Wildcat Fireflies (11 page)

Before she moved away, I asked, “Have you heard of a Father Anthony?”

“Catholic? Episcopalian?”

“I don’t know.”

“Not off the top of my head, but his name sounds familiar. Let me think about it.” She scuttled back to the cashier’s counter for the ringing phone.

“No problem.” Deflated, I headed to the cottage with Tupperware and foil filled with lots of food, all of it ladylike.

I didn’t remember lying down or closing my eyes, but the next time I stretched and opened my eyes the windows framed dark night. A propane fire burned in the fireplace. Tens puttered in the kitchen, the air steaming with fragrant chili and corn bread.

With my waking sigh, Tens’s head snapped around. “Hiya, Supergirl.” He strode over and stretched out next to me on the bed. He curled toward me. “You slept forever. You feeling okay?”

“Sorry.” I snuggled against him, tucking myself into his shoulder and side. “Tired.”

He nodded across the top of my head. “You hungry?”

“Hmm … let’s stay here like this for a minute, okay?” I reveled in the weight and feel of him pressed to me.
So different from me in his proportions and shapes. Safe. Secure
. Butterflies tickled my insides, not with anxiety but excitement. He smelled like sunlight and sap, a touch of wet dog, and loamy earth.

He ran his fingers through my hair, untangling my sleep from each strand. My curls had recovered fully from the latest batch of transitions. “Hmm.” I sighed my pleasure, my breath moistening the cotton covering his chest. If I could have purred, I would have.
Don’t stop, please, don’t stop
. I enjoyed the tug and soothe on my scalp. His heat and strength drove my worry away.

He kissed my fingertips. “Dishpan hands.”

“My one brush with the fifties. I’m a feminist. I hate doing dishes.”

“Is that what ‘feminist’ means? I thought it was something else.” He chuckled deep in his chest, but without
the raucous abandon I longed to hear. Laughter for Tens was a small tremor. I still didn’t know who, or what, had stolen his laugh machine. He settled silent again, quiet.

Intermittent traffic outside created soft white noise and people walking around the neighborhood occasionally yelled greetings to each other. Car doors slammed, crows called, and dogs barked. I felt like we were in a cocoon and the world outside was happening without us. This quiet was relative.

I missed Sammy’s antics—his goofy faces and spontaneous giggles. The games of chase and tag. I hadn’t known how much I’d relied on him to balance the burden of so much death until I no longer had him. I needed Tens to provide some of that for me. I needed goofy playing, flirting, and touching. I’d told him this while we were stuck in the caves; he’d made monumental strides in occasionally giving me lighter, airier moments. This wasn’t one of them. I felt him waiting to have the serious conversation that stalked me. It hung there like the gallows. The reality of death being an integral part of our lives made the act of living oppressive. “Thanks for not telling me I overdid it today,” I said, breaking our silence.

“You’re welcome.”

I wondered aloud, “How did she do it?”

“Who? What?”

“Auntie? How did she balance it all? She had Charles, a home, and quilting. A family. She did charity work and was a nurse. She had all these amazing dimensions to her life.”

“And you don’t?” He leaned over me to catch my gaze.

“I don’t mean it that way. I’m blessed to have you, I know that.”

“But you want the rest? Right this minute? You’re comparing the life of a hundred and six years to your sixteen. Do you really think she had all of that in the beginning?”

Good point. Of course she didn’t
. I held my tongue.

Tens continued. “My grandfather was the epitome of a shaman, an elder, the person everyone turned to for advice. Lessons. Actions. He didn’t just give empty words; when the talking was done he acted. Every day of my life, I will strive to be like him and I will never get there. Never.”

I pushed myself up until mere inches separated our faces. “That’s not true. You’re special. You’ll be him and then some, because you started with the foundation he set for you.”

“Maybe. But what I’m trying to tell you is that you and I can only do the best we can in the moment. When we know more, we’ll do more; when we
are
more, we’ll make bigger choices and have bigger impacts. We’re just starting, Merry.”

“Why does it feel like I have to steal normal, though?”

His lips twitched. “Because you do.”

I rolled my eyes, knowing he was right. Again. I kissed him lightly on his lips and chin and cheeks.

