sixties—clunky lawn chairs, which were bulky and made of too much metal—were scattered along the sizeable porch.
Well used to the Cape’s orderly color schemes of cream and white and green and cream and white and cream, and sometimes green, and maybe red if the neighborhood was spiraling out of control, the odd pastel colors more than pleased her. She found them delightful.
Perhaps the Cape could stand with some color changes; perhaps if they tried something more daring and less conventional . . . ack! Traitorous thought!
She opened the front door, realizing (again) that it hadn’t been locked and remembering (again) that it never was, until her landlord went to bed.
All right. She would confess. That was something she could get used to, and no lie.
The entryway was all dark blond wood and hardwood floors waxed to a high gloss. The stairs were much the same—the house smelled more of floor wax and cleaning supplies than anything else. Given how old it was, Rachael was beyond grateful. More than once she’d walked into a Cape Cod cottage that reeked of dead fish and dust.
If she took the stairs up, she’d find herself in the area of the house the landlord shared with his elderly wife and their grown son. Their grown son lived in the turret, fortunate bastard.
They were all human, which she had expected. Humans outnumbered Pack by a minimum of fifty to one. She’d been fortunate Mrs. Cain was in the Midwest, and in a position of power to help a Pack member newly come to Minnesota’s capital.
She took the stairs down and down (there were quite a few). The more she burrowed, the calmer she felt, until she was standing in her small living room.
Mrs. Cain hadn’t known (as Rachael herself had not) how long she would be staying, so she’d rented a furnished apartment. The small basement area was decorated with several rugs in jewel colors, while the walls were lined with cement blocks of a color she had never before seen: rose. They were, she had to admit, the most glamorous cement bricks she had ever seen. She hadn’t been aware bricks came in rose. There was an old-fashioned rolltop desk that gave off a strong, though not unpleasant, odor of decades of furniture polish.
The worst that could be said was the faint undertone of live mice. It was a battle she knew not to fight; mice outnumbered Pack by a ratio of seven million to one. In an old house like this, mice were the nature of the beast. The thought made her chortle. Who would know the nature of the beast better than she?
Every other Pack member on the planet, for starters. You have to admit, Rachael-girly-girl, you’re a beta. You’re the second spear-carrier from the left, the kid in the play who has no lines.
True enough. And irrelevant now.
The kitchen, tucked around a corner to the left, was small, with all the disorder and filth found in the average operating room. In other words: immaculate. Possibly sterile. Back home, Rachael never cooked . . . she had a three-ring binder, organized by cuisine, stuffed with menus from every take-out and delivery joint on the Cape. So the small fridge, half-sized stove, and lack of counter and storage space suited her nicely.
The living room was also festooned with several rugs (mostly reds) as well as a daybed, built-in book shelves (dens for her books!), and a plasma screen television. That made no sense until her landlord, a perfectly nice older gentleman whose name was Call Me Jim, explained that their nephew worked at Best Buy and was always bringing them electric doodads at a severe discount.
“Those plasmatic TVs, they hurt my eyes,” he confided while giving her a tour. “But you know kids. If it’s new, it’s gotta be the best, and if it’s the best, you gotta have it. Our old one works just fine.”
“That’s very generous of you, Mr.—”
“Call Me Jim.”
The small bedroom was large enough for a queen-sized bed, an end table with a lamp, a closet, and a small chest of drawers. More than adequate. And the bathroom just off her bedroom had a shower, tub, medicine cabinet, enough rolls of toilet paper to build her own fort, and lots and lots of old towels that were faded but clean and smelled like cotton and Tide.
Best of all were the windows. There were several, and though they were small for house windows, they were large for basement windows. If she