The More Things Change

by Emily Holloway

  She accepts it without complaint. It's just now dusk. Jackie normally does supply runs at night, but this is hardly a normal supply run. Their parents think that she's on a date with Henry, and that Valerie is doubling with them with some kid named Brad, who Jackie barely knows. Both Henry and Brad have been bribed to keep their mouths shut about this.

  Jackie shows her to the edge of the complex and explains how to time their crossing with the lights and the patrols. Valerie has no problem climbing over the two fences. She might not be in the militia, but she's done gymnastics and is well-trained in self-defense. They hit the streets and Jackie heads to Solomon's. Valerie looks around the empty streets. "It's so much quieter at night," she says.

  "Yeah, nobody wants to be out at night," Jackie says. "That's when the things under the bed come out."

  Valerie shivers a little.

  "Don't worry, you're safe with me," Jackie says, and she doesn't question. A few minutes later, she's letting them through the back door of the clinic. Just from the low murmur of noise, she can tell that Solomon has done his part and gathered some of the townspeople he needs. "Hey, Solomon," she says. "This is my sister, Valerie. Valerie, Cedric Solomon. He's kind of a doctor-slash-pharmacist. Mostly he does healing charms and potions, but you didn't hear that from me." She's decided ahead of time that she's not going to mention Miranda Cooper working from the clinic. The Coopers were deserters, and she doesn't know how Valerie would react to that.

  "It's lovely to meet you, Valerie," Solomon says with a warm smile.

  Jackie lets out a breath and sets down her bag. "Okay. Got those antibiotics you needed," she says, "and the disinfectant."

  Valerie stares between the two of them. "You don't get disinfectant?" she asks. "How do you even do sterile procedure?"

  Solomon's smile doesn't waver, and his tone is patient. "I do get some, Valerie, but nowhere near enough. It's barely enough to keep my clinic clean, let alone my tools."

  "What…what sort of stuff do you do here?" she asks, a little reluctant, like she's not sure she wants to know.

  "Well, any major trauma would go up to the base," he says. "But today, for example, I cut away a growth that was probably skin cancer, and gave IV fluids to someone who was sick with vomiting and getting dehydrated. Tomorrow, now that I have what I need, I'm doing a procedure on a little girl with chronic ear infections, to prevent deafness. Oh, that reminds me, Jackie—did you get any Plan B?"

  "Not as much as you would like," Jackie says, taking out a little box and giving it a rattle. She's somewhat amused because she's pretty sure that Solomon had done none of those things, but he's clearly boarded her 'don't mention Dr. Cooper' train.

  "What's that for?" Valerie asks.

  "It's emergency birth control," Jackie tells her. "They can't get the usual birth control pills with enough regularity that they can count on them to be reliable, so Plan B is a popular way of preventing pregnancy. That and condoms are really the only things they get."

  "Can't they just…not have sex?" Valerie asks, her forehead creasing.

  "Can they? Sure. Is it fair to make them? Not in my opinion." Jackie lets out a breath and tries to rein in her temper. "Time's a wasting," she says, and heads out into the clinic's waiting room, where about a dozen people have gathered, both known and unknown to her. She gives poor Mrs. Mendoza an industrial sized bottle of Tylenol. There are diapers and baby wipes for the families with babies. Baking soda for people who have to work outside. "To prevent trench foot," Jackie tells her sister, who looks blank, and doesn't offer more explanation.

  Everyone is grateful, even the people she's never met before, and they give her hugs and one woman pushes a tin of cookies on her which she reluctantly accepts, thinking that she'll hide it somewhere and then give it to the Callaghan pack. Valerie moves around the crowd, talking to people, hearing their stories. More than once, Jackie hears someone say, "And I know that the militia needs supplies, that they can't just throw surplus at us, but we need these things too." One woman is tearfully talking about how her fussy baby won't breastfeed well and she doesn't know what to do since the militia never brings in formula.

  All in all, it's a rousing success, but Jackie watches these desperate people and feels an uneasy stirring in her stomach. She's going to have to find a way to keep bringing supplies to them, and she doesn't know how she's going to do that.

