She grabbed the rope so suddenly, he braced and pulled without thinking. Letting out a gleeful hoot, she released the rope and shouted, “You’re it!” Then she lunged at him. And he, being unprepared, leaped away from her. And she chased him!
Of course, she couldn’t hear terra indigene speech, so she chased him, trying to grab his tail!
Meg didn’t hear him, but the other Wolves did.
Blair called.
Suddenly there were Wolves racing toward him and Meg—Blair, Nathan, John, Elliot, and Jane. Even Alan, Joe, and Jackson had come along for an evening romp.
He saw Joe and Alan focus on Meg, probably assuming that she had turned aggressive. He understood why Joe would think that, coming from the Midwest and dealing with all the recent problems with humans. And most of Alan’s stories had deranged humans as the villains, so it wasn’t a stretch for him to react as if a Wolf were under attack.
Before Simon could snap out a warning, Blair and Nathan shoulder-bumped Joe and Alan, knocking them off stride, while Jane and Elliot blocked Jackson.
That’s when Meg pointed at him and shouted, “Simon has the rope!”
And that’s when all the other Wolves focused on him.
Simon spun and ran past Meg, who laughed so hard she could barely walk. Now clear about what game they were playing, the Wolves gave chase. Since he didn’t have to stay on the road to accommodate Meg’s lack of night vision, he ran hard, bounding up the rises and weaving through trees until he could circle back to the sneaky female.
When he reached the road again, with the rest of the Wolves nipping at his heels, he saw Meg trotting back toward the Green Complex. Nathan trotted along with her. He wasn’t sure if that was Nathan’s idea or Blair’s, but it was smart to have a guard with her when she might be mistaken for real prey.
he said when Blair came up beside him.
Blair obligingly grabbed the rope and ran off.
Simon told Nathan. He lunged at the other Wolf when Nathan hesitated. My Meg!
With a yelp of surprise, Nathan sprang out of reach and ran to catch up with the rest of the Wolves playing chase.
Not my Meg, Simon thought uneasily as he settled into a pace that kept him beside her. My Meg sounded like more than a friend. Didn’t it? And thinking that way could be dangerous. The human form was merely a convenience since humans couldn’t seem to interact with anything that didn’t look like them. But absorbing too much from the human form and becoming too much like a human could alienate a terra indigene from his own kind and leave him with no one and no place that felt like home. He was a Wolf, would always be a Wolf. Having a human friend wouldn’t change that. And he wasn’t the only one with a human friend. Henry, Vlad, Tess, Jenni, Jester. Even Winter claimed Meg as a special human friend. Did Nathan . . . ? My Meg! Okay, he could share Meg the squeaky toy with another Wolf but not share Meg the friend with another Wolf? Except Sam, of course. Which was fair since Sam had been friends with Meg first. And he was still a puppy.
My Meg. Another confusion she’d brought into his life and something he would have to figure out later.
Panting, Meg slowed to a walk. Didn’t take that long for her breathing to even out, which pleased him. She was getting stronger, fitter.
“Simon, we need to talk,” she said when they turned into the Green Complex and approached his apartment. She opened his door and let him go in first.
He sighed. He needed to talk to her too, but talk meant human, so he went upstairs to his bedroom to shift and pull on a pair of jeans. When he came back down, she was waiting for him in the living room.
“Sam isn’t living with you anymore?” She sounded wistful, and it struck him that she actually missed the pup. He knew Sam missed her.
“Not all the time. It’s safer for him right now to be with the rest of the Wolfgard. But the next time he’s here, you could come over and spend the day with us,” Simon said. “We’ll even let you choose one of the movies.” And he and Sam would have a talk ahead of time about being polite even when you were bored silly by a movie that someone else was enjoying.
Meg smiled. “I’d like that.”
When he looked human, she was wary of letting him get too close. He sort of understood that since his human form was becoming more interested in hers in ways he was pretty sure didn’t fit with being a friend kind of friend. But she’d let the Wolf cuddle up next to her while they watched a movie. And getting licked by someone furry wasn’t threatening but being kissed by the nonfurred male was, which made no sense when the furry and nonfurred were the same person. Wolf. Whatever.
Maybe that was just Meg, who was more like a puppy learning about the world than an adult female. She didn’t smell like she was interested in kisses. Of course, he wasn’t interested either because they were friends and kisses that weren’t licks would cause more confusion.
Maybe he really did need to read one of those romances about humans and Wolves to figure out the inconsistencies in the female brain.
“Simon,” Meg said quietly.
Her tone reminded him of why they needed to talk—and why he wanted to avoid talking. “Meg?”
“Using prophets’ blood to make drugs that stir up trouble between humans and terra indigene. Grinding up a girl to infect meat so lots of people go temporarily insane. You have to stop those things or it will keep happening, and each time it will be worse. More anger, more hatred.” Meg raised her chin. “You need a prophecy to help you find the Controller. So I’m going to make another cut.”
