“What?” she spun around, startled.
A rather grimy young hyena shifter trotted up to them. He’d come from behind the store. Isadora guessed his age at around fourteen. He’d scrubbed his face, but she could see grime on his neck and hands. His clothing was worn and patched. Now, he looked like a Hobo.
He was accompanied by a mountain lion female of around ten years of age, who wore a filthy dress.
Aunt Laura? Who were these crazy kids? They couldn’t possibly have mistaken her for somebody else…could they have?
“It looks like the weather’s going to turn nasty later,” he added. “We should get going.”
Freaking great. WarriorDemon1 had sent kids to meet her.
“I saw that same weather report,” she said, and he gave the tiniest nod of acknowledgement at her correct response.
“Who are you?” the warden asked him suspiciously.
“My name is Raymond. This is my aunt. We need to go, I have a doctor’s appointment.” He frowned at them impatiently.
“What’s your aunt’s date of birth?” the Warden persisted. The young interloper recited it, shifting from one foot to another.
The warden still looked skeptical. “She’s your aunt? You’re a hyena. And she’s a mountain lion,” he protested. He glanced at the young girl.
The hyena shifter looked at him indignantly. “Our family is very open-minded. Don’t judge.” And he yanked open the door to the minivan without a second glance, and the girl followed him.
Isadora suspected that, with his superior canine hearing, he’d overheard her fake name and the birth date and repeated it back. However, the wardens seemed to be buying it.
“How…” Warden Lawrence asked, his gaze darting from her to them.
She managed a pained smile. “Their parents were troubled. I took them in.”
He looked at the van and her clean clothing, and nodded approvingly. “Well, it looks like you’ve done well for yourself. They’re in good paws now.” He pulled out his wallet, fished out a few twenties, and handed them to her. “That’s for some new clothes for them.”
Well, now Isadora just felt bad. She’d find a way to get the money back to him.
“We’re looking for a female lynx shifter about your age,” he continued. “Black hair, tattoos, nose ring, kind of Goth appearance. She’s collaborating with that group of humans who kidnapped shifters.”
“I thought that group of humans had all been caught.” Isadora pretended to look horrified and concerned.
“Most of them. Unfortunately, some of them are still on the loose, and she’s been cooperating with them.” His tone was contemptuous, his lip curling as he said it.
Awesome. So that’s what she was now. The girl who’d betrayed every shifter in the land. Well, she’d known what she was signing up for.
She nodded. “I’ll keep an eye out.”
Her heart still racing, she climbed in the van and drove off.
“Thanks for saving my furry hide back there, kid,” Isadora said, once they were a couple of miles down the road. “Did WarriorDemon1 send you?”
He straightened up and puffed out his narrow chest. “I am WarriorDemon1,” he said proudly.
She shot him a startled glance.
“You are WarriorDemon1? Seriously?”
She looked at the little girl. “Who are you?”
“Savageslayer.” The girl flashed a cheerful grin at her. “My real name’s Sally.”
“I’m Thomas,” the hyena said.
These were the Hobos she’d talked with in the chat room?
“You sounded completely different online!” she protested. “You talked about getting in fights and ripping out the throats of your Challengers!”
“Of course I did.” He rolled his eyes, and his tone indicated extreme impatience with stupid grownups. “If anyone knew I was a kid they might try to rob me and Sally, or kill us. You have to sound tough. It’s Internet Survival 101.”
“Duh,” Sally added helpfully.
“You knew all the Hobo code words!” she protested.
“My parents were Hobos. Or they are Hobos. They might be dead.”
“But…” her voice trailed off. “What happened? How long has it been since you’ve seen them?”
He shrugged indifferently. “I’ve been on my own since I was ten. They took off for different parts of the country.” At Isadora’s horrified look, he added “My uncle’s coming to get us. I’ve stayed with him before. I don’t mind being alone, but with Sally here, I was thinking it might be a good idea to have a grownup around for a while.”
“What happened the last time you stayed with him?”