  And of course, as soon as they've left Solomon's, Valerie is talking about telling Helen that the next supply run needs to include formula. Jackie stops walking, and Valerie turns to her with a questioning expression. "Valerie," she says slowly, aware that she has to be careful, that using the words 'you can't' are only going to add fuel to the fire. "Do you have any comprehension of what will happen to me if Mitchell finds out I'm doing this?"

  Valerie's mouth tightens. "Look, he'll be mad, I know, but he won't—"

  "Yes, he will," Jackie says. She rubs both hands over her hair and says, "Whatever the second half of that sentence is going to be, I guarantee you that he will. I need you to understand that Mitchell knows exactly how these people live. That he completely understands their desperation. That he wants them to be desperate. Because if they aren't desperate, they won't care about his little rewards program, and they won't give him tips about the supernatural creatures he's still trying to hunt down."

  "There must be a better way to do that!" Valerie protests.

  "There are absolutely better ways to do that but Mitchell doesn't care," Jackie says. Valerie opens her mouth and Jackie interrupts her before she can get out the first syllable. "Mitchell doesn't care. Literally the only thing that Mitchell cares about is how many monsters he can kill. He doesn't care about how much the townspeople suffer. Hell, he doesn't even care about how much the militia suffers. And if you try to rally his sympathy, it's going to get you precisely nowhere. And if he finds out what I've been doing, he'll—" Jackie stops and takes a breath. "I don't know that he'd have me hanged for treason, but—"

  "Hanged!" Valerie blurts out, unable to help it.

  "Come on, Val, I know that you know people have been executed under his regime," Jackie says. "Do you know why they get hanged? It's partly so he doesn't have to waste the bullets. But it's also because it makes a fucking spectacle, and that's what he wants. Don't you understand the things he does to keep this town under his thumb? The way he uses propaganda to make everyone terrified of the supernatural creatures and make himself look like the hero? The way people don't even dare talk shit about him in private, let alone in public, lest they get overheard, reported, and punished? As long as the people here are more afraid of werewolves than they are pissed at the fact that Mitchell took their lives away from them, then the fact that one mom was crying over a kid who won't breastfeed doesn't mean jack shit!"

  "Then…" Valerie's face crumples. "What do we do?"

  "We keep helping the people we can," Jackie says, and turns away. "And we try not to think too hard about the ones we can't."

  She starts walking again. After a few moments, Valerie jogs up beside her. "I hate that answer."

  Jackie shrugs.

  Valerie takes a deep breath. "What if I made sure he didn't find out about it from you? Like, what if I said one of the girls that I see in town told me about it?"

  "Mm hm. And when he asks Mom to confirm?"

  "Oh, come on, Mom doesn't…" Valerie's voice trails off as she realizes that her mother does, in fact, stay with her the entire time she's in town, and certainly does listen, and almost definitely would catch her in the lie. They walk in silence for a few minutes. "I don't get why Grandpa is such a jerk to you," she finally says.

  Jackie isn't about to volunteer to talk about that. "Because I'm not his granddaughter."

  "Yes, you are."

  "Not in his opinion. Mitchell is the guy who would support the male lion for killing all the cubs that aren't his. He doesn't get why Dad adopted me. So in his opinion I'm just an obnoxious teenager who hangs around and gets into trouble
. He'd love to have an excuse to get rid of me. He might not execute me, but he'd kick me out. Exile me to the lower districts, or just fling me out of the valley on a trebuchet."

  Valerie giggles despite herself. "That'd be a sight to see."

  "I might actually enjoy that." Jackie shakes her head. "Come on, let's get home before it gets any later."

  *~*~*

  Stumbling upon the abandoned water treatment plant was a stroke of luck, and things seem to settle down for a few days. Maya has everyone on double watches, because she doesn't want anyone to snatch their new real estate. The pack grumbles, because it's cold outside and they'd rather be curled up by the banked fire, nestled into a pile for warmth. Maya just reminds them that they'll be colder if they're dead.

