or the hazards if we failed. I accepted a tile rack and picked seven tiles to start with as we started a new game, but my mind was far away, in the depths of Devil’s Gulch, wondering just how hard this was going to be.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The next morning I was nervous. I was supposed to meet Briar to give him an update, and seeing the Fae Lord was the last thing I wanted to do. Charles called. He had emailed me all the notes he could find about the sluagh. I thanked him, told him we’d see him next week, then hung up and checked my email. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much in his notes that I didn’t already either know, or that I could use.

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