Wild Country (The World of the Others #2)- Anne Bishop Page 0,67

was slender, had almond-shaped eyes and straight black hair cut very short. The other man was burly and dark-skinned, with curly black hair.

“Can I help you?” Jesse asked.

“Please,” the slender man said with a gentle smile. “The man at the train station said we should come here and talk to Jesse Walker.”

Nicolai had sent them to the store? “I’m Jesse.”

He looked at the wrist she still held. “You are Intuit?”

“Yes.”

The man’s smile warmed with relief, a response typical of someone who was also an Intuit—especially someone who had had reason to keep some things hidden because he’d lived among people who would not have welcomed an Intuit’s abilities. “We arrived on the train and are hoping to become citizens of your fine town.”

Then why didn’t Nicolai direct you to the mayor’s office to talk to Tolya?

She knew why. Nicolai had sent them to her for the same reason someone had relaxed the travel restrictions as soon as those men said they were coming to Bennett. Because of the children. Knowing that her Intuit ability was sensing other people, Nicolai had sent these people to the store so that she could get a feel for who they were before he contacted the terra indigene who would make a decision about whether the men lived or died.

Out of the corner of her eye, Jesse saw the tight-lipped, disapproving stiffness in two of the Simple Life women who stared at the newcomers. She also noticed Lila step up, ready to give a bouncy welcome. The men didn’t bother Jesse, but the children did, especially the girl who had a disturbingly vacant stare.

Before she could frame a question about why two men had four young children, Joshua Painter walked into the store, swung around the men, and focused on the children. His right hand was covered in that leather glove with the Panther claws, and the look in his eyes made Jesse’s skin crawl.

Eyes. Jesse looked at the girl who was Joshua’s main focus, then looked back at him. Gods above and below, they both had green eyes with an outer ring of gray.

Virgil Wolfgard and Tolya Sanguinati walked into the store, forcing the strangers to move forward, caught between them and Joshua.

Virgil sniffed the air and growled, “That little female. She’s …” He looked at Tolya, whose lips pulled back, revealing fangs.

The men put their arms around the children, protective. And the children clung to the men, although one of the boys growled at Virgil before turning away and pressing his face against the man who held him.

“We don’t want any trouble,” the burly man said, sounding nervous.

“Then explain why you came here with a Wolf, a Hawk, a Coyote … and a sweet blood,” Tolya snarled.

Jesse swayed. The girl with the vacant stare was a cassandra sangue, a blood prophet?

Joshua lowered himself to his heels and balanced on the balls of his feet. He stared at the green-eyed girl, and his face took on an expression that wasn’t as disturbingly blank as the girl’s but was too similar for comfort, as if he had fallen into some kind of trance. “Sees too much, knows too much.”

“She’s mute,” the slender man said, looking at Jesse in a silent appeal for understanding. “We think the cause is emotional trauma.”

“Tell the truth, feel the belt,” Joshua whispered.

Virgil snarled—a sound filled with hate.

“Why did you come to Bennett?” she asked quickly.

“We are a mixed family,” the slender man said. “We had hoped that, in a town where terra indigene and humans lived together, we might be accepted. We hoped our children would find others of their kind to help them, teach them the things that we cannot.”

Jesse focused on the men. They were parents by heart if not by blood, but if the men didn’t give the right answers, they wouldn’t get out of the store alive.

Then a woman hurried into the store wearing a deputy’s star pinned to her shirt. Thank the gods, the human deputy had arrived. Jesse felt fear and hope rise in equal measure along with the certainty that this woman would be the deciding factor in what happened to these men and children. But she could do her part to help. After all, Nicolai had sent them here to talk to her.

“The children?” she asked.

The slender man brushed a hand over the brown feathers that covered the other girl’s head—a head that had been covered with neatly combed and braided brown hair when they’d walked into the store. “Orphans. Abandoned chicks