Black Dog(60)

“Well, you know, black dogs. I’ll see if I can work with Ethan. Grayson wants him to help me make silver bullets, so that’ll give him a chance to get used to me. He’s not really so bad, I think.”

“It’s hard for him,” Natividad agreed. “I bet it always has been hard for him. Imagine growing up in the same house as Ezekiel. I bet he couldn’t ever match Ezekiel in anything even when they were both little.”

“Exactly. And he probably knows Alejandro is stronger – which I think he is – and now there’s Keziah. Oooh.” Miguel clutched his chest, pretending he’d been struck by an arrow, but Natividad was pretty sure he wasn’t really kidding. “Ethan’s afraid he’s going to wind up right down on the bottom of the whole younger set,” Miguel added. “He’ll like having me around.”

Natividad laughed. “Oh, yes, of course he will, until he finds out what a bully you are! No, you’re right, I thought he was kind of a bastardo at first, but I think you’re right. He’s just scared and worried.”

“So, I’ll see what I can do with him. What do you think about his father?”

“Oh, well…” Natividad had barely exchanged two words with Harrison Lanning. She said slowly, “He’s worried about his son, I expect, but that isn’t all. There’s something else there. He doesn’t like me – or something. I’m not sure.”

“We’ll figure him out. If he doesn’t like you now, he will – everybody does.” Miguel sounded perfectly confident. “What about Zachariah?”

Natividad grinned. “Oh, I like him! I do. I think Grayson really depends on Zachariah – I didn’t think black dogs could really be friends, you know, but you can see they are. And maybe Harrison, too. I think Dimilioc is lucky all three of them came through the war.”

“Yeah.”

“James, I can’t tell yet. He seems like kind of a jerk, but at least he really cares about Dimilioc. That Keziah, though – wow.”

Miguel nodded. “Oooh,” he said again, appreciatively.

“Poor little Amira, though, you can see somebody cut her on purpose. I hope the vampires got all the black dogs in the whole Mideast.” Natividad mimed spitting on the floor. “I bet they had a black dog father and black dog brothers. Everyone betrayed them, nobody protected them – except Keziah protected Amira. That’s what I think.”

“She’s something,” Miguel agreed. He lay back on her bed, crossing his arms under his head. “You think she’ll want to be friends?”

Natividad rolled her eyes. “With you? She’s too sexy for you. She’ll eat your heart.”

“You’re talking about the love of my life, here.”

Natividad ignored this plaintive protest. “You know she got somebody to do the Aplacando for her before? And for her sister? She’s smart and she knows what she wants – and what she wants is to be inside Dimilioc’s power. Grayson wants her to be Dimilioc–” she touched her own chest “–in her heart. But I think she hates Grayson. I think she hates all black dog men. She hasn’t even noticed you – and you’d better hope she doesn’t, gemelo. She’ll chew you up and spit you out. That’s what I think.”

“Um.” Miguel looked unhappy.

“Black dog or human, in some ways, guys are all the same.” Natividad gave her brother a knowing lift of her eyebrows. “When I say she’ll eat your heart, I mean literalmente. She’s dangerous. Anyway, she’s too old for you. I bet she’s eighteen, or seventeen anyway. Why would she notice you?”

“I like you better when you’re not so serious,” Miguel complained.

Natividad ignored this. “Now, Grayson…” Grayson kind of had that extra-sexy older guy muy masculino thing going, but she didn’t say that. Anyway, it wasn’t important, as long as Ezekiel… She didn’t want to think about that. She said instead, “Grayson lost almost all his wolves in the war, didn’t he? And now there’s Vonhausel. He’s grieving and he’s scared. And he’s angry, of course. With us, too. But…”

“But?”

“I think I like him. He cares about his people.” Natividad turned back to her pentagrams, and traced them again with her finger. If peace was too much to hope for… “Let there be happiness in this house,” she said. She drew light into the pentagrams, a soft moonlight that would hold them in place and keep her wish alive.

But she already knew that no one, Pure or not, could bring either happiness or peace to Dimilioc. Not while so many of the people within the house were afraid of one another or angry with one another. Not while they were surrounded by enemies who wanted to kill them all.