Twelve Sides

Kyell Gold

Illustrated by Rukis Croax

24 Carat Words

Contents

Copyright

Introduction

1. Slowing Down

2. The Elusion of Truth

3. Turbulence

4. Sinful

5. Fatherless

6. Paths

7. Challenge

8. Festival

9. Price Tag

10. Maxon’s Decision

11. Under Pressure

12. Goodbye

Acknowledgments

About the Author

About the Illustrator

Also by Kyell Gold

Copyright © 2016 by Kyell Gold

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

ISBN: 978-0-9972794-1-2

Created with Vellum

Introduction

In late 2014 I started a Patreon site and included as one of the goals that if we reached a certain funding level, I would write a bonus story every month centered on a side character from one of my existing works, and I would let the patrons of a certain tier choose the character. That worked pretty well until the end of the year, when people started running out of ideas and I chose one character (Maxon’s Decision), then wrote an entirely new weird SF story based on word prompts (Under Pressure) and finally concluded 2015 with a followup story about a main character that was themed for ending the run of side character stories (Goodbye).

Whether or not you’ve read the stories they come from, you should be able to enjoy these dozen stories. I’ve written a short introduction to each one that explains what book it’s based on and how bad the spoilers in the story are for that book.

Another goal level was that Rukis would illustrate the bonus stories if they reached a certain level, and this was reached for some of the stories. I’ve included those illustrations where they exist.

Thanks to all of you who supported the Patreon, and to all of you who are seeing these stories for the first time. I had a blast writing them.

-Ky, February 2016

1

Slowing Down

From the pages of Out of Position comes a story of Coach Samuelson, Dev’s head coach, built around one of the main interactions they have in that book. Minor spoilers for Out of Position in this.

“Coach.”

I raised my head from the desk in my office in Chevali, still thinking about the flight and hotel plans proposed by Kerny for the Aventira game. Mikilios, the linebackers coach for the Firebirds, a cougar hired years before I got here this season, was standing in the doorway. “You see the Internet?”

“What, all of it?” I glanced down at my open laptop. “Just the parts with porn. Don’t tell Charlene.”

He didn’t laugh. Bad sign. “Search ‘Devlin Miski,’” he told me, and sat down, his tail curling into a circle and hanging there.

“Is this about that report we got that he assaulted someone last night in Hilltown?” My fingers opened a browser tab, searched.

“Not him. Kingston.” Mikilios waggled his finger at the computer. “But no.”

I got it right away, the rumors that he’s gay. Some blog, a strenuous public denial from his agent, and a slow sports news week. “Fuck,” I said. “Is he?”

Mikilios shrugged. “Who cares?”

I exhaled. “And why didn’t Vince tell me about this? Fine. Get him in here.” As he got up I said, “Wait. How’s he doing?”

The cougar looked at me and shrugged again. “Good.”

A month ago, I’d have had to ask him what that meant. Now I knew he thought highly of Miski, enough that it was worth keeping him, so I waved the cougar out of the office and thought about number 57. Big tiger who’d come to us from Hilltown, where they didn’t know what to do with him. Cornerback in college, but too bulky to do it in the UFL; the game would never slow down enough for him to catch up to it. I sympathized with that. Mikilios thought he could be a good linebacker, and he’d been pressed into service when Corey Mitchell got his shoulder gored. I hadn’t noticed much dropoff in our linebacker play, and Mikilios hadn’t come to me to tell me I needed to call Rodriguez about getting another linebacker, so I assumed all was okay. I’d been meaning to make time to talk to Miski, but it was way down on my priority list and it hadn’t happened yet. And I was going to call him to find out what happened in Hilltown, but I’d only heard about it last night when the team’s media liaison called me.

I stared at the open doorway and thought about him, wondering whether the game was slowing down with him. It was a tough league for rookies.

* * *

When I joined the Port City Devils, a bushy-tailed rookie only just old enough to hoist a celebratory beer, the veteran quarterback was a white wolf named Ketka Loqit who’d been in the league nine years (though only two of those with the Devils). He told me a lot of things that turned out to be true (never trust the Port City media, immediately forget the last play and focus on the next, never be without a condom) and a couple that turned out to be not so true (all rabbits are conniving shitheads, all foxes are great lays, no coach cares about you more than about his job). But the one thing he told me that was truer and more valuable than any other was this: first the game slows down, then you slow down.

All the rookies who make it in the league will tell you the same thing. When you first get onto a UFL field, the game comes at you with blinding speed. Everyone in the pros is faster, stronger, better than in college. It takes you a few games to acclimate to it, sometimes months. But eventually you get used to the speed of the pro game, you become part of it, and next year when the new crop of rookies comes in, you watch their glassy eyes as you rush toward them.

I set a passing record at Dorvaris College, took them to bowl games in two consecutive years, and was drafted by Port City in the second round of the draft. Scouts had questions about whether my success was due to the system, about whether my mechanics would work in the NFL. A couple draft previews said I could be a starting QB; most said I would be a competent backup. The Devils took a chance on me—probably because I nailed the interview with them and because my coach at Dorvaris knew the offensive coordinator on the Devils and put in a good word for me.

In the fourth game of the season, Loqit went down with a concussion and I got my chance. I went into the game against the Tornadoes thinking I was prepared because I’d done well in practice.

It wasn’t a complete disaster; a couple of the plays worked as designed, and with some nifty running from our white-tail receiver after I dropped a perfect spiral into his arms, I even got a touchdown. The Port City media fixated on the two interceptions and the two sacks, with the four major columnists evenly split 2-2 on whether I was a complete bust or should get at least two more games to prove I wasn’t a complete bust.

“It’ll slow down,” Loqit told me, but it never did. I was the one who was too slow, my career set before it had even started.

Oh, I finished out the season, and most of the next one before a 300-pound boar rolled on my ankle. I survived because I studied film every night, including weekends, because I was desperate to unlock the secret of slowing down the game. As I learned the game, it did slow down a little, just enough for me to realize that the problem was not and would never be in growing accustomed to the game. The problem was that I knew the game too well, that I waited an extra half-second to be certain of what I was looking at, and that half-second closed passing lanes or got me sacked. One time I’ll never forget is when a big lion safety, guy named Kat, knocked me down and said, “Thanks for waiting for me,” as we were getting up.

I couldn’t break that habit. What I could do, the reason coaches kept me around, was that the guys would listen to me. They’d play their hearts out for me and often they’d buy me that one extra second to make the right decision. I finished my time at Port City with a record of 15-11 as a starter, something I’m still proud of.

Then I went to Hilltown and shepherded a mediocre team to three years where our best finish was 8-8 and our worst was 6-10, never good enough for the playoffs, never bad enough for a high draft pick. Eventually they cleaned house, brought in a high-priced leopard who could sling the ball the way I couldn’t (he was an asshole; I got almost nightly calls from my former teammates for a while saying, “if I break Logan’s leg, will you come back?” or variations on that theme).

I stayed in touch with Loqit, too, now retired, and he got me the backup job in Kerina, a place he’d been before. I impressed the guys there, and that’s where I got my championship ring, in a game I spent entirely on the bench.

This one fox, Alan Marquez, was the quarterbacks coach for Kerina, but at the end of my seventh year in the league, he was promoted to offensive coordinator. He asked if I would be interested in taking over his old job. “The guys like you, and more important, they respect you,” he said.

When I hesitated, he told me the team was going to let me go after the season anyway. I discussed it with my fiancée Charlene: I could definitely kick around the league for a couple more years, but at this point in my career the game was never going to slow down; only I would. The pay for a quarterbacks coach wasn’t great—not even as much as I’d made as a rookie—but we had some money set aside and Charlene had just finished law school, so she’d be starting with a practice. “The key,” she said, “is whether you think you want your next career to be in coaching. If you want to do that, might as well start here.”

So I did. And in coaching I found myself more comfortable than I’d ever been on the field. I was advising young guys who could do the things I no longer could, and in some cases had never been able to. That first year I learned so much more about the game that it reminded me of my rookie season, the dizzying sense that I was diving into a pool with no bottom. But unlike on the field, in the film room the game did slow down. I got a handle on what my guys were doing wrong and where they needed to improve, and slowly I started making a difference.