She said exactly what he needed her to say. But that meant hurting his friend, so he bared his teeth and snarled at her. “I’m not asking you to put your foot in a trap to save the rest of us.”
“No, you’re not. But if one of the pack chose to do it, you’d accept her choice.”
His snarl changed to a whine. He didn’t like it, but she spoke truth. Then again, he didn’t think Meg spoke anything else.
“I’ll make the cut tomorrow morning.”
“No.” He shook his head. “First we’re going to find out whatever you can remember about your journey to Lakeside. That way your skin won’t be wasted.”
“All right.” She shifted her feet. “I should go home now and get some rest.”
He wanted to go with her, wanted to curl up beside her tonight. Then he heard the Wolves howling, a reminder that there were guests in the Courtyard who might become uneasy if they saw evidence of him being too friendly with a human—especially one who was Namid’s terrible creation.
CHAPTER 24
Despite Earthday usually being a day of rest for both humans and terra indigene, the next morning the guests crowded into the front part of Howling Good Reads. Henry and Vlad stood behind the counter while Tolya and Stavros Sanguinati floated near the ceiling in smoke form. Tess leaned against the doorway between HGR and A Little Bite. Simon waited for the four females—Merri Lee, Heather, Ruthie, and Theral—to join them.
Walking in from the stockroom, the girls hesitated when they saw the crowd of terra indigene, but they came forward when he wagged a finger at them. He’d called all of them last evening, telling them to come in for a full day’s work and he’d explain at the meeting this morning.
Before he could say anything, they pulled notebooks and pens out of the carry sacks they seemed to haul around everywhere. Meg carried a purse when she went to the office or the Market Square, but it was small and didn’t hold anything of particular interest. He knew that because he’d looked. But these sacks were big enough to contain all kinds of curious things, and he wished he’d poked his nose into one before now to find out what it held.
“Today we’re all participating in a special assignment,” Simon began.
The four girls opened their notebooks to a clean page, wrote the date at
the top, then looked at him expectantly.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Bobbie Beargard hunch her shoulders, shifting her body into a preattack stance. He noticed how many of the other terra indigene guests also stiffened.
If only one of the girls had done it, none of them would have thought about it. But all four? Was this something that was supposed to be done during a meeting? Did everyone have notebooks and pens, or only females? Was this a secret human thing, a subtle indication when making a deal or trying to buy merchandise that the other person wasn’t really human? If the human teachers the terra indigene paid—and paid well—to teach them how to interact with humans were omitting pieces of that training deliberately, what other ways had they been lying to the Others?
And most important, who could they ask when asking made them vulnerable to deceit?
Simon eyed Ruthie and thought he had the answer to that.
“Mr. Wolfgard?” Merri Lee said, glancing at all the terra indigene. “You were going to tell us about the special assignment?”
“The man who came here yesterday was . . .” Simon faltered, not sure how to explain since he didn’t want to tell them what would happen when the Others found their prey.
“Someone hired him to procure blood prophets,” Merri Lee said with a simmering anger that made everyone brace for an attack. “He tried to hypnotize Meg into believing she needed to come with him.” In contrast to the simmering anger in her voice, her eyes looked haunted. “He was a bad person.”
“Yes,” Henry, the Courtyard’s spirit guide, said with quiet authority. “He was a very bad person who would have brought harm to many other girls and their families. Meg’s warning to hide the children stopped him from taking anyone from Ferryman’s Landing.”
Merri Lee hadn’t killed Phineas Jones any more than Meg had. But their defensive attack had prevented the man from escaping, and being captured had ended with him dying by his own hand. Simon didn’t think it was as simple for the human female to accept as it was for the Others.
“We need to find a man called the Controller,” Simon said. “He runs the compound where Meg was held, and he keeps a lot of other girls there and treats them as property. He was the one who called Meg cs759 because property doesn’t need a name. We believe he’s responsible for manufacturing the drugs gone over wolf and feel-good—and for making the tainted meat that caused so much violence and death in a Midwest town. So what we’re all going to do today is help Meg figure out how she reached Lakeside and how she reached the Courtyard.”
As he watched them absorb the words, he understood some things about his employees. Heather was definitely a bunny, and while she was a good worker, he didn’t think she’d be staying much longer. Theral was so new he couldn’t decide whether her uneasiness came from trying to understand the Courtyard as a whole or this assignment. But Merri Lee and Ruthie? He saw a bit of Wolf in them, just like he saw in Meg at times. They understood that the Controller wouldn’t live a day after the terra indigene found him.
Maybe Merri Lee wasn’t having as much trouble accepting Phineas Jones’s death as he thought.
Before he could explain the actual assignment, Merri Lee looked at him and said, “Pictures. Meg needs photographs, drawings, maps, names of towns—images that she’ll remember seeing on the journey to Lakeside.” She turned to Ruthie. “She doesn’t always see in a direct way. Sometimes the answer is by association.”
Ruthie nodded. “So we want to start broad and then keep narrowing the focus.”
