months, maybe a year will see him strong enough, past the dangerous part. If he can make a name for himself doing something else, it won’t be easy to abduct him, force him. He will find a job he can do.”
Joe and Fiji looked at each other. “With the Rev?” she said finally. “You’ve been in the Rev’s house?”
“Yes,” Quinn said steadily. “I’ve seen it’s barren. I was going to ask if there was somewhere else he could stay, though the Rev would be responsible for educating Diederik in the ways of the tiger and instructing him in our history. Of course, I would pay his room and board and other expenses. I understand that you . . . Fiji . . . have been buying him clothes, and I want to pay you back for that. I thank you for your generosity.”
“De nada,” she said, smiling. “If you want to, sure, but I did it to keep him decent and smiling. Kids got to have clothes and lots of food.”
“Do you two have any ideas about who would host him?” Quinn looked from one to the other.
“I guess I could clean out my second bedroom. It’s pretty crammed with stuff,” Fiji said doubtfully.
“You’ve been great for Diederik, and he loves your cooking,” Quinn said. He smiled again. “I can see why, after eating this bread. But you’re also pretty and young, and sharing a house with an adolescent boy at such close quarters . . . well, it might not be ideal.”
Fiji turned red. “Okay,” she said.
“We have visitors,” Joe said regretfully. “So our guest room gets some use.” Chuy kept in touch with his human descendants, though they didn’t know his true nature, of course. Joe did not chide Chuy for the elaborate fictions he fed them about their kinship. Chuy seemed to need the contact.
“That leaves Manfred or Bobo,” Fiji said. “They’re both good men.”
Quinn stood. “I’ll go talk to them after I shower. I owe both of you for your kindness to my son.”
Mr. Snuggly raised his head and said, “Good-bye, big man.”
Quinn seemed taken aback. “Well . . . good-bye, little brother.” He shook his head and left.
“Joe, do you think this can work?”
“I hope so,” Joe said. “This town seems to have adopted a child.”
As he walked back to his apartment, looking forward to his shower, he was still thinking about the hard life Quinn had had, and the loss of the female Tijgerin.
Diederik was motherless, and his greatly accelerated growth rate had deprived him of a childhood. Yet the boy had always impressed Joe as being cheerful and willing and intelligent. For a moment, Joe almost resented Chuy’s odd attachment to humans that made Diederik’s boarding with them very unlikely. It would have been nice to have someone young around the place. He smiled to himself. It hadn’t escaped his notice that Quinn had automatically assumed that Diederik would be attracted to a woman rather than a man. Well, he was probably right. Joe hadn’t gotten any vibe that said otherwise, though a boy so young sometimes didn’t know his own nature.
Joe wondered if Diederik’s mother, Tijgerin, had really been the last female weretiger.
If so, Diederik was the end of the line. If he couldn’t find another female, weretigers were extinct. For most of his life, Quinn must have assumed that he was the last one, and now he had a son. Joe hoped that Diederik would be even luckier and find a mate who lived.
The death of the woman the night before did not overly trouble Joe. It was done now. Past mending. He was not going to lament over it or ask God to smite Diederik.
And that was one reason he was in Midnight.
36
By the time lunch rolled around, there was a small crowd gathered in Home Cookin. Olivia was indulging herself with an open-faced roast beef sandwich. She cut the pieces very small and chewed them deliberately. Her fellow Midnighters were gathered around the table, and she smiled at them all. The action of the night before had left her feeling pleasantly relaxed. Aside from the absent weretigers and Teacher, perpetually on duty at Gas N Go, everyone else was there, though Madonna and Grady were in the kitchen and Dillon was at football practice.
Manfred came in later than the others, looking flushed and excited. Since he was normally the palest person in town (except, of course, for Lemuel), this was a notable occurrence.