The third jar didn’t break, so she went into her workroom, rummaged through her box of tools, and returned to the display table with a hammer. Air burned her lungs as she picked up each jar and set it on the floor. Then she swung the hammer hard enough to break the jars. Swung the hammer over and over and over.

Had to stop the dissonance, had to protect herself. Had to …

The hammer mashed through the candle, revealing something inside besides the wick. Using the hem of her dress, Abigail dug it out. A tumbled stone no bigger than her thumbnail. Quartz.

Heedless of the glass, she mashed the other broken candles and found more tumbled stones. Agate. Jet. Carnelian. Hematite. Turquoise. They could have been good stones for someone else, but they were bad stones to be around her.

“Gods above and below, Abby.” Kelley stood in the doorway that connected his shop with hers, staring at her. “What are you doing?”

She twisted to face him, felt a shard of glass slice her knee. But she didn’t feel pain. Not from the glass. She felt rage at this boring fool who had torn a hole in her defenses.

“How could you do this? How could you?”

“I thought … Just something extra. A little surprise when someone burned the candle. You didn’t have to touch the stones. You dislike my work so much, I’m surprised you even realized there were a few tumbled stones missing from the bowl in my shop.”

I knew they were in the candles. I could feel them.

Kelley hesitated, then walked over to her. He took the hammer and helped her to her feet.

“You’re bleeding.” He sounded sad—and there was something else in his voice she didn’t recognize. Something she didn’t like.

“I’ll help Abigail clean those cuts,” Jesse said as she stepped into the shop. “You clean up the glass.”

Kelley nodded.

Remembering who she was supposed to be, Abigail didn’t protest when Jesse took her arm and led her to the washroom at the back of her shop. It didn’t surprise her that Jesse would show up, but she asked the question anyway. “Why are you here?”

“Because Rachel came running back to my store, too scared to make much sense, followed by Shelley, who said you were having some kind of fit,” Jesse replied sharply.

When had Shelley left? When she’d gone into the workroom to find the hammer? Or had Shelley fled after she started smashing the candles? She hadn’t noticed, couldn’t remember.

“Sit.” Jesse pointed to the closed toilet. Opening the daypack that was now so much a standard part of Jesse’s attire that people barely noticed it, she pulled out the first-aid kit and a bottle of whiskey. Pouring two fingers into the water glass Abigail kept on a ledge above the sink, Jesse held it out. “Down in one.”

“I’m not supposed to drink,” Abigail whispered. “I promised Kelley I wouldn’t drink.” Of course, Kelley had believed she’d been drinking hard for two years before he found her and doing some bad things to pay for the drink, so her giving him that promise had meant a lot to him.

“We’ll call this medicine. If he has a problem with that, he can talk to me.”

She downed the whiskey. Funny how it didn’t taste as good as the sips she took on the sly when Kelley was gone for an afternoon and wouldn’t notice.

Jesse said nothing while she washed the cuts and applied antiseptic ointment and bandages. She put everything back in her daypack before she leaned against the doorframe. “You scared Rachel so much she ran into the street and almost got hit by a car. That was unkind.”

Stupid Wolf should have been run over. No, don’t think that way. Sweet, simple Abigail wouldn’t think that way.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“I sense people. It’s how my Intuit abilities manifest themselves. But I’ve never been able to get a good feel for you. We’ve always thought you were a sweet girl and a bit simple, dressing up in those long dresses women wore in my grandmother’s day and making your soaps and candles. But you’re not simple, are you, Abigail? That’s how you’ve chosen to hide and is as much of a costume as the clothes.”

Bitch. She’d always known one mistake around Jesse would end the game, but she had to keep trying to work the con until she found a way out. “I’m not bright. Never was. Everyone said so.”

“When you and Kelley showed up last summer, looking for a place to live and a place to work, we made room for you. Intuits have always tried to make room for their own, since we often can’t survive in towns run by humans who see our gifts as threats. I couldn’t figure out why he wanted to live in such a small place. He’s a goldsmith with a lot of talent for creating beautiful pieces of jewelry. He wasn’t going to get much work from the rest of us. Nobody here is rich enough to buy what he creates. But he wasn’t the one who wanted to live in an isolated place like Prairie Gold, was he? You’re the one who wanted—or needed—to live in a place where no one would think to look for you.” Jesse smiled grimly. “I never got a sense of you, Abigail. Until now.”

It sounded like a threat.

Jesse pushed away from the doorframe. “You and Kelley have some things to talk about. Then you and I will talk.”

“About what?” Abigail asked, pretending she didn’t know.

Jesse walked out of the washroom, letting the question hang in the air.

