“May I . . . ?” Vicki waved a hand at the box.

Julian shrugged. “Go ahead.”

Vicki opened the box and smiled. “I had a set of these when I was a child. I loved playing with them, putting the sticks and wheels into all kinds of odd shapes or structures. My mother disapproved because I built shelters for my little stuffed animals instead of building a proper home for the dollies I didn’t want to play with.”

“Why didn’t you want to play with them?” Ilya asked.

“Dollies are creepy,” Vicki and Ineke said. They shuddered. Then they began taking pieces out of the box.

Grimshaw looked at Ilya Sanguinati, who was looking at the women as if he’d just discovered a hitherto-unknown predator and wasn’t sure what to think about that. Well, Grimshaw knew what to think about it. He was certain he could subdue Vicki DeVine if he had to. After all, she was short and plump and didn’t have the kind of muscle mass that indicated that she routinely worked out. Ineke, on the other hand, advertised that she buried trouble—and he still wasn’t sure if that was figurative or literal.

It made him glad he was the only person in the room carrying a real gun.

Vicki cocked her head. She set three small wheels on the table, equally spaced, then waited for Ineke to connect the wheels with short colored sticks before she pointed to each one in turn. “The first dead man. Detective Swinn and his team. The bank manager.” She placed a larger wheel below those three. “The bank president now living in Putney.” She placed another large wheel up and away from the others. “Yorick up in Hubb NE.”

“Big wheels and little wheels,” Grimshaw said as Ineke attached long colored sticks to the wheel representing Vicki’s ex-husband, connecting him to the three small wheels and the bank president’s wheel.

“Social status,” Ineke said before Vicki could respond. “Odds are better that the businessman and bank president would move in the same social circles—circles that would not include minions like detectives and employees.” She smiled at him. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Grimshaw replied. “The blood prophet had said ‘schools.’ Ms. DeVine, where did your ex-husband go to school?”

“Yorick’s family has lived in Hubb NE for generations,” Vicki replied. “He went to Smythe and Blake, the private college in the city.”

“It may be a private college where the future movers and shakers are sent to learn how to take over the family businesses, but land constriction made it necessary to share some things with the University of Hubb NE as well as the technical college and the police academy located in that city,” Julian said.

“Like the athletic fields and some of the general-use buildings,” Grimshaw said. “I remember how, at the dances, there would be four distinct groups holding their own piece of the room, and may the gods help anyone who dared to cross into another territory to ask a girl for a dance.”

Julian tapped one of the connected wheels. “But there were clubs and societies that crossed those lines. I never paid attention to them because I wasn’t interested in joining.”

No, Grimshaw thought, Julian wouldn’t have joined a club. That would have been an additional risk of someone figuring out what he was. “So what are we saying? That a secret club has been working out of the schools around Hubbney, recruiting members?”

“Probably working out of the private college and spreading out from there,” Julian said. “Think of the announcements on the bulletin board at the academy. Clubs like the chess club and drama club were obvious, but some groups had names that sounded so dumb you couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to join.”

Like a group that claimed to be interested in tie clips? Had they been operating when he and Julian had been at the academy? Must have been, but he hadn’t noticed. “Hiding in plain sight.”

Julian nodded. “And promising that all the members would benefit from a helping hand. So a man comes to The Jumble to pressure Vicki to give up the property. When he is killed, someone alerts Swinn so that he makes sure he takes the case and can try to apply a different kind of pressure, along with the bank manager removing any paperwork that would prove Vicki’s claim that she was the rightful owner of the property.”

“Even if there is a conspiracy to take The Jumble, the terms of the original agreement are clear,” Vicki protested. “As far as having access to the land that makes up The Jumble, humans keep it as it is, which is some cultivated land and limited dwellings and outbuildings. If they don’t, the deal is off and the whole thing is reclaimed by the terra indigene. That’s the biggest reason Yorick pawned it off on me—he knew there wasn’t any commercial use for the land. Why would he try to get it back?”

“Maybe someone else thinks there is a loophole that will allow a developer to come in and build a resort or private community on the lake,” Ineke said.

Ilya brushed a few dog hairs off his trousers. “Being aware that your ex-husband had claim to some potentially lucrative land, perhaps other members of his pack put together a plan that would make them money and didn’t realize that Yorick no longer held the paper for The Jumble. If they didn’t want to walk away from the deal, they might pressure him to reacquire The Jumble.”

“How much information would this cabal have about The Jumble?” Grimshaw asked. “By now, they have to know that people were killed there. Why try a land grab and tangle with the terra indigene? I would have thought last summer would be a sufficient lesson in how well that works.”

“It’s been our observation that humans often willfully believe that they can repeat the actions of those who went before them and not suffer the same consequences,” Ilya said.

“But none of this is aimed at the Others,” Ineke protested. “It’s all aimed at Vicki, as if this was strictly a human-against-human conflict and all they have to do is get her out of the way.”

“Maybe this group has people in government who have promised to find a loophole in the agreement or have the original agreement contested in court and thrown out,” Grimshaw said.

“There are no loopholes,” Ilya said. “And contesting it in a human court would not change the terra indigene’s response to invaders.”

Grimshaw had expected that answer. Didn’t mean he liked it.

Julian crouched near the table and tapped one of the wheels as he looked at Vicki. “What it comes down to is your ex-husband could be just a cog in this deal, and whoever is behind it is a much bigger wheel and is going to come after you again.”

CHAPTER 30

Ilya

Firesday, Juin 16

“I have something to show you,” Natasha said the moment Ilya returned to the lodge. “Aggie Crowgard brought it over after you left to take Miss Vicki to the doctor.”

Ilya took the envelope and studied the former bank manager’s name. “We already suspected him of having one of the tie clips and being involved in the threats to Victoria.”

“Aggie thought it was important because it had shiny gold ink.” Natasha smiled, showing a hint of fang. “She mentioned a couple of times that the police might be interested in a shiny envelope and that they sometimes exchanged one shiny for another.”

“Not a precedent I want to follow, and one Officer Grimshaw may come to regret,” Ilya murmured as he considered the return address. “TCC, with a Hubb NE address. Tie Clip Club?” That would fit in with Grimshaw’s and Farrow’s thinking that the group had a name that would be overlooked by most of the humans attending the schools in Hubbney.

“Would an enemy be that bold to display the location of where they can be found?” Natasha asked.

“Organizations send information to members all the time. Nothing unusual about that. Nothing suspicious. All out in the open. Except the part that is hidden.”

“If these humans have dug in to three locations in the Northeast Region, they could have their claws in many more.”

Ilya nodded. In human-controlled cities, there were Courtyards—a separate place within the city that was the territory of the terra indigene who kept watch over the humans and made sure they honored their agreements. Because Hubb NE was the seat of government for the Northeast Region, the Courtyard there had a strong gathering of Sanguinati. It was possible they already knew about these tie clip humans but had not interfered because the humans had interacted only with other humans. With this gambit against Victoria DeVine, the tie clip humans had crossed a line and were now dealing with the terra indigene whether they knew it or not.