FUR FOR ALL, Book 5 in FIXED (5 page)

“You must be, since you look about sixteen.”

“Gee, thanks.”

35

Christine Warren

“Don’t mention it.” Missy finished the first half of her sandwich and grinned.

“Sure you don’t want some? Speak now or forever hold your peace.”

“No, thanks.” Tess shook her head and watched with wide eyes as Missy shrugged and bit into the second pound of roast beef. “I mean, I really don’t mean to be rude, but…how the heck do you eat like that and not outweigh your husband?”

Missy choked down a swallow of milk and laughed. “Don’t do that while I’m drinking. You almost made me snort milk.” She quietly cleared her throat.

“And believe me, if I’d tried to do this six months ago, I probably would weigh more than Graham. But this is one of the best fringe benefits of having baby werewolves. I burn calories like a raging metabolic inferno.” Tess felt her eyebrows arch. “When did you have the baby? Last year?”

“Last month. Two weeks ago, to be precise. Well, two weeks and five days.” Missy beamed with a proud new mama smile and downed another third of the milk. “A boy. Roark. I’d force you to come upstairs and meet him, but he was fussy tonight and now that he’s finally asleep, I don’t want to risk waking him.”

“Two weeks ago? You’ve got to be kidding.” Tess gestured to the tightly belted robe at Missy’s waist. “What did you do, adopt? Because two weeks is
not
enough time to lose a baby belly.”

“That’s the other fringe benefit.” Missy pushed her empty plate away and sat back with a satisfied grin. “I told you, I burn calories like it’s going out of style.

Have since I first got pregnant. Werewolves have really fast metabolisms. They probably burn seven or eight thousand calories a day on average. They eat like horses. When they’re breastfeeding, human women burn about five thousand.

And I’ve just discovered, much to my joy, that when breastfeeding a baby werewolf, a human woman can burn somewhere around twelve thousand calories a day without breaking a sweat.” Her grin widened. “Ain’t life grand?” Tess laughed. “That’s a diet plan I don’t think I’ve seen on the infomercials.” 36

Fixed 5: Fur For All

“Not in this lifetime. The Lupines—well, all the Others, actually—are trying to preserve their secrecy from the human world, but it’s getting harder all the time. They’re not about to go telling people anything about themselves until they’ve got absolutely no other choice.”

“Is that likely to take much longer?” Tess asked, curious. “I mean, I’m hardly an expert, but I think that might have been one of the things my gr—the council wanted to talk to Rafe about. I’ve heard some of the members rumbling about how some of the Others in the city haven’t been keeping as tight a lid on things as usual. There were rumors about some faeries being spotted over the summer.” Missy sighed. “Yes, there were. It was a huge mix up, and we sorted it out as soon as we found out what was going on. But I suppose there will always be people who aren’t happy with that. It makes me crazy, but it also makes me happy that Dmitri’s council position went to Rafe and not to Graham. Call me kooky, but I’d prefer it if my husband spent his time worrying about keeping me and the baby happy, not the entire Other population of Manhattan.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you—” Missy’s scowl smoothed out into a warm smile so rapidly that Tess wondered if she’d ever really seen the hostile expression. Maybe she’d just imagined it.

“Oh, you didn’t,” Missy assured her. “I get carried away sometimes. I’m the one who should apologize. But that subject is no fun, anyway. I want to hear more about you. What sorts of things do you sell at your herb and teashop?

Besides herbs and tea, of course.”

Tess shook her head and laughed. “That’s the bulk of it. The herbs range from fragrant to flavorful, though most of what I have is medicinal in one way or another. I’m a licensed herbalist, so I make blends for specific problems people might have, and I tailor remedies to specific people.” 37

Christine Warren

“Wow, that’s really cool. I’ve always found the idea of herbal medicine to be a fascinating subject. How did you get into that?”

“It’s sort of a family business. My grandmother was an herbalist, too, though she did it for her family and her neighbors without making a career out of it.”

“Cool. And you said you sell teas, too?”

Tess nodded. “Good quality loose leaf from all over the world. And I make up my own blends to sell as well.”

