The first one was something I hadn’t been expecting, although I probably should have been. A man shouldered his way to the front of the crowd and demanded, “Well, how do we know if we’ve been exposed? Cooper helped with dinner the other night! Maybe he put something in the soup!”
The people around him erupted in anxious mutters. I put my hands up, waiting for silence. Inch by slow inch, it fell. I lowered my hands.
“Lycanthropy is spread via fluid transfer,” I said. “You can’t catch it from a toilet seat or by sharing a glass. It can’t be cooked into food without denaturing the virus and making it ineffective.” Technically, Cooper could have drooled or bled into something cool, like salad dressing, but even then, there would only have been a risk if the people who consumed his “specialty dishes” had had open sores or wounds in their mouths, throats, or stomachs. The odds of an infection via that route were perishingly small, and I decided quickly that it was better not to mention them at all. I was already struggling not to start a panic.
Shelby stepped up next to me. The crowd, which had been starting to mutter again, calmed, looking to her with a degree of trust that they would never show to me. I was an unknown quantity. She was the daughter of their current leaders, the heir apparent, and even if she’d been away for a long time, she was still someone they knew had their best interests at heart.
“We have a test for lycanthropy,” she said. “It doesn’t require bleeding, which is good, since we’ve seen enough blood shed in the last few days, yeah? It just needs you to come over here and let the talking mice get a whiff. If they say you’re clean, you’re clean. If they say you’re not, well. We have plenty of space in the quarantine house,” she nodded over her shoulder to the building behind us, “and we’ll be offering the best possible care. We want to help you get better.”
There was no “getting better” for someone who’d been infected long enough to have experienced their first transformation. The body the new-minted werewolf returned to was no longer fully human, having grown the necessary circulatory backups and additional nerves to survive repeated changes. There was no point in going into any of that under the circumstances. We wanted anyone who had been infected—or suspected they might have been—to come to us willingly, not turn and bolt for the hills.
“Why do we trust a bunch of talking mice?” shouted someone.
To my surprise, it was Gabby who stepped forward and said hotly, “Because they’re Aeslin mice, and Aeslin mice can’t lie! Unlike you, Patrick Hester. Don’t think we’ve forgotten about you trying to catch that drop bear last year.” The target of her rage was a large, towheaded man. The people around him stepped away, creating a bubble of open space that was extremely visible in the middle of the otherwise packed crowd. “You were going to sell that poor thing to a private collector, and for what? A little money? You should be ashamed of yourself. We trust the talking mice because they’re talking mice, just like we mistrust you because you’re an arsehole.”
“That’s my sister,” said Shelby, looking amused.
Raina didn’t look so amused. “That’s not right,” she said. She reached forward, putting a hand on Gabby’s shoulder. “Hey. I’m the angry one, remember? Dial it back a little, we need to keep these people on our side.”
Gabby’s head whipped around so fast I heard the bones in her neck crack. She bared her teeth at Raina in a human parody of a dog’s snarl. Raina’s eyes widened and she took a step back, almost colliding with me. Jett matched her motion, ears going flat.
“Gabrielle?” said Charlotte. “Honey, what’s the matter?”
Bit by bit, Gabby’s snarl faded into a look of wide-eyed dismay. Then, before any of us could gather our wits enough to react, she turned and flung herself from the porch, shoving through the crowd as she fled toward the woods.
“Gabby!” Charlotte jumped after her middle daughter, giving chase. I had to give her this: she was in her late forties at the very least, she was a mother three times over, and based on the speed with which she pursued her fleeing child, I would have been happy to have her represent me in a triathlon. The crowd, which had parted somewhat to let Gabby through, closed again around Charlotte, not to protect the fleeing girl, but because they were all starting to demand answers at once.
Shelby was standing frozen, a horrified expression on her face. I turned toward her, and said the words I most wanted to avoid:
“She’s been exposed.” They were cold, cruel words, and they fell hard into the space between us, seeming to create a chasm that could never be bridged. “The temper, the physiological response—it’s the only thing that fits.”