The next thing Simon knew, Merri Lee and Ruthie were dividing up the tasks and scribbling notes about who was going to do what—including handing out assignments to the Others.
Vlad asked, amused.
Simon growled.
The terra indigene were assigned land—plants, animals, water, distinctive features of each region—while the girls would check the human locations.
“What can we use for reference?” Ruthie asked.
“Any of the books in the store or in the library,” Simon replied. “Just indicate in some way the books from the store if we need to reshelve them later. You can use the big tables in the library and work with Meg at the sorting room table in the Liaison’s Office.”
“I’ll get a Lakeside map and talk to Meg,” Merri Lee said.
“Can I use the computer in the library?” Ruthie asked. She continued without waiting for Simon’s agreement. “I’ll check the train and bus schedules and see what might have been coming into Lakeside and from where. But first I’ll ask Meg if she remembers any town names.”
“There can be more than one town with the same name,” Theral said.
“Yes,” Ruthie agreed. “But not all of those towns would have a bus or train link to Lakeside. Not directly, anyway.”
The girls looked toward the rack of maps that stood opposite the checkout counter. It was usually within easy sight of whoever was at the counter. Today there was a crowd of earth natives standing in the way of anyone who wanted to reach the maps.
Smoke flowed along the ceiling, then drifted down toward the rack. An arm and hand took shape, along with enough of the face for Simon to identify Stavros when the Sanguinati selected several maps and handed them to Alan Wolfgard, who gave them to Charlie Crowgard, who passed them on to Simon, who gave them to Ruthie.
After murmuring their thanks, Merri Lee and Ruthie headed for the back of the store, followed by Theral. Heather looked over her shoulder at all of them before hurrying to catch up to the other girls.
The other humans.
Vlad said, sounding regretful.
Simon replied.
He collected one copy of every magazine the store stocked, which wasn’t many since the terra indigene didn’t find magazines all that interesting and the human customers didn’t like paying the nonrecycling fee he tacked onto the price. Now, though, he would consider whether magazines would provide a useful reference for Meg. He’d have to talk to her about that.
Should he pick up a notebook at Three Ps so he could write such things down? Why did he need to write them when he could remember them?
Damn humans. He was second-guessing himself, wondering if he’d really passed for human as well as he’d thought all these years.
Wondering why it mattered now.
After he handed out the magazines, most of the Courtyard’s guests took their assignments into A Little Bite, where they could use the tables and get a drink.
Alan wandered over to the shelves of children’s books and selected several before he joined Joe and Jackson at A Little Bite. Vlad went upstairs to deal with paperwork. Henry and Bobbie headed for the Market Square shops to see what might be helpful.
That left Simon alone with Charlie.
Going behind the counter, Simon reached for the stack of orders from the terra indigene settlements. If Heather was going to quit, he needed to get a start on these.
“Whispers from across the water,” Charlie said quietly.
Simon began separating the orders into stacks that would go on the same earth native delivery truck. “Whispers of what?”
“War.”
He looked up, giving Charlie his full attention. “War” was a serious word because war reshaped the world. “You think the humans over there are that foolish?”
“Enough of them are.”
“If it does start over there, do you think war will come here?”
“It will touch us. But not, I hope, with the ferocity that will touch the Cel-Romano part of the world.”
“How did you hear about this?”
Charlie smiled. “The Crowgard live in many parts of the world, not just Thaisia. We share what we know. But the Crows
can’t tell if the humans will fight to steal territory from each other, as they sometimes do, or if they are looking to take what is ours.”
“I guess the terra indigene over there will find out soon enough and deal with it,” Simon said, frowning as he read the titles being requested from the settlements supplied by the Lakeside Courtyard. It looked like everyone had finished reading the survive-the-blizzard-and-the-evil-human thrillers and had made the seasonal change to stories about surviving other kinds of storms. The evil humans didn’t vary even that much.
Charlie leaned his forearms on the counter. “Simon. This Controller is your enemy, and the Midwest leaders especially are not averse to helping you with this hunt. But that human might not be the only one making the drugs. He might not be the one responsible for the bad meat.”
“He might not be,” Simon agreed. “So that’s one of the things we’ll ask Meg.”
• • •
“Meg?” Ruthie asked while Merri Lee opened up the Lakeside and Northeast Region maps on the sorting table. “May I ask you something?”
“Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do today?” Meg replied, setting aside the Lakeside News. “Ask questions in order to find answers?”
Ruthie raised her notebook. “Why would the terra indigene be angry about us taking notes for this assignment? If they’re worried about security or something, we can leave the notebooks here.”
“And everyone in the Courtyard’s Business Association knows Ruthie and Karl are living together and will be getting married this summer and that Michael and I are dating,” Merri Lee said. “At the very least, Simon and Vlad have to figure the police will be aware that something is going on since Ruthie and I were called in to work on Earthday.”
“So why would they be upset about the notebooks?” Ruthie asked. “Because all four of us saw it. The Others in HGR were seriously ticked off, but they didn’t say anything. I know it made Heather and Theral uneasy.”