When I returned to the porch to see if I’d left anything that could be damaged by water, I found a wet Cougar and equally wet Conan waiting for me by the kitchen door. They were in their furry forms and each carried a sack that I assumed contained some human clothes.
I stepped aside in invitation. “Aggie is here too. Do you want to join us?”
They entered the kitchen and dropped their sacks next to the ones Aggie and I had carried from her cabin. They came back out with me while I did a quick check of the porch. Since the porch ran the length of the house, a quick check to rescue a couple of books and move a couple of plants from tables to the floor wasn’t all that quick and I was clothes-clinging wet by the time I returned to the kitchen. Conan and Cougar had tipped over the lightweight chairs on the porch—an activity I appreciated when a blast of wind knocked me into Conan. I wasn’t sure the Bear even noticed; I was pretty sure I would have some interesting bruises the next day. I couldn’t wait to explain those to the doctor—or Ilya Sanguinati. Or Officer Grimshaw.
It wasn’t my fault. The wind knocked me into a Bear.
I wasn’t sure Dr. Wallace would want to believe me. After all, he was one of the Sproing residents who had lived in the safe little bubble of believing the Others were Out There before the events of the past few days had shown everyone that Out There really meant Right Here.
I went to my suite and changed into dry clothes. I looked at my hair and put enough clips in it to hold it away from my face, planning to take a hot shower later and use extra hair conditioner in the hope of combing out all the tangles.
When I returned to the common rooms, Cougar and Conan had shifted to human form and were dressed. They still smelled a bit like wet animal, but I decided not to comment about that since it occurred to me that I had no idea what a wet human might smell like to them.
On Firesday, the first full day of rain, I made hourly checks of the rooms, reassuring myself that I hadn’t left a window open or had any leaks that I could ill afford to have fixed at the moment. One of my companions came with me during each inspection, watching everything I did but not asking why I needed to check something I’d already checked. They just rotated keeping me company. In between inspections we napped or read. I turned on the TV to watch the noon news. Serious faces advising viewers to stay indoors as much as possible. Some flooded roads; some blocked by downed trees.
“Why do humans need other humans to tell them things they should be able to know by themselves?” Conan asked.
“There is comfort in confirmation,” I replied. “It’s easier to believe something if someone else thinks the same thing.”
They looked at the windows as the wind chose that moment to drive the rain against the house with enough force it sounded like pebbles hitting the glass. Then they looked at me.
“It is raining,” Cougar said solemnly. “If you go outside, you will get wet.”
I wasn’t sure if he was trying to be snarky or helpful, but I decided to go with helpful. “That’s what I think too.”
He nodded, yawned, then closed his eyes as he stretched out on the floor. I studied him. Could he really fall asleep that fast? Conan was also dozing. Even Aggie was curled up at one end of a sofa, looking too young to be on her own. Then again, a lot of her kin might live in The Jumble, so her staying here probably wasn’t much different from a human teenager going away to college.
“I’m going to take a shower.”
Three pairs of eyes opened, fixed on me for a moment, then closed again.
Going upstairs to my suite, I stripped out of my clothes, turned on the shower to bring up the hot water—and hesitated as I listened to the storm. I hadn’t heard a rumble of thunder or seen a flash of lightning in a while. I wasn’t keen to become a morbid headline—“Woman Struck by Lightning While Taking a Shower”—but I thought I would be safe if I was quick.
Warmed by the shower, I combed through my hair and wondered if I should try the hairstylist in Sproing—an old barber who had a monopoly on the haircutting trade because he hadn’t run away or been eaten last summer—or take Ineke’s advice and go to the stylist in Crystalton who cut and colored her hair. Someone who, according to Ineke, had an extra sense about how to do the most with the hair a person had. Then I thought about the income that wasn’t coming in and wondered if I wanted to throw away money on a lost cause. So not something I would say to Ineke, who would give me a lecture about letting someone else’s opinion sour my opinion of myself.
Easy for her to say.
Feeling a bit defiant, or maybe just not caring for the moment, I pulled on clothes that were comfortable and warm and in no way flattering—things I wouldn’t wear around anyone human. Then I thought about Aggie’s questions about what to wear and when to wear it and changed into clothes that were a little less disreputable. Not being happy with the way I looked or any of the clothes in my closet didn’t mean I had any right to spoil Aggie’s fashion adventure.
As I returned to the social room, it occurred to me that Paige Xavier had the same light-boned build as Aggie, if not the same coloring, and might be better at suggesting outfits suitable for the Crow. If the weather cooperated, we would have our first trail ride beach party in a few days, and I could introduce Aggie to Paige and let them work things out for themselves.
The rest of Firesday passed quietly. We read our own books. I thawed out all the meatballs in the freezer and made spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, which was a new food for the boys and required teaching them how to twirl the spaghetti on a fork. Since that slowed down food consumption, I suspected that, on their own, they would have picked up the spaghetti by the handful and ignored the saucy mess. But they were sufficiently intrigued in learning how to eat this meal the human way that they persevered, and in the end everyone had plenty to eat.