Abigail sat in the washroom for a minute—or maybe an hour. She didn’t know. Her body remembered the feel of a strap across her back when she’d messed up somehow and given a mark a stone that would bring good fortune. And she remembered the fear that had filled her just before she made the decision to run. She couldn’t go back to that. She wouldn’t.

But today Kelley had seen a moment of who she really was—and so had Jesse.

* * *

* * *

Jesse reached the sidewalk in front of her own store when Phil Mailer, who was not only the editor of the Prairie Gold Reporter but also ran the combination post office, telegraph office, and business center, called to her and ran across the street.

“Is Rachel all right?” Phil looked pale. “Gods, Jesse. She ran right in front of me. I almost didn’t stop in time.”

“But you did stop in time,” Jesse said. “She didn’t come to any harm.” Not physically, anyway.

“Thought she knew enough not to run into the street like that.”

“I’ll talk to her.” She’d be talking to a lot of people today.

“Don’t want Morgan or Chase to think I was careless with one of their own. Especially … Well, you know.”

She did know. Rachel wasn’t old enough yet to be looking for a mate, but she was the only surviving female of the Wolfgard pack who would be old enough in the next year or two to mate and have young. The two dominant Wolves would never forgive the humans in this town if one of them injured—or may the gods help them, killed—the young Wolf. “I’ll explain it to them.”

She walked into the general store. Rachel turned away from the shelf where she’d been stocking dry cereal, her amber eyes still full of fear.

“Does Abigail have rabies?” Rachel asked. “We know about rabies. It’s a dangerous sickness.”

“She doesn’t have rabies.” Jesse kept her voice matter-of-fact. “Her body isn’t sick. But something upset her and she behaved badly.”

“She didn’t want me to touch the candles she made.”

“She didn’t want Shelley touching the candles either.” She knew they were alone, but she made a show of looking around the store. “Where is Shelley?”

“She said she was going home to change into clean underpants, but I didn’t smell any pee or poop.”

So hard to keep a straight face when the girl said things like that. “That was an excuse to go home for a bit until she calmed down. Abigail scared her too.”

“It’s better to be around pack when you’re scared.”

Setting her daypack on the floor, Jesse gave Rachel a hug. “You’re right about that.” She stepped back and picked up her pack. “Can you look after things out here? I need to make some calls and handle some paperwork.”

“You need to call Tolya Sanguinati,” Rachel said. “He said I didn’t need to fetch you, but you should call him as soon as you were done with Abigail.”

Jesse went to her office, which wasn’t more than a corner of the back room that had been sectioned off with partitions and a long curtain that was usually tied back but took the place of a door when she needed some privacy. She turned on the lamp and stared at the phone.

Part of her wished she could send a direct e-mail to Steve Ferryman, the mayor of an Intuit village located on Great Island. But there wasn’t direct access to anyone in the Northeast Region. Probably just as well. She wasn’t in charge of Bennett, wasn’t the leader. Whether Tolya Sanguinati chose to resettle the town was his choice, not hers.

Tolya had taken over the mayor’s office as his workplace, so she dialed that number.

“Tolya Sanguinati.”

How many people felt a chill when they heard “Sanguinati”? “It’s Jesse. Rachel said you called.”

“Yes.” A beat of silence. “We have been fortunate that the young humans who have come to Bennett to assist in sorting the possessions of the former residents have been cautious around the terra indigene. Adding too many humans too quickly might cause … tension.”

“Might provoke your new sheriff or his deputy into biting first and asking questions later?”

“That too, but I was more concerned about the Elders and whether they would see a town full of humans as an … invasion.”

Jesse braced her head in one hand. The Elders had killed every man, woman, and child in Bennett a few weeks ago. They could, and would, do it again if the humans weren’t careful. “We still need more people to sort through possessions; we need people to try to find the heirs of anyone who left a last will and testament. There’s a need for people to work the ranches.”

“I don’t disagree, Jesse Walker, but I have discussed the possibility with Virgil Wolfgard of more humans settling in Bennett, and we agree that the Elders will not react well to there being more humans than terra indigene living in the town.”

“More Wolves working in the stores?”

“No.” Tolya’s voice held regret, reminding Jesse that he had known Joe Wolfgard, the previous leader of the terra indigene settlement near Prairie Gold. “No, there aren’t enough Wolves left who are willing to work around humans. Virgil and Kane are here because the rest of their pack was lost. There was no reason for them to remain in their old territory. Other forms of terra indigene would come to fill the empty spaces, learn human kinds of work.”

“Forms as deadly as the Wolves and the Sanguinati?”