My second season, we got to the championship game and lost; the next year we won. I got offers from several teams and took an offensive coordinator position at Highbourne. Didn’t lead to any championships, but it did lead to my first head coaching position, with the Aventira Chimaeras.

I had a reputation as a players’ coach, whatever that means—I guess in contrast to guys like Kewan, who I coached for at Gateway, who was a real strategy guy. My guys there used to complain about him, but they also respected him. Me, though, they loved. I had natural bonds with the quarterbacks, but as I coached the rest of the groups, I got close to the linemen and the wideouts as well. I had a talent for keeping the guys happy, making sure the wideouts all got their touches, balancing the attack so the QBs got their stats, oh, and also matching up against the defenses we faced.

The trick with Aventira was learning to reach out to the defensive guys. As a former QB, they didn’t trust me right away, but I spent a lot of time with them. My defensive coordinator was a good guy and helped a lot with the transition.

We did well there for a few years. Made it to the playoffs four out of seven years, won a couple of the games one year and got to the championship, only to lose to Port City. After that, Rasim Sharif, the owner, told me they were going with a different philosophy and I opted to move on rather than stick around and try to adapt.

So I kicked around broadcasting for a year, but I couldn’t stay away from my friends on the sidelines. And yeah, I was two and five in the playoffs, but when Yerba canned their coach, I interviewed for that job and got it. A year later I brought over my defensive coordinator, and he really helped with the transition.

What didn’t help was the general manager. I’d tell him the kind of personnel we needed, and he would go out and get a bunch of guys who were talented, but couldn’t do the kinds of things I needed them to, or (more often) couldn’t do anything. We lost and lost, and after a couple seasons of that, the players didn’t trust me anymore. Four years of this and I finally got fired for the first time after a 4-12 season.

It sucked. It ate at my heart because I knew I didn’t deserve it, but mostly because the team was a great bunch of guys. They deserved better, and I felt like I’d failed them.

My defensive coordinator was fired as well, and he and I talked for a bit about the one head coaching job there was: the Chevali Firebirds. “It’s a lousy team,” Lew said. He’s a coyote, canny and thoughtful—one of those X’s and O’s guys. “But if you turn it around…what a job, huh?”

“You think we could?” It’d be him and me for sure; I’d told him that.

“Any team with Gerrard Marvell has potential. On offense…no idea. But if anyone can turn Aston into a productive guy, you can.”

“Shit.” I’d followed Aston York the three years he’d been in the league, and the book on him was pretty straightforward: bring pressure from his left side and make him scramble, get him uncomfortable, and he’d make mistakes. But even as Lew said the words, I was thinking, if I just teach him to read the safeties, if we dial up some slants for him and put in a hot route he can dump off to, well, he can make those short passes.

I interviewed. Told John Corcoran that I thought he had a talented group, that they were players, some of whom I’d known in Yerba, who responded better to a coach who tried to relate to them than a drill sergeant. I outlined the plan Lew and I had talked about, for York and a dozen other parts of the team, and I told him I would see a championship banner flying over his stadium.

The fox gave me a wry smile at that. “If you can accomplish that, Samuelson, then…” He stopped at looked at me. “Wait. You really believe that.”

I kept my ears up and my eyes determined. “I do.”

I got the job, and brought Lew with me. I’d been coaching for almost fourteen years, and I thought I knew what to expect, but this Miski thing—this threw me.

* * *

Miski was smart; I could see that right away. I asked him about the Hilltown thing and he stammered his way through an innocuous answer. “My friend works for the Dragons now, so he came down to say hi. And this guy, Brian, he, uh, he and my friend used to date but they broke up, and now he thinks we're going out. So he came down to spy on us, and Fisher caught him.”

Mikilios leaned forward. “What about “property damage”?”

Miski inhaled and breathed out slowly. “He had a video camera. Fisher took it from him.”

He seemed sincere; at least, my nose said he was, and I trusted my nose. “Christ Wolf. All right, we'll talk to Fisher. So far, this asshole hasn't filed assault charges, at least.” I don’t want to ask if he’s gay, not outright, so I just gave him my best ‘you better not fuck up again’ look. “That's the whole truth?”

He said it was, and so we let him go. I told Mikilios to close the door. “You think he’s telling the truth?”

The cougar eyed the chair in front of my desk, and I could tell he was wondering how long this conversation would be. Finally he drops into the chair and lets his tail hang down. “About the camera, yes.”

“What about the rest of it?”

“What do you think?” His expression doesn’t give away anything.

I exhaled and lowered my voice. “I think that a gay guy terrified of being exposed wouldn’t tell his position coach and his head coach if he was afraid it would cost him his job.”

“Would it?” Mikilios raised an eyebrow.

“I meant what I said when I told him I don’t give a fuck what he does outside the game. Is he worth keeping? I can tell Rodriguez to see what other linebackers we could get.”

The cougar taps his claws on my desk, but only for a second. “He is worth keeping,” he said. “Other linebackers in the league might be better, but none who are available, none who know our system, none who will let Marvell lead them. Miski is the best we have.”

“Until Mitchell comes back.”

Mikilios didn’t reply to that. I raised my eyebrows. “Really?”

He waved a paw. “Possible. He improves every week. Marvell likes him more, means he plays better too.”

Improving every week. I thought back to my own rookie season and about the guys who gave me a chance. “Is he working hard?”

“Hard as anyone.”

“All right.” I needed this off my plate. “I don’t like people lying, but if it turns out he is gay, I understand why he wouldn’t tell us. We’ll keep him unless he makes it impossible.”

Mikilios got up and gave me a smile. But as he closed the door behind him, I couldn’t help but feel like this game, too, was moving too quickly for me. This thing with Miski wasn’t over, and I wasn’t sure I’d done the right thing at all.

* * *

I dreamed that night that I’m back on the field, only I’m running a team of guys from all through my history: Lew is one of the guards, Loqit is a running back. They’re all looking at me for the play and I don’t know the playbook, so I bark out a couple words that I remember are one of our plays. We all line up, and then I see that the defenders are all scaly monsters with glistening fangs. They’re huge, and the field is muddy and slippery. If I yell for the snap, they’ll attack us. But I can’t just sit and wait. We’ll get a penalty.

I call ‘Hut!’ and my longtime center Rigby shoots the ball back into my paws. I drop back to pass and go through my progressions. Down the field, a wide receiver falls as a monster tackles him. It bites his arm off. In front of me, my friends are screaming, bleeding, dying. There, across the middle, a rabbit darts. I can get him the ball. I cock back my arm to throw, I let it go—

I’m tackled and gleaming teeth frame a maw inches from my face. Somehow I see the ball land in the rabbit’s paws, but when he cuts to go up the field, another monster is there and its jaws sink into his legs.

I woke up in a cold sweat. Charlene’s paw was on my shoulder. “Hey, honey.” She nuzzled my ear. “You okay? You were yelling.”

“Yeah.” I closed my eyes and panted. “The Godzilla dream again.”

“Wow. It’s been years, hasn’t it?”

I nodded and leaned into her, breathing in the warm scent. My heart slowed. But the feeling stayed with me all the way to Aventira for the game that week.

I kept an eye on Miski from a distance. Last thing I wanted was for him to think I was suspicious of him, for that to affect his play in any way. I asked Mikilios to report back to me on anything that happened.

It was a habit of mine to take time to meet with the guys one on one for lunches, breakfasts, five-minute chats after workouts. There was tension in the team, I knew, but nobody I talked to mentioned the issue, not Omba who played next to Miski on the line, not Colluti the offensive tackle, not Norton the safety. And when I circled back with Mikilios, the cougar assured me that nothing was boiling over. “Some argument good,” he said in his laconic way. That didn’t change the fact that every conversation I had with anyone on the team left me picking through it afterwards for clues about whether he was or wasn’t okay with Miski being gay—maybe.

Two days later, Miski himself came to tell me about the tension. I liked that; it showed he cared about the team. I told him to go out with Fisher and think about how he’s going to handle this distraction, and he went. My sense of being in over my head grew stronger, so I fought it off by focusing as much as I could on my work, getting the team ready for our Aventira game. That didn’t get rid of the feeling that events were ramping up, spinning out of control far off beyond where I could see them, but at least it kept me distracted.

