Forest Moon Rising (25 page)

“How did you get here?” I jumped topics on the girls.

Gollum had a bad habit of expecting others to follow his rapid transitions. His mind had already made logical leaps. Unfortunately, not everyone had his intelligence and extensive knowledge of seemingly unrelated subject matter.

“We took the bus.” Salal shrugged just like her sister, ducking her head into her shoulders.

Okay. They’d already admitted to ranging around Old Town and Chinatown.

“How’d you get to the bus?” I pressed them.

The girls looked at their hands folded around tea mugs.

“You don’t have to tell me. I’m guessing you walked a tunnel into Old Town and came up in a back alley right near a bus stop.”

Salal half nodded. “It’s beside a parking lot where Father keeps his car. But Oak is the only one of us with a driver’s license, other than Father, that is.”

“What’s his connection to the Coopers?”

“How’d you know about that?” Blackberry looked up sharply.

“Scrap smelled him there a few weeks ago. His minions and your brothers invaded the office looking for something precious.”

“Oh,” she said flatly. “Father works there. We all help out sometimes when they have a new shipment of antiques. The boys have learned to use the computer there.”

“I want to go back to the women your father attacks,” Allie insisted. “And what he makes your brothers do to you. How has he gotten away with it for so long?” Her shoulders hunched and her hands reached for the gun that no longer hung on her belt. Her new revolver was locked up in the bedroom.

“Why do you say attack? He uses no violence,” Salal insisted.

Blackberry didn’t look so sure.

“Does your father ask their permission? Does he court them? Does he follow up with offers of a relationship?” Allie pressed.

“N ... no.”

“Then he coerces them, tricks them. He doesn’t get their permission. That’s rape.”

“Would you like it if some man did that to you?” I brought home the concept.

“Our brothers and the helpers haven’t practiced on me yet, though Father wants them to,” Salal defended the nasty little man.

“Um....” Blackberry hedged.

“How does your father expect you to behave when confronted with men? Do you strip off and open your legs to every man who looks at you—like a prostitute? Will you do it for your brothers when they can no longer resist his prodding?” Crude, but they didn’t seem to understand subtle. “Or will you have sex with the lost travelers your father brings home just to produce more babies?”

“Yes,” Blackberry whispered. “That’s what he wants. That’s why he insists we practice. That’s why I need the black cohosh.”

“He’s using you like breeding cattle.” Allie swallowed deeply and turned her back. She was having trouble containing her outrage.

So was I.

“Why?” I asked. “Loss of habitat and urban crowding drove him here from the Italian Alps. He doesn’t belong here. Why is he so bent on rebuilding the Nörglein when there isn’t enough wild land left for them all?”

“I don’t know!” Blackberry shouted. She stood up, angrily pushing back her stool so that it clattered against the wood floor. Without another word she headed for the front door.

I couldn’t stop her. The next decision had to be her own.

“We’d better get home,” Salal said flatly. She rose more slowly, pushing her stool up next to the bar politely. She stalled by righting the fallen chair. She kept her gaze firmly on her task, never engaging me or her sister. “Thank you for the lesson on female biology. Thank you for the tea.”

“You don’t have to go back,” I reminded them quietly.

Both girls stilled. Not even their eyelids twitched. A useful skill when hiding in the forest.

“Father will be very angry if we are late,” Blackberry said after several long moments of silence.

“What will he do if you don’t go back?” Allie asked. I could see ideas spinning in her head.

“He’ll punish us.”

“How?” I asked.

“He’ll ... he’ll command our brothers to whip us with the vines of the other blackberry. The big ones.”

I cringed in sympathy. The Himalayan variety had thorns big enough to penetrate the hide of a Yeti.

An odd thought. Bullets from an automatic weapon couldn’t penetrate the hide of a Sasquatch—the North American version of the Yeti—because they were man-made. The blackberry, being natural, probably could. Something to keep in mind.

“Interesting that the coward will command your brothers to do his dirty work, but can’t stomach it himself.”

“We’ll protect you,” Allie insisted.

“You are awfully generous in that ‘we,’” I grumbled.

“You don’t ever have to go back,” Allie continued as if she hadn’t heard me. “You can be like normal girls, go to school, and have friends. Learn to use a computer. Date boys and make your own decisions who you have sex with and when, preferably when you have a lot more experience of life and know what you really want in a partner, a long-term partner.”

Blackberry retreated one step away from the door. Salal looked up with interest.

“You can protect us?” Blackberry asked, hopefully.

“Scrap, you on alert?”

