Written In Red Part 27

Thinking about what Henry and Tess-and Simon-would say if Meg ended up in a ditch because of watching how he drove, Vlad slowed to a moderate speed and took care not to do anything that would be considered bad driving. That was something they had agreed on-be precise when showing the Liaison how to do something so that she learned what she needed to know.

Of course, Simon had ignored that completely when he rushed off and dumped a Wolf pup in her lap.

Something new, Henry had said about her. Something little known and not understood. She was all of that. And she was a potential threat, because someone with Meg's ability to remember images and accurately describe them could tell an enemy too much about their Courtyard and about the terra indigene.

He pushed those thoughts aside when a Hawk, an Owl, and four Crows all came winging toward them from the direction of the Liaison's Office.

the Hawk told Vlad.

he replied to all of them. the Crows said as they circled around, and went winging back.

He wasn't far behind them, so a minute later he pulled up at the Liaison's Office, parking close to the back door. "You go in and get settled. I'll bring Sam and the bags."

"Thanks," Meg replied, jumping out of the BOW.

Sam tried to scramble into the front seat and follow her, but Vlad grabbed him as Meg closed the door. The pup struggled for a moment, then stared out the window, making anxious sounds.

Vlad said. No answer except that shallow, anxious breathing, accompanied by a whine.

Vlad sighed. How had Simon endured this silence from a pup he loved?

He got out of the BOW, carrying Sam so he wouldn't have to dry off the pup. After setting him on the floor in the back room-and watching while Sam rushed into the sorting room to find Meg-he took the sacks and towel out of the BOW and carried them inside.

Moving silently, he entered the sorting room. Sam was sniffing one corner of the room, now oblivious to everything except the scent he'd found. Opening the Private door all the way, he looked at the tableau and thought, A Crow, a prophet, and a vampire walk into an office . . .

Then he huffed out a breath. It sounded like the beginning of one of those stupid jokes the terra indigene never understood.

Three deliverymen, all holding boxes and all standing back from the counter. Dropping the pen it was holding, the Crow cawed at them, walked to one end of the counter, selected another pen, then returned and tapped the pen on the paper clamped to the clipboard.

The men hesitated to approach, as if that small distance would make any difference. If Nyx wanted to feed, there wasn't anything her prey could do to stop her. If she had been wearing jeans and a sweater, the men wouldn't have known she was one of the Sanguinati. But Nyx preferred wearing a long, black velvet gown that had a modest train and those draping sleeves-the kind of garment female vampires often wore in the old movies Grandfather loved so much. Wearing it amused her because she said it was a way to tell her prey what she was, even before she began to feed.

Still in her winter coat, Meg took the pen from the Crow. Smiling and talking to the men, she quickly filled out the information while they set the packages on the handcart and kept glancing at Nyx.

Realizing none of the men were leaving, Vlad said, she replied, her dark eyes watching the men while she remained perfectly still. he asked, although he made no move to withdraw.

Nyx replied.

Meg smiled at the deliverymen as they walked out the door together and got into their trucks or vans. She continued to smile until they drove away. Then she blew out a breath and turned to Nyx and the Crow.

"Thank you for opening the office. I don't mean to be late every morning. Things have gotten complicated the past couple of days."

Looking over his shoulder at Sam, who was still busily sniffing his way around the sorting room, Vlad said, "That's understandable."

"It was entertaining," Nyx said. "And Jake knew what to do."

The Crow who was pulling pens out of the holder and arranging them on the counter looked at them and cawed.

"I think there is a package for Mr. Erebus from the movie place," Meg said. "Do you want to take it with you?"

Nyx laughed. "And deprive him of a visit from you? No. But I will tell him a package has arrived." She changed to smoke, from feet to chest, and floated over the counter. Returning to solid form, she held out her arm to the Crow, who hopped on to be taken outside.

Meg stared as the Crow flew off and Nyx changed completely to smoke that flowed toward the access way leading to the Market Square. Then she stared at the counter, and finally at Vlad. "Am I the only one who needs to use the go-through?"

