“Someone knew where the gems were supposed to be, and Scaffoldon was sent to fetch them. It isn’t likely that he thinks Lizzy still has them. If he was going to believe anything, it would be that I found the jewels and kept them.” Burke smiled. “I didn’t, but I could have hidden them in the evidence lockup or in a desk drawer.” The smiled faded. “That being said, I think it would be a good idea for Lizzy to stay in the Courtyard unless she’s with you. Now, what did you want to tell me?”
Churned up about Elayne, and feeling he had forgotten something, Monty set the newspaper on the desk and pointed to an article about a woman being killed in a random attack while out shopping with her family.
“Heather Houghton?” Burke said.
“She worked at Howling Good Reads. Resigned last month after Meg Corbyn . . .” Monty’s throat tightened.
“Ms. Corbyn saw this?”
“Saw something. Meg reads the Lakeside News. I don’t know if anyone else in the Courtyard does.”
“You should make Simon Wolfgard aware of this.” Burke sighed. “It’s so seductively easy to think that using the cassandra sangue’s pronouncements will make the bad things go away, that we’ll be forewarned about anything and everything and will avoid being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But it’s not always true.”
“No, sir. It’s not always true.”
Monty met up with Kowalski in the parking lot. The younger man glanced at the newspaper, then got in the car, saying nothing.
“You saw the article?” Monty asked.
Kowalski nodded. “Heather’s family had been pressuring her to quit her job, had threatened to disown her if she didn’t quit. If she’d still been working at Howling Good Reads, she wouldn’t have been in that store, and she’d still be alive.”
“You don’t know that,” Monty said gently. Since Kowalski was feeling the same kind of pressure from his own family to distance himself from the Others, Monty didn’t offer platitudes. But he wondered exactly what was said before Meg saw that vision.
CHAPTER 43
Firesday, Maius 18
At least she had stopped crying.
Simon didn’t mind when Meg cried on him during a movie. Well, he minded but he accepted that this was typical of human females, and she shook off feeling bad once the movie ended. But this was something else, a deeper pain, as if she’d swallowed a splinter of bone that was tearing her up inside.
“It’s my fault,” she said.
He’d lost count of the number of times she had said that since Nathan howled that something was wrong with Meg. “How could it be your fault? You weren’t there. You didn’t hurt Heather.”
“I gave her the wrong advice, told her the wrong thing,” Meg cried. “That’s why she died.”
“She died because a human turned rabid and attacked other humans who were shopping in that store.” Had someone gotten hold of a dose of gone over wolf? Something he would ask Lieutenant Montgomery.
“That day we were all doing research to locate the compound where I’d been kept, Heather was upset because her family was going to disown her if she continued to work at Howling Good Reads. I remember thinking, What will happen to Heather if she makes the wrong choice? I must have hit my hand at the same time I was thinking that because I had a vision about Heather. There were magazines scattered around her, covered in blood. I saw a date. Not the current issue.” She frowned. “Not even the current year. But what I saw had to be wrong. I must have mixed up the numbers.”
“Is that all you saw? Magazines scattered around Heather?”
“You sell some magazines at HGR, so I thought . . . There was so much blood, I thought it meant she was going to die in the store if she stayed.”
There hadn’t been many details about how Heather died, but the newspaper article hadn’t mentioned anything about magazines. Something else to ask Montgomery. And whether Meg mixed up a date hardly mattered now.
“Meg?” Simon moved until he was right next to her, then rested his forearms on the sorting table, matching her position. “Would that store have had magazines?”
She blinked at him. “What?”
“That store Heather was in. Would it have magazines?”
“I don’t know.” She had that look in her eyes that meant she was reviewing her training images to see if she could find a match. Then she shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Heather was a bunny,” he said gently. “She was nice for a human, and a good worker, but she was afraid of us in a way that Merri Lee and Ruthie aren’t. Vlad and I recognized the signs and knew she wasn’t going to stay much longer, even before the terra indigene leaders came here for that meeting. Even before you had that vision.”
“But if she had stayed a little longer . . .”
“She would have been driven out of her pack, and when she left HGR, maybe they wouldn’t have taken her back, and she would have been alone.”
“But alive.”
“Would she?” He touched her hand. “Maybe Heather did avoid the death you saw because she quit when she did. She was with her family, and that’s what she wanted. If they hadn’t gone to that store on that day, or if they had been delayed, or if Heather had decided to stay home and do some chores, she would have been reading about someone else who was killed in that attack. You can’t know about what you don’t see, Meg.”
Meg sighed. “You’re right. I couldn’t know. And I can’t make a cut to see what might happen every time a friend has to make a choice.”
“No, you can’t.” He ran a hand over her head and gave her a light scritch behind one ear. “You feeling better now?”
“A little.” She gave him a wry look. “Better enough that I won’t put another knot in Nathan’s tail.”
Nathan said from the front room.
Simon replied.
With a huff of annoyance, Nathan went back to the Wolf bed.
