The Silent Strength of Stones (16 page)

“Maybe he’s got a career or something. Maybe he’s got a future on the stage. Maybe—” I thought about what I had seen Willow’s family doing since I had discovered them. None of it looked like anything you could make a living at. Maybe this was the wrong line of reasoning to follow. Or maybe they could make a living off whatever their magic was, only in some weird way I couldn’t even imagine. Magic food? Magic money? Magic life-forms that didn’t need what I assumed all humans needed? I felt the itch to spy on them growing inside me again. I hadn’t seen the men do much, or Aunt Elissa—had only observed her torturing me, basically. I didn’t even know what the boys had been doing when I watched them. If I could get Lauren alone again I was pretty sure I could find out a lot from her.

I said, “Hey, maybe he’s going to college.”

The thought of that staggered me as soon as I mentioned it. I imagined Evan in an MBA program and grinned. Imagine Evan wearing a suit and tie. Or how about law school? A guy who broke rules all the time and refused to obey authority. A laugh escaped me. No, definitely the arts. I could see Evan covered with clay, throwing pots he would personalize with a paw print.

“Hey!” he said. “Think I couldn’t do college?”

“I was just trying to figure out what your major would be,” I said. I wondered what my major would be if I could ever get away from Sauterelle. It had never occurred to me to think about college. My primary goal had been just getting away—at least, getting away from Pop and the store. I wasn’t so sure I wanted to leave the lake and the forest. But if I did go—yeah, detective work. I’d figured that out a long time ago. Where did you study to be a detective? Something I should probably detect pretty soon.

Even though my feet were set in cement here.

Evan owned me, and that meant more than I had ever suspected. If anybody could get my feet out of cement, he probably could, if he were correctly motivated. But for the first time I was sort of worried about Pop. How would he manage without me? Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe he’d have to sell the business, even though it was his dream to run it. Maybe he’d have to hire somebody. He couldn’t afford that ... could he? The one thing he never let me do was the books.

But I had the inventory in my head. I could extrapolate from what he paid to what he charged. I could do that kind of math if I really wanted to. It wouldn’t hurt me to know.

“I was good in school,” Evan said.

He was still standing half on me and glaring down at me with fierce yellow eyes. His breath was hot against my face and smelled as if he had been chewing mint.

I’d never seen him defensive about anything before. Must be a sore spot. I filed that for later and said, “I never said you weren’t. How would I know? It’s not something we’ve talked about yet.”

He rested his head on my chest. “I was good in school,” he said, “but I haven’t gone since I left the Hollow.” He moaned. I stroked his head.

“
Akenar
,” Willow said. Her voice was relaxed, more fond than condemning, but I could tell it wasn’t a nice word.

“
Wurf
,” said Evan. “I didn’t see any human future, so why bother learning anything new? Animals don’t need school .... Little did I know I would find people I would be interested in.”

“What are you guys talking about now?” Megan asked.

“School,” I said. “If you’re really going to be her boyfriend, it would probably be better if she could understand you,” I told Evan.

“No, only family members and
fetchayim
and those with the gift of tongues can understand me,” he said. He lifted his head, cocked it, and looked at Megan. “
Fetchayim
. You think—?” He took his paws off me and sat on the pebbled concrete of pool skirting, studying Megan, who seemed to have forgotten she was embarrassed by her swimsuit and sat cross-legged on the chaise, gripping her toes.

I felt a stab of cold in my stomach. Scared for Megan’s sake or just jealous? Or something else? A small wordless feeling from somewhere deep inside flashed through me in a dazzle of white sparks and orange splashes and was gone.

What language was that? Who, inside me, spoke it?

“Nick told me why it’s a bad idea, fetching someone you might love,” Willow said.

“He did? When?” asked Evan.

“About twenty minutes ago, when we first got to the pool.”

“How many fetchies can you
kilia
, anyway?” I said, hoping I was being obscure enough. I couldn’t remember the real words they had used.

“Fetchies!” said Evan, and laughed. He licked my hand. “Fetchies!”

“No limit,” Willow said.

“Fetch? Kill? Are these the kind of dog commands you people use?” asked Megan.

