by Holley Trent
“I don’t understand what’s happening here, but instincts tell me to grab my baby and run.”
“I probably would, too,” Lily said, nodding. “I’m like Aunt Glenda. There’s nothing unusual about me, except for the fact I’m the lone decaf drinker in the family.”
December gave Lily an assessing look. The woman didn’t seem strange. She didn’t look like much of a horsewoman, either, though. She managed her horse well enough, but seemed to lack Mrs. Foye’s instinctual ease in controlling the reins. Instead of faded old jeans and flannel, she wore broken-in pink khakis and a Foye Woodworks T-shirt, the sleeves of which she’d pegged up with a couple of ribbons that matched her pants. With her bouncy ponytail, she looked more cheerleader than cowgirl.
“I’m kind of the sore thumb around here,” Lily said, laughing.
“I was just thinking that,” December muttered.
“I swear, you kind of get used to the unexplainable on this ranch. I wasn’t exposed to my cousins much as a kid because my mom really didn’t want me and my siblings knowing about this stuff. Crazy thing to hear those kinds of rumors about your cousins and have to go around your parents’ backs to get answers.”
“What stuff, Mommy?” Cruz asked.
Lily grimaced. “Uh. After a while, they seem just as normal as anyone.”
“But what are they?” December asked.
“What are you talking about, Mommy?”
“Perhaps you should talk to Tito,” Mrs. Foye said.
December shook her head. “No, you’re like me. I want you to tell me. Tell me in a way I’ll understand.”
Please.
December wanted, in almost equal parts, to run and to get answers. She didn’t want to think her little girl wasn’t normal, but deep down, she already knew. She’d already suspected. Her visit to Maria wasn’t supposed to play out the way it was, but the time had come for her to learn what made Cruz the way she was. More, she needed to find out what Tito had to do with it, too.
“May I?” Lily had ridden around and reached down for Pudding’s reins. “There’s a little pond just around the bend in the trail. I think he might be thirsty.”
December craned her body to see around the horses and the fence posts, and sure enough, there was a tiny body of water about a hundred yards around the trail—just out of earshot.
December needed to trust someone. Normally, her go-to person was Alicia, but Alicia was back in Tucson. Calling for advice probably wouldn’t be fruitful because Alicia hadn’t been there to witness what December had. She might even think December had finally fallen off her rocker.
Hesitantly, she handed Lily the reins, gripping them still once the woman had them in hand.
“Everything’s all right,” Lily whispered. “I promise.”
December let go.
“Just holler when you’re ready for us to come back, ’kay?” Lily led Cruz and Pudding away, and Cruz didn’t even look back. She’d started running her mouth a mile a minute again, easily distracted as always, and Lily was giggling.
Mrs. Foye silently dismounted and walked her horse to the fence. She looped the reins around the post, leaned against the slats, and tapped her fingertips atop the worn wood for a few moments.
December was on edge, breathless from anticipation, but also terrified of what might come out of the woman’s mouth. She didn’t want to know, but she needed to.
“You know,” Mrs. Foye said, just when December’s head had started to go light.
She’d forgotten to breathe.
“When I found out what my late husband, Floyd, was, I fainted.”
“You?” December’s voice was practically a squeak. The idea was preposterous—a bold woman like that had fainted. If Mrs. Foye hadn’t been able to hack it, then December expected to hit the ground from the feeling of overwhelm at any time. Before she did, though, she wanted those words in her brain. She needed to hear what Mrs. Foye had to say.
“I feel like I’m trapped in some kind of weird dream right now,” December said quietly.
“I certainly understand. I still feel that way sometimes.” Mrs. Foye lifted the brim of her straw hat and passed her bandana across her forehead. The air was stiflingly thick.
“Floyd grew up on the neighboring property. He was my first and only love, and I never knew what he was until one day he got tired of waiting for me to agree to marry him. I guess he wanted to come clean before we moved forward. You don’t really understand their natures until you have to live with them.”
December nodded slowly. “Them? What is them? Sean and the rest.” Tito.
“Floyd was a cougar shifter.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t follow. I know those words, but put together they don’t make sense.”
“Don’t try to inject sense into a conversation about magic. You’ll regret it every single time.”
“Magic? That’s not a real thing.”
Mrs. Foye’s laugh was deep and warm, and the lines at the corners of her eyes creased as if she found the whole concept to be charming and not ridiculous as hell. “The logic didn’t click for me either, that’s why when he shape-shifted in front of me, I collapsed. Picture it.” She held up her hands as if to frame a vignette between them. “There I was, thinking I was this tough, scrappy cowgirl. I’ve castrated bulls, birthed calves, and been up to my shins in shit more times than I care to recount, and there I went.” She snapped her fingers. “Down like a sack of rocks. I like to think I would have handled the revelation better if he’d just told me first, but I probably wouldn’t have. I would have been just as spooked as you are right now.”
Mrs. Foye must have seen a little bit of what December felt, because she pressed her hands to her shoulders, and December could see shaking. That wasn’t Mrs. Foye’s hands shaking. That was December.
