Simon didn’t ask how many of those outraged humans had bought a cut on any of those girls. But Vlad, who had listened to the news reports, took note of who denied the existence of blood prophets.
The terra indigene in Lakeside had done as much as they could today. Just one more thing for him to do.
He opened the back door of the Liaison’s Office and looked around. How little was the little thing that was too much for Meg to absorb?
But she had learned how to do a job, and she did it so well she had changed how the Others saw the people who worked for them. She had learned how to take care of herself, was learning how to cook simple meals. She had even learned how to drive, more or less. Not that anyone in the Courtyard would let her go out on the city streets, but she chugged along just fine in her Box on Wheels as she made deliveries to the various complexes where the Others lived.
Meg, the Trailblazer. The one who could show the other girls how to live and survive and enjoy the world they’d seen only in pictures.
He walked into the sorting room. Meg stopped tidying the stacks of magazines and waited.
“They killed the babies,” he said, not knowing how else to tell her. “Humans like the ones who caged you put babies in sacks and threw them into water to drown. The girls who were left beside roads weren’t from the compounds; they came from dens where females had their pups.”
Her hands trembled. “Is that one of the things I saw in the prophecy? Was that one of the things Merri Lee didn’t want to tell me?”
“No. You saw the girls who were in trouble, not the babies.”
She said nothing. He waited. A Wolf knew how to be patient.
“Dragging the lake,” Meg said. “Are the police going to drag the lakes?” She smiled bitterly. “I know that phrase because I read it in a couple of thrillers recently. But I don’t recall any training images that would match those words.”
“Wouldn’t that be an important image if someone wanted to find a missing human?” Simon asked. Humans did drown by accident.
“It should have been a training image. But I don’t think the people who owned blood prophets wanted girls to have an image of what happened to the boy babies when they were taken away.” Meg shuddered. “After Sam began shifting to human form, I wondered if I’d ever had a younger brother. In the compounds, there were no boys being trained to see visions. Just girls. How many old sacks do you think they’ll find in the lakes?”
“I don’t know.” He hurt because she was hurting. He wanted to lick her face and find a meaty bone for her to gnaw on. He wanted to entice her into a game so she would think about something else. But he knew from experience that nothing could provide enough distraction to eliminate that kind of hurt.
“Simon? Could we go to the Wolfgard Complex and play with the puppies?”
Maybe there was a distraction that would help. “Sure we can. It would be good to do that.” Tomorrow he would think about human things again. Now he would spend some time with his own kind—and with his friend.
As he and Meg locked the back door of the Liaison’s Office, Vlad approached them from HGR.
“I closed for the day,” Vlad said. “We’re not open for human customers, and any terra indigene who want a book can borrow one from the Market Square Library. And I’ve had enough of—” His mobile phone rang.
“Aren’t you going to answer it?” Meg asked.
“No.” When it stopped ringing Vlad took the phone out of his pocket and shut it off.
“We’re going up to the Wolfgard Complex,” Simon said.