Enemy Territory

Jericho throws the tiller hard over and the boat heels so sharply that river water slaps over the side and into your lap.

"Down," he says. "Hold the rail."

You hold the rail. The Pellbrook launch roars past where you were a second ago, so close its wake lifts your whole boat and drops it. You hear men shouting. You smell Pellbrook on the wind: cut cranberry vines, diesel, the cologne Cashel's enforcers all buy from the same shop.

"They're turning," you say.

"I know."

"They're faster than us."

"On open water." Jericho opens the throttle and points the bow at the south bank, at a wall of black marsh grass that looks solid. "We're not staying on open water."

You brace for impact. Instead the grass parts.

It's a channel. Narrow as a hallway, black water between walls of cordgrass taller than your head, and Jericho takes it at a speed that should kill you both. Left. Right. A hard left through a gap you never saw. The grass whips your face. The red moon flickers overhead between the blades.

Behind you, the launch's spotlight snaps on and sweeps the marsh. It can't follow. It's too wide. You hear its engine roar, stall, roar again as someone tries a channel and runs aground.

Jericho throttles down to a murmur and lets the boat drift through the dark.

For a minute neither of you speaks. Your heart is slamming. Your green silk dress is soaked to the knees.

"You knew that channel was there," you say.

"I grew up in it." He glances at you. "So did you, in yours. Pellbrook's bog ditches. You could walk them blind."

You could. You have, in March floods with a dead flashlight. You don't ask how he knows that, either. You're collecting questions for tomorrow.

"Who was on that launch?"

"Cador Bastable, I'd guess. Domenica's dog." His jaw tightens. "They weren't trying to sink us. They wanted me to stop and fight in front of witnesses so the Council could say Redfen broke the peace on the Blood Moon."

"And if you had?"

"Then you'd be in that infirmary by morning, and I'd be in a cell." He steers around a bend. "So I didn't."

Saltwick at night is a crooked harbor town of gray shingles and fishing boats, a boatyard with half-built hulls standing on blocks like whale skeletons, a fish market shuttered for the night. Every light seems to be on. Every porch seems to have someone on it.

They watch you come up the dock.

Redfen wolves. Big shoulders, weathered jackets, salt in their hair. The women look at your silk dress and your ruined hair. The men look at Jericho, and then at you, and their faces close like doors.

"Pellbrook," someone says, not quietly. Then, louder: "He brought the Leverett girl home."

"She's not a Leverett," Jericho says, without raising his voice. "And she's under my hand. Anybody who forgets that can take it up with me tonight."

Nobody takes it up with him.

The red-bearded giant from the island is already on the dock. Ruairi Coyne, Redfen's Beta, according to the woman who comes running down the pier behind him. She's small and freckled and has Jericho's black hair in a messy braid, and she throws her arms around him so hard he rocks back a step.

"You absolute lunatic," she says into his jacket. "You actually did it. In front of the Council."

"Aoife. My sister," Jericho says over her head. "Aoife, this is Ava."

Aoife pulls back and looks at you. Up and down. Her eyes are as grey as his. Then she grins, sudden and bright.

"You're shorter than I thought," she says. "Hi. Welcome to enemy territory. Your dress is ruined. I've got sweatpants."

"Aoife," Ruairi rumbles.

"What? She's soaked."

"She's Pellbrook. She's the Leverett boy's girl."

"She was," Jericho says, and the word lands like a door shutting. "Get the truck."

The keeper's cottage sits alone on a little rise in the salt marsh a mile from town. Gray shingles, a red door, a single window glowing gold. Somebody has lit the lamp.

"It belonged to the old tide-gate keeper," Jericho says, walking you up the plank path. "Nobody's lived here for years. Aoife cleaned it this week."

This week. Before the Blood Moon.

You stop on the path.

He stops too. He doesn't pretend not to understand.

"Tomorrow," he says quietly. "I promised you tomorrow."

He opens the red door and steps back so you can go in first. One room and a bedroom. A woodstove already warm. A kettle. A quilt on the bed, a stack of towels, a basket on the table: bread, apples, cheese, a jar of soup with a note in Aoife's handwriting that says EAT THIS, PELLBROOK.

Jericho puts a key in your palm. Brass, new-cut.

"The lock's new. That's the only key. I don't have one. Neither does anyone else." He sets a phone on the table beside it. "New phone. Pellbrook pays your old one; they'll be reading it. This one has three numbers in it. Mine, Aoife's, Ruairi's."

You stare at him. "Why are you doing this?"

"Rules first, Ava," he says, as if you haven't spoken. "One. You're under my hand, not in it. You're not my mate, my property or my prisoner. You come and go as you like. If you want to leave Redfen, I'll drive you to the county line myself."

"And if Pellbrook's waiting at the county line?"

"Then I'll drive you further." His mouth twitches. "Two. Lock the door at night. Not because of me. Because of everyone else."

"And three?"

He looks at you for a long moment in the lamplight. The scar through his eyebrow. The salt drying in his hair.

"Three," he says. "You can give it back any time. I meant that."

Then he leaves. He just leaves, pulls the red door shut behind him, and you hear his boots on the planks fading toward the road.

You lock the door.

You sit down on the edge of the bed in your ruined dress, and the shaking finally comes. Seven years. Two hundred wolves. I, Cashel Leverett, reject you. The snap of it under your ribs, still aching like a pulled tooth.

Your old phone buzzes in your purse.

You pull it out. Cashel.

Come home and I'll fix this. You don't know what you've done. Mother is furious. Don't let him touch you.

You read it three times. Then you open the kitchen drawer and drop the phone in and close it, hard.

The cottage is so quiet you can hear the marsh breathing outside, the tide whispering back out through the grass.

On the table, the new phone lights up.

One of the three numbers. Calvert. One line.

The enemy alpha is texting you.