Page 83 of Junk Magic

Laura shrugged. “There’s always a first time,” she said optimistically, and left.

I watched her go, wondering how much trouble the stubborn Lupa was likely to make. I decided to let Hargroves or Sebastian explain things to her, depending on who she cornered next, and turned my attention to the young man. And discovered that he wasn’t looking at me.

Chapter Twenty-Three

I watched the boy’s Adam’s apple bob up and down as he looked at what was left of a clan’s best defenders. Laura must have doubled over the sheets when I wasn’t looking, hiding the worst of the damage, but it didn’t help much. A ripped-up body under a sheet, as it turned out, looked a lot like a ripped-up body under a sheet.

I suddenly remembered that I was dealing with a kid, even if he was taller than me. And probably a traumatized one at that. Weres might be exposed to more violence than most humans, but what I’d seen today wasn’t normal, even for us.

“We can go somewhere else,” I offered.

But the boy was made of the same stern stuff as his mother, and shook his head. “It’s okay. Saw worse out there.”

He jerked his head in the direction of the arena, and I used the opportunity to maneuver us around so that he was facing the door to the outside. “Yes, I heard that you discovered the . . . situation.”

“Situation.” He choked out a laugh. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

I’d made my voice softer, and that and the fact that he was no longer staring at corpses seemed to help. I also decided that I might have underestimated his age. I revised my guess upward to maybe fifteen, taking into account the acne on the otherwise smooth cheeks and the hint of peach fuzz on the upper lip. He also had lashes as long as a girl’s and would probably turn heads in a few years.

“Got a drone for my birthday,” he told me tersely. “Wanted to try it out. We’re not supposed to go into the arena, but a lot of us do anyway. The back tunnels get . . . claustrophobic . . . after a while.”

“You’re not allowed to go outside?”

He shrugged. “Sure. As long as we take a couple of adults with us, who usually don’t want to stay for long. And it has to be in daylight and in sight of the lookout stations up top. And we have to have a good reason.”

I thought that having a bunch of kids cooped up in an unfamiliar place dealing with a move, a war, and what was likely a bunch of antsy adults ought to be reason enough. But then, I wasn’t a parent. I’d probably be overprotective in their position, too.

Of course, they might have loosened up the restrictions after a while, had everything gone according to plan. But probably not now. And Jake seemed to be thinking along the same lines, because he suddenly scowled.

“Everybody’s so focused on the war, on keeping us safe. Yet it got in anyway. Looks like nowhere is safe anymore.”

“We’ll look after you,” I promised.

Which . . . may not have been my best move. Angry dark eyes met mine, and then the floodgates opened. The formerly quiet, scared teen started talking and couldn’t seem to stop.

“You can’t! The hunters came for us at Red Mountain, and I—we barely got away! Then they followed us here and—”

“Those weren’t hunters out there.”

“Then what were they? Why would anyone do that?” he gestured wildly in the direction of the carnage. “How did they do that? And who were those people? I never even saw any of them before and now they’re dead. Did you see—”

“Yes—”

“—what somebody did to them? They were torn up. But nobody seems to know why, and nobody will tell us anything! We’re just supposed to go back to our rooms and wait until the adults figure it out, but we can’t. How can we go back there? How can we stay here at all? But if we don’t, where do we go? The war is everywhere—”

“And so are your protectors,” I said, griping his arm.

But he just looked at me, shaken and miserable. He needed comforting, like the frightened kid he still was. But his mother had been busy trying to deal with the fallout and I was a lousy substitute.

Not for the first time, I wished that I had Cyrus’s easy way with people. Even when he was being stern, they gravitated toward him. And damn, didn’t I wish he was here right now!

But he wasn’t, and this boy needed something.

Or someone.

“Is your dad around?” I asked, and immediately wished I hadn’t.

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