Black Wolf (13 page)

Jesse
shrugged. "Yeah, whatever."

"Anyway. I did
what I really wanted to do. I'll go away if you want me to, and I
won't be offended. Or I could stay here or you could come home with
me, it's up to you."

He hesitated,
then shook his head. "I don't think I want to go anywhere. But it
doesn't matter to me if you stay."

"Oh, good,
'cause it's much quieter here than it is at my house, even with
Deanna away. She's home so much you can hardly tell she s'posedly
lives here."

Jesse gave her
a confused look. "Deanna's your sister?"

That made
Gisela giggle. "More or less. See, lots of people in Haven are part
of a coven, which is a small group of people that are really
intensely connected on multiple levels. It's so common that a lot
of the time, people use their coven's name instead of their regular
last name, it's just more useful. Our parents are in the same
coven, and we all live in the same house. Four parents and three
kids, me and Dia and our little brother. It's a big house but
that's a lot of people."

"No shit.
Uh... would it be safe to guess that Kevin and Cynthia and
Bane..."

"And Deanna
and Flynn are a coven? Good guess. I'm not in one. I just hang
around with Coven Sundark a lot. That's Kevin and everybody. And
there are two other covens, Winter and Dandelion, and one other
person who isn't in a coven, and we all tend to hang around
together a lot. The thing they do every week that I bet you've
seen, that's called a circle, it's a way of sharing energy. That's
what makes a coven a coven and keeps them connected, and it's
extremely
rude to ever interrupt a coven in circle. It's
about as intimate as possible. Because of that, covens tend to be
very close on a lot of levels, and some things almost always happen
just because they're so tangled up in each other. Like living
together and sex within a coven. A lot of Haven businesses are run
by one or two covens collectively."

"Uh-huh.
And... aren't covens supposed to have something to do with witches
or something?"

That puzzled
her, until she recalled that the outer world used the word
differently. "You mean like the witches in Macbeth? Casting bad
spells?"

"Sure. Or
Satanists, or stuff like that."

Satanists?
Another word that confused her briefly. "Death magic, you mean? Or
summoning demons?" She shook her head. "Death magic's revolting,
and no one with half a brain will mess around with demons. And
Sundark being that kind of witches is silly. Can you see Dia making
brews in a cauldron out of eye of newt and tongue of frog or
whatever it's supposed to be, to hurt anybody?" That made quite the
image in her head, of Deanna in a black robe chanting evil spells
over a huge cauldron, the rest of her coven dancing around her and
it, and all sorts of demonic beings hovering around them; she
laughed, despite the disturbing connotations of demons and death
magic. "No way."

Jesse relaxed
a bit. "Just checking."

Gisela
lingered for a while, did her homework there, and they dug two of
Kevin's frozen dinners out of the freezer. Reluctantly, she went
home after they ate, with a promise to come over after school the
next day.

* * *

Jesse spent
Friday exploring. When he ventured into the village proper, he got
a few sideways looks, but no one bothered him. In fact, some knew
who he was; more than once he was greeted by name. He saw several
very large long-furred dogs, in a variety of colours, wandering
around with no collars visible, but no one paid any attention and
the dogs showed no sign of aggression—if anything, the opposite—so
he figured he might as well just ignore them. Dogs of any other
breed, and there were several, always had collars and were
sometimes on leashes. Cats, healthy-looking ones, were common, and
always wore collars, lounging in the sun on any available surface
or stalking bugs and leaves; people stopped at times to greet them,
which the cats tolerated.

Haven was
remarkably self-sufficient; it seemed to have everything
conceivable, some of the businesses not what he'd expect in a
village in the middle of nowhere. Even a pet store. He hesitated,
but yielded to temptation and went in.

The front part
of the shop was chaos, with no human in sight. The reason for the
chaos was that the large cages against one wall were all open, and
the puppies—three clear litters, none resembling the adults loose
outside—and kittens—two sizes—had taken over the shop. Puppies were
chasing each other and dozing under the fish tanks and chewing
rubber bones; kittens were drowsing on the counter, in a basket, on
top of small animal cages, or pouncing on each other. Enchanted,
Jesse dropped to one knee and called softly to the puppies.

Like any other
animal he'd ever encountered, especially dogs, they responded,
frolicking over to jump up on him. One that looked like a sheepdog
licked at his face; he chuckled, rubbed a spaniel behind its
ears.

"They like
you."

Jesse glanced
up.

The speaker
was a woman he guessed at around thirty, leaning against the
counter. Jesse's height, more solidly-built, coffee-brown hair
pulled back. Smiling. Jesse liked her instantly, had to answer the
smile.

"Animals tend
to, for some reason."

"I don't know
you, do I." Not a question.

Jesse answered
anyway. "No. I'm not from around here."

"Didn't think
so. I know everyone in Haven. Well, you're no tourist, so I'm
guessing you're Kevin's friend Jesse."

"Good guess.
That obvious?"

"Funny things
are obvious in Haven. You have to have figured out by now we aren't
just your average backwoods village."

"I'm getting
that idea, yeah. Should I ask how you and everybody else seem to
know about me?"

"This isn't
the big city, where a million people never look twice at each
other. Everybody in Haven is related one way or another, maybe a
step or three removed. Not a lot of privacy, however hard we try to
stay out of each others' lives, but it's worth it. We all hang
together, because we're different from everyone outside."

"And you
discourage outsiders?"

"Outsiders,
yes. People who belong here but found themselves in the wrong
place, no."

An adult cat
picked herself up off the top of a rabbit's cage, stretched lazily,
and padded over to examine Jesse. The puppies dodged around her,
never touching her. The cat, a fine-boned long-haired dark
tortoiseshell with a startlingly white tail-tip, sniffed Jesse
over, then rubbed her head against his leg, purring.

