Silver Fox

by Zoe Chant

  Nicola leaned in conspiratorially, like a spy in a movie, and hissed, “Everyone’s set against him! For no reason! He’s not unemployed, he’s starting a landscaping business with my best friend Isidor! That’s how we met.”

  Doris, hoping to avoid getting trapped in a family feud before she even set foot in the door, said, “I can’t wait to meet him.”

  Together they entered the side door. Doris heard the clamor of voices coming from the den. Long practice at judging the tone of a room caused her to gauge what she heard as Faculty vs. Admin—when everyone is being polite, but no one is really comfortable.

  She sighed, longing to take her stuff up to her room and disappear until she could scold herself out of her own bad mood. She’d brought three nice long novels, chosen to last for two lazy days without TV. But Nicola had already vanished into the kitchen with her groceries, causing a commotion.

  Doris had a second to suck in a breath and assume her parental smile before her mother appeared, arms akimbo in a theatrical pose.

  “You’re here at last!” Her mother hugged her tightly. Doris hugged her back, noticing her mother always smelled like flour and herbs, even when she hadn’t been cooking.

  “You shouldn’t have brought all this, Doris—we’ve got both fridges and the cooler filled. Where are we going to put it all?”

  “Mother,” her sister Sylvia said, exasperated, from right behind her, one arm waving in a huge circle. “It’s twenty-nine degrees outside, with night coming on. Some of it can go out in the mud room, which is just like a fridge. We’ll eat that first.” She flashed her wonderful smile at Doris. “Glad you made it, Doris. I don’t have to ask how the traffic was—"

  “Sylvia,” Mom said, hands at her forehead. Definitely there had been flour. Mom left white prints above her eyebrows. “I had all the meals planned—”

  Rather than deal with the Clash of the Titans, Doris yelled, “Glad we all made it safely. Smells great in here.” She marched into the den as her mother and Sylvia went on debating where to store the extra groceries.

  Doris’s dad sat in the shabby old armchair, a stack of magazines he’d been saving up since New Year’s by his side. He always brought his magazines to the grandpa house so he could catch up on his reading.

  “Aunt Doris!”

  That genuine delight in the melodic tenor belonged to Isidor, Nicola’s bestie since grade school. Doris’s mother had been campaigning for Isidor and Nicola to make a match ever since Nicola turned sixteen, conveniently ignoring the fact that Isidor was gay.

  A thin, shaggy-haired man sat stiffly between Isidor and Nicola. That had to be Nicola’s Brad. He would have reminded Doris of a jug-eared hound in any situation, but especially in comparison with Nicola’s first three husbands, who had all been quite handsome.

  “Brad, this is my Aunt Doris,” Nicola said.

  Doris’s impression of Brad improved when she saw the straightforward intelligence in his green-brown eyes. “Glad to meet you. I guess you already met my kids?” He indicated Batman and Wonder Woman, who were now playing with Legos by the fireplace.

  “I did,” Doris said, and went to kiss her dad on the cheek. He looked up from the newspaper to murmur, “Doris. Glad you made it.”

  “Hi, Dad.”

  Doris looked around for the other person to complete their family portrait, and aha, there she was, hunched over her cell phone. Teenage Marrit, Nicola’s younger sister, would make the gloomiest cynic in history look like Mr. Rogers. She was a pretty girl, but she’d dyed her hair black, painted her nails black, and wore black clothes and even black lipstick. Most of her blended so well into the black leather couch she sat on that her white-powdered face leaped out like a head-only ghost.

  Doris was hit with a vivid image from the dance the night before, how well Joey had dealt with a group of teenage boys about to light up cigarettes outside the fire exit. The boys had been loud and obnoxious in that way that barely hid uncertainty about themselves and the world. She still didn’t quite know how he’d managed it, except he’d gotten them to laugh, and then to talk, and then to go back inside—without the cigarettes . . .

  Joey again. She had to get her mind off him. She was casting around for conversation topics when Mom sailed in, carrying a heavy tray loaded with crisp latke, steaming knishes, and cinnamon-laden babke for those who wanted something sweet.

