Binding: Book Two of the Moon Wolf Saga (8 page)

He always looked smug, I thought. I chewed on a big bite of bread, beef and pickle. His voice sounded like molasses ought to taste, sweet and rich, lovely to listen to. I’d always liked his voice, but now it sounded affected. I’d never been to Redlands. Marge's daughter Hannah had made a scent trail out that way, to obscure mine, when I’d stupidly blundered onto Gray Fox's scent marker. I hoped that my chewing kept him from seeing any reaction I might have made.

“You’re hurt?” he asked.

“‘S’nothing,” I said. “Just a hunting accident.” I grinned at him, and he obligingly grinned back. He had a lot of teeth.

“How's Luke?” I asked. My younger brother, the only one of us left at home. My older brother, Carl, disappeared when my dad did.

“He's surviving,” Gray Fox said lightly.

I felt a wave of guilt. Since my mother brought home Ray, as our new stepfather, I’d been Luke's protector. I realized on the heels of that wave of feeling, that Gray Fox meant me to feel guilt, just by the way he’d answered me. My attention rose a few more notches. Then I tamped it down. He could read focus, any hunter can read focus. And this conversation was, I realized too, another kind of hunt.

So I didn’t ask him what he was going to do, now that he’d found me. I asked him, instead, something I wanted to know.

“Where is my dad?”

He smiled, lifted a hand. “Please, Lady. Don’t ask me questions you know I’m not allowed to answer.”

“I go by Amber here.”

“Very well. Amber.”

“And I will ask you anything I damn well please.”

For just a second he was taken aback. Great, something that wasn’t in his script. Then he bent his head to me. “As you wish, L—Amber.” He showed his teeth for a moment as he replied. “You will excuse me if I don’t always answer you.”

I nodded, as though it wasn’t a big deal. As though this wasn’t a kind of battle.

“Are you staying long?”

That brought a smile. “Lady, we have been hunting you for six months.”

“You have a message for me?”

“Of course.” He opened his hands. He wasn’t eating anything, I noticed. I wondered if I should have surreptitiously sniffed the food more carefully, to see if he’d doctored it. That would be a point to him, though. “‘Come home.’” His eyes glinted. “‘Now.’”

I put my sandwich down. This was serious. “Okay,” I asked. “Who sent you? My mother?”

He looked at me gravely for a moment, and shook his head. “Ray sent us. All the fox kind. He wants you back.” He grinned, showing his teeth. “Right now.”

I grinned back, but I was lying. I wondered if he was. I didn’t ask him what my mom said, because I didn’t want him to tell me. My mother is the Moon Wolf, Lady of the Wolf Kind, and I am her Daughter. Disobeying a direct summons from her, well, that was something I wanted to avoid.

“Ray wants you back,” he continued, turning his mug in his hands, “because by the time of the next Gathering he must be seen to be in control.”

I nodded. It didn’t take much figuring to know that.

“The Rapsons have left the valley,” he continued.

I raised my brows.

“The Shorburns went last month. The Ipsitts are selling up.” He sipped his tea, watching me. “And your cousin Claire left about the same time you did.”

“Did she?” I sipped my tea, too.

“Yes,” he smiled. “She did.” He put his cup down and opened his hands. “I must tell you, Lady—Amber, I don’t like Ray's sudden appearance, his faction, nor his influence any more than you do.”

I studied the dregs of my tea. It was not possible that this was true. Gray Fox had not lived in Ray's house. He had not been a girl who Ray and his sons believed needed to be taught a lesson. Needed to be taught her place. Needed to be taught this as often as necessary. There was no one who wanted Ray gone, who wanted him dead, more than I did. And his sons with him. When I lifted my head, Gray Fox almost started back. My eyes had gone gold. “Oh,” I said, “I’m not so sure about that.”

He nodded understanding.

“If you try to take me back there now, I will fight you.”

He shook his head. “But, Lady, have you considered what your absence means to your family? Your mother, pardon my bluntness, is not considered to be a strong leader. Her acceptance of Ray, her allowing him and his cloddish sons to throw their weight around—”

I cracked a laugh. “Sorry. That's what we’ve always called them, Luke and me. The clods.”

