Written in Red

  No matter how fast a human could run, the Sanguinati could move faster. And per Erebus’s orders, unless Vlad was convinced that Darrell had done nothing more than act foolishly because of a woman, the man wouldn’t get past Nyx when he bolted for the presumed safety of the human-controlled land.

  “Mr. Wolfgard?” Darrell said as he fiddled with the knot in his tie. “You wanted to see me?”

  “Yes,” Elliot replied, his voice smoothing into a sound that gave nothing away. “Do you know why?”

  “No, sir. But . . . someone emptied my desk and put some of my personal items in a box.”

  “No, we put all of your personal items in the box. The rest of the items in the desk actually belong to the consulate. Now you’ll hand over the keys you were given, as well as your pass to the Market Square.”

  “But . . . why?”

  “You’re being dismissed for a breach of trust.”

  Rapid breathing. Pulse spiking. Face turning pale. And even with all those acknowledgments, the fool still tried to deny what the Others knew.

  “I didn’t,” Darrell said.

  “I hope for your sake that the breach begins and ends with you taking that female to the Green Complex. I hope you understand what will happen if you become indiscreet about what you’ve seen or heard in the consulate.”

  “Sir, I think I’ve done a good job here,” Darrell began.

  “You did. I was pleased with your work. But you broke the trust we had given you, and now you have to go. However, before I let you leave this room, I need one answer: What were you looking for in the Liaison’s Office?”

  “I wasn’t in the office,” Darrell protested. “I was in the abovestairs room I was told I could use last night. I was with my . . . friend . . . until I woke up this morning.”

  “So you were never in the office?” Elliot asked, his voice still smooth.

  “Sure, I was in the office. Went to pick up the consulate mail a few times.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?”

  “Yes,” Elliot said patiently. “Why? You’ve never done that before.”

  Darrell squirmed in the chair. “I wasn’t comfortable being around the other Liaisons. But Meg is a pleasant girl, and she always has the mail bundled in an orderly manner. I just thought picking it up would be a friendly gesture.”

  And a way to set up Meg as the next potential friend if Asia Crane didn’t work out? Vlad wondered.

  “Whose idea was it to go to the Green Complex?” Elliot asked. “Your pass doesn’t extend beyond our business district without permission, and your guest didn’t have permission to go anywhere last night except the designated room for your . . . social interaction.”

  “She wanted to see it, as an adventure.”

  “See what? It was late. It was dark.”

  “I think she wanted to see where Simon Wolfgard lives.” Darrell hung his head and talked to his tie. “She said she wasn’t interested in him anymore, but I think she is. I think she pretended . . .”

  Vlad said.

  Leaving Elliot to finish the dismissal, Vlad flowed under the door, shifting to human form when he was in the hallway. When he got outside, he stopped long enough to tell Nyx that Darrell was allowed to leave the Courtyard intact. Then he walked down the access way between the buildings and stopped behind the Liaison’s Office.

  The truck from Fallacaro Lock & Key was already there, and Chris Fallacaro was working on the office’s back door. Blair was watching him, which was probably why it was taking the human so long to change a lock. Having youngsters watching in order to learn was one thing. Having the Courtyard’s primary enforcer watching was something else altogether.

  And there was Meg, pulling up and looking confused because the truck and Blair’s BOW effectively blocked her ability to park her own vehicle.

  They hadn’t discussed what they were going to tell Meg, and he didn’t want to push Simon—especially when they weren’t on opposite sides. He would have preferred a more permanent solution to ridding themselves of Asia Crane, and he should have taken care of it last night. Since he’d made the wrong choice, he thought Simon should be the one to take the direct approach now—and provide them all with some blood and meat in the bargain.

  But what would they have said to their Liaison? It’s like this, Meg. We didn’t like that Asia Crane, so we ate her.

  When dealing with humans, honesty isn’t always the best policy, Vlad thought as he walked over to the BOW and opened Meg’s door.

  “What’s going on?” Meg asked as she got out of the BOW.

  “Let’s go inside. It’s cold out here.” He cupped her elbow as they walked to the back door.

  Blair said something to Chris. The man jumped, whipped his head around in a way that must have made a few muscles twang, then pulled the door open wider for Meg to slip inside.

  She swapped boots for shoes, hung up her coat, and went through to the other rooms to open up the office. Vlad followed her, then stood in the Private doorway while she leaned against the counter.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “A breach of trust. Darrell broke one of the rules,” he replied, wanting to be blunt and direct as he would be with one of his own kind. But he suddenly wondered how much blood prophets in general, and Meg in particular, knew about sex and felt the need for caution when explaining why the human was upstairs last night. “He’s been dismissed. Since he had a key to the consulate as well as keys to this building, we’re getting the locks changed.”

  “Do you do that every time an employee leaves?”

  “Not every time.”

  She paled, which alarmed him.

  “Is Sam in danger?” she asked.

  Interesting question. “I don’t think so.”

  Of course, Nathan chose that moment to open the front door. He paused when one of the Crows cawed at him, then raised an arm in invitation. The Crow flew over, and the two of them came inside. The Wolf shot one look at the bed, then stomped the snow off his boots and approached the counter. The Crow hopped from arm to counter, sliding a little.