But that night Charlene reminded me about Tony Calhoun. “I haven’t thought about him in…” I shook my head and pushed my dinner plate aside. “How long’s it been?”

“Sixteen years,” she said. “I tried to look him up in case you wanted to talk to him about Miski, but he’s not easy to find. If he’s even still alive.”

“Okay, but he was…he didn’t get along with the guys as well…” I reach back sixteen years to my first year at Highbourne as the offensive coordinator, remembering now the big bear, soft-spoken and reserved, and the guys telling me they thought he was looking at them like that, claiming he was a distraction. How I’d talked to Calhoun and he hadn’t denied it or anything, just said he didn’t mess with any of the guys and if he mentioned his boyfriend, how could that be a problem? The head coach then had a talk with him and he was released at the end of that season. A couple guys called me to ask what was up with him and I was honest with them, told them he never denied being gay and it made the rest of his line uncomfortable. “Where’d he end up playing?”

“After Highbourne? Never got another job. He just faded away.”

“Well, shit.” Sixteen years of guilt dropped onto me. “Look, he was a distraction. If I’d hidden that from the guys…the ones I talked to…they’d have found out, and I’d never have…” I took a breath. “One of those guys who called about him ended up hiring me in Yerba later. You think that happens if I’d lied to him about Calhoun?”

A sketchy connection, a tenuous defense, and Charlene the lawyer doesn’t shred it because she also loves me. “You lived in a different time. Nobody would fault you for what you did then. The question is: what are you going to do now?”

“Shit,” I said again. “He might not even be gay, you know? It’s all rumors.”

“Okay.” She slid her chair around next to mine and rested a paw on my shoulder. “But even if he’s not, someone will be. Times are changing, Vern. Are you going to change with them?”

“What should I do?” I looked up at her hazel eyes.

She laughed. “Oh, no. I don’t get to run your team, remember?”

“This isn’t—I’m asking you for help.”

She kissed me. “You’ve got to do what you think is right. I’m not going to tell you what’s right.”

“Okay, then.” I exhaled. “Do you think a gay guy can be a successful football player?”

Her eyebrows rose. “Do you?”

“Dammit!” I pushed my chair back and stood, pacing around the dining room. “I don’t know! It shouldn’t be my decision to make. It’s a…It’s not just my team, it’s the whole league, it’s society, it’s the world! Why do I have to figure out this thing? Ask me how to beat Aventira’s Cover Two and I’ll come up with six different schemes we can run. Ask me how to compensate when Jaws sprains his ankle and I can tell you the three players who might take his place and which one gives us the best chance against which team. Who the fuck cares if one of them is gay?”

I stalked back and forth as I ranted, while Charlene kept her paws on the table and her eyes on me. When I stopped, she inclined her head to the side. “Well, it sounds like that’s your answer, then, isn’t it?”

My tail stopped its switching back and forth. “Is it really that easy?”

“Look,” she said, getting up to hold my paws. “I know that you think everything has to be complicated. You live in a complicated world inside of a game where everyone is trying to outguess and outsmart you.”

“So do you,” I pointed out.

“I do. And sometimes you find that people aren’t playing a game, that what they want is really very simple. You can try to outguess them, but you’d only be outguessing yourself.”

I touched my nose to her and then kissed her. “I knew there was a reason I married you,” I said.

When we broke the kiss, her eyes sparkled. “Only one?”

My paws slid down her ample curves and pulled them against me. “Maybe only one at a time.”

* * *

Charlene had settled me down, but it proved a lot harder to put her advice into effect than it had been just to listen to it. I had my strategy set, but I didn’t know what the rest of the team was going to be doing in the meantime. Should I talk to everyone again? Should I tell them that the Firebirds would be proud to have the first openly gay player? What if Miski wasn’t gay? What if he was just the target of rumors? Wouldn’t be the first time for that either; Aston’s been featured in more than one photo manip on the Internet. If I gave a speech to the team in support of a guy who isn’t even gay, it might make things worse, might make people think he is.

So I kept quiet, and Thursday and Friday my mind was absorbed by practice. I talked to Aston, to Ford and Rodo the wideouts, to Ferrix the backup QB, and to Lopez, one of the safeties, as well as Delacruz, a big bear on the defensive line. None of them said anything about Miski. Aston was focused on the game, but I got the others to open up about their lives a little.

It helped remind me that everyone has problems. Omba’s grandmother, Ford’s pregnant girlfriend, Ferrix’s friend with the investment scheme (seriously, do any of these guys listen in the rookie seminars?). I was thankful again for Charlene, whose idea of an ideal life meshed almost exactly with mine. We neither of us wanted cubs (a football team is plenty for me to handle, and she’s just not interested) and loved to keep busy. When one of us was having trouble, like me then or her with that damn Renkage Industries case two years before, the other always found time to be supportive.

So I got through Friday thinking that we were going to make it, that this whole Miski thing was going to blow over. Then as everyone was showering and I was on the phone with one of the media guys who wanted to talk about Miski (and who hadn’t given up two days before) basically telling him there’s no story, I heard a commotion from the locker room. “Sorry, Jeff, I’ll have to get back to you,” I said.

“Let me listen in!” he said, but I’d already hung up.

Outside in the locker room, I walked in on the team standing in a semicircle around Miski, with Kingston standing beside him. Partchan, big bear who plays defensive tackle, was just saying something about Miski checking him out in the shower, and Charm, the big stallion kicker, was giving him shit about it.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out what had happened, which was good because it meant I could get a handle on it. As Miski said that he just wanted to prove himself on the field and Marvell backed him up, the smell in the room and the tension in everyone there left me with no doubt that Miski had just come out to the whole team.

And it was my move. If I didn’t do anything, if I made the wrong decision, I risked losing the team. They wouldn’t respect me or like me anymore, they wouldn’t play for me, and I’d be done here in Chevali before I even had a chance to start. We were heading in the right direction and this could unravel everything.

The guys were paying attention to Marvell right then, so I pushed my way toward him specifically and said, “You wanna run this team?” He deferred to me as I knew he would, and with the attention of everyone, I told Miski, “My office, five minutes.”

He was scared, I could see that, but he held it in and nodded. I turned to the rest of the team with little idea of what I was going to say, but I remembered what Charlene had drawn out of me and I just started talking. I started with Marvell, because he’d been right.

“Marvel's got it dead on. In this building, out on that field, we are a team. We have to be able to trust each other out there.” I was looking out at the field, and then pointed at the exit. “Out there, I don't care. But I'll tell you, I've been on a couple championship teams, and what they had in common was a group of guys who believed in themselves, believed in each other, and played together, as a team. I've told you that before, but you haven't been tested. This'll show what kind of character you have.”

I gauged their reactions. They were nodding, quiet, accepting. The veterans agreed and the rookies were listening. Nobody challenged me, though Smith, the rookie fox corner, wouldn’t meet my eyes, just raised his fingers and played with the cross around his neck. “Now, the rest of you hit the showers. See you in a couple hours at the airport.”

On the way back to my office, I found Marvell, with Mikilios standing next to him. “You tell me if there are any problems. Any. You got it?”

They both nodded, and I went in to deal with Miski.

I closed the door and left him standing in front of my desk as I walked around it. Sat down, let him sweat a little more. I wanted to chew him out for lying to me, but I remembered what Charlene had said, and I thought about Calhoun, and most importantly, I took a good look at Miski. He was definitely scared, but he was putting a hell of a brave face on it. His tail and ears were up and he was looking right at me. So I let him see a little of my exasperation. “Fuckin' hell, Miski, I am runnin' out of linebackers.”

Not strictly true. Mikilios and I have a list of three guys who could step in and fill his spot, starting with Zillar the coyote. None of them would be as good, though.

“Yes, sir.”

I picked up a pencil and chewed on it. Time to let him know he’s not screwed. “You feel like you can play Sunday?”

He reacted like I’d flipped a switch. Energy crackled through him and he jumped forward, putting his paws on the edge of my desk, eyes bright, ears perked, and a huge grin on his face. “Hell, yes!”

