by Anne Bishop
Maybe he should do that anyway.
When a break came in the morning traffic, Jimmy hustled across Crowfield Avenue and went into A Little Bite to let Sissy provide him with a decent breakfast.
• • •
While Nadine filled the display case with fresh baked goods, Tess wrote the day’s offerings on the menu board.
“We received extra eggs yesterday, so I made quiche for the breakfast crowd and figured I’d use the rest of the eggs to make egg salad for sandwiches later in the day,” Nadine said.
“I’ll add them as specials,” Tess replied. “Save a piece of quiche for Meg. She dashed out this morning without eating an adequate breakfast.”
“Why was she in such a hurry to reach the office? Some kind of special delivery?”
“She’s reading a book, which she left at the office because she went to the Quiet Mind class last evening. But she had stopped at an exciting part and wanted to read more before work.”
Nadine raised her eyebrows. “And there were no comments at home?”
Tess smiled. “Simon doesn’t know how to complain about it since he asked her to review the book.”
Nadine laughed softly. “Maybe I’ll walk the piece of quiche over to the Liaison’s Office and see for myself what Meg finds so interesting.”
Tess looked at the Sierra, who was moving a broom around but didn’t seem to be doing much actual work. Her smile faded. “Hold off for a few minutes. I’ll be back.”
Howling Good Reads wasn’t open yet, but the lattice door that separated the two shops wasn’t latched. Going in, she went to the checkout counter, picked up the phone, and called the Market Square bank. The Business Association had an account with a human regional bank, but the Market Square bank was a private institution run by the Sanguinati. It was the place where all the Courtyard businesses recorded the amount of credit employees could use in the stores here. Pay was always split between Courtyard credit and money that could be used in human places.
When Miss Twyla arrived with the Sierra and the pups, Simon and the rest of the Business Association had been prepared to give them food and shelter for a few days simply because they were Lieutenant Montgomery’s family, and the Courtyard had offered the best protection against the storm and the Elders’ wrath. But Miss Twyla had insisted on working for her keep and had insisted that the Sierra do the same. No pay had been involved. But after it became clear their visit was actually a permanent move, Simon had held by the Courtyard’s basic rule: anyone who lived off the land’s bounty had to do a job that supported the Courtyard. Humans like the police pack didn’t officially work in the Courtyard, didn’t receive a pay envelope like an employee, but the interaction they provided was valued, which was why the police directly involved with the Courtyard were allowed to purchase things in the stores.
“Market Square Bank,” a male voice said.
“This is Tess. How much credit does Sierra Montgomery have available?”
While she waited for the information, she looked out the window and saw that Cyrus waiting to cross the street. Her hair turned green with broad red streaks and started to coil.
The banker returned to the phone. “How much credit do you want to allow that she hasn’t yet earned?”
Tess watched that Cyrus cross the street as she considered the question. All the children received half their daily milk ration as part of their midmorning snack on school days, courtesy of the Courtyard. When they had decided how much rent to charge for the apartments, the Business Association had taken into account that the Sierra was a lone female who had to feed two pups, so they had agreed to charge her less than their other tenants. They had done those things because, while the Sierra wasn’t a dominant female like Miss Twyla and hadn’t earned the same respect, she had started out as a good, reliable worker.
She’d sulked a bit about their decision not to let her work at the consulate, and showed her displeasure by not doing her assigned work as well as she’d done it before. They were used to that behavior in humans, and she would have improved or been fired. But since the arrival of that Cyrus yesterday, the Sierra acted like a different person—someone none of the terra indigene would have trusted if she hadn’t been connected to Montgomery and Miss Twyla.
“Basic meals for herself and her pups at A Little Bite and Meat-n-Greens,” Tess said in answer to the banker’s question. “She has to pay cash for everything else, including food for anyone else, until she has a credit balance again.” She heard his hesitation. “Get Simon’s and Vlad’s approval before you send a message to all the stores, but let them know I’m going to hold to it in my shop.”
“Vlad just came in. I’ll tell him. If he agrees, I’ll tell all the stores.”
Tess hung up and stood to one side of the archway, watching the Sierra and that Cyrus, who had taken a seat.
“We’ve got quiche with seasonal fruit this morning,” the Sierra said. “And we have fresh muffins and some pastries left over from yesterday.”
“I’m not eating that shit,” that Cyrus replied. “I’ll have some bacon with scrambled eggs and fried potatoes and buttered toast. And coffee.”
“We don’t make that kind of breakfast,” the Sierra whined. “It’s a coffee shop, Jimmy.”
“You got the fixings here. You can go in the kitchen and make it for me.” That Cyrus leaned toward the Sierra, who cowered but didn’t have enough sense to walk away. “You owe me, Sissy. You lied to me about the situation here, so you owe me. Now, get your ass in the kitchen and cook me up some breakfast.”
Nadine stepped into the front room. “My kitchen is off-limits to everyone but Tess.”
