Part of the adventure. But it made her wonder about the personal side of her new life. She’d thought plenty about the professional side, imagining different scenarios of meeting her boss, the Wolf, for the first time. What about the woman who would be her housemate? What kind of house would they be living in? There had to be indoor plumbing, right? Right?

Which was a harder way to travel—four straight days with the nightly stopovers or breaking up the journey and being stuck in a small town for a full day because trains didn’t run on Earthday anymore? More experienced travelers probably used the day to take in a movie or eat a decent meal or rent a room at the hotel. Some of the people going to Bennett had done enough traveling in the Northeast to feel confident that they could navigate through an unfamiliar town and believe the train wouldn’t pull out of the station when they were still a couple of blocks away. For the rest of them, the thought of being stranded in a border town, without luggage, without the papers that proved you had the terra indigene’s permission to cross the border, without anything to go back to even if you had enough money on you to pay for a ticket … Those were the reasons most of the passengers who had traveled from Lakeside were staying close to the station, making use of a sandwich shop or the diner that was open. And even those businesses would close an hour before dark, leaving passengers to spend another night on the train or in the train station.

Part of the adventure, Jana reminded herself as she wandered over to the station’s shop. The small space held everything from bottles of aspirin and toiletries to coloring books and decks of cards. There were a few postcards, but nothing that appealed to her.

Turning away from the postcards, Jana focused on the paperbacks in a spin rack. She’d found out the hard way that she couldn’t read when the train was in motion. She hadn’t embarrassed herself or caused her fellow passengers any discomfort, but she didn’t want to gamble with nausea again. Still, she’d have plenty of time to read this evening, just like the other evenings when the train pulled into a station for the night.

She looked at each book that was available. Some of the books held no interest for her and others she’d already read. But it was something to do, a reason to linger away from the train a little while longer.

No authors with last names ending in “gard.” Was that because the station didn’t want to stock anything written by a terra indigene or was it because the person who ordered the books didn’t know such books existed? Would the bookstore in Bennett carry books written by the Others as well as books written by Intuits? She’d have to ask John Wolfgard, since he’d told her he was going to manage the bookstore.

She selected a thriller, then put it back when she realized the gun for hire was a human and the villains in the story were terra indigene. That was when she noticed the woman sitting in a dark corner, half hidden by the spin rack. The body language made her think runaway, but the woman was an adult. Short brown hair. The corner was too dark to tell the color of the woman’s eyes. Jana guessed her age to be late twenties or early thirties. Definitely adult. And yet … runaway.

“Excuse me.” The woman had a husky voice.

Jana offered a smile but kept her distance. “You need some help?”

“Are you boarding the train in the morning?”

“Actually, I’m returning to the car in a few minutes.”

“The regular car?”

“No, the earth native car. I’m heading for Bennett.”

“Oh.”

“Are you in some kind of trouble?” Was she officially an officer of the law yet?

The woman stood and came closer to the spin rack, closer to the light. Jana noted the way she favored her left side, particularly her left shoulder. The top she wore was oversized—the kind that could be worn off one shoulder. The woman pushed it off her left shoulder, revealing a dark, fist-sized bruise.

“Have you ever dated someone you thought was really great until you learned his being really great was an act and you saw the real man? I was fast enough that he missed hitting my face.” She hesitated. “I need to disappear. He went off to meet up with some friends or cousins or something. I need to be far away before he returns and starts looking for me.”

“I don’t have much …” Jana reached for the back pocket of her jeans and the few bills she’d tucked there.

“I don’t need money. I have money. A couple of nights ago, he wanted a ‘loan’ to play a few hands of poker, and when I wouldn’t give it to him, he hit me. So I closed out my savings account, packed my clothes and personal papers, and I caught the first bus out of town. Got off here. I was hoping to cross the border, find some work. But border crossings aren’t easy, or safe, without the right papers.”

From a few comments she’d heard from passengers in the regular car, you could cross the border if you put enough money in the right hand—unless one of the Others observed the exchange. If that happened, you’d end up in someone’s belly and your skin would be nailed to the station wall as a warning.

She wasn’t sure if that was only a story told to scare people into behaving, or if it had started because someone had seen a skin nailed to the outer wall of a train station. She just hoped she didn’t see any evidence that the story was more than a story.

“What’s your name?” Jana asked.

“Candice Caravelli.”

“You in any trouble with the law, Candice Caravelli?”

“No, but Charlie might be. Charlie Webb. He’s the man I was dating.”