“She’s my sister,” snapped Shelby.
“That doesn’t make her immune.” It hadn’t made her father immune. It hadn’t made me immune. All any of us could do was roll the dice and take our chances.
“I know where she’s going.”
Shelby and I both turned to Raina. She was still standing where she’d been when Gabby ran, Jett pressed against her legs like the small black dog thought that her new mistress was the only remaining source of safety in a world that had suddenly turned confusing and cruel.
“What’s that?” asked Shelby.
“I don’t think she’s working with Cooper—not voluntarily—and I know where she’s going. The same place she’s always gone when she was scared.” Raina’s expression went hard as she focused on me. “I can take you there, but you have to promise you won’t hurt her.”
“I don’t know if I can promise that,” I said, tracking Charlotte’s progress—or lack thereof—through the crowd. Gabby was gone, leaving nothing but confusion and shouting in her wake. “If she attacks one of us, I’ll have to react accordingly. But I can at least try to make sure she isn’t hurt.”
“If you can’t promise, I can’t take you,” said Raina stubbornly.
Shelby sighed. “And when Mum gets back here? Do you put the same requirement on for her? If Gabby’s been infected, we’re going to need to deal with it, one way or another. If we go now, maybe we can talk her down before Mum makes things worse. She means well, you know she does, but . . .”
“But she’ll pick and pick and agitate the situation.” Raina shook her head. “This is such a mess,” she practically moaned. “I should have seen it. She’s my sister. I should have seen it.”
“We promise,” I said, before the conversation could continue. I lifted the mice down from my shoulder, setting them on the porch railing. They looked up at me with wide, trusting eyes. “When Charlotte comes back, help her,” I instructed. “Let her take you around to sniff out the infection. All right? She is the mother of your newest Priestess. Until I return, obey her as you would my mother. Understand?”
“It Shall Be So!” squeaked one of the mice, while the others shivered in religious ecstasy.
We could deal with the issue of whether I had just deputized Charlotte Tanner as an official Mouse Priestess later. I turned to Raina. “Please,” I said. “Take us to your sister.”
Raina nodded, eyes bright with the tears she wasn’t allowing herself to shed. Then she turned and bolted back into the house, leaving Shelby and me to follow her or be left behind. Jett ran at her heels, ears folded flat against her head and long canine legs eating up the distance with ease.
We ran through the front room and down the hall, until we came to a small, boxy kitchen that hadn’t been included on my earlier tour of the house. There was a door on the far wall, half-blocked with boxes and kitchen detritus. Raina tore into the barricade like a wild thing, raining down cardboard and boxed pasta on Shelby and me, until she wrenched the door open and flung herself through it in turn, vanishing down the back porch steps. Shelby and I exchanged a look before we pursued. We had already come far enough that turning back seemed impossible.
Trees loomed up on the other side of a narrow strip of uncultivated lawn that was half wildflowers and half
snarled scrub that snatched at our feet and ankles as we ran. I didn’t recognize any of it, and I didn’t remember enough about the local flora to know if we were charging straight into the Australian equivalent of poison sumac.
If that was the case, the Tanners would no doubt have the Australian equivalent of calamine lotion in their medicine cupboard. I kept running.
Eucalyptus forests are not like evergreen forests in any but the most general of senses. We ran until we could no longer see anything but trees in any direction. The space between trunks remained broad enough to feel like something out of a Hollywood film. It was like we were running through a soundstage, and not an actual wood, and that only made me more uneasy.
“This is ridiculous,” muttered Shelby. She put on a burst of speed, grabbing Raina by her elbow before the younger Tanner girl could vanish into yet another thick copse of trees. “Stop! Raina, just stop, all right?”
Raina stumbled to a halt, turning to glare mulishly at her sister. “You said you wanted to help me. You said.”
“Yes, and we even ran off half-cocked to do it, but where are we even going? We’re in the middle of nowhere, and there are werewolves on the loose!” Shelby let go of Raina’s elbow. “This isn’t a good place to be without a plan.”
