Etched in Bone

CHAPTER 20

Windsday, Messis 22

Monty walked into the interrogation room sick with fear. When he’d first caught sight of Kowalski as his partner hauled Jimmy into the station, he’d thought Karl had been hopped up on some kind of drug. And there was Jimmy with scrapes on his face and bruises already blooming, screaming that Kowalski was off-his-head crazy—and judging by the scared expression on Officer Hilborn’s face, Jimmy’s assessment of Kowalski might not be wrong.

Then Monty unwrapped the “roast” Jimmy had bought at the Market Square butcher shop and understood Kowalski’s behavior. He understood a lot of things as he slammed into a stall in the men’s restroom and threw up. Now he needed to convince Jimmy to give him the information he would never get from Simon Wolfgard—because Wolfgard had already sent a clear message that Jimmy was involved up to his neck in whatever had happened in the Courtyard last night.

Setting a closed folder on the table, Monty took a seat opposite his brother.

“Look what that bastard Kowalski did to me,” Jimmy shouted, waving a hand at his own face. “You better fry his ass for this, CJ, or I’ll raise a stink that will smell right up to the mayor’s office in this fucking city.”

“Have you made out a will?” Monty asked quietly.

“What? Are you listening to me? Kowalski—”

“Have you made any provision for your wife and children? Is there any legal document I should know about?”

Jimmy stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Whatever you did this time, you might not survive it.”

“I didn’t—”

Captain Burke walked into the room. He closed the door, walked up to the table, and pressed his hands flat against the surface, all his attention on Jimmy.

“Your brother shouldn’t do this interview,” Burke said. “But I figured you would lie and stall and wheedle and waste everyone’s time if I had anyone else asking the questions. I’m not willing to waste anyone’s time, especially mine. So this is what is going to happen. Lieutenant Montgomery is going to have ten minutes to get information from you about an incident that occurred last night. I’m going to be standing on the other side of that glass, listening. If I’m convinced that you’ve provided accurate information, you’ll be free to leave. If I’m not convinced, you’ll be charged with mishandling human remains, accessory to murder, and cannibalism. And you will be relocated to a secure, undisclosed location by nightfall—the kind of place people like you never leave. I can, and will, make that happen.” He straightened and stepped away from the table, finally looking at Monty. “Your ten minutes starts now.”

As soon as Burke left the room, Jimmy started in again. “What is this shit? I didn’t kill anybody. I was home last night.”

Monty took the first photograph out of the folder and laid it between them. It showed a tattoo on a man’s forearm. “Do you recognize this tattoo? Do you know this man?”

Jimmy looked at it—and hesitated a moment too long. “Never seen it.”

Monty removed another photograph from the folder, which showed the whole forearm—and showed the ragged edges where something had bitten through elbow and wrist. “You sure? You were carrying this man’s forearm when Officer Kowalski arrested you. Which is why you could be charged with mishandling human remains as well as cannibalism.”

Jimmy shook his head so violently Monty wondered if he would tear a muscle. “No way. No. That bastard is lying, trying to set me up. I bought a piece of special meat from the butcher shop and that Kowalski—”

“Gods, Jimmy! Humans are the special meat. All the terra indigene in the Courtyard consider humans a prey animal, same as rabbits and deer. Anyone who enters the Courtyard without the Others’ permission is meat.”

Jimmy stared at Monty, his eyes blank with shock.

“I’ve been informed that a person or persons unknown broke into the Market Square butcher shop last night and stole all the meat. Since there was a delivery made yesterday, that equals a lot of beef and pork. Gone. So are the people who tried to steal it.”

Jimmy blinked, seemed to come back to himself. “What do you mean, tried to steal it?”

“They didn’t get away, didn’t leave the Courtyard. And the Others know you were involved in the theft.”

“I was home last night.”

“Yeah.” Monty smiled bitterly. “You’re always the one with the alibi if things go wrong. You’re as dirty as the men who do the job, but you’re always distant enough that you can’t be charged.”

“So you can’t hold me for something I didn’t do.”

Jimmy sounded like he always did—sure that he was going to walk away unscathed to start thinking up his next scheme. But not this time.

Monty tapped the photograph of the full forearm. “The Others know you were involved, Jimmy. It doesn’t matter if you were at the butcher shop last night or home in bed. They know. And this was their way of telling you, and the police, that they know. But what they aren’t telling us is how many men entered the Courtyard last night. They haven’t left any identification for us to find, which they sometimes do. Whoever was in the Courtyard last night is dead. We know that.”

“Then why aren’t you asking the freaks?” Jimmy demanded.

