Dead in the Family

gnawed at me, thinking of Eric so close to me but in so much trouble.
    The confusion of what I was feeling through our blood bond was making me more jittery with every passing night. There were so many people sharing in that bond now, so much feeling going back and forth. It wore me out emotionally. Alexei was the worst. He was a very dead little boy, that was the only way I could put it: a child locked in a permanent grayness, a child who experienced only occasional flashes of pleasure and color in his new “life.” After days of experiencing what amounted to an echo of him living in my head, I’d decided the boy was like a tick sucking on the life of Appius Livius, Eric, and now me. He siphoned off a little every day.
    Apparently, Appius Livius was so used to Alexei’s draining him that he accepted it as part of his existence. Maybe—possibly—the Roman felt responsible for the trouble Alexei caused, since he’d brought him over. If that was Appius Livius’s conviction, I thought he was absolutely correct. I was sure that bringing Alexei to Eric, thinking the presence of another “child” would soothe Alexei’s psychosis, was a last-ditch effort to cure the boy. And Eric, my lover, was caught in the middle of all this along with all the problems he was staving off involving Victor.
    I felt less and less like a good person every day. As we walked from the driveway to Alcide’s front door, I admitted to myself that since my visit to Fangtasia, I found myself wishing that all of them would die—Appius Livius, Alexei, Victor.
    I had to shove all that into a mental corner, because I had to be on my game to enter a house full of Weres. Jason put his arm around my shoulders and gave me a half hug. “Sometime you’ll have to explain to me how come we’re doing this,” he said. “Because I think I kind of forgot.”
    I laughed, which was what he’d wanted. I put up a hand to ring the bell, but the door swung open before my fingertip made contact. Jannalynn was standing there in a sports bra and running shorts. (She always came up with wardrobe choices that startled me.) The running shorts showed concave dips by her hipbones, and I sighed. “Concave” was not a word I’d ever used in relation to my body.
    “Getting into the new job?” Jason asked her, stepping forward. Jannalynn had to either back up or block his way, and she chose to back up.
    “I was born for this job,” the young Were said.
    I had to agree. Jannalynn seemed to love doling out violence. At the same time, I wondered what job she could hold in the real world. She’d been bartending at a Were-owned bar in Shreveport when I’d first seen her, and I knew the owner of that bar had died in the struggle between the packs. “Where are you working now, Jannalynn?” I asked, since there shouldn’t be any need to keep that secret that I could see.
    “I manage the Hair of the Dog. The ownership passed to Alcide, and he felt I could handle the job. I have some help,” she said, which was a confession that surprised me.
    Ham, his arm around a pretty brunette in a sundress, was waiting across the foyer by the opened doors to the living room. He patted my shoulder and introduced his companion as Patricia Crimmins. I recognized her as one of the women who’d joined the Long Tooth pack in surrender after the Were war, and I tried to focus on her. But my attention kept straying. Patricia laughed and said, “It’s quite a place, isn’t it?”
    I nodded in silent agreement. I’d never been in the house before, and my eyes were drawn to the French doors on the other side of the big room. There were lights out in the large backyard, which not only was enclosed by a fence that had to be seven feet tall, but was also lined outside with those quick-growing cypresses that shoot up like spears. In the middle of the patio was a fountain, which would make getting a drink easy if you’d turned into a wolf. There was a lot of wrought iron furniture set around on the flagstones, too. Wow. I’d known the Herveauxes were well-to-do, but this was impressive.
    The living room itself was very “men’s club,” all glossy dark leather and paneling, and the fireplace was as big as fireplaces got in this day and age. There were animal heads mounted on the walls, which I thought was kind of amusing. Everyone seemed to have a drink in hand, and I located the bar at the center of the thickest cluster of Weres. I didn’t spot Alcide, who because of his height