Page 38 of Fated Exile

"You're right—I didn't." Here is the part where Cat raises a clever brow. "If I learned anything in my high school theater troupe, it was how to pantomime properly. I insisted he take the first hit, since he was our host, and once I was sure he was at least a little bit high, I pretended to take the second. It took all my skills to pretend to inhale without actually inhaling."

"You'll have to show me that trick sometime. I'm a terrible actress." Kerry shakes her head. "What happened after that? How'd you and your friends get out of there?"

"By being as pleasant as possible—at least at first. Once I was done, I thanked him, watched him take the next few, and excused myself to the ladies room. Meghan and Louise joined me, only instead of hanging right into the bathroom, we ran down the hallway."

Cat's eyes glimmer with memory. "On the way out, I jumped up and grabbed the machete off the rack. I swear, Louise looked at me like she thought I was insane, and maybe I was. But we got out of there with the thing, and I still have it hanging up in my apartment in San Diego. Meghan hot-wired the guy's Jeep and we split it before he was any wiser. And that's the end of the story."

Walking into the room, I catch Kerry's attention and she beams at me. "Delilah, your foster mother Cat has just been regaling me with thebeststories. I can't believe some of the things she's been up to!"

"Trust me, the more you get to know her the more you'll believe they're all very real." I raise my brows at Cat and motion towards Kerry. "Aren't you going to tell her the rest of the story?"

My foster mother shoots me an annoyed look. "Why ruin a good ending?"

"What, what is it?" Kerry looks back and forth between us, propped up on the recliner opposite Cat's position on the sofa. "I want to hear the whole thing. Whatever it is, I'm sure it's just grand."

"Oh, it is." Cat sighs as I sit down next to her on the sofa, scooting over and shooting me a betrayed look as I launch into thetrueversion of the end of the story. "Cat and her friends got out of there alright, and in the lick of time, because Mr. Machete Meth Man was coming to the door to yell at them when they peeled out.

"But halfway back to San Antonio, Cat got a case of the heebie-jeebies and insisted they pull over. She wasconvincedthat she accidentally swallowed some of the meth and spent the whole night making herself puke and taking nausea medicine to soak up the fumes. Aunt Louise told me that she acted like a recovered addict for months afterwards, telling somber stories about her own fight against addiction to anyone who'd listen."

"I had a hankering!"

"Maybe in your paranoid mind you did," I shoot back, grinning as Cat throws daggers at me with her eyes. "Louise said you barely even put the pipe near your mouth and you'd wrapped your fingers around the tip of it. If you tasted something funny, it was probably your own fingers."

Kerry laughs at this, wiping her eyes as they water. "I wish I had stories like that. I've spent so much of my life in that damned cavern, watching over that witch of a woman. Now I'm too old to get out there."

"Too old? Ha!" Barking a laugh, Cat slaps her thigh and shakes her head emphatically. "I may be past my days of stealing machetes and faking a meth hit, but I still get up to things with my friends. We're just a little classier about what kind of trouble we get up to these days."

"I'll have to see if I can come along, once Delphine is taken care of," Kerry says, her voice wistful and her eyes full of hope. She glances over at me and frowns a little as she adds, "If that's okay with you, Delilah. I don't want to impose myself on your life too quickly."

"Of course it's okay with me." I put my hand on her knee and squeeze. "I'm so glad to have you in my life, Aunt Kerry. I can't believe I never even knew you existed. We were so close this whole time, and so far away."

She smiles wistfully. "We were. But the truth is, even if you'd known about me, I doubt we ever could've done much besides meet, and that alone would've been dangerous. As the last living weaver of the coven, it's my responsibility—or at least itwas—to keep the spells holding Delphine captive going and fed. I never could've left the mountain long enough for a visit, and it would've been too dangerous to have you come visit me, with her right there desperate to take you. No, this is the only moment we ever could've met each other, and unfortunately, it's under the worst of circumstances."

Silence falls around the room. Though I'm comforted to have two women I care about so deeply nearby, one who raised me and one who I want to knoweverythingabout, I can't stop the trepidation that slides down my spine.

Wolves are patrolling the border, yes, and even sitting inside I can feel my connection to the land, like a reminder sitting in the back of my mind. But Delphine is more powerful than we could ever really guess, capable of extending her influence even while she was in captivity.

I'm desperately afraid that the only reason she hasn't attacked us again or sent her vampires against us is because she doesn't want to—not because she can't. Which means the worst is yet to come.

Into the silent and oppressive atmosphere, Niall clears his throat and speaks up. "You must know a lot about witchcraft and its history, Kerry. Your knowledge is a welcome addition to our side of things. We need someone like you around here."

"Oh, I don't know about that." She waves away his words casually. "Sure, the coven has handed down information for generations. But not all of it is as useful as you might think. Some of it is so half-baked it's hard to tell whether it's history or myth. And other things apply only to the most random of moments. I know twelve different stories about floating cattle and five different legends concerning the underworld, but next to nothing about the creation of werewolf territories or how to translate a spell to another language."

Her words spark a curiosity in me. "Do you know about hybrids? I mean, other than Delphine. Last night Elder Vivia came to me and answered a lot of my questions, but she wasn't able to tell meeverything."

Kerry frowns a little. "The elder! Niall mentioned a little about that when he picked me up, but you never mentioned it on the phone."

I feel a blush heat up my cheeks. "I'm sorry, I totally forgot. It's been a long day, and I was so worried about Bastian. The long and short of it is, I woke up in the middle of the night and..."

Slowly at first, then with more confidence, I tell her all about Vivia's visit with me in the middle of the night. I stumble a bit when I come to the part about having five mates, but Kerry barely even blinks at it. "Yes, of course—Delphine was supposed to have five as well. It makes sense in a way that you'd be just as strong."

When I come to the end, I have to tell her about the dark presence that appeared in the Mating Circle. She frowns, murmuring something beneath her breath, then blinks as I mention that Vivia was never able to tell me how to defeat Delphine, exactly.

"Oh, oh!" Kerry snaps, sitting upright. "I know a little about that."

"You do?" Niall takes interest in the conversation suddenly, reminding me of his presence in the room. He'd been so quiet that I almost forgot he was here.

"Yes—although..." She halts a little, brows creasing. "Honestly, I'm not sure it's helpful. I only know a few things about hybrids because all of us in the coven had to study up on Delphine. But obviously we never knew how to kill her, or we would've done it ourselves."

---