by Holley Trent
“He’s going to make cuts again, isn’t he?” one of the clarinet players asked.
“I’ll do everything in my power to get all of you guys on the field, but I’m not going to lie to you woodwind players. He wants a percussion- and brass-heavy band. That’s why I’ve been pushing you to get comfortable in those lower registers because if you get on the field, he’s going to have you on third and fourth parts supporting the rhythm section.” She tapped her baton idly against the stand and chose her words carefully. She was about to burst a lot of little bubbles, but she’d had to make a tough decision.
“And that’s why I’m auditioning girls for snare and base drums first,” she said, and on cue, a quarter of the boys in the room yelled out complaints.
“I’m sorry,” she shouted over them.
None of the girls had shown any interest in percussion, but Willa was going to do what she had to. Her colleague was playing a dirty game, but Willa had been a musician for longer.
She knew all the games.
She wished she was as good a player when it came to Coyote games. She always seemed to be coming in last place with those.
Chapter Thirteen
Blue slinked from the driver’s seat of his SUV and let out a sigh of exhaustion. He’d shifted to his animal form and back three times in less than five hours. The pace wasn’t sustainable, even for an alpha, but he’d been afraid to lose the opportunities when the bags of fur had tracked across his path.
He had four pack members sitting in their houses recovering from being alpha-rolled. They weren’t the pack’s worst offenders by any stretch of the imagination, but every member mattered. It was probably best if he started at the bottom of the pack, anyway. Those people cast their allegiances to whomever they thought was taking care of them. The rough and grizzled guys at the top—they’d probably be a problem for him. Blue needed to get the core of the pack settled in before he dealt with the worst offenders.
He tugged open the back door of the truck, grabbed the bags of Chinese food from the floor, and then jogged across the street to Willa’s house.
Three glowing pairs of eyes blinked in the shadows under her Jeep.
Doubling back, he gave the ever-present raccoons a sarcastic salute, tossed them a handful of fortune cookies, and made a mental note to root the plastic wrappers out later.
Moving stealthily up the steps to the stoop, he tuned in to the sounds from inside. She had the inner door open, and only the flimsy screen door stood between her and the world beyond.
King was somewhere in there, making pitiful whimpering noises and quietly indignant woofs. Asleep and dreaming, probably.
Farther back was Willa’s breathless voice and the pauses indicative of a one-sided conversation.
She was on the phone, probably.
“You’ve done me so many favors already,” she said, “but I don’t know what else to do but ask.”
What now?
He shifted the hot bag to his other arm and held his breath so as not to miss a word. She had a tendency to mumble.
“I thought about asking the community work coordinator at the high school if she could try to send back a couple of former students to help out, but I figured any kids in that program are probably looking for jobs that pay a little, and I can’t pay.”
Ah, school stuff.
The inner paper bag crinkled a little as he shifted.
Oh shit.
Blue held his breath and waited for discovery. Fortunately, King didn’t run to the door barking, and Willa didn’t give any indication that she’d heard, so Blue let down his guard.
He hated having to eavesdrop the way he was. It was cowardly and shameful, but if there was another way to get information out of the woman, he would have already tried it. They couldn’t cooperate if she didn’t tell him what she needed. Not everything they discussed had to be about the pack.
“I can’t teach traditional grip for snare,” Willa said. “And Paul won’t let kids march with match grip. I know that probably makes no sense to you, but I figured you could pass that along and explain what I need. I can’t turn my left wrist over far enough anymore. It’s getting worse as years go on, and I, so . . . Uh-huh.”
“What the hell did she do to her wrist?” he murmured, rubbing his chin.
Chronic injuries just weren’t something people like him had, and obviously Willa wasn’t normal—not human normal, and not demigoddess normal, either. She was a mystery he was still trying to figure out.
Remembering another mystery, he snapped his fingers and swore under his breath.
He’d forgotten about that coin. He’d emptied out his pockets at home and left it on his dresser without thinking to look up the image, but he’d do it before bed. If he could unravel that one clue, he could move on to others. It’d niggle at the back of his mind until he figured that thing out.
“You’ll ask him?” Willa asked whomever she was talking to. “Tell him I know he’s busy, but even just a couple of times per week through the end of the school year would mean so much to those kids. And it’s just the eighth-graders. First thing in the morning on Tuesdays and Thursdays. After lunch on the other days, if that makes a difference. Okay. If you can catch up with him, call me back and let me know. Thanks. Oh! Thank your aunt for the cupcakes for me. I don’t know how she knew I needed them, but they made my day. Bye.”
He heard the snick, probably of the phone hitting the base, and then a long breath.
Then quiet, padded footsteps, and a mumble of, “Please, Hank, say yes.”
Hank. Shit.
Grimacing, Blue rapped the edge of the screen door and called out, “Willa? I’ve got dinner,” as though he hadn’t been standing there for three minutes eavesdropping like a depraved asshole.
King was at the door in two seconds flat, paws up on the screen as though he were going to cut it down and leap through the mesh for the bag.