“Or, I should say, one is limited by how much one can control. How much,” Willow said, “or how many.”

“They’re not dog commands, Megan,” I said.

Speaking to Evan, Willow went on, “Nick said if you get it mixed up with romance, you’ll never know how the other person really feels about you.”

“As
kolestyani
, I could just ask Nick how he feels,” said Evan, “and he’d have to tell me.”

“Try it,” Willow said.

“Don’t,” I said. “Not just now.”

“Nick, tell me how you feel about me.”

“Don’t, Evan.”

He laughed, “How can you say no to me, Nick? What are you hiding?”

“I can say no because you told me before not to let you mess yourself up again, and I’m not hiding anything from you. I’ll tell you later.”

“What?” He jumped up and sat on my stomach, then glared at me as breath oofed out of me. “I never said any such thing, I would never give my actions over into your hands!”

I looked up into his eyes and tasted a syrup of sadness, because I had handed myself to him almost utterly—was counting on him in ways I didn’t even know yet—but he was saying he wouldn’t return the favor. I had a clearer idea of where I stood in his regard. Not the almost-equals I had assumed. I closed my eyes and sighed.

“Hey,” he said, pawing at my shoulder, “that probably came out wrong. What did I say that makes you think you can stop me from messing up?”

I sifted through my memories. I wasn’t sure exactly what he had said, but I remembered feeling it gave me permission to question his orders when I thought they would get him in trouble. I remembered the specific instance from that morning, when I had been wide open to his words because he had told me to be, and he had said I could ask questions if I didn’t want to do what he told me to; but this was something even more specific, something he had said in the last little while.

“What was it, Nick? Tell me.” This time his voice had that hot edge to it I had heard in my own voice and in Willow’s when we were persuading people against their wills.

I opened my mouth. “‘Don’t let me do that to you again, Nick.’” Megan jumped. It was eerie. Evan’s voice was lower than mine, but it sounded like Evan’s voice coming from my mouth.

“Do what?” Evan asked.

“Something stupid that will get you into more trouble.”

“I never said that part.”

“I guess I assumed that was what you meant.” I remembered: he had rendered me dumb and then undid it, and I had assumed he meant I should stop him from making me do things that would make him look foolish. This introduced a new element to our relationship: creative hearing.

I wanted to stop doing everything else and just think about that for a while, but Evan said, “Why is it stupid for me to want to know how you feel?”

“Because we’re not alone,” I said.

He sat staring down at me for a long moment, then gazed away across the pool. Presently he turned and licked my nose. “You fascinate me,” he said.

“I wish I knew what you were talking about,” said Megan.

“You would be able to if you could deal with him turning back into a human,” I said. “On the other hand, I’m not always sure what we’re talking about, and I can understand the words.” I looked at Kristen. She was still peacefully asleep. I looked toward the office. Adam Lacey was nowhere in evidence, which didn’t mean he wasn’t watching.

“If he changes into a human, is he going to keep kissing you?” Megan asked.

“Nick, say this to her: a lick is not a kiss. A lick is just a way of getting reacquainted.”

I grinned and said it out loud, then added, “Of course, he hasn’t said he’d turn back into a human, anyway.”

“I’ll do it for the rest of the afternoon if she likes. After that ... it depends on what happens.”

“The Friday night dance,” I said.

“Make Nick teach you how to dance,” Willow said.

“Megan can teach him. More fun for both of them.”

“It is really a wonderful thing, Evan,” said Willow. “You get to hold the other person, but the music sings through both of you. It’s a good way to live inside music.”

“Get off me.” I pushed at Evan until he jumped down off my chest. “Megan, you want to try this again?”

“All right,” she said. “I’ll close my eyes.”

Evan lay down between the chaises. This time I sat up and watched him, but I still couldn’t understand what I was seeing, The white wolf stretched out on the cobbles, laid his head between his front paws, and shimmered and pearled and
shifted
, and then there was a tall muscular man with wolf-bite scars and a blond mane. He rolled over and stretched his arms up in the air. “Ahhhh.”

I tossed him his swimsuit and he pulled it on. He sat up. “You can be my valet,” he said.

