“I’ll tell her.” A ringing sound startled him.
“Have to take those cookies out of the oven. Come around to the door over there.”
She opened the Employees Only door for him, and he followed her as she hurried to the back of her shop to pull out the cookies.
Looking at the food she’d already made that morning, Monty figured she’d been up since the wee hours, cleaning up the glass and sealing up the broken window. And then cooking, baking, doing whatever she could with her hands, to ease the hurt in her heart.
“I wasn’t the only one who was targeted last night,” Nadine said as she boxed up the food. “Why do those people think anything will be better if we start fighting among ourselves?”
“I don’t know,” Monty said gently. Then he looked around. “Where is Chris?”
“He’s been trying to find some glass to replace the window. If we can’t get new glass, he’s going to the hardware store to figure out a way to seal up that opening a little better than just using plywood.”
After receiving Nadine’s assurances that she and Chris had things under control, Monty and Kowalski loaded the food in the back of the patrol car and drove away.
“We’re not a delivery service, and we shouldn’t be doing this,” Monty said since Karl wasn’t saying anything quite loudly.
“I don’t think she’s expecting many customers today,” Kowalski said. “She unloaded a lot of what she’d made.”
“I know.”
Kowalski glanced at him. “What’s on your mind, Lieutenant?”
Monty sighed. “If things are starting to unravel like this in Lakeside, how bad is it in other parts of Thaisia?”
? ? ?
The computer finished downloading the first picture from Jackson. Simon put two sheets of the special glossy paper into the office printer and printed two copies. Then he went on to the next e-mail from Jackson and gave the commands to download the second picture.
He took a copy of the first picture out of the printer as Vlad, Blair, Henry, and Tess walked into the office. He held up the picture for all of them to see as the printer spit out the second copy.
“A mound of bison,” Henry said grimly.
“Hope is good,” Vlad said. “I’ve never seen a real bison, but part of me believes that if I touched the paper, I could feel the shaggy fur, the horns.”
“Smell the blood,” Simon said. “Well, Jackson certainly smells blood on the original drawing.”
Tess stared at the picture. “Bloody footprints—Wolf prints—all over the bodies piled up. Why?”
“We wouldn’t hunt that way,” Simon said. “We don’t hunt that way.”
Vlad shook his head. “We’re missing something—or misunderstanding something. Are you going to show this to Meg?”
A terrible picture. Wanton killing. Not for food or defense.
“Is that a huge paw print?” Vlad pointed at the bottom of the picture, at a shape that looked like it had been created in blood and absorbed until it was a faint impression in the grass near the bison mound.
“Could be a print in the foreground,” Tess said.
Simon looked at Henry. “The Hope pup couldn’t have seen any of them.”
“Who?” Blair asked. “Are you saying there are giant Wolves in the Midwest or Northwest?” He looked at Simon, then at Henry. “Not Wolves.”
“No,” Henry said. “Not Wolves. The primal terra indigene in their true form. The Elders are very large—even when they take a form close enough to what shifters like us have taken.”
“Even then, none of us are actually seen when we’re in our true form.” Simon looked at Henry, who was large in human form and massive as a Grizzly. But when Henry walked in his true form as spirit bear, he was even bigger.
Compared to the Elders, even Henry as spirit bear was small.
“Could they do that?” Tess asked, pointing at Hope’s drawing.
Simon hesitated, then nodded. “Some of them are big enough, and strong enough, to drag a full-grown bison and haul it onto a pile of carcasses. But they don’t hunt that way.” But like the rest of the terra indigene, the Elders studied other predators—and learned from them.
“Simon, you have to show this to Meg,” Vlad said.
The computer pinged, the signal that the second picture from Jackson had finished downloading. Simon put two more pieces of glossy paper into the printer and hit the Print key. “I’ll talk to Meg, but not just . . .” He looked at the printer. Stared at the picture printing on the paper.
“Simon?” When he said nothing, Vlad pulled the sheet from the printer the moment the first copy was done. “What is this?”
An old woman wearing a straw hat, her bare arms browned by the sun so the thin scars showed white. She sat behind a little table, pointing to the cards that were spread out over the top. Her other hand held two cards. One was the image of a young Wolf—Simon recognized it as a picture of himself when he was a juvenile. The other card was a picture of Meg. But not Meg as he knew her. Younger. Lost. Eyes that held little hope. And yet just a touch of defiance in those eyes.
“Simon?” The sharpness in Vlad’s voice made Simon focus on the other terra indigene in the room.
“Part of a memory,” he replied. “And part something else.” The old woman hadn’t known about Meg specifically, so why would the Hope pup draw the picture like that? “Which females are working in the Courtyard today?”
“Merri Lee and Ruthie are downstairs, pulling stock to send to Jesse Walker in Prairie Gold,” Vlad said.
Simon reached for the picture Vlad held. “I want to show them this picture. I’d like you to e-mail it to Jesse Walker and Steve Ferryman. Maybe the Intuits will have a feeling for what it means.”
“Just this picture or both of them?”
“Would the Intuits on Great Island care about bison?” Henry asked.
Vlad shrugged.
“Send both,” Simon said. Taking the picture of the old woman, he went downstairs and found both girls in the stock room, busily depleting the stock he wanted in the store for next week’s visitors. “Look at this.”
They stopped and stared at the picture.
“I’m not sure what we’re supposed to see,” Ruthie finally said.
He wasn’t sure either. That’s why he showed them the picture.
“What kind of cards is she pointing to?” Merri Lee asked.
Simon growled softly. Couldn’t help it. “I don’t know. She told fortunes. With the cards.” Except she hadn’t used the cards the day he stopped by her table. That day, the old woman had opened a silver razor and cut her skin.
They cocked their heads, such a Wolflike gesture it startled him.
“Tarot?” Merri Lee said, looking at Ruthie.
“Maybe,” Ruthie replied. “But the woman is like Meg, a cassandra sangue. Would one of them use tarot cards? And how can you tell from the picture that she used the cards to tell fortunes?”
“I saw her once when I was a juvenile.” Simon studied the females. He wasn’t going to back away. Or run. But predators had that same focused look in their eyes just before they sprang at their prey.
They have little teeth and little claws that aren’t very sharp. And I can run faster.
“You met her,” Merri Lee said slowly. “So this is a . . .”
“Vision drawing,” he finished. “That’s what we’re calling the pictures the Hope pup makes.”
“A message.” Ruthie pointed to the bottom right-hand corner. “For Meg.”
That look again. “I’m going to show her,” he said, sounding, and feeling, defensive.
“There are some stores around Lakeside University that might sell tarot cards,” Merri Lee said.
“Better if you stay away from the university stores,” Ruthie said. “Karl and I can go after he gets off work.”