Historical notes for September: Morgan Dominique, honoured ancestor of virtually every witch in Haven, was born Sept. 17, 1767. Yes, Morgan of Coven Starluck which founded our fair village was born a full century before Canada’s birthday. One year ago Sept. 19, Flynn ‘Sundark got his first acceptance letter for a short story (thanks for reminding me, Cynthia). Fifty-six years ago, Haven College began its first year as a recognized private post-secondary school with our own schedule for holidays and various programs tailored to and practical for the abilities and needs of the mixed village population—my highest respects to those who pulled that trick off! How many of us would go noisily insane if we didn’t have our own college to rely on, and to bring in our own kind from the other five Canadian mixed villages, they being not so fortunate, and occasionally from farther afield? Without it, we’d be more inbred than we already are, and I would never have come here from Ravenrock to meet my coven!
Have fun back in school, kids, and I’ll get back to you in October. Ciao!
4
Aindry woke sharply, lay still to try to find what had disturbed her. The familiar musty smell of hay, loose ends of which they’d scraped together to make a bed, and the smells of the cattle below… the animals were stirring, though, and there was a human scent now, faintly.
“Oh, damn. Jaisan, wake up. Wake up!” she whispered.
“Mmm?” Coiled warmly against her, Jaisan opened his eyes. “What?” he asked drowsily.
“We overslept. The farmer’s up.”
Immediately, he twisted away from her, sat up and brushed away as much of the hay as he could. “Let’s get out of here.”
The barn was an old one, with a ladder down to the lower part, and two huge doors for bringing the hay in. Aindry thumped with the heel of her hand at the solid hook—over her head, and she was five-foot-six, why did they put them so high?—until the rust on it surrendered, and the door swung open. They slipped quickly out, and Jaisan found a rock to brace the door closed with.
There they paused, all senses alert, scanning the area. Aindry touched Jaisan’s arm, indicated a cedar-rail fence liberally overgrown with brush and trees; he nodded acknowledgement, and they darted across twenty feet of open space to it. A short distance along it, they stopped and crouched.
“Near miss,” Jaisan whispered. “We should’ve been awake a long time ago.”
True, but not so hard to explain. Cold, hunger, and general fatigue made a powerful team.
“We’ll just have to be more careful,” Aindry murmured back, putting all the reassurance she could into her voice. “Besides, what’s the worst that could happen? We get thrown out. No one’s going to catch us. We’d just have to move on a little faster than we would have.” She ran a hand over his hair, the long midnight mane forever getting in his eyes, but he refused to cut it short like hers. Given the strong resemblance between them, it wasn’t unusual for strangers to get them confused. Even more common was being thought younger than her and Jaisan’s twenty-one and seventeen years respectively.
He shifted under her touch, restlessly; she kept stroking, and slowly he relaxed.
“Let’s go farther back,” she suggested. “Maybe there’ll be a woodlot or something that will have prey we can hunt.”
Silently, he followed her along the fence. It opened into a tree-edged lane.
Some distance back onto the farmer’s property, they found a possible hunting ground: large flat glacial rocks with trees growing between them, and places where dirt had piled up to provide footing for various sorts of brushy cover.
They shed their clothes and shifted to wolf-form within a heartbeat of one another. Their clothes and half-empty backpacks they left there, and they went in search of food.
Aindry startled a scrawny rabbit out in front of Jaisan, and he grabbed it neatly; they shared it, as they always did, and kept hunting. Each snatched a few mice, but nothing else offered itself. Still hungry, they gave up, and went back to where they’d left their clothes.
“So much for that,” Jaisan sighed, pulling over his head the oversized, once-blue sweatshirt they’d found in a thrift store.
“We have a few dollars, we can grab some fries in the nearest village, or something,” Aindry said, hoping human-type food might break Jaisan out of his slowly-deepening melancholy. Last time he’d gotten truly depressed, it had taken what felt like forever for him to come out of it. A couple of years of constantly moving, surviving by their wits, was claiming its due price.
