by Amy Lane
“Well, one thing at a time,” he said, sounding careless when they both knew he was anything but. “I’m afraid we’re going to need to plan a prison break here in the next few days. We’ll be busy.”
Bracken rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Always busy,” he complained, but he stalked off to fetch the other members of their team.
Green wandered into the kitchen and listened casually to Cory’s conversation with their little runaway.
“So you grew up in Stockton?” Cory asked, not disguising her wince. “I’m sorry—I haven’t, uh, heard a whole lot about Stockton.” She shivered, and he was pretty sure the odd blood-borne connection between her and Bracken had kicked in. She usually tried very hard to dance the same line of telling the truth that the sidhe walked, but she could tell the occasional white lie if need be.
Not at the moment, apparently.
“You heard it was a real shithole,” Cami said with feeling. “Well, you heard right.”
Green rifled through the pantry and came out with a box of cookies—double-stuffed Oreos—for Cory, so she could eat companionably while they spoke. Cory looked gratefully at the cookies and took one, the line of her shoulders relaxing as the sugar did its work.
“Yeah? I used to say that about my hometown,” Cory said, washing her cookie down with some milk. “What makes your hometown a shithole?”
Cami shook her head, her honey-blonde braid rippling down her back. “The foster-care system sucks anywhere,” she said with feeling. “But Stockton… it’s supposed to be a port town, right? But it’s flat, and people are poor, and the crime is high—so you’re always afraid, and we just never felt like there was a way out. So Dylan and me, we aged out of the system, and suddenly, like, whoomp. There we were. No job, and Dylan—man, people’s thoughts in his head, they’re just so fucking loud. He couldn’t graduate from school, couldn’t get a fucking job….” Cami started to cry silently, and her throat worked as though she was trying not to come unglued again.
Cory grabbed a napkin and handed it over without a word. “What made you decide to come up here?” she asked quietly.
Cami shrugged. “We… I mean, we can tell, right? When someone’s different. We can hear it. Werewolves, their thoughts are red and sharp and loud. Vampires, they’re like a dead spot, unless they’re trying to roll your mind, and then they’re… they’re dark and warm. And… and people like you guys… so clear. Pure, right? Like crystal. And the winter before we graduated, a couple of days before Christmas, we were sneaking out of the foster-folks’ home to go….” She flushed and darted a look at Cory.
“Get the hell out of the foster-folks’ home?” Cory asked, smiling to show she understood. Well, she wasn’t lying about hating her hometown—Green was sure she did.
Cami nodded gratefully. “Yeah. We were… we kept each other safe, right? And we could find each other across the city—it didn’t matter where we got placed, or how. I’d know where he was, and we’d talk in our heads and find a way to meet. So… you know… we were… being close.” She blushed again. “And it’s cold, so we’re hiding in this old abandoned car, and we see this, like, green wind. It blows through… well, everything. And nobody seems to notice. But the next day, all the grown-ups we know that are freaks like us—they’ve suddenly gotten tattoos, right?”
Cory winked and turned around, pulling the back of her sundress down.
“A little like that?” she asked, sounding like she was showing off. Well, she should be—the tattoo had been her idea. The mark of oak, lime, and rose, woven on her back to represent each one of the men she loved who loved her back. It had been Green’s idea to make it the mark of their people. He couldn’t wear a brand on his skin—he was the leader, and a brand would make him subject—but he could worship and be grateful for what his children wore on their skins for Green, for Cory, and for the memory of Adrian, who had been beloved by them both.
“Oh my God!” Cami held her hand to her mouth and tried not to spit up her corned beef. “That’s… but you don’t sound….” She frowned. “You sound… well, normal. I mean, anyone listening to your brain would think it’s normal. But… your brain voice doesn’t match your mouth voice. It’s like… you’re thinking in Shakespeare,” she said suspiciously.
Cory laughed and squinted her eyes closed. “Oh hell!” She shook her head at Green. “I thought you were joking!”
And in spite of the direness of Cami and Dylan’s situation, Green had to laugh. He’d been telling Cory for years that the words that came out of her mouth and the way she thought were two different things.
