by Anne Bishop
“Not on our own,” Simon replied.
“In that case, we would be willing to share responsibility for that land with the Lakeside Courtyard.” Ming looked at Steve, who nodded.
“You have people who can check the buildings?” Simon asked Steve.
“Sure,” Steve replied. “We have plumbers, carpenters, and all the rest. I’ll put a team together to inspect each building and make a list of what each would need to be habitable again. And we’ll check out the availability of water and electricity in the buildings.” He hesitated. “I take it you’re thinking of this as an invitation-only community?”
Simon nodded. He wasn’t sure who should live in that community, but he was certain the land and buildings needed to remain under the Others’ control.
Then he stood, feeling crowded in body and mind. “Enough.”
Steve stood too, then tapped the box from Eamer’s Bakery. “Take those with you for your coffee shop.” He walked out of the cabin with Ming.
Outside, the sawhorses were moved and passengers boarded for the trip to the mainland side of the village. But no one entered the cabin.
Henry opened the bakery box, made a sound of approval, and took a fruit-filled pastry. “Good,” he said after swallowing the first bite. “So. Are you wishing you’d gone to the Addirondak Mountains with Nathan?”
“No. But I do want to check with Vlad. If everything is still quiet in the Courtyard, I want to take a look at those houses since they’re on our way home.”
Right now he really wanted to shift out of this skin and be Wolf instead of having to think about human problems, but he didn’t regret passing up the opportunity to spend time away from the Courtyard. He didn’t regret staying in order to be with Meg. His human friend.
He just wished he knew why Meg, the Pathfinder, had decided to make a cut while he was away.
CHAPTER 3
Thaisday, Maius 10
Simon and Henry found a handful of young Sanguinati squatting in one of the abandoned houses in what Simon decided to call the River Road Community. They had come to Talulah Falls from terra indigene settlements around the Great Lakes, drawn by stories of a glut of easy human prey. But the terra indigene sent to deal with those surviving humans weren’t interested in teaching youngsters how to live in a human town, and the Sanguinati had been scared off by the Falls’ primary enforcer, with his braids and clattering bones.
After getting the youngsters’ promise not to hunt in Ferryman’s Landing, and promising in turn to tell Erebus about their current situation, Simon and Henry left, satisfied that they had a minimal guard on their new land acquisition.
As they turned into the Lakeside Courtyard’s Main Street entrance and drove up the access way, they heard Skippy Wolfgard’s mournful arroooo.
Putting the minivan in park, Simon studied the juvenile Wolf sitting at the back door of the Human Liaison’s Office.
“Arroooo! Arroooo! Arooeeooeeoo!”
Glancing at the clock on the dashboard, Simon huffed out a breath and rolled down his window. “Skippy. Skippy!”
“Arroooo!”
Skippy had a brain that didn’t always work right and often skipped over bits of information. In the wild country, that typically ended with the youngster making a fatal mistake. It was inconvenient in a Courtyard, but any youngster who survived to maturity usually grew out of the skippiness.
Skippy had been sent to Lakeside a few weeks ago. Most days he spent at least some time in the office with Meg, with enough Wolves working in the nearby buildings to prevent him from doing something too stupid—not to mention Nathan’s usually being present as the official watch Wolf.
But understanding that the office wasn’t always open was a bit of information Skippy’s brain had trouble holding on to. Since Meg was probably still on her midday break, the youngster would howl himself hoarse and never realize she wasn’t letting him in because she wasn’t there.
Or else she was there and preferred having some barrier between her ears and that yodeling arroo—a sound Simon sincerely hoped Skippy would outgrow.
Simon looked in the side mirror and saw Elliot Wolfgard, the Courtyard’s consul and Simon’s sire, standing outside the consulate.
Seeing Vlad step out of the back entrance of Howling Good Reads, Simon got out of the minivan and told Elliot,
Skippy, still howling at the closed door, didn’t notice them.
Simon stepped up to the door, startling Skippy, who leaped away with a yelp of surprise and banged his head on Vlad’s knee. The vampire swore and grabbed for the Wolf, who proved he wasn’t ready to join a hunt for anything that had hooves or horns when he tried to escape by running between Vlad’s legs.
Henry caught Skippy, gently dumped the struggling Wolf in the enclosed yard next to the Liaison’s Office, then shut the wooden gate. Since Skippy couldn’t shift to another form and couldn’t keep his brain focused long enough to learn how to open doors, he’d stay where Henry put him.
And hopefully he’d quickly forget where he’d been a minute ago and why he’d been howling.
Of course, Skippy tended to remember things at the most inconvenient times. Like now, when, sitting behind the gate, he resumed his howl about Meg not letting him in.
Shaking his head, Simon tried to open the office’s back door.
Locked.