“I grew up Floyd’s neighbor, for crying out loud,” Mrs. Foye said softly. “I’d had absolutely no exposure to what he was or what he could do, and the fact I hadn’t seen anything off about him scared me more than anything. He’d seemed normal. Not so much in hindsight now, but after nearly forty years, I know what to look for.”
December stopped shaking, not that she was less scared, but from sheer will—Mrs. Foye’s. The lady’s grip was tight and bracing. It was something for December to pay attention to besides the words Mrs. Foye had thrown at her.
“Th-that lady—Mrs. Perez—she just.” She shook her head hard and tried to push a swallow down an uncooperative throat. “She changed a bunch of times right in front of me. I’m convinced I was seeing things, because I’d seen so many of those women before. She’d been at my daughter’s school, and I saw one of those women every now and then at a park near my house.”
“They’re all real, December. They’re all her. She puts on different faces depending on what she needs to accomplish. Mostly around Maria, she’s the old lady with the cane. That’s how almost everyone in town knows her, and that’s how Cruz will probably know her. She doesn’t let just anyone see the face that comes most naturally.”
“So, she’s … one of those Cougar things? Like Sean?”
“No. She’s not, honey. Sean and Hannah. Belle. My other sons and most of the cowboys you’ll see working on the ranch are all Cougars. Lola’s not.”
“What else is there?”
“Powerful things not meant for me to explain.”
“That’s not an answer. What’s Tito?”
Mrs. Foye shrugged. “Tito is her son.”
“But what does that mean?” In spite of the painful notching of Mrs. Foye’s fingers into December’s shoulders, she started shaking again, and her voice warbled. She hadn’t been so frightened since she was a kid on her parents’ front porch, and they’d been okay with letting her walk away and not come back. “What does that mean for Cruz?”
“You should ask the person who knows best.” A woman with Mrs. Perez’s voice had appeared out of thin air, and Mrs. Foye’s horse immediately tried to buck and pull free of the fence
.
“Whoa, there.” Mrs. Foye quickly grabbed its reins and calmed him.
He stopped bucking, but given the way he kept cutting hostile side-eyes toward Mrs. Perez, he was obviously still wary.
“Apologies,” Mrs. Perez said. Her voice was the same as the old lady’s, but her appearance was the younger one she’d shown in the dining room. She looked to be around thirty. Small-framed. Dark hair secured in a long braid. Eyes black as night. She had her hands stuffed into the pockets of her long skirt.
December looked down the path and saw three figures coming up toward them. One was Tito, one was Hannah. The other was on four legs.
“Is that … a cougar?” she whispered, reflexively gripping the fence slat, as if she were really in good enough shape to toss herself over it if need be.
Mrs. Foye squinted into the distance. “I think that’s Sean. Hard for me to tell the boys apart unless they’re up close.”
“You can tell by the fur color,” Mrs. Perez said. “They’re all subtly different.”
“Eh. I should feel worse about not being able to tell the difference, but I’m at the age where I could plead bad eyesight, and nobody would question me.”
December tittered nervously and estimated the number of footsteps between her and Cruz. “You know, I’m getting that feeling again that Cruz and I should head out.”
“You wanted answers to your questions,” Mrs. Perez said.
“I wanted answers, not insanity. All that time—all those years, you … ” December shook her head again. “You were there. You were around my kid, and I’d keep seeing you and I never put two and two together that seeing the same stranger so often was weird. You left all those anonymous bags of stuff at my basement door, didn’t you? You left all those new clothes and shoes for Cruz.”
Mrs. Perez looked down the path.
The trio was almost in earshot.
“She needed them,” she said.
“She did, yes, but now that I know where they came from, I feel guilty about taking them. I would have been content with thinking they came from anonymous neighbors.”
“Why? I thought you wanted help.”
“But not like … ” December sighed. “You knew and you didn’t tell him? Tito, I mean. In all that time I was looking for him—”
“My son and I have a very complicated relationship. We could debate on the propriety of my actions, but I’m a very old woman, December. Everything I did was with thought and care. Maliciousness was not my intent.”
“You get used to the secrecy around here,” Mrs. Foye said. “You have to stop worrying about the things that you don’t know, or you’ll go nuts.”
“I could just go home where I won’t have to worry about any of this. I can pretend none of this happened.”
“I hate to break it to you, but Tucson is no more a paradise than Maria. Ask Sean and Hannah what happened the last time they were there.”
“What happened?” With every new statement or query, December’s voice was becoming increasingly shriller. She took a few deep breaths and tried gather her composure, because no one was going to believe that she could capably parent a child on her own if she couldn’t even control her voice. She was usually so much better at going with the flow. Apparently, Maria had sucked all the chill out of her.
“What started the last time they were there perhaps was the opening salvo for the mess that is in process now,” Mrs. Perez said.
Tito stopped about ten feet from them—on the other side of the trail—and leaned against the railings with his hands in his pockets.
He was wise to keep his distance, because December had one mind to press her hands to his neck and squeeze until his eyes bulged.
She couldn’t even meet his gaze. While she understood that she’d, in a way, dropped an unexpected bomb on him, she couldn’t help but to feel wounded by his lack of enthusiasm. All those years ago when they’d hooked up, he’d acted like he wanted her, and he’d made her feel like he did. No one had made her feel that way before, and no one had ever since.