That was all I needed to know. I matched his grin. “Hell, yes you can,” I said. “We'll deal with this other crap after the game.”

Get his mind off the issue, reassure him he’s still my guy: that’s what I was thinking. It worked, or at least it appeared to.

I called Charlene before calling Jeff back. “Hey, hon,” I said. “It blew up today, but just in the team.”

“You handle it okay?” She didn’t have to ask what I was talking about.

“I think so. I guess we’ll see.”

“Tell me more from Aventira.”

“Love you.”

“Love you too.”

It wasn’t until we were getting on the plane and I was thinking about her again that I thought to text her, BTW, he is.

She replied a moment later. So?

I thought about that. Gonna take care of him, I sent back.

Good, she wrote.

* * *

Was it? Had I done the right thing? I weathered Saturday and Sunday morning, the flutters in my stomach dying down as I was consumed with game prep. The ritual of game day took over my life and I didn’t even think about Miski’s situation until I walked out onto the field and saw the signs up there in the crowd, HOMO-SKI and shit like that.

In football, you know right away if you did the right thing. The play works or it doesn’t; you complete the pass or you throw an interception; you get a first down or get sacked. But in life, sometimes it takes weeks or months or years. Sometimes you never know.

I watched Miski come out onto the field and let Mikilios take care of him. He saw the signs; that was clear. He didn’t react more than with just a pause and a look around, and then he went out again. But he wasn’t right on the field, that was clear too. He was slower to react than normal, and he misjudged a play badly, then lined up out of position. On the next series, he was still preoccupied. When he missed another assignment, Marvell sent him to the bench.

I let him sit. I had a game to manage. On the way into the locker room at halftime, though, I grabbed him out of the line of players. He mumbled an apology and I snapped at him. “Don’t apologize. What I need to know is if you can take this. Because if you can't, you better hang up your uni and go home right now. We'll buy out your contract. It ain't gonna get any better, and it sure as hell might get worse.”

Then he said, “What would Tony Calhoun have done?” and I had to hide my surprise. How the hell did he know about Calhoun?

But I told him how Calhoun wasn’t the only one with a secret to hide, and after answering his question, got back to my point. “I need guys on this team can play football. I can't make the other team stop talking. I can't get rid of those signs. I can't even make everyone on my team like you. What I can do, the only thing I can do, is put a team on the field that can play the game. So if you're gonna play, let me know. If not...” I looked to where the team was waiting for my halftime speech. “We got someone who can stand on the field in your position. Believe me when I say I'd rather have you out there. Corey's a little better, but the dropoff after you...”

I let that sink in. I gave him halftime to think about it and then went in to rouse the guys, to tell them that being down 0-3 wasn’t nothing we couldn’t get over, and I forgot about Miski.

Until we came back out after halftime. I found him on the bench then. “Well? Am I sending you in?”

He gave me a weird look and said, “Where’s section one-sixteen?”

That was a new one on me. “You need to know that?”

“Put me in,” he said, “but where’s one-sixteen?”

I coached in this stadium for years. I point out the section to him and his eyes go right there. “Don’t go climbing up there,” I told him, and walked back out to tell Ferrix what play to call out to Aston.

Sometimes, like I said, it takes a while before you know you did the right thing. Sometimes it happens in an instant.

Miski went out and played well on the first snap. Then on the second one, he leapt in front of a pass, grabbed it out of the air, and charged down the field. They tackled him almost in the end zone—it wasn’t quite a touchdown, but we got the ball on their three.

As Miski came back to the sideline, I caught his eye. “Nice job,” I told him, and he just smiled back at me, full of confidence, full of life.

Not so bad, old wolf, I thought. Maybe this coaching game is slowing down for you after all.

2

The Elusion of Truth

Henri, Niki’s roommate from Green Fairy, takes center stage in this story. Set before the events of the book, it delves into why the black rat became the way he is.

The moon had risen over the rooftops of Lutèce, burnishing the red clay and white marble alike with gleams of argent, but on this particular rooftop at the foot of the Butte Montmartre, the house to the west blocked most of her lights. Nearly invisible in the resultant shadow, a black rat in a dark tunic unbound a parcel and pulled a leather pouch from inside. He upended it over one paw and shook out five gold pieces and a letter. The gold he replaced in the pouch; the letter he carried to the edge of the roof where he could thrust it out into the light and the neat, educated scrawl resolved into words.

New Kestle, 8 November 1889

My dear brother,

The latest painting you sent was the most beautiful yet. I felt that at any moment, the fruit merchant might turn himself to look me in the eye and hold out an apple with a smile. I feel certain that you will soon be as successful as the Dutch fox you admire so, and I beg you accept these gold coins as payment for your work and investment in your future.

The New World continues to treat me well. There is no shortage of work for a seamstress in New Kestle. This month alone I have created dresses for…

There followed a list of names and establishments that meant nothing to Henri.

…and I have been told by trusted whisper that highly-placed officials have gotten word of my talents. By the time you receive this, I may be the lucky recipient of a commission from the governor himself! Wish me luck, fraton!

Outside of work, my life also proceeds well. Latour ceased his courtship under pressure from his family, who wished him to marry a wealthier bride. I have met a dear brown rat named Voulie, who says he does not care about the meanness of my work. He is the third son of a sugar plantationer north of town, but he is quite the genius with domestic fowl and says that his father would deed him a small plot of land on which to raise them. However, my work keeps me in the city, and I have not yet been convinced to give it up. Voulie does not believe that a seamstress may earn as much as a farmer of fowl, but I hold out hope that I may convince him in time.

Please write to me soon with more news of your education, and send more paintings of Paris. If you are able to send a picture of yourself, I would happily gaze upon your face once more, to pass the time until you have made your name and consent to join me here in the New World.

I have enclosed as well a small charm which will bring you luck, as Madame Lafitte says that you have discarded the one I sent you last year. Please do not discard this one, but carry it with you at all times!

With love,

Desirée

Henri frowned, then dug back into the pouch, his small paw and then wrist disappearing. Gold clinked and then he withdrew his arm. Patches of paint on his fur changed in the moonlight to uniform marks like spots on fruit, a smattering of decay to come, but he ignored these familiar patterns and examined the small fabric bundle that lay easily in his palm, tied with a black ribbon. He picked at the ribbon until his claws found the secret of the knot and unmade it, and the fabric lay open in his paw.

On it, four small items, two that shone sickly white, long and thin, which Henri suspected to be bones of some unfortunate woodland creature or bird, and two dark round stones. He rolled the stones with a claw and then bent his nose to sniff, but no scent other than the scent of the priestess herself—muskrat, or he was a noseless goat—reached him.

With a twist of his lip, he shook the small charms from his paw and listened for the clatter as they struck the pavement below. The fabric and ribbon he replaced in the pouch; the fabric would do well for testing paint, and the ribbon would find a use.

“Ho, Trounoir,” said Denis as he climbed down through the window. “Painting your monochromes again?”

“Nothing escapes your perception,” Henri replied, straightening. He climbed to his bunk in the small room. “I have used my invisible brushes to mix paint on my invisible palette, and you see here the result.” He brandished a paw as though showing off a canvas, and then produced a gold coin he had palmed and tossed it across the room to the ermine. “This should pay my debt to you.”

Denis caught it and grinned widely. “Such profit there is in invisible monochromes! If only the Dutch fox knew this, he would sleep all day.” He turned the coin over and bit it. “And how is your sister? Still earning your keep, I see.”

“Aye, still whoring in New Kestle. She may be called upon to service the governor soon, it seems. But her beau’s family objected to their union on account of her profession, so she is seeing a new rat, one with lofty aspirations of being a chicken farmer.”

“Brother-in-law to a chicken farmer!” The ermine stretched out upon his bunk, the upper one on the opposite side of the room, and gazed up at the ceiling. “And you thought you would never amount to anything in this world.”

“We may all be mistaken,” Henri said.

After a moment of silence, Denis spoke again, his tone more serious. “You could come to Pais-Bas with me, with this money. The art world there is more accustomed to styles such as yours.”

