After Kira took two potato sticks, Victoria offered the food to the shifters in the kitchen, who followed Kira’s example and took two sticks. Ilya shook his head when Victoria offered the . . . food . . . to him, but he felt some relief when she ate a couple of pieces before setting the container on the table.
“They are . . . interesting,” Kira said.
Victoria smiled. “I don’t think they’ll be a mainstay of the Sanguinati diet, but humans like to eat them with hamburgers or sandwiches. Helen makes the best potato sticks, and Ineke makes these deep-fried potato rounds that taste amazing.”
“Don’t need that,” Bobcat said, pointing to a bottle of wine. “We just eat the buzzy grapes.”
Victoria frowned. “Buzzy grapes?”
“Naturally fermented grapes,” Ilya explained.
“So you get buzzed on fermented fruit?” she asked.
Coyote, Bobcat, and Crow smiled at her.
“Our buzzy fruit ends up in a bottle.”
The three shifters exchanged a look. Then Bobcat nudged the wine bottle closer to Victoria and said, “You should have the buzzy.”
“Thank you.” Victoria set the wine bottle in front of her.
While everyone else had been distracted—or were doing their best to distract Victoria from the humans’ upsetting behavior—Ilya efficiently divided the sandwiches and other foods that he thought the shifters would actually eat. He set the raw carrot sticks aside and looked at Coyote, who returned his look and nodded to acknowledge that he knew which residents in The Jumble should be offered that treat.
Not knowing what Victoria might have available to eat—and he would ask Dr. Wallace what a human who had had a bad shock should be fed—he kept one of the sandwiches, intending to slip up to Victoria’s apartment and place it in her small fridge. Now that she had regular guests spending time at The Jumble, she had purchased a few kitchen appliances for her apartment so that she could eat a solitary meal whenever she needed some peace.
Having four fosterlings in his care, he realized he hadn’t appreciated the solitude and peace of Silence Lodge enough when he’d had it.
Coyote and Bobcat headed out with their bags of food, Kira wandered off to join Viktor and Karol in the library, and Jozi let out a big sigh before leaving to find Aggie and Eddie. Maybe she realized that Grimshaw had done them all a favor by protecting the dead body. Three Crows plus two eyeballs equaled a squabble. Better for all of them to avoid more excitement tonight.
“If you would like to go up to your apartment and rest, Mr. Farrow and I can look after things,” Ilya said. He preferred to have her out of the way by the time Grimshaw returned and began questioning the humans to find out who had told Lynchfield about the private showing of books.
Victoria shook her head. “My place, my guests.”
But that was the answer he expected.
He turned toward the front of the house. “Chief Grimshaw, Dr. Wallace, and the EMTs are here.” He glanced at the six-pack of beer that was still on the table unclaimed. “You should put those in the refrigerator for the EMTs.”
Victoria sighed. “I liked them. The Five. I don’t want to know what they did to the man who tried to take their picture.”
He heard the plea in her voice. Because of the position she held as the bridge between terra indigene settlement and human village, it was better for all of them if Victoria didn’t know some things about the beings she dealt with.
“You don’t have to know,” Ilya soothed. “I’ll make sure of it.”
* * *
* * *
Ilya?>
<Natasha. Is everything all right?>
She hesitated. <I contacted the home shadows of the fosterlings. The shadows that were listed on Lara’s and Karol’s papers confirmed that those youngsters belong to them and were sent to us.>
Ilya felt chilled. <The other two?>
Natasha sighed. <Everything looked legitimate, but the shadows listed on Kira’s and Viktor’s papers had never heard of them. The leaders of those shadows wondered if those two ran away, either separately and they just happened to pick Silence Lodge as a place to hide away, or they had planned to come here in order to be together. Either way, they have lied to us.>
<The Five killed a human this evening,> Ilya said. <This is not a good time to confront those two unless you think they are a danger to others.> A danger to Victoria?
Natasha hesitated again. <We only know they are here under false pretenses. We do not know why, so we can’t know if they pose a threat.>
<Contact the other shadows in the Finger Lakes region. See if they are missing any youngsters that match Kira’s and Viktor’s description,> Ilya said.
<All right,> she replied.
He felt a weight in her silence. <Something else?>
<Vlad called with a message from Tolya Sanguinati. About Nicolai.>
Ilya sighed. Nicolai had been terribly wounded in the battle to keep the town of Bennett out of the hands of evil humans. <I had heard that Nicolai is being relocated to Lakeside. The shadow in that Courtyard is larger and Grandfather Erebus lives there. And there is room there for privacy.>
<Yes, that was the plan,> Natasha said. <But Nicolai slipped away from the Sanguinati who were escorting him and has disappeared.>
CHAPTER 47
Vicki
Watersday, Novembros 3
The EMTs and Doc Wallace looked so pale and scared when they arrived, I figured beer wasn’t going to be numbing enough and was tempted to raid Grimshaw and Julian’s private stash of whiskeys and offer a bottle or two to the men. Then I remembered that someone would need steady hands to stitch up David Shuman, so I kept my thoughts to myself and my hands off the whiskey.
When Conan was asked why he’d swatted Shuman, his only response was to growl at everyone.
Not even Grimshaw asked him for clarification.
I went to the kitchen and made a pot of coffee, not sure who might want to drink it. I put the kettle on to heat up water and set my selection of teas on the kitchen table along with the mugs my guests used at breakfast.
Julian came into the kitchen, placed a bottle of whiskey on the table, smiled at me, and left.
I knew people often added alcohol to coffee to make it a blended drink. I wondered how mint tea would taste with a dollop—or five—of whiskey.
I was willing to play guinea pig and find out.
Intellectually, I recognized that people knowingly took a risk by staying at The Jumble. I recognized that people could get hurt—could get killed—if they misbehaved, because the terra indigene put up with only so much nonsense from humans before ending the nonsense, usually in ways that required the police to notify next of kin.