“For goodness’ sake, dog,” Willa said with a sigh, and Blue wasn’t quite sure which of them she was talking about.
She gave King a scoot by the bottom toward the inner recesses of the house and tugged the door handle. “What are you doing here?”
Blue pointed demonstrably to the bag as he squeezed past her. “Let’s eat it while it’s hot. Can’t stand cold lo mein.”
The door clicked shut behind him as he marched to the kitchen uninvited.
Despite the way he’d been behaving since arriving in Maria, he did have some manners. Normally, he would have called ahead before showing up at a lady’s house, but he had a sneaking suspicion that if he relied on decent behavior when dealing with Willa, she’d do everything she could to avoid seeing him face-to-face again.
That wouldn’t do. After all, they were finally starting to make nice.
He set the bag atop the kitchen table, which was covered with her open laptop, lined music composition sheets, and a few pencils that had been chewed nearly to the lead.
He picked one up and raised an eyebrow at her.
She snatched it away and crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s a tic. I sometimes gnaw when I’m thinking.”
“Maybe you should switch to beef jerky or something. It’d be better for your health.”
“I’ll bear that in consideration.”
“Good. I like cooperation. We should do more of it.”
She sighed. “What are you doing here?”
He pointed to the bag. “I brought dinner.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Because people have to eat?”
Her eyebrows darted up and she pointed to herself. “And you want to eat . . . with me?”
“I figured I’d kill two birds with one stone, you know? Put food in my belly and continue our chat at the same time.”
“You’re not even going to beat around the bush about it, huh?”
“Why bother?” He removed packets of food from the bag and gently lifted the container flaps to let some of the condensation settle.
S
haking her head, she walked to the cupboard and fetched plates. “Diana had been gone for fifteen minutes before you showed up.”
“Ah, thought you were free of Shapelys for the day, huh?”
“It’s not that I . . . mind Diana at all,” Willa said hesitantly. “I don’t, really. I like her as a person, but it’s hard to get comfortable when I know precisely why she’s here.”
“I can’t say I’m entirely thrilled at why she’s in town, but I figured that if she was going to be here, I’d at least put her to work in a way that’s useful.”
And he was. While he’d been fetching glorious little fried chicken bits in sauce with a name he couldn’t pronounce, and carbohydrates of all sorts, he’d sent his sister a text message dispatching her to continue what he was calling the Maria Massacre. No one was dying—he wasn’t that kind of brute. They were simply tempering the wills of a few wild Coyotes. He figured it was kinder sending Diana out after some of the ladies than him doing it. She wouldn’t mentally steamroll them the way he did. She’d just confuse them until the dogs came to the conclusion on their own that Diana’s way was better. And as long as Blue kept Willa occupied, Willa wouldn’t go poking around town to see what her Coyotes were up to.
She’d find out soon enough, probably. Hopefully, after the majority of the pack had started Shapely rehab.
“What kind of meat is in there?” Willa pointed to a tall container of fried rice.
“None. Just egg.”
Nodding, she grabbed the container and scooped a healthy portion onto her plate.
He wondered if she were going to say anything about the phone call she’d just made—wondered if she’d tell him she was ingratiating herself with a Foye.
She didn’t say anything. She lifted another container and sniffed it.
“Moo shu pork.”
She set it down and picked up another.
“Orange chicken.”
She scooped some out. “That Chinese food place has only been in Maria for the past year. I’ve only been there once.”
“Didn’t like it enough to go back?” He thought it was pretty good, but being a dog at heart, his food sensibilities were probably somewhat on the gauche side.
“Not an issue of liking it,” she murmured. “It was spendy for what it was.”
“Ah.” She was probably right, but he didn’t pay a lot of attention to price tags on most things. Whether his fried rice was a couple of bucks more expensive at one place versus another didn’t arouse his attention. Two dollars wouldn’t hurt him, but it would hurt her. He hadn’t considered that before.
Hadn’t considered what a few bucks of difference might have meant to the people in the pack who were, by far, so much less wealthy than the Coyotes in Sparks.
That merited further thinking.
Empathy, came the echo of his mother’s voice in his head. You’re capable of it. You just need to pay attention, Blue.
Willa grabbed some forks from a drawer, handed him one, and then sat with the others. She left the spares at the center of the table atop a sheet of music she’d marked up and dug into her food.
King plopped his big head on her lap, eyes fixed on the fork in her hand and the chunk of chicken on the tines.
Laughing, Blue settled into the chair across from her and dug into his pork. “How long have you had him?”
“About forty years.”
Blue had chosen the wrong moment to swallow. He nearly choked on his food. After pounding his chest to get his swallowing mechanism working properly again, he got out, “Did I hear that right?”
Smiling gently—and at his expense, likely—she shrugged. “He was a gift from a friend I had back when I was living in Germany. I wasn’t there for very long, but I guess he remembered me fondly.”
“Boyfriend, huh?”
“No,” she said tartly. She ripped the corner off a packet of soy sauce and poured some onto her food.
He put up his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Didn’t mean to offend you.”
