Cold Spell Read online

  Jackie raised an eyebrow. “Fur’s not warm enough?”

  Nic’s lips parted as if he’d thought of a clever response, but he failed to deliver it. “Didn’t think of that, actually. I figured your arm would still be on the mend and you wouldn’t want to shift.”

  She moved her injured arm away from the door and rolled up the sleeve of her robe, showing it to him. A hefty black and purple bruise remained, and it was tender to the touch, but the skin had already sealed the wound, or else she wouldn’t have risked the bath.

  “Good.” He nodded. “So should I just put these back or…”

  “Actually, I was thinking about going for a run.”

  “A run?”

  It took him a minute to work out what she meant. He was too busy focusing on not letting his eyes wander below her face. As much as she’d been certain a minute ago about shutting his interest down, there was still a part of Jackie that liked him looking at her like that. At least he was making the effort. A lot of men didn’t.

  “It’s thirty below out there,” he said with a frown. “And pitch dark. Not to mention something’s out there attacking werewolves. Even with fur and heightened senses, that’s risky.”

  “I’m not asking you to come with me, though you can follow if you want.” She pushed the door open the rest of the way and paced back into the bathroom to the mirror, where she picked up a brush and began running it through her hair. “Well?” she said as she watched Nic in the doorway, his debate over whether or not that was an invitation to step into the room etched in his wrinkled forehead. “You coming in or not? If so, shut the door. It’s cold out there.”

  Nic stepped over the threshold and shut the door behind him.

  Jackie turned back to brushing out her long, dark hair. “This thing that’s hunting your pack, what steps have you taken to try and track it down? Anything?”

  “Just maintaining the pack has taken all my time.” He put the stack of clothes down on a small stand next to the door containing toiletries. “It’s why I called for help. As much as I would’ve liked to handle this on my own, I can’t, not and hold the pack together.”

  “I’m not questioning your leadership.” Jackie turned away from the mirror. “Only gathering information. That’s my job.”

  “So, you’re the brains and Bo is the brawn?”

  Jackie flashed him a smile. “Oh, I can handle myself. I certainly don’t need protecting.”

  “Good.”

  “So about that run.” She put the brush back on the sink. “Now that we’re clear I don’t need your permission, or your protection, I wouldn’t mind your company. You know Barrow, and you know its people. You can give me the tour.”

  He looked away and rubbed the back of his head. “There’s something I have to tell you, Jackie. And I don’t want you to take this the wrong way. It’s about what happened earlier.”

  Oh, no. Here it comes. She braced herself for the inevitable questions. Was she seeing someone? Someone waiting for her back home? Maybe he’d be more direct and just profess his feelings. That would at least be refreshing, even if it’d be more awkward.

  “Whatever’s going on with us, I think it’s best if I just get this out before one of us misinterprets something. I’m not really looking for a serious relationship. Definitely not anything long-distance. Whatever interest the wolf has, it’s from a purely instinctual standpoint.” He raised his hands. “Not that I don’t think you’re attractive. That’s not true. I’m just saying there’s too much going on for me to think about relationships, and I don’t want you to think otherwise. It’s not my intention to lead you on.”

  Jackie let him continue rambling, barely restraining a smile. Guess I don’t have to let him down after all. He’s come to say the same thing to me. There was something endearing about how he felt the need to clarify what should’ve been obvious. Of course, it also made her want to slap him for assuming she’d been interested in the first place, even if it was true. She would’ve thought maybe Nic was used to giving this speech and assuming that women were into him except for the way he stumbled through it with repeated, rigid phrasing.

  She crossed her arms. He practiced this. Or someone told him to say it. Maybe he’d just told himself. She pictured him in front of a mirror giving himself a pep talk and finally lost control. Jackie exploded with laughter, interrupting whatever he was in the middle of saying.

  Nic froze, one hand up, gesturing to something. His shoulders slumped as she doubled over.

  “I’m sorry.” Jackie wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. “I was just imagining… How long did you practice this before you came to talk to me?”

