by Holley Trent
She hoped he forgot soon. She wanted him to come home.
She stepped into Oscar’s newspaper office and spotted the Wolf bent over his desk.
He looked up and raised one of his thick brows. “Well, hello, kitties.”
Lola nodded warmly at him. “I heard that you’d returned with the mail. Was there none for us?”
Oscar grimaced and rubbed a hand down his scruffy chin. “Nada, sorry. Not even a catalog. I won’t bother to ask if you were expecting something.”
“Always expecting.” Lola tapped her fan against the side of her thigh with frustration.
Is Yaotl trying to drive me mad?
Certainly he’d seen his mail by then. She didn’t expect much more than a sentence or two. She would be happy with “I’m fine. Goodbye.” His silence was devastating.
“Maybe it’ll turn up next time.” Oscar wiped ink from his hands and then batted at a smudge on the cheek Elizabeth pointed to. “Ah, forget it.”
Lola peered at the compact newspaper proof Oscar had been studying and furrowed her brow. Oscar ran the newspaper singlehandedly and fielded every rumor and whisper of gossip in town to fill the columns. Sometimes, his sources lacked credibility, but his accuracy rate was as high as Lola had ever seen from a journalist. “What is this item about land prospectors?” she asked.
“And bandits?” Looking over Lola’s shoulder, Elizabeth snorted. “Come on, Oscar. You keep running the same stories and just changing the names.”
“You accusing me of making it all up?” he asked, voice spiked with indignation.
“Who’s your source?” Elizabeth asked.
“Sheriff Nickerson brings some of that stuff in.”
“Well, there you go,” the Cougar said with a huff. “It’s fake news. Stop running it. He’s trying to get everyone all scared and reactive for no good reason.”
“He’s been eyeing buildings on Main Street and no one wants to vacate them,” Lola murmured. There was a story about a certain mysterious bandit at the bottom left corner of the page. A mysterious bandit whose description, given by an unnamed bystander, was a close match for one particular person—one angel, rather.
Big dark-skinned man with close hair and yellow eyes like some kind of bird.
He was wanted for “questioning” about a missing gold delivery in the next town over.
Lola swore under her breath and pulled the page closer to reread it.
She hadn’t seen Tarik in three weeks. When she’d returned from her head-clearing jaunt and settled herself back into her corporeal body, he hadn’t been in his room or in the building at all. He didn’t return the next day or the following one, either.
She didn’t know where he was or what he was doing. Having need of his room for a pair of Cougar employees, she’d cleaned the space out for them. But he’d returned several days later, according to Rachel.
Annoyed, Lola had kept herself busy in her office. He didn’t intrude because he couldn’t. As much as she hated squandering her magic, she’d decided that it’d be best for them to maintain their distance from the reckless creature. She’d deposited boluses of her magic into the walls and under the floorboards, deterring him from approaching.
She didn’t care if he could guess why.
She’d assumed he’d left again but hadn’t known for sure. She didn’t know where he was and thought that was what she wanted. The fact that she was rehashing the events in her mind at all made her question her motives.
“Did the sheriff give you this story as well?” Lola asked, pointing to the two inches about the supposed yellow-eyed man.
“Which?” Oscar squinted at it. “Oh. No. Got that in a special notice from the Marshals, actually. They were sending them to newspapers all over.”
“The…Marshals.” Lola’s gut lurched. The U.S. Marshals didn’t tend to be the sorts who’d make up stories.
“Yep. They came through a couple of days ago saying all kinds of deliveries between here and San Antonio have been disrupted.”
“Disrupted?”
Elizabeth tightened her grip around Lola’s arm and projected into her mind, “Maybe it wasn’t him. It could have been anyone.”
Lola scoffed. Something niggled at her—suspicion or a whisper of “I knew it.” Of course he’d do something like that to earn funds. Of course he’d find some trouble to get into the moment she turned her back on him.
She should have known he wouldn’t behave.