“I’m fine,” Meg said. “I don’t want my friends to get hurt, and it’s hard knowing that what I saw wasn’t enough to save Heather when I was able to save the ponies and Sam. And maybe she did live longer than she would have if she’d continued working at HGR.”
And maybe she died much sooner, Simon thought.
CHAPTER 44
Firesday, Maius 18
Not only had Jackson returned her drawing of the Wolf song; he and Grace framed it and hung it in her room. They brought her more paper and more pencils in different colors. They spent time telling her that this shade of green was grass and that shade was tree that shed its leaves when Autumn walked the land and that shade was pine. They described, as best they could, the shades of water, but they knew water as shallow and sun warmed versus the coolness of a deep pool, not the color of the water.
She listened, soaking up what they said and wondering what was outside her room. Jackson and Grace weren’t the only Wolves here. She knew that from the song. But she wasn’t brave enough to ask if she could leave her room.
She thought about her new keepers. They refused to call her cs821. Once each day, they asked if she had chosen a name. They didn’t punish her for not choosing. They fed her, cleaned her clothes, made sure she had what she needed to wash herself and use the toilet. And they seemed pleased that she liked to draw.
Jackson and Grace. But as she thought of them, she didn’t see Grace. She saw Jackson and . . .
Taking a clean sheet of paper, the girl began to draw.
* * *
Jackson walked into the scarred girl’s room with a plate of food for the midday meal.
She sat at the head of the bed, her arms wrapped around tucked-up legs, her chin resting on her knees.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, only realizing how sharp he sounded when she winced. He
set the plate on the desk and approached the bed, sniffing lightly so that she wouldn’t know he was trying to catch the scent of blood.
No blood, but something was wrong.
“I wanted to draw a picture for you and Grace, but I drew that.” She pointed to the paper at the end of the bed.
Holding it carefully by one corner, he turned it around. Then he sucked in a breath.
“Have you ever seen these places? Seen . . . images?” he asked.
She shook her head.
She’d never seen him in Wolf form, but she’d drawn his head, muzzle raised to the sky, the Rocky Mountains in the background. That filled the top left section of the paper. The bottom-right section was filled with the head of another howling Wolf. Filling the center of the paper was a human dwelling like nothing he would find around his home territory, an Eagle’s view of an island, and the thundering water known as Talulah Falls.
“That other Wolf isn’t Grace,” she said, sounding worried.
“No, it’s my friend Simon. He lives in Lakeside, a place on the eastern shore of Lake Etu.” He studied the girl. Her shaggy hair was a golden brown, and her eyes were green with flecks of gold. If she were a shifter, he’d think she belonged to the Panthergard with her coloring. “You drew this for me?”
She nodded. “It means something.” She looked at the desk, at the drawer where she kept the razor. Then she looked away.
“It means something,” he agreed. “A strong friendship always has meaning.”
She looked surprised, then relieved.
No, Jackson thought. I won’t ask you to use the razor.
He picked up the drawing, careful not to smudge it. “Thank you.” Then he saw the drawing under it.
“It confused me, so I didn’t finish the picture.” She hesitated, then added softly, “I used up a lot of my blue pencils.”
“I’ll go down to the Intuit village later today and see if they have more.”
There was power in the drawing she’d made of him and Simon, but this other one disturbed him. A wheat field. He knew it was wheat because she had drawn stalks with ripe grain in the foreground. But it was underwater. Sharks swam above the wheat field, and in the background, at the edge of the paper, was something that looked like a sunken ship.
He took that drawing too.
“Eat your food,” he said.
“Wheat doesn’t grow underwater. I remember that from the training images.” A glance at the drawer that held the razor.
“You don’t have to cut. You’ve given us answers. It’s up to us to figure out the questions.”
Jackson left the room and closed the door. Then he listened.
Soft footsteps crossing to the desk. A drawer opening.
He counted to ten before the drawer closed again and the chair scraped over the floor. When he was sure she was eating instead of using the razor, he silently stepped away.
Only one telephone in the terra indigene settlement. There wasn’t any need for more. The phone, along with the computer, was in the cabin at the edge of the settlement, next to the road that led to the Intuit village. Mail and packages were delivered there as well because there were too few who lived in the settlement who could pass for human.
He looked at the drawing of two Wolves who lived in different parts of Thaisia but were connected by more than friendship.
He would show the drawings to the elders, then leave them with Grace for safekeeping while he walked to the cabin with the phone and placed a call to Simon.
CHAPTER 45
Firesday, Maius 18
Simon reviewed the lists in his hands, then looked at the books on the shelves. Early in Maius, he’d asked the gaggle of girls and the police who had become part of the Courtyard—including Lieutenant Montgomery—what kinds of books they read and what authors they liked. They’d given him lists, and based on those lists, it was time to cull the stock.
Setting a cart within easy reach, he began pulling books off the shelves.
“Is this something I should know about?” Vlad asked, leaning against the shelves.
