Natividad had been so proud that day, because she was Pure and would be able to protect everyone. She had believed every word. She didn’t want to remember that, now; only she sort of did want to, except remembering made her feel ashamed and small and young. So, she didn’t want to remember. She wouldn’t remember.
“There wasn’t any time,” she whispered. “I didn’t have time to do anything.”
That was true. When Vonhausel had come to Potosi, she had really, truly, not had time to find out if she had the strength of her Mamá’s blood in her own veins. She had not had time to find out if she had learned enough. But now there was this other town that needed the kind of protection a Pure woman could set into the earth and the air, and Natividad knew there would be time to protect this town. There would be time. There had to be, so there would be. If she was strong enough. And brave enough.
And Grayson ought to see it was her responsibility to help the townspeople, but he wanted to keep her safe. She thought maybe she liked the Dimilioc Master. She knew she admired him – he was trying so hard to protect Dimilioc, and yet he was almost kind, when he could be. He hadn’t even hesitated to take responsibility for the sheriff’s daughter. There were so many other demands on his attention, and a moon-bound shifter was not easy to handle, at least not if you wanted to help her. But he thought protecting his own family was the only important thing there was. He was like Papá that way. Mamá had known there were more important things than being safe.
Natividad, blinked hard, rubbed her hand across her eyes, took a deep breath, and ran up the main stairway so it would look like she meant to obey Grayson. But then she ran back down the kitchen stairs and poked her head cautiously out the side door into the cold morning. It was hardly light even now: clouds had thickened overhead and fat flakes of snow were beginning to wander down from the heavy sky.
Pearson was leaning against his big vehicle, watching, his body rigid and his hands clenched hard, as Harrison led a thin girl into the house. He took a step after them, but stopped himself, his face tight, his thin mouth a hard line.
Natividad thought the girl couldn’t be more than thirteen or fourteen years old. Her father’s elegant features were, in her, a fragile delicacy. She didn’t look like a girl who could survive disasters. She looked stunned and blank, like she had not yet figured out whether she ought to feel grief or rage or despair or terror. All those emotions would crash in on her at once, Natividad knew. Soon. Probably as soon as Harrison locked her in the cage downstairs to wait, alone, for her corrupted shadow to rise. It might not come up until nightfall, but really it could happen any time, with the moon so near full. Natividad wanted to go sit with the girl, talk to her, try to get her to believe that her life might still go on despite being moon-bound.
But the girl probably wouldn’t be able to believe anybody’s reassurances. Not right away. Not till after the moon began to wane and her shadow subsided again. Besides, if Natividad went to help her, she would have to leave Sheriff Pearson to drive back to Lewis alone, without anything to stop Vonhausel’s black dogs biting more of his people to make more moon-bound shifters. Whatever Grayson said, somebody needed to help Pearson or all the townspeople would be terribly vulnerable.
The sheriff was not cursing, but he looked as though he might have liked to. He stared at the blank facade of the Dimilioc house as though he was considering storming it like a castle and prying the help Grayson had denied him out of the Master’s hands like a prize of war.
Natividad liked him. She liked the way he hit the side of his car with the palm of his hand: she liked the clean, human anger in him. She should ask Miguel what he thought before she did anything really risky, but there was no time; in just a moment the sheriff would get in his car and drive away.
So, she walked boldly across the snowy drive, opened the passenger side door, and leaped up to the seat. It was warm in the car – a measure of how brief the sheriff’s visit had been. “Quick,” she said, while Sheriff Pearson was still staring at her. “Unless you want somebody to peek out and think you’re kidnapping me. Quick, let’s go!”
That got the man moving: no questions, just swift, economical movements. He, too, had to jump to get into the vehicle. Then he started the car, swung it around without pausing, and drove toward the forest. He glanced once and then again into the rearview mirror. So did Natividad. She more than half expected a sudden uproar, Grayson or Harrison or somebody to race out of the house and after them.
But there was no sign anybody had seen her get in the sheriff’s car. She faced forward again, but then found that the trampled, torn-up snow, spattered with the remnants of battle, looked even worse up close. Natividad was glad of the drifting snow in the air: let clean snow cover up all the ugly reminders of blood and fire and death…