I didn’t mean anything to him.
“Dee,” Tito said.
She cleared her throat and fixed her stare on one wispy blade of grass at the edge of the trail. “What?”
“You gotta understand. This isn’t how I would have had things happen.”
She cleared her throat again. “If … if you’re going to tell me excuses, I don’t want to hear them.”
“I’m not gonna give you any excuses. We’ve gotta talk about some things—serious things. I can’t keep you safe if you don’t know the whole story, and the thing is, the story isn’t one anyone would believe.”
She nodded slowly, her gaze still on that blade of grass. “Any minute now, I’m going to wake up in Tucson, and this’ll all have been a dream. I didn’t really come here looking for you. I didn’t really see your mother magically change forms in front of me and then later materialize out of thin air. I certainly don’t see a giant cat sitting in pouncing distance of me. Nope. Not at all. I’m just asleep.”
The cat padded over to Mrs. Foye’s horse, which gave an indignant neigh and attempted to back up, but the cat was too fast. It swiped a rolled blanket from a catch on the saddle between its teeth and then walked away a bit behind the horse.
A moment later, December heard “Fuck,” in Sean’s strained voice, and he walked over with the blanket wrapped around his lower body.
Oh my God.
Mrs. Foye wasn’t around to dig her fingers into December’s shoulders, but Mrs. Perez was close enough to wrap a hand around her wrist.
“Be calm.” Her tone held more command than sympathy, and December’s nervous system fell in line and reined in the shakes, for the moment.
“Probably easier to pretend that none of this is happening,” Sean said, “but compared to some folks, your adjustment will be a piece of pie. Ask Hannah how she ended up here. Ask her how she got those scars on her face and neck.”
December looked at the blonde.
Hannah was silent, looking calmly toward the pond with her thumbs crooked into her belt loops.
She did have scars—on her cheek, her chin, her neck. They were white and healed over, but ragged. Whenever Hannah had visited the bar with Sean, December had always wondered what they were from, but she’d thought asking about them would have been rude. The marks were in long, jagged runnels, as if some beast had …
December backed to the fence, put her hands on the top slat, and had one foot already poised to climb.
“Dee! It wasn’t anyone here,” Tito said quickly. “Decent folks don’t claw up humans against their will.”
“F-folks?”
Tito cringed. “You might have to adjust your definition of what that means.”
“I’ve known you for so long,” she said to Sean, shaking her head rapidly, “and you never said anything.”
Sean shrugged. “We don’t really go around sharing that information. We’re not exactly what you’d call a protected class.”
“The folks who know about us,” Tito said, “try their best to not bring attention to us. They work with us to problem solve when necessary, but for the most part, they leave us to police our own community.”
“And you help them police theirs,” she said, remembering what his job was.
“Yeah. The sheriff knows we’re out here. He hired Steven and me last year because we can move through communities that he can’t, and having some folks like us working in official capacities makes the law and order thing easier for the rest of the small force.”
“I think I’ve proven my point,” Sean said. “I’m going to return to the house with Hannah before Lily brings Cruz back this way. We won’t come out in anything but our human forms until you think she’s ready to see otherwise, Dee.” He tossed the blanket to his mother, and before it could even fall into her hands, he was back in that cougar shape and nudging Hannah toward the ranch houses.
December sucked in some air and swatted a ha
nd through her ponytail. She didn’t have any words, didn’t know what to do next. Nothing about her trip to Maria had gone as predicted. Apparently, her imagination wasn’t as good as she thought.
Mrs. Foye laughed and pulled December into a side hug. “You’re looking kind of pale. I promise, everything will start making more sense soon. You might even be able to see some plusses of the situation.”
“Like what?”
“Like having your daughter’s grandmother be a goddess,” Tito said quietly.
Of course, then, December had to whip her head around and look at him dead on.
She still didn’t have anything to say, but she’d heard him, and what he’d said was sheer lunacy. She hoped he’d read her face and understand that his statements were utterly deranged.
“We should talk, Dee.”
She blinked at him.
Then again.
That didn’t help clear her brain or even her vision. That was going blurrier the longer she stared at him.
It took her a minute, maybe, to realize she was crying, and over nothing.
Or maybe everything. She was feeling way too overwhelmed, and the feeling had sneaked up on her all at once—like the quietest freight train ever, and she’d been sitting on the tracks and too deaf to hear it coming.
“Okay. Okay,” Mrs. Foye said, pulling her into her arms. “Still better than fainting, I guess.”
chapter SIX
Twenty minutes later, December was back at Mrs. Foye’s house, and sipping strong, hot tea on the living room sofa. Cruz was outside somewhere with her grandmother The Freaking Goddess who December hadn’t felt brave enough to say “no” to, probably being given an extended tour of the ranch, and the rest of the ranch’s occupants seemed to be giving December a wide berth. Sean and Hannah had disappeared, Belle had gone to do ranch chores with Lily, Mrs. Foye was in the kitchen starting what would probably be a huge meal, and the rest of the Foyes kept themselves busy elsewhere.
