The Coyote's Bride

by Holley Trent

  “I’d put money on you being right. But listen. I’m going to get some sleep and I’ll get back to digging into this in the morning. I feel like I’m on the cusp of figuring this out. I just need to find the right rabbit hole to dig into.”

  “We’ll keep trying to find out what we can on our end,” Lance said. “Did you happen to talk to Lola? We weren’t sure we should loop her into this.”

  “I think at this point, we should. Willa went ahead and left her a voicemail earlier. I think she went out of town. The lady has like seventeen jobs. She’s hard to track down even on the best of days. Oh! Before I go, I did find out something that might be useful. That mark you have, Lily—Kenny forwarded me that picture of it that Lance took. I saw some similar images on pictures of stone idols. Same place, right on the back of the neck.”

  Lily’s hand went to the scar. “Idols? What sort of idols?”

  “They’re just figurines of an unidentified goddess. There’s nothing alarming about them, at least, from my perspective. That being said, I think that mark may have more than one purpose. Every source I’ve found was speculative about the meaning of the symbol, but most specify children or childcare. If I’m interpreting it correctly, you’re wearing around the thirteenth-century version of a safe place symbol.”

  “Huh. So, that’s why they left Martha with me?”

  “Evidence points to that. I wouldn’t feel too put off by it if I were you. From what I can tell, they were common at one time. I don’t know if every single one was made by Lola or if other people used it as well. Maybe we can do a very discreet survey of everyone we know in Maria to see if anyone else has it.”

  “Lola might subconsciously put them on people just out of habit,” Lance said. “Especially the people who spend time around her granddaughter. She’s always at the ranch, so maybe see if Mrs. Foye has one or any of the elementary school teachers.”

  “I’ll look into it when I get home,” Lily said.

  It made sense that Lola would leave marks on people the girl could trust should anything ever happen to Lola. Life in Maria was unpredictable. Lola had nearly lost her immortality a couple of years back during a conflict with her nephew. A creature of her age couldn’t possess so much hubris to think that she wouldn’t eventually die just like everyone else.

  Lily looked down at the sprawling, sleeping baby on her lap and nodded. “Do you think the Jaguars are coming back?”

  “If they left their stuff there, they’re probably coming back,” Blue said. “Can’t guess when. I saw the text Lance sent me about how they sorta disappeared. Gotta tell you that I can’t find any information yet about women who vanish, but that’s going to be my first priority in the morning. Be careful, and don’t let that bull kick you in the head, huh?”

  Lily was confused for a moment and then remembered the lie she’d told Willa. “Oh. Right. Yeah. Don’t worry. I’ll keep my distance.”

  “’Night.”

  They disconnected.

  After a minute of awkward silence, Lance moved about the trailer, grabbing clothes and his boots.

  “What are you going?”

  “Going to unhitch the trailer from the truck and go out to try to find someplace that sells toothache gel. Not sure anyone’s still going to be selling the baby formulations because of that FDA warning that came out.”

  “Now? It’s one in the morning.”

  “She’s not going to sleep for long, Lily, with her gums as inflamed as they are. And maybe we’ll get lucky. The Jaguars might see me driving away and will double back to put me back in my timeout corner.”

  “Worth a shot, I guess.”

  He grunted and left, closing the door softly behind him.

  She waited.

  The Jaguars didn’t return as he was unhitching the trailer.

  They didn’t return when his thundering diesel engine cranked up.

  They didn’t return when the truck tires crunched gravel and churned onto the road.

  There was no sign of them in an hour later. Or two.

  At three AM, Martha awoke screaming again and Lily peered hopelessly out the window. “Little girl, where is your mommy?”

  *

  Lily woke with a gasp, feeling for the baby on the bed beside her, and then banging her head against the bottom of the loft when she sat up too quickly.

