by Anne Bishop
Tolya thought that sounded like an appalling way to spend a day off, but he smiled since he was pretty sure that was the correct thing to do. “Then we won’t keep you any longer.”
The terra indigene waited until the humans left the conference room. Then they all looked at each other before Tolya turned to Virgil. “Black stones. Blackstones.”
Virgil nodded. “Looks like the Hope pup was right about that too.”
* * *
* * *
“Walker’s General Store, Jesse speaking.”
“Jesse Walker, this is—”
Recognizing Tolya’s voice, Jesse focused on the new member of her family and said firmly, “Down, Cutie.”
A beat of silence. “I beg your pardon?”
His tone of voice, somewhere between bewildered and insulted, made her laugh. “I was talking to the puppy. She’s in her pen”—Jesse took the couple of steps needed to reach the pen and quiet the puppy, who had been trying to climb out to be closer to her—“and has to stay there.” To make sure the pup did, she crouched beside the pen and began petting.
Another beat of silence. “You named her Cutie?”
“Are you going to tell Virgil?”
“No. Absolutely not.” Now he sounded horrified.
“Her official name is Cory Walker, but Rachel insists on calling her Cutie-pup or Cutie for short.”
“Rachel Wolfgard named the puppy?”
“She did.”
Tolya sighed, a long exhalation.
Jesse’s humor faded when she realized she’d stopped petting the puppy and now had her right hand wrapped around her aching left wrist. “You didn’t call to ask about the puppy.”
“No, I called to ask if you had heard of the Blackstone Clan. They’re a family of Intuit gamblers and swindlers.”
A chill went through Jesse. “I’ve never heard of them. Why have you?”
“Abigail Burch is from that family and says she has been hiding from them for many years now. She believes they’ll kill her if they find her.”
Jesse’s hand tightened around the wrist that now throbbed as a confirmation of Tolya’s words, and remembered the drawing Hope Wolfsong had made that showed Abigail dead. “They will.” She thought about Abigail, who had made soaps and candles and worn old-fashioned dresses and read tarot cards—and who had hidden her real self so well even Jesse hadn’t sensed the truth about her.
“Apparently she can sense if a particular stone will bring a person good luck or bad,” Tolya said. “This is an unusual skill?”
“Yes.” Being able to bring about a run of bad luck would certainly benefit gamblers and swindlers.
Cutie started yapping, craving attention. Or needing something else. “Tolya? I’ll call you back.” Jesse hung up, grabbed Cutie and a leash, and rushed through the back of the store and out the door. She walked the pup for a few minutes, letting Cutie become familiar with the scents and land behind the store.
An excuse, to give herself time to think before she called Tolya.
Had the soaps and candles and long dresses and tarot cards been Abigail’s attempt to reinvent herself and get away from a corrupt life, or had it all been a disguise? Oh, Jesse was sure the girl had had reason to hide, but she also had a feeling that everyone in Prairie Gold had been played—and now she wondered if Abigail had moved to Bennett to try to patch things up with Kelley or to get away from her, an Intuit who sensed people and would no longer accept the disguise at face value? Was giving Tolya this information about the Blackstone Clan just a piece of a game?
She didn’t want to be responsible for the girl being driven out of town, especially if Abigail really was trying to make a fresh start. But if Abigail had a different agenda, what sort of damage could she do in a mixed community where she would find marks for a different kind of con?
Or had she already found some?
In small Intuit communities—and most of their communities were small, given that they were tucked away in the wild country—there was almost no crime beyond occasional mischief and the rare times when an individual snapped without warning and did grievous harm to someone. That didn’t mean all Intuits were good people. It didn’t mean their kind of human didn’t spawn liars and thieves. It just meant that kind of person didn’t prosper in an Intuit community. Couldn’t prosper. But in other communities where you could hide what you were and use your extra sense to do unlawful deeds?