Jaisan shrugged. “It might be better to keep it, and maybe we can find a fool begging to be parted from his money. It’s not like they’re a dying breed.”
“Maybe so, but I want something more to eat.”
“Sure, whatever.”
They backtracked, stealthily covering the ground between the last of their cover and the nearby road. They tossed the bags over the page-wire fence, scrambled over at one of the posts, and started walking along the road.
It didn’t matter which direction; every road led somewhere, and one destination was as good as any other.
Some time and a few roads later, they spotted a small restaurant. They paused outside to count available funds.
Two cups of hot chocolate, a plate of fries, and a bacon-and-tomato sandwich, the food shared, did much to improve not only Jaisan’s spirits but Aindry’s as well.
One day at a time, she reminded herself. Tomorrow might never get here, and yesterday’s gone. Think only about right now, and we’ll survive somehow.
Jaisan felt so much better that, while they were lingering over the chocolate, he produced from his pockets three walnut shells and a small polished amethyst. Aindry played along, the two of them giggling over the game.
A shadow fell across the table, a man in his mid-twenties or so, smelling of car oil and gasoline.
“Are you any good at that?” he asked Jaisan curiously.
“What, this?” Jaisan looked down shyly. “I practice. Sometimes I can win.”
“Show him,” Aindry said coaxingly. “Come on, you’re better than you think.”
“If you want.” He set the amethyst down—not for anything would he play this with anything else, insisting it gave his luck an extra boost—and placed one of the shells over it. He shuffled them around casually, looked at the man, who of course pointed out the right one. The second time, Jaisan put a bit more effort into it, but again the stranger chose the right shell.
“I have an idea,” Aindry suggested, putting all the charm she could into it. “Give him a reason to try harder.” She dug around in her pockets, found the single loonie left from paying for the food, and laid it down.
The stranger placed a second dollar coin beside it.
“Where does this highway go?” Aindry wondered aloud, timing it carefully. The man glanced briefly at her, and Jaisan’s hands flickered faster than she could see, switching the shells. Bingo; some could find the stone if they kept watching closely enough, but as soon as someone looked away for even a heartbeat, it was hopeless.
He told her a name that meant nothing to her; meanwhile, Jaisan raised his hands from the shells and gave him an expectant look.
“I think… that one.” He tapped the one on the left.
Jaisan picked it up and showed him—nothing. The amethyst appeared under the centre shell.
Of course, Jaisan made a show of being surprised and delighted at his success; of course, once the man laid another loonie beside Aindry’s, he just had to try again…
They won from him the amount they’d spent on the meal, and a few dollars extra, before the owner caught on and threw them out.
That being a fairly typical reaction, they shrugged, wished her a good day, and departed.
5
Jesse pretended to himself that he’d never tried to run away the night before, while he had breakfast with the others, then helped collapse the tent and stow everything back into backpacks and bags. In less time than he expected, there was little sign that they’d ever been
there, only the well-buried fire ring and the flattened circle where the tent had been, not much else. He wondered how fast the grass would recover and spring back, hiding even those traces.
As it turned out, there was a dark green van parked on a narrow little road not too far away. The back of the van was entirely empty except for thick green carpeting on the floor and up the sides, with a few rings peeking through the carpet here and there. Everything was piled in the very back and then tied with silky-looking rope through the rings to keep it from shifting, which left the centre of the van for Deanna and Jesse and Flynn to sit in.
It seemed like an odd thing to do to a van, but on the other hand, there was enough padding under the carpet beneath him that someone could sleep in here easily, and you could probably pack either a lot of friends or a lot of groceries and stuff in here.
The house that Bane pulled up in front of was, well, it would be pretty big in the city, but seemed about average around here, from what he’d seen on the drive. It was all red brick, and seemed to have a lot of windows.
