“The kids from your Directorate are staying with a few of the bigger families around here,” Judy said, a little primly.
I looked around at her trailer, which seemed roughly the same size as all the others, but it was quiet and there was nary a sign that anyone inhabited it with her. “Any of them staying with you?”
“Heavens, no,” Judy said. “I’m a terrible person to live with, especially for a child. My sense of rules and order is very clearly defined and much too strict for most people, which is why I have chosen not to inflict it upon anyone else.”
I blinked at her. “I’ve ... uh ... never heard anyone be quite so critical of their own personality quirks before.”
She shrugged. “I don’t see it as a flaw, but others certainly do, and since I have no desire to annoy, I find it better to live on my own.” She thumped a hand lightly on the table. “Now then. You’ve come about the children, but Scott mentioned on the phone that there were other circumstances propelling you up here. What are they?”
I cleared my throat as Scott took off his coat and sat next to me. “Have you heard the rumors out of Europe?”
She inclined her head slightly as if to say, “Meh.” She was of a generation that probably wouldn’t know what that meant, but the sentiment was definitely there. “I have a few friends in the old world who have stopped returning any phone calls or emails. The responses I do get are from their local constabularies, looking for clues to their deaths or murders.”
I thought about that for a second. “But they’re all murders.”
“The local police in several countries do not share your rather obvious conclusion, I’m afraid,” Judy said, a little primly. “Of course there are some ways in which a meta can die that, by their nature, look like natural causes. Incubi and succubi, naturally—” Scott cleared his throat rather abruptly and Judy looked at him, annoyed, before speaking again. “In any case, the truths are percolating their way out to even us, here at the edge of the wilderness. Something is destroying our kind.”
“But you’re not concerned?” I asked.
“Of course I’m concerned. What kind of a foolish question is that?” Judy’s lips were pressed together tightly, stealing all the color from them.
I realized suddenly that I hadn’t had much to drink in the last few hours. “But you’re not doing anything about it.”
She watched me with a clear sense of annoyance. “Oh, be assured, we’ll do something about it. It’s just that we’re still deciding on what that something will be.”
“There is a man called Sovereign,” I said, just launching into it, “and he’s leading a group called Century that is planning to wipe out all of us to the last meta.”
Judy’s face was already ruddy compared to her yellow shirt. “That son of a bitch,” she said under her breath.
Scott’s eyes widened. “Umm ... Great Aunt Judy? You know him?”
She looked him over like he was an idiot. “Of course I know him. Anyone who’s been around these parts for a few hundred years knows him. He’s been through before, that ass. Used to take pride in breaking metas who’d run local protection rackets, which was a pretty common thing even a hundred years ago. You had these metas who would watch out for a town or county in exchange for money. Sometimes they’d even take the sheriff’s job. Some were honorable about it,” her expression tightened, “some weren’t. Anyhow, Sovereign passed through a few times, and it seemed like every other time he’d break some damned fool who tried to shake him down. The man didn’t say shit to anyone when he’d come through, he’d just walk along, buy food or eat in a restaurant without saying more than a required word to anyone, and be on about his way when he was done.”
“So he was like a good guy, back then?” Scott asked. “Breaking up protection rackets?”
Judy snorted. “Hardly. Sometimes it was warranted, sometimes I think he was just spoiling for a chance to bust someone up. Didn’t kill ’em most of the time, though, and that’s to his credit because he certainly could have. Just warned them off, told them to find an honest job. A lot of them learned to steer out of his way when he came to town. They’d give him a wide berth and he’d given them no trouble.”
“He seems to have changed his mode of operation,” Scott said.
“Yes,” Judy said pensively, a frown on her face. “He didn’t truck with anyone else that I knew of. Damned sure not anyone with as dumb a name as ‘Century.’” She looked over at Scott. “What does it mean?”