There had been Intuits who had done such things. Maybe the most successful outlaws who had lived a century ago had been Intuits who sensed what to rob and when—and sensed when it was time to retire and become something else. Maybe they got married and raised children and quietly taught their sons and daughters skills that were outside of polite society. And maybe there were some of those progeny even now who knew when to move on and let the marks recover before coming back around, like some kind of outlaw migration.
A family of gamblers and thieves. A clan, Tolya called it. No, she’d never heard of the Blackstones, but she had a very bad feeling about what would happen in Bennett when the next member of that clan showed up.
* * *
* * *
Virgil helped haul boxes into the two vans while he tried to decide if he could justifiably snarl at Deputy Jana for not telling him about the Blackstone humans yesterday when she’d first found out about them. Except he’d known about humans made of black stones days before Jana arrived in Bennett and hadn’t shown her the picture the Hope pup had drawn.
Was he just as wrong for not telling? More wrong? No. Not more wrong.
He snarled and felt his canines lengthen to Wolf size—and watched one of the salvage humans stumble away from the van, dropping a box as the man fled back into the house.
Moments later, Jana rushed out of the house. Of course the wolverine would come rushing out to puff up and snarl.
“What happened?” she demanded. “Larry said something about teeth and is pretty freaked-out.”
Virgil bared his teeth.
Jana almost took a step back, then took a step forward, kicking the box, which, from the sound of it, had been full of breakables that were now broken.
“Oh,” she said. “Well, why did you snarl at Larry?”
“I wasn’t snarling at Larry; I was snarling about you.”
“What did I do?”
That tone was a challenge to his dominance. It really was. If he was certain she was the one who was more wrong, he’d bite her—but he’d use his mostly human teeth. Those wouldn’t hurt her as much, but enough.
And if she bit him in retaliation?
He shoved his box deeper into the van, then swung around her to fetch another one that wasn’t full of broken things. As he passed her, he growled, “You’re confusing the puppy.”
Jana threw her hands in the air. Why? Who knew? It was one of those weird things humans did.
“How?” she yelped. “Why? She’s not even here!”
As he walked into the living room, Virgil heard a box full of broken things being thrown into the van—and he smiled.
* * *
* * *
Jana stood under a cool shower, washing away dirt and sweat. They’d done a lot of good, hard work today, and tomorrow Evan and Kenneth’s family would move out of the hotel and into their new house—where it was less likely that Maddie would be seen by someone who would realize what she was and see nothing but profit.
The day had wrung her out. Not just the physical work, and not just the niggle of doubt about some of the details in Abigail Burch’s story, but the gnawing sense of guilt that maybe she was confusing the puppy. She needed to have a firm idea of what she wanted to accomplish with—and for—Rusty and then find out how to do that. And once she figured that out, she had to convince the big bad Wolves to follow her rules when it came to her dog, or poor Rusty would get caught in the middle
of mom-and-dad squabbles about how to raise the kid.
Gods. Perish the thought of Virgil in that role. Except . . . he was the sheriff and that made him the dominant enforcer in the town and that made him the dominant Wolf in the town. Or maybe being the dominant enforcer was the reason he’d been given the job of sheriff. Whatever. The point was that she and Virgil had to agree on how to oversee Rusty’s education.
She was so not looking forward to that discussion. But she didn’t have to think about it for the rest of the day. She would take Rusty for a walk and then some playtime in the backyard. But right now, all she wanted was some food and a glass of beer. Or a large whiskey. Or . . .
Even under the water, she heard the howls coming from her neighbors down the street.
. . . a sledgehammer.
She turned off the water, dried off as quickly as she could, and threw on some clothes when she heard Rusty howling in the living room—and heard Buddy the parakeet making a loud scoldy noise that was either the parakeet version of a howl or an objection to the sound Rusty was making.
“Hey, girl,” Jana said as she moved toward the dog.
Rusty looked at Jana, wagged her tail, and howled again—and was answered by Virgil, Kane, and John.
