Why was she holding her left elbow up to the mirror?
Frowning, Meg gingerly rubbed the skin, then looked closer. No cut or injury of any kind. Not that she could see anyway. The skin didn’t hurt when she rubbed it. But the elbow hurt, faintly. And the skin prickled, faintly.
Leaving the bathroom, she went through the sorting room, glanced at the box, and almost shrugged off the odd feeling in her elbow. If she said something, she might cause who knew how much upset? But if she said nothing and the odd feeling was a forewarning of trouble . . .
She opened the drawer that contained the wooden box of prophecy cards. She put the box on the counter, opened the lid, and placed her fingertips on the cards. Probably wouldn’t get an accurate answer if she didn’t spread the cards out on the table. If she left them in the box, it would be harder to find the correct one. It was time to look at all of them and start discarding the ones with images that could be represented by a single card when the Trailblazer deck was created.
And how many times was she going to say she should do it before she actually started doing it?
Hadn’t she seen an article in a magazine recently about how to stop procrastinating? Maybe she should find that article and read it again.
For now, she would ask a question and select a card as the answer.
Why is my elbow hurting? Why is my elbow hurting? Why . . .
Her left hand tingled. The fingers buzzed. Didn’t have to search far to find the card. She held it up, turned it over.
Explosion. She’d drawn that card when she had asked about her friends in the Courtyard—and when Lieutenant Montgomery asked about his brother, Cyrus, aka Jimmy.
Meg put the cards away, then pressed her hand against the pocket of her capris, feeling the shape of the silver razor. But the buzzing, prickling, tingling feeling was gone, giving her no indication of where she should cut to find this particular prophecy.
Her elbow hurt again, but not in a way that indicated prophecy.
Disturbed, Meg stepped up to the counter in the front room. “Nathan? Could you look at something for me?”
No leisurely stretch and yawn. He was across the room and had his forelegs on the counter before she had time to blink.
She held up her elbow. “Can you see anything wrong with my elbow? It feels . . . odd . . . but I don’t see a scrape.”
He sniffed her arm from wrist to shoulder, then gave the outside of her elbow a more thorough sniff. He licked the skin. They both waited to see if he would react to a trace of blood so small it couldn’t be found any other way. He gave the skin a dismissive “you’re fine” lick and started to turn away. Then he growled, startling her. Was he reacting to something on her skin after all?
She didn’t know what to think when he rushed to the front door and shifted a front paw enough to have fingers that could turn the simple lock. Frightened by his inexplicable behavior, Meg backed away from the counter, bumping her shoulder against the doorframe.
Returning to the counter, Nathan shifted to human form. “Let me see that arm again.”
Not her friend. Not the office’s watch Wolf. This was Nathan as a Courtyard enforcer.
“Meg.”
The snarled word was a warning. If Nathan was this angry about what she’d thought was a small question, she didn’t want to consider how Blair would react.
I’m not a bunny. I’m not a bunny. I’m not . . .
She kept repeating that as she eased forward and held up her elbow.
His hands gently closed on either side of her elbow. He bent his head and studied the skin, sniffed it, gave it another lick before releasing her.
“Nothing.” He sounded calmer but also puzzled.
The counter hid him below the waist, so she refused to consider what anyone pulling up for a delivery could see through the glass door.
Meg blinked. Thought. Nothing about her had upset him—but something had. “What happened?”
“Uninvited male visitor. Tess said to lock the door and stand guard until Simon decides what to do about that male.”
That sounded bad. The image of the bunny’s backbone popped into her head, making her queasy.
Nathan twisted around and focused on one of the front windows. Nyx looked back at them, nodded, then glided across the delivery area to the consulate.
Jake Crowgard landed on his favorite spot on the brick wall and cawed, letting everyone know that he, too, was watching.
“You’re safe, Meg,” Nathan said. “Nothing will hurt you.”
Her heart pounded so fast she felt dizzy. “Someone is here looking for me?”
“No.” He cocked his head, as if listening to something—or someone. “No, not looking for you.” He studied her elbow. “But if that keeps hurting, you let Simon know. Or Henry.”
Explosion. A physical explosion or an emotional one? Considering how many times she’d drawn that card lately, it could be either—or both.
She didn’t know why her elbow hurt, but she knew it would be pointless to make a cut now. The events she’d seen prophesied in the cards had already begun.
Something had changed in the Courtyard. Air carried the scent of anger. Earth reported that the Wolves were in motion, moving to guard the vulnerable in their pack. All because of the male who had just arrived with his mate and young. The Wolfgard and human packs hadn’t reacted like this to the swarms of humans who had come and gone—the humans who were migrating to other parts of Thaisia. Why was this one male considered a threat to so many when he could be killed so easily? What made him different from the rest of the humans?
This was the reason they had come to Lakeside. This was the kind of human they needed to observe before the migrating humans returned to the places Namid’s teeth and claws had reclaimed for the terra indigene. And they needed to make sure that male remained within reach of the Courtyard.
<Wolf!>
Mostly hidden behind Henry’s large human form, Simon studied the human herd that had gathered in A Little Bite. Strange how the addition of one human could change his way of looking at them, change them from a pack back to a herd. Back to prey.
Maybe that wasn’t so strange. Meg’s arrival in the Courtyard had changed all kinds of things, including changing female employees from nonedible prey to a female pack that was approached with some degree of caution. And with the female pack came the connection to the police pack. So a single person could create a lot of changes.
Nicholas Scratch, the spokesman for the Humans First and Last movement, was another example of a human who had set many things in motion. But the ripples Scratch created had ended with many Wolves and humans dying and Thaisia being broken into pieces to keep the humans more isolated.
Now he was looking at another human he instinctively knew had the potential to cause trouble for the terra indigene. But how? This male was related to Miss Twyla and Lieutenant Montgomery, who were good humans, but both had been concerned about what might happen if this member of their family pack arrived in Lakeside. And Meg had seen trouble when she’d drawn cards to reveal prophecy. Not just trouble; an explosion, which was not a small thing.
And yet, he couldn’t see the threat, couldn’t explain why he wanted to drive this male away from Meg and Sam and everyone else in the Courtyard. So he watched as Miss Twyla and the Sierra entered the coffee shop, followed by Kowalski and Debany, who were in uniform. Miss Twyla looked stern, ready to snap at a misbehaving pup. The Sierra, on the other hand, looked ready to roll over and offer her belly in submission.