by Anne Bishop
He left, giving Nathan a brisk nod on his way out.
The rest of the morning went along much the same way. There was a knee-jerk reaction when a deliveryman walked in and spotted Nathan. Most said something along the lines of, “You got a new helper? What happened to the Crow?” Meg took this to mean that dealing with a Crow might be peculiar, but it was much preferred to dealing with something that weighed as much as you did and growled at you.
Only one deliveryman refused to come inside once he spotted Nathan, and that was the man who had paid too much attention to Sam and the harness the pup was wearing. She ended up calling Lorne at the Three Ps to run over from his shop and take the packages, because Nathan blocked the door, preventing her from going outside while that particular man was there.
After the mail was delivered, Meg checked her list against the previous week’s. She looked at Nathan, who was sniffing around the front room in a way that made her hope he knew the difference between a counter and a tree.
“That’s the last of the regular morning deliveries,” she said, hoping she sounded bright rather than demented. “I’m going to be working in the sorting room for a while. You want to go outside for a few minutes and stretch your legs?”
He didn’t respond, so she went into the sorting room to deal with the mail and other deliveries. A minute later, she heard the Crows. When she peeked through the doorway, she saw Nathan outside, moving back and forth in the delivery area, nose to the ground. Then he raised his head and howled.
“Well, that will help traffic,” she muttered as answering howls penetrated the building from several directions.
We are here.
That was always the message. But she had the feeling people wouldn’t have to go into Howling Good Reads anymore to catch sight of a Wolf.
* * *
Nathan had a point. Meg’s peculiar reaction to seeing a Wolf in the office kept scratching at him. Most humans who had seen one Wolf didn’t get upset about seeing another one, as long as it wasn’t attacking someone. At least, that was true of the customers who came into Howling Good Reads. To them, a Wolf was a Wolf was a Wolf. On the other hand, he liked that he wasn’t interchangeable with the rest of the Wolfgard and that Meg knew him on sight, even the first time she’d seen him as Wolf.
He spotted Nathan when the other Wolf rounded a corner to sniff around the back of the office.
It took a little too much effort to stop himself from running over to the office and marking his territory. Not that he should consider the Liaison’s Office as being more his territory than the rest of the Courtyard.
He shifted his feet and whined softly.
Have to stay human and do my own work—and trust Nathan to do his.
He heard the Crows, watched Nathan head for the back door and slip inside the office.
was the reply.
A familiar female who would go into the office to talk to Meg. Someone who wasn’t terra indigene. The Crows would have said if the female was Other. That narrowed the possibilities. But Heather was downstairs, shelving stock. Merri Lee wasn’t scheduled to work at A Little Bite until lunchtime. The Ruthie? Maybe, but he didn’t remember seeing her around the store in the mornings, and she usually spent time at Run & Thump later in the day. Which left Asia Crane.
Simon pictured Asia alone with Meg—and snarled. No reason. Asia hadn’t done anything except be too pushy about wanting the Liaison’s job and wanting him to take her for a walk on the wild side. But she didn’t seem that interested in either of those things anymore.
And if she was, she wasn’t saying anything to him.
He didn’t get a response and didn’t expect one. Going back to his desk, Simon looked at the telephone. With Elliot at the consulate, there were five Wolves in this part of the Courtyard, but only two were in Wolf form—Nathan and Ferus, who was on duty at HGR. It wouldn’t hurt to have a couple more Wolves close by, especially because he’d promised Sam that the pup could spend the afternoon with Meg.
Maybe he should mention that to Meg?
He picked up the phone, but he didn’t call Meg. Instead, he called Blair and arranged for an increase in the Wolfgard presence in the Liaison’s part of the Courtyard.
* * *
Asia strolled up to the Liaison’s Office, hot chocolate in hand. On previous dates with Darrell, she had hinted that Simon might be a wee bit jealous about the time she was spending with another man. Now that plans had changed, she wanted everyone in the Courtyard to know she was Darrell’s girlfriend.
She didn’t think Simon would give a damn one way or the other, but she hoped he would lower his guard some if she no longer paid attention to him and didn’t have much time for Meg.
“There you are!” Asia said when Meg stepped up to the counter. “I was whittling my way down to nothing with worry, but this was the first chance I had to check on you.” A quick look over Meg’s shoulder. She didn’t see the Wolf pup, which was a disappointment, but she did see the box of sugar lumps on the big table. Confirmation enough that Meg brought out the sugar on Moonsday.
“Check on me?” Meg said.
“I heard the police were here and there was some big commotion. And then I heard you were injured, maybe even in the hospital, so I just had to see for myself that you were all right. Here. I brought you some hot chocolate.” Darrell hadn’t actually said anything about Meg. He’d just mentioned the ambulance being on the scene—and he told her some freaky story about a wolf man standing right out where everyone could see a lot more than they wanted to see.
