Waylon looked more smug, like he had something to do with it.
"What?" he said, when I elbowed him.
"What's with your shit-eating grin, huh?"
"Please," he said, sipping his coffee. "It's just nice to see what good sex can do for a girl's confidence. Ow--damn, your elbows are pointy."
I glanced past Waylon to Flor and we locked eyes. I looked back at my food, flushing at the sudden, unexpected intimacy of his mysterious gaze.
In the morning, a big shipment of clothes arrived at Merrymore. We each received boxes and bags in piles, and they were desperately needed, since none of us arrived with more than the clothes on our backs.
Still, I was nervous as I opened my boxes, since Esther picked them out. Esther had this soft aesthetic like she shopped at twee craft fairs, and it was not what I had in mind for a queen, or anything I would ever do, really.
I opened the first box and found a tight but professional-looking dress, a different woman than any of my usual personas. It wasn’t the innocent girl who slipped across the borders to spy, and certainly not the naive party girl who snuck into the Merryweather house with Ansel. It sure wasn’t day-off Frankie in a thrift store tee and cutoff jean shorts.
I saw the first glimpse of a queen in the black dress I put on that morning. It showed off my curves and made my small cleavage look good, but the shoulders were cut hard, and the dress was so simple. Did Esther pick this out? Maybe she has a wardrobe person. Either way…not bad.
I tried my best to do my hair and makeup but as I walked out, I ran into Flor and he took one look at me and narrowed his eyes, suddenly looking exactly like Ansel.
"No," he said.
"No?" I touched my hair. "I just washed and dried it and..."
"It's just everywhere," he said.
"I have a lot of hair! I don't know!"
He pointed at the bathroom and quietly picked up a bottle of some product and worked it loosely into my hair and then he spun me around and side parted it. He shrugged.
"Better," he said.
"Better enough?"
"You're meeting the birds today," he said, arching a brow. "Birds don't just lick themselves and call it a day."
I snorted. "You know we don't just..." My eyes were on eye level with his mouth and I had a flashing memory of kissing Ansel, what a good kisser he was, and what a sexy mouth he had.
Flor's mouth is...better.
I would definitely lick that.
"Flor...," I said, hesitating. "Do you--"
"We need to go," he said, and he just left me there abruptly.
Hmph. Okay. He was actively avoiding me, or at least avoiding...The Conversation.
All the guys had dressed up more for Birdland, and they all looked damn good too. Waylon always looked put together. I expected he had given Esther an easy list. He always wore black, and today it was a Western-styled shirt with white piping that gave him a little rockabilly vibe. Now I was sure she picked out all the clothes because I could easily imagine Esther thinking that Waylon needed just a little extra something.
I wasn't used to Ian taking any care with his wardrobe, and I knew I had Florian to thank for the fact that he showed up with a makeover. Definitely a good change. Now he had on a low-key suit. The shirt was a little tight and his pants fitted for once in his life, so even with clothes on I got tantalizing reminders of the body underneath.
Birdland was the elegant portion of the park, if a theme park could be called elegant. All four of the rides were flight themed, one a fanciful kiddie ride, one a simulated flight over scenery, one a thrilling fighter pilot ride, and the original Birdland ride which had an It's a Small World vibe with birds around the world singing. There was also a bird show, and a tiki restaurant.
"Birdland could use a revamp," Alistair said. "But the birds themselves argue us on it. They were very involved in the design originally, even when Grandpa was in charge.”
"It does have some retro charm," Ian said. Birdland was both colorful and light-feeling, with big ridiculous tropical flowers blooming in the conservatory and fake ones outside of it, glass and fanciful architecture everywhere. Plus, the birds were genuinely welcoming. They were the most common and popular pets, but most humans would rarely see them in bird form, since most birds were banded.
Now, people marveled and snapped tons of photos as cardinals and orioles landed on their hands, plus other colorful birds whose names I didn’t know because there was no baseball team named after them and I was a city girl. Hummingbirds buzzed right by them, and herons stood to have their feathers stroked.
Whatever natural hospitality Flor might have once had, he had clearly lost it. He looked at everything with cold disdain, although he didn't say much, as usual.
Rather than a rustic village like the wolves, the bird employees lived in a 1960s apartment complex with a huge garden in the center, and we were welcomed there by "the co-Mayors of Birdland," as Merilee introduced herself, along with her husband Spencer. They gave off a definite "power couple" vibe and had a few gorgeous children.
“Welcome, welcome,” Merilee said. “Did you ride on any of the rides?”
“No, we didn’t,” Flor said.
“Oh! That’s too bad; I heard you rode on the Wolf Hunt, so I thought…” She sounded a tiny bit offended.
“I hope this guy brought you to the ice cream parlor, at least,” Spencer said, giving Alistair a blinding grin.
“We came straight here,” Alistair said. “After a driving tour. We could have managed our time better in Wolfwood, so we didn’t want to make the same mistake twice and take any time away from you.”
“Ah, that’s so sweet,” Merilee said, now understanding. She started telling Waylon about all the building’s architectural features and I saw Flor quietly rescue him.
The birds had prepared an elaborate feast for us inside the banquet hall on the premises, and it was so classy that I had to learn to relax all over again. But before long I started seeing the same pain that was familiar from the wolf village--the orphans, the ones who seemed too anxious to please, like they couldn't shake years of being pets, or the ones who just shrank away.
"A toast to the Queen of Cats, our Black Queen!" Spencer raised a wine glass to me. He was at the opposite head of the table, dressed in a white suit, with half a dozen flower bouquets between us. It looked like I had crashed a wedding.
I was about to rise and say a few words myself when Flor stood up instead.
He didn't fit in here in Birdland. Ansel would have worked the room, but not Flor, who had on an ink-blue button-up shirt, sleeves rolled up, tattoos on display, a studded belt and black pants with a slight shimmer in the fabric. Sure, you could still tell he was a bird who liked his adornments, but he was the bird you wouldn't take home to your parents, that was for sure. His hair, perpetually in his eyes, was shoved back again, but never stayed there.
"We aren't going to be pets anymore," he said, in a low tone. I'm not sure everyone heard him, but that was just the warmup, because then he said, “Those motherfuckers out there come here to birdwatch our asses and they don't even deserve anything this nice."
Alistair's eyes widened like he was afraid Flor was about to start a fight.