Feeling Sam come up beside him, Vlad grinned at her. "No, you're not the only one. At least for now. I'll park the BOW in the garage for you. If you don't find your key, let me know and I'll drive you home."

He didn't wait for her answer. He needed to open HGR, and he wanted to let Henry know Sam was with Meg-a.s.suming Jake hadn't already told the Courtyard's spirit guide.

And he still needed to find a subtle way of warning everyone in the Courtyard that, until Simon returned, he and Henry Beargard would be looking after Meg and Sam.

Meg put out kibble and water for Sam, smoothed the fur under the harness, and let him roam the sorting room without the leash. After she barely missed stepping on his tail or toes a couple of times, he settled down where he was out of the way but could watch her sort the mail and packages. The package for Mr. Erebus from the movie place was small enough to go with the mail, but remembering what Nyx said, Meg put it with the afternoon deliveries-including a special delivery for Winter that she hadn't yet had a chance to make.

The morning pa.s.sed quickly. When she heard the ponies, she snapped the leash to Sam's harness and slipped the other end over her wrist before opening the outer door, just in case the pup decided to bolt outside. But Sam, while intrigued, was happy to stay with her as she walked back and forth from table to ponies. For their part, the ponies seemed curious but unconcerned about the pup.

Congratulating herself on getting through another week without getting eaten or fired, she tapped the stack of papers that held her notes about the week's deliveries. Her little finger slid along the papers' edge.

A s.h.i.+ver of pain came before blood welled from the slice along the joint. She stared at her left hand, trying to remember something from her lessons that would explain the cut, unwilling to believe that paper could slice skin. Then the pain came, smothering her chest and twisting her belly.

Sam howled in terror.

She looked at the pup to rea.s.sure him, hoping to shape ordinary words before the prophecy began flowing through her.

Except Sam wasn't howling. He stood next to her, watching her anxiously as her own body told him something was wrong.

Sam wasn't howling. But she could hear him. Even now, knowing he wasn't making a sound, she could still hear him.

The vision had started. She didn't know what was coming, what images she would see. But if Sam was part of it . . . If she spoke to experience the euphoria, she wouldn't remember enough, if she remembered anything at all, and no one would know why Sam was afraid. But if she didn't speak, if she swallowed the words so that she could see the prophecy . . . For Sam's sake, could she endure the pain?

"Stay here," she said through gritted teeth. She hurried to the bathroom and shut the door before Sam could follow her.

Her throat felt clogged with terrible things. Leaning over the sink, she struggled to breathe as pain crawled through her and the vision filled her mind as if she were watching a stuttering movie clip.

Men. Dressed all in black. Even their faces, their heads, were black. Some had guns; others carried rifles . . . skip . . .One man was grabbing at something, but she couldn't see . . . skip . . . A sound like a car mated to a hornet . . . skip . . . Snow falling so fast and fierce and thick, she couldn't get a sense of place, couldn't tell if she was seeing the Courtyard or the city or somewhere else that had a snowstorm . . . skip . . . But Sam was there, howling in terror.

Meg came back to herself when the muscles in her hands cramped from holding on to the sink so hard.

Focus on breathing, she told herself. The pain will fade. You know it will fade.

She washed her hands, taking care to thoroughly clean the little finger.

Such a small slice along the edge of that joint. If she sliced it again to lengthen it, maybe she could see more. And maybe she would see another prophecy, but it would be mashed with the images she'd already seen in this small cut. The Walking Names called the result of cutting over a previous cut a double vision, that nightmarish occurrence when one prophecy imposed itself over another and the images collided in ways that usually had terrible, mind-breaking consequences for the girl who saw them.

Sometimes the colliding images weren't terrible. Sometimes, if the girl could accept what she was seeing, the images could change a life. They had changed hers when the Controller had cut across old scars as a punishment. The colliding prophecies had shown her the first steps of her escape.

