How to Howl at the Moon (3 page)

I hear of you trying to grow and sell anything, and I will sue you so fast your head will spin! You think you can be somebody on your own? You have the social aptitude of a gnat, and you couldn’t run a business if Donald Trump himself was sitting on your shoulder.

Grief and anger blossomed in Tim’s chest, and he blinked his eyes hard. After all he’d done for Marshall… he’d thought they were business partners. Then he’d found out that their partnership consisted of him doing all the work and Marshall keeping all the profits and filing copyrights under his own name besides. Tim took a deep breath and looked around again at the tall pine trees and the big blue peak he could see over them. The Sierra Mountains were stunning.

He was here, in Mad Creek, in this beautiful place. He had a place to stay and work for the time being. He was going to be fine. More than that, he was going to
enjoy this place
. This was
the first place he’d lived in that was his very own. He was going to make the most of it.

Tim felt a frisson of fear, and his thoughts went to the diner. Everything was going to be fine as long as he didn’t run into that cop again. What was
with
that? That… that gorgeous black-haired, blue-eyed man’s man in a uniform who’d sat down in Tim’s space,
smelled
him, and stared at him with these weird intent eyes. Tim had never seen a look like that before. It wasn’t a come-on. It was more like:
Leave my town, leave now. Bwah-ha-ha.
What the fuck? For one paranoid second, Tim had thought the cop must have been sicced on him by Marshall. But that made no sense. Marshall had no idea where Tim was, did he? He couldn’t. Hell, he’d just
gotten
there. No one knew he was in Mad Creek except Linda.

And then, of course, Tim had spazzed out, like he always did around people. Made an idiot of himself.

He sighed. Oh, well. He was never going to see that cop again, right?

He found the key just where Linda had said it would be hidden, dumped his bags inside, and went off to find the greenhouse.

Don’t Make Me Come Over There

“OH, LANCE! You have to go by tomorrow and see her. Get her scent. She’s the most adorable little
black
-haired baby you ever saw! Her eyes are already as blue as yours!”

Lance grunted in agreement and took another bite of beef stew. How his mother had managed the stew when she’d been at the McGurver’s all day helping Jane McGurver deliver was a mystery. Then again, his mother generated food the way a wellspring generated water. It just
bubbled up
all around her.

“Baby Samantha is not even a day old,” Lance pointed out. “There’s plenty of time to get her scent.”

“Oh, heavens!” His mother finally stopped fussing around the kitchen and sat down to her own bowl of stew. “I knew at first glance she was quickened. The little pads on her fingers are all plump and wide—cutest thing you ever saw!”

“Of course she’s quick. Both her parents are.”

“There is
nothing
on this earth more adorable than a baby quick,” his mother insisted. “Like a baby and a puppy all rolled into one.”

This was a common pronouncement of his mother’s. She said it anytime she saw a baby quick. But they just looked like ordinary human babies to Lance. Maybe their noses were a little more button, their lips a bit more pouty over the tiny teeth they were born with. And, yes, they did have the typical quickened fingers with wide, squared fingerpads. But still. Most quick children couldn’t even shift until five or six or even puberty. They looked nothing like puppies.

Lance took another bite and steeled himself for more baby talk. His mother always got like this when she played midwife.

She put down her spoon and fixed him with a look. “Lance, why won’t you ask Lizzy out? She’s perfect for you.”

Yup. Precognition skills +1. Patience -2.

“Mother, just like the last fifty-five thousand times you’ve mentioned it, I have no intention of getting married and having a family. You’re just going to have to content yourself with the grandchildren you already have.” Lance had six nieces and nephews currently, and there were no doubt more on the way from his four siblings.

His mother narrowed her eyes at him. He could see her mind working on how to get him to come around. She was never going to give up, and she would be fit and healthy enough to badger him about it for years and years.

Lil
y
Beaufort was a young fifty-five. She’d only been nin
eteen when she had Lance’s older brothers, Lonnie and Ronnie. And she was still sprightly, wiry,
and had more energy than ten humans her age. Her hair was thick and black, with a few silver clumps that grew like ribbons among the midnight. Like many quickened, she’d never taken to makeup and favored practical clothes rather than frilly ones, but she was stunning. She was beautiful without any effort at all.

She was also a royal pain in the ass. Lance had heard humans talk about the tenacity of Jewish mothers. He didn’t know any, but he’d be surprised if they could hold a candle to the relentless herding instinct of a quickened mother who was descended on both sides from border collies.

He didn’t meet her eyes, didn’t challenge her. That would only escalate this conversation. He focused on his stew even though he’d lost his appetite.

“You’re thirty-one years old, Lance. How old do you intend to be when you finally settle down?”

“Maybe
I never will
,” Lance said firmly. “You know how I feel about it. This town is my family, it’s my pack. It takes all of my attention. Plus, it’s dangerous. I don’t have anything left to give a wife and kids, and I won’t get into something I can’t do right.”

“So like your father!” Lily huffed with a mix of regret and fondness. “You take everything so seriously! You’ll give yourself a heart attack just like he did.”

