The Loup Garou Society by Julie Steimle (ereader with android txt) 📖

cafe where they could purchase replacement outfits. She got herself a summery, sleeveless dress with a matching hat, while Rick was in a nearby shop checking out a number of trendy outfits which on most occasions he never would have touched. There were baggy pants, which he realized in a pinch would be lousy to run in. He finally selected an outfit a skater would wear, including a hat, and he even picked up a skateboard for show.

“Do you know how to use that thing?” Margarete asked when she saw him carrying it.

Rick shrugged with a smirk. “I’m decent enough.”

She chuckled, walking alongside him down the sidewalk. “It is going to get heavy…”

“Don’t worry,” he said, looking around for backpacks next. “I know what I’m doing.”

Chuckling more, they strolled along the street together.

Eventually they picked up bags to carry their other clothes more comfortably—hers a leather satchel which hung femininely on her arm. His a sport backpack which he filled with his things. He also picked up drinks and tucked in snacks for ‘just in case’.

Margarete then said, “You have your cellphone, with you, right?”

He nodded. “Don’t you?”

She shook her head. “I’m borrowing one from a friend. I left my phone at the house. The pack can track us with GPS.”

Staring at her for a moment, Rick said, “If that were the case, then why did they follow you home?”

“They were trying to catch you.” She shrugged, walking silently. “…And I have a history of switching phones.”

He gazed at her, amazed.

“I don’t like be followed,” she said. But as they walked on, she asked, “But, can I use your phone for a minute?”

He nodded, handing it to her, yet holding on.

“Does it have a tracker?” she asked, looking like she’d smash it.

Rick set it in her hand. “No. When the CIA are connected with hunters, you disable GPS and add scramblers to your tech. I have one of the safest cell phones on the planet—soon to be obsolete, though.”

“Obsolete?” She opened the call screen and punched in a number, peeking at him.

Nodding, Rick explained, “My friend Semour Dawson is about to be the next Steve Jobs. He’s brilliant with machines. In fact, we ought to start comparing him to Nikola Tesla soon. He’s more of an inventor. The guy is working on a cell phone system that will not need a carrier or provider, but can piggy back on satellites to make calls and be basically untraceable.”

She paused before finishing the number. “Seriously?”

He nodded, then gesture to the phone. “Who are you calling?”

“Genevieve,” she said. She pressed the last number and pressed call.

They waited, listening to the dial tone.

Genevieve picked up after three rings.

Rick tried to listen in as Margarete spoke to her, but he hardly caught more than a few words. Margarete spoke in rapid-fire French. From the rise and fall in debate, he could tell there was a small argument, and then an agreement somewhere in the end. He could also tell Genevieve was warning Margarete of something. When she ended the call and handed back the phone she smiled, though there was pain on her face.

“So…” He tucked the phone back into his pocket. “What’s the plan? What did she say?”

Faint color rising to her cheeks, Margarete said, “She’s angry. And for a moment I could not convince her to come. She says the house is being watched….”

He nodded, waiting for more.

“But she will meet us,” she said. “She might want to push you off the top of the Eiffel Tower, but she will meet us.”

“Great! Where?” Rick straightened up. “Where?”

“The Eiffel Tower.”

He stared. “That wasn’t a joke?”

She shrugged and continued on. “It is an active public place. Difficult to corner someone there. And it is… high.”

His stare widened. “She still wants to kill me.”

“Yes.” Margarete continued on. But then she chuckled. “…Though in the middle of the day with a pack trailing after her, I doubt she will do it.”

“That’s very comforting…” Rick murmured, following along.

 

They took a direct route to the Eiffel Tower. Rick paid for their metro tickets. When they arrived, there was already a substantial crowd of tourists. Rick quickly blended in.

“So, do you want to go directly to the top or do you want to climb the stairs?” she asked, smirking at him teasingly.

“Stairs,” he said without hesitation.

For a second, Margarete looked like she wanted to swat him. But she shook that glower off her face and threw up her hands. “Stairs it is.”

They climbed up along with the crowds. Going up, there was a substantial number of tourists from different parts of Europe, along with visitors from Asia and Africa. He picked up on a couple speaking with either an Australian accent or a South African one. He couldn’t tell the difference. When they were on the second level, Margarete pointed out a couple from French Canada, making fun of their accent. He wondered if he sounded that snobby.

Rick gave Margarete the money and she purchased the tickets.

It took a while.

So, while she was in line, Rick looked out the glass windows, walking along the lower edge and peering through the telescopes to see the city. It was quite a sight. On the lower deck with him was a school club, all the students in bright French flag patterned tee shirts which had the words French Club on them. They were speak American English.

While he was examining one particular souvenir, thinking of what he could bring back for Abey and Jessica, he overheard one of the girls squeal and say, “Hey, isn’t that Howard Richard Deacon the Third?”

He tried not to react. Normally he wasn’t recognized when in a big city. He wasn’t that famous after all.

“Nah,” another girl said. “He looks like a skater. Would a wealthy bazillionaire go skateboarding in Paris?”

“They could afford to skateboard anywhere.”

He tried to slowly maneuver away from them, pretending he did not hear them or know what they were saying. Now he really wished he had studied harder in his French class. If he had, he could have just pretended to be a local.

