CHAPTER NINE

Lily opened the door for Lance and stood back as he, in his coyote form, leaped up the step and into the trailer. Rocking Martha gently and shushing the fussy child, she stepped outside into the brisk night. The lake was quiet, the campsites all dark. Nature itself seemed to have turned in for the evening.

The chill whipped through her thin pajamas so she retreated to the sultry warmth of the camper and shut the door.

After a moment of justified petrification, she averted her eyes from Lance’s taut, naked backside. He’d already shifted back and was pulling on sweatpants.

“Anything?” she asked him over Martha’s insistent whining.

The child had her fingers in her mouth, gnawing without satisfaction, and Lily hadn’t been able to find a pacifier or teething ring in the diaper bag. She’d even tried looking through the van and a couple of the tents in search of something the baby could chew on, but nothing seemed safe enough. She’d resorted to ice chips in a washcloth, and that only lead to Martha having a soaking wet shirt and an extra layer of drool under her sweet, fat chin. Keeping her dry was becoming a challenge.

“Not a damn thing.” Lance dragged his hand down his face, jaw tense, expression worried. “Doesn’t make any sense. I can’t pick up a trail for them at all, and if they’d been here a few days like you said, their scents should be all over the place. I’ve never not been able to track someone before.”

In a fit of desperation, Lily offered Martha her knuckle. The baby chomped down hard enough to make Lily fear for her bladder control, but at least the tension in Martha’s body instantly abated.

“Go on and chew it, then,” she murmured and risked taking a seat on the sofa. Every time she sat, Martha screamed, and Lily had been pacing in the trailer for the entire two hours Lance had been out scouting.

Blessedly, Martha settled into the niche of Lily’s arms and chewed contentedly.

“She’ll chew you down to the bone if you let her,” Lance scolded. “That kid’s a shifter.”

“Well, she isn’t one yet. Not until puberty, right?”

“Constitution is the same. Shifter babies are kinda miserable to be around. Living on the ranch, you should know that.”

“My little cousins are lovely.”

“But miserable, right?”

“Are they fussier than most?” Lily shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t say I know the difference. All of my friends are shifters, are married to shifters, or don’t have kids yet.”

“Ever spent the night with one?”

“Yeah. Every now and then I give my cousins an opportunity to do something together without a baby in tow. It’s the only time I get the kids all to myself, so I never think of complaining. I always miss them when they go home.”

Martha’s eyelids drifted downward as she gnawed. Lily swayed her legs to and fro to help her along to sleep.

“Looks like Blue called back.” Lance was squinting at his phone screen. “One o’clock. He said to call whenever I’m back in my skin, but I don’t want to wake them.”

“It could be important. Maybe text him first and see if he’s up.”

“Good idea.”

“Yeah, I have a few every now and then.”

“Don’t start that again,” he murmured.

“When should I start it, then?” she asked sweetly. “Before or after we sort out the divorce?”

“Right before. It’ll be just the impetus we need to reach for that finish line.”

She rolled her eyes.

Less than thirty seconds after Lance sent off his missive, his phone buzzed.

He grunted, then dialed. “Says he’s still up working.” He put the phone on speaker and set it on the island. “Talk softly,” he said when Blue came on the line. “Baby banshee is teething and Lily’s trying to get her to sleep.”

“Go to the big box store and get her a chew toy.”

Lily gaped but recovered quickly. “She’s not a kitten.”

Blue snorted. “Yeah, she kinda is.”

“Behave yourself, Barrett,” came a feminine voice in the background. Didn’t sound like Willa.

“Is that your mom?” Lance asked.

“Yeah. She just got back from a trip with Diana.”

“Tell them that if there’s not a big box nearby, they can find her a pacifier to chew up at the closest gas station,” Deb Blue suggested.

According to the Maria gossip mill, Deb had reverted to her maiden name after her acrimonious divorce from Blue and Diana’s mother. Blue had recently considered doing the same, but he’d been known as “Blue” for so long that he assumed people would be confused. Lily just couldn’t see him as a Barrett. Every Barrett she’d ever known wore khakis and boat shoes. Blue’s tastes tended to run a little more…corporate shapeshifter.

Apparently, in the entire time Lance had been working for him, none of Blue’s style had rubbed off on his lieutenant.

“They can hear you, Mom,” Blue said. “You’re on speaker.”

“If that doesn’t work”—Deb’s voice was closer now, as though she were speaking directly into the mic—“just keep her gums numb. Use two or three times more of that gel than the little tubes tell you. The instructions aren’t written for shifter babies. They metabolize everything faster. How heavy is the baby?”

