* * *

* * *

Jesse’s hands shook as she placed the call to the communications cabin.

“Hello?” A male voice filled with tension, like he’d already seen too much. Already knew too much.

“This is Jesse Walker. I’m calling on behalf of Tolya Sanguinati, in Bennett. Your counterpart in the Northeast cabin needs to make an urgent call to Steve Ferryman at the mayor’s office in Ferryman’s Landing.” Jesse stopped. Thought. “No. Your counterpart needs to make an emergency call and inform Steve that Tolya Sanguinati is sending him a prophet drawing via e-mail. Steve needs to get it to the right people as fast as he can. He’ll know who they are.”

“When is Tolya Sanguinati sending this e-mail?”

“As I speak. But Steve needs to know it’s coming, even if he gets the phone message a minute ahead of the e-mail.”

A weighty silence. “What kind of emergency?”

“Life or death for all of us.” Her words weren’t an exaggeration; they were the painful, terrifying truth.

Some commotion suddenly in the background. Raised voices. The man said, “Hold on a minute.”

Jesse listened to the voices, then looked at Jana. “Something’s wrong there.”

“Are they under attack?” Jana asked.

“You there?” The man sounded spooked. Since he was an Intuit, that wasn’t good.

“I’m here,” Jesse replied.

“You said Steve Ferryman at Ferryman’s Landing. That’s the Intuit village on Great Island, near Lakeside and Talulah Falls. Is that right?”

“Yes.” Definitely something wrong.

“A rider from the other cabin just came in with a printout of an e-mail that was sent from Ferryman’s Landing to a long list of Intuit villages as well as the Northeast communications cabin. It’s asking everyone to be on the lookout.” He hesitated. “Does that picture you’re sending have anything to do with the Lakeside Courtyard?”

“Why?”

“Because the Lakeside Courtyard’s Human Liaison was abducted a short while ago by a man named Cyrus James Montgomery.”

Jesse felt her stomach roll. Fighting against the nausea, she said, “Then let’s all hope that what we’re sending will help them find her in time.”

* * *

* * *

Parlan had done his duty, flirting with his business partners’ wives enough to make them feel good without flirting so much that the husbands might feel a flicker of jealousy—if they could take their eyes off the prettier, younger women who were traveling on the train. Now he wanted to go back to his private car before the train left the station—and before one of the women invited herself to join him.

“If you ladies will excuse me …” He pushed his chair back.

“It’s outrageous,” a man said as he and a companion entered the car and took the table on the opposite side of the aisle. “And no explanation!”

“There’s a problem on the tracks?” Parlan suddenly felt uneasy in the same way he did when a game turned sour. “My apologies for intruding on your conversation, but what you just said sounds alarming.”

“Alarming?” The man huffed. “Damned inconvenient, that’s what it is. The station in Bennett is closed, so now all the trains are being held at whatever station is their nearest stop until … Well, that’s the point. No one will tell us why the Bennett station closed, so no one can tell us when we’ll get moving again.”

“There was that robbery at the way station the other day,” the man’s companion said. “Maybe the authorities are closing in on the robber. He shot one of the people working at that station, didn’t he?”

“If that was the case, you’d think they’d want the trains moving instead of being sitting targets. Might as well put up a big sign that says, ‘We’re stuck here, come rob us.’ ”

Spotting the conductor as the man entered the car, Parlan raised a hand, a quiet command that received more attention than the men who, also spotting the conductor, were loudly demanding answers.

“Gentlemen,” Parlan said sternly. “We’d all like to hear what the conductor has to tell us, so be quiet now.”

They wanted to argue—oh, how they wanted to argue—but they looked in his eyes and saw a hint of why he was the leader of the Blackstone Clan, why he, who seldom got his hands dirty, had influence over a man like Judd McCall.

“If you could tell us what you know,” Parlan said quietly, shifting his gaze back to the conductor.

“Station master at Bennett said the Others are hunting for a human enemy, and he was closing his station until further notice. No trains allowed in and nothing going out. Every station master who received the message is holding the trains.”

“Why? Surely a problem at one station shouldn’t put a freeze on the trains throughout the Midwest.”

The conductor gave him a strange smile. “One of the Sanguinati is the station master in Bennett. If he’s giving the warning … Well, you’re all free to disembark and find another way to where you’re going, but stations have been designated safe ground as long as no one starts any trouble, so you won’t find any man who works for the railroad, from engineer to porter, who is going to leave a station until we get a message that the trouble is past.”