“Where will you hide us?” Salal asked.

“Right here,” Allie replied.

“You giving up the bed to them?” I returned.

“We’ll work something out.” She smiled.

“I wish I could call Donovan, he’s got experience in integrating Kajiri into society.” He’d reached out to me in his worry over Doreen. “I don’t trust him. Gollum could help. I think I have to call him.”

But first I needed a double shot of single malt Scotch. The good stuff.

Oh, boy, this could get interesting. Very interesting indeed. Too bad we can’t extend this apartment into the chat room and give us more space without really adding to the building in this dimension.

Nope. That wouldn’t work even if I could figure out how to do it. We don’t want those girls exposed to the energies of the chat room that would bring out their elven heritage even more. We want to tamp down on those characteristics.

So who’s going to sleep where? Maybe we can do it in shifts.

At least my babe is calling Gollum.

Uh oh, the phone is ringing. It’s Dr. Sean. He’s going to distract my babe and keep her from calling the only man she can trust to help her.

What to do? What to do?

I know, I’ll send Gollum an email. Hmm, if I invade his home computer monitor I can make the screen show my message.

It’s going to take some work and a whole lot of energy. Best I load up on mold first. Then I’ll hit his computer just about the time he gets home from teaching.

That’s the trick. Show him the message once and then make it fade like an automatic delete. He’ll never know it’s me and not Tess calling for help.

M
UCH THOUGHT AND CALCULATION LATER, I decided it would be better to work with the devil I knew than the angel who could break my heart again.

“Who’s the better computer hacker, Steve or Donovan?” I asked Allie.

Our two new guests had retired to the bedroom to discuss their decision to stay with me. If I was about to become their guardian, I didn’t necessarily want them to know how I made it look legal.

“That’s a toss-up.” Allie hitched up the belt of her jeans as she would the utility belt she no longer wore. She used to do that as a subtle reminder to bullies and speed offenders that she had the firepower and the will to enforce the law. Her habits as a cop were going to be hard for her to drop. Those habits would add authenticity to her classes at the community college.

“This isn’t going to be exactly legal. I don’t want to involve Steve,” I said as I punched number six on my speed dial.

“Halfling Gaming Systems, how may I direct your call?” A sultry female voice came on the line. Donovan’s newest secretary I guessed. I wondered why Quentin wasn’t the gatekeeper today. Maybe he was out planning a hit on someone. The big man who looked like he carried more Indian blood than demon had been Donovan’s right hand for as long as I’d known him. He was also high on my list of suspects for the role of assistant to Donovan’s foster father, Darren, on the night my husband died in an arson fire set outside our motel room.

That is if Donovan could be believed and he didn’t have a hand in that murder.

“Tell Donovan that Tess is on the line and it’s urgent,” I said a little less politely than my mother had taught me.

“One moment please, I’ll see if Mr. Estevez is available.”

Barely ten seconds passed. “Now what?” he snarled less politely than I had. “I told you not to worry about Doreen.”

“I have just taken guardianship of two Kajiri girls who look twelve and fourteen. I need to make it look legal.”

“What am I supposed to do about it?” He sounded interested but still cautious.

“You’ve done it before for others. Someone did it for you. You know what to do and how to do it.”

“You’ll need birth certificates.”

“Can you do it?”

“Only if I put my name on them as their father.”

My stomach lurched.

“If your name is on the certificate, then you’ll sue for custody.” And he’d raise them with constant reminders of their dark origins.

“Not if your name is listed as their mother. But then you are a firm believer in family, in two parent families. You’d have to marry me then.”

I hung up on him. So much for his relationship with Doreen. It didn’t stand the chance of a snowflake inside a lava flow of succeeding.

“That was short,” Allie said cautiously.

“I don’t even know why I bother asking him for help. He always attaches conditions that cost too much.”

“He proposed again.”

“Barely.”

“And you refused again.”

“If he’ll believe hanging up on him is a refusal. But he did give me an idea.”

“Such as?”

“I don’t have to go through social services and getting certified as a foster parent if I’m their mother and they’ve been back east growing up with my relatives. Home schooled, therefore no records. Medical records lost in an office fire.”

“Tess, you’re only thirty. You’d have been sixteen when Blackberry was born.”

“Not all that unusual these days. So, do you think Steve can forge the birth certificates?”

“I hate to ask him. I hate that we are doing something so illegal.”

“You got a better idea?”

“Gollum.”

Right on cue the phone rang. The landline, not my cell phone. Gollum would call the cell.