“Thanks.” Meg took a sip and set the cup on the counter. “I’m fine. Someone brought in a suspicious box, that’s all.”
Not by a long shot, Asia thought. That little incident had the whole Courtyard buzzing right along with the cops. “Well, I’m glad to hear you didn’t take any harm.” Now she made a show of looking past Meg. “Say. Where is that adorable puppy that was with you the other day? He was just the cutest thing.”
“He’s not here today.”
Before Asia could push to find out where the puppy was when he wasn’t at the office, a full-grown Wolf appeared in the doorway, startling her into taking a couple steps back. Despite their size, the damn things were so quiet. After that Wolf rammed his nose into her crotch, she was a lot less interested in being around any of them unless she could pick them up and carry them away.
Meg looked at the Wolf, then said to Asia, “I have a different office buddy now.”
“All the time?” Asia asked.
Meg hesitated. “The incident on Watersday . . . It was alarming at the time, and with so many police officers responding, it caused a lot of fuss. So Mr. Wolfgard decided to add some security in the office during business hours—the same kind he has at the bookstore.”
She hadn’t appreciated how badly White Van had bungled the snatch, but this just confirmed how pointless it would be to continue hanging around Meg. Anything she said from now on would be reported to Simon.
A chorus of neighs gave her an excuse to leave.
“More friends?” she asked.
“The ponies are here for the mail.”
“And the sugar.”
“That too. Thanks for the hot chocolate.”
“I’d still like to go out to lunch one of t
hese days,” Asia said. “You let me know when we might be able to do that.”
Not that it’s going to happen, she thought as she left the office. She looked toward the consulate, spotted Darrell in one of the upstairs windows, and blew him a kiss. I am going to be all kinds of distracted with my new boyfriend.
She sauntered to HGR and stayed long enough to make sure she’d been spotted. Then she picked a book at random, relieved that it wasn’t Simon manning the register when she went up to pay for it.
As soon as she returned to her car, she called Darrell. He was thrilled to have the opportunity to invite her out on another date.
* * *
Meg didn’t know where Nathan had gone when she went to A Little Bite for lunch and then walked over to the Market Square to browse in the library for a while, but he was waiting for her at the back door when she returned for the office’s afternoon hours. She wondered if he was making an effort not to startle her again, since his appearance that morning made it obvious that he could get into the building by himself.
She opened the doors and spread the Lakeside News on the sorting table to skim the paper for whatever might be of interest to the Others. Nathan was in the front room, sniffing everything.
When the Crows started fussing, she went to the counter, tensing when she saw an unscheduled delivery truck. Then it turned enough for her to read the Everywhere Delivery name.
“It’s Harry,” she said to Nathan as she hurried to open the door for the deliveryman.
“Was asked to make a special afternoon delivery,” Harry said when he put the box on the handcart. “Got the other piece to bring in, but you might want to make sure the floor is dry wherever you want to put it.”
“Good idea.” Meg hurried into the back room and fetched a towel. While Nathan paced, clearly not sure of where he should be, she wiped down the floor where he’d been lying that morning. “Right over here, Harry.” Since his boots were snowy, she took the bulky stuffed fabric from him and positioned it herself.
“Need your signature, Miz Meg,” Harry said.
She signed his slip, made her own notation on her clipboard, and waited until Harry drove off before she smiled at Nathan. “Go ahead. Take a look.”
He moved forward cautiously. He circled it, sniffed it, whapped it with a paw. Then he found the product tag and stared at it for a moment. Turning toward her, he lifted a lip in something that might have been a sneer.
“I know it says it’s a dog bed, but I’m sure a Wolf can use it,” Meg said.
Nothing but grumbly sounds from the Wolf.
“Fine. If you want to lie on a cold, hard floor instead of something comfy and warm just because Wolf is spelled d-o-g, you go right ahead.” She went into the sorting room and shut the door. Then she remembered the other box and opened the receiving door long enough to pull the handcart into the sorting room. If he was going to be so churlish about her trying to do something nice for him, she sure wasn’t going to leave six defenseless boxes of dog cookies alone with him.
She tucked the boxes—three boxes for puppies and three for large dogs—in the cupboards under her sorting table. Then she went back to reading the paper until the Crows announced the next delivery truck.
* * *
Simon walked into the front room of the Liaison’s Office and stared at the Wolf curled up on . . .
“What is that?” he asked, stomping snow off his boots as he stepped toward Nathan.
“How did it get to be yours?”
Giving Simon a smug look, Nathan added,
Ignoring the warning growl, Simon ran a hand over the fabric, squeezed the stuffing, and looked at the tag.
“Where did you find this?” Not only did it look comfortable; it would look neater than the pile of old blankets he now had in his office for the times when he wanted to shift to Wolf and nap for a while.
