Blair was there, waiting for his delivery. So was Ferus. When she pulled up, both of them were focused on her passenger.
“You have to stay inside,” Meg said quietly. “Big Wolves don’t like the safety line.” She got out of the BOW and had the back door open before the two Wolves approached.
There were flickers of red in Ferus’s eyes. He snarled at her. Blair immediately turned and snarled at him until Ferus lowered his eyes and took a step back. And Sam, poking his head between the seats to watch the Wolves, vocalized opinions to everyone.
Blair studied the pup. Then he studied Meg. Finally, he said, “You have any packages for the Wolfgard Complex?”
“Yes.”
“You leave those here. I’ll take them with me when I go home.”
Relieved, she hauled out boxes and packages, which Blair handed to Ferus to take into the Utilities building.
“Simon will be home tonight,” Blair said as he took the last box.
“Oh. That’s good.” It was good. It also meant she needed to have Sam tucked at home before Simon arrived.
Having sufficiently expressed his opinion, Sam was curled up in the passenger’s seat, napping, when she got back into the BOW and headed for the Chambers.
Her hands shook a little as the BOW chugged up the road and snow swiftly covered the pavement. She wanted to finish her deliveries and get home before the snowfall surpassed her driving skills—and it wouldn’t take much snow on the roads to do that.
Sam didn’t stir when she stopped at the first set of delivery boxes for the Chambers, but he woke up when she rummaged through the BOW to find the snow brush and clean off the windows before she could drive to the next group of mausoleums the Sanguinati called home.
By the time she pulled up in front of Erebus’s home, Sam was almost bouncing with excitement, pawing at the passenger’s window and then at the door handle.
“Come out this way,” Meg said, holding her own door open.
He leaped out of the BOW and dodged across the road to explore as far as the leash allowed.
“Over here, Sam.” Meg breathed a sigh of relief when he immediately obeyed. Crouching, she put a hand on his head. “We must never run across a road without looking in both directions. There could be other vehicles on the road, and the drivers might not see us in time to stop. That would be very bad, especially if anyone got hurt. So you don’t run across the road like that. All right?”
He licked her chin, which she took as agreement.
When they went to the back of the BOW and she began gathering the packages, she noticed the way the pup stared at the wrought-iron fence, and thought of what Jester had told her about the Chambers.
Getting Sam’s attention again, she said, “This is also a very important rule that we all have to follow. No one is allowed to go inside the fence unless Mr. Erebus gives his permission. Even Simon doesn’t enter the Chambers without permission. So we stay on this side of the fence and don’t even poke our noses between the bars.”
Sam sighed.
“I know,” she said as she opened a couple of the delivery boxes and began filling them. “There are a lot of rules to remember when you go beyond the Green Complex—and even more rules when traveling outside the Courtyard. If you had let me take you home, you could have been in a warm house, watching a movie, instead of being out here in the snow.”
“Do you like movies, little Wolf?”
Meg jumped and let out a squeak. Sam responded by making puppy growls and snarls—which would have sounded more impressive if he hadn’t leaped behind her and then poked his head between her knees to voice those opinions.
She looked at the old man standing at the gate, smiling gently at her. “Mr. Erebus.”
“I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“I know. I just didn’t see you.” She glanced at his mausoleum. The door was open, but there were no footprints marring the fresh snow on the walk. She had gotten so used to seeing smoke drifting over the snow, she hadn’t even noticed it this time.
Erebus didn’t comment. He just stood there, smiling gently.
“Sam does like movies,” Meg said to fill the silence. She closed the full delivery boxes, then went back to the BOW for another group of packages. “But I don’t think he watches the same kind of movies that you do.”
“I like many kinds of movies,” Erebus replied, looking at Sam. “Have you seen the movies called cartoons? I especially enjoy the ones where the animals or people do the most foolish things and still survive.”
Sam stayed close to her while she filled the boxes, but when she went back to the BOW for the final packages—the ones addressed to Erebus—Sam eased up to the gate to study the vampire patriarch.
Erebus opened the gate, crouched down, and extended one hand beyond the Chambers boundary. Sam sniffed the hand, licked a finger, and wagged his tail.
Erebus laughed softly as he petted the pup. “You’re a delightful boy. I’m glad you’re looking after our Meg.”
“Looks like you have another movie,” Meg said. When Erebus rose, she expected him to tell her to put it in the delivery box. Even when she had gone up the walk and delivered his packages at the door and he was watching, she had set them on the stoop per his instructions. But he had petted Sam, and she had a feeling that meant something. So she held out the package.
He hesitated. Erebus actually hesitated before he took the package from her hand.
“Namid is full of many things, some wondrous and some terrible,” he said softly. “And some of her creations are both. Thank you for bringing my movies, Meg. I do like my old movies.”
She opened the passenger’s door, made sure the towel was on the seat, and let Sam jump in. Once he was settled, she got in, waved at Erebus, and drove off.
Why had he always hesitated to take a package from her until now? Was there some taboo about Sanguinati touching cassandra sangue? Did he even know what she was? And why had he looked at her when he said some of the world’s creations were both terrible and wondrous? Yes, prophecies could be either and sometimes both, but she didn’t think Erebus had been talking about prophecies.
Which made her wonder what he knew about her kind that she didn’t.
The snow was falling faster. Meg stopped the BOW and took out the copy of the Courtyard map that she tucked into her purse each time she went out to make deliveries. She wasn’t ignoring the danger of taking a map out of the Liaison’s Office, but she was careful to keep it out of sight. And while it did show where each gard lived within the Courtyard, the map didn’t show any roads except the paved ones that were suitable for vehicles. It wasn’t anywhere near as detailed as the map of Lakeside that she had found in the Courtyard’s library.
The Controller would have paid a lot of money for even this much information about the interior of a Courtyard.
After studying the map for a minute, she tucked it back in her purse, put the BOW in gear, and turned onto an interior road. She’d make the other deliveries tomorrow if the roads in the Courtyard were passable. Right now, she wanted to get back to the Green Complex while she could.
By the time the BOW slid across Ripple Bridge, Meg was gripping the steering wheel and hardly daring to breathe. Even with the wipers going and the heater switched to blow on the front window, it was getting harder and harder to see.
The white horse standing at the edge of the road blended in with the swirling snow, and she wouldn’t have seen him on his own, but the black horse and his rider stood in the road, waiting for her.