by Anne Bishop
“And the men who made this skin cream?” Chen asked after a moment.
Burke wondered if Chen and Alvarez appreciated the danger of even asking the question.
“Before we could bring them in for questioning, the three men died under suspicious circumstances,” Alvarez said. “Two of them contracted the strange plague that has struck our city a few times and is still a mystery to the doctors. The third man drank the mixture of household cleaners, possibly thinking it was a more merciful death.”
It probably was, Burke thought. But when Chen and Alvarez looked at him, as if inviting him to confirm what they suspected, he said nothing—for all their sakes.
CHAPTER 31
They gathered in the wild country between Tala and Etu, and their footsteps filled the land with a terrible silence.
While the rest of the Elders listened, the two who had returned from Lakeside told the story of the sly predator that wasn’t a danger to the world or to Namid’s teeth and claws but was still dangerous because of the harm it could cause within a human pack—a harm that touched the smaller shifters. They told their kin about the sweet blood howling not-Wolf and the Wolf who wanted to be her mate. They spoke of job-fair migrations and the proper way to ask for tasty Wolf cookie treats. And they spoke of their mistakes in ignoring the animosity the smaller shifters felt toward the Cyrus human and how the not-Wolf had been lost and could have died because they had not heeded the Wolf’s warnings about that particular kind of human.
The two who had been in Lakeside told their story. And when the Elders made the journeys back to their own territories, they took the story—and its lessons—with them.
CHAPTER 32
Moonsday, Messis 27
Vlad filled the checkout counter with the book requests from terra indigene settlements. A few of the requests mentioned a specific book or author—human, Intuit, or Other. Most were requests for a kind of story that sounded similar to the hunt for Cyrus Montgomery and the rescue of Meg Corbyn: police and terra indigene working together; resourceful but wounded girl; plenty of blood and gore as the hunters tore through the bad human’s accomplices to find the girl before she received a fatal wound.
The requests themselves held a hefty dose of fiction—although he suspected variations of the story would be written in the next few months—but he still needed to find something among the published books that might come close to the story requested. And he’d ask the police to recommend a nonfiction book about police cars that would satisfy the request from the Crowgard living around the Feather Lakes.
Tess walked through the archway and stopped at the counter. He hadn’t seen her since Meg’s abduction. Her hair was brown and wavy with a few narrow streaks of green, a sign she was almost relaxed.
“There are strange humans in my coffee shop,” Tess said. “Nadine said you would explain.”
Vlad walked over to the archway and looked into A Little Bite before returning to the checkout counter. “Officer Daniel Hilborn is Officer Debany’s new partner. He comes here a couple of hours before his shift starts and observes. He’s learning who is who and who works where.”
“He called me ma’am. I think he’s afraid of me.”
He has good reason to be, Vlad thought. “Sally Esposito is a psychologist from Ferryman’s Landing who has volunteered to come to the Courtyard a couple of days a week to provide counseling for anyone who needs some help.”
“Meg?” Tess’s voice was quiet, but Vlad wasn’t fooled—not when black threads suddenly appeared and her hair began to coil.
“She’s having bad dreams. And she’s had a few episodes of seeing things that aren’t there. The doctors at Lakeside Hospital are fairly confident that her brain wasn’t damaged by . . .” He stopped. How much did Tess know about the way that Cyrus had cut Meg? Better not to bring it up since he didn’t want to deal with her if her mood turned deadly. “Anyway, Ms. Esposito came here with Steve Ferryman to talk to the Business Association about providing some counseling—not just for Meg but also for Lizzy, Frances, and Sarah Denby.”
“Getting inside the brain of a blood prophet must be a professional coup.”
“You weren’t here to voice an opinion when we had to decide,” Vlad said coldly. “Then again, you weren’t exactly absent, were you?”
“I didn’t ask Nyx to come with me on that hunt,” Tess replied just as coldly. She looked away. After a brief silence, she said, “How is Leetha?”
“She’ll heal, although she may have some scarring around her mouth when she’s in her human form.” Thinking of that, Vlad relented. “The newspaper said the men drank household cleaners in some kind of lethal, winner-take-all game.”
“One of them drank what they had added to the skin cream.” Tess didn’t look at him. “Harvesters are usually lone predators. Do you understand how rare it is for one of us to have friends? What happened to Leetha . . . She barely touched that . . . human, wasn’t trying to feed. But it could have been Nyx—or you. It could have been a Wolf biting an enemy.” She used one finger to shuffle a book request back and forth on the counter. “When we found those men, one of them smeared the cream on his arm and told Nyx they would give her two hundred dollars and all the blood she could drink if she could bite his arm.”
“Fucking monkeys,” Vlad muttered.
Tess nodded. “We made a counteroffer. Or I did.”
Seeing a companion die because of one look at Tess would be a game changer.
“After they saw the first one’s brains leaking out of his ears, they swore they were just getting their own back at that Sandee for cutting into their girls’ profits, swore they didn’t know the cream would really hurt the Sanguinati. We knew he was lying because of what that Sandee had told Captain Burke.”