  Saved by the bell. It might be the first time in years that she’d been truly glad to see her mother.

  “Eat up, eat up,” Mom said cheerily. “Warm you up inside!”

  Sylvia was right behind her, passing out plates—and coincidentally skipping Brad. Isidor calmly snagged another plate and handed it to him. Mom and Sylvia scowled—but Isidor the rabbi’s son could do no wrong in their eyes, so nothing was said.

  However, Mom was an expert at the underhanded lob. “Nicola, you and Isidor should go make sure the heat’s turned on at the side wing. We can put the children there.”

  Pink looked up from her play. “Doughnut,” she stated.

  Brad whispered, “Remember your manners, Pink. What do you say?”

  “Pease. Doughnut,” Pink said obediently.

  Nicola jumped up to snag a babke as she said over her shoulder, “Dad turned on the heat, but it’s still like an ice chest back there.”

  The magazine rattled at the word ‘dad’ but Doris’s father didn’t look up. He hated tension, Doris had realized when young. His defense was to somehow withdraw in a way that made him effectively invisible, though he was there in the room.

  “Please, can I have a doughnut?” Lon piped up in a small voice.

  Meanwhile, Mom was staring at Pink, who clearly loved the babke, and Doris could see the grandmother-hug fighting to get out past her determination to dislike her father.

  Doris smothered an impulse to laugh at Mom’s inner struggle as Nicola served the boy, saying, “It does look kind of like a doughnut, doesn’t it? It’s made by rolling the pastry and putting good things in between the layers, then slicing it into circles. But no doughnut hole!”

  “Thank you,” Lon said thickly around an enormous bite.

  Mom’s expression was a sight. Manners always got in under her defense. She retreated swiftly, towing Sylvia, no doubt to plan their next method of attack.

  Brad looked a little bewildered, and Doris wondered if he was sensing Mom’s Jekyll and Hyde struggle. Nicola was right. Those two kids were adorable, and completely unconscious of it. Mom and Sylvia were determined to dislike Brad, but they hadn’t counted on Brad’s kids. Polite kids who loved Mom’s cooking could get under her defenses like Patton sweeping across France.

  Doris was wondering if Brad would consider her another interfering relative if she dropped a hint to keep quiet and let his kids win the Titans over, when the door knocker banged. Everyone looked startled. “Who could it be?” Mom said, and bustled to the door. Then, in a tone of astonishment, “Mother Zinna?”

  Doris’s heart leaped. Granny Z, at ninety-eight, was invariably deemed too fragile to be invited anywhere. Doris caught sight of her father smiling tightly behind his newspaper as Granny Z walked in, her arms full of grocery bags.

  “Mother Zinna,” Mom exclaimed. “You didn’t try to come up here alone?”

  “I’ve been coming up here ever since I was a bride,” Granny Z retorted. “If it kills me, well, I say, what a way to go.”

  “How did you get here?” Sylvia asked, as the three exchanged kisses and hugs.

  “Took the bus to Meadowlark,” Granny Z said triumphantly. “Then caught me a Lyft from there. Tipped that nice young man fifty bucks, too. Seeing as this was pretty much the only ride he was going to have all day.”

  Mom gave a scandalized hiss. “That’s so dangerous. Something could have happened!”

  Sylvia darted forward. “Here, let me get those bags. You shouldn’t be carrying all that stuff!”

  “My neighbor came over and we baked up a fresh batch of Hamantaschen,” Granny Z said, handing S
ylvia the bags. And rugelach with chocolate and my own apricot preserves. Oh good, we have kids here! Children love pastries,” Granny Z added. “And the Lyft driver told me that when the sky looks like this, it usually means a big storm, so we’d better have enough food!”

  If we can manage to keep from killing each other while we eat it, Doris thought.

  NINE

  JOEY

  It looked like it was going to snow, Joey thought. But that posed little problem for a fox and two wolves.