The spin rack suddenly started spinning. Coloring book pages riffled. Then … nothing.

“What … ?” Candice’s brown eyes widened with fright.

Before Jana could think of a reply—or even a way to voice her suspicion of what had just happened—John Wolfgard walked into the station.

“Air says this female is running away from a bad mate,” John said.

Oh gods, oh gods. She hadn’t considered that an Elemental might be listening to her conversation.

Air was not the only Elemental, but Jana was not, was not, so was not going to think about what that might mean when she took a shower.

“Yes, she is,” Jana said. “She needs to get far away from here, and she’s willing to work. Right?” She looked at Candice.

“Absolutely. I’ll do anything.” Candice thought for a moment. “Almost anything. I’ll do any kind of work that’s legal.”

John cocked his head. “You have money for a ticket to Bennett? If I allow you to cross the border with us, you have to come all the way with us. No getting off at one of the stops and leaving.”

“Okay. Why?”

“Because the terra indigene don’t know you.”

There was no mercy in the wild country, no safety in the dark. She had heard that over and over again from Karl Kowalski and Michael Debany while they had tested her skills. They hadn’t been trying to scare her off; they’d wanted her to use caution and common sense because there would be no boundaries between the humans living in her new town and the most dangerous forms of terra indigene.

Candice took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Okay. Are there jobs in Bennett?”

“There is a lot of work,” John replied. “Tolya Sanguinati is the town leader. He will decide if you can stay and what work you should do.”

“Sanguin … Okay.”

“Would you rather stay here?” Jana asked.

Candice shook her head.

Jana helped by hauling the big suitcase. She was stronger than she looked, but she was glad the suitcase had wheels. Even with wheels, she couldn’t imagine Candice pulling it down the street while carrying a soft weekend bag and a purse over the uninjured shoulder. The woman probably had the essentials in the weekend bag so that she could abandon the large suitcase and run if she had to.

John stood beside Candice while she bought the ticket to Bennett. The man in the ticket booth seemed a little too keen for Candice to give him her name, which wasn’t necessary since she was buying a ticket at the station, but John gave the man a toothy smile and said he would take care of the personal information at his end.

They left in a hurry, getting Candice’s large suitcase stowed in the baggage car before climbing the steps into the earth native car.

Jana said nothing when Candice sat beside her. The woman was understandably spooked. Besides, once the train started moving again, people changed seats to chat and get to know the people who would be their neighbors. Hopefully by then, Candice would feel comfortable enough to take a pair of empty seats and they could both stretch out and get some sleep.

“When I first met him, Charlie was so sweet,” Candice said. “Then sweet morphed into sly. He used to take me out to dinner or pay for the tickets when we went to a movie. Then he’d show up and say he was short of cash and would I mind picking up the tab. And then he started showing up, expecting me to give him sex before he ‘borrowed’ some money and went out to play cards or do something with somebody else. By then, he’d said some things that made me realize he was part of some kind of gang and the work that was the reason he had to travel probably was borderline legal at best. But you get hooked, you know? First you get hooked because he acts sweet and then you stay hooked because you’re scared of what he’ll do if you start saying no.”

“You got out,” Jana said, wondering if she’d have to deal with many domestic disputes. “You got out, and now you’re on your way to a fresh start just like the rest of us.”

Candice nodded. Then she sighed. “Men. You can’t live with them, you can’t feed them to the Wolves.”

Jana’s breath caught. She looked around. Nobody listening that she could see. “I don’t think that’s something you want to say once we reach Bennett.”

“Nobody means anything by it,” Candice protested. “Who would take it seriously?” She stared at Jana. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Jana agreed. She closed her eyes and pretended to sleep, but she couldn’t stop thinking about all the ways things could go wrong once more humans arrived in Bennett.

* * *

* * *

Alone in his hotel room in Shikago, Parlan dealt four hands, all the cards faceup. He studied the cards, much as he studied marks who bought a seat at his table. Whose hand would he bust? Whose hand would he help just enough to almost win the pot? And whom would he help win because the player wasn’t bold enough to bet big, thereby ensuring that Parlan would still be ahead at the end of the night?

A signal knock on the door. “Come in.”

Parlan watched Judd McCall enter the room. A handsome man in a rough sort of way, Judd’s light eyes didn’t betray his taste for spilling blood when the spilling was needed—or even when it wasn’t needed.

Judd took a couple of glasses and a bottle of whiskey from a tray on the dresser and poured two stiff drinks before sitting at one of the seats at the table. He studied the cards. “You finished up early.”