CHAPTER 15
On Thaisday, Simon unlocked Howling Good Reads’ front door, then went about opening the store for business. Not that there was much business. There hadn’t been many human customers stopping at HGR or A Little Bite for a while now. There were even fewer since the incident last week when two girls tried to vandalize the bookstore by smearing dog poop on the books.
The girls’ stinky perfume had almost masked the scent of poop. They’d gotten past John, who was manning the checkout counter that day, but then they tried to walk past Blair and Nathan. The two enforcers pinned the girls to the shelves before howling for Simon and Vlad.
Human law did not apply in the Courtyard. A few months ago, Blair and Nathan would have killed those girls just for trying to damage the books. But that day, Simon had called Lieutenant Montgomery and demanded that the girls be arrested.
When two patrol cars showed up with lights and sirens going, the girls were stunned. They were going to be arrested? They were going to have a police record? They were going to pay fines or go to jail? But they didn’t do anything!
That’s when Blair lost the little tolerance he had for whining, dumb-ass monkeys and snarled that the Wolves were hungry and which of the damn vandals’ arms could they rip off for lunch?
It didn’t surprise anyone that the girls were suddenly thrilled to be arrested and walked out of the store by armed police officers.
They hadn’t had time to damage anything in the store, so there wasn’t any evidence of intended vandalism beyond the bags of dog poop found in the girls’ day packs, and the cops on TV shows were always growling about needing evidence. So it wasn’t likely that human law would do more than give the girls a nip. And that would not sit well with the terra indigene living in the Courtyard. Most of them would have preferred Simon giving Montgomery enough of the girls’ possessions so that the police could fill out a Deceased, Location Unknown form. Then Boone Hawkgard could put up the sign in the Market Square butcher shop indicating the availability of special meat.
The girls wouldn’t understand or appreciate the decision Simon had made, but Montgomery did. The lieutenant’s quiet “Thank you” as Kowalski and two other officers escorted the girls out of the store confirmed that the human recognized the call as an effort to keep the peace a little longer—and as an acknowledgment of the efforts the police were making to uphold the agreements between the city of Lakeside and the terra indigene.
It had been only a few weeks since Winter had locked the city in a blizzard of rage. Every day the news on the radio whined about the difficulties people were having with getting the building supplies needed to repair the damage done to houses and businesses during that storm.
The humans had no idea how close they had come to being wiped out completely. If Meg had died that night, Winter would have shown no mercy, and Lakeside would have been another human city that disappeared.
Because it hadn’t been that long since the storm, and because he hoped Spring’s warmth would ease the tension in the city, he was giving the humans some time to use their brains—and giving the police time to shake things out in their own way. Besides, he had other things to think about.
Last week, he had gone to Great Island to talk to Steve Ferryman. Now Ferryman was coming to the Courtyard to meet with Captain Burke and Roger Czerneda. It was sensible to host the meeting since it meant he and Vlad could sit in and listen. But there were two problems with meeting here: one was Roger Czerneda and the other was Steve Ferryman. Both were unattached males, and Ferryman had already indicated an interest in sniffing around his Meg!
Not my Meg, Simon thought, wondering why he’d opened the cash drawer. Not exactly. Earth natives in human form could have sex with humans, but they didn’t mate with humans.
But an Intuit could be a mate for a cassandra sangue. So could a regular human.
Fur suddenly covered his chest and shoulders. His hands shifted enough to have fur and claws. He didn’t realize he was snarling or that his fangs had lengthened until he heard a gasping squeak.
Heather, the only human employee left at HGR, stared at him.
“Should I leave?” she asked.
He shook his head. Damn! He had shifted enough that he didn’t have human speech. As he pointed at the register, he wondered what else had shifted, but he didn’t think patting his head to find out how much was still human-looking and how much was Wolf would be a good thing to do.
Don’t think about human males, or females, or mating, or … anything. Just get up to the office before you scare the bunny. Heather. Shit, fuck, damn!
She tensed when the checkout counter was no longer between them, but he kept moving toward the stockroom and the stairs. Except he couldn’t stand the thought of being confined in the office. He needed to run!
He stripped off his clothes, leaving them on the floor near HGR’s back door. Then he stepped outside, shifted to Wolf, and let out a howl that rang with frustration.
<Simon?> Nathan called.
<Guard Meg,> he said and took off running. He ran away from the Courtyard’s business district, ignoring the queries from Elliot and Tess asking what was wrong. Running on clear roads wasn’t demanding enough, so he ran across open ground and through the trees, plowing his way through some drifts of snow. It was Spring’s official reign now, but reminders of Winter still lingered.
He ran until he was tired enough that his first thought wasn’t tearing out Steve Ferryman’s throat just for being male. He shouldn’t feel that way, didn’t understand why he felt that way.
Meg had been a source of confusion since he hired her to be the Courtyard’s Human Liaison. His response to Ferryman was just another example of how she muddled him up.
He wasn’t surprised when Blair joined him as he trotted back toward the business district.
<You all right?> Blair asked.
<Fine,> he grumbled.
<Having second thoughts about the meeting?>
<Not about the meeting.>
They trotted in silence for a couple of minutes. Then Blair said, <Be careful, Simon. You don’t want to become too human. We see a few of them differently now, but most of them are still just meat.>
<I know.> It was one thing for an earth native to be able to pass for human. It was quite another thing to start thinking like a human.
Blair headed back to the Utilities Complex while Simon continued trotting toward the business district.
Becoming too human was always a danger to terra indigene who worked in the Courtyards and kept careful watch over the clever meat. He should go to the wild country for a couple of weeks this summer. He could stay in Wolf form for days at a time and regain his sense of who he was, what he was.
But he already knew he wouldn’t go to the wild country. Too much unrest rippled throughout Thaisia, as well as right here in Lakeside. Until they figured out who was making the drugs that had reached his piece of the world, there was too much uncertainty.
And there was too much need to stay close to Meg.
Trying to figure that out confused him, and being confused made him angry.
It was unfortunate for the four-footed bunny that it chose that moment to bolt from its hiding place.