Kevin retrieved the now-finished sheet of chocolate-chip cookies from the oven with one hand, replaced it with the next batch, and set the former on the table next to Deanna. While he went back to contemplating possibilities for things to make that might help with Jesse's frustration as well as his healing, Deanna started transferring cookies off the hot sheet so they could cool.
Even though Kevin had made sure, through most of the previous winter, that there was always a pot of soup on the dining room woodstove for random meals and warming up, he strongly suspected that at the moment, soup would only make Jesse feel like he was being treated as an invalid. The wolf was going to need to eat more than usual, though, and that was more likely to happen if there was something easily available.
If he'd had any idea what the wolves had planned to do earlier, he'd have done this last night, to make sure Jesse got a balanced meal before being helped up to his bedroom. But then, if he'd had any idea, he probably would have done his best to prevent it and keep Jess from ever leaving the house.
Wolves and their status and fighting and rules. If they had to challenge Rebecca, couldn't someone else have done it? But oh no, that's not part of the challenge conventions.
Damned wolves. The more you love 'em the more you want to grab them and shake them sometimes.
Aha, chili, and I'll get someone to run to the store tomorrow morning and get fresh rolls.
He set the big old cast-iron pot on the stove and rummaged in the freezer for ground beef. It was going to be a lot easier to make now, with Bane out running, Flynn with Cynthia asleep in her bed and Gisela in Deanna's and Shaine with Jesse, than it would be while the kitchen was a high-traffic zone.
“This is going to do it for the chocolate chip,” Deanna said, her voice breaking the quiet. “I assume you have more cookies in mind. What kind?”
“Peanut-butter, I think. Head for bed, Dia, these days you never know what's going to happen tomorrow and someone needs to be alert.”
“You think I'm leaving you here to be up until sunrise?”
“I'm just going to throw some chili together and leave it on the woodstove and do one more batch of cookies.”
“And I'm sure you believe that. But that isn't what you actually do when you're all restless like this.”
“I admit I'm tired. I just need to feel like I've accomplished something, then I can try to get my mind to slow down so I can sleep. I have no intention of being up until sunrise.” He dumped two pounds of frozen ground beef in the pot, put the top on, and rested both hands on the rim, touching both parts and thinking heat into them.
If he did that enough, his coven would find him passed out and hypothermic on the floor. Energy didn't just appear from nowhere on demand. Lose enough to drop his body temperature, and sleep would no longer be optional, it would be a fact.
Not the most pleasant way to get to sleep, however.
“I know you don't, but you don't watch the ti...” She halted mid-word as his attention turned elsewhere. “What is it?”
“Someone just came inside the walls. No Dandelion or Winter resonance.”
“At this hour? It's nearly midnight.”
“I know.” He let go of the pot—it was warm enough to begin thawing the meat anyway—and left the kitchen in the direction of the front door. Deanna followed.
“That's Sam,” he said in surprise, as they reached the big open hall just inside the door. “And someone with her?”
Deanna shrugged, passed him in a couple of longer quicker strides, and pulled the door open.
The pair with Sam cringed back instantly and in unison, and Kevin thought they might have bolted had Sam not laid a hand on the shoulder of each.
Startlingly like Jess, especially the longer-haired one on Sam's left who had his right arm in a makeshift sling; the shorter-haired one had an alarming-looking bruise on her jaw, and was keeping her weight carefully off her left leg. Both were dressed, more or less, but in dire need of both a bath and clean clothing of better repair and better fit.
Both looked intensely anxious, nostrils flaring to pick up scents—though the one in the sling flinched with every breath—and eyes flickering everywhere except up to meet Kevin's or Deanna's. Something in their body language, their expressions, screamed that they'd been living wild for so long it probably felt more normal to them.
“It's okay,” Sam said reassuringly, urging them back towards the door. “I promise, I promise, you are absolutely safe here from everything. No one in this house would ever hurt you. These are two of Jess' closest friends. He trusts them.”
The one in the sling whined plaintively. “Smell Jess...”
“He lives here,” Sam said patiently, and looked at Kevin and Deanna—Kevin wondered if they both looked as flat-out astonished as he felt. “No, you aren't imagining things. Jaisan is Jess' twin, and Aindry's their big sister.”
Deanna braced the door with her hip, and smiled at the two frightened wolves. “And here we thought our wolf-cub was one of a kind.” She offered a hand. “I'm Deanna. This is Kevin. Yes, Jess lives here, he's upstairs sleeping, although after the day he's had it would take an earthquake to wake him up.”
“I bet,” Kevin added, pitching his voice much the way he might to a nervous animal, smooth and gentle, “some real food that you don't have to catch first and a hot shower would feel wonderful.”
Both hesitated, gazes going back to Sam.
“I trust them,” Sam said. “Jess trusts them. Go on. Nothing can reach you while you're inside the walls. No demons, nothing else that would mean you any harm. Don't start asking questions right now, there's nothing so urgent that it can't wait until you're feeling more alert. Let Kev and Dia and their coven help, just like they've been helping Jess when he needs them for a while now. Okay?” She gave them a small push towards the door. It didn't take a genius to see that both remained uncertain, or that they were responding to Sam very much as they might to an alpha. “They've had demons making more and more attempts at killing them, so they've been avoiding people even more than before to keep bystanders from getting hurt, they're exhausted and badly injured and haven't been eating regularly. And from the sounds of it, they didn't have a home even before that.” She handed Deanna a canvas backpack with something inside; the attention of both wolves flicked towards it, following its location. “Protect that. It's more valuable than I can explain right now, and absolutely irreplaceable.”