  She rubbed her eyes and quickly searched around for Martha, but she wasn’t on the bed. Lily had put her down on the bottom bed at around three AM, hoping she’d rest less fitfully, and had ended up right beside her. She’d intended to stroke Martha’s hair until she went back into a deeper sleep, but she’d fallen asleep, too.

  Martha wasn’t there.

  Lily hurled herself off the bed and reached for the light switch, and then stopped herself upon spotting the sleeping Coyote on the sofa.

  “Oh,” she whispered.

  Lance was asleep on his back. Martha was asleep on his chest with one fat fist cinched around his beard and the fingers of her other hand in her mouth.

  There were plastic shopping bags scattered all over the floor and in front of the television. On top of the coffee table were several packages of gum numbing gel, one of which had been ripped open in evident haste.

  As she leaned in for a closer inspection, Lily noted that the cap had been left off one already half-used tube. She twisted it back on, holding her breath as she did. She was afraid to wake either of them. Perhaps Lance didn’t realize he was holding a baby, and maybe Martha had been so out of her mind with discomfort that she didn’t realize she was in the arms of the very same Coyote who’d been causing her apoplectic fits earlier.

  Lily was probably more stunned than either of those shifters would be upon realizing their circumstances.

  The man looked good holding a baby.

  Maybe a little too good.

  The revelation that if things had been different, that sweet scene could have been all the more personal, stung. That could have been her baby he was holding like that, but that wasn’t going to happen. It wasn’t in the cards, children, the marriage—anything.

  Somehow, it just didn’t seem fair.

  She had everything going for her. She was healthy. She ate right. She was nice to people most of the time—even when they didn’t deserve it. Still, she’d gotten yanked through the wringer of maternal anticipation only to come out the other end deflated and cold.

  “It was just a fluke, Lily,” her doctor had said. “This stuff happens. Nobody talks about it, but trust me, it’s more common than you think.”

  Sitting on the exam table in the doctor’s office, she’d thought that being common may as well have been a curse, and one she wouldn’t have wished on her worst enemy.

  She couldn’t stand there looking. She just needed to get a little bit of air, and then she’d take Martha from him. Holding a baby was no problem. She did that every day at the ranch. But having to look at Lance and ponder what kind of father he might have made was too much.

  Even for a practical girl like her.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The gods must have heard Martha’s fretful teething cries. She was in much better spirits after breakfast. She bounced gleefully on Lily’s hip during the hike back up from the lake.

  “They’re still not back yet,” Lance said as they approached the trailer and van.

  “No.” Lily let out a weak huff of air. “Anything from Blue?”

  “Nah. My watch says it’s barely after seven. Hopefully, he’s still asleep. I’m sure he’ll get cracking again once he gets Willa out the door for work.”

  “Do you think we’ll see Regina today?”

  “Doubt it.” Lance blew a raspberry and guided Lily over to the Jaguars’ van. If the ladies were going to be absentee campers, he was going to take the opportunity to see if he could find out anything about them. Any bit of information could go a long way in demystifying who they were and whether or not they were dangerous.

  “Kenny texted saying Regina wanted to take a
side-trip over to White Sands because she’d never been. She doubted she’d ever have a chance to get on the other side of the mountains in the near future. She’s a ‘let me do it before I die’ kind of lady, apparently.”

  “They may as well go before she registers him for school in Maria, I guess,” Lily said. “The older he gets, the harder it’ll be for them to make the time. I’ve lived in New Mexico almost all my life and I still haven’t been over there.”

  French Fry jumped up from his pallet he’d made in front of the tents and bounded over, barking in greeting. He trotted to the van and nosed the door.

  “Yeah, that’s where we’re going.”

  He barked again.

  Lance opened the door.

  French Fry jumped into the cluttered vehicle, rooted around, and returned a moment later dragging a kibble bag half his size.

  “That dog is frightening,” Lily murmured.

  “Probably someone’s familiar. They tend to be a little smarter on average, even if they look silly. Willa kinda has one in that dorky Boxer of hers. King’s more like an emotional support animal than a true familiar, though. He’s way more mellow than this keyed-up creature.”

