Chapter Five
The next morning, Harper had awoke to find Tina in her kitchen, making a light soup. Her friend gently led her from her bed, sat her down at the table and told her in kind, gentle words, Harper, you’re pregnant.
Of course, Harper hadn’t believed her. How could she be pregnant? And besides, how would Tina even be able to tell? It had only been a couple of days since she’d been with Grey. She was just sick.
“Honey,” Tina said gently, “you aren’t pregnant with a human baby. You’ve got Grey’s baby in you. Your gestation will only be a few months. You’ll give birth to what looks like a human but is, in fact, a baby shifter. The same thing happened to a human friend of mine.”
Harper fell back in her chair. A baby. She was having a baby. She blinked, amazed at just how cavalier she’d been and how foolish.
“I have to tell Grey.”
“I’ll go find him. You get cleaned up here. Alright?”
Harper nodded her spinning head, wondering how on earth this was going to go. Would Grey be happy? Angry? Disgusted, maybe? She’d never had to have a serious discussion with a boyfriend before. She had never even had a boyfriend. This was all new territory.
She tried not to stress over it too much as she bathed. Warm water this time. Tina had forbidden her from using any cold water on her body. She poured a tincture of fruit tree leaves over her to get her temperature down a little, a trick that everyone in the neighborhood used to fight the heat. After her shower, she ate a bit more soup. Her stomach had settled and she suddenly wanted the whole pot, but she paced herself.
A fast knock came from the door a while later, while she was reading and trying not to think about tiny birds or her new lover. She took a deep breath and stood to answer it.
There on her patio was a stricken, pale young man with a slack face. He had a look to him that, unbeknownst to either of them, was exclusive to young men on the verge of becoming fathers. She stepped towards him wordlessly, took his hand and put it on her stomach.
“So, it’s true. You really are…” He gave her a desperate, wounded look, unsure what to say next.
“Yes,” she confirmed, “I am. Can you feel anything?”
He spread his fingers across her pelvis, then leaned down to press his cheek against her. “No. Not yet.” He stood. “Can you? Is it moving inside you?”
She shook her head. “I feel different, but I don’t feel the little form yet.” She led him inside and the two of them lay down on her bed, staring at each other’s faces. They were silent as they gently touched each other’s faces, tracing the lines of their individual traits and wondering at how this eye would pair with these lips, this cheekbone, that jaw. What would this little creature look like when it came into the world?
“Grey,” Harper whispered, “I’m scared.”
He closed his eyes and let out a sigh of relief. “At least I’m not the only one.”
She gave him a playful smack and he pulled her in for a kiss. “Don’t worry, my Harper. I’ll be a devoted father, even before this little flier is born.”
“Are you sure it will be an Airborne shifter?”
He nodded. “You wouldn’t be going through the process this fast if it were a human. I’ve seen it happen.”
She thought about having a little flier like Grey and the thought made her smile. Back when they were young, Grey would shift for her and deliver silly little messages to her security staff as they stood watching the two play in the park. The notes always said things of no real importance; suggestions for what to serve for dessert that evening, notes about the weather, questions about her mother and who she had been. Perhaps had been Grey’s magical movements that shifted him from human to bird that caused her to fall in love with him. Or maybe it was just his patience with her. Whatever it was, she wanted her little one to be just like his father.
“What are you thinking about?”
“You,” she told him, “when you were younger. And how I hope our child is just like it’s father.”
He pulled her in close for a big kiss on the forehead. She wrapped her arms around him and just let the warmth of the room melt her into him and his strong, reliable frame. They kissed and it felt like a different kind of kiss, as if they had been doing it for years. He felt so familiar and easy to touch that he seemed to be an extension of her, a new appendage or longer hair with the man she loved swinging from the tendrils.
“Grey,” she whispered to him, “I need your help.”
“Of course. What can I do?”
She sat up and looked down at him, chewing her bottom lip. “I’m very close to finding out what killed that boy Marcus. Will you do something for me? If I go, the people might not talk to me the way they would talk to you.”
“Sure,” he shrugged. Grey was always up for a project.
“Well,” she started, “are you familiar with the younger part of the forest? Where the trees are a bit thin?”
“Yes, that’s where Marcus was playing before he died, right?”
“Right.” She stopped and did a double take before continuing. “How did you know that?”