  They were out in the middle of nowhere, trailing one of Cang’s minions whose scent the kids had picked up at Cang’s abandoned house. It was a good thing Doris had gone out of town for the weekend, Joey thought; she was somewhere safe and far away, and he could spend as much time searching for Cang as he needed to.

  Because it appeared that the abandoned house was not as abandoned as they’d thought. People came back from time to time, which made Joey think Cang had some kind of lair in the mountains around town.

  Xi Yong would follow them in Joey’s Jeep, as near as he could get since they were mostly offroad, bringing their clothes and providing backup. In the event that they did get into trouble with a ferocious red dragon like Cang, it would be useful to have a qilin nearby.

  A qilin was an antlered creature with cloven hooves, a horse-like body and overlapping scales, elegant and jewel-bright as a dragon. Long legged-and long-necked, they had dragonish features, with large thickly lashed eyes, and manes that floating about their heads. They could run like the wind, even running a little above the ground, though they did not fly. They could easily match the speed of wolves and mythic foxes such as Joey.

  And they could, Joey hoped, take on a red dragon in a fight. If it came to that.

  It was near morning when the scent ended abruptly on the crest of a mountain in an area with very few houses. Wolves and fox prowled along the base of a high wall topped with barbed wire. The acrid stench of hot metal caused Joey to shift back to human.

  The twins also shifted. Vanessa hopped on her bare toes as she said, “I hear the hum of high voltage. I think that wire is electrified.”

  “So do I,” Joey said. “I can smell it.”

  Vic shivered. “It’s cold.”

  Joey said, “You two go back to Xi Yong and the Jeep, and get your clothes on. I’m going to do a little exploring. See what we’re up against.”

  “Why? He’s here, right?” Vanessa asked.

  Vic smacked her shoulder. “He’s a dragon! He could be anywhere—he flies. It’s his guys that drive. Now we know where they are. We have to figure out if he’s here.”

  “Right. Right. Right,” Vanessa said, and cracked a huge yawn. “I’m not thinking because I’m tired and hungry.”

  Joey said, “Unpack something to eat from the Jeep. We’ll regroup when I’ve had a chance to check around.”

  The twins shifted and loped away, toward the road where Xi Yong had parked out of sight.

  Joey continued on alone. Back in fox form, he extended all his senses, his tails weaving in and out of the layered dimensions. He sensed familiar meridians . . .

  Doris?

  He stared at the trees downslope, stunned. Impossible! But he knew her distinctive glow, like a thread of sunlight. She was not just emotionally near, but physically near.

  He sat down, then carefully, delicately, concentrated. Yes—she was very close indeed. How had that happened? The aunties back in China would call that fate.

  He considered his last conversation with Doris, painful as it was to relive how unsuccessful he’d been—how she’d shut him away. Not in anger, but in a complexity of emotions, with worry foremost. It was clear she expected nothing good to come of trusting him.

  He forced that aside, recollecting her words. An old house, far from anywhere. Vacation homes . . . rich people who used them as summer resorts.

  All of that would fit Cang. He had been born to a privileged family, and his becoming a red dragon had guaranteed high status in China’s celestial realm. He liked his luxury. No, he expected it. Demanded it. To provide that luxury demanded plenty of water, and he and the wolves had skirted a lake before following the scent to this wall. Southern California did not have many lakes surrounded by convenient mountains. Of them, this one no doubt was one of the most remote.

  It was not surprising that Doris’s hermit of an ancestor and Cang would both end up building their houses near this remote lake. The difficulty was that Doris and her family happened to be here, right now, when Joey needed to search in their vicinity.

  How would that look if he stumbled across her? Like he was chasing after her, when she’d made it clear that the next time she wanted to see him was at the writers’ group?

  He rallied. Doris was at a house with her family to celebrate a holiday, not to hike miles into the wilderness. He could surely avoid meeting her for the two days of her stay!

  He wrestled inwardly with his stubborn fox, who was already trying to invent tricky ways to accidentally run into her. No. We’re here on a hunt that might be dangerous. Our mate has to wait in safety.

  However, he needed to know exactly where she was, so… so he could keep his team away from her. As well as himself. Yes. That was a good plan.