Tess glanced at Nadine. Then she considered the knife in Nadine’s hand and the weirdly calm fury in the woman’s eyes.
Shit.
Her hair turned red with threads of black as she strode into the coffee shop, a predator to be reckoned with. “This coffee shop works the same way as any other in the city. You order the food, you pay for the food, and then you take it with you or eat it here.” She stayed focused on that Cyrus, struggling to stay in control while the threads of black in her hair turned into streaks—a warning that she was getting closer and closer to her true nature. She wanted to blacken his organs, turn them into festering slush. She wanted to make it rain inside his skull while she harvested his life energy. She didn’t care if she damaged the Sierra, but she didn’t want to hurt Nadine, so she had to stay in control, had to avoid taking that last step toward her true nature.
“Sissy can pay,” that Cyrus said.
“She’s tapped out,” Tess snapped. “So unless you have cash for the food, get out.”
That Cyrus rose, knocking the chair over. “Who do you think you are?”
She didn’t want to tell him. She wanted to show him.
“Tess?” Merri Lee’s voice from the archway. “Should I call the police?”
“Human law doesn’t apply here,” Henry growled, coming in from the back door.
She knew by the expression on that Cyrus’s face that Henry didn’t look completely human.
That Cyrus looked at all of them, then headed for the front door. Pausing as he pushed the door open, he hawked and spat on the coffee shop’s floor.
Feeling Henry move to block Nadine, and hoping Merri Lee had enough sense to hide, Tess shouted, “Hey!” In that moment when Cyrus looked toward her, her hair turned black with a few threads of red and she looked away before he saw more than the tiniest glimpse of what she was. He clutched at his chest, staggered out the door, and almost stumbled in front of an oncoming car before righting himself.
It didn’t feel like she had harvested enough life to damage him permanently, but that brief look at her should weaken him for a day.
The human mask wasn’t sufficiently in place, so Tess avoided looking at anyone—and hoped none of them
were looking at her.
Startled, Tess almost looked up. When had the Wolfgard arrived?
Keeping her eyes lowered, Tess went upstairs. Once she was safely alone, she looked in the mirror that hung on one wall. Black hair streaked with red, the coils beginning to relax. A face that, once again, looked human.
She had managed to contain her true nature—or enough of it.
She wondered if she was the only one regretting her self-control.
• • •
Simon had come in too late to see the start of the fracas, but he was going to put a stop to this part of the trouble.
Hearing Vlad’s angry hiss, he glanced toward the archway in time to see Merri Lee elbow the Sanguinati in the ribs and break free.
Great. Now they had to deal with one of the exploding fluffballs as well as . . .
“By all the gods, what is wrong with you?” Nadine snarled as she turned on the Sierra, her hand tightening on the knife handle.
That.
Montgomery and Kowalski came in through the front door, avoided the gob on the floor, and scanned the room, taking in the people and their positions. A young woman hustled in behind them, then froze just inside the door.
“Mr. Wolfgard . . . ,” Montgomery began.
Nadine swung toward Montgomery. “I have things to say!”
“You can say all of them after you give me the knife,” Henry said.
She looked at the fur-covered hand clamped around her wrist. She blinked and offered no resistance when Henry took the knife.
Simon wondered if she even knew she’d been holding it.
“Now,” Henry rumbled as he released Nadine and stepped back, “say what needs to be said.”
Nadine turned back to the Sierra. “How long are you going to pander to that man?”
“He’s my brother!” The Sierra’s voice cracked. She looked at Montgomery. “We’re supposed to help family.”
“You’re supposed to help him lie, cheat, steal?” Nadine demanded. “Or does he remain above it while you become the liar, the cheat, the thief?”
“No! It’s not like that!”
“He wants a full breakfast, so you’re going to use the supplies here? Were you even going to offer to pay for them, or were you hoping no one would notice missing supplies when we keep track of every egg and stick of butter? And after he’d eaten his fill here, would he have persuaded you to fill up a bag with food to take with him? Would you have paid for it or pretended that you didn’t know who took the breakfast sandwiches and pastries?”
The Sierra started to cry. “Jimmy doesn’t have any money to buy food.”
“He had money yesterday when he went to the Stag and Hare,” Nadine snapped. “Unless he makes friends awfully fast, he had to pay for his drinks and food there.” She looked disgusted. “Yesterday you took home dinner for three people. Did you end up splitting it seven ways because he claimed he didn’t have money?” Her disgust deepened. “Or did he get half the food because he’s the man and the rest of you split what was left?”
Simon frowned. That wasn’t right. The Sierra and her pups should have eaten their fill first since she was the one who had done the work for the food. But larger predators did steal food from smaller ones. Maybe that’s how it had always worked in the Montgomery pack, with that Cyrus waiting until the Sierra brought home food and then taking it away from her.
He studied Montgomery and saw a grim expression on the lieutenant’s face—and sadness in the man’s dark eyes.
Anger in Kowalski’s face—and in Merri Lee’s. Who had caused the anger? That Cyrus or the Sierra, or both?