“He left for a week to take a construction job. After he left, some humans set up camp near where our group was hanging out, so we left, and I couldn’t get in touch with him again. He’s kind of a technophobe. He stays off grid, never goes in the chat rooms.”
Isadora didn’t think that the uncle sounded that great, but who was she to interfere? And what better options could she offer? She was on the run from every shifter law enforcement agency in existence.
“What about you?” Isadora asked the young girl, with dismay.
“My father’s dead, and my stepfather’s a stupid asshole who hit me all the time,” the girl shrugged.
“Language!” Then Isadora nearly fell over. Dear God, she’d actually just sounded a tiny bit like her mother when she said that, which was literally a fate worse than death.
“Sorry. He’s a jerk. Last year we were at a camp with a bunch of other Hobos and my stepfather hit me in the head because I tripped and spilled his can of beer, and Thomas had just come to the camp, and he jumped on him and bit his shoulder, and my stepfather threw him across the clearing, so I stabbed him with a spear.”
“Oh. Good for you.” Isadora’s eyes widened with surprise and a new respect.
“I was going to kill him before that, but my mom kept begging me not to,” Sally shrugged.
Apparently Savageslayer was not an inaccurate internet handle for Sally. “Did he die when you speared him?”
“I don’t know. Me and Thomas ran for it. We never heard from him again. My mother didn’t try to find me.” Her voice sounded wistful when she said that.
“Well, at least you’ve got Thomas.” Isadora found herself blinking hard. Allergies. Damn it, it was allergies! She didn’t have a soft or sentimental bone in her body.
“Yeah, he’s better than any mother,” Sally said, cheering up.
“So, is Pyotr at the camp?” Isadora had wanted to join up with this specific group of Hobos because of information that her superiors had passed down to her – information about a man from Korslovia.
They’d had Isadora looking all over the country for any shifters from that country. By asking around on all the Hobo boards, she’d finally tracked him down – and was surprised to find that he frequently hung out at the Hobo camp that was located only a couple of hours from Lonesome Pine.
“He doesn’t live at the camp. He stays in some caves nearby. He’s kind of paranoid and crazy. Something happened to him in some war, or something,” Thomas said.
A science laboratory, actually, but Thomas didn’t need to know about that, or all the things that had been done to the shifters there. From what Isadora had heard about the laboratory, it was amazing that he had any scraps of sanity left.
She could only hope that he’d be able to give her what she needed.
“We can take you to him tomorrow. Early is best, because he heads out in the morning to hunt,” Thomas said.
That worked for Isadora. She needed to catch up on some sleep anyway.
She fished around in her purse and pulled out a pack of wet wipes. “Wash your faces and hands,” she said, tossing the pack to Thomas.
“What!” Thomas let out an indignant squawk.
“You heard me. There’s a McDonald’s up ahead. I am not buying you lunch until you clean up.”
“McDonald’s!” Sally cheered, grabbed the pack of wet wipes, and began scrubbing at her face.
“Why should we clean up?” Thomas’s voice had taken on a sullen whine.
“Because I said so,” Isadora said, and then remembered how much she hated it when her mother said that. “And also because it helps you fit in, which helps keep you safe and also makes it easier to spy on people.”
“What do you mean?” Now Thomas was intrigued rather than sullen.
“When people look on you as an outsider, they don’t let you get close to them, and they’re watching you all the time, expecting the worst from you. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about. So when you want to blend in and not attract any attention, you have to look like them and act like them. If you look dirty, wear dirty clothes and smell bad, shifters think you’re a Hobo, and humans think you’re trailer trash. Either way, you’ve just made it so everybody is watching you all the time.”
“That’s true,” Thomas said thoughtfully. He grabbed a wipe and began scrubbing. “Sometimes I need to kind of, you know, borrow a new laptop so I can get online, and it’s hard because security guards are always watching me. And Sally and me can’t go into any human towns or cities too much, because sometimes humans want to call welfare services on us.”