An odd and terrible silence suddenly filled the Market Square.
Simon turned to face her. For just a moment, the Wolf looked frightened, but Monty couldn’t tell if the fear was for himself or Sissy.
“You’re fired,” Simon said. “Find a job among the humans.”
“I second that,” Vlad said, stepping out of the crowd.
“I agree,” Henry rumbled, also stepping forward.
“Yes,” Tess hissed.
Simon walked away. The Others moved aside for him.
Gods, Sissy, Monty thought. Her words were stupid and childish under the best conditions. A human boss would have fired her too. She didn’t realize how lucky she was that Simon didn’t do more than that.
Monty touched his mother’s shoulder. “I’ll take Sissy back to her place. Why don’t you go into Meat-n-Greens? I’ll join you as soon as I can.”
Twyla shook her head. “I’ll go sit in the library for a bit. Need a little time to settle.”
He didn’t want to leave her alone. Seeing Sissy hurting like this was hard on her too. But when he looked past his mother, he saw Elliot Wolfgard, who met his eyes and nodded.
Twyla was part of the Wolfgard pack now. The Wolves would watch over her.
Monty hurried over to where Sierra stood crying, a little girl alone on the playground, unable—or unwilling—to do anything to help herself.
“Come on, Sissy.” Monty put his arm around her shoulders. “I’ll take you home.”
The Sanguinati on duty gave them a curious look but said nothing as Monty led his sister upstairs to her apartment. The girls were home, unsupervised, which produced a flicker of annoyance until he realized the Others wouldn’t see anything odd about leaving young alone in the den when there were adults nearby.
“Mommy?” Carrie said when they walked in.
“Play quietly for a little while,” Monty said, leading Sissy to her bedroom. He closed the door and sat on the bed next to her. Then he grabbed the box of tissues off the nightstand and handed it to her, letting her cry until she was ready to talk to him.
“CJ,” she began, looking at him with eyes that had always melted his heart. “CJ, it was just a stupid dish of lasagna. There was plenty. They were just being mean.”
He shook his head. “One piece per person. That’s not unreasonable.”
“But my girls aren’t going to have anything to eat. I don’t have even a full glass of milk left to split between them.”
“They’ll be hungry,” he said sympathetically. “Tomorrow you can buy more food.” Maybe. He wasn’t sure what would be open on Earthday except for A Little Bite. “I can’t give you any food tonight, Sissy.”
“You could give me the key to your place, and I could slip down and pick up a few things from the fridge and cupboards.” She gave him a wobbly smile. “I wouldn’t take much, CJ. Just enough for the girls.”
“I can’t do that. If I help you, the Others will take the girls.” If he helped her after Simon warned him not to, would the terra indigene even tell him where they relocated the girls? “They aren’t bluffing, Sissy. You act like they are, but they’re not.”
“CJ . . .”
Gods, this was killing him. Would making a sandwich for the girls really be so bad? If he was dealing with other humans, maybe not. But the Others wouldn’t see it that way. “I can’t help you.”
“Won’t help me.” Sissy pulled away from him. “Because I’m not really family.”
Monty stared at her. “What does that mean? Is that more of Jimmy’s crap?”
“It isn’t crap if it’s true.”
“For a smart girl who did so well at school, I swear, Sissy, sometimes you can be stupid.” When he tried to hug her, she sprang up, putting as much distance as she could between them.
Sighing, Monty pushed to his feet. “Look, I still have a one-bedroom apartment near Market Street. That area of the city has had some trouble, but you and the girls could stay there for a few days if you wanted to get away from Jimmy while he’s in Lakeside.” He’d been planning to talk to the landlady about dissolving the lease to free himself of that expense. He didn’t think she’d hold him to it since rents had doubled in the past few weeks with the influx of people looking for jobs in a human-controlled city. But if Sissy wanted to take over the lease, he would talk to the landlady about paying the difference in water usage for three people instead of one.
“I’ll take care of myself and my girls. I don’t need your help.”
The bitterness in her voice stung him. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
She didn’t respond, so he walked out, smiling at Carrie and Bonnie as he left. He stopped at his apartment long enough to change into casual clothes and collect his mail. Returning to the Courtyard to have dinner with his mother, he thought about Sierra—not as a big brother but as a cop. If he’d done that before, would he have spotted the signs of trouble when they were all living in Toland? Well, he’d spotted enough of the signs, but would he have acted on them?
He thought about Sierra as a young woman with her first job, struggling to pay the rent on a tiny box of an apartment but proud to have her own place. Except . . . had she struggled financially because her job didn’t pay quite enough, which is what she’d told him when he’d treat her for lunch, or because Jimmy had been coming around every few weeks and squeezing her for money? And later, when the man who had fathered her children took off for good, had he accepted the excuses for the lost jobs or the final notices on utilities because he truly believed them or because his life with Elayne and raising his own little girl was his own excuse for not asking hard questions?
And now it had come to this: Sissy feeling betrayed, feeling like an outsider, because her family loved her enough not to help her continue on this path.
? ? ?
Meg slipped off her sandals and rubbed one calf with the bottom of her foot to try to relieve the pins-and-needles feeling.
“You’re not eating,” Simon growled, “and you’re itchy.”
She’d eaten just enough not to feel empty, but she wasn’t enjoying the food. “I’m mad at Sierra for spoiling the nice dinner we were going to have, and I feel bad about feeling that way.”
“Why? The whole female pack feels that way.” Simon cocked his head. “Do you want to go bite the Sierra?”
“Yes!”
He narrowed his eyes and leaned back a bit, as if worried that she might bite him, and that made her smile.
“Not for real,” she amended. Then she clenched her hands. For the past couple of weeks, she’d put the silver folding razor in a dresser drawer when she got home. That made it easy to find if she really needed to cut to see a prophecy, but she no longer carried it with her all the time. Right now, sitting here in the summer room with Simon, the razor felt too far away. And yet, she really didn’t want to make a cut. Not for Sierra.
“Vlad is still in the Market Square,” Simon said. “So are Henry and Tess. Do you want them to bring back the box of prophecy cards?”
She thought for a moment, then shook her head.