Jett leaned against Raina’s leg and whined. I looked at the dog, a sudden, horrible thought occurring to me. She had been with Cooper when I first met her. Who was to say that the sweet little black canine wasn’t a werewolf in waiting?
Bringing it up now wouldn’t do any good. I made a mental note to have Jett checked for lycanthropy as soon as we got back to the mice.
“I have a plan,” insisted Raina. “We’re going to find Gabby and make her come home. That’s the plan. We’re going to fix her.”
Shelby cast me a sidelong look. I shook my head. I was staying out of this one for as long as possible. Having two younger sisters of my own has left me well-equipped to know when to shut my mouth.
Sighing, Shelby turned back to Raina. “And when we all come crashing through the brush and scare the life out of her, how’s that going to help her? We need to have a real plan. I need to know where you’re taking us.”
Raina frowned. “You have been away too long,” she said. “Dad said you’d gone native on us, but I thought if I dragged you out here, you’d catch on and snap back to being normal. Gabby needs you, Shelly. She needs you to be on top of your game and looking at things like a Tanner, not like some pretty Covenant trophy wife.”
Shelby slapped her.
The noise echoed through the eucalyptus trees. Somewhere above and to the right, a bird screeched, and then everything was silent. Raina stared at her sister, slowly raising a hand to touch her reddening cheek.
“You hit me,” she said.
“You don’t call me a trophy wife,” said Shelby. “You know better than that. Our mother raised you better than that. Now where are we going?”
“You hit me in front of him.” Raina dropped her hand. “I don’t know you anymore.”
Shelby audibly groaned. “Don’t. Just don’t. This isn’t a soap opera, no matter how much it may look like one, and we don’t have time to piss around out here. Gabby’s in trouble. She needs us. And I need to know where you’re taking me. Alex is already hurt.”
“Alex is also the only one here with silver bullets,” I said. This earned me a glare from both sisters. I paused, reviewed the statement, and amended, “I’m not intending to harm Gabby in any way unless she presents a clear and immediate threat to one of our lives. In that case, yes, I will shoot; being your sister doesn’t mean she gets a free pass to murder either one of you. But we don’t know if she’s alone. Cooper may have told her there was a cure, and said he would provide it if she’d just go along with whatever it was he told her to do. If he’s here, then yes, I’m going to do my best to at least incapacitate him. We need to know how many werewolves we’re dealing with.”
“If you shoot my sister, I’ll scalp you,” said Raina, with the utmost civility. She looked back to Shelby and said, “She’s gone to the old playhouse.”
Shelby’s eyes widened. “Oh, lord. Right, Alex, come on: we’re running again.” Then she took off, and Raina took off with her, leaving me to try to catch up with them—and leaving any questions I might have about the nature of the “old playhouse” blithely unanswered. The Tanner sisters knew the score. I was just the man who got to trust that they weren’t going to get us all killed.
The trees grew larger and closer together as we ran, and other things began to appear alongside the eucalyptus. Twisting-trunked trees with glossy brown bark and broad green leaves; smaller, scrubby trees that looked almost like a form of evergreen. Still we ran, until the trees opened up around us and we were standing on the verge of a large, green-surfaced pond that stretched away into the distance, canopied by more trees I didn’t recognize. There was a small dock near where we were standing, but there was no boat there; no, the boat was anchored some twenty yards from shore, at the base of a particularly large and impressive barrel-shaped tree. In the tree was a fort-like construction which looked like it was made mostly of plywood. I stared.
“Oh,” I said finally.
“She’s taken the boat,” said Shelby. “How are we supposed to get to her if she’s taken the boat? I’m not swimming in that water; it has things in it.”
“Things?” I asked. I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer.
“Eels,” said Shelby. “Turtles. Sometimes really big snakes, although not as many as you’d think, on account of the bunyip around here eating them.”