  His cheeks flushed as if he’d just stepped out of the cold and he offered a sheepish smile. “I ran it by Bryce a few times for pointers. That obvious, huh?”

  Jackie stood straight again. “Nic, you don’t have to sell it to me. I’m here to hunt down the thing killing your pack. Whatever else happens, that has to take priority.”

  “Agreed. We’re on the same page, then?”

  “Absolutely. Now, are you coming on that run with me or should I ask someone else in the pack?”

  “Gladly,” he replied, still grinning like a fool. “So, when do you want to go? Sooner might be better, since the temperature will only drop as the night goes on.”

  Jackie pressed her lips together and looked him over. Just because they’d agreed not to pursue anything lasting didn’t mean she couldn’t have a bit of fun, especially at his expense. A little harmless flirting might just be the thing to keep him from getting too dark and serious.

  She turned her back to him and untied the robe. “Sooner is definitely better,” she said and shrugged off the robe.

  Behind her, Nic sucked in a sharp breath.

  Inside a pack, it wasn’t odd for packmates to see each other naked. Indeed, one of the things werewolves had to get over early in life was the human—and very western—idea that there was some sort of connection between nudity and sex. Mostly, it was functional. If werewolves ran around being afraid of seeing each other naked all the time, shifting would be much more awkward than it already was. But as a general rule, werewolves didn’t allow themselves to be seen naked by other werewolves who were not in their pack. It was a position of general weakness, exposure, a gesture of trust. Except when it was clearly meant to be something else.

  “I’ll meet you downstairs,” Nic said.

  Jackie smiled to herself. Guess that whole ‘I’m not interested’ thing was bullshit.

  Chapter Ten

  N ight at the top of the world was unlike any other darkness Nic had experienced. When he was in his teens, he lived in the south of Alaska, where people complained about long nights and short days. Their nights were full of city lights, the blinking red lights on planes, the faint glow of a television in every window.

  In Barrow, darkness was its own entity. The watery light of a streetlamp covered part of the street in an orange glow. Beyond that, dark shapes rose in angles and slopes, roofs and walls on the other side of the street. A curtain of black waited beyond. Somewhere out there, an even darker shade of black lapped hungrily at the land, tearing it down rock by rock, pebble by pebble. One day, the Old Woman of the Sea would reclaim the land she’d lost, but it wouldn’t be tonight.

  A dog barked, the cold air carrying the shrill sound from half a mile away. A door slammed and the barking silenced. It was the only sound in Barrow other than the howl of unbroken wind.

  The exposed skin around his eyes tingled with cold. Any other night, he’d have stayed inside all night, but this wasn’t any night. It was the night he was going to catch whatever was killing the members of his pack.

  “And I thought it was cold inside.”

  The door behind him shut and Jackie stepped out. He didn’t need to turn his head to know it was her. The smell was foreign, like pine trees and exhaust with strawberry undertones from her shampoo. She’d pulled on her wool coat, hat and gloves along with the scar
f he’d seen her in earlier. At least she’d had the sense to put on the warmer clothes he’d left for her.

  “You’ll freeze to death if you spend too long out here in thin layers like that,” he said.

  She looked down at her hands and said quietly. “I don’t plan on being out here long.”

  The statement had layers of meaning. She wasn’t staying outside long enough to let the cold kill her—a smart move on her part—but she also wasn’t staying in Alaska forever. Of course she wasn’t. Her work probably took her everywhere. She probably saw dozens of packs every year, most of them more welcoming than his had been.

  “You must travel a lot.” He cursed himself for the stupid choice in conversation. He’d been trying to break the ice after the awkwardness upstairs earlier. As much as he’d enjoyed the show, the mixed messages she’d given were making it hard to decipher if she meant what she’d said earlier.

  “Not as much as you’d think. Bo does most of the legwork. I’m just support, and I prefer to work from behind a screen. I’m a glorified accountant for several packs who have proven bad with money.” She blew into her hands and rubbed them together before adding, “I guess Lou thinks having someone independent of any pack is probably best for watching for financial discrepancies.”

