by Forthright
Fine. He could say it clearer. “You’re in love with your best friend. With Ash.”
“I take back the idiot remark. Compared to Ash, you’re a genius.” Kip tipped back the last of his beer. “He never noticed.”
TWENTY-SIX
Squirreled Away
Questions swarmed through Joe’s mind, but he swatted them aside. None of them seemed even remotely appropriate in the face of Kip’s heartache. So he handed him a fresh can and opened the tin that still remained on his desk.
“Mom made these with the nuts we were cracking earlier.” Joe offered him one of the bite-sized tarts, all dark and sugary and rich with butter. “They’re my favorite.”
Kip popped it into his mouth and went for an appreciative sound, only it came out as more of a whine.
Joe pretended not to notice and passed him another. He couldn’t think of anything else to say, so he just repeated, “I won’t tell.”
Tears slipped down Kip’s cheeks.
Another tart found its way into his hand.
“Jiro, would you mind if ….” He cleared his throat. “I really need to hold onto something for a little while, ’kay?”
“Sure.”
Kip patted the floor at his side, and when Joe sat there, an arm draped across his shoulders. Turning slightly, Kip reached across Joe and linked his hands.
Joe sat very still in the circle of those arms, but nothing else happened. Just an additional closeness. Tami sometimes needed this from him. He’d always assumed they needed to touch because they were twins. They’d been teased for hand-holding all the way into their teen years. At home, nobody thought it was strange when they curled up together. Were Rivven the same, needing that extra connection?
Usually, Tami was the only one he wanted this close. Now there was Biddie. And Kip.
Joe reached up to feed Kip another tart. Then leaned into his side the same way Tami was always leaning into him.
“You’re a good kid,” Kip mumbled.
“I’m an adult.” He pushed another tart into the teary-eyed squirrel’s mouth. “I might even be older than you, in human years.”
Kip hauled him snug against his side, wrapping his tail around them both. “You are not the first person to call my maturity into question.”
His smile was soggy, but he was rallying. Joe rewarded his courage with another tart.
“I remember you, you know.” Kip pulled up his shirt to wipe his eyes. “I was a janitor when you were at school.”
“No,” Joe countered. “Our janitors were two old guys.”
“Yeah, that was us. You really hit it off with Ash. He was Mr. Black back then.” Kip took a long swig of beer. “I remember you, your dad, your grandad. Ash and I have been watching over Landmark for a long, long time. I thought we’d go on like that forever.”
Joe calmly played dumb. “You can’t be a janitor anymore?”
“It was always him and me. Just us for so long.” He emptied the second can and stared at it without seeing. “He doesn’t need me the way he used to. The only person he can see right now is Tami.”
“Sorry.”
The end of Kip’s tail fluffed into Joe’s face. “Not your fault.”
“I’m sad that you’re sad.”
“You really are a good kid.” He helped himself to the last tart. “But enough about me. I’m here for you, and this is actually the right sort of close. You still want me to see what’s going on under all your wards?”
Joe nodded. “Do I need to … umm … my shirt?”
“Nope, not for this. What I’m looking for isn’t skin-deep.” And Kip tipped his head to one side and closed his eyes.
He probably should have kept quiet, but Joe wasn’t ready for a diagnosis. He blurted, “If I’m a beacon, will the reavers make me go somewhere else.”
“It’s possible.” Kip opened one eye. “Unregistered reavers sometimes join the In-between, especially if they show a lot of promise. At your age, it’s not like they’d send you to academy, but you’ll need the basics of control. Best bet, you’d be assigned a mentor.”
“So I can stay?”
Kip’s other eye opened. “You know what it means to be a beacon?”
“Highest rank. Most presence or power or something.” He fidgeted and quietly added, “And they’re rare.”
“That’s about right, which is why offers will start arriving by the truckload.”
“Job offers?” Joe shied away from the very idea. He was a farmer, not a reaver. He didn’t want a position in the Office of Ingress or anywhere else.
