“You live in Bennett,” the girl had said. “You wear pretty dresses and run a saloon. You have friends. Yellow bird.”
“I’m a Harvester. A Plague Rider. You think I’ll be wanted in a town?”
“You help protect the town.” The girl breathed out the words “black stones” and died.
Scythe picked up the girl and carried her away from the road. Hid the body under stones and brush. And then she found her way to Bennett.
The Sanguinati who ran the town and the Wolves who were the enforcers didn’t trust her but they had agreed to let her stay, let her run this place. Eventually they might even accept her living among them—as long as she could resist the compulsion to devour all the life force of a being that mattered to the Sanguinati and Wolves.
Yuri Sanguinati, one of the saloon’s two bartenders and the only one working today, turned toward her when she stepped out of the office to join him behind the bar.
“Tolya is sending some humans our way,” Yuri said. “Potential workers and residents.”
“From Lakeside?” Barbara Ellen had stopped in a couple of times to say hello and show her how to take care of Yellow Bird, and had told her about the humans who were migrating to Bennett from Lakeside. The girl had also told her about meeting Tess, which explained a lot about why Barbara Ellen had approached a Harvester in the first place. The friendliness was genuine, but the girl also seemed to be making a point that she would choose her own friends, regardless of Tolya’s concern or Virgil’s growling.
“No,” Yuri replied. “Those humans should arrive on Watersday, if the train stays on schedule. These humans heard there was work here.” He picked up a stack of papers off the bar. “Don Miller worked on the computer yesterday and made up these forms for potential employees. He said he had a feeling you would find them useful, but they might be useful now for dealing with these strangers.”
Don Miller, her other bartender, was an Intuit who had a sense of what people needed. Freddie Kaye was another Intuit, but he had a feel for numbers and wanted to work as the house gambler.
“Are there enough forms?” she asked.
“Won’t know until the humans walk through the door, but I won’t be surprised if there is exactly the number of copies that we need today.”
“We’re going to have customers?” Garnet Ravengard sauntered over to the bar and smiled at Yuri. She had the dark eyes and black hair typical of her form of terra indigene. Except for a couple of black feathers mixed in with her hair, she looked human—and had more of a bosom than she’d had yesterday.
Had the Raven been able to alter her human appearance or had she achieved that effect by using some kind of clothing beneath the garnet red dress?
“The dress looks good on you,” Yuri said.
“And you look like a frontier bartender, right down to the little black tie,” Garnet replied.
The Sanguinati did look the part in the white shirt and black vest and trousers—and the black string tie.
No telling if the humans would appreciate the costumes and the rest of what had been done to give the saloon a particular flavor, but Scythe realized that everyone who worked there would have fun. And that pleased her.
A minute later her pleasure faded and her gold hair suddenly had streaks of blue and red—and a warning thread of black—and began to curl as five human males walked into the saloon.
“I’m Madam Scythe,” she said. “Welcome to the Bird Cage Saloon.”
Four of the men removed their hats in what she assumed was a gesture of courtesy. The fifth man did not.
Something in his eyes. Something that scratched at her instincts to feed. She moved toward him slowly as her hair changed to red with streaks of black and threads of gold and blue—and it coiled.
“We should not be required to be in this house of fornication,” the fifth man said loudly.
Yuri vaulted over the bar one-handed, drawing everyone’s attention, including hers. A movement, a reminder to be careful.
“We sell a variety of drinks,” Yuri said, showing a hint of fang when he smiled at the men. “Our girls are here to talk to customers, even do a little singing and dancing. But Madam Scythe does not allow fornication in this establishment.”
The man looked pointedly at the stairs that led to Scythe’s suite and the rooms the employees could use during breaks or as dressing rooms.
“As you can see,” Yuri said with a nod toward the stairs and the red velvet rope that was attached to the wall and newel-post, “the rooms are for employees only—and that rule is strictly enforced.”
There was enough bite and warning in the words that Scythe understood that Yuri was also uneasy about that particular human. Adding to her own sense of wrongness was the way the other four men were looking at their companion, as if they, too, recognized something odd about his behavior.
“Now, if you gentlemen will fill out these forms, that will assist everyone when the mayor comes in to talk to you about what work you might do here.” Yuri handed out the forms. “On the second page, where it says ‘Miscellaneous’? Please provide the reason you left your previous place of residence.”
Garnet went into Scythe’s office, then reappeared with two pens and a pencil. “Here are writing implements if you need them.”
One man approached Garnet but glanced at Scythe as he accepted the pens and pencils. “I don’t know why he is saying these things,” he said quietly.
“He’s your friend?” Scythe asked just as quietly.
