<It’s bait.> And he was going to find out who had baited those trash cans. <Do you understand, Jenni? It’s a trap!> He swore silently and viciously. If he wasn’t getting through to Jenni, he wouldn’t get through to the rest of the Crowgard. So he’d stop trying to reason with them.
<I am the leader of this Courtyard,> he snarled, sending his words to every terra indigene within range. <And I say that any Crow who doesn’t return to the Courtyard in the next fifteen minutes will be driven out of Lakeside forever.>
<Simon!> Multiple cries now because the Crows knew he meant it. Give up the shinies and other treasures today, or be sent to terra indigene settlements in the wild country, where the pickings would be slim. And they knew him well enough to understand that he wouldn’t just ban them from Lakeside. If they disobeyed him, he would use his influence with every Courtyard leader in the Northeast Region to ban the Lakeside Crows from every human city in this part of Thaisia.
He didn’t respond to the arguments or pleas coming from various Crows. He got back in the BOW and drove as fast as he could to HGR. That’s where the Crows would expect to find him.
<Julia?> he called.
<Most of the Crows are heading back to the Courtyard,> she replied. <They aren’t happy, but they’re heading back. I’m in the air, circling. I don’t see any danger.>
<Can you see Jenni? Is she heading back with the rest of the Crows?> Shinies and a toy in plain view. How many building sets had the Crowgard ordered from the nearby toy stores in the past month or so? Meg would know, but he suspected there had been enough for humans to guess that at least some of the Crows would be drawn to the box if it was sitting in the open.
After Julia told him which street had drawn more Crows than usual, she added, <Jake was pecking at something near the garbage cans just before you gave your orders and now he isn’t flying right. Crystal is helping him get back. Jenni and Starr want to stay and watch. They promised to perch in the trees. All right?>
He hesitated. Was this a challenge to his authority, an excuse to stay in order to snatch some coveted item, or the Crowgard’s need to have a report from one of their own? <As long as they stay in the trees—and you can vouch for them—they can keep watch.>
Besides, he was going to be there too.
As soon as he reached the Courtyard’s business district, he parked his BOW near HGR’s back door just as Vlad stepped outside. He raised a finger to indicate the vampire should wait, then said, <Blair? I need the passenger van.>
<You need any guards coming with you?> Blair asked.
<Just you. Vlad will come with us.> Satisfied that the Courtyard’s dominant enforcer was on the way, Simon turned to the next Wolf on his list. <Nathan? How is Meg?>
<Itchy,> the Wolf replied. <Restless. She tried to step on my foot. On purpose!>
“Did you tell Nathan to stick close to Meg?” he asked Vlad.
“I did.”
Since he didn’t think Vlad had intended for the Wolf to be underfoot, he said, <Keep out of reach,> then nodded to Tess when she came out of A Little Bite, shoving her arms into her coat. Moments later, Henry opened the wooden gate at the back of his studio’s yard and joined them.
Simon told them about the Crows’ resistance to giving up this collection day and repeated his ultimatum even though they would have heard that part.
“What do you need?” Henry asked.
Simon looked at Vlad. “I’d like you to come with Blair and me. As a Sanguinati, you might notice something we miss.”
“All right,” Vlad said. “What about Meg?”
“I’ll close A Little Bite and help Nathan watch Meg,” Tess said.
Simon shook his head. “Better for you to stay open. If humans are watching to see what we do, let them think we’re not aware of the baited street and the trap yet.” He thought for a moment. Did Nathan really need someone else in the Liaison’s Office to help him watch Meg? Or would having Tess and Henry nearby be enough?
“Henry, I need you to handle the Crows and make sure they all return,” Simon said. “I gave Jenni and Starr permission to stay and watch the street. Something is wrong with Jake. Crystal is helping him get back to the Crows’ complex. Talk to their bodywalker. See if anyone can figure out what happened to him.” He looked over his shoulder as Blair pulled up in the small passenger van they used when they needed to travel on human roads.
Blair got out of the van and slipped inside the Liaison’s Office. He returned a minute later with an armful of clothes, which he tossed inside the van.
Good idea, Simon thought. That way Jenni, Starr, and Julia could pull on some clothes if they needed to shift and talk to any humans.
Like Lieutenant Crispin James Montgomery? For a moment, Simon wondered if he should call Montgomery and tell him about the baited street.
No. The lieutenant wasn’t a hairless gibbering monkey like so many humans were, and he had helped protect Meg when she was in the hospital, but that didn’t make the man part of the Courtyard. Besides, the Crows had followed orders, so nothing had happened that required the police.
He would go to the baited street first. If he saw something pertinent, then he would call Montgomery.