“Jiro, you carry a rare and coveted bloodline. The offers I’m talking about will be marriage contracts and applications for paternity. The biggest stables will probably enter a bidding war over you.” Kip glibly added, “Everyone will want a piece of you and your extra-shiny genetic potential.”
Oh.
Oh, no.
Kip’s eyes slowly widened. “Whoa, you are really freaking out here.”
“I don’t want to be taken from my home, and I don’t want any kind of assigned wife.” He grabbed the front of Kip’s shirt. “I don’t want to be a beacon.”
“Calm down,” It would be so much easier to slip past Jiro’s seal if the man wasn’t feeling threatened. Kip automatically pulled him close, then remembered how slow he should be taking things. “You want me to switch forms?”
“Umm … later?” Jiro wasn’t pulling away. “I might have questions.”
Kip smiled past his emotional exhaustion. “Ask me anything, but not this minute. I need to focus.”
Jiro nodded.
His eyes had barely shut when Kip felt a tentative touch along the sweep of his tail. Totally innocent. Oddly soothing. Sure, Jiro was pushing into personal territory, but Kip had barged into the guy’s bedroom—snug as a squirrel’s nest up under the eaves. They were past niceties.
And he was past that pesky seal.
On an intellectual level, he was celebrating his finesse, but most of the rest of him felt like all those times his mother had caught him with a paw in the cookie jar.
“Jiro,” he whispered. “Please, calm down. Otherwise, this might get dangerous for me.”
“I’m dangerous?”
Kip forced himself to back away from a feast bigger than Founder’s Day and Thanksgiving combined. Firmly on the safe side of Jiro’s wards, he met the young man’s tense gaze and told the truth. “You’re beautiful.”
“A … a beacon?”
“Without a doubt.” Kip knew it wasn’t what Jiro wanted to hear, but the man needed to know that this was a good thing. “I’m not experienced enough to guess your magnitude, but I know for certain you’d be hard for anyone to resist. Least of all me.”
Jiro’s brows drew together, and his shoulders slowly sagged.
“I know it’s not the news you wanted, but we ca– ”
“You don’t … umm … it’s only because …?” The guy looked a little heartbroken himself. “Are you only being friendly because you can’t resist?”
“Nooo! No, I can resist. I did resist!” Kip took Jiro by the shoulders and gave him a little shake. “I said it all wrong. You’ve gotta know I’d never cozy up to you just because … you might … feed me. Huh. Okay, even I don’t believe that.”
Jiro cracked a smile.
Right away, the whole mood of the room shifted, filled with a softer, more hopeful radiance. But it put all of Kip’s hairs on end. Jiro wasn’t only an unregistered reaver, he was an untrained one. This was why little reavers learned control from a very young age. Otherwise, they might unintentionally harm your average Amaranthine.
Not that Kip had ever been average. Kith-kin were nearly as rare as beacons. But Kip was no powerhouse. With Jiro, he was in way over his head.
Basics. Kip tapped Joe’s nose, then tapped his own. “Lesson time.”
“Okay.”
“You are going to be popular once the clans catch wind of you. Anyone—and I mean everyone—is going to wis
h they were where I am right now. Because your soul is stunning, and touching it ….” He trailed his fingers through the air around them. “Bliss.”
Jiro paled.
“I know you’re uneasy about the reavers finding out, but they’re your best protection. Only a reaver can teach you how to harness your soul. They can teach you how to defend yourself if anyone gets pushy. And you’ll learn when it’s appropriate to give us a taste.” Kip hoped it didn’t sound like he was fishing for another free meal. “I’d never just help myself, but I crave a reaver’s soul just as much as the next clansman. It’s called tending.”
“I can give you part of my soul?”
Kip nodded.
“What do you do with it?”
“Savor it, I suppose. It’s like dessert. I don’t need it, but it’s the best part of every meal.”
Jiro asked, “Should I be disturbed that you’re talking about eating my soul?”
