Etched in Bone

CHAPTER 6

Thaisday, Messis 9

Meg put her carry sack in the back of the BOW, then stepped back and smiled at Simon. “I want to walk to work.”

“But I need to get to the office early today.”

“Which is why you need to drive the BOW.” Okay, that wasn’t quite true. Even in human form, Simon could easily walk to the Market Square and get to Howling Good Reads in plenty of time for his early meetings. But he couldn’t get there on time if he kept to her walking pace. “I want to look at the garden and see what vegetables we can pick, and I just want to move this morning.”

He sighed, a sound that held so much disappointment that Meg almost relented. She enjoyed going into work with Simon, liked the companionship. But she didn’t want to go to the Liaison’s Office early—and she didn’t want anyone with her as she approached the Market Square, just in case whatever had triggered her distress yesterday was still there. The job fair was over, so she should be fine, but Simon would be unhappy if she had another panic attack, and she didn’t want him distracted from helping the remaining people who were waiting for a decision about whether they were going to Bennett.

“I’ll be fine, Simon.” When he continued to stand beside the BOW, she added, “I’ll let you know as soon as I reach the office.”

What would Merri Lee or Ruth do to convince a male to go along with her plan?

Meg walked up to Simon, went up on her toes, and licked his cheek. Okay, Merri or Ruth would have given him a human kiss, but judging by the surprised and pleased look in his eyes, he didn’t care about that.

He ran a hand over her short black hair and gave her a light scritch behind her ear. Then he got into the BOW and drove away.

Feeling independent and competent and free, Meg left the Green Complex and walked on the grass to reach the big kitchen garden. Along with the Green Complex’s residents, she and her human friends had been harvesting vegetables for the past few weeks. They’d picked a bit of this and that during Sumor, but now it seemed there were all kinds of vegetables that needed to be picked every day—and whether it was true or not, it felt like she was picking zucchini every day. The peppers were growing and almost ready, and there would be fresh corn soon. It was fun to come out here and see what was flowering and what was getting ripe and . . .

What was that?

White and red. And a patch of brown over there. And . . .

A couple of days ago, she had startled a young rabbit grazing near the garden. She hadn’t meant to; she just hadn’t seen it. But when it moved, it had dragged a hind leg. Had it been hit by a car? The complexes weren’t built that close to the city’s streets, but animals did cross the streets looking for food. Julia Hawkgard told her dead prey was often found on the grass beside Parkside Avenue—animals that had been moving from the park to the Courtyard or the Courtyard to the park. But Parkside Avenue was on the other side of the Courtyard. An injured rabbit wouldn’t cross all that land.

Meg approached cautiously, her stomach already doing little flips.

White bone stripped of muscle but still connected with ligaments—and still attached to a furred foot. The patch of brown turned out to be a hunk of fur. And the red . . . Was that the bunny’s backbone?

Meg backed up and screamed when she hit something.

Big hands held her up. Henry’s voice rumbled above her head. “It’s just a rabbit, Meg.”

“Someone ate the bunny.”

“No one in the Green Complex. Not all the hunters who look for food in the Courtyard are terra indigene.”

“Do you think Simon . . . ?” He ate bunnies. So did Sam. So did all her neighbors except maybe Tess and Vlad, and she wasn’t sure they hadn’t. Even she had eaten rabbit a few times. But it had been cooked. And nothing on her plate had looked like that.

“None of your friends ate the rabbit,” Henry said.

“How do you know?”

“They wouldn’t have left bones and scraps where you or the female pack would find them.” He put his arm around her shoulders and led her away from the garden.

“He had an injured leg,” Meg said when they reached the Courtyard’s main road and started walking toward the Market Square.

“That made him easy prey.” They walked in silence for a minute before Henry said, “Why did Simon leave you behind?”

“I wanted to walk to work. Wanted the extra time to approach the Market Square.” Meg sighed. “If I’d gone with Simon, I wouldn’t have seen the bunny, the . . . backbone.” Seeing the leg bones hadn’t been so bad, but the image of the backbone would stay with her.