  Meg looked at the two of them. “Good morning, Nathan. Good morning, Jake.” She slanted a look at Vlad. “Are you all going to stick around here?”

  “Until the locks are fixed. Once the locks are changed, Blair will meet Chris at the Utilities Complex to make all the sets of keys. Front door lock will be changed too.”

  “All this because Darrell broke a rule?” Meg asked.

  “It was an important rule,” Vlad replied smoothly, trying to balance Nathan’s growl.

  The crunch of tires on snow made all of them look toward the delivery area.

  Meg pulled her clipboard from under the counter and accepted the pen Jake offered. “Try not to scare the deliverymen, all right?”

  “Caw,” Jake said.

  Vlad stepped into the sorting room, where he would be out of sight. It didn’t escape his notice that Jake was the only one of them to offer her any assurance about that.

  He didn’t think it had escaped Meg’s notice either.

  * * *

  After giving her approach a good deal of thought, Asia walked into Howling Good Reads, satisfied that she had hit the right balance: makeup just a little too heavy, as if she were trying to cover up something; hair styled but not as well as usual; a cowl-neck sweater that would show off the bruises on her shoulders when she moved in certain ways, but didn’t shout that she wanted them seen.

  The special messenger had done a good job pretending to be a milquetoast who suddenly turned rough. But if a Wolf shoved his nose where it had no b
usiness being, all he would smell was Darrell.

  The girl at the register looked at her and paled. Asia thought it was because Heather had glimpsed the bruises. Then she caught her own name in big letters on some kind of flyer next to the register.

  She took a step toward the register. The next thing she knew, Simon Wolfgard was blocking her, snarling in a way that destroyed any pretense of his being human.

  “Asia Crane, you are banned from the Courtyard,” he said in a voice filled with authority and anger. “That includes all the stores within the Courtyard.” He took a step toward her, forcing her to take a step back. “That includes this one. You can leave this time, but if we see you on our land again, we’ll kill you.”

  The customers at the front of the store froze.

  Asia lifted her chin, switching her performance from rough-sex victim to defender of humankind. “You can’t ban me from a store. That’s discrimination. None of you would be able to buy any of your precious junk if human stores discriminated against you.”

  “They discriminate against us plenty. That’s not the point. The point is, you went sniffing around where you don’t belong, and we caught you, but we’re going to let you and Darrell walk away this one time. Yes, we banned him too. As for the rest of you,” he said, addressing the other customers, “if you want to shop at other stores because we banned the two people who broke our rules instead of banning all of you, that’s your choice.” He turned back to Asia. “And you’re out of time. Get out now or die.”

  He grabbed one of the flyers and slapped it against her chest. “Take this with you so you don’t forget.”

  She took the flyer, crumpling it in her hand. She considered making a parting comment, but she realized he was looking for an excuse to kill her right there, right now. He would splash her blood over half the store and count the loss of merchandise as worth it.

  “What did I ever do to you?” she whispered, pleased with the natural quiver in her voice.

  He leaned toward her, and his voice was just as low. “When I find out, I’ll come hunting for you.”

  She walked out of the store, her mind racing. She’d always paid in cash for anything she’d bought at HGR or A Little Bite. Hadn’t she? She was Margaret A. Crane on all the ID her backers had provided for her, and that was a common enough name. So she wouldn’t be easy to find. Even Darrell hadn’t known where she lived.

  As she got in her car, a patrol car pulled into the Courtyard parking lot. The officer who got out and headed for HGR was one of the cops who dropped by daily.

  Asia’s stomach did a funny little flip. Was that Wolf going to hand out those flyers to the cops?

  She was getting way too much attention, and all the wrong kind. If the special messenger got wind of this and informed his benefactor, it could be the end of a very lucrative arrangement. Even her backers now wanted her working in tandem with this benefactor’s men and would be keenly unhappy if her actions blew the whole operation by making the Others too antagonistic against humans.

  But the benefactor’s special messenger had known what she was going to do today. After all, he’d helped her with this charade. So all she had to do was convince him that getting banned from the Courtyard had been part of her plan all along.

  CHAPTER 21

  On Moonsday morning, Meg opened the office, prepared her clipboard, and breathed a sigh of relief. After Darrell’s dismissal and Asia’s public banning, all the humans who worked for the Others had been edgy, especially the humans who worked in the Market Square and would have a harder time escaping if the terra indigene turned savage. But with the exception of more patrol cars driving past the Courtyard, Firesday and Watersday were ordinary workdays. Earthday had been an enjoyable balance of chores and a long, fun romp in the snow with Simon and Sam in their Wolf forms. The romp had tired her out so much, she fell asleep while they all watched a movie that evening.

  And Simon didn’t say a word about her using him as a furry pillow.

  She still wasn’t sure why Darrell wasn’t supposed to visit the Green Complex. He had worked for the consulate, after all. Surely there was more sensitive material in that office than whatever could be observed in the dark about the outside of buildings.

