Page 89 of Junk Magic

Sebastian’s jaw tightened some more, to the point that I was afraid it might shatter.

“You knew some of them were already in town,” Ulmer pointed out.

“In town, yes. But we don’t need them here!”

“Maybe not, but they’re coming. Gotta figure out what to say.”

Sebastian snarled something in wolf speak that even I didn’t understand.

But I guess Ulmer did, because he rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Probably not that.”

“The council is coming here?” I asked, which was a mistake. Because it brought Sebastian’s blue lasers back to me.

“Allow me to explain something,” he hissed. “You may be a war mage, but you are Arnou! My adopted sister that I brought into the clan at a good deal of political expense. I expected better than this of you. I deserve better!”

“You do,” I agreed, because it was true. I didn’t know what strings Sebastian had pulled to get me out of the mess with Lobizon, but the cost had probably been high.

“Then why do I find out only now that one of my clans is making the drug that turns us into monsters?”

The groundskeeper’s personal effects cascaded off the wall, including a smiling portrait of the man and who I assumed were his two sons. The glass shattered when the frame hit the floor, but I didn’t think Sebastian noticed. The people outside the door suddenly sprang away, however, because silence spells don’t block Were power.

Especially not that much power.

Ulmer sighed and sat back in his chair. “Did I miss something?”

I quickly filled him in while Sebastian paced, his sandals making slapping sounds on the tile floor, which wasn’t doing my nerves any good. And neither did Ulmer’s expression when I finished. I was suddenly grateful for the beard, because the part of his face that I could see . . .

“You didn’t think it necessary to tell us about this?” he asked. “To make a report before you took the day off with your vargulf boyfriend?”

I felt a reply spring to my lips, but bit it back because he was right. The thing was, I had made a report, but to Hargroves, not Sebastian. I technically had two bosses now, but I’d forgotten that in my confusion and one had been left out of the loop. And it had cost him.

It had cost a lot of people.

“I wasn’t thinking clearly,” I said, and managed not to wince at how lame that sounded.

“Yet you had the foresight to call in a query on Cloud Leaper.”

“I knew the Corps wouldn’t find anything—”

“No, but we might have!” Sebastian said, whirling on me. “Now the only lead we had is dead, along with his entire clan! And you knew what they were doing—all day—yet told us nothing.”

I just sat there, trying not to squirm, because he was right. I’d fucked up. And my mistake might have gotten a lot of people killed.

Not that I knew for a fact that Arnou would have found Cloud Leaper and the rest before karma caught up with them, but I didn’t know that it wouldn’t have, either. As the leading clan, it had a lot of resources to draw from, and the loyalty of the other clans. I might have prevented this, if I’d been thinking more like a wolf than a mage.

“I’m sorry,” I finally whispered, and heard him scoff, an angry expulsion of air.

“Yes, that’s helpful!”

“She did tell you about the drug,” Ulmer said, to my surprise. I guessed they must have discussed it after the late-night meeting of the brothers in my kitchen.

“But not that a clan was making it! We could have interrogated them, found out who they were supplying!” Sebastian’s hand hit the desk and I heard an ominous crack.

“That would be the dark mages who put them up to it,” I said evenly. Staying quiet would be more prudent right now, but I’d already done that and look where it had gotten us. “A small clan with meager resources would be exactly the type that the dark would approach—”

“To do what?”

“To interrupt the war, at least that’s what the Corps thinks. To keep us so busy running after drugged-up Weres that we can’t focus our attention elsewhere—”

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