“Blackfeather and I tried to do a little digging of our own, but we didn’t get very far.”
“Okay. Good. So you know a little bit about what’s going on. Well,” she repositioned herself so that she was down by his feet. He didn’t hesitate to put in a foot in her lap, a non-verbal request for a massage. She rubbed his tough, callused foot but put her own up in his face so he would do the same.
“Well,” she started again, “apparently there’s a little secret bar over there. It opens at dusk and as far as I can tell it’s a male-only establishment. I need you to go and see if you can get the guys talking to you.”
He closed his eyes as he relaxed into his foot rub. She tapped him with her foot to get him to wake up. He shook his head and blinked, fully alert. “Why? I mean, why do you need me to go? You can’t ask them?”
“Not if it’s a male thing,” she said, a bit exasperated by the explanation. “Say you’re there celebrating the new baby or whatever and hang out. I need to know what they’re drinking and what sort of effect it has on them. See if it makes them violent or impulsive. It’s possible that Marcus was killed by someone who just had too much to drink.”
“Oh, I see,” he pushed his thumbnail into her big toe and made her yelp, but she instantly felt her sinuses open up with the pain. “You need me to go and be friendly. But really, I’ll be undercover.”
“Essentially, yes,” she agreed as she pulled each of his toes one by one. He spent so much time barefoot that his toes were often crunched up with tension as they carried him over rocks and up the sides of trees. He flexed and wiggled them after the painful treatment and the muscles in his face went slack with the sensation of relaxed toes.
“Alright, sure. But,” he switched out the foot he held for her second foot and she did the same with his, “what if I get too drunk to remember anything?”
She dug into his arch as she considered the problem. “Maybe take Blackfeather with you?” She checked his face for a look of confirmation but found none there. “No?”
He shook his head. “Blackfeather gave up alcohol a long time ago. Some friends of his got hooked on it and now it’s all they do. He can’t stand it. He likes to have fun but alcohol and being around drunk people just makes him angry.”
The two went quiet as they considered the problem and worked out the kinks and knots in one another’s feet. Unfortunately, there seemed to be no way out of the conundrum.
“I guess we’ll just have to risk it,” Harper sighed, defeated. “Try not to overdo it, just drink until you’ve got a nice little buzz and then maybe just fake it.”
“If I fake it they’ll get suspicious,” Grey said, his gaze travelling. “Hey, what if I do my best to take notes while I’m there? I’ll drink as slow as I can and slip off to the bathroom or outside and jot down anything interesting. Huh?”
Harper thought about it, but the image of Grey taking notes at a bar while a bunch of rowdy men brawled around him seemed hard to get a hold of. Surely someone would notice. “I don’t know, Hon.”
“Hon? That’s new. Hey, where will you be while I’m out spying on drunk guys?”
“Oh, I didn’t tell you,” she gave him his foot back and he sat with crossed legs, “Marcus had a secret little spot just under Larissa’s tree. Apparently not even his family knew about it.”
He looked at her incredulously. “Well, then how did you find out about it?”
She smiled, feeling a little smug. “I’m an investigator. And I’m happy to say that my investigation is going very well.” Harper waited to see what he would have to say to that, but all he could do was blink at her, shocked. Fine. Let him be shocked. It was about time she was the impressive one.
“Oh! Grey, I’ve got it.” She took her foot back and scooted closer to him. “Invite Larissa out. She’s got a crazy high tolerance for alcohol and she lives for any opportunity to make Blackfeather jealous. She’ll be able to tell us what the guys get up to, what they’re drinking all of it, even if you get fall-down drunk.”
He tucked his chin into his chest, very uncertain about this plan. “Wait, are you telling me to take Larissa out on a date?”
“No, not a date. Just say you’re in the mood to go out and no one else is interested. And, get this, I hear she can change genders. She’ll blend right in.”
He thought it over and nodded slowly, his mouth shoved into a little pinch on one side of his face. “Yeah, I heard that, too. It’s a fossa thing, apparently. Didn’t she change genders while she was in the prison?”
“Yes! That was so scandalous. The girls were all over her as a male. Promise you’ll behave yourself,” she admonished him with a little smile. He smirked.
“No promises, darling.”