“She thinks in poetry,” he said with some admiration. “Am I right?”
Cami smiled at him, more than a little besotted. “Yeah,” she sighed. “That’s really nice, Miss Cory—”
“Just Cory,” Cory interrupted, putting her hand on Cami’s as it rested on the table.
Cami shook her head and darted a look at Green. “No, ma’am. I mean, you talk like regular people and all, but you’re more.” She blushed, and Green met Cory’s frustrated gaze.
“Let it go, beloved.”
“I don’t want to scare her.”
“You’ll scare her more by arguing.”
“Fine. I think in Shakespeare. Fucking awesome.”
Cami, for all her gifts, hadn’t heard that exchange—Green could tell by the way she was concentrating on her sandwich.
“So,” Cory said softly, bringing them to the problem at hand. “The green wind?”
Cami looked up and swallowed. “Yeah. So everybody in town has that mark, and Dylan and me—we start listening hard, and we keep hearing….” She looked at Green. “We hear your name, Mr. Green. And we hear the word ‘safe’ a lot.” She wiped her face with her palm. “And Dylan and me—we’ve never had that. And Dylan—he’s getting worse and worse at being with people. It’s like he can hear the nastiest thoughts, all the fucking time. I mean, we were….” She shrugged, as though it suddenly didn’t matter. “We did anything we could to survive, you understand?” she asked, shame throbbing in her voice.
“Yeah,” Cory said softly. Then she walked around the table and threw her arm around Cami’s shoulders. “Trust me, sweetheart, we know all about survival here, and what you’ve got to live with in the morning. So don’t apologize, okay?”
“But me and Dylan… I mean, we are… were… I mean, anyone who came knocking, as long as they had money. We’re fucking whores, you know?”
“No,” Cory said, her voice firm. She closed her eyes, and Green could hear the firm “No!” inside her mind. “You and Dylan are kids. And you needed help. And trust me, if we’d known you were out there, we would have given you some. And there’s not a soul here who would judge you for what you did to survive, do you understand? No making your bodies dirty here—not with words, not with survival. Get over that shit, and let’s talk about why Dylan is in jail, okay?”
Cami nodded, as though it was over and done, but Green knew—personally—that it would take longer than that for the wound to heal.
“We… we worked our way up here, you know? We sort of listened in and got an idea, and we’d managed to get an apartment in the shitty part of Auburn—”
“Up by Chana?” Cory nodded like she knew.
“Yeah,” Cami nodded and unconsciously relaxed. “We… you know. Got to know the nightlife.” She grimaced unhappily. “There’s a lot of us in the nightlife.”
“Yeah,” Cory said quietly. “It’s sort of where our vampires and shape-shifters recruit. It’s… you know. Being human? Stuck in a box? Sucks. When it gets too hard, that’s where we go.”
Cami nodded and unconsciously wiped her eyes with the palm of one hand while waving her napkin in the other.
“Yeah,” she whispered. “But… Dylan. It was killing him. We weren’t getting any closer to you….” She took a gulping breath and added honestly, “But, you know. We were afraid. Afraid of anyone who got too close. We needed help so badly, but we didn’t�
��.”
“Didn’t know how to ask,” Cory supplied, grimacing. Yeah. Cory would know how that went, wouldn’t she?
“Yeah.”
“So what did Dylan do?”
“He… he ‘heard’”—she pointed to her forehead—“about a card game. He’s pretty good at scamming poker, and he knows when to stop winning because he can tell when people get mad.”
Cory gave a small laugh. “Now that is a skill I’ve never possessed,” she said with feeling. “So, illegal poker. How big were the stakes?”
Inside she was thinking, “I sound incredibly badass for someone who can’t play solitaire.”
Green allowed himself a small smile. “But you have learned how to bluff admirably.”
“They were pretty big. Over 20K.”
Cory sucked in a breath. “Oh God. So if he ended up in jail, I assume….”
