Etched in Bone Read online

  Vlad’s voice. Soothing, almost seductive, asking about details. Any rings on the hand? Color of skin? Could she see the color of the clothes in the moonlight?

  She answered his questions. She didn’t smell lusty like she did when she cut herself and then spoke prophecy, but her voice had the same dreamlike quality it had during those times.

  Meg closed her eyes and sagged against Henry. Then she opened her eyes, blinked at all of them, and said, “Is there any water? I’m thirsty.”

  Simon handed her the glass of water. She drank it all.

  “Still thirsty.” She unfolded her body and stood up.

  Before Simon could stop her, Jester hopped up and said, “I’ll help you find the water.” He made it sound like they needed to find a stream in the dark rather than turn on a faucet—and Meg didn’t say a thing to indicate she saw anything odd about that.

  Simon waited until he heard Meg and Jester talking in the kitchen. Then he looked at the others in the room. “Do you think she’s sick?”

  Vlad came around to the front side of the sofa. “No, not sick exactly.”

  “Humans walk in their sleep,” Tess said. “They talk to people, do things around the house, even leave their homes and have no memory of it in the morning.”

  “She hasn’t done that before,” Simon said.

  “She’s had upsetting dreams before, but this was different, and it’s something Emily Faire needs to know about,” Vlad said. “It may be an indication of something wrong—or something right. The Intuits don’t hurt themselves in order to have the feelings that tell them if something is wrong. Maybe the cassandra sangue didn’t cut themselves in the beginning. Maybe they had dreamed about the future and discovered by accident that the cutting gave them control of the time and place to see the visions.”

  “Control of time and place and the euphoria that clouded their minds and prevented them from seeing things that might terrify a young mind to the breaking point,” Tess said.

  Simon nodded. “She needs to see the human bodywalker.”

  “Maybe our Meg should spend a few days on Great Island,” Henry said. “Merri Lee could go with her. Steve Ferryman and Ming Beargard would watch over them.”

  Tess had managed to control her emotions while Meg had looked into her eyes, but now her hair had broad streaks of red and was starting to coil as she focused on the Grizzly. “Why? That would be upsetting.”

  “Yes,” Henry agreed. “But she would be out of reach of potential enemies.”

  Hearing Henry’s words made Simon feel cold, but he understood. “Meg’s vision at night is no better than any other human’s,” he told Tess. “She was outside and it was dark, but she could still see well enough to describe what was around her.”

  “You’re applying waking logic to a dream, which had prophecy cards the size of trees,” Tess argued. “What does her being able to see in a dream have to do with sending her to Great Island?”

  “Vlad kept asking her what she’d seen in the moonlight. She didn’t correct him, didn’t say she had a flashlight or there was a campfire that allowed her to see in the woods at night.”

  Threads of black mingled with the red streaks in Tess’s hair. “Meg would need sufficient moonlight to see in the dark, and next week is the full moon.”

  • • •

  Meg stared at the glass in her hand. She stared at the clock. She stared at the Coyote.

  “Jester? Why are you in my kitchen at this time of night?”

  “You should ask me why I’m here at this time of the morning since we’re close enough to dawn.” He studied her. “Are you awake now?”

  Why did everyone keep asking her that? Then she remembered.

  Dream. Vision. Something in between. This had happened a couple of times since she arrived in the Courtyard. The first time, she thought she was driving the BOW at night and Sam wouldn’t stop howling. But she and Sam had been out making deliveries in daylight—and he hadn’t been howling yet. Then there was the dream of making a cut and seeing prophecy. She recognized the trigger when it came in the real world, and her actions had saved Simon and the rest of the Wolves in the Courtyard.

  This was another personal vision, warning her of something approaching in her own life.

  Which didn’t explain the Coyote being in her kitchen at that hour.

  “Why are we in the kitchen?” she asked.

  “You were thirsty and wanted water. I came with you to help you find it,” Jester replied.

  Meg looked at the sink. “I think I can find the faucet by myself.”

  “If you’re looking for a faucet instead of a stream, you must be awake now.”

  Why would she look for a stream? That didn’t make any sense—and that wasn’t the only thing that didn’t make sense. “Did Simon hit me with a goose?”

  Jester laughed. “He whacked you with a pillow. But some of the pillows are stuffed with down, so I can see how you might confuse the two.”

  Meg heard a rumbling voice coming from the living room. She knew that voice, but she asked, “Who else is here?”

  “Henry, Tess, and Vlad.”

  She sighed. “I guess it was a loud dream.”

  “That’s the most entertaining kind, even if we’ll all need a nap because of it.”

  He sounded cheerful. She should worry about that. Instead she drank the water and set the glass beside the sink. “I’m going back to bed until it’s daylight.”

  “You should pee first. You drank a lot of water, even if you don’t remember doing it.”

  Since her bladder suddenly agreed with him, she followed Jester’s advice. And she admitted to herself that it was a wee bit cowardly to sneak back to her bedroom and not say anything to the friends who were still talking in her living room.