“Human law doesn’t apply in the Courtyard. I told you: if humans aren’t invited in, we are meat. Right now, these men have disappeared. Maybe they were killed by other men and their bodies haven’t been found. Maybe they took the first bus out of town and walked away from their families. It happens. But if those men have families, have wives and children, those wives will never be able to get a death certificate, will never be able to get on with their lives or receive any assets their husbands had tucked away. Those women will spend the rest of their lives not knowing if they’re widows or abandoned. Would you want that for Sandee and your kids?”

Jimmy wouldn’t think twice about something like that. Monty saw it in his eyes, in his face. He would leave Sandee wondering and wouldn’t care.

“You knew him, Jimmy.”

“I told you I didn’t.”

“You’re lying. I know the signs.” Yes, he knew the signs. Jimmy was sly; he was cunning; he never told the truth if a lie would work. And he enjoyed beating people down with words and intimidating them with a large body and a big voice. As Jimmy had done to Sierra. As he was doing to young Frances, giving his son a nod of approval for doing the same.

“Fine.” Monty put the photographs back in the folder. “You’ve been implicated in an attempted burglary that resulted in the deaths of six men, so you’ll be charged with accessory to—”

“What are you saying?” Jimmy was sweating now and looking sick.

“I’m saying Captain Burke was right. This is a waste of time, so you’ll be charged.”

Now, for the first time, Cyrus James Montgomery truly looked afraid. “You giving up on me? What’s Mama going to say about that?”

“I don’t think she’ll say anything when I tell her you had a chance to cooperate, but you refused to meet the conditions of your release and were sent to the place where dangerous criminals are held while they await trial.”

“When I tell her my side of it—”

“You’ll be gone. She won’t hear your side of it.” Monty leaned across the table. “And with you out of the picture, not filling her head with crap, Mama will believe whatever I tell her.”

Oh yes. Jimmy was sweating now.

Monty wondered if his brother remembered saying those exact words to him a couple of years after Monty left home and Jimmy hadn’t moved out of his parents’ home yet.

“Bastard.” Jimmy looked like he wanted to spit in Monty’s face. Might have done it if someone hadn’t rapped on the glass at that moment, signaling that their time was up.

Monty stood and reached for the folder.

“There weren’t six of them,” Jimmy said suddenly.

Monty sat.

“Don’t think there were six,” Jimmy amended. “And maybe it was a little bit my fault, but not like you think.”

He waited. Monty said nothing.

“Saw the meat being delivered yesterday.” Jimmy shifted in his seat, as if he was uncomfortable all of a sudden. Monty could believe that. Jimmy did better when he had time to make up a story. “Seems a waste, bringing good meat like that to the freaks when they could be catching rats and squirrels and shit.”

“I didn’t hear you complaining about the meat deliveries when you were eating at Meat-n-Greens or A Little Bite. Where did you think that food came from?” Monty asked.

“Yeah, well, it seemed like a waste. And I was having a drink at a bar near the bus station and heard these men complaining that there wasn’t any meat in the shops and their women were bringing home tripe and shit like that instead of real food, and maybe I was a bit too full of drink and said how the Courtyard always had good meat, said I’d seen a delivery of steaks and pork chops and roasts and all kinds of food that was fit for a man to eat. And the four of them—there were four of them, not six—started buying me drinks and we were just talking about how hard it was now to take care of a family and they were asking about the butcher shop and maybe I told them more than I meant to—more than I remember saying, that’s for sure. Then I went home and I slept all night.”

In the end, Monty had the name of the bar and the names the four men were known by in places like that. Hopefully it would be enough that the police could fill out DLU forms to give to the next of kin.

“Can I go now?” Jimmy asked when Monty stood again.

“I’ll find out.” He took a step away from the table, then stopped. “Jimmy, you should think hard about getting out of Lakeside and starting fresh somewhere else. You haven’t done anything to give the terra indigene here a reason to think well of you, and now they definitely have reason to think you’re an enemy.”

“You think I give a shit?”

Didn’t take long for Jimmy to fall back into his entitlement mind-set.

“You should,” Monty said quietly, “because there are beings in the Courtyard who are so powerful and dangerous that they can turn your brains to soup with just a look. Just a look, Jimmy. And now, because of this bit of stupidity, all the Others are going to be watching everything you do from now on.”

Monty walked out of the interrogation room and leaned against the wall, exhausted.

Four men had gone into the Courtyard last night. Only one had had time to let out a high-pitched, terrified scream.

The door of the observation room opened and Commander Louis Gresh stepped out.