“I’ll have to come see you and try some. And maybe see if you’ve got something to put fussy, cranky baby werewolves to sleep a little faster.” She rolled her eyes and laughed. “So that’s it? Herbs and medicines and teas?” Tess started to nod, then shrugged. “Well, I do readings, too, when things slow down. It’s a nice extra income.”

Missy looked curious. “What kind of readings? Tea leaves?”

“I don’t have the patience for that,” Tess laughed. “No, I read tarot cards.

And the occasional palm. My grandmother taught me that, too.”

“No way! Really?” Missy’s eyes lit up like a teenager’s, and she almost bounced on her stool with excitement. “Oh, now I definitely have to come visit.

I’ve always wanted to have a reading done, but I never knew if I could trust any of those readers who put their signs out in their windows and call themselves Madam Juniper, or whatever.”

“Some of them aren’t bad. You just have to be careful, and take things with a grain of salt. Like, some people think tarot tells the future. It really doesn’t and anyone who says it does is lying. All it does it point out what sort of circumstances are happening around you and how those circumstances could turn out given your current way of thinking. It’s totally changeable.” Tess shifted in her seat and felt one of her inner jacket pockets bump gently against her side, as if reminding her what she always carried with her. Some people kept 38

Fixed 5: Fur For All

emergency flashlights. She kept emergency divining tools. Probably because she was a witch, not a Boy Scout.

She looked at Missy and reached into the pocket. “Actually,” she said slowly,

“I have a deck with me now. If you want to see a really quick idea of what it’s like.”

Missy’s expression took on a glow of excitement and she clapped her hands together. “Oh, you wouldn’t mind? I’d hate to put you out, but I would adore that. If you’re not too tired?”

Tess shook her head and pulled out the velvet pouch that held her favorite deck. “Not at all. I knew I’d be up late, so I took a long nap this afternoon. But since we don’t know how long the guys will be, I won’t do an entire spread. I’ll just let you ask some specific questions and throw down a few cards to try and answer each one. If that’s okay with you?” The other woman nodded. “That’s fabulous. Whatever works for you.”

“Great.” Tess handed the cards to Missy. “Then go ahead and shuffle these and just give them back to me whenever you feel like you’ve shuffled enough.” Missy nodded and began shuffling the oversized cards, a frown of concentration creasing her forehead. Tess waited patiently, letting her mind wander into the right space for a reading. After all the years she’d been doing them, it only took a minute. Contrary to what most people believed, tarot had a lot less to do with the supernatural than it did with psychotherapy. Reading cards didn’t require magic powers, just a creative mind and an understanding of the ways people think. Tess had always found it to be a funny coincidence that she was both a witch and a tarot reader, rather than a given.

She accepted the cards when Missy handed them back to her and twisted them in her hands so that the side that had been on the top when Missy held them was on the top when she held them as well.

39

Christine Warren

“Great,” Tess said. “Now, go ahead and ask one question at a time, and I’ll lay down three or four cards to try and get an answer. You don’t have to ask out loud if you don’t want to, okay?”

“Okay.”

“All right. Tell me when you’re ready.”

Missy paused for a second, closed her eyes in concentration, then opened them again. “Okay. Ready.”

Tess laid down the first card. The Queen of Swords. She felt her eyebrow twitch, and wondered what question Missy had asked. She had assumed the new mother would want to know something about her son or her own future, but Tess didn’t really see Missy as the Queen of Swords type. She seemed too earthy and nurturing for swords. If she’d had to guess, Tess would have said Missy was a pentacles type. The Queen of Pentacles, perhaps, or maybe even the Empress card. If anyone was the swords type, it was Tess herself.

“The Queen of Swords usually represents a woman,” she explained, “though it could be representing an idea or a situation. Assuming it’s a woman, though, she’s someone who is mature. Not necessarily old, but grown up. Not a kid.

She’s very intelligent and focused. Willful, but in the upright position like this, she’s not manipulative, which is good.”

She looked at Missy to gauge the other woman’s reaction, but the blonde just smiled and nodded and kept her question to herself. Shrugging, Tess reached for a second card. Who knew what Missy had asked? Maybe the card made sense to her.

“The King of Wands. That could be your husband.” She tapped the card with one fingertip. “If it isn’t, Graham is still a good example of what this guy is like.

He’s mature—again, not old, but grown up—and generally very charismatic.