  He turned his head. Already, her cheeks and the end of her nose were rosy from the cold. She’d last another two, three minutes at most before she’d have to go in. “You’re not part of a pack?”

  “Been there. Done that. I don’t really care for all the bickering and posturing that comes with pack life. Too much baggage for me.” She sighed, stepped forward and looked up into the sky. “Wow, they really are something, aren’t they?”

  Nic followed her gaze upward to where the long pillars of eerie green and yellow danced in the sky. The lights flowed like rivers above, waves crashing against the black. It’d been a long time since he looked at them. Living with them all the time, they’d long ago ceased to be a source of wonder. He missed those days, when he was easily impressed by refracting light in the sky. It felt like lifetimes ago. Now there wasn’t much that could surprise him at all.

  His eyes fell to her exposed face, burned bright red by the cold. He turned and pulled open the front door. “Come on. You need to go in. You can Change in the study and we can go out on that run.”

  Jackie turned and flashed him a grin. “Who said anything about going in?”

  He was about to lecture her on the dangers of being out in the cold while underdressed when she peeled off her coat and kicked off her shoes, all in one move, before leaping down off the porch. She landed on her knees, fingers gripping the snow. A few familiar pops of bone sounded as she began her shift, peeling off the last of her clothes as she could.

  Nic turned away, debating whether or not to go inside himself. Most werewolves didn’t like it when others watched them Change. Every one he’d ever met had been grumpy about it, at least. The Change left them vulnerable. But it was thirty below out there, and something strange had been stalking the werewolves of Barrow, Alaska. He wasn’t about to leave her alone.

  She probably wants to run after being cooped up in that plane for so long, he thought, averting his eyes. It was what he’d want, he supposed, though he’d never been on a plane ride that long. Four hours was his limit. The plane from Billings, with all its transfers and connecting flights, must have been at least thirteen hours.

  Nic popped the front door open and called for Vince to come stand guard while he was away. He doubted he and Jackie would find anything, and would’ve preferred to wait a few hours to go running around as a wolf so he could do it well-rested. Not that it would have been any brighter in the morning, or warmer. Now was as good a time as any, he supposed.

  Jackie’s shift took less than ten minutes, but she lay there in the snow two or three minutes after, breathing heavily. It must’ve taken a lot out of her. She was a pretty wolf with light gray fur. A stripe of reddish brown ran down her nose. The same color brushed the sides of her cheeks and the end of her tail.

  She stood and shook snow from her fur before venturing a few steps further. The awkward walk on wobbly legs quickly became an excited dash back and forth in front of the house. Jackie slowed to a prance and circled around to stand directly in front of the porch where she spread her paws wide, bowed her head low and left her haunches high, tail wagging back and forth.

  Nic crossed his arms. “You’re lucky you didn’t get frostbite doing that.”

  She sneezed and shook her head.

  He shook his head. “You want me to take off my clothes for you? It’ll have to be a lot warmer than thirty below. Frostbite is a thing, and I’m pretty attached to all my extremities.”

  Jackie shifted her stance, ears standing on end. She stuck her nose high and her nostrils flared as she took in a scent. Without any further warning, she turned and bounded through another snow drift on her way around the house and out of sight. The message was clear. She’d caught an interesting scent and was going after it, whether he liked it or not. If he didn’t want her out there alone, he’d have to go, too.

  Nic sighed and pulled off his boot. “It’s too damn cold for this!” he shouted after her, but stripped off most of his clothes anyway. He opted to undress under the heavy parka he’d worn outside. It wasn’t easy, and it took a long time, but at least he wouldn’t freeze to death.

  His shift took a little less time than Jackie’s had, but only because he pulled a little extra from the pack. When he tapped the well of their collective power to ease the shift, it felt different. Everyone hurt after their recent losses. Vince resisted opening up the link to offer his alpha power, and Nic decided it was best not to push. Vince and David had been close.