The woman
arched an eyebrow. "Well. Alfari certainly likes you, and that
doesn't happen often. You must be something special."

Jesse snorted.
"Hardly."

Alfari
stretched up to plant her front paws on his chest, an unsubtle
hint. Jesse began to stroke her, and the vibrant purring
intensified.

"I don't think
she agrees. Come on back some time and say hi. Or if you need a
little extra money, I have odd jobs around sometimes I can use some
help with."

"Thanks."

She made a
shooing motion, smiling. "Go on, classes'll be out for lunch at the
school in a few minutes. I'm guessing Gisela probably found you,
with Sundark away. If it was one of the college crowd, like Eva,
they should be out already."

Bemused, he
turned to the door.

"Oh,
Jesse..."

He looked
back. "Mmhmm?"

"You don't
look like you're used to belonging anywhere. You should give it a
try. Don't turn it down so fast when you're given the chance." She
spun away, and disappeared into the back of the shop.

A blonde woman
who reminded him strongly of Kevin—she said her name was
Lori—hailed him on sight and told him that she'd seen Gisela
getting pizza for lunch. He found her leaning against a
window-ledge outside with a slice of pizza. She spotted him and
called him over.

"You do have
some interesting people around here," he commented dryly.

"Oh? Who did
you meet?"

"In the pet
store. She didn't say her name."

"Samantha.
Mmhmm, she's definitely interesting. She moved here about five
years ago. She started the pet shop and takes courses at the
college sometimes. She's safe here. No family anybody knows about,
no one even knows where she's from, unless maybe Bryan does—that's
Bane's older brother, he lives with Sam above the shop."

"Safe from
what?"

"The whole
outside world. It's pretty cruel to the kind of people who like
Haven."

"Pretty cruel
to everyone. Life's a bitch..."

"Um... that
means it's bad? It doesn't have to be."

"If you say
so."

"Here, go get
yourself some pizza. Maybe you'll be less pessimistic if you eat
something." She fished a handful of change out of her jacket
pocket, and poured it into his hand.

He walked her
to the school when she had to go back to class, then he returned to
the house.

* * *

Samantha
looked up from stocking a shelf with fish food when Gisela came in,
and greeted the healer with a nod. "You can't be out of cat food
already."

"Getting
there, with that stray eating half of it, but I think I found him a
home. I wanted to ask you something."

"Mmhmm?"

"What do you
think of Jesse?"

Sam fell
silent for a moment, as she meticulously straightened the fish food
and took the empty box to the counter. "I think there's more to him
than anyone has seen or will see for a long time. I think he
belongs in Haven, and I don't mean because of what Rebecca woke in
him. He's not your average stray out of the city, and I predict
that anyone who forgets that is going to regret it. Beyond that, I
can't tell you anything more."

To Gisela's
inner senses, Sam vibrated with a tangle of emotions, too many for
her to sort out. She knew that, after Nick's mention in the Sphynx,
Sam had asked Kevin a lot of questions—Kevin, puzzled, had been
talking to Deanna about Sam's odd curiosity about everything he'd
picked up. She came nearer, closed her hand around Sam's.
"Something's wrong, you're upset. What is it? Something about
Jesse?"

Sam sighed,
and shook her head. "Just... wondering what that poor boy has been
through."

"You don't
mean Rebecca."

"No, I don't."
She pulled her hand away, and turned away to fuss with the jars of
treats on the counter. "Just... take care of him, okay?"

"I was going
to anyway. I'm a healer and I like him." This was not at all like
Sam; Gisela had never seen her shaken before. "Are you going to be
all right?"

"Of course I
will. How much damage did Rebecca actually do to him?"

"She got him
into a circle somehow and ripped him open pretty roughly inside to
get at the power she wanted. Then when she attacked Sundark and
Kevin hit back, Moira or Avryl threw Jess in the middle. And you
know what Kev's like when he's mad..."

"Is he going
to heal?"

"Bane thinks
no, Flynn says yes. I think probably, but it's going to take a
while. This isn't the kind of thing a healer can do much about. I
don't think there's going to be any permanent damage, but there's
no way to be sure yet. Kev feels worse about it than he's mostly
letting on. I hate to think how he's going to react if there is
anything permanent."

"Anything you
need me for, tell me. You can pass that on to Sundark. Anyway. If
you need cat food, take it, you can pay for it later."

That wasn't a
very subtle hint, but Gisela went along with it. She tried to
remember whether she needed cat food right away, and decided it
could wait. So she bid Sam farewell and departed for the house.

* * *

Jesse was
alive.

That simple
fact made it impossible to concentrate on the mundanities of the
shop. Sam gave up, and perched on the windowsill to gaze outside,
not really seeing the familiar street.

Jesse was
alive. The faint thread of hope born when she'd seen Nick's brief
description, nurtured by Kevin's account, hadn't been false; it
really was him. It had been a considerable effort of will to
throttle her first impulse to hug him; a good thing, it seemed,
since he didn't recognize her.

Blocking off
his memories made sense. To be suddenly completely alone, for the
first time in his life, and not know if anyone else in his family
survived the nightmare of storm and music that had killed an entire
village... making himself forget might well have saved his
sanity.

His sanity?
His
life
. How could they possibly find him to kill him if
even he himself didn't know who he was? There'd be no way to see it
in his thoughts, no way for a seer to get a fix on him, no way to
make him betray himself.

She sighed to
herself. To tell him about his family, and that she'd lived with
him and them for a few years around and after his father's death,
was to place him in danger. All she could do, it seemed, was let
Sundark take care of him, and be ready to get involved if
necessary. Without giving anyone any reason to think that she had
so much interest in his wellbeing.