He squeezed my fingers. “Some lies are kinder than some truths.”
As we turned down Liam’s driveway, I asked, “Is your dad home?”
“Not yet. He’s coming back today.”
Through the picture window, I spotted Liam sitting on his couch. Cole, Matt, and Lucas were there too. I was glad Liam wasn’t alone. I didn’t hear any human heartbeats, so I guessed Tamara wasn’t around.
I started to disengage my fingers from August’s, but he held on to them.
I smiled at him. “Can’t get out of the car if I’m holding your hand.”
“I’m worried what’ll happen once I let go.”
“Once you let go?”
His gaze shifted toward Liam.
Oh. “I’m yours, August.”
“Say it again,” he whispered, his tone an octave deeper.
“I’m yours.” I leaned over and kissed him, sensing several sets of eyes on us.
My promise combined with the kiss loosened his fingers but didn’t do much to ease the tension in his shoulders.
Liam’s front door was open. As I strutted inside, all eyes turned to me. Probably because I was giving off way-too-cheery vibes.
Lucas’s scarred eyebrow hiked up. “How many bowls of Lucky Charms did you ingest this morning?”
I rolled my eyes and then announced, “I know how Cassandra killed Julian!” I said it so loudly Morgan herself probably heard me all the way back at the inn.
Liam, who’d been sitting a little hunched, straightened.
“She’s been poisoning herself with silver.”
The silence that ensued was deafening.
“Forget the Lucky Charms, what the fuck have you been smoking?” Lucas asked.
I shot him a genial scowl. “What she has on her mouth isn’t a birthmark. Silver poisoning causes lips and nails to turn blue.” They all stared at me as though I’d morphed into a squirrel.
“That’s impossible, Clark,” Lucas said. “Silver kills us.”
“Not if you take Sillin to balance it out,” I countered, feeling more and more certain about my theory.
“If she’s ingesting Sillin, then there’s no way she can shift,” Cole said.
Their mood was seriously starting to put a damper on mine. “Liam, remember her story about the toxic waste poisoning? What if the toxin was silver? What if she somehow built an immunity to it? Would that be possible?”
“What toxic waste poisoning?” August asked. The first words he’d uttered since stepping inside Liam’s house. He was leaning against a wall, long sleeves pushed up to his elbows, arms crossed in front of his chest.
Lucas tipped his head in my direction. “The day she went to have tea at the inn with Morgan-”
August’s expression darkened. “You went to the inn?”
“Yes, but not for a tea party.” This time, there was nothing amiable about the scowl I shot Lucas. “I went to talk to her about canceling the duel, which she refused. And then she filled me in on her pack’s history. She told me that what decimated the original Creeks was their water source. Apparently, it was polluted.” I perked up again as an idea materialized. “Is there a way to see the topography of their old territory? Maybe there’s a mine, or a news article.”
“Cole?” Liam said. “Can you look it up?”
Cole nodded and went to take a seat at the game table where a laptop was already powered on. As he clicked away on the keypad, I walked over to him.
“Can you shift?” Liam’s voice was taut and low.
I glanced over my shoulder.”No,” August said.
“When did you do the injection again?”
“Nine days ago.”
“Have you tried shifting this morning?”
“Yes. It didn’t work.”
“Show me.”
“Why?” Tendons writhed beneath the skin of his forearms. “You think I’m lying?”
A nerve ticked in Liam’s jaw. “Greg will be over soon. He can test your blood to see how much Sillin’s left.”
Wishing those two could bury the hatchet, I sighed and returned my attention to Cole’s computer screen.
“So . . . anything?” Matt asked, slinking toward me as though to move as far away as possible from Liam and August.
Windows were popping open on the computer, one over the other, and then a map appeared. Cole zoomed in, then clicked on something that turned the flat map 3-dimensional.
He squinted at the screen before leaning back in his chair and clucking his tongue. “So Ness is a little genius.”
My skin prickled. “There’s a mine?”
“There’s a mine. A silver mine. And a bunch of class action suits filed to have it shut down by a certain Henry Morgan.”
“Was that Cassandra’s father?”
“Uncle.” Liam’s breath burst against my temple.
So concentrated on the screen, I hadn’t heard him come up behind me.
“He was the Creek Alpha at the time,” Lucas explained.