“Maybe.” Kip noticed with concern that he’d weakened the old sigil with his tampering. “We need to find someone with serious pull to protect your interests.”
“You.”
Kip understood the compliment. And the impossibility. “I’m nobody, Jiro. Just a small-town janitor whose best subject is still recess. You need someone with clout.”
“But you said you’d do anything for one of your kids.”
“You’re not a kid.”
Jiro narrowed his eyes.
Kip’s expression wavered. “Okay, there is something I can do. It’s wretchedly old school, but it should work as a temporary measure.”
“Thanks. Can we do it now?”
“We’ll need to. You’re expecting an allotment of wolves in the morning, and they’re sharp. If you want to stay a secret, we need to act fast.”
“Are you going to hide me with wards like Tami’s? Do I need a special stone?”
“Just sigils. Lots of sigils.”
Jiro asked, “And nobody will find out about me?”
“I can’t promise that. Not universally. I mean, there are a lot of Amaranthine who are stronger than me. But I can make it a whole lot harder for them to notice you. And even if they do, I’ll have made a prior claim.” He cleared his throat. “Are you ticklish?”
The man raised a hand like a kid in class. “What do you mean by prior claim?”
Kip really kind of wanted that third beer now. And not for the usual reasons. “I need to create a series of overlapping sigils directly onto your skin. They’ll bolster the existing seal while adding additional barriers—ones to keep you in, ones to keep others out. I’ll anchor them to your own soul, which means they’ll be incredibly strong. But you need to understand that the sigilcraft is mine. They’ll carry my … my signature. And according to the customs of my clan, that makes you mine.”
“So it’s a bond?”
“Sort of.” He really wished a better idea would occur to him. “It does define a new relationship.”
“Umm … in what sense would I be yours?”
“My personal stash.” Kip couldn’t quite meet Jiro’s worried gaze as he added, “My food.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
One Way or Another
Tami woke before her alarm and immediately missed Biddie. The girl must have slipped out during the night. Abandoning the warm huddle of blankets, her toes brushed chill floorboards in their quest for her slippers. Tami pulled aside the filmy sheers and raised her shade to consider a sky that still showed stars. Mist clung to the orchard, and it wouldn’t be much longer before frost added its bite. Biddie was probably back in the oak glen, which was both understandable and worrisome. Should a girl so small be out in the cold? Would she need warmer clothes, or were trees impervious to climate changes?
Every day brought more questions. Every answer proved how many more questions she hadn’t considered. “I wish someone could tell me what questions I’m supposed to be asking.”
She zipped through her morning routine, mentally reviewing her agenda for a meeting with Dr. Bellamy. The schools in their flagship alliance would be narrowing down their faculty lists, and he’d suggested coordinating their selections to optimize on the opportunity. And a team from the Office of Ingress would begin warding the school today, so her presence was absolutely necessary. Even though she’d rather stay home to meet the wolves Melissa and Jiminy were bringing.
So much was happening, and she couldn’t be everywhere at once. She’d simply have to trust Grandad to do what was best for the family and the farm.
When Tami reached the kitchen, Grandad sat at the table, a cup of coffee before him. He asked, “Do you have time to talk?”
“I’d like that.”
He waited until she poured her coffee and cut a slice of apple bread. After she sat, he said, “There are things you need to understand. About our family history.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for everyone else?”
Grandad knotted his hands together. “There are things you need to understand. Only you.”
“All right. I get the impression that keeping secrets is a big part of being a reaver.”
He smiled thinly, lowered his gaze to the tabletop, and spoke with surprising detachment. “Being a reaver is all about bloodline. My parents were nothing special—midranks at best—but they had good connections. They used them. Only it didn’t work out the way they expected. In trying to improve their position in the In-between, they put themselves in something of a fix. They vowed out as quickly and quietly as they could.”
Tami wanted to ask for more details, but this wasn’t the right time. Grandad seemed to be working his way toward something that was either dangerous or illegal. Maybe both.