He heard pain in his mother’s voice and felt a corresponding pressure in his chest. His father
had
worked himself to death, and everyone knew it. But he’d been a great man.

“At least your father had us to lighten his load. You need a bond that’s just for you,” Lily insisted. “The
town
is never gonna satisfy that need in you, my darling.”

“I have bonds. I have a bond to you, to Lonnie and Ronnie, Sally and Sam, and their kids. I have friends.”

“It’s not the same thing. Take heed! Either you choose the bond, or it chooses you. I don’t want to see you fall victim to some so-and-so because you’ve ignored your needs for too long! You need to give yourself a chance to bond with a perfectly nice quickened girl.”

This was a new argument. Lance blinked at his mother in confusion and decided she was making no sense. He took another bite of stew.

“Anyway, it’s not like we have gang wars or hordes of dog catchers invading the area,” she huffed dismissively. “I don’t see what’s so dang important that you have to be Sheriff 24/7. And now that nice Roman Charsguard is living here.
Maybe he could take some o
f the burden off your shoulders.
He seems to know his way around trouble, if we ever had any. Which we don’t!”

But Lance heard the false note in his mother’s voice. Despite what she said, she was as paranoid as he was. It ran in the family. They all worried about Mad Creek. Constantly.

He thought about his encounter with that guy in the diner today and frowned.

“What is it?” Lily asked, sitting up pertly.

“’Member I told you about that shooting that took place in Mariposa last month?”

“The one related to drugs?”

He nodded. “They have a real problem with marijuana growers in Mariposa County. And now they have the drug farms fighting each other. And supposedly the Mexican cartels are trying to move in to the Sierra Nevadas too. Everyone thinks pot will be legalized in California in the next few years, and they’re trying to get a foothold. We can’t have that here.”

His voice had grown increasingly tight, and Lily shifted restlessly. “Well… that’s not going to happen, right? Mariposa is over a hundred miles away! We haven’t had any trouble with marijuana in Mad Creek.”

“Not, yet. But we can’t afford to. We can’t withstand the attention, and you know it.”

Mad Creek was a sleepy little town that was on the way to nowhere. Though they were close to Yosemite National Park and Mammoth Lakes as the crow flies, they were hours away from the main attractions by car. And there were far better and more direct routes to take if you were driving over the mountains to Nevada than the little rattail that ran through Mad Creek.

And that was a good thing. Because Mad Creek had more than its share of secrets to hide from the world, and the quickened
pack members
, who had to be protected right along with those secrets. And that was why Lance didn’t have time to fuss about his own life.

“Oh, tosh! Drugs! That’ll never happen here. Besides, I pity any man who’d try to do something like that on
your
territory.” His mother was trying to minimize the threat, still intent on the baby campaign. But he could see that she hadn’t quite convinced herself.

Lance had a sudden, visceral memory of the guy at the diner. The bright light in his hazel eyes. The long, awkwardly coltish legs in jeans, the way that one thick lank of hair flopped over his forehead, the way he’d been so withdrawn and then had perked up and gotten all animated only to exhale right into Lance’s face and then get so
embar
r
assed
about it.

“What are
you
smiling at?” Lily asked with surprise.

Lance stopped smiling. “Nothing.”

“Hmmm.” Lily was watching him like a hawk. Or a border collie.

It was no big deal. She’d understand if she’d seen the guy. Suspicious, yes, but in retrospect also weirdly cute. Probably way cuter than baby Samantha.

Lanced frowned at the strange thought.

“Something happened that you’re not telling me. What is it?” Lily demanded.

Lance couldn’t help it. It wasn’t often he had something to hold over his mother. As in,
never
. He braced his palms on the table and stretched, acting all casual, then slouched back in his chair and grinned at her. And waggled his eyebrows.

“Lance!”

It probably wasn’t the smartest idea to get his mother worked up over nothing. But Lance felt a rare spark of playfulness and he couldn’t help milking it.

“Not a thing special happened today,” he said with utter falseness.

His mother twitched her nose and gave him her most dignified
hmph
!

*                          *                         *

Tim stood before the seed trays he
’d prepared and took a deep breath. This was it. Time to slice open the fruits of his labor and see what happened.

He’d spent the last three days getting the greenhouse in working condition. The place had been filled with spiders, mice, desiccated plants, stacks of dirty pots, and a layer of dust so thick he’d had to wear a bandana over his mouth as he swept it out. He’d patched some cracked windows, repaired a table leg, and bought a frugal list of planting supplies in Fresno.

And now he had a greenhouse. It wasn’t much to look at, and it was pathetically understocked. But it got excellent light from sunup to three pm when the long shadows of the pines reached out to touch the glass. And it was his.

Taking a knife, he carefully sliced open one of the rose hips from bag ‘
A
’ and shook out the seeds, being careful not to damage them.
A
was a cross of Wild Blue Yonder and Nostalgia. He was relieved to see nearly a dozen nice, fat seeds inside. He picked up the fattest candidates, one at a time, with the tip of a wooden plant marker and carefully pushed each one down into a square inch of soil in the tray. He planted a whole tray of rose
A
seeds and then moved on to the next bag of rose hips.