better leave us alone.”
“I can’t believe you just said that,” I said.
“Neither can I,” Mom said. “Anyway, Jack, what kind of safety can we have if our neighbors are killing each other?”
Turk didn’t say anything.
“In any case, there’s nothing I can do that will make this situation better,” Dad said.
And he got up and went to work.
Turk went to school. I could tell she was furious with Dad.
That was a strange day. The house was absolutely quiet. We were waiting for something, and we didn’t know what.
Turk came home, and brought me some assignments.
“Weird stuff at Vlad,” she said. “I don’t know what. Feels bad.”
“Did you see Gregor or Ileana?” I asked.
“She was around, he wasn’t,” Turk said. “And your buddy Justin was following her around like a lost puppy. You know, jenti are jerks. All of ’em.”
And she went upstairs.
It wasn’t half an hour later that the doorbell rang. Just because I felt like I could do it, I walked all the way from the couch to the door, and opened it.
Gregor nodded to me.
“Have I your permission to enter?” he said in high jenti. “Rest beneath the shadow of my wings,” I said, and let him in.
He gave a half smirk at my words and said, “May I see your cousin?”
Now, here was a challenge. Going upstairs. What an adventure.
I hobbled up the first few steps.
“May I help you?” Gregor said.
“I got it,” I said. “Thanks.”
Turk’s ladder was down.
“Turk, you have company,” I said. “Gregor.”
“What do you want?” came Turk’s voice.
And Gregor went up.
Up went the ladder.
I went back downstairs.
It was strange to think of Gregor in my house. We never saw each other except at Vlad and the mill.
From the living room, Mom and I listened to the sounds of their voices.
“It sounds like they’re fighting,” Mom said.
“That’s what they do,” I said.
After a few minutes, Turk called down, “Cuz, get up here.”
“Excuse me,” I said to Mom, slowly pushing myself onto my feet. “I think I have to go defend Turk’s honor.”
As I went up the stairs again, Gregor whisked past me, bowed to Mom, and opened the door.
“Safety to all here,” he said. “Please to stay inside tonight. There will be fires.”
He slammed out the door.
Turk gave me a look of pure anger as I crept up the ladder.
“He marked me,” she said. “Without my permission. He just came up here and said, ‘I have been meaning to do this,’ reached out his damn claws, and put something on my cheek. Do I have a mark?”
“No,” I said. “It’s invisible to anybody but a jenti. Anyway, so what? Ileana marked me without my permission. It saved me from being beaten to a bloody pulp by Gregor.”
“Yeah, I know all about that,” Turk said. “But here’s the difference, Cuz, nice and simple so you can understand it: That kind of thing might have worked last winter, but now it doesn’t. So why would he do it?”
“Why don’t you ask him?” I said.
“I did. I said, ‘What the hell was that about?’ He said I’d marked him already. Some damn fool thing like that. Then I told him to get out, and he left.”
She started pacing back and forth.
“He was just trying to claim me, that’s all. Claim me like I’m his property. I’m nobody’s thing, damn it.
“He said we’d open the center on Halloween just to show my stuff,” Turk went on. “Said he’d go to jail if he had to. I told him I don’t need anybody to go to jail for me. Especially him. I do not need anybody.”
“Lucky you,” I said. “Listen, next time you have to vent, you come to me. I’m not quite up for all this climbing yet.”
And I got up and went back to my couch.
That was a quiet night. Inside the house, I mean. Turk didn’t come down to dinner, and none of the three of us had much to say.
Outside, though, we heard sirens rushing up and down the streets, and through the windows we saw dull red glares come into the sky, flare up, and die. The smell of smoke came in through the closed doors.
Once, not far off, we heard wolves howling.
“They should impose a curfew,” Dad said once.
“Who’s going to enforce it?” I said.
If the Mercians and Burgundians were going to fight it out for control of New Sodom, it would take more than the gadje of New Sodom PD to stop them.
But they weren’t fighting. Not yet. Not quite. Each side was testing