  French Fry’s next bark sounded a hair indignant.

  Lance shrugged and grabbed the bag. He found a bowl that looked clean enough in the bin of dishes, poured some food bits into it, and emptied the contents of a bottle of water into another.

  “You said he might be someone’s familiar,” Lily said, “but whose? People generally don’t share those. No, actually, that’s not true. Claude and Gail share one, but they’ve got a weird connection.”

  “Who are Claude and Gail?”

  “Oh. I forget that you haven’t been in Maria that long and you don’t know everyone I know. You know my cousin Mason’s wife Ellery?”

  “The witch? Yeah.”

  “Well, Gail’s her sister.”

  “And she’s a witch like Ellery, I take it.”

  “Yep. And so is Claude.” Lily’s brow creased. “Sort of. I’m not entirely sure what Claude identifies as. His mother was a powerful voodooienne.”

  “And his father?”

  “Yeesh.” Sucking some air in through her teeth, Lily rocked slowly back on her heels. “Have you met Gulielmus? Calls himself Bill sometimes. The big blond guy in nice suits who always looks like the scents of the world are disturbing to him?”

  “The fallen angel who hangs around Tamatsu and Tarik?”

  Lily nodded.

  “That guy has kids?”

  “That guy has so many kids that he’s stopped counting.”

  “So, you’re telling me you not only have cougar shifters in your extended family but various other dangerous creatures who could probably move continents with a breath.”

  She shrugged. “Pays to be nice to me, I guess?”

  Lance let out a reflexive guffaw. He wouldn’t have gone anywhere near her—with or without the mescal—if he’d had any idea how interesting-in-a-bad-way her network was. His sense of self-preservation was churning into overdrive at the mere mention of her relatives. As far as he was concerned, Lily Baxter was not the marrying type. She was the staring-at-from-afar type. Safer that way.

  “Anyway, people don’t usually share familiars,” she said, “so French Fry likely belongs to only one of the Jaguars.”

  “Does it really matter which?”

  “I think so. My understanding is that not just anyone can bond to a familiar. Of course, there are plenty of witches who have them and who aren’t technically bonded with them. They call those familiars, but really, they’re just pets. They’ve got to have a certain kind of wild magic to get the right kind of link. Ellery explained this to me once when her cat got out. I asked her why she wasn’t worried, and she calmly informed me that the cat would return as soon as Mason left for work. Apparently, they’d had a fight.”

  “Mason and Ellery?”

  “No, Mason and the cat.”

  Lance could only blink at her. She had to know how ridiculous that sounded.

  She didn’t laugh, though. In fact, she just shrugged again. “Did you expect an alpha Cougar to get along with an incontinent Persian?”

  “I feel like there’s no good answer to that.”

  “Probably not. Anyhow, it’s interesting to think that the ladies may not all have the same degree of magic or that their magic might be different from one person to the next,” Lily mused and tapped her chin.

  “You think he’s Estela’s? She’s the leader, right?”

  “She is, but Estela said that Nayeli named him.”

  “Which is Nayeli?”

  “The youngest one.”

  French Fry’s head popped up at the mention of Nayeli’s name.

  “Huh.” He bent and gave the dog’s ears a scratch. “Is Nayeli your lady?”

  French Fry nudged the palm of his hand in what was probably the closest thing to an affirmative he was going to get.

  “If only the dog could tell us whose child this is,” Lily muttered.

  “You don’t know?”

  Lily gave her head an emphatic shake. “Can’t even make an informed guess. I’d assumed Estela at first, but the attachment didn’t look quite right to me. I did ask who her mom was, but they kinda brushed the question off.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Want to hear my suspicions?”

  “Feel free to speculate.” Lance climbed up into the van, recoiling with a shudder at having to reacquaint himself with the location of his humiliating defeat. The fact he’d been outnumbered and distracted didn’t make him feel any better about being so easily suppressed by a bunch of Cats. Kenny was probably never going to let him live it down.

