The smile faded. “What happened?”
“They were mean to Miss Vicki. They made her cry!”
No amusement now. Ilya stared across the lake, then took a seat in one of the chairs. “Tell me.”
* * *
? ? ?
Aggie and Miss Vicki watched three shiny cars drive up to the main house. At least, she thought they were cars. Miss Vicki had called them utility vehicles and said they were a good choice for camping and rougher roads. The humans got out and looked around, the females wrinkling their noses like they had smelled a wheelbarrow of poop—which they couldn’t have because Cougar hadn’t buried much poop in the flower beds at the front of the house since he had been careful not to dig up the flowers Miss Vicki had planted.
The humans were called Trina and Vaughn, and Darren and Pam-EL-la. They were staying in the main house with Miss Vicki. Hershel and Heidi were staying in the cabin next to Aggie’s.
The humans didn’t say much while Miss Vicki did the registering thing, took the payment, and told Hershel and Heidi that she would walk down to the cabin with them and help with the luggage because there wasn’t a track to the cabins wide enough to accommodate anything bigger than a donkey cart, which she didn’t have. Well, she had the cart, which was in pretty good shape—Conan had found it in the big shed with the tools—but not the donkey.
No, she hadn’t told Miss Vicki about the herd of donkeys that lived in The Jumble. There had been no reason to say anything since the donkeys weren’t terra indigene and Miss Vicki hadn’t said she wanted a donkey; she just explained to the guest humans that their cars wouldn’t fit on the track to the cabins.
They used the footpath between the main house and the cabins since that was shorter than using the track. The Heidi human carried her own carryall, but that Hershel gave the heaviest bag to Miss Vicki instead of carrying it himself. Once they reached the cabin and went inside, Miss Vicki returned to the house, intending to bring the guests a basket of fruit and treats, since Darren and Pam-EL-la had gone down to the cabin as soon as they dropped off their luggage in their suite. And Miss Vicki did bring the fruit and treats. But when she got back to the cabin, she heard the four humans talking and . . .
* * *
* * *
? ? ?
“And?” Ilya Sanguinati said. “What did they say?”
“They said Miss Vicki was as pathetic as they’d heard, and they were going to say so in their reviews, and The Jumble wasn’t rustic or quaint; it was decrepit and wouldn’t amount to anything—and these were the cabins she claimed were renovated when it was clear to anyone who bothered to look that she’d barely done anything at all. And then that Pam-EL-la said . . .”
Flight feathers sprouted from Aggie’s arms and smaller feathers framed her face as she remembered the wounded look in Miss Vicki’s eyes.
“She said Miss Vicki should hire someone presentable to deal with guests because no one with any social standing would want to deal with a person who looked like she’d been dragged through a bush backwards.”
“This Pam-EL-la female is the one who said that?” Ilya asked mildly.
Aggie rounded on him, forgetting caution in her desire to remind him that Miss Vicki had been the first human to act as Reader in The Jumble for a long, long time, and she was nice and . . .
When she looked at him, she realized Ilya’s mild voice hid the same burning fury that she felt.
“Yes, she said that.”
Ilya thought for a moment. “Humans say unkind things about each other all the time when the person being . . . pecked . . . with words isn’t around to hear.”
“They knew she was there. Eddie Crowgard heard them talking before Miss Vicki came back to the cabins with the treats. They were waiting for her, watching so they would be sure she heard them.”
“I see.”
She was certain that he did see, and whatever happened to these humans would be a reflection of that seeing.
Aggie hesitated, but if the Sanguinati were going to take vengeful payment for the humans being mean, she should mention the one human who hadn’t been mean. “The Heidi human . . . After Miss Vicki left the treats and went back to her nest to cry, Heidi said that maybe they shouldn’t have let Miss Vicki believe they were reviewers from important travel magazines who were here in-cog-ni-to to tell other humans about The Jumble. But even her mate said she was being softhearted—or softheaded—and the sooner Miss Vicki was out of the way, the sooner their own deal could go through.”
Ilya stared at her. “Out of the way. Is that the exact phrase they used?”
She nodded.
They said nothing for several minutes, just stared at the other side of the lake.
Finally Ilya stirred. “Who among the Crowgard here can take a human form well enough to pass for human?”
The answer was simple, but Aggie thought about it, trying to figure out why he would want to know. “Besides me? Clara. Eddie. Jozi.”
“Eddie and Jozi are closer to your age, yes?”
“Yes. Why?”
“They’re going to stay at the cabin with you. The three of you rented the cabin for the entire summer. The girls sleep in the bed and Eddie sleeps on the sofa.”
“But Miss Vicki didn’t rent it to three of us,” Aggie protested. “We all decided that I would be the lodger.” The Crowgard had discussed it and squabbled over it and finally voted on it, and she’d been so proud to be the one the rest of the Crows had selected for this important first contact with the human who had been working to repair The Jumble.
Ilya rose from his chair. Aggie tried not to flinch. In Crow form, she could fly fast, but the Sanguinati, in smoke form, could move even faster, could wrap around their prey and draw blood through the prey’s skin. In human form, she didn’t stand a chance against him.
Then again, neither did humans.
“You need to stay close to Miss Vicki and help her—and report to me everything the humans do and say around her. But these are dangerous humans, Aggie, and a lone Crow is vulnerable. I don’t want you to be alone with those humans living so close.”
“My kin live all around The Jumble.”
“But not seen—or not understood for what they are. Three Crowgard in human form staying in a cabin? Better odds. Knowing there is a young male present, one who claims kinship to you, will discourage the males from being . . . inappropriate.”
“Who is going to stop them from being inappropriate with Miss Vicki?” Aggie asked.
Ilya smiled, showing his fangs. “I will.”
It wasn’t until she was flying back to The Jumble that she remembered that, in the thriller books she liked to read, “out of the way” usually meant dead.
* * *
? ? ?
Ilya watched the Crow fly across the lake as he considered the information she had provided. Humans arriving at The Jumble under false pretenses, using words to open wounds. They knew each other, had come here as a pack. Had come incognito.