The conductor took a step toward the next car, then looked at the two men who had been making all the ruckus. “Don’t usually tell passengers this because it would scare them too much, but there are terra indigene out there that like to chase the trains for the fun of it. And some of them can outrun a train, they’re that fast and that big. Not that you actually see anything. It’s more an impression that you’re being chased. And sometimes the fun turns into a hunt. Everyone who works on the lines has seen what happens to a train when the Others attack—and what happens to the people inside the cars. We’re not going to die today so that you can make a profit.”

The conductor walked to the next car to inform the passengers of the delay.

Parlan shuffled the cards. He could try to call Judd and Lawry and find out if they’d heard anything—and if they hadn’t, he needed to warn them that the Others were hunting a human enemy. Unless Sweeney Cooke and Charlie Webb had somehow gotten far enough ahead of Judd to have reached Bennett already, they weren’t the cause of this lockdown of the trains.

If he went to his private car, he’d have the solitude he wanted but he wouldn’t hear the news as it drifted through the public cars, wouldn’t have a sense of what the Blackstone Clan’s next move should be.

“If you ladies will excuse me for a minute,” Parlan said. “I need to stretch my legs.”

Gentlemen stretched their legs. Ladies powdered their noses. Human euphemisms for needing the toilet—and not using those phrases was one of the small ways a terra indigene who could otherwise pass for human revealed what it was.

“When I return, perhaps you’d like to play another game to pass the time?” The women fluttered like schoolgirls, their sagging middle-aged bosoms encased in garments that didn’t invite a man’s fingers to touch, didn’t intrigue him into wanting to reveal what the garments hid. Parlan had a feeling their husbands’ fingers were exploring nubile flesh right now, and being discovered by hurt, outraged wives would cast a shadow on his plans. So he squelched his desire for solitude and took just enough time to step outside and place the calls, leaving messages for Judd and Lawry. Then he stretched his legs before rejoining the women and keeping them occupied until dinner.

* * *

* * *

Jana rode Mel around the business district’s side streets and up and down the residential streets, looking for any sign that the Elders were, once again, coming down from the hills to unleash their fury on the residents of Bennett—innocent people who had nothing to do with whatever was happening in the Northeast. Not that being innocent would make any difference.

Was ignorance better than knowledge? She and Jesse Walker were the only humans in Bennett who had seen the drawing of Meg Corbyn in the trunk of that car. They were the only ones who knew the name of Meg’s abductor—Cyrus James Montgomery. They were the only ones who knew the problem wasn’t something anyone here could fix, that it was happening hundreds of miles from here.

But every human here would pay in flesh and blood if the drawing Tolya had sent didn’t arrive in time to help save Meg Corbyn. And she wondered, as she’d wondered throughout the day, what made this one woman so important to the terra indigene that her loss might unleash a flood of hate toward the rest of the humans on the continent.

She’d probably never know the answer, so she rode around the town square and the nearby streets where other businesses were located. People watched her, taking some comfort in the knowledge that she was there to serve and protect—just as she took comfort whenever she heard a Wolf howl.

We are here.

She wondered if that would be true tomorrow.

* * *

* * *

Virgil leaned in the doorway of the sheriff’s office, conserving energy for when it was needed, and checked in with his brother. <Kane?>

<The Maddie pup is sleeping again. The human bodywalker gave the dads medicine that would make her sleepy. Her hands are bandaged, so we are watching movies since she can’t play with the other youngsters today.>

Virgil smiled. <If she is sleeping, who is watching the movies?>

Since it was obvious who was requiring the adults to put a new movie into the disc player when the previous one finished, Kane ignored Virgil’s question and asked one of his own. <Any news?>

<No.> He wished John hadn’t told him and Kane stories about Broomstick Girl. He wished he hadn’t begun to think of her as part of the Lakeside Wolves’ pack, hadn’t felt amusement mixed with sympathy for Simon’s frustration in dealing with a female who was like an innocent, and somewhat clumsy, force of nature in her own small way.

He wished he’d seen a happy picture of Meg Corbyn before he’d seen that picture.

He watched Deputy Jana walk down the street from the livery stable.

How much of his tolerance for humans, and for dealing with the wolverine, was due to the stories about Broomstick Girl? And how much tolerance for humans would die throughout Thaisia if Simon didn’t find Lakeside’s sweet blood?

“You are done riding the horse who is not meat?” he asked when Jana reached the office.

“His name is Mel.”

He shrugged because he knew it would annoy her. Right now, he preferred dealing with the wolverine.

The phone rang.

They looked at each other as the phone rang a second time. Then Virgil rushed to answer it. While he listened to the person on the phone, Jana would have been breathing down his neck if she’d been tall enough to reach it.

He hung up and dodged around her in order to head outside.