The kitchen timer dinged. Our dinner was ready. We shelved our conversation, but over bits and pieces of the tearoom leftovers, Tens paused to stare at me.

“What’s going on in your head?” I asked. His expression
clouded. I pressed. “You worked so hard today, like you were driven.”

“I felt like I needed to move. To sweat.”

“How long was your run?”
Didn’t he run for hours before even starting work on Helios’s grounds? What drives him to push so hard?

“Couple of hours. I don’t know. But—” He stopped and ate a square of honey-drenched corn bread.

I knew to hold my peace and wait him out.

“I took the ravine path back there. It runs along Wildcat Creek. Bike path, maybe? Nice. Paved.”

I nodded, licking my chili spoon. Shoving food in my mouth kept me from pestering him with what he’d consider annoying questions.

“I wasn’t keeping track of the time or distance. Went from town development to rural farmland fairly quickly. Wide-open spaces or woods. No people. I found a rhythm and pounded it out.” He ate a few more bites.

“Custos kept to my right, between me and the creek. She kept leaping over logs and chasing possums or rats or whatever. She crossed over into my path and tripped me.” At her name, Custos stood, stretched, and wandered over to her bowl of chili and corn bread. She wouldn’t touch dog food and she didn’t much like people food, either. But I kept offering it to her, unsure whether she needed nourishment of this type.

“Then she tripped me again.” Tens shook his head.

“Are you hurt?” I reached for him automatically, coming out of my chair. “She did it on purpose?”

He grabbed my hands and gently pushed me back, but he didn’t let go. “Fine. I’m fine. I fell sideways, onto grass. Custos bumped me again. Hard. I tried to stand and she threw her paws into my stomach. Enough force to keep me down, but not hurt me.” He paused, rubbing idly his thumbs across the backs of my hands.

Between Tens and me, Custos’s loyalty was clear. She liked me. A lot. But she stuck to Tens like corn syrup.

“Weird.” I’d never seen her behave with anything other than the utmost deference to Tens. It wasn’t like I didn’t know she was capable of being scary and physical—we hadn’t met in the best of circumstances. I would forever chill thinking about her howl and growl in the Colorado snow.

“Her hackles rose and she barked at something behind me.”

Nocti? Perimo?
I hated that my first thoughts went to the big, bad evil rather than a squirrel or an unlatched window shutter.

Custos wandered over and licked my hand, carefully getting every corn bread crumb and speck of honey off my fingers.

“Go on,” I prompted Tens. “What was it?”

He dished up seconds, continuing to eat between explanations. “In the low light, I saw a wrought iron fence and the shadow of an estate in the distance.”

“What was she barking at? Was there a person?”

“I didn’t see anything. No one. Not right away. And then”—he leaned forward like he was going to deliver a
punch line—“she wagged her tail and what looked like a huge raccoon ran by, up a tree.”

“A raccoon?” I snorted, grasping Custos’s face and kissing her nose. “Custos is scared of a wittle, itty-bitty raccoon?”

Tens stopped me. “Worse. I thought it was a coon, but turned out it was a long-haired cat. Huge cat.” He smiled.

I clucked my tongue. “She chased a cat like a regular dog?” If she had, that would be the only quasi-normal thing about her.

Tens scratched Custos’s butt while I rubbed her ears. She moaned and whined in ecstasy. It was nice to be good for something. “That’s the oddity, that’s when she relaxed.”

“Course she did.”
I take it all back. Our Custos never does anything normal
.

Tens finished eating and carried our dishes to the sink. He ran new soapy water, grabbed a clean dishcloth, and stared out into the night. “I want to take you there, see what you think. I don’t know what to make of the place.” When he turned to me, the furrow was back between his eyes.

“You’re worried.”

“A little. But there’s more.” He said it as if he knew I wasn’t going to like whatever came next.

“More?” I braced.
What earthquake is coming now?

He paused, deliberating.

“Spit it out.” I walked over and faced him. “Just say it.”

“I had a conversation with Joi while you slept this evening.”

“Okay?”
Not the worst thing I imagined
.