“About a million pounds,” Lily said, stretching the kink out of her back. “Oh, I don’t know. She’s about six months old, so seventeen or eighteen pounds I guess? I can only guess based on my cousins’ milestones.”

“Eighteen pounds?” Lance said and whistled low. “What are they feeding that kid?”

Lily held up an empty bottle. “Liquid nutrition.”

“You were a cannonball at the same age, Lance,” Deb said. “Expected it. Your father is a big man.”

“Hearty peasant stock,” Lance muttered.

Lily snorted.

Lance rolled his eyes and leaned onto the narrow island. “So, what’d you find out, Blue?”

He still hadn’t put on a shirt, so Lily had to keep peeling her gaze away from him. Obviously, he had no problems with nudity being what he was, but the last time he’d been anything near naked in her company, she’d ended up pregnant and then married by an Elvis lookalike. That wasn’t an error she wanted to repeat.

“Not much, honestly,” Blue said, “and I’m still looking deeper. The information Lily gave Willa helped unlock the direction I needed to go for research. The best I can tell, these women try exceptionally hard to keep evidence of their existence suppressed.”

“That’s normal for paranormal sorts, though,” Lance said. “Secrets means safety. But that reminds me—I can’t pick up a scent for any of them. I was out there scouting around for over an hour. Not only couldn’t I find a trail for them, but the scent that should have pervaded their campsite is gone, too. It’s like it vanishes when they’re not nearby.”

Blue whistled low. “That’s odd. Their drive for secrecy may be normal for shifters, but we generally don’t go out of our way to suppress evidence the way those Jaguars do.”

“You think they’re doing that?” Lily asked.

“That’s what the pattern looks like to me,” Blue said. “That being said, I am finding some nuggets in publications about craftswomen in Oaxaca that raise an eyebrow. They sometimes reference one particular commune in passing like it’s no big deal. Having seen it mentioned enough times and by so many distinct accounts, I’m probably looking at it from a different perspective.”

“Also because you’re an outsider.”

“Yeah. And one who studied folklore. The writers always refer to the group as an artist’s commune and there’s always some cheeky commentary about how secretive they are and how they rarely let male reporters inside the encampment.”

“Encampment?” Lance asked.

“Yeah. To me, it seems like a semi-permanent compound that the ladies move around as necessary. It’s always referenced as being in the same general area, but not quite, you know?”

“What else did you find out?”

“Well, I found this one article from about twenty years ago. There was this guy who worked on a ranch not too far from the commune. It was near Costa Chica at the time. There’s a pretty notable Afromexican population there.”

“That fits the story.”

“Yeah? The guy was kinda portrayed as a dick, you know? Laughing it up, joking with the journalist about how he hooked up with some lady from the commune. He must have thought that whatever he did was memorable because the lady looked him up for another hookup two years later. Another year down the line, he’d heard rumors about that woman having a baby, but he never saw her again after that.”

Lily grimaced. “If what you said before about them being so aggressively secretive is true, then I bet that guy wasn’t ever seen again by anyone after that story came out.”

“I’d put money on you being right. But listen. I’m going to get some sleep and I’ll get back to digging into this in the morning. I feel like I’m on the cusp of figuring this out. I just need to find the right rabbit hole to dig into.”

“We’ll keep trying to find out what we can on our end,” Lance said. “Did you happen to talk to Lola? We weren’t sure we should loop her into this.”

“I think at this point, we should. Willa went ahead and left her a voicemail earlier. I think she went out of town. The lady has like seventeen jobs. She’s hard to track down even on the best of days. Oh! Before I go, I did find out something that might be useful. That mark you have, Lily—Kenny forwarded me that picture of it that Lance took. I saw some similar images on pictures of stone idols. Same place, right on the back of the neck.”

Lily’s hand went to the scar. “Idols? What sort of idols?”

“They’re just figurines of an unidentified goddess. There’s nothing alarming about them, at least, from my perspective. That being said, I think that mark may have more than one purpose. Every source I’ve found was speculative about the meaning of the symbol, but most specify children or childcare. If I’m interpreting it correctly, you’re wearing around the thirteenth-century version of a safe place symbol.”

“Huh. So, that’s why they left Martha with me?”

“Evidence points to that. I wouldn’t feel too put off by it if I were you. From what I can tell, they were common at one time. I don’t know if every single one was made by Lola or if other people used it as well. Maybe we can do a very discreet survey of everyone we know in Maria to see if anyone else has it.”