Actually, she had known. She’d known that since she’d had her first taste of his energy on that faraway beach in Mexico.
Bastard.
“When are you printing the paper?” she asked Oscar through clenched teeth.
“Tonight. I’m just waiting for folks to bring me the rest of the names of the newcomers so I can put the welcome in for them. Why?”
“No reason. May I take this?” She indicated the proof.
“Sure. I’ve got another one I can mark up.”
“I appreciate the favor.” She hastily folded the newsprint and pulled Elizabeth toward the exit.
“You think he’s got that gold?” Elizabeth asked. “Lord knows, we could sure use it.”
Lola stopped them precipitously on the wooden sidewalk and spun Elizabeth to face her. “Have you taken leave of your senses?”
“No, ma’am, I have not.” Elizabeth pushed her glasses up and huffed. “How come we never get to have a leg up on anything? Cougars have been struggling to make ends meet since forever.” She groaned. “We struggle everywhere we go, don’t we? Wouldn’t matter where we were. It’d always be the same because we always have to be so secretive.”
“So you would have your wealth come at the expense of others?”
“Depends on who those others are.”
“That is a dangerous precedent. Where would it end? How would you decide who was good enough for you to leave be?”
Elizabeth’s shoulders fell and the corners of her lips turned downward. She was upset. Lola understood that. She knew how hard subsistence lifestyles were and how women always got the worst end of the bargain in them, but discretion was their lot in life. Secrecy was vital for their safety.
She gave Elizabeth’s arm a squeeze she hoped was comforting and got them walking again. “I do not wish to see you change, Cat. I know you would like a taste of what easy feels like, but not like that. We will find you some other way to thrive.”
Elizabeth giggled drolly. “Better be careful thinking things like that. Folks’ll think you’re playing favorites if I get too comfortable all of a sudden. Cougars here all think their goddess is aloof and uncaring. If only they had any idea of where you really were. Why don’t you tell them?”
“I prefer to work within the group as I am now. I may have made this place my home, but there are still others to consider. I must always be prepared to go where they are.”
Elizabeth stopped suddenly at the saloon door and turned to her wide-eyed. “You’re not gonna leave us, are you?” she asked aloud.
One of the lingering stagecoach drivers smoking near the doorway turned his head toward them.
Lola cleared her throat and moved Elizabeth into the building. “I try not to make promises, Elizabeth.”
“I understand that, but—”
“You mustn’t become too attached.”
“Sorry, hearts and brains don’t work that way. Can’t just tell them what to do and expect they’ll listen.”
Lola grimaced. Of course, Elizabeth was right. She couldn’t expect them not to get attached when she’d been so criminally remiss in discouraging it. She hadn’t wanted to discourage it, she realized. Relationships were…fulfilling. Unpredictable, at times, and often tedious, but there was a certain kind of pleasure in associating with people who didn’t demand anything of her except friendship.
She’d never had friends before.
Rachel hustled over from the bar, eying the back of the room as she moved. “Heard a rumor,” she said. “A good one. I’m not usu
ally privy to those unless I’m on my back.”
“We heard a rumor as well,” Lola murmured. Her gaze went to the door of what had been Tarik’s room. She didn’t know where he was. If he chose not to return, that would suit her well. One less thing to worry about.
“Well, lemme tell mine first ’cause the person it’s about might mosey himself on in here and you oughtta be prepared.”
“What happened?” Elizabeth asked.
Rachel got into her storytelling stance—legs shoulder-width apart, one hand on her hip and the other in front of her like she was shielding her eyes from the sun. “You know how it goes. I was doing my bit. Stroking the ego of one of them homesick drivers and making sure he got enough of the good stuff to drink. I guess he was real comfortable with me on his lap so he started running his mouth.”
Lola grunted and rubbed her chin in consideration. She wasn’t surprised. Rachel had a way of making people talk, and probably didn’t need to be as close as her job prescribed to do it. It was the way her energy circulated. She had the magical makings of a lead Cougar without the genitals to go along with them.