  “I think there might be two reasons,” Lily called from outside the van.

  Lance got busy sifting through the contents of the glove compartment.

  “The first may be that they do it in case anything ever happens to her mother. The shock wouldn’t be as severe if she doesn’t actually know which woman gave birth to her.”

  “Interesting.” There wasn’t much useful paperwork in the glove box. No registration or insurance documents. The niche looked to him like it was being used as a filing cabinet. There was a stack of gas station and oil change receipts, parking passes, craft fair and expo pamphlets stacked in order of date, maps of the U.S. Southwest, and so on. Nothing personal or official. “What’s your other speculation?”

  “Alternately, they don’t want anyone else to know.”

  “Because?” He peeked outside in time to see Lily shrug. “Why wouldn’t someone want to claim an association with their child?” he asked.

  “Perhaps because of reputation? Either theirs or the kid’s? I’m pretty sure Randall would state at this point that he’s never seen Blue or Diana a day in his life. Goes the same in the other direction.”

  “Maybe, but we’re talking about a six-month-old. I can’t imagine that she’d have much of a reputation, though her mother might locally. That wouldn’t explain why they wouldn’t tell people they’ll never see again whose baby she is, though. The logic doesn’t follow.”

  Lance moved on to the back of the van that was piled high with crated ceramics. Nothing stood out to him. Even the scenes depicted on the sides of the water jugs showed nothing of either personal or cultural significance. Pretty pictures, but nothing that elicited any a-ha sentiments.

  “Just spitballing here,” he said, “but another reason they may suppress information about her parentage would be if the mother has a peculiar sort of magic.”

  “And therefore it’d be expected that the child would have it as well.”

  “Exactly. They’d be hush-hush about it to keep the kid safe from perceived enemies.”

  “Hmm. I think that’s as good a theory as any.”

  “Yeah. File that away to the back of your mind and see what Blue thinks of it later.” Lance turned over a ceramic bell and looked inside for inspiration. He found none, so h
e nestled it back into its wrappings and box.

  “Nothing in there?”

  “Nothing obvious.” He stepped down from the van, gathered up the empty dog bowls, and shoved them behind the door. “These ladies have been operating in stealth mode for so long that leaving behind no traces of themselves is second nature to them.”

  “Check the tents, maybe?”

  “Yeah, just to cover all bases.” He scooted French Fry away from the opening and slammed the van door shut. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  They didn’t.

  Fifteen minutes later, they were walking back to the trailer empty-handed.

  Exhaling a weary sigh, Lily shifted Martha to her other hip. “You little chunk…”

  “Want me to hold her?”

  She gave her head a hard shake and bounded up the step.

  “I can, you know,” he said as he checked his phone for messages. “She might not even scream at me.”

  “It’s fine.” Lily took a seat on the sofa and hastily gathered up the diaper bag. From within, she pulled a bottle and a tin of formula, and then she seemed to notice she only had two hands.

  Lance folded his arms over his chest and raised an eyebrow, waiting.

  She cleared her throat, trapped everything that wasn’t Martha beneath one arm, and somehow managed to get herself to the sink. She filled the bottle one-handed, gave it a shake, and gave it to the giddy child.

  “What in the hell.”

  “Multitasking.”

  “I can see that, but you’re doing it unnecessarily. You could have just handed her to me. Or given me the bottle.”

  “And then I would have had to explain to you how to mix the formula.”

  “I could see how talking to me would be a grievous ordeal for you, but did you miss the first part of the offer? I told you to hand her to me.”

  “Thanks. I’m okay.”

  He groaned. Frustrating woman. He didn’t know how to deal with her. Coyote women weren’t prone to arguing. They’d either submit or get bored and walk away. Of course Lily didn’t make sense to him. He kept expecting her to behave like what was familiar, but she was made of the wrong stuff.

  Obviously, he needed to change his tactics.