“Lola might subconsciously put them on people just out of habit,” Lance said. “Especially the people who spend time around her granddaughter. She’s always at the ranch, so maybe see if Mrs. Foye has one or any of the elementary school teachers.”

“I’ll look into it when I get home,” Lily said.

It made sense that Lola would leave marks on people the girl could trust should anything ever happen to Lola. Life in Maria was unpredictable. Lola had nearly lost her immortality a couple of years back during a conflict with her nephew. A creature of her age couldn’t possess so much hubris to think that she wouldn’t eventually die just like everyone else.

Lily looked down at the sprawling, sleeping baby on her lap and nodded. “Do you think the Jaguars are coming back?”

“If they left their stuff there, they’re probably coming back,” Blue said. “Can’t guess when. I saw the text Lance sent me about how they sorta disappeared. Gotta tell you that I can’t find any information yet about women who vanish, but that’s going to be my first priority in the morning. Be careful, and don’t let that bull kick you in the head, huh?”

Lily was confused for a moment and then remembered the lie she’d told Willa. “Oh. Right. Yeah. Don’t worry. I’ll keep my distance.”

“’Night.”

They disconnected.

After a minute of awkward silence, Lance moved about the trailer, grabbing clothes and his boots.

“What are you going?”

“Going to unhitch the trailer from the truck and go out to try to find someplace that sells toothache gel. Not sure anyone’s still going to be selling the baby formulations because of that FDA warning that came out.”

“Now? It’s one in the morning.”

“She’s not going to sleep for long, Lily, with her gums as inflamed as they are. And maybe we’ll get lucky. The Jaguars might see me driving away and will double back to put me back in my timeout corner.”

“Worth a shot, I guess.”

He grunted and left, closing the door softly behind him.

She waited.

The Jaguars didn’t return as he was unhitching the trailer.

They didn’t return when his thundering diesel engine cranked up.

They didn’t return when the truck tires crunched gravel and churned onto the road.

There was no sign of them in an hour later. Or two.

At three AM, Martha awoke screaming again and Lily peered hopelessly out the window. “Little girl, where is your mommy?”

*

Lily woke with a gasp, feeling for the baby on the bed beside her, and then banging her head against the bottom of the loft when she sat up too quickly.

She rubbed her eyes and quickly searched around for Martha, but she wasn’t on the bed. Lily had put her down on the bottom bed at around three AM, hoping she’d rest less fitfully, and had ended up right beside her. She’d intended to stroke Martha’s hair until she went back into a deeper sleep, but she’d fallen asleep, too.

Martha wasn’t there.

Lily hurled herself off the bed and reached for the light switch, and then stopped herself upon spotting the sleeping Coyote on the sofa.

“Oh,” she whispered.

Lance was asleep on his back. Martha was asleep on his chest with one fat fist cinched around his beard and the fingers of her other hand in her mouth.

There were plastic shopping bags scattered all over the floor and in front of the television. On top of the coffee table were several packages of gum numbing gel, one of which had been ripped open in evident haste.

As she leaned in for a closer inspection, Lily noted that the cap had been left off one already half-used tube. She twisted it back on, holding her breath as she did. She was afraid to wake either of them. Perhaps Lance didn’t realize he was holding a baby, and maybe Martha had been so out of her mind with discomfort that she didn’t realize she was in the arms of the very same Coyote who’d been causing her apoplectic fits earlier.

Lily was probably more stunned than either of those shifters would be upon realizing their circumstances.

The man looked good holding a baby.

Maybe a little too good.

The revelation that if things had been different, that sweet scene could have been all the more personal, stung. That could have been her baby he was holding like that, but that wasn’t going to happen. It wasn’t in the cards, children, the marriage—anything.

Somehow, it just didn’t seem fair.

She had everything going for her. She was healthy. She ate right. She was nice to people most of the time—even when they didn’t deserve it. Still, she’d gotten yanked through the wringer of maternal anticipation only to come out the other end deflated and cold.

“It was just a fluke, Lily,” her doctor had said. “This stuff happens. Nobody talks about it, but trust me, it’s more common than you think.”

Sitting on the exam table in the doctor’s office, she’d thought that being common may as well have been a curse, and one she wouldn’t have wished on her worst enemy.

She couldn’t stand there looking. She just needed to get a little bit of air, and then she’d take Martha from him. Holding a baby was no problem. She did that every day at the ranch. But having to look at Lance and ponder what kind of father he might have made was too much.

Even for a practical girl like her.