“All meat hopped or ran or flew before it became meat,” Henry said. “That is the way of things.”

She nodded. That was the way of things. But the raw truth was a little harder to accept.

Shit, fuck, damn, Simon thought when Henry told him about Meg’s discovery. “Better tell whoever is cooking at Meat-n-Greens today not to put rabbit on the menu board.”

“I already did,” Henry said. “But that one looked like it was eaten where it was caught.”

When she saw an injured bunny, Meg’s feelings would have gone all gooey. A Wolf, seeing the same thing, would have grabbed the quick meal and taken it to the Wolfgard Complex for the pups or eaten it himself.

“I will go back and dispose of the bones and scraps,” Henry said. “You should find something to distract our Meg so she doesn’t spend the day thinking about the rabbit.”

“There’s not . . .” Simon looked at the box that had been picked up at the train station early that morning. “I might have something to distract her.” Of course, he hadn’t done more than glance at the books Jesse Walker had sent for his review and had no idea if they were exciting mystery-thrillers with lots of chasing or scary stories. Well, if the books scared Meg and she kicked him because of bad dreams, he couldn’t snarl at anyone but himself.

Simon picked up the box and left the office, pausing long enough to tell Vlad he was going to the Liaison’s Office.

The back door of the Liaison’s Office was locked. He’d expected that. What he hadn’t expected was to hear a footstep on the stairs above him and see Greg O’Sullivan looking down at him, a hand on the service weapon the ITF agent carried.

“Mr. Wolfgard.” O’Sullivan’s hand moved away from the weapon. He came down the stairs, his steps quick and light. “Didn’t know it was you.”

Simon watched the agent. Nadine Fallacaro and Eve Denby both said the second room above the office was similar to a hotel room, with the perk of a small fridge to hold cold drinks or snacks. O’Sullivan had been happy to become the tenant, saying it was more secure than a regular hotel room, and he could leave personal items there when he needed to travel back to Hubbney and report to Governor Hannigan. “Were you expecting someone else?”

“No, but I’d heard that, during the job fair, a few people had been poking around where they didn’t belong—and I thought I heard someone testing the back door late last night. Just wanted to make sure no one was trying to bother Ms. Corbyn.”

A different kind of watch Wolf, Simon decided as he studied O’Sullivan. Not an unattached male sniffing around his Meg, but a member of the larger pack committed to protecting the territory that sheltered all of them—which meant O’Sullivan needed to be warned about the Courtyard’s guests.

Simon hadn’t seen them, had been too busy dealing with humans to even sense their presence or catch their scent. But Kowalski had called Blair last night, and after the dominant enforcer had sniffed the ground around Kowalski and Ruthie’s den this morning, Blair told Simon that two of the Elders had returned to Lakeside. That was the reason he had asked Henry to delay going to the Market Square—so that Meg wouldn’t be walking alone. And that was why Henry had been there when Meg found the bunny backbone.

He wasn’t ready to discuss that with the humans, so he changed the subject. “Katherine Debany is starting her new job at the consulate.”

“I met her yesterday,” O’Sullivan said. “And Miss Twyla.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Made me feel like I was being scrutinized by two strict but affectionate aunts. I checked all the drawers in the desk I’m using to make sure there wasn’t anything there that might get me into trouble. I have a feeling those two have heard the ‘it isn’t mine’ defense too many times to believe it.”

The ITF agent had struck Simon as intense and distant, focused on his job and more of a lone wolf. Now he saw a glimpse of the juvenile the man had been. “Older females are good for a pack.”

O’Sullivan smiled and made a noncommittal sound before heading to A Little Bite for breakfast.

Simon unlocked the back door of the Liaison’s Office, walked in, and heard something make a rhythmic slap, slap, slap on wood. “Meg?”

Nathan reported from his spot in the front room.

Meg slapped another letter on the sorting room table. Simon approached the table cautiously and set the box on a corner. “Meg?”

