Meg sat in the chair, so Simon leaned a hip on the desk while Vlad stood to one side.
“Yes, this is Meg.”
“Tell her why she was a bad puppy!”
Hearing anguish beneath Jackson’s anger, Simon’s canines lengthened in sympathy. He poked Meg’s shoulder. “Yeah, Meg. Tell her why she was a bad puppy.”
Vlad gave him a sharp look.
“I just needed the color!” A wail.
“I remember you,” Meg said, pretending she hadn’t heard his comment. “You were called cs821.”
“Yes.”
“Did you choose a name for yourself?”
“Hope.” A sniffle. “Hope Wolfsong.”
“That’s a wonderful name.”
<After being snarled at today, I wonder if that will be her name tomorrow,> Vlad said, sounding amused.
But not really amused, Simon decided after studying the Sanguinati. There was nothing amusing about a cassandra sangue using a razor.
“You liked colors, liked to draw,” Meg continued.
“Yes. I’m allowed to draw now. Or I was.”
Poor puppy, Simon thought. She sounded scared. But he would still take Jackson’s side because the Wolf was probably scared too.
“You drew a picture,” Meg prompted.
“Yes.”
“And then you cut yourself, using the razor?”
“Yes. No. I wasn’t trying to cut; I just needed that shade of red.”
Simon poked Meg’s shoulder again. “Tell her the rules.” He raised his voice, even though Jackson could hear him just fine. “There are rules.”
Meg stared at him and bared her teeth.
Vlad muffled a laugh.
Meg leaned toward the phone. “Hope? Is this the first time you’ve cut since you left the compound?”
“Not exactly.”
“The first time with the razor?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Simon is right; there are rules.”
“Told you,” he said quietly.
Meg huffed. “Hope, sooner or later, cutting will kill you. You know that, don’t you?”
A whispered, “Yes.”
“Cutting is about revealing prophecy, and the euphoria that we feel when we cut is our bodies’ way of protecting our minds from what we see. The only way we can remember the visions is to swallow prophecy—if we don’t speak, if we don’t describe what we see, we’ll remember it.”
“I can see my drawings,” Hope said.
Meg nodded even though Hope couldn’t see her. “It’s different for you. But your drawings also mean you don’t have to cut to release the visions of prophecy.”
“I made a drawing for you.”
Meg leaned back. “About me?”
“No. Yes.”
“There is a shop in the Intuit’s part of Sweetwater,” Jackson interrupted. “They have a camera that will take a picture that can be sent through e-mail. We’ll have a picture made for Meg and send it to you, Simon.”
“That’s fine.”
“I’ll create an e-mail account for Meg, adding it to the ones we have for Howling Good Reads,” Vlad said. “She’ll be able to receive mail for herself in a day or two.”
<She can share my e-mail,> Simon said.
Vlad smiled. <She’ll be more honest if she thinks her messages are private.> Simon considered that. For a while anyway, Meg would know only what Vlad taught her about e-mail. <Are you the one who sets the passwords?> <Of course.>
<That’s sneaky.>
<I prefer to think of it as protective.>
No argument from him.
“The drawing you made for me frightened you enough to cut?” Meg asked.
“No! I wasn’t frightened, and it wasn’t the drawing I made for you! It was the other drawing. I made the other drawing.” Hope sucked in a breath. “And then I saw . . .”
“What?” Simon asked when the only sound coming from the phone was uneven breathing.
“Dead bison,” Jackson replied grimly. “A mound of dead bison.”
“Mound?” Simon frowned, puzzled. “Bison are big. Who would put them in a mound? Who would kill so many?”
A phone began ringing downstairs. HGR’s other line.
“I’ll get that,” Vlad said, rushing out of the office and down the stairs.
“Can you send that drawing too?” Simon asked.
Hesitation. “All right,” Jackson replied. Then his voice turned urgent. “We need to know what to do about the cutting.”
No one interrupted while Meg explained about cutting just deep enough to leave a scar but not so deep to cause serious injury; about setting the back of the razor’s blade against an old scar, then turning the hand so the razor was in the correct place to cut new skin. Simon nodded when Meg emphasized the need to have someone there before Hope made the cut, that someone needed to be there to listen—and to help if something went wrong.
“Do you have a piece of paper?” Meg asked. “I’ll give you the phone number of the Liaison’s Office. You can call me if you have other questions.”
“It’s long-distance, Meg,” Simon said. “The telephone companies charge a lot of money for long-distance. Besides, you’ll have the e-mail.”
“Hope? If it’s urgent, you call me. Otherwise, you can use e-mail.” Meg brightened. “Or we can exchange letters. Where can I send a letter?”
Grace joined the conversation, giving Meg the Sweetwater mailing designation for the terra indigene’s settlement.
“Are you feeling better?” Meg asked.
Simon wasn’t sure who was supposed to answer the question, but Hope said, “Yes.”
“Simon?” Jackson said. “We still need to talk.”
Simon looked at Meg. “Shoo.”
She blinked at him.
“Shoo,” he said again.
He was pretty sure Meg wasn’t trying to run the chair’s wheels over his foot as she pushed away from the desk.
He waited until he heard her heading downstairs. Then he picked up the receiver and disengaged the speaker. “What else?”
“Have you heard from Joe?”
“I know he was resettling. All the Wolves who helped destroy the Controller and that compound decided to resettle, and a new pack formed to watch the humans in the town. Joe said he would let me know where to find him as soon as he could.” Simon paused. “Why?”
“Dead bison. The Hawks, Eagles, and Ravens are checking the Sweetwater territory this morning. We do have a herd of bison that graze around here, but our prophet pup draws pictures that are connected to us but not always about us. I don’t think we’re going to find human-killed bison around here.”
“If there is that much meat, it might not have been humans that killed the bison.”
“Maybe.”
“I think Joe’s still in the northern half of the Midwest,” Simon said after a moment. “He might have heard something about dead bison.”
“Hope painted Wolf prints on all the bison. She painted them in her blood. And then she screamed.”
Simon shivered. What had the pup seen beyond her drawing? Not Wolves, but maybe that was as close as she could get to what she had seen in some way?
“Stay in touch,” he said. “I’ll talk to Steve Ferryman. His people are sending out the e-mails to Intuit settlements, relaying information about blood prophets and how to help them stay alive. I’ll have him include you on the Lakeside list. And I’ll ask him to find out if any Intuit settlements have heard about bison being killed.” And he would call Lieutenant Montgomery. It wasn’t likely that the police would hear about dead bison, but Montgomery and his captain, Burke, heard about a surprising number of things that happened beyond their territory.
Finishing up the call with Jackson, Simon made his calls to Steve Ferryman and Lieutenant Montgomery.
Then he went downstairs to find out who was on the other line.
CHAPTER 7
Windsday, Juin 6
Jesse Walker pushed at a lock of gray hair that had escaped the hairclip and looked up from her list as Shelley Bookman, the community’s librarian, rushed into the general store.
“I contacted everyone I could think of, either to help Floyd deal with the meat or offer up a bit of freezer space,” Shelley said. “And I brought over the discussion list, in case we have a chance to talk about more than meat.”
“I wouldn’t push for more discussion,” Jesse warned. “At least, not until we have a better idea how upset Joe Wolfgard is about the bison being killed like that.”