“We’ve closed the store to humans who aren’t part of the Courtyard’s pack, so it’s time to remove books that aren’t of interest to them or the terra indigene.”
Vlad pulled a book off the shelf. The cover showed a muscular male who was partially clothed, looked menacing, and was meant to be some kind of terra indigene. At the male’s feet was a partially clothed female, probably human, who, despite cowering, had her chin lifted in a defiant attitude and had her back arched in a way that displayed an impressive pair of breasts.
“Do you think humans will ever realize breasts have no attraction for us once we’re weaned?” Vlad asked, opening the book to a random page.
“Why should they?” Simon tipped his head toward the book. “None of us would be interested in that story, so none of us would think to mention it, and terra indigene publishers already know that cover wouldn’t attract us.” The better question, as far as he was concerned, was how had that book gotten on the shelves in the first place?
Vlad read a couple of pages, then put the book on the cart. “Some of us might read it if you shelved it as a comedy.”
Simon eyed him, then looked at the book. “Or put it in with the cookbooks?”
“Too obvious what our interest in the breasts would be.”
Laughing, he handed half the lists to Vlad. “These are books our humans enjoy reading. I want to keep those authors in stock, as well as similar books. It seems Heather was the only one who was interested in straightforward kissy books, but the gaggle likes romance thrillers or adventures. For now, I’m keeping one of whatever we have in stock, kissy books and all, and removing the extra copies. Henry can take his pick for our library, and we’ll pass along the rest.”
“What are we going to do with the shelf space?”
“Add books written by terra indigene. Instead of a shelf tucked way in the back or an occasional display in the front of the store, we’ll sell the books next to their human counterparts.”
“Simon? Is turning the Lakeside Courtyard into a kind of academy really a good idea? Especially now?”
“When humans came to Thaisia and we made the first bargains long ago, their settlements were small, and it was easy to study them despite little actual contact beyond what was owed to us for use of the land. That’s the way it still is in most places. Even the Others who keep watch over the largest human cities only interact with a handful of humans, and then it’s a formal meeting, or it’s with the Human Liaison, and that interaction is formal too. They can hide things from us now.”
“Like the compounds that held, and still hold, the cassandra sangue?”
Simon nodded. “We knew about the blood prophets for as long as humans knew about them. Maybe longer. But they slipped out of sight because we didn’t concern ourselves when humans dealt with humans. For the most part, humans have kept the peace, but they’re an invasive species—a two-legged kudzu—and will take over as much land as they can if they aren’t held to the agreed-upon boundaries. Now trouble is stirring everywhere because of that Humans First and Last movement.”
“You think the answer is learning to become more human?”
Simon pulled a few more books off the shelves. “Not exactly. I think the answer is learning to recognize the enemy when it’s hiding within the herd. Once we do that, we can kill the enemy and keep ourselves, and Thaisia, safe.” He looked at Vlad. “We call them clever meat, so it’s easy to forget that the reason some of our ancestors learned this form was because the terra indigene recognized the first humans who came to Thaisia as a new kind of predator, something we needed to understand in order to remain dominant. Now we need to understand more in order to decide what kind of humans should be allowed to remain in Thaisia.” While earth natives like you and me still have some say in that decision, he
added silently.
“I wonder how Lieutenant Montgomery would feel, or Kowalski or Debany for that matter, if they heard that.”
“There’s no reason for them to know, is there?”
“No reason at all.”
After Vlad went to the next group of shelves to pull books from his lists, Simon stared at the titles in front of him, seeing nothing.
He liked the humans who were interacting with the Courtyard. And he liked Steve Ferryman and the other Intuits he’d met at Ferryman’s Landing. But lately he’d come to realize that words could be a weapon as devastating as a gun, and that was something most of the Others didn’t understand yet. The terra indigene hadn’t continued to learn enough from humans because so much of what humans wanted held no interest for them.
Vlad returned, his hands full of books. “Simon, do you want to keep these?”
Before he could respond, Jenni Crowgard came rushing in from the stock room and said, “The Crows know why humans are running out of food!” She paused for a moment, then added, “Well, so do the rest of the terra indigene.”
“What do—” Simon snarled when the phone started ringing.
Vlad set the books on the cart and led Jenni toward the back of the store, saying, “Tell me what you’ve heard.”
Simon grabbed the ringing phone. “Howling Good Reads.”
“Simon? It’s Jackson.”
He froze for a moment. His friend sounded . . . odd. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes. Maybe.” Jackson hesitated. “The scarred girl drew a picture of me in the Rockies and you in Lakeside, with Talulah Falls in between us. Does that mean anything to you?”
“Maybe.” He thought about the land between Lakeside and Talulah Falls. He thought about the new community the Others and the Intuits would make together. He hadn’t thought Jackson would be interested in leaving the Northwest, but a lot of things were changing throughout Thaisia. The other Wolf might be feeling it was time to move on. Would Jackson want to live in the River Road Community?