“I don’t want to be a bunny! Bunnies get eaten!”

“Sooner or later, everything gets eaten,” he countered.

She growled at him. She looked as ferocious as a puppy. He wanted to give her a couple of licks and find a toy. If they could play for a few minutes, she would forget about the bunny.

No, she wouldn’t. Meg wasn’t a puppy, and she didn’t forget something once she’d seen it. At least, she didn’t forget something she’d seen unless it was veiled by the euphoria that was produced by cutting.

He didn’t like that thought, so he picked up the box and put it in front of her. “When you’re done with the mail, I need a favor.”

Meg frowned at the box. “A favor?”

“Jesse Walker sent me some books that we don’t sell at Howling Good Reads.”

It was a shame Meg couldn’t prick her ears to show interest. It certainly looked like she wanted to.

“Crowgard cozies?” she asked.

“More thriller than cozy, I think.” Simon tapped the box. “Jesse Walker says Intuits like the stories, but I’d like to know if you think the stories would appeal to the terra indigene and the human pack.”

“So I’m like a book reviewer for the store?”

He nodded, watching her. It suddenly occurred to him that this was a new thing, something not part of Meg’s routine. Would it upset her? No, she looked intrigued.

Meg set the box aside. “I have to finish sorting the mail first.” She blinked at him. “Aren’t you supposed to be working?”

He glanced at the clock. He was late for his meeting with Captain Burke.

Giving the tip of her nose a quick lick, Simon walked out of the sorting room. He looked back when he reached the door. Meg was sorting the mail, but she kept glancing at the box.

Feeling lighter, as if they’d had a few minutes of playtime, he wondered how many pieces of mail the ponies would have to redeliver because he’d found the right distraction.

Sitting in A Little Bite with Jana Paniccia, Monty smiled at the young woman. Early that morning, Captain Burke had taken her to the firing range to review her skill with the weapons commonly used by the police. Kowalski and Debany had been tagged to test her hand-to-hand and self-defense skills. And he and Burke had reviewed her transcript. Now, while Simon Wolfgard was listening to Burke’s opinion of Ms. Paniccia’s ability to serve as a deputy, Monty was here to talk—and to listen.

“Waiting is always hard,” he said. And the hardest part for him, for Burke, even for Kowalski and Debany, was wondering if they were sending a young—and female—officer too far into the unknown, where her new boss would either accept her or eat her.

“It’s brutal.” Jana glanced toward the archway leading into Howling Good Reads.

“Going to Bennett is a big decision. It won’t be like anything you’ve known. It certainly won’t be like living in Lakeside.” While that was certainly true, Monty wondered if the town would be run like a Courtyard with a larger business district.

“I know. But it’s a place ripe with possibilities.” Jana laughed a little. “I loved stories about the frontier and the sheriff squaring off against villains who wanted to take over a town that was the only human place for hundreds of miles. My favorite stories usually had a feisty woman who was held captive and whacked one of the villains with a frying pan and escaped in time to warn the sheriff.”

“You wanted to be the feisty woman?”

“Well, no. I wanted to be the sheriff, and in my versions of the stories, the feisty woman was my sister or cousin. Sometimes the captive was a brother who had never done anything else with a frying pan in his life, and sometimes it was a brother who wanted to own a restaurant someday and really did know his way around a kitchen.”

“But you wanted to wear the badge and carry the gun?”

Jana nodded. Then she sucked in a breath as Simon Wolfgard and Captain Burke approached the table.

Simon held out two envelopes. “Your travel letter and your pass for the train fare are in the first envelope. You need to show the pass and letter when you board the train at Lakeside and again when the train stops at the station closest to the regional boundary between the Northeast and Midwest. That’s the only way you’ll be allowed to cross to another region. The second envelope has a letter to Tolya Sanguinati, which includes the résumé you gave me. It also includes the address of the house where you’ll live if Tolya feels you are suitable to be a deputy in Bennett. Barbara Ellen, Officer Debany’s sister, is willing to share the house with another female. As the houses are cleaned up and made available, Tolya wants permanent residents to move out of the hotel to make room for temporary workers and travelers. If you don’t like the house or don’t want to share, you can stay at the hotel for a while.”