Pity.
The hierarchy wasn’t of Lola’s making. She’d made her female Cougars strong. Society suppressed their potential.
“What’d he say?” Elizabeth asked.
Rachel pushed them both behind the bar and into the kitchen, startling the cook, Bertha.
The surly witch stopped dishing up chili and gave them a malevolent squint when Rachel closed the back door.
“You tryin’ to suffocate me in this firebox, Rachel?”
“Hush.” To Lola and Elizabeth, she said, “Gotta watch Sheriff.”
“That ain’t nothing new,” Bertha said and went back to dishing. “I knew plenty just like him back in Georgia. Connivin’ snake. I steers clear of him. Don’t like the way he looks at me.”
Bertha probably wasn’t being paranoid. She was going stand out no matter how earnestly she put her head down and minded her own business. Lola didn’t know what Bertha had endured in Georgia but didn’t doubt for one second that she had a whole new set of trials to navigate in the Wild West. Whether they were better or worse than what she’d had before, Lola couldn’t guess.
“Well, that driver said folks around here need to be on the lookout for strangers coming here looking to stir things up,” Rachel said.
“We heard that,” Lola said, “but not in any specifics. What do you mean?”
Bertha opened the back door again, ostensibly to let in fresh air, and dropped her ladle on the floor with a yelp.
Tarik stepped into the hot room, fetched the ladle, and carried it to the wash bucket without missing a beat. “Didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“Where’ve you been, Tarik?” Rachel asked.
“Working.”
Lola growled. She had a very good idea of just what kind of work he’d been doing. Oscar had put it in his little paper.
“You can’t come and go like that,” Bertha said. She planted her hands on her wide hips and gave her head a scolding shake. “Sheriff was in here a couple of days ago asking if you’d died or left or what-have-you, and we had to make up some lies real quick. Thank the Lord we didn’t all tell him a different one.” Her brow furrowed as she gave the angel a more assessing look, not that she knew what he was. Lola certainly hadn’t told her. “You sure healed up real nice.”
He smiled and handed her the utensil. “Yes, fortunately, I did.” He turned his gaze and his smile to Lola. “How are you?”
Lola folded her arms over her chest and tapped her foot with impatience. “We have no rooms.”
“That is fine. I do not require one.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Just a visit.”
“Visitors come through the front door unless they are running from something.”
“We all running from somethin’, ain’t we?” Bertha piled chili bowls onto a tray and pushed through the Cougars in the way of the saloon door. “Somes is just worser than others, that’s all.”
When the door swung shut behind her, Lola whipped around and opened her mouth to tell that disruptive angel exactly where he could go, but before she could start, he said, “Your sheriff seeks to manufacture crises.”
Lola shut her mouth.
“We were just talking about that at Oscar’s.” Elizabeth ferreted the folded newspaper proof out of Lola’s pocket. “We think he wants to get folks scared.”
“It’s all about property,” Tarik said. “There’s a shortage of ranch land that hasn’t already been claimed—”
Rachel guffawed and gave her head a frustrated shake. “That’s for sure. We’ve got squatters on our land. Must have thought we didn’t notice them, but we did as soon as they got there. Just didn’t want to make a fuss. Humans, I guess. Didn’t seem anything more than that. Hopefully they won’t stick it out for too much longer.”
“And within Maria proper,” Tarik added, “there are currently no vacant buildings to be bought or leased. There’s a scarcity of commercial space, which could be rectified by causing some of the tenants to vacate. The sheriff is speculating. Counting on Maria turning into a hub one day if the railroad ever gets close enough. He’ll shake the earth to become a major player. It’s a scheme I’ve seen in countless other places.”
As had Lola. She’d left those other places. She’d hoped Maria would be different.
She groaned at the fact she hadn’t been paying close enough attention early on. She might have been able to do something without too much interference.