Jana grabbed the leash from the basket near Rusty’s crate and snapped it on the dog’s collar—just in case Rusty tried to go through the screen door to join the Wolves.
“We are here,” Barb said, walking out of the kitchen.
Jana studied her housemate. “And . . . ?”
“I think that’s the message. We are here. The Wolves in the Lakeside Courtyard would howl at night and my brother said that was the message. Or one of the reasons they howled.”
“Who were they telling?” She didn’t think the humans who lived in Lakeside were that thrilled to know the Others were close enough to be heard.
A howl. A sound so deep Jana felt it vibrate in her bones and freeze her blood. A huge sound.
A second howl. A third. So close the windows rattled.
“Hold her,” Jana said.
Barb rushed forward to grab the leash. “Don’t go out there. Humans shouldn’t go out there.”
“I’m a cop.” She wanted to run into her bedroom and grab her weapon, but she wasn’t dressed like a cop, wasn’t going about official business—and she didn’t think that whatever was outside would notice if she pinned a badge to her T-shirt. It would notice the gun—and kill her for carrying a human weapon.
All right, then. She had faced down a few bullies at the academy with nothing but attitude; she could do it here too.
After checking that Barb had a tight grip on Rusty, Jana slipped outside and walked into the street just as the Wolfgard answered those deep, terrifying howls—and were answered in turn.
How close were those things? What were they? Elders, sure. But what did that mean? They were howling, so . . . gigantic Wolves? Or something that howled but was even older and more primal than the Wolfgard?
She didn’t know—and understood on a gut level that she couldn’t know and survive. She also understood something else. The humans living in Bennett needed some way to know the boundaries, needed to know where the lines were now drawn that separated streets that were within the jurisdiction of the police and town government from the streets that were in the wild country and were under the jurisdiction of them.
“Virgil?” Jana called softly, hoping her voice wouldn’t carry much beyond the Wolves.
He turned to face her. Kane and John continued to face the direction of the Elder Hills.
“We need to talk about some things tomorrow,” Jana said.
He made a sound she took to be agreement.
She nodded. “Okay, then.” She looked toward the Elder Hills and saw nothing—and wondered if there was an Elder in its true form standing a few yards beyond the boundary, watching her. “Okay.”
Forgoing the walk for the dog’s sake—an excuse Barb didn’t question—Jana and Rusty played in the backyard while Barb put together a simple meal of sandwiches and salad.
Late that evening, as she wrote a short note to Tobias, asking for book recommendations on dog training, she thought about the howling.
We are here. According to Barb, the Wolves meant it as reassurance that they were keeping watch. But the answering howls? We. Are. Here. Should the humans hear that as a reminder or a threat?
* * *
* * *
The door to the private railroad car opened a finger’s length—enough for the barrel of a gun to be aimed at anyone sitting at the card table. But no gun appeared or was fired. Instead, Judd McCall said, “Parlan?”
“Come in.” Parlan placed the derringer on the table and resumed shuffling a deck of cards. He waited while Judd scanned the public side of the room, then fixed on the door that provided entry into what was, most of the time, his private space.
“Any company waiting for you?” Judd asked.
“No.” When the mood struck, he’d pick up a woman and use her well for a day or so, sometimes even letting her travel with him for a while if she had some interesting—and uninhibited—skills. Plenty of the saloon whores had indicated interest in having him for a night instead of some rough-and-tumble man, but he hadn’t reciprocated the interest lately.
The northern half of the Midwest Region was even more barren than he’d realized in terms of large towns and people who still had money. The southern half still had a few human-controlled cities along the gulf—places where the clan had previously set up shop for a few weeks before moving on—but he hadn’t paid enough attention and hadn’t realized the Midwest Region had been split and they would need another set of travel passes to reach the cities along the gulf.
