Mud crossed her arms, adopting my stance. She said, “That’s a dog threat he’s making right there.”
Yummy leaned to the glass and said, “Don’t threaten me,dog. I’d be more likely to kill you first.”
“Us’un too,” Mud said, her face fearsome as a hurricane.
Well.I’m sure my boss-boss won’t be happy with me now.But I was very happy with my fighting sister. Churchwomen don’t fight. Mud was no longer a churchwoman.
Occam walked silently up the stairs to our boss and I was pretty sure my cat-man was figuring where to shoot him to do the most damage. FireWind dropped his front paws to the porch, head down, blowing clouds of mist, and stared at Occam, shoulders raised, ears flat, his yellow skinwalker eyes glowing.
The pillowcase Sam had sealed in a plastic zip bag—the pillowcase Zebulun had slept on his last night on church land—was in Occam’s hand.
Moving slowly to keep from riling the wolf-shaped and wolf-acting FireWind, Occam opened the baggie. FireWind stuck hishead inside and sniffed. And leaped backward across the porch as if he’d been hit with a cattle prod. He shook his head, his ears rotating all over the place. He sneezed mightly. And then four more times. He did the yoga down-dog position and rubbed his nose with his front paws. And he sneezed, repeatedly.
“Gwyllgi?”Occam asked, his words laconic. “Devil dog?”
Our boss-boss nodded his head up and down and then sneezed three more times, his ruff standing straight up. Mud laughed. FireWind shook his head as if shaking off a punch, then pushed off with all four feet, clearing the railing and the eight feet or so to the ground in a single leap.
Occam resealed the baggie and came inside, a cat-sly smile on his face. He shut out the cold and said, “Boss-boss clearly never smelled agwyllgiwhile in canine form. The scent is strong enough to choke a goat even in cat form.” He tossed the baggie to the desk and laughed when the house cats scattered off the tree at the residual scent.
Mud and I went to the kitchen and put on tea and coffee. Mud had taken my fresh bread to Esther’s. I had started a new batch rising and checked to see if the loaves were ready for the oven yet. Not quite. I ladled up a bowl of soup for the boss-boss and scrambled six eggs. He’d be far more hungry than when a were-creature shifted. Weres used the rotational and gravitational force and energies of the moon to shift shapes. FireWind used calories. He’d be starving. I dug out three of my protein bars, made with tuna, canned salmon, and mushy oat groats. They tasted terrible, but the protein made the taste bearable, according to the werecats.
“Mind if I stay around and watch the rest of the show, before I start patrolling?” Yummy asked.
I looked her over, decided she had been well fed at her lair before driving back over, and nodded. “Don’t encourage my sister. I need this job.”
Just as I dished the odd meal up, FireWind entered the house. He wasn’t wearing a coat, just black jeans, black cloth shoes, and a black dress shirt. His black hair was flowing and loose, down to his hips. His eyes were glowing yellow in that skinwalker way.
Mud softly mouthed, “Wow,” but didn’t say it aloud.
Ignoring us all, he lifted a leg over a chairback, settled intoits seat, and raised the bowl of hot soup with his hands. He drank from the bowl, emptying the food without chewing the veggies, noodles, and meat I had quickly chopped in. With a grunt that might have been the word “Thanks,” he scraped the eggs into his mouth with the spoon, six eggs, six bites. He didn’t chew them either. But he did sigh with the last swallow and said, “Nell, that was delicious. Thank you.” Before he tore into the three protein bars.
There was little chewing with the bars either so I placed three glasses of water at his elbow and poured him a cup of hot coffee. He downed a glass after each bar. When he was done, he took the warm cup in his hands and breathed the coffee-scented steam.
“The coffee might be strong enough to get the stink out of my nose. I can detect canine scent in cat form. In wolf form it packed a punch, musky, filthy, strong,” Aya said.
Mud, who was holding the baggie, leaned toward Occam, fists balled at her sides, her short hair falling forward. “That’s not afilthy thing. That’s myfamily,” she said, her voice soft as falling ice and twice as cold, her body suddenly trembling with fury. “Myhalf brother. And his friends. And they had no choice in what they were born, and nobody never taught them how to control what they was or how to be better. So you’un take that back.”
When FireWind didn’t respond except to raise his eyebrows, she leaned in until her nose nearly touched his where he sat at the table. Leaves sprouted across her hairline and in her eyebrows, and her head looked like an entire forest of mighty trees. “Fine. You wasn’t brought up right, to apologize. I get that. But you watch your mouth,dog.”
FireWind’s face went fully human in shock.
I burst out laughing. “Be nice, Mud,” I said through my laughter.
“No. He thinks he’s better than other paranormal people. He looks down on plant-people and werecats and probably even Jane Yellowrock even though he’s her brother. He’s stuck-up and mean just like the bullies at school. And if he don’t apologize, he’ll wish he had. If not, every patch of ground he touches for the rest of his life will sprout thorns and try to trip him and tie him up.”
I was pretty sure none of us could make that happen, but I understood a good threat when I heard it. And I too had caught the insult in his words.
“You have my deepest apologies for speaking out of turn and without forethought.” FireWind took the baggie from her hand. “I’ll find your devil dog half brother. I’ll bring him back to you alive and well if I can. My word on it.”
Mud backed away from him and looked at me. “I do not like bullies.”
FireWind turned to me and said, “You do know your sister is terrifying, don’t you?”
“Aren’t we all?” I asked.
SIXTEEN
The dream was sharper than memory, the trees lifting their roots from the earth, but not to race across the landscape like in some fantasy movie. Rather, to shake out the rocks and ancient bones that were tangled there. Disgorging the bones of the plant-people who had been buried beneath the trees. Jumbles of bones fell free: old fragile bones of the aged, strong bones with full sets of human teeth and the weapons of warriors, and the young, delicate bones of children who never made it to adulthood. So many bones. The skeletons assembled themselves and stood, staring at me out of eyeless sockets. Generations of bones. Four were holding their heads under their arms, a brick still wedged in their jaws.