“You mean that you are accustomed to regular incomes such as mine, you great liar,” Henri said without malice. “No, there is something missing from my art and I shall not find it in Pais-Bas. It is here in Montmartre or it is nowhere.”

“Your art!” Denis shook his head and then turned his pointed muzzle toward the rat. “There is nothing in Montmartre that does not exist in Pais-Bas.”

“I have seen the Dutch models,” Henri replied. “The ones in this studio merely fail to inspire me; those would drive from me all desire to put color to canvas. I should be entirely dependent on the largesse of my sister.”

“Who,” Denis pointed out, “will soon add poultry farming to her list of trades. She can well afford to support you.”

“Go home to Pais-Bas,” Henri said. “I will travel there to see your gallery when it opens.”

* * *

Another of the gold pieces went to Master Corman, a grizzled badger who turned the piece over and nodded, then stowed it in his pouch. “You may pay in advance should you wish to stay beyond the end of the month,” he said.

“I will be leaving directly I find a suitable apartment,” Henri replied. “I thank you for your generosity, but I wish to earn my living from art, and I will no longer be able to afford the expense of your lodging and instruction.”

“And,” the badger said, looking keenly at him, “the Dutch fox is gone now.”

Henri shifted and did not reply. Master Corman huffed. “Well, well. It is no insult to me. That you recognize his talent is a good sign of your own.”

“If only I could approach it,” Henri muttered, daring to look up.

The badger smiled. “Your talent is greater than you think, but you must harness it. When you are inspired, your work is his equal, but the difference is that he works equally well when he is not inspired. Or, perhaps, he finds inspiration more easily.”

“I cannot invent inspiration any more than I can invent truth,” Henri said. “My only hope is to unearth it where it lies.”

“The true artist discovers truths everywhere.” Master Corman gestured to the window of his office, where rain beat a steady rhythm on the canvas awnings below, a grey curtain muting the white walls and red window ledges and yellow shutters of the building across the way. “The rain holds its own truth, the wind another, the clouds a third, the night a fourth.”

“None of those interest me.” Henri inspected his paws.

“Then go in search of your own, and God speed to you.” Master Corman slid the coin into a drawer of his desk and looked down to his papers.

Now that the moment had come, Henri’s resolve weakened. He could stay here, among other artists; he could chase truth from the comfort of the student garret. And who was to say he might not find it in another year? He lingered, and then he saw again in his head the words on another piece of paper, the one the Dutch fox had left him.

…it is better to live fully and to make mistakes, my friend, than to hide behind a shelter of prudence. Love is such a danger: you fear the leap, and indeed you may land badly and painfully, but the sensation of flying in between is like nothing in the world. There lies art; there lies truth. And I feel certain that there is a truth for all of us here. I go in search of my truth and I wish you all the luck in the world in your own search. Do not give up.

And the fox’s voice, slightly slurred from drink. “Many people think to achieve success simply by avoiding failure. This is an illusion. The only way to achieve success is to strive, to pursue, to capture it.”

Would he not be simply avoiding failure by staying? That is what the fox would tell him.

“Thank you for all you have done for me,” he said, and turned on his heel.

* * *

Henri slapped paint frantically onto the canvas, blinking in the bright sun. Four days of rain, four days of stuffy August heat and dim grey light and outlining, and finally the clouds had broken and the sun reached through his window to bring his painting blazing to life. He swirled his brushes around the palette and brought ochre to the rough plaster face of the bakery; dabbed farther into the brown to darken the paint and defined the shadows.

When he lifted his brush to examine his work, a voice sounded behind him. “Marvelous.”

Henri jumped and nearly overturned his stool. Denis stood there, a parcel under one arm, a grin on his mustelid muzzle. “How did you get in?” the rat demanded.

Denis groomed his whiskers. “Come now, you know from our time at Master Corman’s school that these nimble paws are a match for any door. Especially one without a lock.”

“You might have announced your presence.”

“I knocked for a full minute, cher colleague, and upon receiving no answer decided you must be either out or insensate, or perhaps dead. Were you dead, it would be my duty to inform your landlord, however unpleasant that cat might be. He did inform me that you rarely leave, so I suspected you were not out, and in that case I would have the pleasure of waking you to deliver your package.” He lowered the parcel toward the bundle of sheets on the small bed and then stopped with a little jump, lowering his voice to a whisper. “M. Dallon did say you shared the room, but do you not have your own bed? Do you take turns sleeping on the floor?”

“You needn’t whisper. Tourie won’t wake,” Henri said in his normal tone.

Denis inspected the sheets again and then craned his neck around the bed to get a better look. Henri brushed more paint onto the canvas and lost himself for a moment, looking up to see the ermine’s grin as he set the parcel at the easel’s base. “You scoundrel!” Denis said, keeping his voice low. “She’s unclothed. So you’ve found yourself a little mouse to share your bed, and an immodest one at that.”

“Thank you for the delivery of the parcel.” Henri glanced down at it and then back to his canvas. “I won’t trouble you with the details of my life.”

“Come, come,” cried the ermine next to his ear. “It has been nearly two years! You can’t spare an hour to drink with an old friend? I suspect that parcel contains enough to pay for it.”

Henri pointed to the window. “When the sun goes, I shall be free of this wretched painting. Then I will meet you at the Chemin du Cœur. You will find it easily; ask M. Dallon, if you can stand his company, or Mme. Beaumarchais at the boulangerie across the way.”

“It is good to see you have found the inspiration you sought.” Denis bowed. “I will see you at sunset, then. Bring your mouse if you like.” He paused. “M. Dallon also said you make infrequent use of the baths, and the smell bears him out on this point. Might I prevail upon you to attend to your toilette before joining me?”

Henri grunted and waved a paw. A cloud had passed across the sun and already he saw in its shadow the evanescence of the light. He applied his brush to the palette again, and did not hear Denis leave.

* * *

It was harder to find his cleanest clothes after sunset, but Tourie’s pot of scented powder fairly glowed to his nose, so he applied that liberally to his fur and then pulled on some clothes that didn’t smell too terrible.

Tourie was just stirring when Henri walked out and down the stairs, out into the street. He looked intently to either side, his gaze drawn to the flickers of the gas lamps and the shadows they cast, and as he always did when he came down to the street, he felt dwarfed by the scale of it. The Dutch fox had painted the street as though it were a single body moving together, but Henri’s efforts looked to him to be disorganized, jumbled messes, and he found it easier to paint models with simple backgrounds: single buildings, velvet curtains. If he ever ventured out to a park to do references, he might be able to unify the trees and colors there, but August was not a good month for that.

The Chemin du Cœur made no bones about its purpose. At the back, three females of various species (two deer and a wolf) sat on barstools sipping water courteously provided by the house in exchange for a percentage of whatever business they might transact that night. Once upon a time, the stage might have been occupied by a singer or dancers, but now there was only this parade of sex for hire, and the spectacle brought a tightness to Henri’s gorge.

The three prostitutes looked up hopefully as he came in, but when he showed no interest, they went back to their conversations. He found Denis at one of the many small round tables and slid into the adjacent chair, running his paws over the torn and faded velvet lining. The ermine’s nose wrinkled. “Well, you’ve attended to your toilette, I’ll grant you that, but…”

Henri ignored him, signaling one of the servers. A short female bat hurried over to the table and paid little attention to his appearance or smell. “Bonsoir, monsieur,” she said.

“An absinthe.” Henri glanced at Denis’s paw and the tankard of ale it held. “You’re buying. I didn’t open the parcel.”

“Henri, I don’t know…”

“Oh, if you can’t afford it then it’s no trouble, I shall piss in a mug. It’s no worse than what you’re drinking there.”

“I can afford it,” Denis said. The bat glanced between them. “I just think you oughtn’t…I mean, you know how he was.”

“Inspired? Brilliant?” The rat turned to the server. “An absinthe.”

Denis did not object. “Très bien, monsieur,” the bat said, and hurried away.

“You needn’t worry,” Henri said when Denis remained silent. “I drink it whenever I can afford it, and it has not yet killed me.”

The ermine took a drink from his tankard. “As pleased as I am that you’ve settled at least one part of your life, I would like to see your drinking and painting improve.”

“My painting is fine,” Henri growled.

