Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson(91)

Devon got up, shook himself forcefully, stretched—and then gave Asil a look.

Asil raised his eyebrows and opened the door so the wolf could leave. When he was gone, Asil looked at Kara, who was biting her lip nervously. He’d scared her again, and he meant only to twit Devon.

“Because I like you,” he told her, “and because he cannot hear me, I’ll let you in on the real reason Devon comes here. He was once a gardener almost as good as I.” Devon, under a different name, had grown roses that rivaled Asil’s own a hundred years ago. “The Alice Vena rose in the corner”—he gave her a mock-disappointed look—“the burgundy rose next to the ‘stripy’ ones, as you call them. That Alice Vena descends from one of his roses. Devon misses his flowers and comes here to remember.”

That was true—and Devon would probably rather not have anyone but Asil know it. But it was also true that if Asil had not been so much more dominant, or if Asil had been the least bit afraid of him, Devon could not come for his little visits without risk of bloodshed. But Kara would be safer if she thought Devon was just here for the roses. Fear was not useful when keeping company with the oldest of the wolves. And Kara’s safety had become important to him.

“You will come here to me tomorrow,” Asil said as she put her coat back on. “Bring your schoolbooks, and you can teach me what they are doing in school since I was last in a schoolroom—which was several centuries ago. We shall make breakfast and prepare my outdoor gardens for the cold that is coming. You shall do this until after the moon is done with her singing, yes?”

“All right,” she said.

“Do you need a ride home?” he asked her. “There are no school buses from here.”

“I’m staying at the Marrok’s house until he finds a better situation for me.”

Asil grimaced in sympathy. “Let me know if Leah troubles you.”

Kara frowned at him. “She’s been very kind.”

“Really?” Asil took the notion of kindness and the Marrok’s mate and tried to put them in the same room together, but they wouldn’t fit. Maybe she had other rules when she dealt with children? He found that unlikely. “If that changes, feel free to let me know. In the meantime, I will give you a ride today—and you can catch the school bus in the morning and run here from school.”

“Run?”

He nodded. “It will do your wolf good to get rid of some of that energy.”

•   •   •

Kara taught him algebra and science and he taught her how to bed down plants with straw to protect them from the storm. He did not go on that moon hunt, as he had not gone on any since he’d moved from Spain to Montana.

But he shadowed them, making sure she was all right, even as he called himself an old fool: Bran would not allow harm to come to her any more than he would. Devon, who had come one more time to lurk with the roses while Kara taught Asil Montana geography, ran beside him for a mile or two before heading off to go wherever Devon went when he wasn’t in Asil’s greenhouse. Asil should have left as well—Kara was doing fine—but he didn’t. All the self-directed imprecations in the world could not make him go home until she was safely back at the Marrok’s home.

October dawned with a heavy snowstorm and strangers who came to Aspen Creek to be Changed. Asil avoided town. He avoided the Marrok’s house specifically, as the inductees—the Marrok’s word for the humans who wanted to become werewolves, not Asil’s—filled the Marrok’s home to bursting. The wolves and, in some cases, the human relatives who had come to support the inductees, took over the small motel in town.

The Marrok required anyone who wanted to be Changed to come two weeks beforehand. He told them it was so he could make sure they knew what they were getting into. He’d told Asil it was to give Bran one last chance to talk them out of it.

Asil wasn’t worried about how his wolf would react to all the strangers—not this year. But too many of the humans would die rather than be Changed as they wished, and their loved ones who came here with them would grieve. He had had enough grief and mourning, even secondhand, to last a thousand lifetimes.

Avoiding town meant driving to Missoula to resupply—which wasn’t a bad thing as Missoula had real grocery stores, bookstores, and restaurants. He ate lunch at his favorite Indian-vegan restaurant because the food was good and because it amused him—an ancient werewolf eating New Age vegan. And it was petty of him, but one of the waitresses was terrified of him and another one was vaguely disapproving—as if she could smell the meat on his breath. He enjoyed both reactions. He always made a point of leaving a big tip.

The roads were icy, but he was a good driver. Werewolves have very good reflexes, and he’d had years to perfect his ability to drive in the snow. He got home before dark. Once he’d unloaded and stored the results of his shopping trip, he went out to his greenhouse to play. Work. The challenge of growing things in this climate was invigorating—and expensive. He enjoyed the first and had no issues with the latter. He’d been poor—any number of times—but not in the last five hundred years.

He was repotting an African violet when someone scratched at the greenhouse door and whined. He opened the door and let Kara’s wolf in. She was wet and shivering, but not with the cold. Her eyes were miserable, and she whined at him piteously.