The leader always had first choice of food, of females, of anything that came to his attention. A leader who always took what another had was a leader who ended up constantly fighting to retain the leadership.
“This one stays here for whoever is on guard. I’ll ask Meg to order another one for me.” He glanced at the closed door and wondered why Meg hadn’t come out, since even human ears should have heard him talking to Nathan.
He had a good idea which female Darrell had found.
The first time Asia came in to Howling Good Reads and indicated she’d like to have sex with him, he’d tried to imagine being with her. Something about her interest hadn’t felt right, and all he could picture was a trap with steel teeth hidden under leaves and twigs. But that was his reaction to her, and, to be honest, he was relieved she’d turned her attention to a human male and would leave him alone now.
He didn’t like her, so he didn’t trust her. He didn’t care if that was fair or not. Just like he didn’t care if it was fair to wonder if the Others should continue to trust Darrell once he began having sex with Asia. After all, males did plenty of foolish things when they wanted sex.
He didn’t say anything to Nathan. His new reservations about Darrell were a discussion to have with Henry and Vlad. But right now, he had to face another discussion.
Using the go-through, he went behind the counter, studied the closed door, debated a moment, then knocked before opening it just enough to say, “Meg?”
No answer. Walking into the room, he didn’t find a woman. Before he had a chance to howl about her being gone, he heard the toilet flush. Her whereabouts discovered, he opened cupboards until he found the cookies. He had his hand in the box when Meg walked into the room.
He stuffed a couple of cookies into his coat pocket, then closed the box and put it back where he’d found it.
“Where did you get the bed for Nathan?” he asked.
She sighed. “Does it really matter that the tag says dog instead of Wolf?”
It would if they decided to send some into the settlements, but he could ignore the words here in the Courtyard. “I wondered because I would like to get one for my office. And maybe a couple of extras to put in our general store.”
“I ordered it from the Pet Palace.”
He winced, thinking of what Elliot would say about purchasing anything from such a place. Well, he just wouldn’t tell Elliot where the beds came from.
“Order more.”
“All right.” She gave him a puzzled look. “How did you know about the bed?”
“I didn’t. I came over to see if Sam can stay with you for the rest of the afternoon. I’ll fetch him from school. He can go with you on your deliveries, or you can leave him with Henry.”
“All right.” Now she looked uneasy. “Simon? Asia asked about Sam. She saw him while you were out of town, when he was here with me.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I told her he wasn’t here today. Then she saw Nathan. She and I talked for a couple of minutes, and she left. Sam is cute, and humans do like cuddling puppies and kittens.” She shrugged. “I don’t think she meant any harm by asking, but I thought you should know.”
“Good.” He nodded. “It’s good you told me. I’ll take your BOW and go get Sam now.”
He went out the back door. As he crossed the space to the garage, he looked back at the stairs that led to the two small apartments over the Liaison’s Office. A meeting place. An overnight place. A sex place for those among the terra indigene whose status in the human world required more privacy than was available in the rooms above the social center.
A trap with steel teeth. He needed to figure out what he didn’t understand about Asia being with Darrell before that trap snapped shut.
CHAPTER 18
With Sam bes
ide him in the front seat, Simon drove away from the Courtyard’s school and headed for the Liaison’s Office. The school was tucked near the center of the Courtyard, well hidden from prying human eyes.
It wasn’t safe for terra indigene youngsters to go to school with human children, so Courtyards provided their residents with an education similar to what humans received. A human couldn’t cheat a Wolf who could add and subtract like anyone else. Two plus two equaled four, no matter what species you belonged to.
Thaisia’s history, on the other hand, was a different matter altogether. Humans and Others held very different opinions about that subject.
But that day’s report of arithmetic, reading, and writing had been covered in the first two minutes of the drive. Now Sam was back to a more important topic.
“But Nathan isn’t doing anything,” Sam said. “Why can’t he play with me?”
“He is doing something,” Simon replied. “He’s on guard, so he can play only during the midday break when Meg isn’t in the office.”
“How come Meg needs a guard now? Nathan wasn’t guarding when I was with Meg before.”
He didn’t want to tell the boy about the intruder, but if he didn’t say something, the pup would keep on pestering him and Nathan about why the Wolf on guard couldn’t play.
“A man came into the office. He was mean to Meg. We didn’t like that, so Nathan is there to make sure nobody else is mean to her.”
Sam looked out the window. Then he asked in a small voice, “Is he the man who hurt Mom?”
“No. Those men ran away. We’ll find them one day, Sam. We will. But the man who came into the office wasn’t one of them.”
“I want to be Wolf when I’m at the office.”
Simon glanced at the boy. “Meg can’t communicate the way the terra indigene do. You won’t be able to tell her what you learned in school today if you’re Wolf.”
“I can tell her when we get home. I can’t wear the harness in this form, so I have to hold the safety line in my hand, and sometimes I forget and drop it.”