“Captain Burke said I should drive your brother back to the apartment building,” Louis said.

When no one else came out of the observation room, Monty asked, “Where is the captain?”

“He’s kept Kowalski isolated in his office since your brother was brought in. He knew you’d get the truth out of Cyrus, or enough of it, and he figured watching Kowalski right now was more important.” Louis blew out a breath. “This shook up your boy something fierce.”

“It shook all of us.” Monty looked at the ceiling. “The terra indigene aren’t human, but they have studied us, and, gods, they know how to send a message.”

“Do you think your brother got that message?”

“No. He’ll go on believing he can work this just like he worked his schemes in Toland. Despite the evidence right in front of him, he’ll be like a lot of other people who still want to pretend, maybe need to pretend, that there aren’t lethal repercussions when they mess with the Others.”

Louis sighed. “It could have been worse.”

“How?”

“The Others could have waylaid Kowalski, made sure he wouldn’t cross paths with Cyrus. Then Cyrus would have brought the package home and opened it there. How much more shocking would it have been to cut the string, unwrap that package, and recognize the tattoo?”

And Jimmy would have bragged about it, made a big deal about snagging the last piece of special meat, just like he’d done when he saw Kowalski. But it would have been Sandee and the kids looking at a man’s forearm, unprepared for the harsh reality of what the terra indigene saw when they looked at humans. Most humans. He had to keep believing that Simon and Vlad and the rest of the Others no longer saw all humans as prey.

But the Others had known the theft was going to happen and hadn’t asked the police for help, so he had to wonder if Jimmy had created a wedge between himself and Simon Wolfgard, had cracked the trust that had been building.

And he had to wonder what that meant for the mixed communities that were being created and the people who were now living among the world’s dominant predators without even the pretense of a barrier between them.

Burke studied Kowalski, who sat in his office looking pale and still a bit shaky. But the officer’s dark eyes didn’t have the wild look anymore, so now it was time to talk.

“What happened?” Burke asked.

Kowalski shook his head. “I saw Cyrus waving that package and bragging about scoring a piece of special meat, and I lost it. I don’t remember taking him down. Things snapped into focus again when Jenni Crowgard asked if I needed help, if I wanted her to peck its eyes out. Its eyes, not his eyes. I knew I needed an excuse to get her away from him and I needed to get him out of the Courtyard, get him back on land where human laws did apply. I needed to arrest him and get him out of there because he was drawing attention to himself, to all of us, and . . .” He stopped, seemed to choke.

“It’s one thing to pick up a wallet that was dropped for you to find and know the person who owned it crossed some line and was killed and eaten because of it. It’s quite another thing to see the proof of it.”

“Whenever word got out that the Wolves had bitten off the hand of a shoplifter, Howling Good Reads would be packed with customers for days after,” Kowalski said.

Burke smiled. “The perversity of human nature. But a severed hand isn’t the same as a corpse. The terra indigene in the Courtyard are true to their nature, Karl, and that makes them very dangerous. But they’re still the only chance of survival that we have because no matter how dangerous Simon and Vlad and the rest of them are, they are nowhere near as much of a threat to us as the Others who live in the wild country.”

Kowalski sat back. “I know.” He sighed. “I know. What happens now?”

“I don’t want you out on the street, so you ride a desk for the rest of the day, give yourself time to settle. If the lieutenant needs a driver, Debany or Hilborn can handle it.”

Burke clasped and unclasped his fingers a couple of times, debating the wisdom of saying anything, even now. “When you’re a cop serving in a small human village within the wild country, sometimes you make hard choices that you wouldn’t—couldn’t—make in a human-controlled city. And you look the truth in the face when its fangs are bared and its fur is smeared with the blood of the prey you had gone out to talk to that morning. But you’d taken a walk beyond the village lights the night before, and you were mulling things over out loud about how to handle a difficult situation, about the nice woman who had a broken arm again, how her mate beat her but she was too frightened to say anything against him so there was nothing you could do, and that was a shame because she really was a nice woman who had shown a couple of terra indigene females how to mend clothes, which is what started the argument that ended with her arm being broken, along with a couple of fingers to keep her from doing any mending for a while. And when you go to talk to the man the next morning and discover he isn’t home, you follow the game trail behind his house and you come upon a savaged, partially eaten body and you look the truth in the face—not the truth that has fangs and fur but the hard truth about yourself, that you’re just as dangerous as the beings the rest of the people fear but you can’t afford to be as honest about it. You can’t tell those people that you’ll make deals with what they fear in order to keep them safe from the monsters who look just like them.”

