I parked in the shell drive, turned off the growling bike, and unhelmeted. As Aggie watched, I began removing my weapons, stashing them in Bitsa’s bags. Guns, blades, stakes. The cross in the lead-lined pouch. Everything. Nothing that might be considered a weapon could be brought into an elder’s house. I filled up one saddlebag and started on the other.
Paper crinkled in the bottom and I dug out a white paper bag. I had bought Aggie and her mother gifts while I was in the mountains, and left them in the bag in my bike. I closed the lid of the saddlebag, feeling the witchy-lock tingle under my fingertips as it activated. A thief would get a nasty shock if he tried to steal Bitsa. Carrying the small white paper bag, I crunched across the shells, my boots falling silent on the grass. I smiled down at Aggie, her face unlined, her black hair pushed back behind her ears. She had cut it into a pageboy that just brushed her shoulders, and it glistened like liquid onyx in the sun.
Aggie wasn’t surprised to see me. But then, little really surprises Aggie. She’s like a leaf on the surface of a stream, floating along in the eddies, sliding across rapids, untouched by it all, and serene. “I have no idea what that kind of serenity might feel like, Lisi.” It wasn’t what I had planned to come out of my mouth, and I rattled the bag to take attention away from my words. “I come bearing gifts.”
“You are covered in dried blood. Are you injured?” she asked.
I touched my shirt, crusted through with blood. “No. Not mine. And no one else is hurt either.” At her disbelieving expression, I added, “Some vamps tried to bite me last night.” Which was true. I just didn’t add the part about them being successful.
“Are they dead?” she asked.
“Not any more than they were before they tried.”
Aggie’s mouth twisted into what might be the start of a smile or a grimace, and tilted her head in acceptance. “Come inside. My mother asked to see you this morning when she woke.”
“Uh. Sure.” But Aggie’s mother scared me witless. Uni Lisi, grandmother of many children, a term of respect, was an old woman who saw too much sometimes. I followed Aggie into the house, feeling like a lumbering giant next to her petite grace. “Wait here,” she said, pointing to the living room. Inside, the windows were thrown open and bees bounced at the screens. The small living room was spotless, floral fabric on the sofa and chair, a brown recliner, a new wide-screen TV, a rug I hadn’t seen before on the floor, and on a side table, a bowl of potpourri flavored the air with dried herbs and synthetic scent. A feral hiss brought me up short. A huge tabby cat lay curled on the cushions of a well-used old rocker. She stared at me with wide green eyes. I stared back, Beast rising inside. The cat drew her paws beneath her, the body language saying she was ready to run or fight. Her hair bristled and she showed me her teeth. Cats don’t like me. Never have.
I dropped my eyes, though Beast pressed her claws into me, painfully. She didn’t like showing submission to anyone, but this was the tabby’s den, the cat a new addition since the last time I’d been inside the house. I smelled her now, over the potpourri. I didn’t enter the room, but stood at the entrance, eyes down. The cat settled slightly, uneasy, and kept her eyes on me.
Aggie stuck her head in from the kitchen. “I see you met the queen. She showed up here a few weeks ago and moved in. Sweetest cat I ever saw. ’Til now.”
“Cats don’t like me,” I said.
Aggie looked at me strangely. “Queenie likes everyone. Even the dogs.” I grunted as Queenie showed me her teeth again. Aggie’s brows went up at the threat from the house cat. “Hmm. My mother is out back on the porch. Come.”
I trailed Aggie, and Queenie dropped heavily to the floor, following us through the house with regal disdain. Her scent came strongly then, heavy with hormones and faintly with blood. I said, “You know she’s pregnant, right?”
Aggie turned back and stared at the cat. “Well, darn. I knew she was getting fat.”
“She’s due soon.” Like today, but I didn’t say that. Queenie was already in early labor, but since I had no way of knowing that, except my extra-good nose, I didn’t say that either.
Aggie made a long-suffering sound, half sigh, half snort, something I remembered from The People, the Tsalagiyi, a sound that was pure Cherokee, and I smiled, relaxing at the familiar noise. On the back porch Uni Lisi was sitting on a deeply upholstered chair, a bowl of bean pods on the table in front of her, shelling them fast, her knobby hands flying through the beans, pinching off the ends and stripping the string down the side of the pods, exposing the plump beans inside, tossing them into a bowl, and dropping the empty shells on the table. It seemed like a lot of work when they could buy beans in a can, but I didn’t say that either. She paused in her shelling and gestured me to the table. “Come. Come, Jane. Sit.” I sat across from her, my little paper bag on my lap.
Aggie placed a glass of sweating tea in front of her mother, a single mint leaf in the bottom; two identical glasses went to the side. One was clearly mine. “Jane says Queenie is going to give us kittens soon.”
“Oh?” Uni Lisi leaned over and studied the cat. “We have to get her a basket and a blanket. That big pink one in the corner of my room. Make her a place on the porch so she doesn’t take the babies off. Good to see you, Jane. Go get the basket, Aggie.” Uni Lisi drank her tea and smacked her lips. I had never heard the old woman so chatty. “Drink,” she commanded. At her gesture I drank too, the tea so sweet it coated the inside of my mouth, good Southern tea, one-third sugar, the rest tea so dark it looked like bayou water. It was delicious. I tried to think of something to say, as the old woman went back to shelling beans. “We gonna have some kittens,” the old woman said, as if I didn’t already know. “You want a kitten?”