As Bane shut the van off and Deanna slid the side door open, the front door of the house opened. The young woman who emerged was tall like Deanna, but very slim; platinum blonde hair, almost silvery in the sunlight, fell absolutely straight to about jaw length and then turned into a cascade of loose waves from there to her elbows, completely unconfined as far as he could see—and it wasn’t bleached, even her lashes were almost invisibly pale. Her skin was probably pretty light naturally, but it was somewhat tanned—less than evenly, he could see lighter areas where her cherry-red tank-top showed off territory that had previously been covered by short sleeves. She looked fragile and cool and aristocratic, and unlike Deanna, he could imagine her easily dressed as a princess, or maybe a queen or high priestess or something—weighing someone’s fate, calm and impassive.
The impression shattered completely when she smiled. There was nothing cold at all about that. “Welcome home! Oh, hello.”
“Cynthia, Jesse,” Deanna said. “Jesse, this is Cynthia. Cynthi, we met Jesse while we were camping and he needs a place to stay for a few more days or so.”
Cynthia nodded. “Hi, Jesse. Sure, not a problem. We don’t have any extra beds, but the couch is comfy and the kitchen’s always full of food. Make yourself at home.”
Jesse managed a rather shy greeting, completely at a loss to explain why he found her so intimidating. After all, she was acting welcoming enough.
She also helped with bringing everything inside, demolishing the idea that she was in any way fragile. Those smooth slender limbs showed surprising muscle tensing under the surface when she added her own hands to theirs. She was the one who took charge, and even Bane obeyed her directions without hesitation. Everything was piled neatly at one side of the living room, to be sorted through properly later. Then Cynthia sent them off to shower, while she drove Deanna and Flynn home.
“Is there going to be enough hot water for three showers?” Jesse asked doubtfully.
“You shower first,” Kevin suggested. “I’ll go last. I don’t mind if there’s no hot water left at this time of the year.”
Jesse considered protesting, then thought of how good a hot shower would feel, and decided to take Kevin up on the offer.
It felt every bit as heavenly as he’d expected. He fought the temptation to simply stand under the hot running water, and got himself clean and presentable as quickly as he could. Flynn had left him another fresh set of shorts and T-shirt, and once he was finished and dressed, he felt almost human again.
The sheer ordinariness of the rest of the day, other than his dozing off periodically and no one reacting to it at all, was almost surreal in itself. He made himself as useful as he could between naps, helping with the laundry and general cleaning up, and tried to ignore how good it felt to both be accepted and to be thanked.
The thought surfaced at moments, though: what was it that had trapped him in the campsite last night?
*
“You sure you’ll be okay alone?” Kevin asked, scooping up his bag of books.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Jesse asked, trying to cover exasperation with patience and sure he was failing. “You’ll be late if you keep standing here asking dumb questions.”
Cynthia, Bane, and Deanna were already waiting outside, with the van. Kevin sighed.
“You’re right. Have fun. We’ll be back about three.”
“You already told me that. Twice.” At least.
“Catch you later.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Jesse watched from the door while Kevin slid the side door of the van open and ducked agilely inside. In a moment they were gone.
He couldn’t quite believe that they’d been naive enough to trust him in the house alone. Not that he intended to take anything, not after that weird experience the other night. But maybe he could find out a little. Information was a kind of power, after all, and feeling less powerless would be an enormous relief.
And information would be all the more welcome given the general strangeness around here. The evening after they’d come back to the house from the campsite, he’d been—gently, tactfully, but quite unequivocally—evicted from the living room for over an hour. Flynn’s explanation was that it was a sort of spiritual thing that they typically did once a week, and that it was complicated to explain and the details would probably not interest him. Being asked not to interrupt them for that long seemed fair enough, all things considered, but he’d peeked from the kitchen while grabbing a drink. To him, it had looked like some sort of group meditation, the five of them in a circle on the living room floor close enough to hold hands, no one moving or talking at all. As religious stuff went, it probably beat a lot of lectures on what to do, but it was nonetheless odd.
He prowled the house, room by room, careful to return everything to its former place.