“It is extraordinary still. And the pile of canvases in your rooms no doubt bring great joy to the spiders and flies that crawl among them.”

“Am I to blame for the lack of discernment among the patrons of the arts?”

Denis looked around the small lounge, and Henri examined the gaily patterned maroon and cream wallpaper with his friend. The other patrons of the lounge wore unadorned leather vests over their shirts or else just the plain tan shirts, fur askew, many of them muzzle-deep in their cups or holding whispered conversations among themselves. None paid attention to the three females at the back of the room, lost in their own discussion. “Perhaps just a touch, considering where you seek them out.”

“You chose places like this when we were at the studio.” Henri finished the words just as the bat returned with his absinthe, sugar, and spoon. He allowed her to assemble it for him, pour the water over the sugar through the spoon, and watched the clouds spread through the green glass.

When the server had taken the spoon, Henri sniffed the drink. “Sugar,” he said. “A luxury.” He sipped and made a face. “I should have asked her to leave it out.”

Denis shook his head. “You enjoy the bitterness, do you?”

“Say rather that I am accustomed to it.” Henri set the glass down. “Well, and what are you doing here? Has your gallery opened, or have you returned from Pais-Bas just to mock me?” He couldn’t keep his eyes from flicking down to Denis’s light jacket and the pockets. Was that a letter protruding from one of them?

“No. I went to the studio first, and they gave me that parcel, which they have been holding for half a year. They thought you were here in Montmartre but Master Corman said, ‘We are artists, not postmen.’” The ermine smiled wryly. “You know how he is.”

“And yet you found me.”

“It was not so difficult as all that. I asked around for a black rat who claimed to be an artist but never sold a painting, and found your room within a day.”

Henri scowled. “I sold a painting.”

“Oh?”

He returned Denis’s gaze levelly. “To the landlord. I painted his daughter. She is quite unattractive. It was a masterpiece.”

“I will have to make sure to seek it out on my way back.” Denis finished his ale. “Well, I am glad to see you still painting, anyway, even if you are not selling it.” He reached into his pocket. “I had worried that perhaps you would be despondent, but it has been some months.”

His paw placed a small envelope on the table. Henri followed it with his eyes. “Months since what?”

Denis had begun to lift his paw from the envelope, and at those words, the fingers dropped to the paper again, as though attempting to hold it back. “Oh,” he said. “You don’t—I thought that you would have heard.”

“Heard what? Stop talking in riddles.” Henri could make out writing on the envelope, and it was not as familiar as he’d hoped it would be.

The ermine kept his paw on the paper. “He died, Henri.”

A rushing built up in Henri’s ears. He stared down at the envelope. “Who? Not…” He couldn’t bring himself to say the name.

Denis nodded slowly. “I’m sorry. I know how close the two of you were. This,” his finger tapped the envelope, “is from his brother to you.”

How close we were? You didn’t know, none of you knew, and perhaps the Dutch fox, V. himself, did not know. Henri reached out for the envelope, but stopped inches from it. “What does it say?”

“I haven’t opened it.” Denis seemed annoyed at the implication. He shoved the envelope across the table.

Henri lifted the envelope and held it awkwardly. Its warmth bled up into his fingertips. He examined again the writing and now understood why it felt both familiar and not. “How did it happen?”

“It…well.” Denis ducked his head and rubbed at the bridge of his muzzle. His voice grew gentler. “It appears he took his own life.”

“No.” Henri tried to stop the words from sinking into his heart. “That is ridiculous. He would never. Someone else must have—there was a robbery, perhaps—”

“I don’t know details.” Denis’s voice was as gentle as when he’d tried not to wake Tourie. “He returned back to the inn suffering from a wound inflicted by a gun and died the next day. He claimed—he said that he caused himself harm. That is all I know.”

“Well, it is a lie,” Henri said. “That is all.”

“As you say.” Denis’s eyes lifted. “Oh, here is your mouse. Perhaps I should go and leave you to her comfort.”

Tourie came over to the table with a wide smile. “Oh, cherie,” she said, “when I woke and you weren’t in the room, I thought perhaps you were sick.”

“I am sick.” Henri kept staring at the envelope.

She turned her attention to Denis. “And who’s your handsome friend?”

The ermine rose and extended a paw. “Denis van Dijk. A pleasure, madame.”

“Ooh, ‘madame,’ is it?” The mouse shook his paw and smiled. “You may call me Tourie. Everyone does.” She looked around. “So are you here as Henri’s friend or as a patron?”

“Well…” Denis glanced toward the back wall. “I am here to see my friend.”

“He is a patron,” Henri told Tourie. “And a kind one. All the best whores in Montmartre sang his praises.”

The ermine’s ears flattened, but he kept his smile bravely up. “One wonders where you heard those songs, my friend, but never mind. Once our business is over, I suppose—”

“It is over,” Henri said. “You’ve made your deliveries and reminded me to sell paintings.”

“Why don’t you paint this lovely model here?” Denis gestured toward Tourie.

“She sleeps while I paint, and I sleep while she works.” Henri could not put the envelope down but could not bring himself to open it.

“I would sit for you if you asked.” Tourie caressed his ear, and he flinched away from it. “But he never asks.” She turned to Denis. “Can you believe it?”

“I cannot.” The ermine raised his eyebrows. “She’s lovely, Henri.”

“You paint her, then.” Henri reached for his absinthe, drained it, and then signaled to the bat for another one. He waited for the alcohol to numb him further.

“Do you really think I am lovely?” Tourie sidled around the table toward Denis.

“Of course,” he said.

“Well, you know…” She trailed a paw down his arm. “If you like, we can go back to the room, since Henri is here.”

“What?” Denis pulled away. Henri smiled thinly.

Tourie drew her paw back. “Well, if we take a room here,” she said in a low voice, “I must pay for it, so I must ask you for more money. If we go to my apartment then it will be cheaper and more private. As long as Henri does not mind waiting.”

“Please,” Henri said, amused at the discomfiture on Denis’s pointed face, “take all the time you like.”

“Cheaper?” Denis looked from her to Henri. “But you two—I thought—”

Tourie frowned, and then burst out laughing, drawing attention from some of the people at surrounding tables. “Me and him? Oh, cherie, how amusing! No, no, I offer him the discount as well, but he says he only wishes to make love to his canvas.”

“Huh.” Denis narrowed his eyes at Henri. “Liar.”

“Oh, I know. I think it is a figure of his speech.” Tourie stepped toward him again. “But there is nothing between us. So now, what do you say?”

When Denis hesitated, Henri said, “Don’t worry on my account. Go have fun.”

“I suppose…” Denis smiled and straightened up.

“And Tourie,” Henri said. She turned to him. “There’s a package on the ground by my easel. It should have some gold in it. Take whatever you need to pay for my friend’s night, and then keep the rest. You may discard the letter and any other keepsakes inside.”

Both of them stared at him. “But…” Denis said weakly.

“She needs it more than I do. It is a crutch I do not want.” The bat arrived with more absinthe then, and Henri gestured to it. “Besides, you are going to buy me at least two more of these, yes?”

“Of course.” Denis dug into his wallet and came out with two bank notes, which he gave to the bat. “As much absinthe as this will buy.”

She bowed and left, and Denis looked down at Henri. “I worry about you, mon ami. Standing on your own is one thing, but this rejection of those who wish to help you—”

“Help me?” The absinthe was not numbing; it was fueling the fire, the blaze inside him that refused to accept that the fox was gone, that there would be no more of his wry wit and absinthe-fueled heart, no more of the magic he pulled from ordinary palettes and unremarkable streets, no more luminous paintings that cried out to the spirit and haunted one’s dreams. That he had taken his own life and not even written to Henri; or, perhaps worse, that he had written to Henri and that the rat now held this letter in one paw, the fox’s last words to him. “Help me? You may help me by leaving me be. There is nothing you or anyone can do for me.”

“Your sister, at least—”

“I am not interested in reading the latest accounts of who my sister has been whoring around with in the New World. I am not interested in the petty art world of Pais-Bas. I am not even interested in who is sleeping with whom in this neighborhood.”

“Come.” Tourie tugged on Denis’s paw. “When he is like this, there is no talking to him.”