“Lisbet and I had different fathers.”
She frowned. “I thought you were twins.”
“Everybody thought we were twins. Truth is, Lisbet was tree-kin.”
New terms kept cropping up. Tamiko patiently asked, “What does that mean?”
“My sister was born under special circumstances.” Grandad rubbed at the side of his face. “So was I, for that matter. Mother managed to scrape together the paternity fee for a reputable stable, which is how we’re kin to Melissa’s people. Meanwhile, Dad contacted an old family friend and begged for help. They left together.
Dad told me a little about his trip, but he never would say where he went. Only that when he came home, he was already carrying her. My folks went into seclusion after that. Twins, they told everyone. Fraternal twins.”
Tamiko tried to make sense of what he’d said. “Your sister was adopted?”
Grandad shook his head.
“But you said your father brought her back from a trip.”
“In a way.” He pursed his lips, then spelled it out. “Mother gave birth to me. Dad gave birth to Lisbet. And like all tree-kin, she was born with a golden seed in her hand.”
The pipes behind Joe’s wall gave their usual morning shudder, so he knew his sister was in the shower. And that meant he’d overslept. He rolled over to check his digital alarm clock and got a faceful of fur.
Oh.
Right.
Kip.
Easing an arm over the tightly-curled squirrel taking refuge on his narrow bed, Joe fumbled along his bedside table, then blearily studied the time. It took a few moments to register that he wasn’t late. Tami was up early. Had something happened?
A tufted ear tickled his chin. Whiskers twitched, and a small paw grazed Joe’s bare chest. Where were his pajamas?
Oh.
Right.
The thing with the sigils.
He couldn’t see much. Sunrise was a ways off. But he didn’t need light to tell they weren’t glowing anymore. Joe shimmied out from under his covers and tucked them around Kip, who didn’t stir, even when the desk lamp switched on. With unaccustomed stealth, Joe pushed yesterday’s shirt against the crack under his door. He didn’t need Tami checking on him.
Avoiding the loose boards. Pulling fresh clothes from drawers. Tidying away empty
cans and containers. He loitered until he heard Tami on the stairs, then counted to twenty before opening his door. There were no sounds coming from Melissa’s room. There wouldn’t be, though. She’d insisted on a night watch.
Joe studied himself in the bathroom mirror, twisting and turning, but nothing looked different. Kip had explained as he worked through the night, teasing beautiful patterns out of thin air, tracing them onto bare skin. They were wards. And they meant that no one could sense his soul. Not easily, anyhow. So if possible, he was supposed to avoid contact with the incoming wolves. Especially their leader.
When Joe stole back to his bedroom, he found Kip taking advantage of the additional mattress space. He’d changed back into speaking form, curled on his side, hugging his tail to his chest.
Didn’t he have work? Tami had joked about never managing to out-early the janitorial crew. And what about his friend Ash? Had Joe inconvenienced the both of them with his plea? Come to think of it, how had Kip arrived? Was the infamous Coach parked alongside the road, where Tami was sure to see when she left for work?
Joe gently touched Kip’s shoulder. “Hey, there,” he whispered. “It’s morning.”
Nothing.
“Kip?” He gave a squeeze, then a shake. “Time to get up.”
The redhead slept on, breathing deep and slow.
Something stirred in the back of Joe’s mind. What was that thing about Rivven sleep patterns? They could sleep for days, almost like hibernation. Was he going to have a squirrel in his bed for the rest of the week?
Joe took a firmer tone. “Kip, this could be bad. The wolves are coming. They’ll be here in the house, remember?”
Still gone to the world.
Desperation made the necessary leap to inspiration.
Oh.
Right.
Food.
Still mindful of creaks, Joe opened the narrow door to the little-used back stairs, which led straight to the kitchen. They were steep and narrow, and the inside wall was entirely lined with shelves used for dry storage. When he and Tami were little, they’d considered this hidden passage through Mom’s pantry to be one of the farm’s greatest secrets.