“No. He joined us at the border station. He said he was coming here and asked if he could travel with us. We thought, because of some of the things he said on the journey, that he was from a community that lives by stricter rules than our own, but that doesn’t explain his rudeness.”
Scythe nodded. “I’m sure Mr. Sanguinati is already aware of your companion’s difference.”
He returned to the table and handed out the pens and pencil just as the next group arrived, led by Kane in Wolf form. Two adult females, a boy, and …
<The Becky girl is a kind of skippy,> Kane said as the girl grabbed his tail. <Their pack name is Gott.>
A look of loathing aimed at the skippy girl filled the fifth man’s face before he looked at the younger of the adult females and his face filled with something else. Then he noticed Scythe watching him and became busy filling out the form.
Garnet led the Gott pack to another table, taking some of the forms from Yuri as she passed him, leaving him—and Scythe—free to keep an eye on the males.
They’d barely settled the Gott pack at a table when Tolya, Virgil, Jesse Walker, and a bouncy female entered, followed by Barbara Ellen and Joshua Painter.
“All right if we come in for a drink?” Barbara Ellen asked.
“Just belly up to the bar and I’ll fix whatever you like,” Yuri said, hesitating for a heartbeat as he met Joshua Painter’s eyes.
“Oh, this is wonderful,” the bouncy female said, turning in a circle as she clutched folders to her chest. She focused on Garnet. “Are those feathers real?”
Tolya looked at Scythe. <She wants to work for you.> The look became a predatory stare. <Something wrong?>
As an answer, she looked toward the table with the five men—and frowned. What was that odd male among them staring at now? She followed the line of his focus right to Barbara Ellen, who was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt.
“A woman should not expose her limbs and incite a man to lust,” he said loudly. Then he licked his bottom lip.
“This is not a Simple Life community,” one of his companions said. “The other people here are not bound to live by our rules. And we are here because we want to explore other possibilities while holding on to our core values.”
Scythe watched Joshua Painter turn toward the voice at the same time he slipped his right hand into one of the pockets in his trousers. As he withdrew his hand—a hand now wearing a leather glove that had Panther claws at the ends of the fingers—he bared his teeth and stepped in front of Barbara Ellen.
“Joshua,” Virgil warned, moving toward the male.
“The marsh,” Joshua snarled. “It’s the marsh. It looks safe but it kills. I told Saul. Ask Saul.”
The words made no sense to her. They didn’t make sense to Tolya or Virgil either. But Jesse Walker swayed and looked like bleached bones.
Scythe didn’t know who had contacted Saul Panthergard or what was said, but suddenly Tolya, Virgil, and Yuri were converging on the table where the five men sat. The odd man leaped up, knocking over his chair as he bolted away from all the males and ran straight toward her, mistakenly thinking he could get past her.
Turning squarely to face him with her back to the rest of the beings in the room she said, <Don’t look.>
She heard the terra indigene scrambling to pull the humans to the floor or shield them in some way. Those seconds gave the odd man time to grab her arms and try to shove her aside. And in those seconds, her hair turned black with streaks of red—not revealing so much of her true nature that just looking at her would kill her prey, but sufficient for her to consume enough of his life force to make his heart flutter, to make his limbs weak.
One heartbeat. Two. Three. He collapsed and Scythe ran into her office and closed the door to protect the rest of them.
<Scythe?> Tolya called.
She’d been here just long enough to want to stay. <Do you want me to leave?>
<No. I would prefer if you stayed in your office until you feel calmer. We’ll deal with things out here.>
<I meant … >
<I know what you meant. I would have snapped his neck. Virgil would have torn out his throat. No one understands why he collapsed, so your solution was less obvious than ours would have been.>
Scythe sank into the chair behind her desk. She didn’t have to leave. Then another thought as she remembered Barbara Ellen was in the saloon. <Was anyone else hurt?>
<No. Everyone else is fine.> He sighed. <Although Barbara Ellen is a bit too fascinated with Joshua’s accessory.>
That made her smile. <If the female who wants to work here wasn’t scared off, have her talk to Yuri and Garnet. If they think she’ll fit in with them, I’ll talk to her when I’m … calmer.>
<Lila Gold has books and folders full of papers about frontier towns.>
She felt her hair relax from coils to loose curls, knew the black and red were changing to mostly gold and blue.
Feeling calmer but not quite calm enough to go out among the rest of them, Scythe reviewed the inventory of alcohol that had been brought in from the uninhabited houses.
* * *
* * *
Tolya guided Jesse Walker to the sofa in his office. He wasn’t sure if the previous occupant of the office had used the sofa for informal talks or to take a nap—or to mate with one of the females working for him, which was something human males who held a position of authority often did. At least that was something the Sanguinati had heard about human males.