I explained that the mattresses had rotted and been removed, and that I would purchase a new box spring and mattress, as well as linens and blankets. Cougar was also in one of the primitive cabins, but he’d chosen one from the second set of cabins that were close to the lake. He, too, had been puzzled by the bed frame but hadn’t given it much thought.

As we talked, I had the impression that Aggie had more of what they called a human-centric education than the boys, who made me think of young men in earlier times of human history who would give up formal education before finishing grade school in order to go to work. I didn’t get the impression that Conan and Cougar wanted to get too humanized, but they wanted something enough to settle into two of the cabins and do some work in lieu of rent.

I put away what was left of the vegetable pizza. After confirming what time Ilya would return in the morning to take me to the bank, I said good night to my attorney and settled in to watch cop and crime shows with my new friends.

The boys had never seen television, so I had to explain that commercials weren’t some weird schism in the story, that they were like their own little stories about something humans were selling and wanted other humans to buy. When Aggie said it was all right to talk during commercials because no one wanted to listen to them anyway, that started a whole round of questions about why the TV police did or didn’t do the same things the police who had been sniffing around The Jumble had done. Which made me wonder if I should warn Officer Grimshaw about how carefully he was watched when he came around to investigate.

There were growls when the cops missed a clue and snarls when the bad humans did something sneaky—and more than a few eye rolls over human behavior in general. At one point, Aggie shouted at a woman who approached a villain who was pretending to be hurt. “It’s a trick! There’s no blood! Can’t you smell that there’s no blood?”

During commercials I tried to explain about human senses without sounding too apologetic for the inadequacies of my species. I ended up feeling that all I’d managed to do was convince my new friends that fish were smarter than humans even if humans did have those nifty opposable thumbs.

The other thing I realized by the end of the evening was that humans and the Others did have one thing in common—we both had a love for, and fascination with, stories. I learned that every form of terra indigene had its own teaching stories as well as stories that were the repository of their history and connection to the world. And they all had stories that were told for the fun of it.

After the last show of the evening, the boys and Aggie went to their own cabins, and I triple-checked the porch door to make sure it was locked. Ilya had said one of the detectives had opened the door but hadn’t gone inside. As I did my walk around the rest of the house, I stopped in the library and looked at the books I’d been buying from Lettuce Reed. I hadn’t purchased anything I didn’t want to read. With only one lodger, what was the point, especially since Aggie seemed as enthusiastic about reading thrillers as I was? But now I looked at the books I had purchased and considered them with an eye to reading level. I was pretty sure Conan and Cougar would like the story lines in the thrillers. I was equally sure their reading skills weren’t yet a match for those books, and making a trip to the story place had sounded like one of the big reasons those two had decided to interact with humans at all.

If Ilya Sanguinati was willing to stick around the village for a bit before taking me home tomorrow, I needed to talk to Julian Farrow about some appropriate books before I talked to the boys about a trip into town.

CHAPTER 15

Ilya

Sunsday, Juin 13

Ilya Sanguinati walked to the lowest level of the lodge’s deck and stared out over the lake. Had he made a mistake allowing Victoria DeVine to restore some of the buildings in The Jumble? If the terra indigene had prevented any human from taking up the agreed-upon caretaker duties for one more human generation, the agreement the Sanguinati had made with Honoria Dane and her designated heirs all those years ago would have been considered null and void, and the buildings could have been claimed as part of the terra indigene settlement. Humans could have been denied all access to Lake Silence except the southern tip, which, per the agreement with the first humans who had wanted to settle near the lake, was accessible to humans only as long as Sproing remained a viable human village.

But losing Sproing as a viable village would mean losing easy access to the Sanguinati’s preferred prey. They had successfully hunted from the shadows since the village’s founding, becoming more of a folktale that produced a delicious shiver than a real threat. Humans living and visiting Sproing believed themselves safe from those predators—even when the predators sat among their prey and became the seducers who were woven into a different kind of tale.

“This Victoria worries you.”

Ilya waited until Natasha, his potential mate, stood beside him before answering. “She is not what I expected.” Through the informants the Sanguinati maintained in the village, he had followed every step of Victoria’s progress with the renovations so that he could reassure the terra indigene the rest of them feared that this human was behaving honorably. He’d also been careful to keep his distance—until the Crow had come winging across the lake looking for help because humans had come to The Jumble and had taken Miss Vicki away.

Perhaps keeping his distance had been another mistake. The informants had been less forthcoming than usual, leaving him unprepared to deal with a human who was emotionally outside of his experience.

“You could have fed from her today,” Natasha said. “The rest of us could see it, feel it. She reads stories about a vampire’s kiss and would have given her blood willingly.”

He nodded. No point denying what even Officer Grimshaw had recognized when the police officer had tried to stop Victoria from moving toward him. “I could have fed from her, but only once. Then fledgling trust would have broken with whatever fantasy she has about our kind, and she would have run from any offer of help from us. No more flowing around the edges. With Victoria as caretaker, breaking the connection the Dane family had with the land, The Jumble can become a functional terra indigene settlement again, but we need direct access to her in order to deal with this potential threat.” He hesitated, then added, “Something inside of her is wounded.”

“I didn’t notice any damage. She doesn’t move as if she were injured.”

“Not the body. This wound wasn’t apparent—at least not to us. But the detective who was in the bank with her knew the wound was there and knew how to open it again.”

“So she is vulnerable to attack.”

“Yes. And like any other animal, she will hide the wound whenever possible to escape being targeted by a predator.” But hiding a wound wasn’t the same as healing it. Was there anything they could do to help Victoria heal? Their plan to reseed Sproing with humans of the Sanguinati’s choosing hinged on The Jumble being restored and providing another source of transient prey. And The Jumble’s restoration hinged on the Elders tolerating the designated caretaker. So far they were showing more than tolerance toward Victoria, and the warning should be clear enough for even humans to understand.

“Perhaps we should watch some of those cop and crime dramas to find out how humans think attorneys should act,” Natasha said as they returned to the lodge.

“Perhaps.” He had never been inside a courtroom to defend someone or argue a case. He specialized in leases for land and buildings, and his client had always been the terra indigene. Until now.

Victoria DeVine hadn’t been wounded during all these months when she’d been restoring The Jumble, but she was wounded now. What was he supposed to do about that? His informants had failed to provide any information or give any warning. Perhaps that was as simple as loyalty to a friend, but that meant he wouldn’t depend on them where Victoria was concerned. He needed another source of information.

“I’ll join you soon,” he told Natasha. Then he went into the room that served as an office for all of them, picked up the phone, and dialed the number for a Sanguinati who had access to other resources. “Vlad? It’s Ilya. I need to understand wounds that affect the human mind and emotions. Could the Lakeside Courtyard’s female pack help with that?”