No, that wasn’t true. He had been paying enough attention ever since that damn war, but people were still discovering the repercussions of the HFL movement trying to wrest control of the land from the Others. And the clan finding themselves in the wrong half of the Midwest Region was one of those repercussions.
He dealt four cards, faceup.
Judd raised an eyebrow. “Blackjack?”
“To pass the time.”
Everyone else in the clan liked to gamble, but some weren’t allowed to gamble outside the clan because they couldn’t always be trusted not to put something on the table that they shouldn’t. But Judd didn’t gamble. Not with cards or dice. And Judd wasn’t what you would call a rough-and-tumble man. He was too damn dangerous for that because Judd McCall liked to gamble with guns and knives. He liked to gamble on how long it might take a man to die from a particular wound.
“Game broke up early?” Judd tapped the table to indicate he wanted another card. “Busted.”
They set those cards aside and Parlan dealt another hand. “The ones who joined the game because it’s Earthday and they were bored and looking for something to do until the train could leave in the morning didn’t have enough cash to see them past a couple of hours of play. And the ones who hoped I’d take markers because they never figured to lay eyes on me again . . . I persuaded them to move along.” He sighed. “Barely making enough to meet expenses since those HFL idiots lost the war.”
“Sometimes you’re the one who floats us . . .” Judd pulled a handkerchief tied up as a bundle out of his coat pocket. “And sometimes another branch of the clan makes the profit.” He untied the bundle.
Parlan set the cards aside and picked up a diamond and emerald necklace. A modest piece. Probably a gift for an important anniversary— or the kind of gift a married man might give his mistress to keep her sweet and believing that he really was going to leave his wife. “Where did you find this?”
“Charlie Webb and Sweeney Cooke reported in. They found another of those hole-in-the-wall towns. They were thinking it might work as a base of operations for some in-and-out jobs, but Charlie noticed that two of the houses were
occupied and figured they shouldn’t be touched since he wasn’t sure who, or what, occupied those places. They entered one of the other houses and helped themselves to whatever easily fit in the car. Some cash and jewelry that couldn’t belong to anyone living in that town. A couple of handguns and a rifle, along with ammunition. Clothes and cans of food. Sweeney wanted to do a bit of crazy and smash windows, make a mess, but Charlie calmed him down. Said if they left quiet, they could slip back into town and clean out another house.”
“Good thinking on Charlie’s part.” Parlan dealt cards, not even asking if Judd wanted to hit or stay. “Is Sweeney becoming a problem?”
“Might be. But not yet. I’ll deal with him when the time comes.”
Parlan nodded. “Did Lawry have a look at those?” His brother, Lawry, was their jewelry expert—and their jewel fixer. Lawry always knew which stones could be popped out of a setting and replaced with paste with the mark none the wiser, and could make the switch in the time it took to fix a broken clasp.
“Not yet. He and Dalton went off in a different direction. Heard some rumors about abandoned ranches.” Judd gave Parlan a sharp smile. “Rustling isn’t much fun when there’s no one around to notice the stock is missing.”
“Not practical either unless we already have a market for the animals. Besides, that’s not really our line of work.” Parlan tossed the deck on the table and sat back. “I’ve squeezed dry everyone I can squeeze on this train, and I don’t have the feeling that any fresh marks will be boarding tomorrow. I’ll make arrangements to have my car hitched to the eastbound train with an eye to changing to a southbound line before I reach the Midwest Region’s border.”
“You’re thinking the people coming out here to live might have some cash?”
“No, I’m thinking it’s time to take off the gambler duds, put on my suit, and charm some of the businessmen’s wives by gallantly offering to make up a foursome for bridge. Some of those women have been traveling with their husbands on business for weeks now to escape whatever was happening in their hometowns and are desperate for fresh company. They’ll be a likely source of information about towns that have become nothing more than stops for the train and which ones might have potential for us.” Parlan walked over to a cabinet and opened the drawer that held maps. Taking out the map for the Midwest Region, he returned to the table and opened it.
