“No, ma’am. I didn’t eat much at home because I planned to pick up something when I got to work.” When Twyla stared at her, Meg added, “I really don’t like the taste of bison.”
“I tried a slice the other day and can’t say it appealed to me either. But I suspect if it was a choice between eating bison and going hungry, I’d like it just fine—and so would you.”
Meg nodded. “If that was the choice, Simon might learn to like yogurt.”
Twyla laughed. “You think so?”
Meg imagined being given a plate of rolled bison slices dipped in yogurt. Shuddering, she wondered if you could make a salad out of grass.
Twyla tapped a finger just above the three cards on the table. “What’s this about? Or can’t you say?”
“These are fortune-telling cards, but I call them prophecy cards. I’m trying to see if some of the cassandra sangue can use them to reveal prophecy instead of making a cut.” A thousand cuts. It was said that was all a blood prophet had before the cut that killed her or drove her insane. Since most prophets didn’t survive past their thirty-fifth birthday, Meg, at twenty-four, felt highly motivated to find an alternative to the razor.
“What do these tell you?” Twyla asked.
“I’m not sure. I asked what was going to happen to my friends in the Courtyard. These cards were the answer.” Meg waited until the older woman came around to her side of the table. She pointed to each card. “Subject, action, result.”
Twyla frowned at the train/bus/car card. “Does that mean travel or the transportation itself?”
“Could mean either. It was drawn as the subject, so that should mean the thing itself, but it could mean that one of these forms of transportation is bringing someone or something to Lakeside. The explosion, being the action card, could mean a ‘call the bomb squad’ kind of explosion or an emotionally explosive conflict between groups of people. So maybe a group of people traveling to Lakeside are going to cause some kind of trouble for the Courtyard. I’m getting pretty good at finding the cards that answer the question, but Merri Lee and I are still working on correctly interpreting them.”
As she watched Twyla study the cards, the skin between her shoulder blades began to prickle.
“What does the question mark mean?” Twyla asked, sounding troubled.
“Future undecided. That was the same answer I drew when I asked about the city of Lakeside this morning.” Meg studied the older woman. “You know what the cards mean, don’t you?”
“I have a thought, but nothing I’d want to share. Not just yet.” Twyla walked toward the back room.
“Thanks for bringing the food,” Meg said.
Twyla turned to look at her. “You’re welcome. Don’t you be skimping on food. There’s no need for that.”
Meg heard the back door of the office close. Then she reached over her shoulder and scratched at her back. She liked Twyla Montgomery, and even the Others offered the older woman a trust they rarely gave someone they’d known for such a short time. That was the reason Meg felt uneasy now.
She just hoped Miss Twyla decided to share her thoughts about the cards before something bad happened.
Twyla polished the desks at the consulate—the building in the Courtyard that was the domain of Elliot Wolfgard. He was the Courtyard’s public face, the terra indigene who talked to the mayor and the city council members, who attended political events, and who talked to the press. It hadn’t taken her long to realize that Elliot might be the urbane spokesWolf for the Courtyard, but Simon was the real leader.
“It never took the other humans this long to clean the desks,” Elliot said.
Twyla jerked upright in surprise and turned to face him. She hadn’t heard him come down from his office on the second floor.
At first glance, he could pass for the CEO of a successful company: expensive suits, thinning hair that was cut by someone who probably charged more than she usually made in a week, lean body that spoke of hours in a fitness place. Yes, he could pass for one, and she would bet plenty of CEOs and politicians had made the mistake of thinking that looking like them meant he thought like them. But the amber eyes belonged to a Wolf, and even if humans sometimes overlooked what he was, she was certain Elliot never did.
“I can see they didn’t take that long to clean in here, which is why it’s taking me longer than usual to give it a proper cleaning now,” she replied.
Elliot studied her. She was getting used to that. The Crows who worked in the Market Square had more questions than a houseful of small children, and at least one of them joined her whenever she went into a store to buy anything, wanting to know why she chose one thing over another. The Wolves studied her, studied all the humans who were allowed some access to the stores in the Courtyard, but she noticed they watched her and Nadine Fallacaro and Katherine Debany, Officer Debany’s mother, more than the younger women who were Meg Corbyn’s female pack.
Who taught the young in a Wolf pack?
“Come over here,” Elliot said. When she didn’t move, he added, “Please.”
He led her to the filing cabinets along one wall, then pointed to a stack of folders teetering on a small table tucked against the last cabinet. “Do you know how to file these the human way?”
She picked up a folder, looked at the designation on the tab, and chose the appropriate file drawer. Then she chose another drawer. And another.
She closed the drawers and turned to face him. “What sort of nonsense is this?”
“That’s the human way to file papers.”
“So you say.”
A flicker of red, like a flash of lightning, filled Elliot’s eyes. “What does that mean?”
“It means that whoever did this had his own system to find things but made it near impossible for anyone else to put his hand on the proper file, or the fool just shoved things into drawers and hoped he’d never be asked to find anything.” She stepped forward to drop the folder on the teetering stack, and Elliot took a step back, watching her in a way that made her think he wanted to tear into someone’s flesh and hers would do.
“Can you fix it?” he asked.
He seemed to be having some trouble pronouncing the words, and she wondered what was wrong with his mouth now when it had been fine a minute ago.
“Do you know how to work in a place like this?”
Everyone in the Courtyard had a job. Everyone in a Wolf pack had a position. And while not all the humans who were being allowed to share in the Courtyard’s bounty had been assigned tasks, it had been clear that the Others expected all the newcomers to figure out what skills they could offer that would justify their being accepted.
Twyla considered what Elliot was saying. It would be a change from mopping floors and scrubbing toilets—although they needed someone to do that too. She didn’t think many people bothered Elliot, so it would be calmer than working at one of the Market Square stores, and she could use a little calm in her day if she was going to help look after the children in the afternoons.
“I never learned about typing and computers and such,” she finally said. “Answering the phone and filing—that I can do for you. But only in the mornings when the children are having their lessons. I came to Lakeside to help Crispin take care of Lizzy, and that has to come first.”
“Of course,” Elliot said calmly, his pronunciation once more crisp. “We take care of our young.” He paused before offering, “Sam is my grandson.”
Twyla smiled. “He’s a fine boy.” She’d seen Sam around the Market Square, sometimes spending time with the other children but more often in the company of Meg Corbyn and a young Wolf named Skippy. The first time she’d seen him and noticed the gray eyes, she’d thought he was a human child with hair that was an odd mix of gold and gray. And she’d thought he was Meg’s younger brother or a cousin. Then she’d seen Meg with a Wolf pup who had that same coloring.