Kowalski said nothing for a long minute. “You think I should have stepped aside?”

“No,” Burke said gently. “You interfered because you’ve been around the Others long enough to understand that it’s one thing to know something intellectually and quite another to look the truth in the face. The police? We’ve seen plenty of evidence of how the terra indigene respond when they’re angry with humans. But civilians like Ruthie and Merri Lee who are living so close to the Courtyard and working among the Others? They don’t need that much truth.”

“Protect the women?” Kowalski gave him a dry smile. “They might take exception to that.”

“Of course they would—and should—but I’ll deny I ever said it.”

The smile faded. “You’re giving me a lot of credit for a few seconds I don’t remember.”

“I recognized the look in your eyes when you got to the station. I saw it in a mirror once or twice when I was around your age.”

Burke’s phone rang. He glanced at it, then focused on Kowalski. “You steady enough?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then get to work.” He picked up the receiver as Kowalski walked out of his office. “Burke.”

“It’s O’Sullivan.”

Trying to remember if the ITF agent was back in Lakeside and had heard about the debacle in the Courtyard, Burke merely said, “What can I do for you?”

“Do you have any news about Dr. Lorenzo?”

He’d tell O’Sullivan everything once they could talk face-to-face, but he didn’t want to say anything about Lorenzo over the phone. “I heard he resigned from the task force. And his car was found. Had some bullet holes.”

A hesitation. “Are you checking hospitals and the morgue for any John Does?”

“Not necessary.”

“Did you fill out a DLU?”

“Not required.” Did O’Sullivan understand the message, that Lorenzo was alive and his whereabouts were known?

“Could you check the hospitals and morgue anyway?”

Burke sat up straighter. “Problem?”

“Half the doctors who were gathering information about the cassandra sangue resigned from the task force after being threatened by members of the Humans First and Last movement. During my talk with the governor, I confirmed that several other doctors besides Lorenzo have disappeared.”

He wrote down the names O’Sullivan gave him. “I’ll see what I can find out.”

“Appreciate it,” O’Sullivan said. “I’m on my way to catch a train back to Lakeside. Should be arriving late this afternoon.”

“Give me your ETA when you know it, and I’ll have someone pick you up.”

“Thanks.”

Burke hung up and sat back. There were still plenty of blood prophets living in the compounds where they’d been held all their lives, unwilling, or unable, to conceive of any kind of independent life. But there were also plenty of those girls who were now trying to shape a life for themselves, struggling with their addiction to cut, pushed into that self-destructive act by visions that wouldn’t be denied. Even the least talented among those girls could give a handler a very nice living, and the best among them . . .

He’d done a little digging, a little research, called a couple of places posing as a possible client before all the dirty secrets about benevolent ownership and what was done to the girls in those places came crashing down on the prophecy industry. One question, one cut on a girl with low-end talent and basic training, cost a couple of hundred dollars. Someone like Meg Corbyn, who was intelligent and absorbed information perhaps too well, who saw strings of images and was frighteningly accurate? A cut on someone with Meg’s skill would cost thousands.

Plenty of motivation to abduct and interrogate men who would know where to find girls who might not be as well protected as the Others believed—mainly because they would never consider that a human would be rash enough and greedy enough to try to get past them and snatch a girl.

Burke pushed away from his desk. He wanted to go to the Courtyard and assess the situation. But first he would get Kowalski started on locating the missing doctors, or at least getting some idea of where and when they were last seen. And then he needed to apprise the mayor and police commissioner of the potential trouble this attempted theft of meat might cause the city.

“What?” Simon snapped when Vlad, who was behind HGR’s checkout counter doing nothing useful, continued to stare at him.

“I noticed that all the books you’re putting on the display table are thrillers by terra indigene authors and are the type that could be described as ‘rip and tear.’”

“So?”

“Don’t you think the message is a little too blunt?”

Snarling, he turned toward the counter—and noticed Miss Twyla standing quietly between the shelves that separated the front area from the rest of the store.

“Is there something we can do for you, Miss Twyla?” Vlad asked.

“I understand that all the meat that was delivered yesterday was stolen.”

“Currently there is nothing in the butcher shop for sale.”

“I see.”

Simon couldn’t stand having her think there was no meat, that the female pack would have nothing to eat but greens. “The meat the thieves didn’t take we gave to Meat-n-Greens to use. And we can thaw a couple of packages of bison meat.”

Miss Twyla nodded. “That’s a good plan. And humans don’t need as much meat as you folks do, so a little can go a long way.”

He wanted to believe her. Wasn’t sure he did.