  Ryan's been quiet for the past few days. Maya would suspect that he's up to something, but really she thinks her brother just doesn't want to talk about how he swallowed his pride. When the others realized he was back, Jared started to say something, and Maya chopped him off at the knees. "After all the times you've left and then come back, you don't get to say anything to him," she said, and Jared had lowered his eyes and agreed. Ryan seemed a little surprised that Maya had come to his defense, but he didn't say anything about it.

  "Maya! Maya!" Gabby comes scampering into the water treatment plant, a huge smile on her face. "Guess what we've got!"

  Maya, who had practically fallen off the bar she was using to do her chin-ups, looks over. "What?"

  "Eggs!" Gabby cheers.

  "Eggs?" Maya asks, eyes going wide.

  "Dominic and I were scrounging around and then he started having a vision, and he said Mrs. Ford had died—she was, like, ninety so that's probably not a huge surprise—so we trucked on over there and raided her place. She kept her own chickens and she had two! Dozen! Fucking! Eggs!"

  Maya takes a brief moment to contemplate what scavengers they've become and then decides she doesn't care. As long as they're not eating Mrs. Ford herself, she figures they're probably okay. Someone else will probably get to that soon enough, but that's not their problem. "Well, hot damn," she says. "Anything else good?"

  "Mostly nonperishables, like some canned stuff and some crackers, but she had a bag of apples and—ooh! Corn bread! It looked like she had just made it a couple days ago and hadn't finished it yet. She even had some spices that she hadn't used, like cinnamon and stuff."

  Maya looks up, seeing a few of the others coming in, hauling a bunch of blankets and pillows. "You stole those too?"

  "She wasn't using them anymore," Spencer says with a shrug.

  "True, but you know we won't be able to take them the next time we move," Maya says.

  "Who says we're going to need to move again?" Jared says. "Now that Jackie can warn us if there's going to be a raid, we might as well stay here. We've got good digs here."

  Maya feels a headache coming on. After a moment, she decides to postpone the inevitable 'we can't rely on Jackie to keep us safe' discussion for after she's had some of the spoils. Even if they move in a week—which they will—for that week they'll have blankets and pillows.

  Marcus and Jared go get water and they boil the eggs. Kyra asks if they can have the chickens too, but Maya says no. Roasting a chicken on a spit over the fire would be wonderful, and it would smell wonderful, and everyone within ten miles would be on their doorstep wanting a share. They don't get chicken.

  But they do get eggs, and there's even salt and pepper for them, along with cornbread and apples with a bit of cinnamon and there's enough for everyone to eat until they're full. Jackie pokes her head in to bring them the new patrol schedule, and she allows herself to be drawn in for a little while. She hasn't had cinnamon in ages, she says—most of what Leo brings in pretty basic stuff—so they persuade her to eat half of an apple.

  "I should really go," she says, without moving from their circle. "Eventually I'm going to snarl at my grandfather and he's gonna figure out I've been hanging out with a pack."

  "Then go," Maya says, just bordering on rude. She doesn't know why the subtle rejection that isn't even a rejection bothers her so much.

  "I will, I just…I like it here," Jackie says in a low murmur. Maya has to fight down the urge to tackle her and rub her scent all over the younger teen. She's had that urge every time Jackie has showed up since their night on the roof together. When Jackie had taken her arm in the bank vault, she nearly hadn't been able to control it.

  Jackie leaves about five minutes later. Gabby banks the fire and they arrange the pillows and blankets into a pile and everyone is huddled together and Maya is starting to feel a little drowsy. She shakes herself awake. "Watches," she says, and everyone groans. "Ryan and I will take the first one. Kyra, it's your turn for a night off so Spencer and Siobhan, second; Jared and Marcus, third; Gabby and Dominic, last."

  "Come on," Spencer says. "We're safe here. Do we have to still do watches at all? Let alone double watches?"

  "To be honest, I'm more worried that people will have seen you at Mrs. Ford's and decide to come see what we got and help themselves," Maya says, "or that someone tailed one of you back here and will tip off the militia."

  "But Jackie will warn us if—"

  "We're done talking about this," Maya says. "Double watches. I don't care if you like it or if you don't. Feel free to find somewhere else to sleep if you don't want to do your part."