Cami shrugged. “I don’t know. I…. Not everybody there got arrested. But Dylan did—and the lawyer we got, the public defender, he wasn’t any help. He kept saying to plead guilty, but we could hear his thoughts. He wasn’t getting us a deal, he wanted Dylan to get blamed for setting up the game.”
Cory’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, dear God. We’re stuck in a crime show.”
Cami actually choked in surprise, and Cory patted her on the back solicitously until she recovered.
When she could breathe again, Cami kept her hand up to her mouth, and the sound she made….
A terrifying combination of giggling, snorting, and oh my Goddess….
Laughter.
Green let out the breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. It had taken her half an hour to talk at all—and Cory had gotten her to laugh. Good.
And bad.
Hell, he hadn’t known about these two. He and his people had missed them. He could imagine them—sleeping in abandoned cars, running away from indifference, selling themselves, living on dreams and stolen food.
They were his children, and he’d missed them.
He wasn’t sure how to fix that damage, how to seal the cracks in the world that allowed his children to grow up unattended. He had no idea who had fathered them and left their mothers to pine and die or wither at the root, but there had to be a way—a spell, a system, a census, a something—to make sure the Goddess’s children didn’t grow up nursing gifts that could drive them mad and trying to survive in a world that didn’t know how not to crush them.
But they were here now, and he needed to help them. That was why people wore his mark. It was why he’d taken over the area in the first place—because he could protect the people in his care.
Cory was sitting on the kitchen stool at the raised table, leaning on her elbows and waiting patiently for Cami to finish laughing. Cami was obliging, down to hiccups and the occasional giggle, when Bracken walked in with Max and Nicky at his heels.
At five foot six, Nicky looked as nonthreatening as possible. His hair was cut trendily to blow forward, with black tips at the end of the rust strands, like a bird’s feathers. Max was six very human-looking feet of policeman, with hair that he wore in old-fashioned bangs made to be combed back, slightly crossed blue eyes, and a bit of a hawk’s nose. Max had the bearing of a soldier—not the top of the food chain, but smart and steady. Green was hoping Cami would tune in to that and the man’s decent heart, as well as the shape-shifting flavor of his thoughts, and perhaps ignore the fact that he was one of the enemy in his other life.
“Cami?” Cory said gently, touching her hand. “Honey? I’ve called in a couple of friends. If we’re going to get Dylan out of jail, we need their help, okay?”
Cami looked back with limpid eyes and nodded. Good. Cory had her confidence—that was the place to start.
Max began first, sitting down at the kitchen island and pulling a notebook out of his pocket with crisp efficiency.
“Okay,” he said, smiling briefly. “Cami?”
“Yes, sir,” Cami said, straightening her shoulders and responding like any adolescent before a police officer.
Max swallowed and shot Cory a pained look, then went back to his questioning. Once upon a time, both Cory and Max’s wife Renny had been on the other end of this kind of interrogation. Back then, Max hadn’t known enough to be kind.
“So, first of all, who arrested your friend? The sheriff or the police?”
Cami looked stricken. “That makes a difference?”
Max nodded, grimacing. “Yes—if these people were tipped off, it does. I work for the police department, and I didn’t hear about the raid. If it was police, they were working off the books. If it was the sheriff’s department, well, they’re chronically understaffed—the department includes law enforcement and the coroner and the forensic team. I mean, he’s got an undersheriff and deputies, but right now they’ve got a lot on their plate. If it’s all of the deputies, then they’re crooked, and we might be able to cause a stink because they all wouldn’t be there without his permission. But if it’s the police, well….”
“That’s a bigger department?” Cory hazarded, and Max rolled his eyes at her.
“My God, you never pay attention,” he accused.
“My Goddess, you expect us all to know this shit,” she shot back, crossing her eyes at him. “You gotta remember, Max, when your people show up, people like Cami and me are all deer in the headlights, right? It’s all big scary white guys in uniforms telling us why we fucked up!”
Max grunted. “We’re not all white.”
“But you concede the big and scary with attitude?” she asked, as though she was making sure.
