Lake Silence (The Others #6)(8)

Yes, he did. “If you had to keep what you are a secret, why not attend an Intuit police academy in one of your own communities?”

“There wasn’t one. Not then. There are a couple of them now in the Northeast Region for the men who feel the need to serve and protect.”

Grimshaw continued to study the man who had been his friend. Julian’s dark hair was long enough to pull back in a tiny tail, but he wore it down so it looked shaggy—or maybe just disheveled in a way that might appeal to some women. A lean build and finely sculpted face with a thin scar across one cheekbone, a souvenir of that attack—or maybe just the scar that people could see. Grimshaw suspected Julian Farrow had a few other scars from that night that weren’t on the skin or visible to the eye.

But he’d also been a good cop. Even more than that, he’d been a good investigator.

Which left the question: what had Julian Farrow really been doing all these years?

“You sure that’s all you’re doing here in Sproing? Selling books?”

Julian looked toward the screen door. Grimshaw thought he heard a quiet scratching on the screen, but when he looked over his shoulder he didn’t see anything.

“I have just the thing for an evening read,” Julian said. “Something I doubt you would have read before.” He walked into the back area of the store and returned a minute later. He placed two books and what looked like a narrow trencher on the counter. Opening a container, he put ten pieces of carrot on the trencher and walked over to the screen door. He propped open the door with a gallon jug that must have been filled with sand or water—Grimshaw couldn’t tell which from where he was standing—and set the trencher on the floor just inside the threshold.

As he walked back to the island, he held up two fingers and said, “Two pieces for each of you.”

Grimshaw stared at the critters who gathered at the door. Five of them. For a moment, he wondered if Julian had gone completely out of his mind to be feeding giant rats. But the faces didn’t belong to rats. What could look that happy about a piece of carrot?

“Alan Wolfgard writes thrillers,” Julian said when he resumed his place on the other side of the island’s counter. “And the other is a mystery written by an Intuit writer.”

“What the fuck . . . ?” Grimshaw whispered. Then he caught the warning in Julian’s eyes and picked up one of the books. “Never heard of Alan Wolfgard.” But he knew the name meant the author was a terra indigene Wolf. “You like his stuff?”

“I do. And his perspective on the genre is . . . different.”

I’ll bet.

“And something you may find useful,” Julian whispered.

Hearing a scraping at the door, Grimshaw looked back to see the five whatever-they-were push the wooden tray to one side of the door. Then they made that happy face and hopped away. Not like a rabbit or anything else he’d ever seen.

“Those are Sproingers, from which this village takes its name,” Julian said.

“But what are they?”

“That’s a question. I’ve collected books about places all my life, especially books that have photographs of wildlife and plants from other parts of this continent as well as other parts of the world. My best guess is the template for the critters we know as Sproingers came from the continent of Australis.”

“That’s so far away it might as well be another world,” Grimshaw protested. How many weeks on a ship would it take to reach such a place? “How could a critter from . . .” Then what Julian had said hit him. “The template?”

“Among the odd things about Sproingers, besides the fact that they’re here at all, is that there are always about a hundred of them, and on this continent they can only be found around Lake Silence,” Julian said. “They have no natural enemies—they’re big enough to take on any domestic cat, and dogs back away from them—but there are never more than a hundred. There are bobcats who live in the woods, as well as coyotes—both ordinary animals and terra indigene. Nothing touches the Sproingers. So they’re a bit of a tourist attraction with their happy little faces and the way they hop around and stop at various stores for treats. And while they stuff their faces, they listen to everything that’s going on around them.”

“But they’re not predators,” Grimshaw said. “There has never been a known form of terra indigene that wasn’t a predator.” The terra indigene, the earth natives, the Others, were, as a group, the dominant predators throughout the world, and they could be a terrifyingly efficient killing force, as humans had learned last summer.

“That’s true,” Julian agreed. “Sproingers aren’t predators. I doubt the same can be said about their other form.”

“Do you know what that is?”

“Something dangerous.” Julian hesitated. “Did you wonder about the name of the store?”

“I thought some froufrou idiot owned the place.”

Julian laughed softly. “I opened the store last fall. After the terra indigene swept through Thaisia last summer and killed so many humans during the Great Predation, a lot of stores in Sproing were suddenly without owners, either because the owners died or the people packed up and ran. The bookstore, such as it was at the time, was one of those places. The owner’s heirs wanted to sell fast and get to anyplace that was human controlled. I bought it.