He doubted any of them would get any rest, let alone sleep, that night. There was no way to tell where trouble would strike next, but he figured between the three of them and Osgood, one of them wouldn’t be too far away from the next body.
CHAPTER 40
Aiden
Watersday, Novembros 3
Those humans with their books and their big words and their thinly veiled contempt for anything that wasn’t like them were up to something sneaky.
Not all of them, no. Edward Janse, the male who had been identified as an Intuit, was polite and trying to interact with the terra indigene while staying within the neutral ground of his cabin’s front yard. Unfortunately, whatever bit of special Intuits had when dealing with humans didn’t seem to work when dealing with the Others.
Aiden spent an hour watching Janse set out chunks of pizza crust on the short wall that enclosed his cabin’s front yard. He’d had plenty of interest from a variety of creatures, but it became obvious that he couldn’t tell a crow from a Crow and he simply talked to every bird of that shape that flew over to snag a bit of food.
<Should we tell them that the Crowgard are avoiding unknown humans while the Hunter is here?> Air asked, joining him.
<Even if it doesn’t come through the Crowgard, word still travels that he is interested in communicating,> Aiden replied. <Perhaps some other gard will stop by for a visit.>
<Something might stop by.> Air stared at the other occupied cabins. <And they are going to visit the Reader soon to exchange books.>
Aiden looked at Air, surprised. <The Five are going to show themselves?> Uneasiness was an unfamiliar sensation for an Elemental. He didn’t like it. <Vicki provides a valuable service to many terra indigene, but they may not appreciate that. Perhaps one of us should keep watch.>
<Earth is watching tonight. The Five don’t want to harm the Reader. They just want new stories.>
The three men from the other cabins came outside and looked around, impatient.
“Hey!” the Roash human shouted. “Can you hear me? I need to ask you a question.”
Aiden noticed how Janse froze in place like prey. Then he moved closer to the cabin’s porch—and did not ask the shouting Roash any of the questions humans tended to ask, like, what was wrong?
<I think they want to talk to you,> Air said, amused.
<Fools.>
He understood, as well as his kind of terra indigene could, why the Sanguinati had rented some of the cabins to the institutions where humans went to learn many things and now wanted to learn about the Others. Most humans didn’t stay longer than the waxing or waning of a moon, but the appearance of the Hunter at the same time these males came to Lake Silence was reason enough to distrust these humans, even if they did nothing wrong.
He waited until the humans were looking in the wrong direction, then assumed his human form and pulled on a pair of jeans he’d left in a sack secured to a branch of a tree. No shirt, no shoes. He couldn’t dress like this if Vicki was going to see him, because she tried to give him more clothes, convinced that he was going to catch cold.
He was Fire. He didn’t catch cold. But he’d helped her light the stove in a cabin when she’d been driven out of The Jumble and stayed here under Ilya’s protection, and she associated the human need for warmth with him. In order to talk about something besides sweaters, he dressed in more clothes when he intended to cross paths with her.
Now he stepped out from among the trees and walked toward the cabins.
“Hey!” Roash shouted.
“Hey,” Aiden replied. He wasn’t surprised that Roash, the troublemaker, was the shouter, since the man had sent another human to The Jumble pretending to be Crowbones.
“If we’re going to be stuck here awhile longer, can we drive into the village and pick up supplies?” Roash asked.
He tried to think like a human, tried to think of how going into the village to purchase food could be turned into something sneaky. When he couldn’t think of anything, he said, “How many of you need to go?”
“I’ll go.” The man called Peter Lynchfield held up a key. “I have a spare key for my car, so I can drive in and pick up some supplies for us.”
Since “us” didn’t seem to mean “all of us,” Aiden looked at the Intuit. “What about you? Do you need supplies?”
“Not tonight,” Janse said. “But it’s good to know I can drive into the village tomorrow and buy a meal at the diner. And check out the bookstore if it’s open.”
It sounded like he was being asked if those activities were okay, so he nodded.
“When do you think the roads will be open?” Roash asked.
Aiden shrugged. Then he smiled. “When the enemy is dead.”
CHAPTER 41
Them
Watersday, Novembros 3
After Roash took a phone call from the informant, he watched the man almost wet himself with excitement. A one-of-a-kind opportunity. Couldn’t pass this up. Of course, the Others were watching Roash because of his interest in folklore and urban legends, so he couldn’t do the deed. No. Better to be one step removed.
It was always better to be one step removed. Wasn’t that why he’d chosen Roash to assist him in this part of his project?
And it had taken only a passing comment expressing apologetic doubt about Lynchfield’s manliness to have that man fall in with Roash’s plan.
With those playing pieces in motion, he looked at the occupant of the other cabin.
Edward Janse wasn’t a pansy. Or if he was, that wasn’t the reason he came across as sensitive and . . . vulnerable. Janse wasn’t one of those Intuits who could tell you about the weather or which horse would run well in tomorrow’s race. No, Janse seemed to pick up the undercurrents of people, which made him a potential threat.
Unless that sensitivity, combined with a little feel-good mixed into a mug of tea, could influence Janse’s thoughts, encourage him to do something potentially fatal. The drug was harder to come by these days, and he needed to hold back enough to reward his previous helpers, but he thought he could spare enough to find out how an Intuit reacted to a drug made out of blood from the cassandra sangue.
CHAPTER 42
Vicki and Aggie
Watersday, Novembros 3
There is something ironic about being afraid to watch horror movies when you live in a place like The Jumble. I was going to have a strong talk with myself about that one of these days.
“This shouldn’t take more than an hour,” I said for the third time, responding to the third of my four surly guests. This time it was Fred Cornley, who looked like he wanted to try out for the role of ax murderer. I stood my ground—and made sure I was in easy reach of Conan Beargard.