* * *
• • •
By Watersday afternoon, the novelty of staying inside napping and reading had worn off, even for me. I opened the cupboard where I had stored board games and the shoe boxes filled with plastic figures I had purchased as toys for the children of my future guests. I dismissed the jigsaw puzzles as being too sedate, even if the four of us worked on one together. I dismissed the games that were too young for my companions. Finally I pulled out a box and held it up to show Aggie and the boys. “Let’s play Murder.”
I tried not to think too long or too hard about the way all their eyes brightened and the amount of enthusiasm they showed as we set up the game. They looked a little puzzled as I explained the game, but they recognized the fireplace poker, rope, revolver, knife, and hammer as weapons. I had to explain the garrote.
“Teeth would work better to choke your prey,” Conan said, studying the game piece.
“Yours, maybe. Mine? Not so much.” Could you garrote a Bear or Panther? Could someone get a wire around a neck and through all that fur fast enough not to get clawed to pieces? Another question to ponder when I couldn’t fall asleep.
I let each of them fan a different set of cards while I selected victim, weapon, and location and tucked them in the little envelope. Then I shuffled all the cards and dealt them.
“Now we have to figure out who died and—”
Aggie, Conan, and Cougar immediately laid down the character cards they were holding, then looked at me.
“Do you have any humans?” Aggie asked.
I revealed my character card.
“Now we know which human is dead,” Conan said.
“But we still need to figure out where that human died,” I said.
They laid their location cards over the rooms on the game board and looked at me again. I put my location card over the kitchen, which left the dining room as the only location uncovered. I held up a hand before the three of them could put down the weapon cards. “To make it more interesting, let’s say that a player has to fetch a weapon and bring it to the dining room, and i
f a person has the card to show that weapon wasn’t used, he, or she, only shows it to that one player.”
Needing to roll dice and move their pieces along the squares to reach a room suddenly added more interest to the game. Since even Aggie was more of a predator than me, I didn’t point out that I had explained the rules before we had started, so the whole thing would have been more interesting if we were trying to figure out the who, what, and where instead of just the what.
Even then, the terra indigene didn’t seem to understand that every player worked alone. Maybe that was something I should mention to Officer Grimshaw. They might not cooperate if one brought down a deer and wanted to keep his lunch for himself, but when it came to finding a human who did a bad thing, they scattered and regrouped. Each of them clumped over the board to reach the closest room with a weapon, and then they headed for the dining room, taking the weapon with them. Since I was considered part of this odd pack, I followed their example and fetched the knife that had been in the kitchen, leaving the garrote that had been discarded there. Maybe it would have been a weapon of opportunity in a crime show. Not a likely weapon since I didn’t think most people knew how to kill someone with a garrote. You probably had to go to assassin school or something and take the garroting class to learn how to do it properly. Which didn’t mean someone couldn’t do it badly but still be effective in the end.
I think they all figured out the knife was the weapon, but they all guessed incorrectly, letting me reveal the final piece of evidence.
“That was pretty good,” Cougar said, making me think he would offer a cub the same encouragement for almost catching a bunny or some other small edible.
“Yes,” Conan agreed. “But our way of playing the game is better.”
“You all play a different version of Murder?” I asked.
They nodded.
I considered making an excuse to stay in my suite for a few hours. Then I considered that this was good practice for entertaining lodgers on a rainy day. Not that I would be expected to play games with my lodgers. I would be expected to provide drinks and snacks and fight with the rabbit ears that provided sketchy TV reception in this kind of weather since there was bound to be someone who preferred television over board games.
“Why don’t you set things up for your version of the game while I see what I can rustle up for snacks?” That suggestion went over well and gave me an excuse to retreat for a few minutes.
I was pondering what I had available that would feed two carnivores and two omnivores when the phone rang.
“The Jumble, Vicki speaking.”
“It’s Julian. How are you doing out there?”
“Since I’m not planning to leave until I run out of food or the rain stops, I’m doing pretty well. Aggie, the boys, and I are about to play the terra indigene version of Murder.”
“Oh.” A single word followed by the slightest pause. “Well, I’m glad you’re not on your own there in the storm.”
Something in his voice. It suddenly occurred to me that Julian might be lonely. He lived in one of the Mill Creek Cabins, but he was the only tenant. That meant he was as isolated there as I was at The Jumble. Of course, if the roads were passable and he could reach the village, he could rent one of Ineke’s rooms for a night to avoid being alone.
“I don’t know what the main roads are like or if my access road is passable, but if you’d like to join us . . .” I did have two guest suites on the second floor of the main building, so I could offer him a place to stay instead of going out on slick roads after dark. And since I’d already said Aggie and the boys were here, he wouldn’t mistake the offer as more than an invitation for friendly company.
“I’d like that. Is there anything I can pick up since I can stop at Pops’s store before I leave Sproing?”
“You’re already in the village? Are you sure you want to come out in this weather?”