“Having a housemate would be great,” Jana said, gripping both envelopes.

“The train leaves tomorrow morning. We’ll pick you up in our van so there will be room for everything you want to bring with you.”

“Thank you.” Jana sniffed. “I’ll be ready.”

Simon studied her face. “Your eyes are watering and your nose is runny. Are you sick?”

She shook her head. “Just really happy.”

He studied her face a little longer, then walked away.

Monty handed her the paper napkins that were on the table. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

“Congratulations, Deputy Paniccia.” Burke held out his hand.

Jana stood up and shook his hand. “Thank you, sir, but I don’t have the job yet.”

“I’m confident that you will. Let us know how you’re getting on.”

“I will.”

Burke stepped away from the table. Monty pushed his chair back, ready to return to his duties. When Jenni Crowgard rushed up to the table, both men hesitated.

“Are you going to Bennett?” Jenni asked. “Do you have a pen pal? The Ruthie explained what that is. I could be your Crowgard pen pal and send you news from Lakeside.”

Lots of emotion invested in this, Monty thought as he watched feathers appear in Jenni’s long black hair.

Jana stared at the feathers, then, with effort, focused on Jenni’s face. “Yes, I’m going to Bennett. I promised to write to Merri Lee, but I don’t have any Crowgard pen pals, so I would enjoy writing to you.”

Jenni set an index card on the table. “This is me. When you get to Bennett, you can send me your address.” She dashed out of the coffee shop.

Jana stared down the hallway that led to the back door, then looked at Monty and Burke.

“For the Crowgard, information is a form of currency,” Monty said, smiling. “I got the impression from things I’ve overheard lately that having a pen pal and receiving postcards from another region in Thaisia has become a bit of a status symbol.”

“Is having a human for a pen pal more or less of a status symbol?” Jana asked.

“More, I think.”

“Communicating with one of the Lakeside Crowgard won’t hurt your status either,” Burke said quietly. “Especially since plenty of individuals in Bennett and Prairie Gold already have ties to this Courtyard.”

Jana gave them a brilliant smile. “I’d better get home and make sure everything is ready for my trip tomorrow.”

“Have your mail forwarded to the Bennett post office,” Monty said.

“Will do.”

Tess joined them, giving Monty and Burke no more than a glance before focusing on Jana. “You ready to go?”

“I am.”

“Our minivan can take you home. It’s in the access way. The driver’s name is Harry.”

“Thanks.” Jana hurried out the back way.

“Well,” Tess said. “I hope we’re done with all the excitement for . . . a . . . while.” As she looked toward the archway, her hair changed to red-streaked green and began coiling. “The job fair is over.”

“Didn’t come for a job.”

The familiar male voice—a voice Monty had hoped he wouldn’t hear in person, despite what Meg had seen in the prophecy cards and what his mother had told him—was like a hammer blow to the chest.

“Came to see family.” A gesture to the woman and two children behind him. “Was told there was a place we could stay.” The smile aimed at Monty wasn’t sincere, unless you counted the hint of meanness. “Hey, CJ.”

“Lieutenant?” Burke’s voice was barely audible but a warning nonetheless. “You know him?”

“My brother. Cyrus James Montgomery. Jimmy.”

Burke took a step toward the archway. “Sir, you need to leave. Now.”

Monty glanced at Tess and felt a wave of dizziness. Something wrong with her face. Something . . .

He looked away and waited for the dizziness to pass. Hoped it would pass.

A squeal from the archway. Then Jimmy’s wife and children were pushing into the coffee shop, and Henry Beargard stood in the archway, blocking escape.

Monty looked at Jimmy, who was still trying to hold on to his cockiness.

“Whether or not he leaves isn’t your decision, Captain,” Tess said. “He’s in the Courtyard. The Wolfgard will decide what happens to him now.”