He’s energetic and successful and incredibly charming. The kind of man who just 40

Fixed 5: Fur For All

blazes through life on sheer force of personality. Like I said, either Graham or someone a lot like him.”

Missy’s mouth curved. “Yes, it does sound a lot like him.” Nodding, Tess flipped a third card and stared at it for a minute. “The Wheel of Fortune. That’s interesting. One meaning is just what the card sounds like. It’s the turn of luck in your life. Upright like this, it means good things are happening and you’re benefiting from them, which is great. But some people also think that when it shows up in a reading it signifies the influence of Fate on your life. That whatever is happening or about to happen to you is something you really can’t control. You just have to ride it out and see where it takes you, because that’s where you’re destined to be.” She spoke slowly and looked back over the two other cards she’d already laid down. An uneasy sort of feeling had begun to twist inside of her stomach.

She wasn’t quite sure why, but she thought it might have something to do with this impromptu reading. Her hand hovered over the deck until Missy looked at her and smiled her warm, comforting smile.

“Go ahead,” Missy urged. “You said you’d set out four cards on the question and see what they said.”

Tess obediently reached for another card, slipped it off the top of the deck and slowly turned it over. The Two of Cups.

“Shit.”

Missy looked at the card, then back up at Tess with an amused expression.

“What’s the matter? It’s not like it’s the Death card,” she pointed out. “It looks like a very pretty card to me. Isn’t it a good one?”

“The Death card isn’t really bad.” Tess’s reply came automatically. Her eyes were still glued to the fourth card laid out on the smooth, pristine countertop. “It just means change.”

“Then what does this card mean?”

41

Christine Warren

“True love.”

“Well then.” Missy looked from the card to Tess as a beatific smile spread across her pretty face. “Isn’t that just perfect?” 42

Fixed 5: Fur For All

Chapter Five

“Perfect,” Rafe growled as he stalked beside Graham through the semi-hidden hallway that connected Vircolac to the library in Graham’s neighboring house. “Thirteen bloody members on that bloody council, and I
still
get stuck with the job of making contact with the witches.”

“You are the head of the council,” Graham pointed out, sounding amused.

“And you are not helping.”

Rafe’s temper had not improved during the brief, informal meeting with the rest of the council members. He had his suspicions about why the witches would want to contact the Others for the first time in nearly four hundred years, and none of the possibilities he had in mind made him very happy. The only good thing he could see coming out of the situation was having met Tess. And since she seemed not to consider him to be her favorite person at the moment, even that couldn’t soften the entire blow of being caught up in this political mess. He growled.

“Look, if we’re right and the witches are considering breaking out of the Accord, it’s important for us to talk to them before they do anything rash.”

“I know.” Rafe wasn’t pleased about it, but he did know.

The Accord of Silence had been reached centuries ago, long before the split between the witches and the Others, even before humans had begun writing down tales about men who changed into beasts or cast spells to wither flocks and tell the fortunes of kings. Since the first time when humans began to realize there was something different about some of the creatures walking among them, witches and Others alike had relied on the power of the Accord to keep their existence separate and hidden from humans. It was a formal agreement that 43

Christine Warren

none of the races or powerful sects on earth would reveal their existence to humankind. To do so would be folly, but in order to preserve their secrecy, the cooperation of all supernatural creatures and magic users had been vital. The idea that all of it might end because the witches were tired of hiding made him grind his teeth in frustration. How could they be so irresponsible as to risk the lives of so many non-humans just because they wanted the right to wear pointy black hats in public?

“Don’t sound so grumpy or you’ll scare the human,” Graham said, grinning.

“She’s not human. She’s a witch.”

“Last I heard, witches
are
human. So unless they’ve been doing some experimentation that we Others haven’t heard of…”

“Bite me.”

Graham laughed. “Nah. You’re old and tough. I’d much rather kick you out and go nibble on my wife.” He paused, lifted his head, sniffed. “Who I see has been nibbling on something herself while we were busy. Roast beef, I think. With extra-hot horseradish. They’re in the kitchen.” Rafe already knew that. He could smell Tess’s sweetly pungent fragrance drifting to him from down the hallway. He tried to resist the urge to inhale deeply, but failed, and then he had to growl at Graham when he caught the Lupine eying him with an amused expression.