“The girls tell me you have creeks running through the Courtyard. Any of you catch fish in those creeks?” Miss Twyla asked.

“Henry does.”

“Fish is another kind of meat.”

Did Meg like fish?

When Simon didn’t say anything, Vlad smiled at Miss Twyla. “Thank you for the suggestion.” When she didn’t go away, he added, “Is there something else?”

Miss Twyla looked at Simon in a way that made him want to back up a step—or show her his better set of teeth as a warning.

“My James was a good man, and I loved him for all the years we were married. Still do, even though he’s been gone some years now. But he enjoyed eating a cheese that smelled up a house worse than a bad case of farts.”

Simon blinked. Scratched behind one ear. He didn’t know how to respond to Miss Twyla saying “farts.” “Did you like the cheese?”

“I did not. But once or twice a year he would get a craving for it and buy enough of that cheese to make a sandwich, and it was the best treat he could think to buy. He ate those cheese sandwiches before we were married and every year we spent together.”

“But it was stinky.”

“It was. But it was part of who he was. He didn’t ask me to eat it, and I didn’t ask him to give up eating it. That’s how it works when two people are partners.”

She took a step forward. Simon held his ground as long as he could before taking a step back.

“You have more courage than you’re showing right now, and avoiding that girl doesn’t do either of you any favors. You talk it out, set it right, decide what each of you can live with.”

“I ate a human,” he snapped, feeling cornered.

“All by yourself? You must have been hungry.”

“No, not by myself! We—” Simon glanced at Vlad, who shrugged.

“You think there’s anyone here except the children who hasn’t figured out what happened to the thieves? Miss Merri says you used to put a sign on the butcher shop door when you’d caught some of what you call special meat, although the only thing I can see about it being special is you didn’t catch it all that often and certainly didn’t go looking for it off your own land.” She looked pointedly at Vlad. “Not the meat anyway.” She turned back to Simon. “Am I right in thinking you don’t mix that meat with other kinds?”

“We never sold it at the butcher shop,” Simon growled. Before Meg, they might have stored a bit in the big refrigerator because meat was meat, but they learned the difference between clean and human clean, and as they got to know the human female pack, it began to matter that they not do things that could make the girls sick. “And we haven’t kept any of that meat in the shop for a long time now.” Not since the day Meg called Boone and asked for some special meat for Sam, not knowing that there was a special kind of meat.

“You had one package in the shop,” Miss Twyla said.

“In a separate cooler. And the cooler wasn’t in the shop for very long.”

“Just long enough for Cyrus to take the bait?” She nodded again, as if something had been confirmed. “If he deserved being given that package, then he did, and while I can’t say it surprises me, it makes my heart heavy to know he was involved with those thieves. But I’m grateful Officer Kowalski stepped in and didn’t let Cyrus bring that package home for the children to see.”

“We weren’t going to let him leave the Courtyard with the package,” Vlad said quietly. “We wouldn’t have let his mate and young see the meat. Selling it to him was punishment and warning for that Cyrus. Kowalski had no authority here to arrest that Cyrus and take him, and the package, to the police station. But we let him do it.”

“Just shows you’re all learning to pull as a team.” Miss Twyla gave Simon a hard look—the same kind of look a nanny would give an erring pup. But a nanny might add a paw-whack or a nip to the look. “You talk it out with Miss Meg and set things right.”

She walked to the back of the store. A moment later they heard the door open and close.

Still feeling cornered, Simon glared at Vlad. “You didn’t help.”

“You weren’t being scolded for eating a human; you were being scolded for upsetting Meg, which I haven’t done.”

“It’s not the same for you,” Simon muttered.

Vlad stared at him. “You weren’t bothered by this when we killed those intruders and the Wolves were tearing into the flesh. You weren’t bothered by it when you bit through the hand and elbow and gave the inked meat to Boone to wrap up for that Cyrus. You were fine with all of it until you went home and saw Meg sleeping—and weren’t sure you would be welcome.” Vlad looked away. “Miss Twyla is right. You need to find out if this changes things between you and Meg.”

Seeing the truth in Vlad’s words, Simon nodded and went back to working on the display in order to avoid finding out for just a little while longer.

Meg stood at one end of the Green Complex’s kitchen garden and stared at the woven baskets filled with zucchini. “Is this normal?”

“Even for zucchini, this is a bumper crop.” Ruth wiped sweat off her forehead with one hand and pressed the other hand to her lower back as she straightened up.

“Nadine said she’ll take some to make zucchini bread for A Little Bite,” Merri Lee said. She held out two modest-size zucchini. “You should take these, Meg.”

