“How many humans did you used to have here?” he asked. “Were they all somebody’s relatives? Because that’s pretty bad, losing them, if they were brothers and sisters, cousins and wives. That’s tough.”
“Too many were, as you say, kin,” said Harrison. “Far too many.” His tone lowered, so that Alejandro wondered what kin he might have lost. He added, almost more to himself than to Miguel, “They… Humans are so vulnerable to vampires.”
“Were,” said Miguel. “Were vulnerable to vampires.”
Harrison’s dark eyes focused on Miguel. After a moment, he smiled, though grimly. “Were vulnerable. Yes. That’s done.”
Alejandro found the Dimilioc wolf’s obvious grief profoundly reassuring. They had carried one or another of the Dimilioc names, he guessed, those dead human brothers and sisters and cousins and wives. They had counted as part of the Dimilioc pack. Maybe a subordinate part, but they’d had an accepted place, a place that Miguel could move into and make his own.
“We’ll bring in a few human servants in the spring,” Ethan said, his tone tight and annoyed.
Alejandro looked at Ethan in surprise. They would? How? Would the Dimilioc wolves just hire ordinary people as servants? That was hard to picture. Maybe Dimilioc actually made a practice of kidnapping people when they ran short of servants? Could that possibly be what Ethan meant: that in the spring maybe a few early hikers might disappear?
“Oh, servants,” Harrison said, with a dismissive little tilt of his head.
“Useful creatures, servants. Or do you enjoy dusting?” said Zachariah, coming into the dining room with a platter balanced on each hand and Natividad, similarly laden, behind him. He slid his platters onto the table with the neat grace of experience and turned to help Natividad with hers.
“You don’t seem to mind the cooking,” Ethan said, not quite snapping.
“But do I dust?” Zachariah was clearly amused, but the glint of humor in his pale eyes faded as he looked around the table. “Where’s Ezekiel? Grayson?”
“Busy, one supposes,” Harrison said. “We won’t wait.”
Breakfast was ham and eggs and biscuits with honey and fig jam. The eggs were fine. Plain. Not very interesting, was Alejandro’s reluctant judgment, and he didn’t even care about food. Natividad, if she had been cooking, would have fried strips of day-old tortillas to scramble with the eggs, and added chilies and onions. The biscuits were alright, though. Much better than the squishy bread you could get at the roadside places where buses stopped. Alejandro watched Natividad tuck ham and fig jam into a biscuit. She was avoiding the eggs. He suspected she was planning a takeover of the kitchen. He wondered whether Zachariah would mind if she made some good Mexican food. Did he think of that kitchen as his? He might be territorial about it, hard though that was to imagine when the room was so free of personality.
“Do you make bread, too?” Natividad asked, and Zachariah said, “I do,” and passed her the platter of ham. Alejandro found it was actually not hard to imagine Zachariah’s long clever hands kneading bread dough on one of these fancy stone-topped counters.
“In the spring–” Harrison began, and was interrupted by Zachariah suddenly putting down his fork and lifting his head. “Yes?” said Harrison.
“I don’t quite know.” Zachariah stood up, not urgently but not wasting time either, and said briefly to Harrison – not so much to the rest of them – “I’ll let you know.” Abandoning his plate, he walked out, heading for the front of the house.
Harrison ate two more bites of eggs, then put his fork down and glowered at Ethan. “Anything?”
Ethan shrugged. “Not so I can tell.” He shoved his chair back, preparing to get up. He said to his father, pointedly not looking at Alejandro or Miguel, nor even at Natividad, “I’ll go find out, shall I?”
Harrison began to nod, but was interrupted by a deep-throated cry – a sound midway between a howl and a roar, violently aggressive. There was the sound of shattering glass and the long ripping sound of splintering wood. Harrison was instantly on his feet, striding toward the door, his back bowing and twisting as his shadow rose: it had been a man who’d got to his feet, but it was a massive-shouldered black dog who slammed the door open and lunged through it, moving in long bounds that seemed almost more suited to a lion than a wolf. Ethan was a step or two behind his father, still mostly in human form, his dense shadow gathered close around him.
Alejandro spared one fast, alarmed look for the twins. Miguel had already turned and bolted – the right way, away from the trouble – but Natividad had frozen, staring at him. “Vamos!” Alejandro snarled at her, meaning: “Go after Miguel.” He himself whirled to follow the Dimilioc wolves. His shadow rose around him as he ran; his claws sank into the hardwood floor as he flung himself through the doorway and forward.