“Go ask him,” one of the girls said.

He peeked out of the corner of his eye. He saw three girls in matching shirts from that American high school club. They were probably in his grade or a bit younger. One girl with long bushy brown hair stood back with her arms folded, looking annoyed with her giddy friends—a blonde with a stylish straight bob and her toast-colored gal pal with sporty braids. The blonde was nudging braid girl.

“Jenny, leave him alone,” the bushy haired girl hissed after them. “The Deacons would have bodyguards. That guy looks like he is here alone.”

“Shut up, Audry!” the blonde snapped back through her teeth. “Don’t you know he’s a bad boy? I heard he used to sneak out of his private school in New York all the time.”

“I totally want to tame him,” the braids girl said, near giggly.

It was so silly. But he wondered who had spilled the beans that he had snuck out of school back in New York. The school wouldn’t have. But then he realized that Selena probably had said something to a gossip columnist in her strategy to get Ewan P. Steed to believe they were a serious couple. Those society gossip magazines often cornered her for statements, and she liked to talk.

He took another step away, pretending he did not overhear… though others around them who understood English were looking to see whom they were talking about.

“Um…” The blonde mustered up the guts to talk to him, tapping him on the shoulder. “Excuse me, but aren’t you—”

“Rick! I got the tickets!” Margarete jogged up to him. “Let’s go.”

Smiling, Rick quickly joined his sister and together they hurried to the stairs for the climb upwards.

“See,” he heard that girl Audry say. “His name was Rick. And he was with that woman.”

Both girls pulled back, frowning.

“I think she looks a little old for him,” the blonde said.

“Homewrecker,” braids muttered.

“Maybe she is his sister,” that Audry peevishly said to console them. Rick did not hear the rest.

Rick and Margarete climbed up the stairs at a slow pace. He would have gone faster, but Margarete really wasn’t the climbing, walking, hiking type. Not that she wasn’t fit or anything. It just wasn’t something she did for sport, and said so.

There were fewer people going up as there were going down. As they went up, Rick had to let Margarete rest a number of times. They could both feel the wind blowing between the steel girders and mesh, and the entire tower seemed to sway as they ascended over Paris. Margarete went white and clung to the nearly swaying metal rail as they went higher and higher. But it was such an odd sensation for Rick, so much that he wondered if this was what it felt like to fly. He’d have to ask Eve McAllister who could pull out wings the span of a dragon’s from the birthmark in her back. Eve went flying almost every night, something he thought was a great deal better than turning into a wolf at will. Or… he could just text his old roommate, Tom Brown, who floated on the air with his hand-sized wings and hardly felt the effects of gravity unless he wanted to.

“Can we please slow down?” he heard Margarete say from the a few steps below.

Rick hadn’t realized he had gone ahead. She looked frozen there, staring through the metal mesh at Paris below. He walked down again. “You really don’t have a head for heights, do you?”

She shook her head, wide-eyed. “I used to think I did.” She then stared up at him. “But you. The tower is swaying. Don’t you feel it at all?”

Thinking just a moment, he shrugged and took her arm to stabilize her.  “I guess it just doesn’t bother me.”

She stared more, then shook her head, carefully placing her feet. “Aren’t you afraid of anything?” Her voice was shaking.

Sighing, Rick nodded. “Tons of things. Getting shot at. Eating garlic or honey and not being able to breathe. Touching silver.”

Margarete scoffed. “Those are easily avoidable.”

“Not for me,” he said, shuddering. “I’ve… I’ve nearly died on a number of occasions because people have purposely put honey in my food, or garlic.”

She halted. “You can’t be serious.”

“Totally am,” he said. He then shuddered, thinking about the time Ewan P. Steed almost killed him with a sorbet, a silver spoon, and a cough drop. He could barely breathe. He was lucky he had been taken to a hospital in time.

Breathing hard, trying to keep her eyes off the large amount of sky beneath her, she said, “But what about all your scars. I overheard you have a claw mark—”

“Ah,” Rick nodded. “Admittedly, that terrified me. That demon could have killed me.”

She lurched to a halt. “Demon?”

Nodding, Rick sighed. “Yeah. Demon. Shapeshifter, which my roommate said was a boogieman—only this one was a Chinese breed.”

“Cute.” She chuckled thoroughly in disbelief. “You had me there for a second. What was it really? Another wolf? A bear?”

Rick shook his head, letting go of her arm. He took a step back from her and leaned against the metal frame, gazing at her. “No. It was a demon.”

Her eyes peered at him skeptically. In her eyes, he could see there was no trace of a chance that she would believe that demons were real. But he wanted to help her understand that the pack had truly sheltered her from a larger world, so he said, “Margarete, I don’t know what the pack tells you. I but grew up in a completely different situation than you. And the world outside the pack is a lot… bigger.”

She just stared.

“That is, there is a lot more in it besides werewolves and humans,” he said.

Margarete nodded, quickly averting her eyes from the ground below. “Of course. There are also vampires.”

“Yes, there are.” He nodded to himself. “I’ve met a couple of them also.”

 Her eyes widened on him. He somehow knew she