I unlocked the kitchen door and dumped the carry sacks. “Close the windows,” I said as I ran around the house doing exactly that. Not fast enough in some cases—the wind scattered papers in my office, knocked over a lamp in another room, and soaked the curtains in a couple of rooms.
Breathless, I ran back to the kitchen and pulled out the sheets and towels, handing the hand towel and facecloth to Aggie. “These need to be washed anyway, so let’s use them to wipe up any water on the windowsills and floor.”
She didn’t ask questions, didn’t indicate if this was a familiar human behavior or a new experience.
Flash! BOOM!
The weatherman on the TV news had talked about a storm coming in from the west that could be fierce enough to cause some flooding and close roads. Viewers had been warned to have emergency lanterns and food for a couple of days in case they were cut off from nearby towns. I had assumed the warning was for the farmers and vintners, but I suddenly realized the warning was also meant for someone like me. And I was glad that Aggie had chosen to join me at the main house.
When I returned to the porch to see if I’d left anything that could be damaged by water, I found a wet Cougar and equally wet Conan waiting for me by the kitchen door. They were in their furry forms and each carried a sack that I assumed contained some human clothes.
I stepped aside in invitation. “Aggie is here too. Do you want to join us?”
They entered the kitchen and dropped their sacks next to the ones Aggie and I had carried from her cabin. They came back out with me while I did a quick check of the porch. Since the porch ran the length of the house, a quick check to rescue a couple of books and move a couple of plants from tables to the floor wasn’t all that quick and I was clothes-clinging wet by the time I returned to the kitchen. Conan and Cougar had tipped over the lightweight chairs on the porch—an activity I appreciated when a blast of wind knocked me into Conan. I wasn’t sure the Bear even noticed; I was pretty sure I would have some interesting bruises the next day. I couldn’t wait to explain those to the doctor—or Ilya Sanguinati. Or Officer Grimshaw.
It wasn’t my fault. The wind knocked me into a Bear.
I wasn’t sure Dr. Wallace would want to believe me. After all, he was one of the Sproing residents who had lived in the safe little bubble of believing the Others were Out There before the events of the past few days had shown everyone that Out There really meant Right Here.
I went to my suite and changed into dry clothes. I looked at my hair and put enough clips in it to hold it away from my face, planning to take a hot shower later and use extra hair conditioner in the hope of combing out all the tangles.
When I returned to the common rooms, Cougar and Conan had shifted to human form and were dressed. They still smelled a bit like wet animal, but I decided not to comment about that since it occurred to me that I had no idea what a wet human might smell like to them.
On Firesday, the first full day of rain, I made hourly checks of the rooms, reassuring myself that I hadn’t left a window open or had any leaks that I could ill afford to have fixed at the moment. One of my companions came with me during each inspection, watching everything I did but not asking why I needed to check something I’d already checked. They just rotated keeping me company. In between inspections we napped or read. I turned on the TV to watch the noon news. Serious faces advising viewers to stay indoors as much as possible. Some flooded roads; some blocked by downed trees.
“Why do humans need other humans to tell them things they should be able to know by themselves?” Conan asked.
“There is comfort in confirmation,” I replied. “It’s easier to believe something if someone else thinks the same thing.”
They looked at the windows as the wind chose that moment to drive the rain against the house with enough force it sounded like pebbles hitting the glass. Then they looked at me.
“It is raining,” Cougar said solemnly. “If you go outside, you will get wet.”
I wasn’t sure if he was trying to be snarky or helpful, but I decided to go with helpful. “That’s what I think too.”
He nodded, yawned, then closed his eyes as he stretched out on the floor. I studied him. Could he really fall asleep that fast? Conan was also dozing. Even Aggie was curled up at one end of a sofa, looking too young to be on her own. Then again, a lot of her kin might live in The Jumble, so her staying here probably wasn’t much different from a human teenager going away to college.
“I’m going to take a shower.”
Three pairs of eyes opened, fixed on me for a moment, then closed again.
Going upstairs to my suite, I stripped out of my clothes, turned on the shower to bring up the hot water—and hesitated as I listened to the storm. I hadn’t heard a rumble of thunder or seen a flash of lightning in a while. I wasn’t keen to become a morbid headline—“Woman Struck by Lightning While Taking a Shower”—but I thought I would be safe if I was quick.
Warmed by the shower, I combed through my hair and wondered if I should try the hairstylist in Sproing—an old barber who had a monopoly on the haircutting trade because he hadn’t run away or been eaten last summer—or take Ineke’s advice and go to the stylist in Crystalton who cut and colored her hair. Someone who, according to Ineke, had an extra sense about how to do the most with the hair a person had. Then I thought about the income that wasn’t coming in and wondered if I wanted to throw away money on a lost cause. So not something I would say to Ineke, who would give me a lecture about letting someone else’s opinion sour my opinion of myself.
Easy for her to say.
Feeling a bit defiant, or maybe just not caring for the moment, I pulled on clothes that were comfortable and warm and in no way flattering—things I wouldn’t wear around anyone human. Then I thought about Aggie’s questions about what to wear and when to wear it and changed into clothes that were a little less disreputable. Not being happy with the way I looked or any of the clothes in my closet didn’t mean I had any right to spoil Aggie’s fashion adventure.
As I returned to the social room, it occurred to me that Paige Xavier had the same light-boned build as Aggie, if not the same coloring, and might be better at suggesting outfits suitable for the Crow. If the weather cooperated, we would have our first trail ride beach party in a few days, and I could introduce Aggie to Paige and let them work things out for themselves.
The rest of Firesday passed quietly. We read our own books. I thawed out all the meatballs in the freezer and made spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, which was a new food for the boys and required teaching them how to twirl the spaghetti on a fork. Since that slowed down food consumption, I suspected that, on their own, they would have picked up the spaghetti by the handful and ignored the saucy mess. But they were sufficiently intrigued in learning how to eat this meal the human way that they persevered, and in the end everyone had plenty to eat.
* * *