“Could be,” Grimshaw agreed. “We certainly have a few people stirring up trouble within the human community. And those still-empty storefronts are becoming an itch I can’t scratch.” He looked at Ilya.
“None of the buildings that supposedly have new occupants belong to the Sanguinati,” Ilya said.
“Any chance of someone picking the locks, so to speak, and taking a look around the inside of those buildings?” Julian asked.
A flicker of amusement in Ilya’s dark eyes. “Mr. Farrow. Are you suggesting, in front of the chief of police, that the Sanguinati break a human law?”
“As long as you don’t set off a smoke alarm or write your name in the dust, how is the chief of police supposed to know?” Grimshaw asked dryly.
“I would prefer that human methods of gaining information about the occupants be employed first,” Ilya replied, his voice equally dry.
Not angry anymore, Grimshaw thought, watching Ilya. Still pissed off, sure, but there’s not that smoldering anger that could turn into a flash fire of violence.
Julian cleared his throat. “You should both know that some of my customers are going to The Jumble this evening to do their weekly book exchange.”
Grimshaw felt his heart beating. “Which customers?”
A hesitation before Julian looked at Ilya. “The Five who come at dusk.”
Ilya hissed, showing his fangs.
“Those five?” Grimshaw asked quietly. “Why?”
“A compromise—and a gamble,” Julian said. “I thought it would be safer for everyone if the Five didn’t come into the village right now. Conan and Cougar will make sure none of Vicki’s guests cause trouble. The Five only want to deal with the Reader.”
Silence.
Grimshaw focused on breathing and tried not to think about those voices in the dark. Moooonkey man.
“Vicki can handle it,” Julian said. “Gods, she survived the Elders who live in the lake, so she can supervise the exchange of used books.”
Was Julian trying to convince them or himself? Grimshaw wondered. Then he said, “Vicki will be fine. They’re female, aren’t they? Other females don’t trigger her anxiety attacks, so as long as the guests can be corralled for the time your customers are browsing, everyone will be fine.”
The men agreed on a plan. Julian would close early as he had intended to do and head over to The Jumble to be on hand if Vicki needed assistance. He would take Karol and Viktor with him and make sure they were safely tucked in with Vicki’s employees before the Five showed up. Grimshaw would talk to some of the owners of existing businesses and see what he could find out about the newcomers. Since Ilya had sent Boris home because he’d planned to be at his office most of the day, Grimshaw agreed to drop Ilya at The Jumble before heading home.
He doubted any of them would get any rest, let alone sleep, that night. There was no way to tell where trouble would strike next, but he figured between the three of them and Osgood, one of them wouldn’t be too far away from the next body.
CHAPTER 40
Aiden
Watersday, Novembros 3
Those humans with their books and their big words and their thinly veiled contempt for anything that wasn’t like them were up to something sneaky.
Not all of them, no. Edward Janse, the male who had been identified as an Intuit, was polite and trying to interact with the terra indigene while staying within the neutral ground of his cabin’s front yard. Unfortunately, whatever bit of special Intuits had when dealing with humans didn’t seem to work when dealing with the Others.
Aiden spent an hour watching Janse set out chunks of pizza crust on the short wall that enclosed his cabin’s front yard. He’d had plenty of interest from a variety of creatures, but it became obvious that he couldn’t tell a crow from a Crow and he simply talked to every bird of that shape that flew over to snag a bit of food.
<Should we tell them that the Crowgard are avoiding unknown humans while the Hunter is here?> Air asked, joining him.
<Even if it doesn’t come through the Crowgard, word still travels that he is interested in communicating,> Aiden replied. <Perhaps some other gard will stop by for a visit.>
<Something might stop by.> Air stared at the other occupied cabins. <And they are going to visit the Reader soon to exchange books.>
Aiden looked at Air, surprised. <The Five are going to show themselves?> Uneasiness was an unfamiliar sensation for an Elemental. He didn’t like it. <Vicki provides a valuable service to many terra indigene, but they may not appreciate that. Perhaps one of us should keep watch.>
<Earth is watching tonight. The Five don’t want to harm the Reader. They just want new stories.>
The three men from the other cabins came outside and looked around, impatient.
“Hey!” the Roash human shouted. “Can you hear me? I need to ask you a question.”
Aiden noticed how Janse froze in place like prey. Then he moved closer to the cabin’s porch—and did not ask the shouting Roash any of the questions humans tended to ask, like, what was wrong?
<I think they want to talk to you,> Air said, amused.
<Fools.>
He understood, as well as his kind of terra indigene could, why the Sanguinati had rented some of the cabins to the institutions where humans went to learn many things and now wanted to learn about the Others. Most humans didn’t stay longer than the waxing or waning of a moon, but the appearance of the Hunter at the same time these males came to Lake Silence was reason enough to distrust these humans, even if they did nothing wrong.
He waited until the humans were looking in the wrong direction, then assumed his human form and pulled on a pair of jeans he’d left in a sack secured to a branch of a tree. No shirt, no shoes. He couldn’t dress like this if Vicki was going to see him, because she tried to give him more clothes, convinced that he was going to catch cold.
He was Fire. He didn’t catch cold. But he’d helped her light the stove in a cabin when she’d been driven out of The Jumble and stayed here under Ilya’s protection, and she associated the human need for warmth with him. In order to talk about something besides sweaters, he dressed in more clothes when he intended to cross paths with her.
Now he stepped out from among the trees and walked toward the cabins.
“Hey!” Roash shouted.
“Hey,” Aiden replied. He wasn’t surprised that Roash, the troublemaker, was the shouter, since the man had sent another human to The Jumble pretending to be Crowbones.
“If we’re going to be stuck here awhile longer, can we drive into the village and pick up supplies?” Roash asked.
He tried to think like a human, tried to think of how going into the village to purchase food could be turned into something sneaky. When he couldn’t think of anything, he said, “How many of you need to go?”
“I’ll go.” The man called Peter Lynchfield held up a key. “I have a spare key for my car, so I can drive in and pick up some supplies for us.”
Since “us” didn’t seem to mean “all of us,” Aiden looked at the Intuit. “What about you? Do you need supplies?”
“Not tonight,” Janse said. “But it’s good to know I can drive into the village tomorrow and buy a meal at the diner. And check out the bookstore if it’s open.”