His expression turned apologetic, then defiant. “I know you hate it when I know things, but I can’t help it. I can’t turn it off. I wish I could. But even she noticed.”

The rest of this conversation was not going to be pleasant. I agreed with everything I knew he’d say and it pissed me off. I hated my physical weakness. I’d gained so much strength since my birthday, but I wanted more.

He softened his tone. “You’re not ready to work a full day. I can feel how torn you are about finding the other Fenestras, and at the same time wanting a life that’s normal, or at least has the regular parts, but I don’t think—”

“I’ve made a lot of progress.” I felt like I needed to point out that I was better. Taller. Stronger. No longer in constant pain, no longer bruised unexpectedly, or too ill to eat.

He held my shoulders and gazed into my eyes with the sincerity of wisdom. “That’s true, but it’s not going to happen overnight, Merry.”

I hated knowing he was right. My rebellion was directed firmly at the powers bigger than Tens and clearly more all-knowing than me. “I know—I took a vacation today into the ordinary and I liked it, but I know.”

He stepped back, but didn’t break his hold. “What do you mean, you know?”

I leaned my forehead against his heart. “We can’t waste time playing at having jobs and making friends and forgetting.”

He growled, “I’m not talking about forgetting.”

“No, but I am. It’s tempting. So tempting.” Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes. “I thought as soon as I learned my powers, got my mojo, that I’d be healed and whole and ready for anything. That we could date, and have fun, and save the world while being teenagers.” I envied the teenagers in movies who had friends, went to school, and worried about college, prom. I would never be that. Have that.

“But you’re not ready to juggle all that.” Tens held me.

“Not yet.”

Tens smoothed my neck and traced circles along my spine. “Joi’s going to rent us the cottage as long as we need it.”

“No work?” I glanced up at him.

“We can work whatever hours we want to. She’ll keep a list or we can come find her and she’ll tell us what needs to be done at the moment. She also asked about your health.”

“What’d you say?”

“I lied. I told her we were looking for your family for medical reasons. You were adopted and now you’re on the hunt for your genetic match.”

“That’s a big lie.” I blew out a breath of regret.

“I couldn’t really tell her the truth, could I?” Sadness tightened his mouth.

“I hate having to lie.”
Really, really, abysmally hate
.

“Me too. Maybe someday we won’t have to.” His tone was dubious.

“Tomorrow we hunt again for the cat, the girl?”
Will
I feel something? Will an alarm go off in my head, or will I see flashing lights in the presence of another of me? Will there be an apparent kinship?
I feared walking right by her and not knowing her until too late. I tried to remember if I’d recognized Auntie immediately and I simply couldn’t untangle the threads of all of it. The whole trip to her, of learning the truth about myself, was so foreign I hadn’t been looking. “Yeah, vacation over. I’ll check in the journal and see if there’s anything about how to spot another one of us,” I said.

“Only you would consider working a vacation.” Tens kissed me until my regret faded.

T
he social worker, Ms. Asura, was due to stop by DG today for her twice-a-month check-in. Recently, she’d been coming more frequently, but never unannounced.

Nicole grabbed my hand tightly and dragged me into the pantry. “I don’t trust her. You shouldn’t either.” Tension pinched her cheeks and drove the color from her complexion.

I shook my head in confusion. “Why? She’s nice. Just because there isn’t anything she can do to help us—”

“She doesn’t try to help, Juliet. She’s never tried. She doesn’t want to know.”

“You don’t know that; you haven’t been here that long.” I’d never seen Nicole so worked up.

“Long enough. But it’s more than that. There’s something really wrong going on.”

I paused. “What do you mean?”

“We shouldn’t all have the same social worker.”

“I don’t know that. How do you know that?”
Who says? Who cares? Whose rule?

“It’s not the way the system works. But if that isn’t enough, we should be in school, being kids. This is slave labor. You’re a prisoner. You should be thinking about what you want to be when you grow up, not how you’re going to get Sema fully potty-trained before you turn sixteen.”

I stopped being a kid a long time ago
. “We’re homeschooled.” I wished I believed that. I’d started parroting too well.

“When exactly? Because I’ve never seen a textbook or done homework or taken a test.”