“He shouldn’t have more absinthe,” Denis said stubbornly. “Drinking away your talent isn’t going to make your life any better.”

Locking eyes with him, Henri raised the glass of absinthe and drained it in one long swallow. “Not drinking will make my life worse.”

“If you’ll just talk—”

“Talk!” Again the fire in him blazed high. “Talk to whom? About what? The only person I wanted to talk to left, years ago, and the only people who hover around me refuse to leave me alone even though I have nothing to say to them!”

The ermine’s eyes went cold. “Well,” he said, inclining his head, “Enjoy your drinking.”

“Enjoy your whoring.” Henri stared down at the dregs of his absinthe as Tourie led Denis out of the lounge and onto the street.

* * *

He remembered getting the fourth glass of absinthe after he’d finished the third, but by then the room was blurred and wobbly. It wasn’t fair; he felt worse and worse and the Dutch fox was still dead in the ground up in Pais-Bas, a bullet hole in his side, his paws wasting away with no paintbrush in them. The envelope remained unopened on the table, face down because he couldn’t bear to look at the writing anymore. What lay within, after all, could be nothing more than his friend’s last, tentative lie, revealed by the truth of his actions.

The fox would have loved this horrible place. He would have taken the purple of the wallpaper and mixed it subtly with the shadows behind the bar; he would have seen every flaw in the velvet of the chairs and would have brought them out, would have matched them with the girls in the back and pulled out the lighting there, and there…

As his vision grew less reliable, the painting became more real than the room. Henri saw himself as a shadow at the front of the canvas, the darkness that offsets the light, the extra layer that changed the picture from being about a place to being about someone in that place, the isolation and loneliness coming in powerful waves over you until you had to turn away and look at something brighter.

And nobody would paint that now. Henri could not do that; just as he could see the fox’s work in his mind’s eye, so he could see his own crude imitation of it and it made him furious. “Who is left now? Who will bear the light and show us the world inside?”

“Sir?” That was when the bat came back. “Is there a problem?”

“Yes,” he croaked, and waved his paw at the purple, the lights, the ladies, the shadow. “This is the problem. It is as big as the world and just as ugly.”

“Ah…do you need anything?”

His paw came to rest on the envelope. “I need…I need…”

Later, he would not remember whether she had answered him. He only knew that the lanky camel who ran the bar prodded him awake. “Ey. It’s struck three. Go to your home.”

The light was gone, the ladies were gone, the purple was black. The shadows had won. Henri pushed himself out of his chair and nearly fell to the floor, catching the edge of the table with one paw. “My envelope,” he muttered, but when his paw met the table, there was no paper under it. He stared down at the pitted, stained wood. “It’s been stolen.”

“What stolen?” The camel had taken his chair and turned it upside down, setting it on the bare table.

“I had an envelope…the bat, she saw it.”

“Hey!” The camel loomed over him, finger poking Henri in the chest. “Axia is good bat. She does no steal. My servers honest.”

“The fox…” For a moment, Henri feared the table would be insufficient to support his weight.

“Yes, fox perhaps steal. No can trust fox.” The camel harrumphed. “Go. We close.”

Henri staggered toward the door. “What fox?” he said.

“What fox? You say fox, I no say fox.” The camel walked behind him.

“But did you see?” Henri reached the door and turned, but the camel closed it. A moment later the thunk of a lock sealed the moment, and then he was left in the dark, silent street.

The sliver of moon visible through tattered clouds provided enough light for Henri to find his way. A few stars poked through as well, but the rat only glanced up at the sky before picking his way across the stones through the shadows hurrying back and forth through the night. The smooth stone step of his building rose up to meet his rump with a painful impact, but he settled there and leaned against the cold brick. He couldn’t see his window from the street and he didn’t know whether Denis and Tourie were still up there. Tourie had not come back to the Chemin, but she had other places to go.

Noise and movement woke him again. When he cracked his eyes open, he thought at first that it had only been a few minutes, but then along the eastern horizon he saw a light pastel brush of lilac just leavening the dark. In the street, bodies made their way with form and depth, whole people, not just shadows.

Henri pushed himself to his feet and then into his building and up the stairs. When he arrived at his room, he listened at the door, but no sound reached his ear. Inside, nothing stirred. Sheets lay askew on the empty bed and the small trunk in which Tourie kept her clothes was gone, along with the package from his sister.

The rat surveyed the room and smiled thinly. Here was truth laid naked and bare. In the dim morning light he could just make out the shape of his stool sitting by his easel. He dragged it to the window, then sat and leaned his head against the cold glass, waiting for the light to return.

3

Turbulence

People have been asking me for years if I’m going to write a sequel to Waterways. The only angle I’d come up with for that was to follow Kory’s younger brother Nick in his own life away from home. Some spoilers for the book as this takes place after the conclusion and there are references to events in Waterways.

The first day of school had been a whirlwind of new classrooms and new teachers, so Nick was glad to visit the cafeteria with Khalil and Denz. The routine of standing in line and talking about their classes, smelling the lunch and trying to see what it was, then giving his lunch card to the cashier hadn’t changed, even though here at the high school the cafeteria felt older, the tile faded and cracked below his feet, the ceiling tiles discolored where they weren’t broken or missing.

Compared to the oddity of being the youngest students in school where they had been the oldest at the junior high school, that change was minor, and Khalil and Denz were both otters like Nick, the three of them the core of the swim team. So when the lunch cashier gave Nick’s card back to him, he didn’t even register what the tall red deer had said until he walked on to get his food and the guy called, “Hold on there,” in an Anglic accent.

“What?” Nick turned, one paw on a tray.

“That card’s no good, mate. Old one?”

“Yeah, but…” Nick turned the card over in his fingers. “It’s my lunch card. Did we have to get new ones for the high school?”

Khalil showed his, a worn piece of plastic with his name and picture on it under the words “Benedict Carter High School.” Denz, digging in his pocket, said, “I got the same one.”

Nick watched as both his friends’ cards were swiped without issue, and moved aside so they could get trays. “Hey,” Denz said, “I’ve got two bucks if you want.”

“Oh, uh.” Nick didn’t want to take it, but he was starving and he had swim practice later. “Yeah, thanks. I’ll pay you back.”

“Don’t worry about it,” the other otter said as Nick gave the money to the deer, and at first Nick thought Denz meant he didn’t need to be paid back, but then his friend went on, “those cards are broken half the time. You probably just need a new one.”

“Or a fake one,” Khalil said. “The guy who got my fake ID said he could do anything.”

“It has to have money on it, idiot,” Denz said.

“So he’ll put money on it.” Khalil grabbed a bowl of mystery soup. “You think he can’t do that?”

“Then it’s stealing.” Denz glanced back at Nick.

“Whatever.” Khalil moved on down the line.

Denz got his main course. “Don’t listen to him. Fake ID is one thing, but you don’t want to commit fraud.”

Nick grinned and grabbed a flat chicken breast from the available plates. “Yeah. Thanks for bailing me out.”

Denz picked both sides, the mac and cheese and the roll, pushing them to make room on his tray. “Hey, when I beat you for top spot, I don’t want it to be because you’re hungry.”

“Only way that’ll happen is if I break my leg on the way to the pool.” Nick and his friends laughed, and he made a mental note to go to the office and ask them about it, and that was that.

He didn’t get to the office that afternoon, but remembered again when Mr. Christian reminded them that their two hundred dollars for swim team expenses was due at the end of the week. This distracted Nick enough that he didn’t do very well in practice, and afterwards went to see Mr. Christian.

“Don’t worry,” the porcupine said with a big bucktoothed grin. “Lots of guys show up out of shape over the summer. You’ll be back to it soon.”

“Yeah, thanks.” Nick shuffled his feet, breathing in the chlorine smell of the pool water. “About the two hundred bucks…”

“Is there a problem this year? If your mom’s having trouble…” Mr. Christian shut up and waited for Nick to go on.

“Well, it might take a little longer to get it this year.”

“Don’t worry about it.” The porcupine smiled and waved. “You’re good for it, I know.”

And Nick said thanks and walked out with a smile. This year was already tough enough with getting used to the new school, but he was going to have swim team and his friends and he could handle the rest of it.