That door wasn’t supposed to be locked when Meg was in the office, in case she needed help in a hurry. Like when she used the razor.
Growling, he fished his keys out of his jeans pocket, opened the back door, and hurried inside.
“Meg!” Simon turned toward a sound coming from the bathroom. “Meg, what . . .” He stopped. Stared.
That was new.
He took a cautious step toward her. Then, intrigued, he took another step. “Meg?”
Even after Meg came to the Courtyard, he hadn’t paid much attention to the physical appearance of the humans who worked for them. They did their work, and he didn’t eat them. That was sufficient. But they’d never had a blood prophet living in the Courtyard before, so maybe this was a normal seasonal change?
No, not normal. Meg looked upset, so this must be a new thing for her too.
“You shed your old hair,” he said. Well, she’d done something with it. He had a feeling this was one of those times when a male should express positive enthusiasm regardless of what he really thought—especially when he didn’t really know what was going on.
Fortunately, he did feel positive—and curious.
Meg’s weird orange hair was gone, and her head was covered by a coat that was glossy black and thick and so short it stuck straight up. He reached out, wanting to see if the hair felt as soft as it looked. “This looks like puppy fuzz.”
Before he could give her a scritch behind the ear, she jerked away from his hand and wailed, “I don’t wanna look like puppy fuzz!”
“Why not? Puppies are cute.”
Her breathing started to hitch, and her eyes had a panicked, glassy look that reminded him of a young bison he’d seen once when he was a juvenile Wolf
living in the Northwest Region. The youngster had challenged an older bull and took a blow to the skull that had hurt its brain. He and the other Wolves had watched it stagger around and around, unable to change direction or even stop. It eventually recovered and followed the rest of the herd.
If the pack hadn’t already made a kill earlier in the day, that young bull would have been easy prey.
If you forced blood prophet puppies to see too many new images, their brains froze as if they’d taken a hard hit, just like the young bison. The girls he’d brought back from the compound had done that several times during the train ride back to Lakeside.
But this was the first time he’d seen that panicked look in Meg’s eyes.
“Meg!” he said fiercely. What could he do? How could he help her?
Same way he’d helped the girls during the train ride. Hide the strange. New things frightened.
Simon rushed into the sorting room and yanked open the drawers under the counter, growling as he pawed through the contents and thought of the nastiest human swearwords he knew. He found the floppy fleece hat stuffed in the back of a drawer. Grabbing it, he ran into the back room, plopped the hat on Meg’s head, then dragged her into the bathroom and positioned her in front of the mirror above the sink.
“Look!” he demanded, closing his hands around her upper arms and giving her a little shake. “This is Meg, wearing the floppy hat we bought to keep her head warm after she came home from the hospital. This is Meg, the Human Liaison for the Lakeside Courtyard. This is Meg, who is my friend, Sam’s friend, Vlad’s friend, Tess’s friend, Henry’s friend, Jenni’s friend. Look!”
He watched the panic in her eyes fade, watched her absorb the image of their reflections in the mirror. With the hair hidden, she looked the same as she had yesterday, except for the bandage on her left forearm.
Now confusion, and a touch of fear, filled her gray eyes. “Simon . . .”
Upset with her and for her, but gentler now that she sounded like Meg again, he led her into the sorting room.
Simon said.
Simon studied Meg as she leaned against the sorting table, looking exhausted. He hoped he hadn’t bruised her arms when he dragged her into the bathroom, but if he had, he wouldn’t be surprised when Henry swatted him—hopefully with a human hand and not a clawed Grizzly paw.
Merri Lee rushed into the sorting room. “Meg . . . ?” She jerked to a stop. “Mr. Wolfgard?”
“Take off the hat, Meg,” Simon said. Merri Lee would look at Meg’s new coat, make a casual remark, and then . . .
“Wow! That’s radical.”
Meg’s breathing hitched. Simon turned on Merri Lee and snarled, “You are not being helpful!”
“Well, I’m sorry, but it is radical,” Merri Lee stammered. “I can understand why Meg needs time to adjust to how she looks with hair that short.”
“Not helpful,” he warned, showing his teeth.
But Merri Lee wasn’t paying attention to him. She was studying Meg. “You weren’t prepared for how it would look, were you?”
Meg shook her head.
“Your hair was short when you first arrived at the Courtyard. Not this short, but short, so it must have been trimmed on a regular basis.” Merri Lee continued to study Meg. “But not at a salon?”
“I don’t remember my hair being cut,” Meg said. “But sometimes I had odd dreams of things being done. The Walking Names took each of us to a room for a maintenance sleep. When I’d wake up, nothing seemed different.”
Simon watched the two girls and shifted his weight. Merri Lee looked like she wanted to bite someone, so he wasn’t sure if he needed to leap forward to protect Meg or leap away to protect himself.
