My partner gave me a look. It might have meant most anything. I smiled at him blandly and nudged Gee out of my chair, saying, “Up, my Enforcer, unless you want me to take a bite out of you.” To Eli I said, “This smells yummy. I hope you made two.” I’d need more than a single serving to make up for lost calories.
As the others took their places, shoving chairs around and bumping knees at the too-small table, Eli nodded his head and said, “There’s plenty.”
I looked at Ayatas, the only one who hadn’t moved. “Even for him?”
Eli made a pretense of looking around the table. “I guess I could set another place. He could squeeze in next to Bodat. If you want him here.”
I looked at my br—at Ayatas. “It’s the way of The People to feed guests. To see after their needs.” Eli had another place setting ready and set it near the garlicky gamer kid as everyone scooted chairs closer.
Ayatas was staring at Edmund, not moving. “I thought Mithrans preferred blood over normal food. Human food.”
Placidly Edmund said, “We consume a variety of foodstuffs. Blood is the favored food, but I do not sip from my mistress or her family. And Eli is a splendid cook.” Edmund turned to me. “Do you wish to offer thanks, my mistress?”
We had started praying over meals after the angel Hayyel had reappeared in my life. It might be nothing more than covering my bases, or it might be something significant, but it made me feel better. I nodded and closed my eyes. The others quieted. “We are thankful for the blessings of this day. Thankful for family. For clan. For food.”
Eli, Alex, Edmund, and Gee said together, “Amen.” Bodat looked confused. Ayatas looked surprised. I passed the bread around and dipped a spoon into the pot pie. And Oh. My. Gosh. Ignoring the men gathered around the table, I ate. And ate a second serving. And then ate a third serving. Fortunately Eli had more than one loaf of bread, and the second pot pie in the oven. It was, nearly, enough.
By the time I was finally fullish, the others had long finished eating and Bodat and Alex were washing dishes. Eli had slipped to the third-floor construction site with Gee and Edmund, their muted voices coming down the stairs. Ayatas was sitting to my right, his gaze on me. I pushed my chair back from the table, meeting Ayatas’s eyes. “Alex?” I said. “Would you mind leaving the dishes?”
“We’re mostly done.” He looked back at me and said, “Oh. Come on, Bodat. Let’s give them some privacy. We can finish this later.”
My entire face softened. Only a few months before, Alex wouldn’t have understood what he was being asked. Now he was adulting. They left the room. I picked up my wineglass and sniffed the contents. It had a nice crisp aroma. Even good wines tasted a little vinegary to me, and unless I was cuddled with Bruiser, I didn’t typically enjoy them. However, as an Enforcer I needed to know about them even if only a rudimentary and passing familiarity. I hadn’t touched the glass while I ate and it was a little too warm to be perfect now, but I sipped anyway. It had a nice balance of acid and earth and oak. I swallowed. Eh. It was still wine. I put the glass down. I had dithered enough. “I heard you talking to Eli.”
“They are very protective of you.”
“They’re family.”
“You have a family.”
I said nothing.
Slowly he leaned forward and rested his arms on the table, lacing his fingers together. His sleeves were folded neatly to midarm, exposing skin that was the same golden shade as mine. He said, “Where were you all those years you were missing? Why . . . why didn’t you come looking for us, once you grew up?”
“The early reports were correct. Amnesia. No memory, no language, no social skills.”
There was no smile in his voice when he said, “Raised by wolves.”
I shrugged. “I’m sure you know my childhood history. There’s enough public record to make that part easy. When I turned eighteen I left the Christian children’s home where I’d been raised and moved to Asheville, where I got my training in security and lived for several years. While I was there I rode through every small town where The People still lived in North and South Carolina, into Tennessee, looking, listening. Wondering if I had family, if someone among The People would recognize me as a missing daughter, sister. Would take me in. When I did come upon someone who looked and smelled and sounded like what I remembered, they had no interest in a skinny Cherokee chick. And no one knew of a kid who had been lost in the mountains and never found. I rode through the territory of the Western band once. It was even more foreign.” I took a breath and asked the question that I’d wondered for so very long. “Your questions work both ways. If you’re not lying to me, creating an intricately layered fiction, if my family are all skinwalkers, if they are all as long-lived as you seem to be implying, then why didn’t . . .” I let my words trail away, thinking, Why didn’t my family come looking for me?
There. That was my real reason for running away last night. Ayatas FireWind claimed to be what I was, claimed to be family, and he hadn’t come right away. Latent shock boiled up inside. Pain, loneliness, betrayal gushed after it. A geyser of misery that went back to a single day in the snow that I could barely remember. The day an old woman forced me to shift into a bobcat and pushed me into a blizzard to live or die alone. I had been five years old.
I swallowed hard, forcing down the pain. Forcing it back into the darks of me. Yet, tears gathered in my eyes, hot and stinging. I blinked them away too. Calmed my breathing and let go a breath that smelled of old despair and suffering. I knew Ayatas had smelled the pain. I knew that gave him some kind of power over me if I let him take it. Instead I pulled all my suffering deep inside and crushed it into stillness. Emotionless, sounding almost detached, I stared into Ayatas’s eyes and said, “Eli is right. If my family still lives, why didn’t you come for me?”
“We didn’t know you existed until the videos surfaced. Until we saw you on the television as a warrior woman working for the vampire master of New Orleans. Until we saw you kill a demon, the Raven Mocker, on television. Uni Lisi, who is one of the Keepers of the Secrets, said we must watch and wait to be sure you were not u’tlun’ta. They had to research and share the old stories. This took time. Time to be certain that it was possible. The Elders do nothing in haste.”
At the mention of the Elders, I thought about Aggie One Feather, the local Elder who was helping me to try to remember my past. There was no way that she had been left out of the loop. They had called her. I was sure of it. And I was equally certain that she had told them nothing. Personal privacy was sacrosanct to an Elder. But did it work both ways? Why hadn’t she talked to me about it, unless she couldn’t?
“Why should I believe you?” The question was harsh and disbelieving, but inside, deep in the soul of the lost little girl growing up in a children’s home, I wanted to believe. I wanted this more than I wanted breath or vision or sanity. Valued it more than I valued the sanctity of my own soul. And that was a weakness that another could exploit. That was—
“Gvhe,” Ayatas said, the syllables more breath than air.
Tears flooded my eyes, hot and painful. I focused through them on his laced fingers, thinking, reasoning past the unbridled emotion the single word created in me. How had he known? I had only just remembered my child name. I had told no one. I didn’t blink. Didn’t move. I held in the tears by force of will, breathing deeply. Not looking up. Only someone who had lived then would know that name, my baby name.
“Wildcat,” Ayatas said. “Or We-sa, Bobcat. According to the old tales, our father called you both.”
My gaze turned inward, backward, to a past I no longer consciously remembered.
I was standing on a precipice of rock and loam. Inches from my bare toes, a sheer cliff fell off into a chasm. At the bottom, a fog swayed, so dense it seemed impenetrable. A cloud upside down. Below us a hawk soared. At the bottom the cloud parted to reveal racing water, a river running wild, white water roaring.
A hand held mine. Heated. Long fingered. Golden skinned.
A hand like Ayatas’s. I said nothing, but I knew this place. It was a real place in my childhood memory. I knew this place.