“You built a playhouse in bunyip territory?” I couldn’t stop myself from squeaking slightly. Both Raina and Shelby turned to blink at me.
Finally, Raina said, “Where else would you suggest we build a playhouse? New Zealand? Everywhere is bunyip territory, except for maybe the middle of Sydney, and that’s because even the bunyip don’t want to deal with the fucking funnelweb spiders. Those nasty bastards will kill you as soon as look at you.”
“. . . right,” I said. “I’m sorry, for five seconds, I forgot we were in an unholy murder paradise. What do you suggest we do if we don’t have a boat and the water is full of ‘things’?”
“We ask the things.” Shelby cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, “Hey! Basil! Hey! I know you’re out there! Gabby’s gone and snitched the boat again! Come on, you lazy bastard, haul your ass out of the substrate and come help us out!”
Her call echoed over the swamp. I frowned at her, then at the playhouse. Nothing moved. If Gabby was there, she had to hear her sister shouting, but it wasn’t drawing a visible reaction from her. I didn’t know whether or not I should be regarding that as a good thing. Under the circumstances, I was no longer sure how I should be regarding much of anything.
“He’s not going to come out,” said Raina. “He hasn’t been answering us lately.”
“Did you keep bringing him Tim Tams and Doctor Who Magazine?” asked Shelby.
“No,” said Raina. She pushed her lower lip out in a pout. “Dad cut my allowance when I refused to go on survey for those blasted manticores that you were supposed to be helping us get rid of. Like I should go and get myself stung to death because you couldn’t be bothered to come back and do your job? I had to make cuts in the budget.”
“So you cut Basil’s Tim Tams? Oh, real smart, Raina, real smart.” Shelby turned back to the swamp, taking a deep breath. She cupped her hands around her mouth, and shouted, “I brought Raina and I will let you hit her with an eel if you’ll come out and help us get the boat!”
“I want my Tim Tams,” said a sullen voice from what looked like an undifferentiated patch of swamp. Then, with no further fanfare, the swamp . . . stood up. What I had taken for floating water weeds became hair; an upturned branch became an impressively pointed nose, and the rest became a tall, stocky, aggressively male human
oid wearing nothing but whatever had happened to adhere to his olive green skin while he was submerged. He scowled at the three of us and Jett, scratching one muddy buttock with his left hand. “Who’s the fellow? And the dog?”
“Basil, meet Alex Price, my fiancé. Please do not drown him, bury him in mud, or attempt to feed him live frogs because you think it’s funny when humans scrunch their faces up. Alex, meet Basil, our local yowie. The dog is Jett, she belongs to Raina.” Shelby gestured between us violently. “There, now you’ve met. Basil, will you please go get the boat? Raina and I need to talk to Gabby.”
“Hi, Basil,” said Raina.
“Fuck off, Raina,” said Basil. He stabbed a finger in my direction. “How come I get told all the things I can’t do to him, but he doesn’t get told what he can’t do to me? You’re favoring the humans again.”
“Well, yes, I am,” said Shelby. “I generally do. As to why Alex doesn’t get a list of thou shalt nots, it’s because he’s a gentleman, and he knows that it’s rude to attack your new friends. You’ve never shown that sort of civility. If you start, maybe I’ll stop giving you commands.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” I said, before the argument could proceed. “I’ve never met a yowie before. I’d love to discuss your ecological niche, after the current crisis has passed. I can bring Tim Tams to pay you for your time.”
Basil blinked. A small frog fell out of his hair and leaped for the swamp, choosing freedom over remaining on Basil’s head. Basil snatched it out of the air and jammed it into his mouth, crunching twice before he said, “I like this one, Shelby, he understands basic commerce. All right, Price, you can come back here and talk to me. I’ll let you open your own tab, rather than drawing on this pair’s.” He jerked a thumb toward Shelby and Raina. “Their credit’s shot. Which is why I’m interested to hear what makes them think I’m going to bring the boat over here for them. Strikes me that watching them go wading might be a great way to spend an afternoon.”