Gray Fox leaned toward me for emphasis. “The line depends on your mother's successor. We all look to you. Grow quickly, grow strong. Be wise. It may be sooner than you think before everything depends on you.”

Tears pricked my eyes, so I looked away. I couldn’t figure out why his words made me so angry. They were true, of course they were true. But something was wrong about how he said them, or why. Or that he brought it up now.

“I have to report back,” he was saying. “But, thanks to the way in which you escaped, I have a lot of ground to cover before I must do that.” He smiled at me. “One would not want to leave any trail unchecked, for where you might have gone, or what you might be doing. That would leave my report incomplete, after all.”

I almost smiled back. “I need a year. I will be eighteen a year from August. I need until then.”

“I can’t give you that long,” he said, his voice filled with regret. “I’ll need to bring back word before the Gathering.”

I nodded. I had until the fall, then. Unless he was lying. Why did I feel that he was lying?

He checked the teapot, then rose, gathered it up together with my cup and his, and said, “I’ll make more tea. You look like you could use some.”

He went into the cabin before I could figure out a polite way to tell him I didn’t much like his tea. It had a strangely bitter aftertaste for something with so little flavor. I thought in a moment I would get up and go after him, just to get a look inside the cabin. I wanted to go in and sniff my way around, to find out what I could about what had happened to Marge and Andy. If their dead bodies were rotting inside the door, I could certainly smell that from here, even in my human form. As a wolf, I could sort out all the old traces of their comings and goings, from the last time they left. I might also be able to tell if they were frightened when they went. I could tell which way they went. I could check the stone by the path, and find out who obliterated the wards, and smeared out the signs.

I badly wanted to know all that, but I realized, looking after Gray Fox, that I very much didn’t want to change in front of him. I didn’t want him to see how badly wounded I was. If he’d watched me come up the trail, and I assumed he had, then he’d seen me limping on two legs. I wouldn’t let him see me limp on four. I was forming some plan of how to find out all I wanted to know, that became entwined at the back of my eyes with the Celtic knotwork that connected the three signs on the stone by the path. With a start I sat up and opened my eyes. Gray Fox sat across from me, pouring the tea. He smiled. “Here. This will help.” His smile looked smug.

I didn’t need to change to my wolf form to know that he had touched me. He’d checked my pockets, moved my keys. I didn’t look at him. I didn’t want him to know that I knew. I cleared my throat and said, “What will you do now?”

He laughed. “Don’t you know better than to ask the Fox his business?”

Ask the Fox a question and he will waste your time
. “I told you, I’ll ask you whatever I want.”

“Very well. Amber. I will be here for awhile. I have several scouts out, who will report to me here. If you need anything, come and see me. I’ll do whatever I can.”

“You’re staying in the cabin?”

He shrugged. “It's convenient. It has a few wards. The nearest neighbors are…” he lifted his nose, “a quarter mile away.”

I didn’t drink any more of his tea. I got up to take my plate into the cabin, thinking I could at least get a look inside that way. I headed for the door.

“Leave that,” he said, not quite sharply. I turned and looked at him, and he lifted a hand. “I’ll get that in a minute. Come,” he gestured. “I’ll walk you down.”

As he started down, he changed to his gray fox form. The fox kind, like the wolf kind, take no time at all to change. He set a foot down as a human, and the next foot down as a fox, sliding from one form to the next like water from one vessel to another, almost too quickly to follow. Then he turned and looked at me. Strange. I’d never noticed before how small he was, as a gray fox. He was above average height as a human. I wondered if he took pains to make himself look larger than he was.

He stood looking at me expectantly, his bright eyes challenging. He wanted me to change as well. I pretended I didn’t see the look, and continued down the slope after him, picking my way along the rocky path, and trying not to limp. Aside from not wanting him to see the shape I was in, if I changed, I was sure I’d lose those damn stupid shoes.

In any case, when we got to the creek, my decision seemed prescient instead of defiant, because at that moment a crowd of hikers came laughing and chattering up the trail. A few of them waved. I waved back and smiled. When they had passed, I turned to look for the Gray Fox, but he was gone.

It was a long walk back down the trail. Hikers passed me every few minutes, going either way. My ankle hurt, but I couldn’t limp too much to spare it. Gray Fox was out there somewhere. He would be watching me.