Meg sighed but she took them. Eating foods that were in season was all well and good, but she now understood about having too much of a good thing.

“You don’t have to eat them tonight,” Merri Lee said. “They’ll keep for a day or two.”

Goody. A no-zucchini meal. Of course, she wasn’t sure what they would eat—or if she’d be eating alone.

Then she saw the Wolf moving toward her. Simon, with his dark coat shot with lighter gray hairs. It had been a while since she’d had that odd sense of not being able to see him clearly when he moved, as if she were seeing an overlapping image of something even larger poking through a Wolf suit, making the outline indistinct. Maybe a little of his true form, whatever it was, showed through when he was stressed, like when he was in human form and things shifted involuntarily because he was angry or upset.

Did anyone else experience this when they looked at the Others? Or did seeing the visions of prophecy skew the way she saw the mundane world? If you could call any of the terra indigene mundane.

Ruth and Merri Lee looked around and spotted Simon.

“We should go,” Ruth said.

“You don’t have to,” Meg said quickly.

Merri Lee picked up one of the baskets. “Yes, we do. You’re not always going to agree or get along, but you’re going to be unhappy until you talk it out.”

“I could just conk him on the head with a big zucchini.”

Laughing, Ruth picked up the other basket. “Something every woman has imagined doing to a man at one time or another.”

She watched her friends put the woven baskets into the wire baskets on the front of their bicycles. She watched them ride away. Then she looked at Simon, who had edged closer to the garden as Merri Lee and Ruth moved farther away.

“We need to talk,” she told him.

She didn’t hurry back to the Green Complex. Simon walked beside her, not stopping to sniff anything to find out who had been nearby today. That was so unusual it made her wonder if he was unhappy too.

Unlocking his front door, she let him into his apartment, then went up to her own place to put the zucchini in the fridge and pour two glasses of cold water. A minute later, he opened the kitchen door and sat down at the table.

What to say? How to start?

“They were bad humans.” Simon’s voice was rough, but his amber eyes didn’t have the flickers of red that indicated anger.

Meg took a sip of water. “It was wrong of them to steal the meat from our butcher shop, same as if they had stolen from a human shop.”

“Yes.”

Of course, it would have been smarter for those men to steal from a human shop. The police would have arrested them instead of eating them. “How many were there?”

“Four.”

She didn’t know all the Wolves personally, but between the ones who looked after the puppies and the Wolfgard Complex and the ones who, like Simon and Nathan, worked in more visible parts of the Courtyard, she had a fairly good idea of how many Wolves lived in Lakeside.

“Were they scrawny men?” she asked.

Simon narrowed his eyes and cocked his head. “Not what I would call scrawny. They weren’t fat, but they were bulkier than Kowalski or Debany and just as tall.”

“And the pack ate four of them?”

He sat back, looking a bit put out. “No. The two Elders who are in the Courtyard each ate one, and the rest of the terra indigene ate the other two.”

That explained Jester’s comment about breakfast. “Did Sam . . . ?”

Simon shook his head. “We didn’t give any of the special meat to the puppies or Skippy. They’re playing with human pups now, and we didn’t want to confuse them.”

Meg sighed out a breath. She couldn’t say why the thought of Sam and Skippy chomping on a hunk of human bothered her more than Simon tearing into a person, but it did. And it made her wonder about something.

She ran her fingers up and down her glass, wiping away the condensation and avoiding a direct look at the Wolf sitting across from her. Should she ask? Could she ask? “What does human taste like?”

Simon scratched behind one ear. “Doesn’t taste as good as deer but better than chicken.” He thought for a moment. “Lots better than chicken.”

She tried to visualize the illustrations on a prophecy card that would rank the tastiness of meat. On a scale of one to ten, deer would be a ten and chicken a one? Would cows and pigs be a seven or eight and humans be a four or five?

“Meg? What are you thinking?”

She told him.

He stared at her before saying slowly, “You don’t need a prophecy card like that.”

No, she didn’t. But . . . “How accurate would it be if the card was illustrated that way?”

“Close enough.”

“So special meat isn’t special because it tastes so much better than other meat; it’s special because you don’t get to eat it that often.”

He seemed relieved when his mobile phone started yelping. He hauled it out of one of the cargo pockets in his shorts and said, “What?” He listened a moment and looked at Meg. “Kowalski is making a pizza run. You want one?”

“Yes.” She’d even cut up and sauté one of the zucchini for the vegetable side dish.

“Thanks,” Simon said, then hung up.

Meg started to rise but realized she had one more question. “If those men had tried to steal anything but food, would you have killed them?”