  • • •

  Jester stepped into the living room and gave everyone a gleeful smile. “Now that we’re all awake, Meg has gone back to bed.”

  Simon looked out the window. “Why? It’s almost time to get up anyway.”

  Jester shrugged. “Human time makes less sense than ours.”

  “Nothing we can do right now,” Vlad said. “We’ve been warned that danger is coming, and we know the result when it strikes.”

  “But not the danger itself,” Henry rumbled before looking at Simon. “You’ll talk to Meg about spending a few days on Great Island?”

  “There are woods on the island,” Simon said.

  “But there wouldn’t be a body hidden under leaves,” Tess said. “The Intuits would have a feeling about something like that, and the terra indigene would have found it by now.”

  Simon rubbed his forehead. “It might not happen during next week’s full moon. It could happen a month from now.”

  “Not likely,” Henry said. “These days, our Meg’s visions are more often about the immediate future.”

  “Talk to her, Simon,” Vlad said. “Talk to Blair and Nathan so they’ll be on the lookout for trouble in the evenings. I’ll talk to Grandfather Erebus and Nyx.”

  Jester slipped out of Meg’s apartment and stopped at his own place just long enough to remove the jeans he’d pulled on when the commotion started. Then he shifted to his Coyote form and ran to make his own report to the girls at the lake.

  • • •

  Jimmy left the apartment and walked to the nearest bus stop on Main Street to catch one of the early-morning buses. There were things he needed to find, calls he needed to make, and he couldn’t do that from the apartment. For one thing, there was no phone in the place. You would think the freaks could put in a phone, even if it was a pay phone in the small, piece-of-shit entryway. But no. Either you used a mobile phone, which you paid for, or you had a landline connected at your own expense.

  He’d bet his shoes that Sissy and Mama hadn’t paid to have a phone in their places.


  Didn’t matter. Despite what he’d told Sandee, he did have a mobile phone, which he would ditch as soon as his plans were made.

  More annoying today was the lack of a phone book in the apartment. The last tenants must have taken the thing. Which meant he needed to find a coffee shop or diner that had a phone book he could look at while he had breakfast.

  The bus pulled up to the stop, and the people going to work downtown piled in. Some smiled at people already on the bus and sat next to them. Coworkers maybe. Others found an empty pair of seats and claimed both, daring other passengers to ask them to move their daypack or carry sack. Jimmy was big enough and looked rough enough that he didn’t need a daypack to claim extra room. He just looked at a person eyeing the seat. That was usually enough to convince them that standing was good exercise.

  The bus pulled away from the stop, and Jimmy began to relax.

  He’d spent most of the night thinking it through, considering the plan step by step. Easier to reestablish himself in Toland or Hubbney, but those would be the first places CJ and the other cops would check. So it had to be somewhere new, someplace large enough for him to disappear. Shikago. Yeah, he’d start his new life in Shikago, give himself time to learn how to use his new asset and acquire enough money to grease the necessary palms to travel anywhere he wanted in Thaisia. Then he would set himself up on the West Coast and become a behind-the-scenes big shot.

  Asset. Yeah, he liked that word. Made him sound like a businessman. He should invest in a suit and a couple of dress shirts. That would attract better customers than the lowlifes he used to deal with. His asset would help him find the right people, the ones who could pay his fees.

  She could, and would, help him with a lot of things once she understood who was in charge.

  CHAPTER 22

  Thaisday, Messis 23

  Jimmy spent the morning selecting the things he would need, always aware that the best chance he had of succeeding was today at the start of the midday break. The cops and the Others wouldn’t expect him to make a move so soon after those men screwed up the theft of a few pounds of meat. They wouldn’t be ready for anyone to do something bold.

  There were places around the bus depot and train station where a person could rent a car for a few days, but even the places that rented junkers wanted things like an address and payment made through a bank card or a cash deposit that covered the full cost of the time the car would be used. A nice car would be better—less chance of breaking down considering how far he was driving—but a junker wouldn’t be reported stolen if it was an hour late being returned.

  Not finding the right balance of reliable and nondescript, Jimmy took a taxi up to the university area, not wanting to waste time waiting for the next bus. The bookstore near the campus had maps of all the regions. He bought maps for the Northeast, High Northeast, and Southeast—the three regions within reach if you were flexible about where you crossed a regional border. There were bound to be operators of small boats plying their various trades along the coastline, hauling in fish and dropping off a passenger or two on the other side of an arbitrary line.

  A backup plan in case he decided heading for Shikago wasn’t his best move.

  The salesperson mentioned a couple of times that the maps weren’t totally accurate anymore—some places that were listed didn’t exist now or were no longer under human control. Could be hard to find gas if you left the toll road with its rest stops that were kept supplied with fuel. And you needed to figure out where to stop once the daylight began to fade. Couldn’t risk driving on any road after dark, especially the ones running through the wild country, and hotels and motels that were built conveniently close to the toll road tended to fill up fast.

  Jimmy smiled at the girl and thanked her for her help, doing what CJ would have done. He explained that the maps were a hobby—he just liked studying places—but he did have business on Great Island and didn’t want to hire a taxi for a day. Did she have any suggestions?

