he said. Darryl loved to cook. “Christy says that men can’t cook.”
“You’re a great cook,” Jesse told him.
He smiled at her, a gentle smile he saved for Auriele and Jesse. “I know. I’m better than any of them, but they won’t listen to me.”
“I think I like Korra better than Aang,” I said after we’d watched another five minutes. “She gets to go do things instead of waiting around for other people.”
“I hear you,” agreed Darryl.
“I think I’m going to go check on Medea,” I said.
With Lucia’s big dog in the house, we’d shut Medea in the tack room out in the stables. The horses in the pasture whinnied at me when I walked by. I threw them a couple of flakes of alfalfa hay, though there was plenty of grass in the pasture. A couple of extra flakes wouldn’t hurt them.
Medea greeted me with frantic purrs. I sat down on the wooden floor next to her and petted her, trying not to think.
There were two Western saddles bedecked with silver on wooden saddle racks and another pair that were more everyday trail saddles. Blue ribbons and big, oversized awards plastered one wall. Everything was covered with dust, as if, like the horses, they had not been used since Peter died.
Eventually, Darryl came out to talk.
“Hey, girl,” he said from the doorway.
“Hey.”
“Jesse was summoned as taster in the kitchen,” he told me. “They should be over at the house by now, in the middle of changing.” Adam’s plan had been to find a quiet spot near Guayota’s place so that all the wolves could change. Then they would wait until the small hours of the night and take what advantage surprise might offer them.
I’d been keeping track of the time, too. “I’ll let you know if our mating bond tells me anything,” I told him, my attention firmly on the way Medea’s rabbit-soft coat rippled under my fingers.
“We’ll all feel it if anyone dies,” Darryl told me after a very long moment. “Why don’t you come into the house? I’ll keep Christy in line.”
I looked at him and raised my eyebrows. He smiled sheepishly. “Okay. But I expect she’ll behave in front of everyone, anyway.”
“It’s not Christy,” I assured him. “I just don’t have any comfort for anyone left in me, Darryl. And if someone even looks at me with sympathy … no. I’ll wait here for a while more.”
He hesitated. “I told him I would look after you.” His voice was soft, as soft as I’d ever heard it.
I wiped my eyes angrily but managed a half laugh. “Shut up. Samuel told me not to mourn until I had something to mourn about.”
“Yeah,” Darryl said softly. “Yeah.”
He leaned against the doorframe and kept me company for a few minutes before returning to the house. It would be hours before we knew anything, anything at all. Tibicenas could be killed, temporarily, if they caught them in dog form. They were going to try to take them out as early in the fight as they could, and if that didn’t destroy Guayota or send him back where he came from, they would then concentrate on Guayota. Seven werewolves and a walker against a god.
I curled up around Medea and prayed as fervently as I ever had. I had faith that it would help. But death isn’t a tragedy to God, only to those left behind.
I finished, and only then realized that Stefan was sitting on a hay bale on the wall on the far side of the stable aisle, where he could look through the tack room door and see me.
“I didn’t want to interrupt,” he said. “I told you I’d come talk tonight, but I had some trouble finding you.” He paused. “I talked to Darryl at the house. He told me what’s going on. A volcano god, eh? If I’d realized exactly what that address meant … I’m not sure I’d have gotten it for you.” He looked away. “I think the talk I promised you ought to wait until—until later, I suppose.”
I’d forgotten about the talk. Somehow, it didn’t seem important to fuss about something he could have done nothing about. Any other day, I might have gotten self-righteously angry. I’d worked really hard not to freak at the bonds I shared with Adam and the pack. I wasn’t sure I had it in me not to freak about a bond with a vampire, even one I liked. But today I couldn’t find the energy to lie to