“Yeah, okay, I get it. We’re scary. We intimidate people. That’s our job, Cory. I mean, it’s what you do too!” He sounded a little beleaguered.
Cory shook her head. “I know, Max. What I’m saying is, it would be really easy for a group of cops to scare the crap out of her until she couldn’t tell. And if her lawyer’s in on it, well, he’s not going to mark the difference with her. So it is important which department they were from. But if one sheriff’s deputy puts all his buddies in black slacks and flak jackets, is she going to notice?”
Max grunted. “That’s my queen—always thinking out of the box. But point taken. When I start looking for a raid here, I’m not looking for a big group of guys.”
“Are there really that many guys in flak jackets around here?” Cami asked, big-eyed.
Cory grunted. “You know—one guy sees a wolf here, when there’s not really supposed to be any wolves in the area, and suddenly people are stocking up on ammo and sending their kids off to school in Kevlar with Walther PPKs.”
Cami cracked up, but Cory and Max just rolled their eyes. Survivalists. Until recently, they hadn’t been too much of a thing, but while Cory and Bracken had been up in Shasta taking care of a rogue vampire kiss, Green had noticed a disturbing number of incidents in the news. They’d had their hands full since then—the events in Monterey and Cory’s pregnancy not least among them—but still… it was something to think about.
“Okay,” Cory said, pulling them back. “Max, we do need to know how he ended up in jail, but even more importantly, we need to know how to get him out.”
Max sucked air in through his teeth. “And that’s where shit’s going to get tricky,” he said. “Because even if he’s in there under false pretenses—I mean, even if I present cold, hard evidence right now—it could take us months to get the charges rescinded. It’s not like the television shows, usually. The innocent guy doesn’t go free. When’s his trial?”
Cami’s joy faded, and her thin, elegant oval of a face became peaked, drawn, and pale. “October,” she said quietly. “I couldn’t spring bail—they’re asking 500K—”
“For a poker game?” Cory asked, aghast. “Oh hell, that’s got to be crooked.”
Cami nodded, wiping her eyes. “And… he’s panicked. His cellmate is… well, he’s one of you guys, and the guy is… well.” She wrinkled her nose. “It’s…. Dylan is terrified of him, but it’s more th
an that.”
“Like how?” Cory asked, sliding easily into her role of interrogator. “I mean, what else, besides he’s afraid?”
Cami shook her head. “It’s like he’s afraid for him too.” Cami sighed and, for all her youth and vulnerability, cast Cory an adult look. “You’ve got to understand,” she said, her voice dropping. “I mean, me and Dylan fooling around, that was—we were being friends, you know?”
Cory nodded, and Green could practically see her antennae perking up.
“But it wasn’t….”
Cami shrugged. “It’s… I’m not his type,” she said apologetically.
Cory pulled up a corner of her mouth in a wry smile. “Is Green more his type?” she asked softly.
Cami sent a sweet smile over her shoulder at Green. “Yeah,” she said, and Green smiled back.
“Maybe he’ll be my type as well,” Green said, hoping this wouldn’t be a shock to her.
She blushed, but she didn’t recoil. “Dylan… when we were, I don’t know, fifteen, and we first started fooling around, he used to say that… that it wasn’t bad when we cared for each other, you know? We didn’t have to be in love, but we… it was perfect just because it was us.”
“Yeah,” Cory said. “We get it. Don’t worry, Cami. There’s so much here for you to learn, but the most important thing is this—nobody here is going to judge you. Nobody here is going to judge Dylan. I’ve got three husbands. One of them is Green.”
Cami jerked, and Green tried not to sigh. Well, she’d been very politic so far.
“So you see? We’ve all been there.” She cast a sour look at Max. “Well, most of us have been there. If you live in the human world, even the liberal part of it, everybody wants a name. Gay, trans, bi… but here, we don’t have names for it. And when we do, it’s usually a thing that nobody expects. I swear Green is going to tell me about some sort of preternatural condition that gives a guy two penises and a vajayjay complete with piercings, and we just haven’t encountered one yet because they’re very rare and live in Seattle.”