“Last summer? Yes, we would have. Now?” He met her eyes. “We would have torn into them as a warning to other humans, but we probably would have howled for Montgomery and let the police pack deal with the intruders.”

After Simon drove the BOW to the Market Square to pick up their pizza, Meg got everything ready to cook one of the zucchini.

Death, police, jail. Those things had happened today and would result in danger, which would result in her being connected somehow to a woods and a grave.

She should tell Simon. She would tell Simon. But not tonight. Saying anything now would stir up the Others, and she didn’t want to get everyone riled just because her tongue was prickling again.

Meg braced her hands on the kitchen counter. She didn’t want to make a cut on her tongue. Too easy to make mistakes and do permanent damage. And a cassandra sangue who couldn’t speak clearly wasn’t any use to the people who had traveled to the compounds to buy a look at their future. But sometime soon her tongue was going to bleed and she would see the prophecy waiting to be revealed.

The more time he spent around humans, the more confusing they became. Every other predator the terra indigene had absorbed had a social structure that made sense. But humans!

Simon pulled into the employee parking lot, got out of the BOW, and opened the wooden door that provided access between the employee and customer parking lots.

No sign of Kowalski yet.

They might not eat each other, but humans killed humans all the time. He’d seen that for himself when Lawrence MacDonald had been shot and killed at the stall market when men from the HFL movement attacked their group. While the human pack had grieved, their behavior didn’t change toward the terra indigene. In fact, the deaths of MacDonald and Crystal Crowgard made the bond between the human pack and the Others even stronger.

Were they that accepting of the terra indigene seeing humans as meat because they realized that those who lived in the Courtyard didn’t see them that way anymore? Or were they accepting because they understood that they, too, would be seen as meat by the terra indigene living beyond Lakeside and the connected places of Great Island, Talulah Falls, and the River Road Community?

Simon watched Kowalski and Pete Denby pull into the customer parking lot. He saw Montgomery leave the apartment building and walk as far as the public sidewalk. The lieutenant seemed to be listening for something, but Simon didn’t detect any unusual sounds.

Kowalski opened the back door, pulled out a party-size pizza, and said, “I wasn’t sure if Sam and Skippy were joining you tonight, so I wanted to make sure you’d have plenty. Half is pepperoni and sausage; the other half has veggies.”

Simon took the pizza box. “That’s good. I owe you money.”

“It’s our treat tonight.”

Trying to make up for something other humans did. Trying to help take care of the pack.

Kowalski closed the back door, then hesitated. “Do you have any meat at home? Something frozen?”

“Hunks of bison.”

“Ruthie made a pot roast the other day. Beef. She froze part of it in a couple of containers. A container probably wouldn’t be enough for big appetites like ours, but for the girls, for Meg . . .”

“I’ll ask her. Thank you for the pizza.” Simon went back to the BOW, pausing long enough to close and lock the wooden door between the two parking lots. He wasn’t surprised to hear someone rattle the door—Kowalski, checking to be sure it was locked.

On the way back to the Green Complex, he thought about what was said. Appetites like ours. A Wolf could eat pounds of meat at one time, far more than a human stomach could hold. But Kowalski had made it sound like the difference was between what males and females could consume, not humans and Wolves.

He wasn’t sure what it meant, but he thought it was interesting.

Jimmy sat on the porch, brooding. He’d been on the porch since that cop drove him back here. If Sandee had been out when he returned, he would have packed one carryall, taken his stash of money and the couple of pieces of jewelry she kept hidden, and slipped away and caught a bus to anywhere, free of that bitch and her brats. But she’d been home, whining about food and money until he showed her his fist. He didn’t need to use it—not often, anyway—to make her shut up quick and leave him alone to think.

Nothing wrong with his plan. It should have worked. His crew should have gotten in and out instead of being dead and . . .

He swallowed hard to keep his gorge from rising.

What was wrong with the people in this town, acting like it was normal for those fucking freaks to eat people? That had never happened in Toland! In Toland, regular folks didn’t have to see those Others, didn’t have to worry about being clawed or bitten or worse. This wouldn’t have happened in a big human city, a proper human city. But here the cops were all bent, bought off by the freaks. Even that bastard Burke must be working for the Others. Why else would he be going after a man just looking to take care of his family instead of shooting those freaks? Why else would that Wolf lover Kowalski go after a man who had been tricked into buying . . .

Jimmy pushed that thought away.

Those freaks had known his crew was coming. They’d known before he’d made the final plans. How was that possible?

He became aware of the commotion inside—crybaby Fanny squealing for Mommy, and Clarence . . .