“Why do you assume that a generous gift would have to come from a lover?”
“Believe it or not, that’s the first place any reasonable person’s mind would go.”
“If you say so,” she murmured. “I don’t owe you any explanations, but I’ll tell you anyway. I was a governess throughout most of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. I taught a lot of children how to read music. Being female, I wasn’t welcome in most public ensembles, but private employers didn’t mind so much if I was teaching their children music competence. Anyhow.” She shrugged and raked the tines of her fork through her food. “When I was in Germany, there was another demigod doing tutoring work as well. We’d often cross paths, and we’d share war stories about our pupils.” Her lips curled up slightly at the corners, and her gaze suddenly went soft. “I think he tried to look out for me the best he could, but we were both always looking for the next thing. We had to keep moving around so no one could get suspicious about how old we were or where we’d originated. I went to England and then the US, and I don’t know where he went.”
“You ran into him again, though.”
She nodded and took a bite of food. “As luck would have it, he saw me in a concert. Ran up to me after a show and scared the heck out of me. I nearly dropped my viola. That was in Texas. He convinced me to spend the night at his farm and let his wife feed me. We spent all evening chatting and catching up, and then they wouldn’t let me leave without King. He was just a puppy then. I had no idea what he was.”
“Is he immortal? Like, a familiar or something?”
“Hmm.” Her nose scrunched as she stirred her food around on her plate, mixing meat with rice. “That’s a good context. My peer’s wife is a witch, and she has a way of weaving magic that connects pets to their owners. I guess they were uncomfortable with me still being out on my own. I suppose they figured I should have found a partner by then. After all, most people like me look for one. Being paired off is safer.”
“So why haven’t you found someone?” he asked.
“And why haven’t you called off your unwanted engagement yet?” she returned without missing a beat. She scooped up more food with one hand and, with the other, pulled a page of sheet music closer. “Malagueña” for snare drum.
“You’re deflecting,” he said,” but I think that’s a fair question.”
“It becomes decidedly less fair when everyone who’s known me for any stretch of time asks it, and I have to come up with a pretty excuse for them. I tell them that I’m too busy with my career, or that I’m probably going to move soon and it doesn’t make sense to start anything serious with someone, or how I’m still rebounding from the last one.” Grunting softly, she picked up a pencil and circled a series of notes on top of the music sheet. She was a right-hander, but her writing with her left was almost legible. It said something about drilling.
“If those aren’t what’s holding you back,” he said, curious, “what is?”
She lifted her gaze slowly to him and chewed. Watched quietly as though she had all the time in the world, and maybe she did.
When she was still and silent like that, he remembered that she wasn’t like him. Her life span was open-ended and she’d been around a hell of a long time. She probably thought he was a baby the same way he thought the woman his father expected him to marry was. That was likely what was crossing her mind every time he argued with her. Every time he made demands or tried to get her to see things from his perspective.
He wasn’t a fucking child, though, and wondered if she needed a reminder of that.
“What’s the truth, Willa?” He reached across the table and grasped her by the chin before she could lean away from him. “You think you’re too good for people?”
She swallowed and her eyelids narrowed, making the golden irises behind them seem to glow even more. She raised a hand as if to push his away, but she let it fall without touching him.
An unexpected sense of relief coursed through him tha
t she didn’t follow through with the small refusal. He wasn’t going to hurt her. He wanted her to know that. There wasn’t a single person he craved the trust of more. She was practically a litmus test of morality, and never before had he cared if he met anyone’s standard of decency, except his mother’s.
“Is that it?” he nudged. “Easier for you not to let anyone get close enough to have you because that way you won’t have to reject them?”
“You’re way off-base.” Her eyelids opened to their usual positions, and he saw more evidence of her strangeness then—the golden hue retreating from the whites, like sunlight being absorbed by the horizon.
What the hell?
He turned her face from one side to the other and watched her eyes track, waited for the colors to shift again, but they didn’t.
“What are you doing?” She grasped his wrist as if to pull his hand away, but instead furrowed her brow and murmured, “What are you looking at?”
“What kind of magic do you have inside you, Willa?” he asked softly.
Her brow burrowed. Nose crinkled. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I think you’re lying. You’re telling me one of those pretty excuses you mentioned.”
“Think what you want. I know what I have and what I don’t. I have no reason to lie about that. Don’t you think my life would be a lot easier if I did have a bit of magic?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Her skin was like warm satin, he discovered as his grip of her chin shifted to a caress. He shouldn’t have been touching her like that, but he didn’t know how else to go about slaking his curiosity. His questions kept multiplying. He could probably spend forever unraveling her.
“You can sense magic,” she stated matter-of-factly as her gaze fell to his hand, still stroking.
“Yeah, I can,” he said quietly.
She didn’t feel real. Substantial, yes. Solid, yes, but not real. Her skin was too smooth—like metal made into flesh. Her coloring, upon longer inspection, was unusually sallow beneath the olive.
And she was so warm. Not warm like a shapeshifter, but like a lamp with a bulb too powerful for its base.