  The betas go into a sulky silence. Or, well, silence. Some of them are sulking more than others. Maya leaves them in a pile and climbs up to the roof. But she brings one of the blankets with her, because it really is cold. Ryan joins her a moment later.

  "What's on your mind, little sister?" Ryan's voice is deceptively casual. He knows that Maya has assigned them watch together so they have a chance to talk. Maya usually puts him with Gabby, because if there's anything that Maya trusts her brother to do, it's protect Gabby. From the way Ryan sits down, knees drawn up loosely, arms resting on them, he looks somewhat defensive. Maya guesses that Ryan thinks she's about to broach his absence and doesn't want to talk about it, but she has no intention of doing so.

  "It's about Jackie," Maya says.

  "Mm hm," Ryan says and shakes his head. "We can't stay here, even with—"

  "I know," Maya says. "That's not it. We'll move in a week like we always do, blankets or no blankets. And we'll keep doing double watches. It's just about…Jackie." She feels her cheeks start to flush. "Lately, I, uh…when she shows up, I have trouble…I feel like…"

  "Spit it out, Maya," Ryan says, arching an eyebrow at her.

  "I just want to grab her and rub my scent all over her," Maya blurts out. She sees Ryan's jaw tighten and thinks he's angry, but then she realizes that Ryan's trying not to laugh. "It's not funny. That—that can't be normal, I mean—"

  "No, it's quite normal," Ryan interrupts. "It's mating instincts."

  "Oh, come on, don't give me some bullshit about only having one true mate."

  "Nothing like that," Ryan says. "But being an alpha gives you, shall we say, a possessive streak. It makes you want to mark and claim your mate in a much more visceral, physical way than a beta does. In the same way that you mark and claim your territory."

  "I don't think Jackie would be happy if I pissed on her," Maya growls, trying to get over the embarrassment.

  "Some people are into that, you know," Ryan says, and laughs when Maya glowers at him. "But for the sake of your peace of mind, it is quite normal for you to feel that way. I even think I know why it's happening now, rather than before—although Jackie has been meeting with us and bringing us supplies for months, I think the night of the raid might be the first time you actually touched her. You got your scent all over her, and now it's gone, so every time you see her, you want to mark her again."

  "Okay," Maya says, and huffs out a breath. "What do I do about it?"

  Ryan shrugs. "Well, you're fortunate in that you don't have to worry about birth control—"

  "That's not—" Maya knows she's flushing
bright pink. She clears her throat. "I don't think that's a good idea."

  Ryan doesn't look impressed. "You're not seriously going to try to tell me that you think Jackie wouldn't be interested."

  "That's not it." Maya tries not to growl. Of course she knows that Jackie is interested. Everyone in the pack knows that Jackie is interested, although by some miracle they don't bring it up. Probably because they figure Maya would never reciprocate. "It's just that—it would make things—complicated."

  "That's your excuse?" Ryan gives a dry chuckle. "I know all about complicated relationships with Donovans."

  "Are you going to tell me that it was worth it?" Maya asks, his voice a challenge.

  Ryan shrugs. "At least I have the memories."

  They sit in silence for a long minute.

  "I suppose," Ryan finally says, "that I believe in taking what you can, when you can. Sure, it might complicate things. But I don't like the idea of having regrets. I would always be happier to take a shot and miss the mark than to hold back. But that's me. That's not necessarily you." He stands up. "The question you have to ask yourself is, if everything fell apart tomorrow—would it hurt less because you hadn't been with her? Or would it hurt more?"

  Maya watches him walk away to take up his watch position at the back of the building and murmurs, "Thanks, Ryan."

  Not that she really has any idea what to do. But it does give her something to think about.

  Chapter Seven

  Valerie is surprised when Cedric Solomon walks into the little café where she's talking with her friends. She's also intensely glad of the interruption. Ever since her little foray with Jackie, she's found hanging out with her two remaining friends unbearable. There's so much she wants to ask them, and she doesn't dare. Do they even like her? Do they hang out with her because their parents make them, because nobody wants to cross General Donovan? Do they go home and sleep cold and hungry, or are they some of the favored few who get anything they need because they betray other people?