A Wolf After My Own Heart MaryJanice Davidson (children's ebooks online .txt) 📖

Kama-Rupa. Sometimes you meet the exact right person at the exact right time. Even if you don’t know it, the universe does.”

Lila (barely) held back her snort. “I’m not swimming the widest river Oz has ever seen—which would be the Mississippi, I’m assuming—no matter how attracted I am to him. That’s all it is, y’know. You’re talking about soul mates and connections and crushes, but you left lust off that list. Which, ninety-nine times out of one hundred, is what it is.”

“Oh, yes,” Macropi agreed. “But you’re one in one hundred, Lila. And so is my Oz. All I’m saying is, sometimes strangers are brought together for reasons even they don’t understand. Both versions of Kama-Rupa are about lonely people who will die alone if they don’t find their physical and spiritual counterpart.”

“Jesus Christ.”

Macropi brightened. “But in the second version, meeting the right person didn’t just save their lives, it birthed an entirely new dominant species. So you have to ask yourself, ‘What am I missing in my life? What’s the thing that is slowly killing me that Kama-Rupa is trying to fix?’”

“Again: Jesus Christ! Look, this has been weird and interesting, like every other thing this week, and I guess butting in is your prerogative as the neighborhood mother figure, but I’m not Oz’s Kama, or his Rupa, or his Karma Chameleon, or whatever you want to call it.”

Macropi shrugged and smiled. “As you like, dear.”

“So to get allllllll the way back to what I wanted to talk to you about in the first place, in return for me not taunting Garsea too often about her Honey Bear nickname, you were gonna tell me about Shakopee.”

Macropi’s smile disappeared. “Oh.”

“That killed all the fun in the room, didn’t it?”

“Just a bit, yes. But.” She spread her hands. “A deal’s a deal.” She leaned against the counter, folded her arms across her chest. “What do you want to know?”

“Were you there?”

“No, thank heavens. I found out afterward, like most of us.”

“And you guys kept it out of the news, positioned it as a climate change protest turned violent, one-time only, such a tragedy, thoughts and prayers…like that?”

“It seemed safest at the time. You understand how vastly outnumbered we are.”

“There are a crap ton of Stables crawling all over the world,” Lila admitted.

“Yes. So our standard response is always geared toward staying hidden. It trumps every other consideration. But it also gives rise to that tired ‘separate but equal’ canard. That’s how you get the Klan and imbeciles like SAS. Lila, dear, are you all right? You look like someone clipped you with a brick.”

“Is that what it is?” Lila breathed. Everything had disappeared as her brain followed the trail that had suddenly lit up like a fireworks display. Macropi, the kitchen, the state of Minnesota, the northern hemisphere all faded away while she followed her train of thought.

You’re the first one of your kind I’ve spent any real time with. And Sally didn’t just say that once. It wasn’t an offhand comment. It made enough of an impression that she pointed it out twice.

“Is that the connection?” Lila knew she was breathing, but still felt like she wasn’t getting enough air. “That’s what makes Team Smalls so special?”

“Lila?”

“How.”

“What?”

“How! How’d the protest—the coup attempt—how did you guys—Garsea said sanity prevailed. How?”

Macropi looked taken aback but answered readily. “There was a mole among the SAS. Or a traitor, depending on who you’re talking to.”

“So a few disaffected Shifters lost because it was a numbers game.”

“It’s almost always a numbers game,” Macropi replied. “As anyone who’s read a history book knows.”

“Right. So it was already going to be difficult. For their power grab to have even a prayer of working, they needed every Shifter to go all in on their national tantrum. But it sounds like they didn’t have every Shifter on their side, there at the very beginning. Because of the mole.”

“Yes. My understanding is that whoever he or she was—I never got all the details—they were in the SAS but realized at the last minute that they didn’t want it to go that far. Or they were a spy and notified their handlers. Whatever the motive, he or she sounded the alarm and non-SAS Shifters got to Shakopee in time.”

“So with two groups, each with a different agenda…”

“Rather than a power grab from one apex predator to another, it looked like the groups facing off were just two sides of the climate change debate. The ‘everything’s fine, knock it off’ group and the ‘you’re killing the planet and dooming us all’ group. And in the middle of all that, the police came and added to the chaos, and someone set fire to downtown, or more than one someone, and when the smoke cleared, the dead were in the streets or locked up, and the movement was in ruins.”

“You hope.”

“Well.” Macropi shrugged. “Nothing’s happened. If there were other blocks of SAS scattered about, waiting for their cue, or even to start their own revolutions, they haven’t done anything in ten years. Exactly ten years, now that I think about it. You wouldn’t know this, Lila, but this weekend is the tenth anniversary of the Shakopee riot.”

“Wait, what? What?”

“Yes. That’s why it’s been on everyone’s mind. It’s—”

“Now? This weekend? Right now? Now now?”

“Yes. Oh, but don’t worry, dear! You must know we would never let anything happen to you. There’s no one under my roof who would hurt you, and we would never, ever allow anyone to—”

“I’m not the one they want to hurt! Jesus Christ, why didn’t anyone tell me?” She had to call. Or run. Or drive. Because it was never about Sally Smalls. It was always about her parents.

And Magnus Berne, of course.

10. Alas. Onion pie is a thing.

Chapter 42

“What do you mean, gone? Lunch? He died? What?”

“Dr. Gulo gave notice last Thursday.” This from Debbie, Dr. Gulo’s assistant, a curvy brunette with incongruously small wrists and ankles who probably got carded for R-rated movies. “Sorry you missed