  He oriented on Doris’s brilliant meridian, and followed it. The result was both exhilarating and dismaying. Doris’s family’s house lay in a sheltered valley directly below Cang’s mountain estate.

  It was both sweet and painful to know she was near. Also, it was sobering to consider how close Doris’s family was to possible danger.

  Still in fox form, he trotted back down the slope as snowflakes began to drift down, then ducked under a bush when he heard voices.

  “I just had to get out of there, Brad,” a female voice said. Two sets of footsteps crunched through the mat of fallen pine needles. “And this made a good excuse.”

  “I don’t blame you, Nicola, but maybe we’d better head back,” a man responded. “The snow’s getting heavier.”

  “I was so sure our old playhouse was around here. But things change in the woods, and there’s so much new growth after that old forest fire awhile back. I haven’t been up here in years.”

  “I’d love to see it, but we better try some other day. It’s really coming down.” He laughed a little. “Getting lost in a blizzard wouldn’t make your family like me any better.”

  “They like you fine,” the woman said, too quickly. Then she sighed.

  In spite of his mission, Joey found that his natural tendency to seek out lovers in trouble was drawing him to these two. He had planned to slink away, but instead he slunk along behind, ghosting through the snow.

  “I’m really sorry about them,” the woman was saying. “They just come on strong. Even my mom means well. They’ll come around.”

  “Your aunt seems nice.”

  “Aunt Doris is great. She’s a lot more chill than the rest of the family. We’ve always been close.”

  Doris! This woman was related to Doris! Joey couldn’t turn back now. He zigzagged under bushes and shrubs, staying just out of sight.

  “I can ask her about the playhouse,” Nicola went on. “I bet she remembers where it was. Grandpa built it for her and my mom when they were little.”

  The lights of the house gleamed warm and golden through the snow. It was difficult to judge distances in these mountains; Joey had scoped this house out from the top of the slope, but he hadn’t realized he was so close to it.

  Hand in hand, Nicola and Brad crunched across the snow to the back door. All of Joey’s instincts urged him to follow—not just his mate-bond sense, but also his fox’s inherent tendency to smooth the path for troubled lovers. There were troubled lovers in that house; he could sense it. And Doris was in there.

  But he could not expose her to danger.

  He hesitated at the edge of the woods, in an agony of indecision. The door opened and closed, and Nicola and Brad vanished inside. Through the lighted windows, he could see indistinc
t shapes moving around.

  Finally, Joey managed to master his instincts. He could not risk Doris; that was the thing he knew beyond all else. And mythic shifter senses told him that a storm was coming. They couldn’t drive back to town before it hit, even in the Jeep. He and his companions needed to find somewhere to go to ground before the blizzard came down like the breath of winter itself.

  He whisked around and vanished whisper-quiet into the snow.

  … just a little too late to see the back door open, so that a bundled-up Doris could step out into the softly falling snow.

  TEN

  DORIS

  Joey?

  Doris didn’t know why she’d almost expected to see him as she walked through the snow to the edge of the yard. It somehow felt as if he’d been here a moment ago. But that was silly, of course.

  When she and Sylvia had been little girls, they’d looked for animal tracks in the fresh snow. Why, there were some fox tracks, already half-covered by the gently settling blanket of new snow. Doris crouched down to look at them, and smiled as she straightened up, already feeling more peaceful.

  It was just so tense in that house. When she’d left, Nicola, Sylvia, and her mother had just started in on another argument about Brad, while poor Brad lurked in the other room. Mom had decided (again) that Isidor would make a better match for Nicola than Brad, in spite of Nicola and Doris telling her firmly (again) that Isador was gay. At that point Doris had had enough.

  Nicola and Brad had just come back from looking for the old playhouse and failed to find it. That had given Doris a perfect excuse to duck out of the ever-growing tension in the house before things really erupted.

  “I’ll go look for the playhouse!” she’d exclaimed, and grabbed her coat as she ducked out the door.

  She looked back from the edge of the woods, worried that someone might try to follow her, but apparently they were too busy with their argument to even notice she was gone.