Vision in Silver(14)

            That was new.

            He took a cautious step toward her. Then, intrigued, he took another step. “Meg?”

            <Simon?> Vlad asked. <What is it?>

            <Stay outside,> he replied.

            Even after Meg came to the Courtyard, he hadn’t paid much attention to the physical appearance of the humans who worked for them. They did their work, and he didn’t eat them. That was sufficient. But they’d never had a blood prophet living in the Courtyard before, so maybe this was a normal seasonal change?

            No, not normal. Meg looked upset, so this must be a new thing for her too.

            “You shed your old hair,” he said. Well, she’d done something with it. He had a feeling this was one of those times when a male should express positive enthusiasm regardless of what he really thought—especially when he didn’t really know what was going on.

            Fortunately, he did feel positive—and curious.

            Meg’s weird orange hair was gone, and her head was covered by a coat that was glossy black and thick and so short it stuck straight up. He reached out, wanting to see if the hair felt as soft as it looked. “This looks like puppy fuzz.”

            Before he could give her a scritch behind the ear, she jerked away from his hand and wailed, “I don’t wanna look like puppy fuzz!”

            “Why not? Puppies are cute.”

            Her breathing started to hitch, and her eyes had a panicked, glassy look that reminded him of a young bison he’d seen once when he was a juvenile Wolf living in the Northwest Region. The youngster had challenged an older bull and took a blow to the skull that had hurt its brain. He and the other Wolves had watched it stagger around and around, unable to change direction or even stop. It eventually recovered and followed the rest of the herd.

            If the pack hadn’t already made a kill earlier in the day, that young bull would have been easy prey.

            If you forced blood prophet puppies to see too many new images, their brains froze as if they’d taken a hard hit, just like the young bison. The girls he’d brought back from the compound had done that several times during the train ride back to Lakeside.

            But this was the first time he’d seen that panicked look in Meg’s eyes.

            “Meg!” he said fiercely. What could he do? How could he help her?

            Same way he’d helped the girls during the train ride. Hide the strange. New things frightened.

            Simon rushed into the sorting room and yanked open the drawers under the counter, growling as he pawed through the contents and thought of the nastiest human swearwords he knew. He found the floppy fleece hat stuffed in the back of a drawer. Grabbing it, he ran into the back room, plopped the hat on Meg’s head, then dragged her into the bathroom and positioned her in front of the mirror above the sink.

            “Look!” he demanded, closing his hands around her upper arms and giving her a little shake. “This is Meg, wearing the floppy hat we bought to keep her head warm after she came home from the hospital. This is Meg, the Human Liaison for the Lakeside Courtyard. This is Meg, who is my friend, Sam’s friend, Vlad’s friend, Tess’s friend, Henry’s friend, Jenni’s friend. Look!”

            He watched the panic in her eyes fade, watched her absorb the image of their reflections in the mirror. With the hair hidden, she looked the same as she had yesterday, except for the bandage on her left forearm.

            Now confusion, and a touch of fear, filled her gray eyes. “Simon . . .”

            Upset with her and for her, but gentler now that she sounded like Meg again, he led her into the sorting room.