The kitchen was very ordinary, until he took a closer look in the cupboard that had neat hand-labelled bottles of spices. In front were ordinary things, like oregano and basil and savory. In behind those were many odder-looking jars of dried plants he didn’t recognize the names of. Vervain? What was that? St. John’s Wort? Sounded real appetizing. Lemon balm? Why would anyone without a cat bottle catnip? Or bottle willow leaves, for that matter? Hawthorn, red clover flowers, something labelled pansy that looked like small dry purple, white and yellow flowers. That was interesting, and not how he’d always used the word. Wolfsbane, which for some reason he thought was poisonous.
Maybe they were into making brews, or poisoning people, or something. Or expecting an invasion of werewolves.
Yeah, sure, Jess. Get a grip on yourself.
There was nothing else of note in the kitchen, that he could find, nor in the laundry room past the kitchen.
The dining room… he checked the cabinet, glanced briefly through the obviously old china. It was actually rather pretty, white with a border of green and gold and red leaves like a wreath.
Somewhat surprisingly, there was nothing of obvious interest in the living room. It was an ordinary kind of place, a couch, two chairs that matched each other but not the couch, a coffee table and two end tables that didn’t match in any combination, a stand that held TV and VCR and the movie collection, a new-looking computer on a desk in the corner farthest from the window. All on worn wall-to-wall carpet, one wall almost entirely taken by what he thought was called a bay window. Dominant colours all earth-tones, greens and browns and greys and the russet of the carpet, which suited the plants hung in the window and in corners and standing absolutely anywhere they were unlikely to be tripped over. About the most unusual thing here was the collection of silky, lightweight blankets thrown over the backs of the couch and chairs, and they were most often in vivid primary and fiery colours instead. He knew they were warmer than they should have been, since they’d been abundant at the campsite and he’d been sleeping here on the couch under one of them; he also knew that they made his skin tingle faintly,
in a not unpleasant way. They reminded him of stuff he’d seen around Shaine’s, but he’d never felt that tingling before.
Where next? The basement was half utility room, half Deanna’s irregularly-occupied bedroom, all green and russet and brown, plus a half-bath; he decided to go upstairs first.
He expected nothing in the bathroom, and other than a few hand-labelled bottles of what appeared to be bath oils, it didn’t disappoint him. The oils smelled rather pleasant, actually, nothing musky or perfumy that irritated his sensitive nose at all.
Bane’s room was, like Bane, utterly practical and organized. Bed, dresser, a small table beside the bed, a bookcase with glass doors, that was it. Jesse searched drawers quickly, found only clothes; searched the bookcase, found only ordinary books, mostly horror and fantasy and at least half a dozen on wolves and others that looked like the kinds of things he recalled from English classes.
Cynthia’s room, the master, across the hall. Double waterbed, dresser, a larger open bookcase, a table on one side of the bed, a squarish wooden chest about the same height in the mirror position on the other side. A sturdy large basket near the door, where she could take it easily downstairs, held yarn and knitting needles and sundry mysterious objects; several bags in the closet, beneath her clothes, held more yarn. Only clothes, again, in the dresser, and on it a compact stereo and a collection of cassette tapes, mostly unfamiliar to Jesse. The books were lighter kinds of fantasy, and the rest on things like The Ecology of the Northern Canadian Forests and Mammals of the Canadian Wild, but also meteorology and weather and windmills and wind energy. One entire shelf was poetry. He pulled one at random, and opened it to the page marked. The poem was called “True Thomas” and looked long, the language old.
The drawer of the table held only a small flashlight, a notebook and pencil—the notes, all in a neat, elegant hand, were things like, “Register for class Thursday” and “Pick up milk and eggs” and “Call Naomi”—and stray odds and ends. The chest proved to be locked; a little searching, in Kevin’s room in fact, provided a couple of paper clips he straightened while returning. Despite all Shaine’s lessons and his own experience, though, he couldn’t coax the lock open, and finally gave up before he could leave scratches that would be too obvious.
Black Wolf Page 5