  He expected her to haul out a phone book and direct him to the rental places he already knew about. Instead, she pointed to the store’s large vestibule, where a bulletin board was conveniently located next to the pay phone. University students sometimes rented out their cars for a day to help with the costs of owning a car. Usually they rented to other students, but he seemed like a nice guy and a day trip to Great Island at this time of year wouldn’t put wear and tear on a car. He could check out the cars that were available today.

  He thanked her again and went out to look at the notices tacked to the bulletin board. He found a few cars that sounded like they would be suitable—new enough that he wouldn’t need to worry about breaking down in the wild country but not so new that they would attract the attention of cops.

  The first two numbers he called didn’t pan out. The cars were already rented for the day. But the third car was still available and the guy who owned it lived a few blocks from the bookstore.

  Jimmy walked to the address he’d been given, and within minutes he’d handed a hundred dollars to a scruffy-looking young man, had confirmed that the registration and insurance card were in the glove box, and promised to replace whatever fuel he used before returning the car that evening.

  He drove carefully, partly to reassure the fool who had just handed over a vehicle to a complete stranger and partly to avoid being pulled over for something stupid. Spotting a coffee shop, he parked and went in to study the maps.

  He wanted to stay in the Northeast Region for the first stage of this new venture, so he needed to head south or east. Only one road out of Lakeside headed south besides the toll road, but that one road branched out like fingers spreading from a hand. The “thumb” continued south, following Lake Etu until it angled west toward Shikago. The “fingers” branched out, some heading toward the Southeast Region while the rest headed east toward the Finger Lakes. He could make it look like he was heading to Shikago—a destination CJ would expect him to choose—then take one of those branches heading toward the Finger Lakes, changing direction whenever two routes intersected in some town, always heading east, toward the coast. He would put enough distance between himself and Lakeside that CJ wouldn’t have a clue where to start looking. And since he wasn’t using a car from a rental place, the cops couldn’t track him that way.

  Jimmy folded up the maps, finished his coffee, and left the coffee shop smiling. Once he had the asset away from Lakeside, he would know which roads to use to elude the cops and the freaks.

  He drove back to the neighborhood around the Courtyard. Time to put the last part of his plan into motion.

  • • •

  “Playdate?”

  Setting aside the book order he was trying to fill for one of the terra indigene settlements, Simon glanced at Vlad, who shrugged. Then he focused on Eve Denby, who had combined ordinary words in a way that made no sense. “Humans designate a time for puppies to play?”

  No wonder humans were all a bit peculiar. Puppies played. A lot. That’s how they learned much of what they needed to know about the world. They played with puppies their own age. They played with juveniles. They played with adults. They played with sticks and pinecones and just about anything they could pick up that interested them.

  “Robert and Sam want to play a board game,” Eve said. “A game played on a board.” Using two fingers, she traced a square on the counter.

  “We know about board games,” Simon grumbled. Okay, so the terra indigene might not play the game according to the rules printed on the box or in a way humans would understand, but they had some of those games shelved in their various social rooms.

  “Well, this game has small pieces that could be lost if the boys play it in the Courtyard,” Eve said. “I don’t want some youngster spotting a game piece in the grass, thinking it was edible, and choking on it. The boys will be playing on the porch, have already been told there will be dire penalties if they take so m
uch as a step off the porch without supervision.” She placed her hands on the counter and leaned toward Simon. “And if they don’t stop pestering me about this so that I don’t have an hour’s peace to get some work done, I am going to get cranky and bite somebody.”

  Her eyes held a feral quality that made him think it wasn’t the puppies who would get bitten.

  Simon breathed in her scent and thought she might be in season. That would explain the snappishness, especially if she was one of those females who gave the “come here, come here, come here” signals one moment, then wanted to bite off her mate’s face the next.

  Should he warn Pete Denby? Then again, the man had been mated to Eve enough years to recognize the warning signs.

  “Sam . . .” He stopped. Let Sam go out among the humans alone? “Sam has never been out of the Courtyard. My sister was pregnant when she arrived in Lakeside. He’s never . . .”

  Sympathy in Eve’s eyes now and in her smile. “It’s hard, isn’t it, letting them take those first steps away from you? It’s been just as hard for me letting Robert cross the street and play inside the Courtyard with Sam and the other young Wolves.”

  Considering the results of mixing human and Wolf curiosity, innocence, and boy boldness, he couldn’t say the terra indigene adults had kept Robert and Sam out of trouble; they’d just put a stop to things before trouble became dangerous.

  Of course, after dealing with a boy who had learned why you don’t tease a skunk—a smelly but useful lesson—Eve might not share a Wolf’s scale of “okay to dangerous” when it came to learning experiences.

  “I’ll escort them across the street,” Eve said. “You can watch from the window right here. If they disobey and I don’t get to them first, feel free to come over and bite them. Better yet, send Nathan. I’m not sure Robert believes you’ll bite him, but he is sure that Nathan will.”