  Except Darrell had brought Asia, who really wasn’t allowed to be there.

  Meg gave her arms a brisk rub, relieved when the prickling under her skin subsided. Going out at night to look at the Green Complex was odd, but she’d seen plenty of training images of someone sitting in a dark car, watching a building. Obsessed ex-lovers. Stalkers. Police. Asia didn’t fit any of those labels, but Meg thought the other woman was impulsive enough to jump at a chance to see any part of the Courtyard. And since Asia had been so curious about Sam, maybe she’d hoped to get another look at the puppy.

  Did Asia know Sam lived with Simon at the Green Complex? Meg shook her head, unable to remember. Well, it didn’t matter anymore. Asia was gone and Darrell was gone, and neither of them had been part of her vision about men dressed in black.

  Giving her arms a final rub, she dismissed thoughts of Asia and Darrell and went about her day. She chatted with Harry when he came in with his deliveries, laughing at his jokes even when she didn’t understand them. She spent several minutes trying to convince Nathan that he couldn’t have entire boxes of dog cookies and had to choose which kind of cookie he wanted for a snack. When he insistently pointed a big paw at each box, she ended up giving him two cookies of each flavor, which he took back to his Wolf bed to crunch.

  Around midmorning, she got tangled in a bizarre game of tug between Nathan and Jake. She didn’t know which of them had brought in the length of rope as a toy, but the Wolf, still lying on the bed, had his teeth in one end of it, and the Crow had his feet clenched around the other and was madly flapping his wings. Her mistake was thinking she could break up the game by grabbing the rope right in front of Jake’s feet. Suddenly Nathan was on his feet, wagging his tail while he growled at her, and Jake’s caws sounded suspiciously gleeful. Because the floor was a little snow-slick and her shoes didn’t have enough traction, she was pulled from one end of the room to the other and couldn’t figure out how to let go of the rope without falling on her butt.

  She got out of the game only because Dan walked in with a delivery and started laughing so hard, he almost dropped the packages. After signing for the delivery, she retreated to the sorting room and pondered what game the Wolf and Crow really had been playing: tug the rope or trick Meg into playing with them.

  It said something about human resilience that a week after Nathan had been assigned as the office’s watch Wolf, most of the deliverymen were accepting of his presence, if still justifiably wary. A few tossed a “Hi, how’s it going?” in Nathan’s direction before they took care of business with her. Only one company had a new driver coming to the Courtyard, replacing the man who had refused to enter the office the first time he saw Nathan.

  Once the mail was sorted and packages going out to terra indigene settlements were properly tagged for the earth-native trucks, Meg peeked into the front room. Jake was on the counter, fluffed up and dozing. Nathan was on his back, paws in the air, also snoozing. At that moment, they didn’t look like much security, but she knew they’d be awake the instant they heard footsteps or tires in the delivery area.

  Leaving them to their morning nap, she headed for the back room. The ponies would be here in half an hour, and she wanted to be ready.

  When she stepped into the room, a sickening rush of images filled her mind. Old hands, young hands, male hands, female hands, dark hands, pale hands. All reaching for something and . . . Shrieks of pain. Cries of anguish.

  Meg stumbled out of the back room, shaking. Was she sick? Was she going insane? Was this what happened to cassandra sangue when they didn’t live in the compounds? Was this why they had originally been brought to live in such isolation? Maybe this was
the reason the girls were allowed so little personal experience, why their lives were so sterile.

  She rubbed at her arms, at her legs, at her belly, at her scalp, wanting to dig and scratch and claw until the painful prickling went away. It had never been this bad, and she had never seen actual images before a cut.

  But there had been that moment on the road the other day when she had slipped into a vision without cutting.

  Bracing her arms on the sorting table, Meg fought to think.

  Sensitive skin. She had overheard the Walking Names once when they were reviewing the value of the girls. They said prophecies from her were the most expensive because her skin was so sensitive, it became attuned to the visions even before she was cut. She just had to be around something connected to the prophecy.

  And Simon had speculated that this prickling was a sign her instincts were waking up because she was living and doing and experiencing for herself instead of seeing the world as labeled images.

  Was the prickling under her skin not only a warning but also a measuring stick? A little tingle that was annoying but faded quickly indicated a small choice that wouldn’t have major significance, while the harsher, painful buzz . . .

  Meg returned to the back room, staggering as the images flooded her mind again. But she couldn’t figure out what was causing the reaction.

  “Something there,” she whispered, fleeing to the sorting room. “Have to do it. Have to cut out this vision hiding in my skin.”

  But she needed a listener this time, because whatever was struggling to break through was too big for her to endure alone. And she was scared that she wouldn’t be able to sort out the images of the prophecy, wouldn’t be able to recognize the warning or put the pieces together.

  Who to call? Not Simon. He’d be angry that she didn’t call him, but he’d be angry about the cut too, and she felt certain that they didn’t have time to argue.

  She tiptoed to the Private door. Jake and Nathan were still napping. She closed that door as quietly as possible and turned the lock. Then she called A Little Bite, hoping that whatever guardian spirit looked after prophets would guide Tess’s hand to answer the phone.