Just because she had survived double visions before didn't mean her mind wouldn't break if she tried it again.

She dried off her hands, got antiseptic and a bandage from the first-aid kit, and took care of the slice. Moving slowly, she returned to the sorting room and Sam. Opening her personal notebook to a clean page, she wrote down what she had seen while the details were fresh.

She had to tell someone, but who would listen?

Wis.h.i.+ng she could talk to Simon, Meg reached for the phone and made a call. The phone at the other end rang and rang. Then the answering machine picked up.

"Henry? This is Meg. I need to talk to you."

Henry arrived a minute after she locked up for her lunch break. Leaving Sam in the sorting room with a couple of cookies, she found herself unable to look at the big man, let alone say anything.

"You're hurt," he finally said.

She shook her head.

"You smell of pain, of weakness."

Not weakness. No, she wasn't weak. But the pain, while fading, was still a fearsome thing.

Henry's voice was a quiet rumble. "What did you do to your hand, Meg?"

"I didn't know paper could cut." Even to her own ears, she sounded whiny. "I thought that was a make-believe image."

"Make-believe?"

"Not real."

He looked puzzled. "Let me see your hand."

"My hand is fine. That's not why-"

He took her left hand and unwrapped the bandage on her little finger. His hands were big and rough, but he touched her with surprising gentleness.

"You have scars," Meg said, looking at his fingers.

"I work with wood. Sometimes I am clumsy with my tools." He studied the slice on her finger, then bent his head and sniffed it. Shaking his head, he rewrapped the bandage. "Such a small cut shouldn't cause so much pain."

He wanted an explanation, but her pain had no significance in what she had seen, so right now it wasn't important. "Henry, I saw something."

Releasing her hand, he straightened to his full height, towering over her. "You saw . . . ?"

Easing around him, she picked up her notebook from the table in the back room and handed it to him.

She watched him read the words, the frown line between his dark eyes getting deeper as he read them again.

"Some prophecies look like a series of images or sounds," she said. "Some, like this one, look like a movie clip, or a series of clips with sounds and action. The same image might appear in a hundred prophecies, so it's up to the person who wanted the vision to understand the meaning."

Henry studied her. "You heard a Wolf howling. Are you sure it was Sam?"

"Does any other Wolf howl sound like Sam's?"

"No." Henry thought for a moment. "Why would you have a vision about Sam? He could not have asked you to see anything."

"No, but he was the only person with me when I got the paper cut." Meg s.h.i.+vered. "Who are those men? Why do they want Sam?"

With Henry standing in the middle of the room, she didn't have room to pace.

"I'm so useless!" she cried. "I see this, but I can't tell you where it will happen or when or why!"

Henry held up her notebook. "I need to talk to some of the others. May I take this? I will return it."

"Okay. Yes. What about Sam?"

"Vlad will take Sam home. He has been here long enough for one day."

"But . . ."

The back door opened and Vlad walked in, giving Henry a questioning look. Then he glanced at her hands and stiffened.

Something pa.s.sed between Grizzly and vampire that neither shared with her. Vlad slipped into the sorting room while Henry fetched her coat from the peg on the wall.

"Come with me," Henry said.

"My purse is in the sorting room, and my keys are in it."

Before she had both boots on, Vlad opened the door enough to hand her purse to Henry, and used one of his feet to block Sam's attempts to join her.

"Where are we going?" she asked when she and Henry stepped outside.

"Not far."

He led her to the yard behind his shop. A narrow path ran down the center of it to his studio door, which wasn't locked. Big windows filled the back wall on either side of the door, providing light. The sides of the studio were the building's brick walls. The floor was wood chips-or was covered in a layer of wood chips so thick she wasn't sure what the floor was supposed to be. The room felt warmer than outside, but not warm enough that she wanted to give up her coat, and Henry didn't indicate she should remove her boots.

He pointed to a bench. She sat down, wondering why she was there. Besides several pieces of wood and a cart filled with tools, there was a storage cabinet with a granite top and a round carved table that held a music player.