Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
New Orleans feels ripe with meaning. I don’t know how to explain it other than that. I wonder if I would be feeling these feelings if I had come here before I knew the wolves were real, and murderous. The city is beautiful and somehow dark. There’s so much water, so much history. And there’s a power here. I can feel it thrumming in the air, like an electric charge.
A lot of the city looks sort of generic, but it almost feels like a facade, like the buildings are trying to be normal, but not quite succeeding somehow. I’m probably projecting all sorts of things onto it. Hard not to while surrounded by the architecture of a rich history. The verandah game here makes me want to renovate my house ASAP.
The city feels older than most other places in the United States. Don’t know exactly how that is, but there’s a gravitas and spiritual weight to the city that you’d have to be completely dead inside to miss.
I’ve been glued to the window since we got here. Karl is driving. I’ve rolled down the passenger side rear window and am enjoying the view.
“Shut that,” he says.
“I can’t. I won’t be able to see anything.”
He tries to wind the window up from the electric controls up front. I use the controls back by me. The window starts making very distressed sounds that only get worse when I curl my fingers over the pane and physically push it down.
“Don’t make me stop this car,” Karl growls, warning me with a flaccid threat. I already know Gray will kill him if he so much as puts a finger on me. That’s what I tell myself, anyway. I guess Gray didn’t exactly kill him when he threw me in the back of the car at my place.
“Let her look out the window,” Gray says.
“You want her seen? You think it’s a good thing if she’s recognized, if someone takes her picture? You want this to be a public scandal?”
“Good point,” Gray says. “Sweetheart, put the window up.”
“No.”
Next thing I know, there’s a hard grip at the back of my neck, and Gray is hauling me across the seat and into his lap, one hand under my jaw, forcing me to look up at him.
“Do as you’re told,” he says, his eyes flashing at me with stern intention. “This is quite a dangerous journey. Don’t forget humans are never supposed to be seen in the company of wolves. Your presence with us, especially as everyone already knows about all your studies of our kind, will raise eyebrows.”
“Fine. But I want to go out for dinner later, when this is all over.”
He shakes his head slightly, his brows furrowed in confusion, and I realize suddenly that it’s very possible that this will never be over. There’s a problem that cannot easily be solved, or be solved at all. Humans are not allowed to know of their kind. I am a human who knows of their kind.
Satisfied that he’s able to wind the window up, Karl stops talking. We loop around a few old neighborhoods and finally slide into the gated driveway of a pretty palatial place. The sort of place my real estate agent would show me if I wanted. I think for a second about getting the address and having an offer made on the place. It’s a snotty move to try to buy someone’s pack den out from under them, but it’s also quite funny.
As we step out of the car, I feel quite nervous. The house is big and fancy, covered in both ivy and verandahs. I’m used to palatial dwellings, but some places just have gravitas the others don’t. This is definitely one of those places.
Gray takes me by the hand and leads me into the house via a side door that has been left open. It feels like a cozy entrance rather than the big palatial one that faces the street and is clearly designed to impress people.
The interior of the building is much like I expected. It’s clean, polished, and full of the kind of furniture that not only looks traditional, but is somehow comfortable as well. There’s a lot of paintings of wolves and things, which makes sense, keeping things on brand.
At first, nobody else seems to be present.
“Wait here,” Karl says. “I’ll get him.”
Gray and I linger on a Persian rug. I try to stay calm. I tell myself I am Calista Hart. If anything, these people should be feeling honored to meet me. I’m kind of famous. I’m an heiress. That counts for something in places like this, so I’ve been led to believe.
“So. This is the little heiress who is too precious to die,” a rough, deep voice intones.
It is followed in very short order by the alpha of New Orleans.