His seventies, with sun-lined skin, sun spots, raised and rough age spots, Nothing in my whole life had gone right since she darkened my door.I lifted one batch of pages and saw the photo of an old man, maybe in Of course this new problem was related to Jane. “I’m Special Agent Rick LaFleur, with PsyLED, and this is Paka. “What do you want?” I asked again, this time with no Church accent, and with the grammar I’d learned from the city-folk customers at the vegetable stand and from reading my once-forbidden and much-loved library books. Alert, taking in everything about me and my home, the man lifted his nose in the air to sniff the scents of my land, his delicate nasal folds widening and contracting. His arm went around her, and he smoothed her hair back, watching me as I watched them. The woman’s snarl subsided and she leaned into the man, just like one of my cats might. I had never seen a man touch a woman like that, and my hands jiggled the shotgun in surprise before I caught myself. The words were gentle, the touch to her arm tender.
As I aimed, I took a single step so my back was against the doorjamb to keep me from getting bowled over or from breaking a shoulder when I fired. I trained the barrel on her, midcenter, just like John had showed me the first time he’d put the gun in my hands. A cat in human form-a werecat of some kind. She drew back her lips in a snarl and growled at me. The man raised his hands like he was asking for peace, but the little woman hissed. They came to a halt at the third step, too close for me to miss, too far away for them to disarm me safely. “Whaddya want?” I demanded, drawing on my childhood God’s Cloud dialect.
In a single smooth motion, I braced the bolt-action shotgun against my shoulder, rammed open the door, and pointed the business end of the gun at the trespassers. There was a weapon bulge at the man’s shoulder, beneath his jacket. And then I realized why they moved and felt all wrong. As they approached the house, they passed the tall length of flagpole in the middle of the raised beds of the front yard and started up the seven steps to the porch. They looked like any other city folk who might come looking for Soulwood Farm, and yet. Around the house, my woods moaned in the sharp wind, branches clattering like old bones, anxious, but I could see nothing about the couple that would say danger.
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