“But why bother going through all that trouble, though?” Elizabeth asked. “He could just buy some land in town, can’t he? He could put up a building if he wanted to.”
“He can’t,” Lola said. “Most of the unoccupied land here that isn’t still Indian territory is owned by two residents and they have no intentions of selling.”
She’d actually asked both if they would. She’d only wanted a sliver of space to open a shop. They were sympathetic, but in the end, both had told her to have her husband ask. She’d given up on the venture. Renting was the best she could do.
“He’ll get the people here so afraid that they’ll be next on the list to get vandalized or burned out that they’ll pull up stakes on their own,” Tarik said.
“Do you know who he’s hired for this?” Lola asked.
“Yes.”
“And?”
He lifted a brow. “You would have me interfere?”
“I—” She’d been about to tell him that didn’t count, but it did. It was the exact same thing she’d scolded Elizabeth about—drawing arbitrary lines between acceptable and unacceptable sins, but not considering that they were all sins to be avoided.
Rachel tugged urgently at his coat sleeve. “If anything happens to my folks’ ranch—”
“I can’t promise that they won’t start there,” he said gravely. “The Double B is a huge spread that’s been worked and cultivated, and there are no men out there to guard it beyond your few ranch hands.”
“Well, let me get to them before they get here. If anything happens to that place or my kid, I swear to—”
Elizabeth clapped a hand over Rachel’s mouth and looked at Tarik. “Can’t we tell the sheriff that we know what he’s up to?”
“What do you think he’ll do?”
She grimaced. “Nothing. He’s not going to do a damn thing he doesn’t want to do. He doesn’t think we can stop him.”
“I could kill him,” Rachel said through Elizabeth’s fingers which she’d pried apart. “That’ll put a stop to all of it.”
Sighing, Lola nudged Elizabeth’s hand away from the Cougar’s mouth. “I understand the compulsion, but I would caution you to not let your baser instincts lead you to savagery. You have the gift of a higher intellect. Use it. Do not pollute your conscience with bloodshed. You will feel less guilt over the circumstances if you are not the one who initiates the conflict.”
Rachel’s tawn
y eyes narrowed to slits. “So…you’re not telling me to be good. You’re telling me to wait until I’m provoked.”
“Yes.”
Rachel twirled the end of one of her sausage curls and stared at the ceiling. “Well. Okay.”
Lola turned to Elizabeth. “Go put on your good boots and take my horse out to countryside. Tell all the Cougars you encounter, with as few details as possible, that there might a problem. Tell them to keep watch for strangers and be prepared to guard their assets. The sheriff has probably made promises of money and stature to the outsiders if they do the job. If the Cougars don’t believe you, reach out to me and I will give them a sign of some sort. I play at being anonymous here, but they’ll heed the edicts of La Bella Dama.”
Elizabeth nodded and got moving.
“I’ll get back out there and see what else I can find out,” Rachel said. “Gods know how big the lies are that Sheriff told his bride-to-be.”
“We saw her,” Lola muttered. “Pale and coddled. She will need accommodating.”
“And he’s gonna tell her everything’s gonna be just fine.” Rachel snorted and left the room.
Lola started after her, thinking she’d go up to her office and plot ways of discouraging the sheriff’s hired men from attempting the job. She had her hand on the doorknob, and then there was an arm around her waist. She was lifted off the floor and then transported into her office.
Tarik was checking the lock on the door while she waited for sensation to return to her tingling feet.
“How dare you?” she snapped when he took a step toward her. “You raise hell and disregard the laws of men, and then come here expecting me to accept—”
“Butterfly.” He took her hands in his, softly pulling the pads of his thumbs along the tops.
She’d forgotten what she was going to say.
And obviously forgotten that she should take her hands back. She couldn’t, though. Drawing away from the small act of affection seemed to defy what was right and logical, and she’d worked hard to evolve herself into a logical creature. Her head ruled her actions, not her heart. But the heart needed feeding, perhaps.