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* * *

Jesse Walker smiled at Lila Gold and Candice Caravelli, who were waiting for her outside Bennett’s general store.

“You’re my helpers today?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Lila said. “Is this like an old-fashioned store?”

Jesse paused to consider the question. “I don’t know. It looks pretty much like mine. More small town than old-fashioned since there are the refrigerated units along one wall, and the store is set up to have a little bit of a lot of things.”

She wondered when someone would ask about the empty lot next to the general store—or suggest clearing out the debris so that people didn’t mistake the plot of land for a dump. It wasn’t completely empty, and it wasn’t a place to discard anything unwanted since the only human thing left on that land was a rusting woodstove.

No, that plot of land wasn’t empty, and it wasn’t a dump. It was a daily reminder that the original residents of Bennett had ignored—a warning decades old of what can happen if you clash with the terra indigene. Why the people had been smart enough to keep the warning but not smart enough to heed it was a question that would never be answered.

“I believe this store was built when the town was first settled,” Jesse continued.

“Handy for travelers or people working in the buildings around the square,” Candice said, looking around. She stared at the wall behind the cash register. “Why do so many places around here decorate with animal skulls?”

Lila studied the skull. “Are we going to have to hang animal skulls in our apartments in order to fit in? Is that a standard frontier motif?”

Jesse couldn’t tell if Lila was hoping it was or hoping it wasn’t. “My family has lived in Prairie Gold since the town was created, and we’ve never decorated with skulls.”

“Hmm. Maybe a frontier version of a rock garden, but with skulls.”

“We live in apartments,” Candice said.

Wondering if she should warn Tolya that Lila Gold might start a fad for using bleached animal skulls as garden art or let him find out for himself, Jesse handed lists to the two women, then pointed to the heavy cardboard boxes she’d piled in front of the counter. “You have the lists for the Prairie Gold ranch, the dairy farm, and the vegetable farm. Check the expiration dates on everything I’ve listed and take what isn’t going to keep much longer. We’ll use those jars and cans of food first.”

They looked at the shelves in the general store and hesitated.

“You two settled into your own places?” Jesse asked, correctly guessing the reason for the hesitation.

Lila nodded. “First thing Candice and I did after taking two of the one-bedroom apartments was select furniture and household goods. It will take a few days before our stuff is delivered, but once we’re moved in, it sure would be nice to heat up a can of soup at home if we’re working late at the saloon and don’t finish up before the hotel dining room stops serving meals.”

Jesse nodded. Give it a few more days and the hotel wouldn’t be serving free meals to anyone who wasn’t staying at the hotel, so wanting to stock up was sensible. “Take a couple more of those boxes to fill up for yourselves.”

“Thanks, Jesse,” Candice said.

Lila Gold had the same confident bounce as Barb Debany, but Jesse had a feeling that Candice Caravelli had known some dark times and felt other people’s kindness more deeply because of it.

Lila and Candice were already busy filling up boxes when the four Simple Life women who were heading out to the ranches came in to select supplies for each ranch. While there was nothing wrong with any of the women—Jesse admired their courage in taking on a new life in an unfamiliar part of Thaisia—only one of them felt adaptable enough to not only embrace a different life but also be able to live comfortably with men who didn’t share her beliefs and traditions. That was the woman she’d insisted go to the ranch that would be run by Truman Skye. Truman would have enough challenges without being undermined by the person who was supposed to be the cook and housekeeper.

She didn’t get a feeling about whether the other women would succeed or fail, but she was certain she didn’t want them working for Truman.

“We’re trying to find out what companies are still in business and what kinds of foods are available,” she said. “Until we find out, we don’t want to waste what is here. When you get to the ranches, you might find a pantry full of moldy food or a pantry full of canned goods you can use. Because we don’t know, you’re each welcome to fill up four of those cardboard boxes with supplies free of charge. All we ask is that you take only what you will use. Keep in mind that each ranch will have a foreman and six to ten men who will be looking to you to provide their meals. Also, if any of you want to have a dog at the house to keep you company and warn you when something approaches the house, we have plenty of food in bags and cans, and someone will fetch those for you from the feed store.”

Two of the women looked sour, as if they anticipated working hard enough to feed whatever had to be fed and didn’t need something else depending on them. The housekeeper for the Skye Ranch, however, looked happy about the possibility of having a dog or two for company. Jesse would ask Tobias to go with the woman to look at the available dogs.

Once the Simple Life women started making their selections, Jesse stepped away from the counter, intending to fetch a few more boxes from the back room. Instead, she grabbed her suddenly throbbing wrist and turned toward the door as a group of strangers walked in.