  The shift completed, Nic didn’t give himself any recovery time, choosing instead to pull himself to his feet and limp forward to try and catch Jackie’s scent. It was easy enough. Hers was the only unfamiliar scent in the vicinity. He followed it around the house and found Jackie waiting patiently, her tail curled around her. The little devil. She’d tricked him into following her. He expressed his displeasure with a huff and swatted some of the powdery snow at her.

  Jackie shook it from her fur, stretched, and trotted off toward the house next door, her nose to the ground.

  Nic followed.

  They wound their way back to the street and turned west until their path intersected with Ahmoagak Avenue. She moved to trot beside the road here, her pace quickening as if she was closing on something. Nic sniffed the air and didn’t smell anything. She mentioned a smell in the house, didn’t she? And she did say her nose was better at detecting magick. Maybe she’d picked up on whatever was stalking his pack.

  Nic picked up his pace, catching her as she veered north, away from the main section of town. If she kept going that way, they’d walk past the college. Stevenson Street stretched the whole ten miles north to Point Barrow, the northernmost point in the United States. It was pretty out there, and a good place to go and think, but no one lived out that way.

  He bumped Jackie’s shoulder, trying to get her attention and to steer her away from there, but she just kept on going. When she didn’t get the message the second time, he ran ahead a few paces and turned to stand in her way.

  Jackie finally stopped, lifting her nose to the icy sea-breeze air and sniffing with her eyes closed. She took a step forward, leaning to one side, sniffing. When she didn’t catch her scent, she turned another way and sniffed the air there. She tried a third direction before lowering her ears and her stance. She bared her teeth at him, ready to attack if he didn’t move out of her way.

  Nic redoubled his insistent stance. He was bigger than her, but she was Bo’s right hand for a reason. It probably meant she was every bit a killer as he was. In a serious fight, he wouldn’t stand a chance. Of course, a fight wasn’t his intention, and he had to do something to communicate he wasn’t being aggressive while still maintaining some authority. Were he in Jackie’s position, and growl
ing at one of his wolves, he would expect them to lie down, perhaps roll over and show their belly as a gesture of submission. The very idea of doing that in front of Jackie made his wolf kin balk. She’d think less of him were he to play at being submissive. Instead, he lowered his snout and crept forward, bumping his nose against hers, just hard enough to divert it sideways.

  She took a cautious step back and gave him an unsure look.

  He kept on, brushing against her left shoulder as he passed, walking into the road. A simple distraction. Jackie followed and Nic breathed a sigh of relief that he wouldn’t have to fight her. The wolf side of him, however, was disappointed. It would’ve been fun to pin her to the ground and nip at her ear. Perhaps equally as fun if he lost.

  The crunch of tires on the rock and dirt road behind him made him turn his head. A brown side-by-side thundered down the road at top speed. It swerved away and then toward them, the bright lights blinding Nic momentarily. That didn’t stop him from leaping between Jackie and the oncoming vehicle. Gravel flew as the driver applied the brakes and the ATV swerved again on a patch of ice. Nic braced himself for impact as the ATV slid toward them, completely out of control.

  Chapter Eleven

  T ires ground against dirt and the suspension groaned as the driver pulled it to a sudden stop at the last possible second beside them.

  Nic breathed a sigh of relief but maintained his alert posture, ready to spring into action if the driver emerged hostile or drunk. The last thing he needed to deal with was another drunk.

  The door creaked open. “Jesus, Nic. Is that you? What the hell are you doing out here so late?”

  Great. Nic inwardly groaned when he recognized the voice. Justice. Of course they would run into him.

  Justice stepped out of the vehicle wearing a white parka, black gloves and heavy black boots. His blue eyes were hidden behind a pair of goggles. He folded his arms, but not in an aggressive way. More in the way of a man who just couldn’t get warm. Justice was like that. Always cold, despite never having spent a day further south than just south of town.