“I’m sure.”
I wasn’t sure I would brave the roads today for anything less than an emergency, but I took him at his word and considered what I was going to run out of by tomorrow morning. “Bread, milk, sandwich fixings?”
“Got it. I’ll see you in a little while.”
The larder was a little more bare than I’d thought, even for snacks. I cut up some carrots, cut some cheddar cheese into squares, and made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I eyed the jar of sweet pickles but put them back unopened.
There were good reasons why, unlike Ineke, I didn’t include meals with the cabin rentals—or with the suites upstairs for that matter. Use of the kitchen? Yes. Me putting out more than snacks? Not a chance. Since Aggie and the boys were more of a mind to eat whatever was available and hadn’t yet acquired any discernment about what foods were a good or bad combination, they were quite happy with what I brought out.
I hadn’t been gone that long, but they had rummaged through all the supplies and toys I had purchased and had transformed the Murder game.
The original board was in the center of the table, but the rooms now had labels that matched the downstairs rooms in The Jumble, even if the layout couldn’t match. They had taken sheets of colored construction paper and added green woodland on three sides of the board. On the fourth side, they had snugged three little houses together to represent the lakeside cabins, added a strip of tan paper to represent the beach and, finally, blue paper to represent the lake. Aggie was busy making strips of squares that matched the size of the squares on the board, while Conan carefully secured the strips to the construction paper to indicate paths in the woods and paths from the kitchen down to the cabins and the lake. Cougar had found the sets of little plastic toys and created a cluster of trees on each of the green sheets of paper. There were farm animals—cow, pig, chicken, horse—scattered on the papers, positioned next to squares. There were also foxes, hawks, owls, a family of deer, and a moose. And there was a wolf and a coyote.
The bear, cougar, and crow were set on three of the places where players started the game. As for the people . . .
“Look!” Aggie beamed at me as she paused in her square making to hold up a figure in a police uniform. “It’s a teeny Grimshaw. And here is a teeny Vicki!”
They were plastic figures that had come out of molds. They had no relevance to the real world. It still gave me a thrill to see that teeny Vicki was just as tall as teeny Grimshaw.
Teeny Vicki was also placed on the game board in a starting position. Teeny Grimshaw was in the library. I had no idea why. Other teeny people included a dark-haired man dressed in casual business attire that made me think of Julian. There was a man in a white coat with a stethoscope around his neck and a woman in a nurse’s uniform. There was a woman wearing an apron, like a short-order cook. There was a curvy, dark-haired woman in a business suit. And a man in a business suit. Except for teeny Grimshaw, the other people were placed on the edges of the board, as if they weren’t part of the game yet. Except for the woman in the long blue dress who was placed in the center of the blue paper that represented the lake.
I didn’t have to ask who she was.
But there was one other creature on the board. I put down the tray of snacks and picked up one of my fuzzy white socks. It had been stuffed with a partial roll of toilet paper. The sock now had frowny eyes drawn on with a permanent black marker, as well as a mouth full of a ghastly number of teeth, and arms that ended with paw-hands that had serious claws.
“What is this?” I asked.
“That’s the Elder,” Aggie said, taking it from me and replacing it on the board.
I would never be able to wear that sock without either stepping on an Elder or looking down and seeing that face looking up at me.
Besides the die that was rolled for movement, there was another pair of dice that, I was told, was used for a number of things. And there was a small stack of cards made from index cards that had been cut in half. Since those we
re turned over and placed in the center of the board where the envelope with the answers usually resided, they weren’t part of the human version of the game. Then again, neither were the question marks that were randomly placed on some of the squares, both on the board and on the newly created paths.
We had our snacks while Aggie and the boys finished making the pieces for their version of the game. I took the dishes back to the kitchen and returned to the social room with a pitcher of cold water and several plastic glasses.
“We’re ready to play,” Aggie said.
Cougar wrinkled his lips, revealing his mismatched teeth, and said, “Heh-heh-heh-heh.”
Oh golly. Did I really want to play a game that made Cougar that gleeful?
I gave them my brightest smile. “Alrighty! Let’s—” I heard a car pull up and headed for the front door. “That must be Julian.” I heard two car doors close, then two more, and hesitated. Maybe that wasn’t Julian. Maybe it was someone else, someone who thought I would be alone here.
I was aware of Conan coming up behind me and Cougar moving past me toward the front door.
The doorbell rang.
CHAPTER 37
Grimshaw
Watersday, Juin 24
Grimshaw glanced in the rearview mirror at the two bags of groceries and the three large pizzas filling up the back seat of the cruiser before focusing on the wet road. “You expecting Vicki DeVine to live on pizza for the next few days?” Or few weeks?
“She said Aggie and the boys were staying with her during the storm,” Julian replied. “I wanted to make sure she had enough food in the house.”
He wasn’t sure pizza would be the best choice of food for a Bear and Panther, but he didn’t argue. Besides, he liked pizza.
“I could have taken my own car,” Julian said.