*
As Meg collapsed, Tess cushioned the girl’s head with her hand and looked at Elliot.
“I’ll call Simon,” Elliot said. He leaped off the stairs and moved a few feet away, pulling his mobile phone out of his pocket.
“She fainted?” Blair asked.
Tess nodded. Not a surprise that the dominant enforcer would have come running, especially if he’d been close enough to hear those odd howls. Not a surprise to see Julia and Marie Hawkgard or Jester Coyotegard responding. Rushing to join their little group were Lynn and Jane Wolfgard, the toother and bodywalker respectively.
“Simon is in danger?” Jester asked. “He needs help?”
“All the help he can get,” Tess replied grimly, hoping the Coyote would understand the kind of help Simon needed.
“I’ll tell the girls at the lake.” He looked at Meg and hesitated. “Our Meg will be all right?”
“We’ll take care of her,” Jane said. “I’ve dealt with one of her cuts before, and I won’t lick the blood.”
“You hear anything in what Meg said to indicate that they shouldn’t take care of her, that we need to wait for a human bodywalker?” Blair asked Tess.
“No,” she replied as Meg began to stir. In fact, everything she’d heard indicated they should get the girl away from this part of the Courtyard as fast as possible. “They can take Meg to the medical office and then to the Green Complex.” She studied the door at the top of the stairs, then looked at Blair. “You and I need to decide what to do about the efficiency apartments.”
Elliot returned, gave Meg a sharp, quick study, then pulled out a clean handkerchief and handed it to Jane. “So she doesn’t drip blood.”
Jane deftly wrapped the handkerchief around Meg’s knee. Then she and Lynn hauled her up and carried her to the Market Square.
“Simon’s on his way,” Elliot said.
The keening howls had been an annoying background noise that Tess had ignored while she concentrated on the warnings Meg struggled to convey. When the howls abruptly stopped, she realized who was missing. “Where are Sam and Skippy?”
“John grabbed Sam and took both youngsters to the Market Square,” Blair said. “They’ll go back to the Green Complex with Meg as soon as she’s fixed up. John will stay with them to keep the youngsters from worrying Meg’s bandages.”
“So that leaves us to find whatever is up there that someone wants to steal,” Elliot said, pointing toward the efficiency apartments. “I’m assuming that’s what Meg meant when she talked about a thief.”
Tess nodded, having assumed the same thing. “We take all of the possessions—everything our humans brought in that’s personal. Lizzy still has something that someone wants badly enough to enter the Courtyard. If we strip all the apartments, the thieves won’t know for sure that we know they’re after Lizzy’s possessions.”
Besides, the thieves might be spiteful enough to destroy Merri Lee’s possessions when they didn’t find what they wanted, which was the main reason for taking all the personal items the Courtyard’s humans had brought.
The terra indigene didn’t need all that stuff in order to figure out what the thieves wanted. Meg had already told her what she needed to find.
“Both BOWs are in the garage here,” Blair said. “We’ll toss everything into the back of them and sort it out later.” He strode to the garage that held the first BOW.
By the time Julia ran up to Howling Good Reads’ office and fetched the keys for the efficiency apartments, Nyx Sanguinati had joined them. The four females split up. Julia and Marie packed up Merri Lee’s possessions; Nyx checked the apartment that Lorne from the Three Ps and Montgomery’s team of police officers were using; and Tess took the apartment Montgomery and Lizzy occupied.
Alone, with the door locked so that no one would walk in on her, she allowed her true nature to show through the human mask. Meg had mentioned a mask when she spoke prophecy at the Pony Barn a couple of weeks ago. Happy mask, angry face. Could apply to a lot of humans right now, but her own interpretation was that the image stood for deceit.
Simon was walking into some kind of danger at the stall market. There were thieves coming to the efficiency apartments at the Courtyard. Two kinds of threat happening at the same time. Coincidence or intentional? Was one meant to be a deception that was supposed to pull their attention away from the other threat until it was too late?
Tess found two suitcases stored under the single bed. Hauling them out, she dropped them on the bed and began emptying drawers, pulling them out of the dresser and upending them over the suitcases, moving as quickly as she could.
But when something from Lizzy’s underwear drawer fell into the suitcase with a thud, Tess set aside the drawer to take a closer look.
Pink book with gold stars. A gold clasp and a tiny keyhole.
Tess shook out a few pieces of clothing, but she didn’t find the key that fit the lock. Didn’t matter. Meg had seen the book, not the key.
She set the book aside while she finished clearing out everything that belonged to Montgomery and Lizzy. Then she wrapped the book in a clean kitchen towel, hid her true nature enough that she wouldn’t endanger the other earth natives, and unlocked the door.
Nyx stood on the other side.
“Marie and Julia cleared out Merri Lee’s things,” Nyx said. “They’re driving that BOW to the Green Complex and will park it in the garages there. Blair is waiting to haul whatever you have up here down to the other BOW.”
A locked door would have meant nothing to a Sanguinati, and yet Nyx had waited outside. It was that respect for Tess’s need of a private moment that made her hand over the wrapped book.
“Keep this hidden from everyone until I ask for it,” Tess said.
Nyx took the book. “Is it dangerous?”
“I think so.” After all, secrets could be very dangerous.
Blair came around the corner. “You ready? Let’s get this stuff out of here so I can bring up the Wolves for defense.”
“You’re not going to defend the apartments,” Tess said, her hair turning solid red and coiling.
Blair took a step back and snarled. Nyx looked curious.
“We’re going to let the thieves break in,” she continued. “We’re going to let them start searching the apartments so that other humans will know they were enemies.”
“And then?” Blair asked.
“And then I’ll kill them.”