It was a good thing I’d lost my I.D. He’d have gotten my address from it, and my new name. I tried to feel grateful that he promised to hold off before telling my family where I was, but I didn’t. It was a while before I realized he’d promised no such thing. He’d given the impression that's what he would do, but he hadn’t said so. Then I realized what he had done. He had offered to deal with me, separately from my stepfather, but most of all, separately from my mother. He was playing me, as though I were a piece on a board that belonged to him. And that was just wrong.

When I thought it through like that, then our whole meeting made a lot more sense. I must be growing up. I could see what he had done. Like a good hunter, he had separated me from any allies I might still have at home. He had blocked me from my covert. He’d gotten me into the open, and now he would watch me and see where I ran. He was hunting for himself, and I was his prey. When he was ready, he would drive me to his chosen ground, and then he would come in for the kill.

I
got to the parking lot without seeing Gray Fox again, but that didn’t mean he didn’t follow me every step of the way. I was very glad to sit down in my car and get my weight off my ankle, but the wound in my hip had begun to hurt. I’d probably torn all the newly-healed tissue in the three miles of hiking that rocky trail. Clenching my hand on the stick shift made my wrist ache again. I was one sorry pup as I headed off that mountain, with no place to lay my head.

I drove out to Redlands, about an hour to the east on the 210. I didn’t know if Gray Fox was shadowing me, or if one of his many tribe was tracking me, or if he could scry me, but I did not want him following me home to my place in Whittier. Since he was so sure my den was in Redlands, that's where I went, and hopped off a couple of the exits, circled the neighborhoods, and hopped back on again, then got on the 10 and drove back toward L.A. Then I caught the 215 and headed south.

It's difficult to scry someone on the freeway, because freeways all look alike. I hoped to obscure the trail enough so that when I eventually went to ground, I would be pretty hard to find. I had one last place where I thought I could ask for help. If she was in town, if she was at her shop, Madam Tamara might help me.

I pulled around back into the parking lot for the World Music: Ethnic and Tribal Instruments store in Costa Mesa. Parking lots look pretty much the same to scryers as well. I sat in the car for a few minutes, resting my wrist, getting up the strength to stand on my bad foot again.

I could hear the drumming from inside the car. Some folks were jamming on the little patio beside the store. Toots and bells, honks and whistles played among the drums, and I thought I heard a fiddle as well. The music had a joyful buzz to it. The residue from the many magical workings that had taken place at Tamara's store over the years gyred in the air, and music or dancing, or sometimes just conversation fed into it, caught the buzz and expanded in its resonance. I was the farthest that I’d ever been from wanting to dance, but as I passed the music makers, heading into the store I felt my heart and my breathing respond. I saw a few faces I recognized, but no one I really knew. A couple of them nodded at me, friendly.

A bear was sitting on the wall to the patio, drinking coffee. He was in his human form, a big black man with a heavy face and eyes that seemed sleepy, but noticed everything. I nodded to him. It pays to be respectful to the bear kind. They will make you pay if you are not.

“Aaron,” I said, greeting him.

He nodded back.

“Is Tamara here?”

He pointed to the store with his chin and I headed for the door.

“You look a mess,” he said, as I passed him.

“It's a gift.”

Coming out of the bright late April sunlight, I paused inside the door of the shop. A group of women clustered among the bright silks, the African pattern cloth, the Indian muslins set with tiny mirrors. Wafting traces of ginger and sesame oil, they draped one another with colorful textiles from the various racks, posing, exclaiming, twirling in front of the mirrors. Along the next aisle a couple of giggling children made rude noises with some wooden whistles. An elderly man methodically sorted through a box of old sheet music, frowning over his glasses.

Tamara stood behind the counter, watchful over everyone in the store, while she wrapped up and boxed a painted mask for a burbling customer. Madam Tamara wore a sky blue turban, vivid against her dark skin, and a flowing yellow, blue, and black dress that set off her angular frame.

She saw me as I came in, looked me over and motioned me to the back of the store, without breaking off her side of the conversation. I went through the curtained doorway, the wards parting for me as I reached it, passed through the office and collapsed in the first chair I came to in the back room. I shoved a stack of catalogs on the long table out of my way and put my head down on my arms.