Jimmy flung himself out of the chair and went inside to stop whatever shit the brats were doing, but he halted in the bedroom doorway.

Clarence held a butter knife and was chasing Fanny around the living room, laughing as he jabbed at her face.

“Gonna cut you, bitch,” Clarence said. “Gonna turn you into a scar girl. Then you’ll tell fortunes and make us a pile of money.”

“Mommy!” Fanny screamed.

He’d heard something about scars and girls, but how was he supposed to remember with Fanny screaming like that? And if she kept on like that, how long before one of the fucking cops started pounding on the door?

“Stop it!” he roared. “What is this shit?”

The glee on Clarence’s face that he might “accidentally” cut his sister changed to wariness when Jimmy stepped into the living room. “We’re just playing, Daddy.”

“What’s this about scar girls?” He ignored Fanny, who ran out of the room crying for Sandee, and focused on the boy. “Well?”

“The girls with all the scars. You remember, Daddy. We saw them on TV. The girls who can see the future.”

“Sure, I remember. Why are you teasing Fanny about them?”

“They got one of those girls in the Courtyard. Her name is Meg. She has really short black hair and pals around with the cop bitches.”

A vague memory of being warned away from someone named Meg. Then he remembered more. He’d seen her when that Wolf brat attacked Clarence. His boy had been wounded, had needed a trip to the hospital, but everyone had been looking after some bitch who didn’t have more than a bloody lip.

That was Meg?

A hard rap on the apartment door. Sandee eased out of the kitchen, glanced at him, then hustled to answer it.

Jimmy saw CJ at the door holding a big pizza box. Did CJ think buying a pizza would set things right after the way he’d let the other cops treat his own brother? After the way he’d treated his own brother, showing him those sick pictures of a severed arm, trying to scare him into confessing to something he didn’t do?

No. Not CJ. Burke. Yeah. Burke had it in for him, was trying to set him up. Bastard could have killed his crew and taken all the meat from the butcher shop, could have cut off that arm himself and paid the freak to make sure it ended up in the hands of a man just trying to feed his family. Yeah. Burke had set him up—and CJ was helping to put him away.

Sandee took the pizza box, closed the door, and hurried to the kitchen. Jimmy hurried after her, grabbed both kids by the arms, and hauled them away from the table. He came first. Sometimes they forgot that.

The dishes were still in the sink, so Sandee pulled a wad of paper towels off the roll to use instead. When she opened the box, Jimmy felt anger burn his stomach.

“What’s this?” he demanded.

“CJ bought a big pizza to split with us,” Sandee said, looking a little frightened by his tone.

“He tosses you what he doesn’t want, and you’re ready to drop to your knees and give him a big kiss.”

“Jimmy!” She looked appalled as she glanced at the brats. Then her face got that hard look it always did when she stopped trying to please him. “If you don’t want your brother’s leftovers, don’t eat any. But there’s nothing else in the house.”

He looked at Fanny, whom CJ had taken an interest in lately. Was she another example of his brother’s leftovers? No wonder he’d never warmed to the little bitch.

Sandee reached for the pizza. He shoved her away from the table. Taking a stack of pieces and the last beer in the refrigerator, he retreated to the porch to eat in peace, letting the three of them squabble over the remains.

He bit into the pizza. Chewed. Swallowed. Thought and thought of how nothing had gone the way it should have since he arrived in Lakeside.

He needed to get out of this fucking city. It was too small, too constricting for an enterprising man like him. He needed something that would bring in money, that would give him clout, that would let him live large the way he was supposed to.

He chewed. Swallowed. Thought.

He needed a way to stay ahead of the freaks and the cops. He needed one of those prophet girls—and wasn’t it fucking fate that one of them was right here, ripe for the picking? Just cut her skin and make a fortune. He could offer a prophecy to a skilled forger in return for a new identity. Then he would become someone else in one of the big human cities. He could get around the travel restrictions and go all the way to Sparkletown on the West Coast and get into the movie business. Using the scar girl, he’d have the means of telling the wheelers and dealers if a movie would be a hit even before they hired the first actor. And he’d have his pick of beautiful women who would do anything he wanted for just a peek at their future.

Yeah. That was the way he should live. He just needed to shake off all this petty shit—and he needed to get the scar girl away from the Courtyard and get them both out of this fucking city. But this time, he’d do it alone. He wasn’t going to trust this plan to screwups like the ones who couldn’t take a bit of meat from a bunch of animals.

So he chewed and swallowed and thought. By the time the sun had set and the streetlights came on, Cyrus James Montgomery had a plan.