Deanna nodded and passed it to Kevin. “We will.” She stepped through the doorway, and Kevin retreated a couple of steps; the two young wolves, with a last uneasy look at Sam, obeyed her gesture and went inside.
So they didn't see Sam watching them, or the sorrow in her eyes.
“It's been a very long and draining kind of day,” Sam said wearily. “I seriously need my bed. Look after them for me, okay? Please?”
“You don't even need to ask,” Deanna said gently. “You know we will, just like with Jess. Go get some sleep. 'Sela's here, I'll go wake her up and we'll get them fed and into a hot shower and a warm bed.”
Sam nodded and turned back to what Kevin thought was his second-cousin Katherine's car. Somehow, he suspected that the amount of faith she was placing in Sundark, to take care of Jess' lost siblings and that backpack in her place, was greater than he could readily grasp.
Deanna closed the door, careful not to let the heavy old wood make any loud thumps.
Both wolves, Kevin thought, were straining for every scent they could possibly pick up, normal wolf reaction to being on new ground but the anxiety behind it was less typical.
“There's lots of smells,” Aindry said apprehensively. “Lots of people. Wolves.”
“All the wolves you smell are Jess' pack,” Kevin assured them. “They'll be very happy to have you here, they aren't going to see you as intruders.”
“Water-people!” Aindry's head snapped up, and she backed towards the door, wild-eyed. Jaisan spun to catch her before she fell, his breath catching in a thin whine as her weight shifted towards him.
“That's Shaine,” Kevin said. “He ran away from the lake because of what his family did to yours. He spent a long time pretending to be human, and Jess wouldn't be alive right now without him. He might be the one person Jess trusts the most, to tell you the truth. I know he'd never in a million years do anything to hurt you, and I'm pretty sure he'd probably do crazy things to protect you. Sam knows him and she brought you here anyway. Would she do that, or would Jess live here, if he wasn't safe to be around?”
“Probably not,” Jaisan said uncertainly, looking to Aindry for a decision.
“Of course not,” Deanna said briskly. “So that's enough of that. It's chilly out. Come on in the dining room by the woodstove. I'll be right back with a couple of blankets and I'm going to wake up our healer. Kev will find you something to eat, and afterwards we'll start looking at that shower, all right?”
Deanna, apparently, had found an approach that worked: they went in the direction she indicated without protest. She gave Kevin a quick glance, and strode off rapidly deeper into the house—Kevin thought he knew where she was going after rousing Gisela.
Both dropped, awkwardly and with too-obvious pain, to the thick rug near the woodstove, eyes closing as the warmth wrapped around them—which didn't mean they weren't still hyperalert. Kevin set the canvas backpack on the big old oak dining table.
“Stay here,” he told them. “Sam's right, you're absolutely safe. I'll be right back.”
He removed the sheet of cookies from the oven—they were slightly overcooked, but not so much so that they wouldn't be eaten anyway—and left it on the table, then filled a plate with still-warm cookies. Figuring odds were very high that Gisela was going to want Deanna to make painkiller-and-wolfsbane tea, he filled the kettle and put it on to start heating. Then he took the jug of milk from the fridge and grabbed two mugs from the dish-rack, and returned to the dining room. He heard one or both talking, voices very low, but they stopped before he was near enough to make out anything said.
He set plate, jug, and cups on the hardwood floor beside the rug. “Help yourselves. I'll find something more substantial, but that'll do for the moment, I think.”
Jaisan's nostrils flared. “Fresh cookies?”
“They can't get much fresher. There are more in the kitchen, so don't worry if you finish those ones.”
Deanna joined them with two crocheted afghans filling her arms—one grey and white and two shades of purple, one black and deep purple and two shades of grey. She draped one around each of the wolves.
The reaction was subtle but immediate, and to anyone used to wolves, it was unmistakable. Both relaxed, Jaisan pulling the afghan closer around him and higher—where he'd smell it with every breath, in fact—and rubbing against it with one cheek.
“Really Jess,” he whispered, with a faint smile.
*'Sela says to make painkiller tea,* Deanna said silently. *She's getting dressed and getting herself together mentally, she'll be here in a minute. Shaine's going to move so he's not upstairs at all when we get these two up there, so they can meet him with Jess awake enough to help. I'll figure out beds somewhere for everyone.* Kevin nodded, and perched on one of the wooden chairs.
Mandisa would be forgiving about being hauled out of bed for an emergency, but Gisela would probably be much less frightening. Better to let Gisela do what she could and make the call on whether they needed more expert assistance.
“Really Jess,” Kevin confirmed. “But you aren't going to want to tackle all the stairs up to where he's sleeping until you're ready to stay up there. In hindsight, we should probably have given him a room on the ground floor. And I don't think we can wake him up just now. Long day.”
“Soon?”
“Soon. I promise.”
