Page 59 of A Wolf After My Own Heart
“Thatiswhat usually happens,” Oz admitted while Annette nodded.
“Or have a nervous breakdown—”
“That also happens.”
“—try to tell the world what’s happening, get ignored or laughed at, and then leave town.”
So that’s why it was the Curs(ed) House. In a neighborhood teeming with Shifters, the rare Stable would come along and see something and get freaked out and vacate. Lila was willing to bet nobody overtly harassed the hapless Stable. But the neighborhood would only come together to helpShifterrenters. And when something would inevitably go wrong, the Shifters had a built-in support system. The Stable was on their own.
She was willing to give Macropi and her landlord the benefit of the doubt: that they weren’t actively driving away Stables by sabotaging appliances and trapping then loosing squirrels in the attic.
For now.
“T’me, lass, it sounds like your time here has been—”
“Ridiculous bullshit? I really like that phrase, by the way. It applies somanyways.”
“—stressful. So why not step away?”
“Because someone wants your goddaughter badly enough to set a fire that could have killed people. So theycan’t have her.” Lila crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m also abiding by her dad’s wishes—he wanted Sally here, not at IPA or with an IPA…” How to label Macropi’s purpose in the system? “…ally? So she’s here for the duration, God help me. But yeah—mostly because half the neighborhood could have roasted, so fuck them, and they can’t have her.”
“Protective spite?” Oz sounded delighted.
Berne seemed satisfied as well. “So what happens next? Lila? Ms. Garsea?”
Oz coughed. “It’s technically my case.”
“O’course,” Berne assured them. “But I’m asking all of you, since you apparently do things by committee.”
“We’ve got some more questions,” Oz replied. “And we wanted to talk to you about the plane crash.”
“Ach.” Berne’s shoulders slumped. “I’ll answer anything you want, but I hate the thought—it was my plane, y’see. Sue got her pilot’s license years ago, so I let her borrow it. The little Cessna I flew here isna mine.” At their stares, he elaborated. “I’m a ferry pilot.”
He probably thought that cleared things up.
“How unfortunate,” Annette said.
Oh, this just gets better and better.“Macropi’s not the only one dealing with insurance guys this week, huh, Berne?”
Oz was already on his feet. “I know you’ve had a long morning so far, but could we get you to come to IPA? We’ve got some paperwork for you to look over, as Sally’s closest known guardian, and we could answer your questions, too. The more we find out, the better chance we have of helping Sally.”
“O’course.”
“I’ll get you the address… Meet you there in two hours?”
“Aye, that’ll give me a chance to clean up a bit. Two hours and then—” Berne cut himself off and grimaced. “Paperwork.”
Lila had a pretty good idea what “paperwork” meant, and it wasn’t forms. Berne was going to have to look at something much less pleasant (though forms were horrible, too). She almost felt bad for him.
Well, no. She didn’t. Not really.
* * *
Just when she thought she’d gotten rid of a few of them for the morning, there was a rap at her bedroom door. She let out a groan that was a bit exaggerated; she wanted a quick break from unpacking. A brief (brief!) distraction was welcome, especially since her Berne = Bear research had only taken sixty seconds. Armed with Berne’s business card, she found that Berne didn’t mean bear, butBerndid. In German, at least. She assumed the man’s family had dropped the ‘e’, though they needn’t have bothered. Even with the ‘e’, it was pretty on the nose.
The knob turned, and Oz poked his head inside. “I’m interpreting that groan as ‘come in.’ Okay?”
“Interpret it any way you like. Don’t you have somewhere to be?”