“I owe him!” the Sierra shouted.
“For what?” Nadine shouted back.
“He never had enough because Mama and Daddy adopted me. My first mother didn’t want to keep me, tossed me out like trash. And trash isn’t entitled to anything.”
Simon heard a soft, pained sigh. Looking over his shoulder, he saw Miss Twyla—saw tears running down her face.
“You owe him because the resources for two children had to be divided three ways?” Nadine said. “Well, if that’s how you want to count it, Jimmy owes his brother half of everything he gets because Monty is the oldest child, right? So when Jimmy arrived, Monty only got half of what he would have had if Jimmy hadn’t been born. And somehow he managed to survive just fine without taking and taking and taking.”
“Cyrus said that to you?” Miss Twyla stepped forward. “He said you were trash? And you never said a thing to your daddy or me? Child, we shielded you as best we could from Cyrus’s childish meanness, but we couldn’t help with what you kept secret.”
“You made him leave and he blamed me,” the Sierra said, crying.
“When he was eighteen, we told him he had to find another place to live.”
“Because of me.”
Miss Twyla nodded. “That was part of it. Childish meanness was turning into a harder kind of meanness. Along with the lying and scheming, that wasn’t something your daddy and I could live with anymore. We couldn’t change Cyrus, and we were concerned about you, about the way you sometimes acted like you’d taken a beating.”
Shocked, Montgomery turned to the Sierra. “Did Jimmy hit you?”
“No!” She shook her head. “No, he didn’t do that.”
“No, he didn’t,” Miss Twyla agreed. “I looked for bruises because I wondered—and I would have told you, Crispin, if I’d noticed any.” She sighed. “But words can beat down a person as surely as fists, and I hadn’t known about the things Cyrus was saying when I wasn’t around to hear him and put a stop to it.”
“He hurt your heart, bullied you into doing things for him just like he tried to do now, and you kept coming back for another serving of hurt instead of slamming the door in his face,” Nadine said.
Simon studied the Sierra. He’d seen this behavior once before when he’d attended the terra indigene college to learn how to work in, and run, a Courtyard. A young female Wolf had been besotted with one of the males. She did everything she could to win his approval—brought him food, brought him gifts. The male had paid attention when he wanted something, made promises to become her mate if she could do just one more thing. Other males, Simon included, had tried to befriend her, but she ignored them—just like the Sierra ignored the brother who didn’t put a price on his love.
The young female died trying to bring down prey that was too big for a lone Wolf to handle because the male had told her that would prove her love for him. The male was expelled from the college but stayed on the fringes of the college’s land, fully expecting to be allowed to return. Then he disappeared and was never seen again.
Simon had never caught a whiff of an Elder’s primal scent—a scent he remembered from the time he’d run with the juvenile pack in the Northwest—but he had wondered if the instructors had killed the male to prevent more trouble, or if something larger and less merciful had passed judgment.
Now, comparing the Sierra with that young female Wolf, Simon had a better appreciation of why the Elders wanted to see what happened when a male like that Cyrus entered a successful working pack of humans. The man hadn’t been in Lakeside a full
day and the pack was already fighting among themselves.
He stepped forward, drawing everyone’s attention.
“There are two Montgomery packs,” he said. “One pack is Lieutenant Montgomery and Lizzy. The other pack is that Cyrus, his mate, and their two pups. While they came from the same family, they are now separate packs, are adversaries. That means the other pack members can be loyal to one or the other but not both. The rest of the family now must consider what each pack has to offer.” He looked at Miss Twyla. This would hurt her, and he was sorry for that. “Choose.”
She stared at him, the tears still flowing. Then she took tissues out of her pocket and wiped her eyes and nose.
“Guess I always knew it would come down to this, but I can’t choose between my children. Not that way.” Miss Twyla straightened her shoulders. “Crispin asked me to come here and help him with Lizzy, and I’d like to keep on doing that. But even if I have to turn away from one of my children, I don’t want to turn away from any of my grandchildren.”
“You have to choose,” Simon said with regret.
She nodded. “I choose your pack, Mr. Simon.”
“What?” Simon gave Montgomery a look that said, Does she know what she’s doing?
“Mama?” Montgomery’s look at Simon said, She knows.
“I’ve put my hand to different kinds of work over the years, Crispin,” Miss Twyla said quietly. “There is plenty of work to be had, and I could find a job in this city. But this Courtyard feels more like the neighborhoods your daddy and I lived in when we were newlyweds and when you and Cyrus were young—a place where people looked out for each other. Haven’t lived in a place like that for the past few years, and I’ve missed that. I’ve done what I could for all of you, but my children are grown, so I’m making a choice for myself first.”
“All right, Mama.” Montgomery didn’t sound happy. “If this is what you want.”
Simon looked at the Sierra. “Now you. Choose.” He held up a hand and noticed the patches of fur on the back. Damn. What else didn’t look completely human? “Understand the choice you have to make.”