They parted ways shortly after that, Grey on a mission to get Larissa to head over to the bar with him, in male form no less, and to get her out of her home so that Harper could poke around at its base. Neither had any idea what they would find or how they would go about looking, so they just shrugged and stepped out the door. After all, Harper had successfully interrogated the little boys completely by chance and now she had a lead.
Harper made sure to open the window shutters and look busy while Grey went over to Larissa’s place. She was sure the fossa would do her best to get a glimpse of her and she wanted to give the impression of a young, pregnant lady settling in for a night at home. She started to wash her few dirty dishes at a leisurely pace, humming to herself.
From a far off distance, she heard the faint sounds of a male and female voice. Was it happening now? Yes, look busy. She grabbed a cloth and started polishing up the window frame as if such a thing could ever be necessary. No matter, it looked good. She moved to the counter and kept wiping and scrubbing, praying this was going well.
A bubbly laughter reached her from several trees away and her heart sped up. She was laughing. Did that mean she found the idea of going to the bar completely absurd or was she amused by the idea? Harper prayed it was the former. She could hear Grey’s voice again and it sounded confident. She moved over the bed, which was already made and perfectly neat, but pulled the sheet off anyhow and whipped it in the air as if she were changing it.
“I’m not much of an actress,” she thought to herself. “I’ll have to pray the effort is enough.” She heard more laughter, now Grey’s as well as Larissa’s, and told herself it was working. Why wouldn’t it? Everyone loved Grey and Larissa loved nothing more than attention. She especially loved it when men came all the way to her tree via the treacherous, sky-high bridge. Harper put the sheet back on her bed and did her best not to stare as Grey and Larissa moved off of her porch and over to the bridge that pointed west. The two bounded over it at top speed, neither afraid of falling. Afther all, Grey could fly and Larissa was extremely nimble in fossa form. No reason to feel any fear of the far away ground.
After they were gone, Harper settled in for a long wait. The sun hadn’t set just yet and she wanted the cover of dusk to find Marcus’ secret little spot. She had a feeling that something there would give her the clue she needed to really zero in on his killer, but she wanted to be careful.
She sat near her bookshelf and, without even thinking about it, draped an arm over her abdomen. She held her book with the other hand and instantly felt how comfortable the chair was, how soft and inviting. She yawned, then silently admonished herself for doing so.
Got to stay awake. Go to go and find the spot.
Her reminder not to sleep made her instantly sleepier and she shook her head. She set her book down and slapped her cheeks a little, trying to revive her energy. But she could already feel just how hopeless the situation was; the tiny shifter inside her was demanding sleep and very difficult to ignore.
“Fine,” she thought, settling into her chair. “Five minutes. But then we go.” She didn’t allow any internal arguments to start. She never would have heard them anyway. In less than a few seconds, Harper was fast asleep.
Harper dreamed, but when she tried to remember what she had seen in her sleep the images eluded her. All she remembered was the moment she woke up and realized it was the middle of the night.
“Oh, great,” she groaned. She went to stand but felt an odd tightness around her belly. She looked down and saw a bump straining against the waistline of her dress, threatening to rip right through it.
“Argh, what next?” She went to her little closet and pulled out the biggest dress she had, but even that left little room for movement beneath the fabric. It would have to do for the evening.
Once she’d changed, she got a small torch and a little flint starter and slipped them into her pocket, praying she wouldn’t need them. If she had to go around with a flame on a stick everyone would see her, murderer included. She didn’t want to inspire any efforts to stop the investigation before it started.
Harper went to the bridges and slowly made her way down the first. She wanted to ask a neighbor for a ride down but everyone was fast asleep. She could soft little snores coming from different trees and the sound was a nice, reassuring one. Now, all she needed to do was make sure she didn’t give anyone a reason to wake up.
Harper’s feet sank into the dry, scratchy material of the bridge and she held on for dear life as it swung a little beneath her. The old vines groaned a bit, but no one opened a window or called out. She went on, holding the handrails as tightly as she could as she advanced little by little.
At the end of the bridge, she found what she was looking for; a little rope ladder that she could descend. She could just barely make out the shape of the thing, but she couldn’t see further than a few rungs down. She would just have to feel her way to the ground step by step.
She gulped, tensed her hands on the rope-ladder’s sides until her arms were doubled up, then gingerly stepped down with her feet. The first step held her. Heart pounding and hands sweating, she started her descent into a dark and terrifying mission to find what Marcus knew during his short life.