With that done, she wasn’tsafeexactly, but at least she could decide when and where the truth about her past would come out.
She put on her sleep shirt and crawled into the sleeping bag, feeling even more lonely than before.
One thing she knew for sure.
Now that she knew she was in a town full of shifters, she absolutely could not let them find her.
BAZ
Baz bounced awake with a bright,fresh sense of purpose. He had bedded down on the floor of the old store in his sleeping bag, and sunlight shining through the windows brought him awake at an early hour. He got up, stretched, and went outside to see what the town was like in the morning light.
He wasn’t the only one up. Once outside, he heard the sound of hammering from down the street. It sounded like either Lexie or Declan were hard at work fixing something.
The whole town was going to need a massive amount of repair. He didn’t think he’d realized what a huge job they were signing up for. It was going to be impossible to fix every building in town. Some were too badly damaged to save; others needed work that would require equipment they didn’t have.
And then there were the wild shifter clans. Somehow it hadn’t even occurred to him that theywouldhave strong opinions on people moving into the town. It was clear that no one else had thought of it either, including their parents when the land-purchase deal had originally been made. Technically, the town wasn’t on shifter land; therefore it shouldn’t have been a problem. Clearly the forest shifters disagreed.
Listening to the hammer blows ringing through the clear morning air, Baz wondered whether he ought to stop the others from doing any further work until he was able to speak to the forest clans more formally. He discarded the idea reluctantly, because there was nothing else for them to do—just sit around and wait? None of their repairs at the present time were making too much of an irreparable change to the town.
Uncle Alec probably could talk to the wild clans on their behalf. Baz knew that his uncle, the Pinerock clan alpha, had regular dealings with them. But no—the whole reason for coming out here was to establish themselves as an independent clan, as independentadults. They couldn’t rely on their parents to solve every problem for them.
For all the wary caution of the wild shifter they had talked to last night, he felt optimistic about the potential of the town to serve as a bridge between the wild clans and the human world.
They just needed to prove that they could do it—to the wild bear shiftersandto their families.
“Baz! Hey!” Lexie appeared, wearing a toolbelt. Her hair was wet from a wash and twisted into a single braid, looking like it had been finger-combed. “Can you come help me move some stuff? I’m shifter-strong—” She flexed, making a muscle. “But this stuff is heavy.”
Baz soon found out that by “heavy” she meant “actual anvil.”
“Are you keeping this?” he asked as they dragged the anvil from the center of the old smithy’s floor, where it had occupied pride of place, to one side.
“Of course I am! I’m planning to repair vehicles in here. But I don’t see any reason not to learn blacksmithing as well. I already know some of the basic principles. Remember when I made a knife out of a leaf spring as a present for Uncle Gannon in shop class? If we’re going to be dealing with the wild clans, it’s not likethey’ll have much use for a mechanic, but they might really need a blacksmith.”
Baz imagined his cousin with the sleeves of her plaid shirt pushed up and smudges of soot on her face, banging a knife blade on an anvil. Yeah, that was a picture he could easily see.
“Do you think the wild clans are going to drive us out?” Lexie asked more quietly, as he helped her relocate some crates that felt like they were full of lead—and probably did contain some kind of metal; they clanked when they moved.
“We’ll be all right.” Reluctantly, he added, “If we need to, we can go back to your dad and Uncle Alec, and have them carry on the negotiations on our behalf. They respect Uncle Alec a lot.”
Lexie had a sour look on her face that reflected his own thoughts. “I don’t know about you, but as much as I love Mom and Dad, I really don’t want to go back and tell them we couldn’t hack it.”
“I know. Especially since it took us all of a day to get into trouble,” Baz sighed. Together, they dropped a clanking, rattling crate on top of another. “What the heck is in here, anyway? I know the silver mine is completely tapped out, but do you suppose there might be some silver left in town?”
“Let’s find out,” Lexie said. She pried open the top.
The crate was full of rusty nails.
Lexie laughed. Baz ruefully picked up a handful of his “treasure.” Most of them were bent. “So much for that. Think these will be any good at all for our repairs?”
“I bet we could get some use out of them somewhere.” Lexie took a handful, examining them. “I can go through these and sort out the ones that are in good shape. Oh, would you look at this? At least some of these are authentic handmade nails.”
“Are they rare?”
“I mean, not really, but you don’t see them around much anymore.” Lexie scooped out a few more. “I think some of these might have been made on this actual anvil.”
Treasure after all, perhaps. At least for her. Baz grinned and wandered off as she continued to enthuse over a crate of nails.
By midday,Baz had the generator set up over at Lexie’s machine shop so they could run an air compressor and use power tools. Everyone in the group had experience with construction projects, as they’d all helped out on their family ranches. Fern was less experienced than the others, and Maida—had she been here—barely knew one end of a hammer from the other. But Baz, Lexie, and Declan could all easily handle basic repairs.