“Nyx will come up to the office and stay with Meg,” Vlad said, breaking into Simon’s thoughts. “Grandfather Erebus is concerned about our Liaison. If something is wrong, Meg might tell another female something she wouldn’t tell Nathan.”
Nothing to be said about that, not even by the leader of the Courtyard. But Simon noticed that Tess’s hair had turned solid green and was tightly coiled—a sign she was feeling agitated or uneasy.
Only Henry knew what Tess was, but Simon had his own thoughts about that and was certain having her uneasy about the Sanguinati could be dangerous for everyone. A shape-shifter had little chance of surviving a fight with a Sanguinati. Would a vampire be able to survive a fight with an earth native like Tess?
He hoped that was a question that would never be answered.
“We have to go.” As he and Vlad got in the van, Simon heard the bitter cawing of the returning Crows.
A moment after that, Julia Hawkgard screamed, <Simon! Come quick!>
Monty rapped on the doorframe before entering Douglas Burke’s office.
The patrol captain of the Chestnut Street station was a big man with neatly trimmed dark hair below a bald pate. His blue eyes, like his smile, usually held a fierce kind of friendliness. Today the smile was absent and the eyes looked sad as he handed a piece of paper to Monty and said, “We got an answer.”
Monty read the paragraph, then read it again. “This happened on Trickster Night?”
“Yes,” Burke replied. “Months before our friends in the Courtyard gave us that cryptic warning.”
Not exactly cryptic. A few weeks ago, Meg Corbyn had cut her skin because she’d sensed something wrong in the back room of the Liaison’s Office and couldn’t identify the source of her uneasiness. The resulting visions and prophecy had revealed poison in the sugar lumps she usually gave the Courtyard ponies on Moonsday. Among the images she’d seen was a skeleton in a hooded robe, passing out sweets to children, and those children dying in the same way the ponies would have died. Simon Wolfgard had told him what Meg had seen on the chance that the police might find the place and the person in time to save the children.
But it had already happened months ago in another city.
If the police in that city had had access to a cassandra sangue like Meg Corbyn, could that tragedy have been averted? Or would a different blood prophet have seen some other prophecy, and the children’s deaths would have occurred anyway?
And was justifying the use of one group of humans for the benefit of the rest of them the reason a law supporting benevolent ownership had been passed in the first place? Was the argument that these girls would cut themselves anyway and keep cutting until it killed them sufficient justification for restricting their lives and using this compulsion for the good of government or profit?
Maybe it was better for everyone that the only blood prophet in the city of Lakeside was surrounded by the terra indigene.
“Lieutenant?” Burke said.
“Sorry, Captain. My mind wandered.” Monty set the paper on Burke’s desk.
Sighing, Burke sat back and linked his fingers over his abdomen. “My people immigrated to Thaisia from Brittania a few generations back, and I still have family over there. Went over to visit in my younger years and have kept in touch with some of my relatives, especially the ones who work in law enforcement. Brittania is about one-quarter the size of Wild Brittania, so the people there have few illusions about what watches them on the other side of the agreed-upon boundaries. Those of us living in cities like Lakeside have that in common with them.”
Not sure where this was going, Monty just nodded.
“According to my cousin Shady Burke …” Burke’s smile warmed for a moment. “Shamus David Burke, an officer of the law in Brittania. Usually goes by Shay, but there was already a Shay at his first posting, so my cousin was called Shay D., which quickly became Shady.”
“Unusual name for a police officer,” Monty said.
“He’s quick with his tongue and quick on his feet. Has to be one because of the other.” Burke’s smile faded. “Anyway, Shady is very good at mixing in where he can hear things of interest. Lately he’s been hearing rumors that somewhere in the Cel-Romano Alliance of Nations there is a factory building airplanes—machines that can fly.”
Still not sure where the conversation was going, Monty said, “Is that a problem?”
Now Burke gave Monty the typical fierce-friendly smile. “A hardship for the people, I would think, if another industry wants a share of the metal and fuel available to the nations. Shortages and stricter rationing would be just the start of the troubles there.”
For a moment, Monty considered the wonder of traveling through the air, high above the ground. The closest thing to air travel in Thaisia was hot-air balloons. Most of the time the balloons remained tethered to prevent them from wandering over land that belonged to the Others. Sometimes photographers or moviemakers were permitted to float over the wild country to take pictures and film herds of animals or places on the continent that humans couldn’t see any other way. Those trips were strictly supervised, of course, because the Others would never permit anything on or above their land that might pose a threat to them. “Why didn’t the terra indigene forbid such a machine from being made in the first place?”