Vision in Silver(110)

            Good point. “Thanks, Jester.” Simon ended the call and looked at Burke. “Maybe, after the Lizzy is asleep, someone could drive Boo Bear to the Courtyard to visit his kin. And maybe that someone could pick him up again before the Lizzy is awake.”

            “Maybe someone could,” Burke said, smiling. He stepped away from the minivan. “Thanks for all your help.”

            As soon as Simon got in and closed the door, Blair backed the minivan out of the driveway and drove back to the Courtyard.

            He’d had enough, and all Simon wanted now was to get out of this skin. But as they pulled into the Courtyard’s Main Street entrance, Meg rushed out of the Liaison’s Office.

            “Is Nathan with you?” she asked, sounding breathless. “I haven’t been able to find him anywhere.”

            “He’s in the back,” Blair said.

            “Can I talk to him?”

            Simon turned enough to look in the back of the van. <Nathan? Up to you.>

            Nathan sighed, but he stood up. <You have to open the door and move the boxes.>

            Simon made room for the Wolf to hop out of the minivan. He watched Meg go back into the office with Nathan. Then he sighed, closed the doors, and said to Blair, “I’ll meet you at A Little Bite.”

            He walked down the access way and over to the coffee shop’s back door, resigned to being human a while longer. He might as well check in with Vlad after talking to Tess.

            There were plenty of things he still needed to do before going home. So no one would think he was waiting around to find out why Meg wanted to talk to Nathan.


* * *

            Meg let Nathan out the back door of the Liaison’s Office and watched him hustle over to the back door of Howling Good Reads.

            Reporting to Simon, naturally.

            After closing the door, she went into the bathroom to wash her face.

            Anger. Wariness. Distrust. She didn’t have any training images to identify emotions on a Wolf’s face, but she spent enough time around Nathan that she could interpret his expressions.

            Had the cut been unnecessary? Everyone else thought so.

            Meg turned on the taps, splashed water on her face, then remained bent over the sink.

            The pins-and-needles feeling was irritating, often painful. But it was a kind of dowsing rod that had been evolving since she’d come to the Courtyard. So maybe if she had walked away . . .

            No. No, no, no. There had been danger for someone at the Pony Barn. That painful buzz had been a warning about an enemy. . . .

            Meg clenched her teeth against the sudden buzz that filled both her arms. She jerked upright and saw her face in the mirror above the sink.

            The buzz faded.

            Meg stared at her reflection.

            “It was me,” she whispered. “I was the enemy.”

            She took a step back from the sink, laid a hand over the bandage at her waist, and thought about what Merri Lee had said: And then Meg, the Trailblazer, should think about what you would want other blood prophets to learn from what happened today.

            “No one else has the right to decide if or when we cut our skin, but if we don’t learn to interpret the warning signs that tell us if we really need to cut, we can become the enslavers as well as the enslaved. We can become our own enemy.”

            That was the second lesson Meg, the Trailblazer, had learned today. The first lesson—the harder, more important lesson—was that she wasn’t the only one who was hurt when she cut.