There was nothing obvious about the two men, but Jesse felt certain that they were lovers at the very least. That shouldn’t have produced a strong feeling of impending danger. No, what confused her—and scared her—and caused that fierce ache in her wrist, were the four children who were with them, two boys and two girls, all under the age of ten.

One man was slender, had almond-shaped eyes and straight black hair cut very short. The other man was burly and dark-skinned, with curly black hair.

“Can I help you?” Jesse asked.

“Please,” the slender man said with a gentle smile. “The man at the train station said we should come here and talk to Jesse Walker.”

Nicolai had sent them to the store? “I’m Jesse.”

He looked at the wrist she still held. “You are Intuit?”

“Yes.”

The man’s smile warmed with relief, a response typical of someone who was also an Intuit—especially someone who had had reason to keep some things hidden because he’d lived among people who would not have welcomed an Intuit’s abilities. “We arrived on the train and are hoping to become citizens of your fine town.”

Then why didn’t Nicolai direct you to the mayor’s office to talk to Tolya?

She knew why. Nicolai had sent them to her for the same reason someone had relaxed the travel restrictions as soon as those men said they were coming to Bennett. Because of the children. Knowing that her Intuit ability was sensing other people, Nicolai had sent these people to the store so that she could get a feel for who they were before he contacted the terra indigene who would make a decision about whether the men lived or died.

Out of the corner of her eye, Jesse saw the tight-lipped, disapproving stiffness in two of the Simple Life women who stared at the newcomers. She also noticed Lila step up, ready to give a bouncy welcome. The men didn’t bother Jesse, but the children did, especially the girl who had a disturbingly vacant stare.

Before she could frame a question about why two men had four young children, Joshua Painter walked into the store, swung around the men, and focused on the children. His right hand was covered in that leather glove with the Panther claws, and the look in his eyes made Jesse’s skin crawl.

Eyes. Jesse looked at the girl who was Joshua’s main focus, then looked back at him. Gods above and below, they both had green eyes with an outer ring of gray.

Virgil Wolfgard and Tolya Sanguinati walked into the store, forcing the strangers to move forward, caught between them and Joshua.

Virgil sniffed the air and growled, “That little female. She’s …” He looked at Tolya, whose lips pulled back, revealing fangs.

The men put their arms around the children, protective. And the children clung to the men, although one of the boys growled at Virgil before turning away and pressing his face against the man who held him.

“We don’t want any trouble,” the burly man said, sounding nervous.

“Then explain why you came here with a Wolf, a Hawk, a Coyote … and a sweet blood,” Tolya snarled.

Jesse swayed. The girl with the vacant stare was a cassandra sangue, a blood prophet?

Joshua lowered himself to his heels and balanced on the balls of his feet. He stared at the green-eyed girl, and his face took on an expression that wasn’t as disturbingly blank as the girl’s but was too similar for comfort, as if he had fallen into some kind of trance. “Sees too much, knows too much.”

“She’s mute,” the slender man said, looking at Jesse in a silent appeal for understanding. “We think the cause is emotional trauma.”

“Tell the truth, feel the belt,” Joshua whispered.

Virgil snarled—a sound filled with hate.

“Why did you come to Bennett?” she asked quickly.

“We are a mixed family,” the slender man said. “We had hoped that, in a town where terra indigene and humans lived together, we might be accepted. We hoped our children would find others of their kind to help them, teach them the things that we cannot.”

Jesse focused on the men. They were parents by heart if not by blood, but if the men didn’t give the right answers, they wouldn’t get out of the store alive.

Then a woman hurried into the store wearing a deputy’s star pinned to her shirt. Thank the gods, the human deputy had arrived. Jesse felt fear and hope rise in equal measure along with the certainty that this woman would be the deciding factor in what happened to these men and children. But she could do her part to help. After all, Nicolai had sent them here to talk to her.

“The children?” she asked.

The slender man brushed a hand over the brown feathers that covered the other girl’s head—a head that had been covered with neatly combed and braided brown hair when they’d walked into the store. “Orphans. Abandoned chicks who had been taken from their own kind when they were so young they couldn’t remember who they were or where they came from. How could we walk away when we were needed?”

Jesse gave him a nod of encouragement, then glanced at Virgil and Tolya. Tell them more.

“I am Evan Hua. This is my partner, Kenneth Stone.” He smiled at the feathered girl. “This is Charlee Hawk.”

“Hawkgard,” Jesse corrected. “Her correct last name would be Hawkgard.

“Charlee Hawkgard,” Evan said. “Our growling boy is Mason Wolf … Wolfgard.”