Either Burke hadn’t noticed smoke hiding in the shadows when he interrogated that Sandee or he’d pretended not to notice. Either way, it explained how Nyx and Tess had reached the men first.
“When it started to rain inside the second one’s skull, the third one grabbed the liquid and chugged it down.” Tess shrugged. “Maybe he really believed he would survive drinking the stuff. He already knew he wouldn’t survive me.” She turned toward the archway but didn’t step away from the counter. “Sandee made a bargain with the police to avoid the terra indigene’s wrath. Jail in exchange for information. Is that acceptable to Simon?”
“As long as she never returns to Lakeside, it’s acceptable.”
“Well,” Tess said. “I’ll let you get back to work.”
Vlad watched her go into A Little Bite, but he didn’t go back to work. Contact, familiarity. Those things cut both ways, exposed the Others’ vulnerabilities as much as it exposed the petty ways humans hurt one another. That pettiness could lead to actions as deadly as a flat-out war, could wipe out Courtyards or towns. One human like Cyrus Montgomery coming into a mixed community could sour everything, shatter trust.
Perhaps the Elders had been right and studying that Cyrus and his family pack had been a useful lesson that they would share with the rest of Namid’s teeth and claws. But Vlad wondered if Simon and Meg, and even Lieutenant Montgomery, felt that way.
To: Jackson Wolfgard
We found Meg. She sprained her ankle and has to use crutches for a while. Her brain is a little strange right now, but she’ll get better. Tell Hope her vision drawing helped the police pack find the bad human’s car, so Meg wasn’t lost very long.
—Simon
Dear Meg,
Steve Ferryman and a woman named Sally Esposito came to see me at the Gardners’ farm yesterday. They told me you had been abducted, but you were missing for a few hours at the most, and you’re safely back at the Lakeside Courtyard now. They told me the man had cut you across old scars and had made the new cuts too close and too deep so they reopened while you were captive. They said you’ve been having “episodes.”
I have “episod
es.” I guess that’s why they wanted to talk to me. When I told them what I could remember about the times when old and new prophecies collided—and continue to collide even now, even when I haven’t made a new cut—Sally Esposito said it sounded like whenever something provided a trigger that unlocked some of the memories of old prophecies, my mind spewed out the images in a dreamlike jumble—a visual hairball I cough up to feel better. (She didn’t say “spew” or “hairball”; she used nicer words, but it amounted to the same thing.)
But there is something I didn’t tell them. Something you need to know. Those episodes show me terrible and terrifying things. Bizarre things, like a huge chicken with a cow’s legs and a goat’s head. Images that got stuck together because, while the parts belong to animals, the whole doesn’t make sense. A jumble, like Sally Esposito said. But since I came to live at the farm with the Gardners, whenever I have one of those episodes, there is always one image that appears every time, whole and unchanging. For me it’s the image of someone handing me a jar of honey. I saw that image when I was still in the compound, and it was something Lorna Gardner did the first day I came to stay with them.
I think you have a constant thing too, something you can trust when you’re not sure what is real and what is a vision. You know what it is. You recognize the symbol for it. Hold on to your talisman until you heal. You’re strong, Meg. You won’t have these episodes forever. And, hopefully, neither will I.
Your friend,
Jean
CHAPTER 33
Windsday, Messis 29
Walking out of the Market Square Library, Monty spotted Simon standing in a bit of shade watching the medical office on the other side of the square. Then he looked at an office on the second level. There wasn’t a sign on the door—not yet anyway—but Monty was already familiar with Sally Esposito’s office.
Get some counseling, Monty, Burke had said. And take some personal time.
Sound advice, especially when he closed his eyes at night and saw Meg’s silver razor and Jimmy’s lower jaw positioned on the shredded clothes.
There was no mercy in the wild country.
But there was a kind of rough compassion. The doctor who had been found in the woods had been tortured by people who wanted to locate the cassandra sangue who were hidden in settlements throughout the wild country. But something else had piled leaves over his body, had prevented small scavengers from eating what was left of the man.
“Simon.” Monty joined the Wolf.
“Lieutenant Montgomery.”
“My friends call me Monty.”
Simon studied him, then nodded. “Monty.”
An acknowledgment of more than a name; a choice that wasn’t made lightly, not by a Wolf. “Is Meg having a session with Sally Esposito?”
Simon nodded. “She sleeps a lot, but she’s always tired. The dreams chase her at night, and during the day she sees things that aren’t there—and doesn’t always see things that are. She’s afraid.” He hesitated. “So am I.”
“I would be more concerned about her if she wasn’t afraid, at least for a while.” He studied the Wolf. “Are the cuts healing okay?”
A shrug. “There was some worry about infection, but Emily Faire gave Meg medicine to take for a few days, and I sniff the arm and her hand a couple of times a day to make sure there is no whiff of badness in the wounds.”
The smile that had begun when Monty thought about Meg’s reaction to being sniffed faded when he heard the word “wounds.”
“She’s not supposed to walk on the sprained ankle, and she’s not happy about that or about needing to use the crutches or the wheelchair or about being carried upstairs. She growls at everyone—except Miss Twyla.”
Now he did smile. “Nobody growls at Mama.”
