Extending between two California Black Oaks and a eucalyptus was a little city. Gossamer-thin rope bridges, woven from the webbing of sizable spiders, connected structures made entirely of twigs and leaves, and so easily overlooked. In and around these, small animals had stilled to blurs—to human eyes, they would be entirely invisible.
With his mythic sensed extended, he could see the hundred signs of labor made by small hands: invasive weeds were yanked, flowers dead-headed. Wisteria and honeysuckle, both notorious for sending out tendrils to twine around and choke out other plants, had been clipped into cooperation.
He stepped into the center of the glade and shifted.
As his serpent, he sent out the thought:No harm will come to you from me.
A high chittering rose in the mental realm, mostly concerned. Wary. But at least not fearful. He’d have to earn their trust, too. He shifted back, and considered what he had discovered. These were squirrels, and yet not squirrels. Their arms were longer, and they had opposable thumbs, which of course would be needed for such complicated construction.
A mystery, but not a new one. This garden had been there when his mother bought the property. Solving it could wait.
Right now, his most urgent task was Wendy’s house! When he’d offered to teach Sam to make birdhouses, she had given him the keys, and the green-light to fix whatever he found wrong. Now, especially after the sweetness of last night, he wanted to explore that house, where she had lived, in hopes of gaining clues about Wendy, and through understanding, find ways to bring that incandescent smile of hers out more often.
He swallowed down the last of the coffee, ignoring how hot it was, stepped outside, and shifted so he could fly down to the house the faster.
He’d tucked the keys into his lockbox, which was inside the larger metal tool cabinet that usually rode in the back of his truck. He let himself into the house, and stood, looking around in the dim light. The air was dusty and still, smelling a little of brine, and cleaning fluid. Obviously Wendy came through every so often and scrubbed it down.
The kitchen was tiny, and badly designed, as were kitchens in so many beach houses. Godiva had once snarked to him that they’d all been built by men who only ate in kitchens, didn’t work in them. Most of the space was taken up by the very old and cumbersome washer and dryer. The space was further damaged by a huge gouge in the cupboard space below the tiny counter. At a guess, someone had tried to force a dishwasher in there, without paying any attention to structural integrity. Then had abandoned the job. Against the inside wall, there were still splinters lying about, and small piles of wood shavings. Invitation to termites.
Why would someone try to force a mega-sized dishwasher into that space? He suspected he knew the answer. He’d seen real estate come-ons, claiming that the kitchen had “all modern amenities” so as to boot the price thousands of dollars upward. He strongly suspected he was seeing the hand of Wendy’s ex in that bad decision, but the real sour cherry on the suck sundae was the hack carpentry job. It looked like it had been done by someone who had never used a hammer before, except to smash things. Whereas, just pushing out the back porch wall would make room for more kitchen space, and not only fit in a dishwasher, but a washer and dryer as well . . .
The rest of the windows could wait. This mess needed tending right away.
But first he walked through the rest of the house. Not that that took long. It was a typical square: two small bedrooms on either side of a small bathroom, behind the kitchen and the front room. The few pieces of furniture were all old, battered wood, at a guess pine, the paint chipped at the corners, and worn from years of scrubbing. Pink in the bedroom with the single bed frame, white in the room with the double bed frame. The closets were equally tiny.
He peered out through the small back windows of the bedrooms into a neglected yard full of sand drifts and tufts of tough grass. Then he returned to the kitchen, and spotted a square in the ceiling. Hoisting himself onto the counter, he opened the trapdoor and glanced around the attic, illuminated by gaps in the roof tiles. A slant of sun was dazzling, catching on floating dust motes. Under the steeply slanting roof, the attic space was nearly as large as the first floor. With a gable window set in on each of the four sides, it would be easy to get another room up there, a den, and a more spacious bathroom…
NEST, the lion said, with immense satisfaction.
“Hold your horses, pal. Though you’ve got a point. Getting a little ahead of myself, eh?”
This was Wendy’s house. She’d had a bellyful of being told what to do, even what she was supposed to like. “First things first: we’ll get that counter put back together, and finish the windows as promised, and let Wendy decide about the rest.”
The serpent clearly wanted to surprise their mate, just like he’d wanted to propose five minutes after seeing Wendy in that chicken suit. He did not actually sniff, but Alejo detected the essence of a miffed snort before his serpent sank down rather pointedly.
Alejo laughed, paced back to the kitchen, and began taking measurements so he could restore that counter. Before hauling in his tools, he opened the tiny, warped windows wide to let in the sea breeze. By the time he’d cut his wood, the house had aired out nicely.
He ripped out the rest of the ruined wood and began with solid framework. Halfway through the job, he sensed a flicker at the edge of his vision and glanced up. There was Squeak, sitting on the windowsill, big round eyes bright. Alejo’s gaze went from Squeak’s face to the squirrel’s hands—holding a bunch of roofing nails.
Squeak laid the nails on the windowsill, nose twitching.
Alejo smothered a laugh. With no idea whether or not he was understood, he said slowly, “Thank you, Squeak. That was thoughtful. But there’s a difference between roofing nails and framing nails, which is what I’m using right now.”
He fished in the jar he always carried, and held up one of each type of nail. Squeak’s big, round eyes twitched, then pop! Squeak was gone.
Alejo turned back the job, fitted another plank into place, hammered it tight—and when he looked up, there was Squeak, this time holding framing nails from the slide-out drawer in Alejo’s tool case.
Alejo had his jar of nails, but he took the ones the squirrel offered, and then he began explaining the job in a slow, friendly voice. It was the same way he’d teach Sam, if the boy were there. When he went back out to cut a couple more pieces of wood, he found Rocky perched beside the tool case, all the screwdrivers having been pulled from their rack and laid out carefully side by side. Rocky held a tire pressure reader and a replacement tip for the glue gun in each hand. When he saw Alejo, pop! He was gone. With the tools.
Then Ratty—or a rat—ran up, filched some washers from the glass jar where Alejo kept them, and pop! He, too, was gone. Theft? Or trade? Rather than risk losing a set of tools to teleporting critters, Alejo replaced all the screwdrivers, lidded the jars and put those away, then closed his tool case, moments before Sam came running down the last of the path.
“I’m here,” Sam piped. “What can I make today?”
“I need some help explaining to your friends the difference between helping and borrowing my tools and supplies,” Alejo said.
Sam’s face lengthened in worry, as if he were in trouble.
“It’s okay, Sam,” Alejo said. “All I’m missing are a few small things. I think your friends don’t quite have the idea here, and they might need your help in understanding. Ah, there’s Squeak.”
