Val nodded, and this dopey smile spread over his face. They’ve been married two months, I told myself, trying not to think about my boyfriend’s naked body one sweatshirt and a plastic blanket away from me. Taks shifted a little so he could sit up better. He picked up his coffee with one hand, and his free hand settled itself to hang over my shoulder. “She and her sisters have given us their protection,” said Val.
“Protection?” I said, looking around. We were in a kind of glade with the sun striking through the leaves. There wasn’t anything to see but trees, but I was pretty sure I could hear traffic noises not too far away. I had no idea what was out this way, beyond Goat Creek and the barrens. There were roads out here? With cars and stuff on them? It was like coming to the end of the world and discovering a shopping mall.
“Sindurak,” said Val. “A—something like what the gruuaa—and the dogs—do, only more complete. Less flexible, less adaptable, but if we stay here, where they have cast it, we are effectively invisible. They are coming for us.”
“Coming for us?”
Val nodded, and his smile got sharper, and he suddenly looked like someone I wouldn’t want mad at me. “There has been, in the last eighteen hours, the most unholy row in this end of Newworld, and your three aunts, who seem to be curiously placed to cause maximum official havoc, have been doing so.”
“Blanchefleur?” I said. “Blanchefleur too?”
“Yes,” said Val. “All four sisters. While your aunts make generals weep and cause nervous breakdowns in senior civil servants, your mother is chiefly responsible for our protection—that is why you feel her presence so strongly.”
Takahiro’s stomach gave a growl like a whole pack of wolves, and Val said, “The rest of the story can wait. It will take Elaine a little while to arrive and meanwhile Casimir has brought us all breakfast.
“Takahiro, you will find most of your clothes—the ones, I gather, you managed to get out of before you ’changed—”
“I’m learning,” said Taks. “I did get out of most of them first. But I was in kind of a hurry.”
“Yes, I ascertained that,” said Val. He stood up. Not like an old guy who had just spent a really uncomfortable night on the ground. Some day—soon—I was going to ask him about all the weird stuff his old life had taught him. “You did extremely well,” said Val. “Most of your clothes are intact, and there beside you. Maggie, if you will come with me, and leave him to his ablutions.” But instead of standing there glaring at me till I shrugged off my naked boyfriend and meekly got up and followed him, my not-so-wicked stepfather, two months married, turned his back and strolled slowly away, and Taks and I threw ourselves at each other and kissed as if our entire lives had been leading to this moment. Maybe they had. It was the most gorgeous thing that had ever, ever, ever happened to me and it was—terrifying. It was probably just as well that Val—still not turning around—paused and called, as if idly, “Maggie.”
I kissed Takahiro’s mouth one last time—I kissed the starburst over his nipple one last time—and tore myself away. When I caught up with Val he was smiling.
“Bacon,” I said disbelievingly. “I smell bacon.”
Val and I had come through a little grove and there was an insanely tidy campfire with a very bent grate that looked like it had once been a shelf in a refrigerator propped up over it, and half a dozen bacon rashers, and four slices of bread-becoming-toast lying on it. There was also what looked like a bucket with a plank across it sitting cozily at, or in, the edge of the fire, but that smelled like a coffeepot. Casimir was carefully and neatly turning the bacon over with another stick with a sharpened end. He was being watched by six dogs and one cat, but Arnie, eating an apple, was watching them and—possibly excepting Majid—I’d bet on Arnie. There was even a (large, mostly empty) bag of dog food being held closed by a small pile of firewood.
Casimir looked up and smiled his smile, and I immediately remembered that I was unbelievably filthy and tear-stained and disgusting, and I didn’t want to think about what my hair looked like—and at the same time, with my mouth full of Takahiro and my body still burning with the touch of his hands, I wasn’t too bothered. I smiled back.
Jill held out a paper plate and Casimir slid the toast and bacon onto it. There was also butter, jam, and a plastic knife. “Oh my,” I said between mouthfuls. “Sugoi. Oh wow.” Casimir had already loaded up his grate again. Takahiro would take a lot of feeding. Mongo changed sides and lay down at my feet, giving me the full force of the big-puppy eyes. Not a hope, friend, I thought at him.
Jill settled down next to me and said, “Daijobu ka? You okay?”
I thought about Taks’ mouth on mine and a kind of explosive thrill went through me. I could feel my (uncombed) hair standing on end and the lightning zapping out of my eyes. It made my hand shake, and I nearly hit myself in the face with my slice of (heavily buttered and jammed) toast. Not quite. I bit it off and chewed. “Yeah,” I said. “Pretty much.”
Jill was smiling at me. I looked at Casimir and back at her and her smile got ever so slightly wider. “He’s a lot better-looking than Eddie,” I said very quietly. “He is, isn’t he?” said Jill, just as quietly.
“So,” I said in a normal voice. “What happened to you?”
They’d left me alone by the barrier as I’d asked them to but, Jill said, they hadn’t gone two steps when Takahiro started stripping out of his clothes. “I didn’t have a clue,” Jill said, “but Caz figured it out instantly and was like whipping his socks off and I’m all whoa, I’m fine for skinny-dipping but where’s the lake, but then Taks started growing fur and I finally got it.” She paused and an expression I couldn’t read crossed her face. “It’s, um, pretty weird, watching,” she said. “Caz said he’d never actually seen anyone change before, but it didn’t seem to faze him any. I was pretty fazed.”
I nodded. I didn’t know but I could maybe guess. I hadn’t seen much when Taks’d changed back to human out in Val’s shed, but it had been disturbing. Whatever had happened last night after Taks-as-wolf caught up with us finally . . . I guess I slept right through.
But as Taks finished the change into wolf the dogs freaked and that’s when Jill lost her grip on Mongo’s collar—but she saw the two of them stampeding back toward where they’d left me. “It had gone all foggy where you were,” she said. “And not a good fog. Like what the armydar might look like if you could see it. I . . . hoped for the best. Since there wasn’t anything else I could do. The gruuaa network had other plans for me, you know?
“Caz really calmly, like he does this all the time for his werewolf friends, folded up Taks’ clothing and put it in his knapsack—even his shoes, which are gigantic. When they’re on Taks’ feet you don’t realize they’re the size of backhoe buckets. Then Caz said that magic always takes longer than you think it’s taking and we probably had some time. Did you see him poking around in the trunk of the Mammoth? Arnie is obsessive about some weird stuff—although I guess I’ll never think about weird in the same way again—so all our vehicles have rope, matches, a first-aid kit, water purification tablets, a little hatchet, and an emergency blanket as well as a flashlight and extra fuel cells in the well with the spare tire. Caz had already put the rest of this in his knapsack and I’d been standing there thinking either this boy is totally anal or I’m a dead battery. I guess we know which it is.