Meg shifted on the hay bale as she considered the question. Regular humans had worked in the compound where she’d lived. But she wouldn’t have been one of them, wouldn’t have taken a job where other people, where children, were treated like property. Would she? “I probably wouldn’t have traveled to Lakeside if I hadn’t run away from the Controller and followed the visions that showed me how to escape. I—” wouldn’t have met Sam . . . or Simon.
“Simon opened a few of the stores to humans and had human employees for several years before you arrived. They were considered nonedible, but we still saw them as prey. If you, the human who was not prey, hadn’t come along looking for a job, Simon, Vlad, Henry, and Tess wouldn’t have changed the way they thought of the human employees—and some of those humans might have died in the blizzard last Febros. If the females working here hadn’t become your friends, hadn’t become a human pack the Wolfgard and Sanguinati decided to protect, those humans wouldn’t have been sheltered here when the Elders came through the city. If you weren’t here, Simon and Lieutenant Montgomery wouldn’t have had a particular reason to work together, and Montgomery wouldn’t have had a way to prove he was a trustworthy human. If you weren’t here, Nathan would have stayed with the Addirondak Wolfgard for the full time he was supposed to be away from the Courtyard, and Lizzy might not have reached Lakeside because Nathan wouldn’t have been on the train to protect her.” Jester stood up. “All those things happened because you’re different, Meg. Don’t be so quick to want to be like everyone else. Crows and Hawks and Owls can fly. I can’t. I don’t need to jump off a cliff to prove it to myself. Why do you?”
Jester headed for the doors. Then he stopped. “What would you have told another cassandra sangue if she’d pushed herself like you have these past couple of days? Being the Trailblazer means being a role model for the other girls. You should think about that.”
He walked outside. Meg sat on the hay bale, listening to Jester talking to the ponies.
What would she have told another blood prophet, especially a young girl who hadn’t been cut yet and had a chance of escaping the addiction to cutting? She would have told the girl not to go to the office, not to push when she was already feeling uncomfortable. She would have told her to respect her limitations as well as her abilities.
She hadn’t done any of those things for herself.
In the beginning, she hadn’t cared that she was different. She was alive and free, and, thinking she had only a few weeks to live, she’d thrown herself into experiencing as much as she could. But she’d misinterpreted the prophecy and hadn’t died—or her future had changed because Simon and several other terra indigene had saved her. In the beginning, she’d had only a small window into the lives of the humans who became her friends. Now, with some of them living across the street from the Courtyard, she saw more of what it meant to have a human life with friends and family. Some of it was bad, but most of it was good. She saw people doing things that overwhelmed her, and she envied their ability—and she didn’t think any of them felt envious of her abilities.
Had she been trying to prove she could be different from and yet the same as other humans?
Being different didn’t mean she couldn’t fit in. She’d been learning to fit in with the Others since the night she stumbled into Howling Good Reads looking for a job. And now she’d stumbled again by reaching for something she wasn’t even sure she wanted instead of looking at what she already had with Simon and Sam and the rest of her friends in the Courtyard.
All right, so she couldn’t fly. But she was the one who could tell her friends when to stay on the ground because there was a storm coming.
? ? ?
Simon read through Jana Paniccia’s résumé a second time and decided not to ask how she’d heard about the job fair.
He set the résumé aside and studied the Jana. Taller than most of the female pack, but not as tall as the males in the police pack. Brown hair, brown eyes. Looked vigorous and healthy. Smelled clean.
She’d been nothing but polite since she’d sat across the desk from him for the last part of the job interview, but she reminded him of a small predator who believed it was larger and fiercer than anything around it—and managed to make larger predators believe it too.
“You want to work for the police?” he asked.
“No.” One of her hands smoothed her skirt, the first sign of nerves she’d shown. But her eyes showed a hint of anger, not nerves. “I don’t want to be a dispatcher or a secretary. I don’t want to work for the police; I want to be a police officer. They let me attend the academy, let me pay for all the classes and training, let me believe I could be hired for the job. I put up with all the crude comments about wanting to grow a pair of balls. I spent hours at the shooting range to learn to be proficient with firearms. I took more self-defense classes than any of my male classmates. I bought extra books about the law and law enforcement and studied them on my own. I passed all my courses and graduated in the top five percent of my class, but I still can’t be a serving police officer because I have breasts instead of balls.”
Simon waited for her to regain control of her emotions. Obviously he’d stomped on her tail by asking what he’d thought was a simple opening question. And he wondered just how much teasing she had received—and why human males would train a female to shoot a gun and then tease her into being angry enough to shoot them.
“I’m sorry for speaking so crudely,” the Jana finally said.
But not for being angry, Simon thought. “You want to be a police officer.”
“Yes.” She pointed at the paperwork. “You can see that I’m qualified.”
“You realize the job is in a town in the Midwest, which is under the terra indigene’s control?”
The Jana nodded.
“The new sheriff is a Wolf. You would be working as one of his deputies.” Maybe Virgil’s only deputy. “You understand that?”
She nodded again.
“Before we send you to Bennett to talk with Tolya Sanguinati and Virgil Wolfgard, I want the police here to confirm your skills.” She didn’t look happy about that, so he added, “Can you ride a horse?”
The anger vanished from her face and her eyes brightened. “I could be a mounted deputy?”
What was it with human females and horses? “That would be something to discuss with Tolya and Virgil.” He noticed that she hadn’t said she knew how to ride a horse, but that would be Tolya’s problem if he wanted her to stay.
He and Vlad had agreed it was best to send all the job candidates on two trains so that no one would be traveling alone. He’d have to nip a few people to get the Jana on the second train.
“Your skills will be reviewed tomorrow,” Simon said. “If everyone agrees, you can catch the train the day after. Will that be a problem?” Humans always seemed to need considerable time to leave a den.