The Courtyard’s minivan pulled up near an archway leading into the Market Square. Blair opened the side door. Sam leaped out, ran a few steps, and then waited until Blair picked up Skippy and set the juvenile on the ground.
The blow to the head hadn’t made Skippy’s brain any more skippy, although he yelped if anyone touched that part of his head. The broken foreleg would have been a death sentence in the wild country, unless the Wolf pack had a bodywalker who knew how to set bones. Even then, a Wolf with a broken leg couldn’t help with the hunting.
“Emily Faire convinced Jane Wolfgard to take Skippy to a vet in Ferryman’s Landing,” Simon said. “There wasn’t anything the vet could do that Jane hadn’t done already, but it was . . . friendly . . . of the Intuits to offer the help.”
“Yes, it was.” Monty hesitated. “Simon? What are you going to do about Meg?”
Simon stared at him, a warning flicker of red in the amber eyes. “Do about Meg?”
“You love her, and she loves you. You’re in love, Simon. Maybe that’s not how you would describe what you feel, but it’s obvious to the humans who know both of you.”
The medical office’s door opened and Meg hobbled out, supported by Sally Esposito and Theral MacDonald, who helped settle her in the wheelchair.
“Meg!” Sam ran to her. Skippy, with one leg in a cast, hobbled after the boy.
Simon watched them, then said in a rough voice, “I’m not human. I will never be human.”
“Is that so important?” Monty asked quietly.
Surprised, the Wolf looked at him.
Monty subtly pointed at Meg, Sam, and Skippy. “Do you know what I see when I see you and Meg and Sam together?”
“Two Wolves and a human?”
“No. I see a family.” Monty sighed. “I envy you, Simon Wolfgard. You and Meg aren’t the same species and you have an unconventional relationship, but you also have a better working partnership than I ever had with Elayne. She and I were both human, but we couldn’t find a way to make the differences in our backgrounds work for us.”
“What if Meg wants puppies? I’m not sure humans and terra indigene can do that.”
“Roo-roo!” Skippy hobbled toward Twyla Montgomery as she came out of Chocolates and Cream with a tray and four bowls of ice cream.
Setting the tray on one of the outdoor tables, she waved for Meg and Sam to join them and said sternly, “Sam, Miss Meg isn’t a toy. Don’t be racing with her in that chair—or taking shortcuts down the steps.”
“But the ice cream will melt if we go slow!” Sam protested.
“Samuel Wolfgard.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Monty shook his head. Could a boy move any slower?
He turned his attention back to Simon. “Maybe it’s different for Wolves, but plenty of humans who are mates don’t have children for one reason or another.”
Watching his mother sitting with Meg and the two young Wolves, Monty thought about his sister, the adopted child. In a day or two, he would make a few discreet inquiries and see if he could locate her. Knowing Jimmy was no longer a threat, hopefully Sissy would get in touch with Mama. It would be good for all of them if that much could be mended.
Thinking of Sissy, Monty said, “Even if you can’t have children of your own, you have Sam.”
“Yes,” Simon replied quietly. “We have Sam.”
• • •
Mated pairs didn’t always stay together. Sometimes the bond between them broke. But sometimes it was the surviving mate who broke if the other died. Was that what humans called love? The joy of being together and the killing sense of loss when one of them ceased?
If he hadn’t found Meg, he wouldn’t have returned to Lakeside. He would have left Sam in Elliot’s care, and he would have . . . What? Disappeared? Died? Looked for a pack deep in the wild country who had minimum contact with human things and no contact with actual humans?
Was that love?
Or was he trying to think too much like a human? Their brains were so full of confusion it was a wonder they managed to do anything at all, let alone estab
lish a proper social order within a pack.
Simon walked into the back room of the Liaison’s Office and stopped when he heard the muffled sound.
Simon stepped into the sorting room. “Meg?”
“I can’t find it!” she wailed. “I’ve looked and looked, and it’s not here!”
“What isn’t here?” Noticing the prophecy cards spread out on the table, he walked over to see what had upset her. All the cards were faceup.
“The card! I can’t find the card!”
Is it a real card? Couldn’t ask her that. “Real” was a slippery word right now. “You’ve held the card?”
“Yes, I’ve held the card.”
“You’re sure it’s not under these cards?”
Meg sniffled and nodded. “I’ve looked through them three times. It isn’t there.”
“Then it’s hiding, and we’ll have to find it.” Simon turned toward the back room.
“How?” Meg was back to wailing.
“You held it, so it smells like you.”
He hurried into the back room, stripped off his clothes, and shifted. In Wolf form, he returned and began sniffing his way around the sorting room. The screen was inserted in the side door to help cool the room. The air brought in the ponies’ scent and . . . cow? He followed that scent to a cargo pocket in Meg’s shorts and found additional scents—hay and feathers.
He placed a paw on the pocket. “Arroo?”
Meg put her hand over his paw. “The card isn’t in there. I received a letter from Jean.”
Ah. Farm. That explained the smells. As for the other, far more interesting smell, well, she was standing and his nose was right there, but he didn’t want to startle her into putting weight on her bad leg, so he went back to looking for the card.