“Did you watch the stylist cut your hair this time?”
“No. I could feel her using the comb and scissors, but I couldn’t see her.”
“Ah.” Merri Lee nodded. “The stylist had the chair turned away so that when she was done she could spin the chair to face the mirror and surprise you with the new you?”
Meg nodded. “I think she knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t stay, couldn’t talk. . . . It wasn’t me anymore.”
Merri Lee sighed. “When I was eleven, my mother decided she didn’t like my long hair and took me to her stylist to get it cut. I loved having long hair, and I didn’t want my hair cut, but I wasn’t given a choice. They had already decided between them that it was going to be short because that’s what my mother wanted. So the stylist kept the chair turned away from the mirror while she cut my hair. Then she spun the chair around and told me it was such a cute haircut, and my mother smiled. . . .” She paused, then shook her head. “The point is, I didn’t recognize the girl in the mirror. I saw a stranger and felt . . . disconnected.”
“Yes,” Meg whispered.
Simon stared at them. “Yes? Yes? You look the same, you smell the same. How can you not know you’re you? Meg, you turned your hair orange and you didn’t get upset. Not like this!” He growled as a thought occurred to him. “Did you get upset like this but kept it hidden from us?”
When she hesitated, his growl deepened. He couldn’t have her staggering around and around like a brain-damaged bison. Not now. Not ever. Not his friend.
“You.” He pointed at Merri Lee. “Starting today, you’re working two hours less at the bookstore and coffee shop.”
Merri Lee paled. “But I need those hours.”
“That’s not fair,” Meg said, making an effort to stand on her own instead of leaning on the table. “Just because you don’t like what she said—”
“I didn’t say she’ll be working less hours,” Simon snapped. “But she’ll be working here with you because you two are going to figure out exactly why this happened, exactly why Meg panicked, and what to do so it doesn’t happen again.”
“Simon, I’ll be fine,” Meg began.
“This isn’t just about you,” he said. “The girls we brought back from the compound are breaking down like you did just now, only it’s happening to one or more of them every day. The Intuits don’t know how to help them. The humans who know the most about blood prophets aren’t going to help us give their property a way to live outside the safe cages. You know they won’t. Jean called you the Pathfinder, the Trailblazer.”
Merri Lee jolted. “What did you say?”
Simon eyed her. “Pathfinder. Trailblazer.”
Merri Lee swallowed hard and looked at Meg. “Those were two of the things you said during the prophecy. Path and compass. Trail and fire. Those were things the terra indigene were supposed to watch for.”
“You two are going to figure out what the cassandra sangue need—and what humans and Others need to do to help them stay alive,” Simon said.
“What do you expect us to do?” Meg shouted. “Write The Dimwit’s Guide to Blood Prophets?”
“Yes! That’s exactly what I want you to do.” Looking at their stunned expressions, he wondered if he’d been a little too honest. “Figure it out and write it up so we can pass on the information to everyone who is trying to help these girls.”
“I’m not a writer,” Merri Lee protested. “I can make notes, sure, but I can’t write up something like that!”
“Ruthie will help you write it.” There. Problem solved. Ruthie was a teacher. She wrote sentences all the time.
“Have . . . have you talke
d to Vlad?” Merri Lee asked. “Has he told you about this morning’s prophecy?”
“Not yet.” He looked at the girls and softened his voice. “Figure this out, Meg. Jean said you’re the one who can do it.”
Simon walked out of the office, closed the back door, and stopped. Just stopped. He couldn’t call the other Wolves in the Courtyard to help him drive away this danger to his friend. This danger lived inside her, was part of her—like the blood swimming with visions and prophecies, like her fragile skin.
How was he supposed to protect Meg from Meg?
Tess stepped out of the back door of A Little Bite. It would have been easier for her to use the inside doorway between the two stores to reach the upstairs meeting room, so she must have come outside to check on him.
He didn’t regret staying in the Courtyard in order to stay with Meg, but right now he wished he could shed all the human problems along with the human skin.
* * *
Meg and Merri Lee stared at each other.
“Before we deal with the other stuff . . .” Merri Lee waved a hand to indicate Meg’s hair. “Why so short?”
“I got tired of the way deliverymen looked at my hair. I got tired of the way the Others looked at my hair. It wasn’t supposed to be orange!” Meg huffed. “I went to the haircutters in the Market Square. I hadn’t met the Crow who was working there. She said she could cut my hair to remove the orange part. But I thought there would be more left!”
Merri touched her dark, layered hair. “It took me years to find a stylist that I trust, so I never went to the salon in the Market Square. But I think the two women who worked there part-time were being paid to teach some of the Others to cut hair as well as provide haircuts. I wonder if the Crow had been learning to cut hair before the women quit, or if she simply volunteered to provide the service and doesn’t know what she’s doing.”