At the sound of his voice, Megan opened her eyes and smiled.

“As long as you only have one pair of shorts, I think I can handle it Megan, this is Evan. Evan, this is Megan. I hope you like each other.”

Megan reached out a hand, and Evan took it and licked it. I nudged him with my foot “Stop it! Shake her hand.”

“That’s stupid,” Evan said. “Your tanning oil is making me hungry,” he told Megan.

She put her feet flat on the ground and leaned forward until her face was close to his. She stared into his eyes. He stared back. She reached out, slowly, and touched his hair, snagged her fingers in it, and he leaned his head against her hand and closed his eyes.

“It’s a trick?” she whispered.

He moaned like a contented dog, high in his nose. She brushed the hair back from his face, and he opened his eyes and smiled up at her, his open-mouthed grin.

She gripped his head between her hands, then stroked her hands down over his shoulders. He stretched up and laid his head and arms on her lap, and she continued running her hands down his head and shoulders and arms.

I was feeling hot and pleasurably uncomfortable just watching them. “Let’s go somewhere else,” I said to Willow.

“In the water,” she said. She stood up and pulled off her short green shift, revealing an orange suit that was more like a short-sleeved leotard; it covered her except for legs, arms from the elbows down, and neck and head, but it was skintight, and she looked just as great as she had looked and felt the night before.

She grabbed my hand and pulled me up off my chaise and into the water. The shock of cold against my body solved my tent-suit problem. At least I had grabbed a good breath before we jumped in. I made for the bottom of the pool.

Willow followed me down and kissed me. I wondered if she had been getting as stirred up watching Evan and Megan as I had, and then I didn’t wonder anything at all, not even how to breathe.

When I opened my eyes I realized we were drifting toward the surface of the water, which was just as well, since my lungs were telling me I was out of air, and pool water didn’t sustain me the way lake water sometimes did. Willow let go of my head just as we broke surface, and both of us gasped for breath. She still gripped my shoulder. Her orange leotard had darkened in the water, and it clung even tighter than it had before. I glanced down at her through the distorting magnifying lens of the water, then smiled and glanced away, peeking at Evan and Megan, who weren’t talking, but were communicating. I looked at Willow again. She was looking at me. I wanted to finish our broken-off conversation about her baby brother from before, and I wanted to kiss her again.

“Evan!”

Willow and I jerked. I felt my heart speed. The tall muscular man I had only seen through a window at the store and a doorway at Lacey number five stood on the concrete, not too far from where Evan and Megan had been sitting side-by-side and somewhat wrapped around each other on the chaise. Evan turned and rose, stepping between Megan and the speaker. Red flushed his cheeks.

“
A lyllya veshoda
,” the man said, and began a long harangue in the other language. Evan lifted a hand, pushed it against the tide of words, flinched, wilted. Megan stood behind him, her hands against his back to support him, her face showing confusion.

“Hey!” I yelled, pulling myself out of the water onto the lip of the pool. Willow grabbed me, tried to shush me. I shook her off. “Hey!” I said, walking up to this guy and getting in his face.

The man looked through me with his silver-flickery eyes, and continued to speak.

“Hey, cut it out!” I grabbed his arm, pulled on it, trying to get him to shift his attention.

He spat out a few more foreign words, said, “Worthless
nazgar
! You’ve slacked long enough! Pull your weight! Earn your keep!” in Evan’s direction, clicked his teeth together, then stared down into my eyes. The green and blue flickers among the silver drew me in again.

When I woke up this time, I was at the bottom of the pool, my mouth open, trying to breathe water.

My throat was raw by the time I finished coughing up the. water, and I felt soggy and tired. Willow stroked my head while tears dripped from her face onto my chest. Evan knelt at my other side, with Megan beside him. Megan had given me the actual mouth-to-mouth; it wasn’t something Willow or Evan knew. Megan’s face wore no expression.

Willow glanced up at Evan. “How could you let this happen to him?” she said in a small hard voice. It had an edge to it that sliced—at least, I felt it. “He was in your care. How could you?”

Why was she blaming Evan? How could he have stopped it? It had happened so fast.