Twenty minutes on the bus and a ten minute walk brought him to the apartment he shared with Malaya, an older fruit bat he’d met through his brother. She worked at a bookstore most evenings, but Nick didn’t really want to eat dinner alone. So he finished the meager homework he’d gotten from the two teachers who wanted to prove to their tenth graders that high school was hard. It was only eight o’clock and Malaya’s bookstore closed at nine, so he walked down there to hang out with her.

She was roaming around the shelves with a pile of books in the crook of one arm when he entered the store. “Oh, hey,” she said. “How was your first day at school?”

Nick snorted. “High school,” he said.

“Anyone pick on you? Haze you?”

He puffed out his chest. “I’m an athlete.”

“Yer an athlete whose brother made a spectacle of himself at graduation.” She shoved the stack of books at him. “Here, Mister Athlete, hold these for me. My arm’s gettin’ sore.”

Nick took the books and held them, following Malaya around while she shelved. “Nah, it was fun. I hung out with Khalil and Denz. We have mostly the same classes, just I have Advanced English while those guys have regular. Oh,” he said, remembering, “I’m gonna have to call my mom tonight.”

“Jesus, why?” Malaya turned to glare at him.

“The swim team needs two hundred bucks. I forgot about that. They get it every year.”

She took another book from him. “So you have to pay to win trophies for them?”

“It pays for meets and the facilities and stuff.”

“Yeah, whatever.” She shook her head. “Why do you think your mom’s going to help you?”

The question brought back the memory of his mother’s red eyes the one time he’d seen her while moving out. “Well, she said she’d pay for school. I mean…she doesn’t hate me or anything, we just kept arguing about Kory and I said maybe I should live somewhere else.” The words had been sharper, but she’d only said that if that was how he felt, she’d respect that. She had almost definitely said that word, respect.

Malaya snorted. “Keep dreaming. I mean, until you call her and she tells you to go to hell.”

“That’s not…” Nick held out the next book for Malaya. “She wouldn’t say that.”

“So why haven’t you called her yet?” The bat shelved the book, not looking at Nick.

Despite the casual air with which she’d said it, the words lodged in his chest. “Well, I came here to meet you for dinner.”

“Uh-huh. Came right from school?” She led him to another section of the store. “Did you call Kory to tell him how your first day went?”

“Nah. He said he’d call me. He and Samaki were going to a study group or something.” Nick shuffled along the floor.

“So I’m the first one you talked to?” Now she did look at him, dark eyes gleaming, the fur around them creased in amusement. “That’s pretty sad, kiddo.”

“Why?” This was at least a distraction from thinking about his mom. “We’re roommates, so why shouldn’t I talk to you?”

Her ears flicked. They were larger than his, but not quite fox’s or even wolf’s ears. “It ain’t like I was just lounging around the apartment.”

Why hadn’t he called his mother right away? He looked back at Malaya and shifted his weight again. “I was hungry, so I thought I’d come keep you company until dinner.”

“Uh-huh.” She took the last couple books from him and replaced them on the shelves. “I’m sure you weren’t scared about asking your mom for a couple hundred dollars. I thought you said you had savings?”

“I’ve got enough to pay for a few months of rent.” Nick chewed his lip. “And a little more. Kory said he could help me. Then I figured I would just ask my relatives for money at Christmas.”

In Malaya’s laugh, he could hear the rasp in her throat. “You were going to pay rent for a year on handouts?”

“Aunt Tilly’s got lots of money,” Nick said stubbornly. “And my grandmother always sends me a check anyway. Six months is only fifteen hundred dollars, and then it’ll be summer and I can earn money again.”

“Dependin’ on the kindness of strangers ain’t exactly a good life plan.”

“They’re family,” Nick said.

“Yeah, well. Family’s just strangers you happen to be related to.” Malaya sighed and checked the clock. “Okay, I got like fifteen more minutes here. You wanna run down to Steakburger and wait?” She dug in her pocket and pulled out a rumpled ten dollar bill. “Dinner’s on me.”

“I’ve got money for food set aside. Kory wouldn’t let me move out until he’d talked to me for an hour about money.” Nick smiled at her and turned without taking the bill.

Both Kory and Samaki had talked to him, separately and together, and Kory in particular knew how hard it was going to be to live on his own. “You need to have enough money for the year put aside,” he said, and Nick had factored in Christmas and his savings. Samaki was less comfortable relying on Christmas money, but Kory thought Nick’s logic was sound. “You can always go stay at Rainbow House if you can’t afford rent,” he’d said.

“That’s for gay kids,” Nick had reminded him, “and anyway it would leave Malaya without a roommate.”

“She can advertise for a roommate,” Kory had said, but Nick still felt he would be letting Malaya down if he left.

He thought about that outside the Steakburger and took his cell phone out. He brought up his mom’s number and stared at it. She’d help him, of course she would, and then he could tell Malaya when she showed up for dinner.

“Hello?” Her voice came through the phone and she sounded tired, a little sad.

“Hi, Mom.” He tried to sound bright.

“Hello, Nicholas.” She didn’t match his brightness, not a bit.

He told her about the first day of school, how the high school actually looked smaller because all the kids in it were bigger, how all the classrooms smelled different and the classes were going to be fun.

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“And my lunch card didn’t work, so I have to go to the office tomorrow morning and get that straightened out. Oh, and the swim team needs the two hundred dollars, but Mr. Christian says I can take a while to pay it, so I don’t need it this week.”

Cars rushed by on the street, and a wolf couple passed him talking animatedly about the movie they’d just seen. Silence from the phone, until his mother said, “I’m not paying for your swim team, Nicholas, and I’m not paying for your lunches.”

“Um.” He felt for a moment like he was in a play or a TV movie, the situation unreal. “But I can’t afford to pay that. I have to pay rent.”

“Yes. That’s what happens when you move into your own place.”

“You said you’d pay for school.”

The tiredness fell away, revealing sharp edges in her voice, the “you didn’t eat enough broccoli” tone. “I am paying for your school. There are assistance programs you can sign up for to get lunches. As for the swim team, if it’s important to you, you’ll find a way to raise the money.”

“Mom…” he said weakly.

That halted her, and when she went on, her voice was softer. Not soft, but softer. “I’m sorry, Nicholas, but it was your choice. If you don’t want to live under my roof, then I fail to see why I should be responsible for your leisure time.”

“I need to be on swim team,” he said, thinking first of Khalil and Denz, and then he remembered what Kory had been going through a year ago. “I need to be well rounded so I can get into college.”

“Oh, Nicholas,” she said, “I don’t think you’ll be going to college.”

He started to say something and then said, “I guess we’ll see. Bye, Mom.”

It was going to be okay. Mr. Christian had said he had a while to raise the money, and even if he had to dip into his savings to buy school lunches, it was only ten bucks a week. Even if he didn’t really have as much set aside for food as he’d let on. But it was okay. He had money for now, and he wouldn’t starve.

By the time Malaya came into the little fast food place, Nick already had a plan. He pointed to the paper taped to the cash register. “I’ll just get a job here,” he said. “They’re open ‘til eleven. I can work evenings and make a couple hundred bucks a week, maybe on weekends.”

“Uh-huh.” She placed her order and then turned to him. “You’re the first person I ever met who figured to improve his life by working at a shitty fast food place.”

The fox behind the counter gave her a baleful look and then yelled, “Next!”

“You shouldn’t say that,” Nick said in a hushed voice as they moved to the pickup side of the counter. “They’ll mess with your order.”

Malaya grinned. “What are they gonna do, spit on my burger? It’d improve the flavor. Anyway, you didn’t hear him arguing, did you?”

“Well, you’ll be nice to me when I’m working here, won’t you?”

“I wouldn’t come in here if it wasn’t for you.” She paused. “Or if there was another place near the bookstore open ‘til ten besides that chicken place.”

“They make a good salmon burger.”

“They make a cheap salmon burger.”

“Okay, it’s good for the price, how about that?”

She shrugged with a rattle of her wings. “It’s your stomach. Their veggie burgers don’t suck.”

So when they’d finished their meal, Malaya waited while Nick went up to the counter. The fox eyed him apprehensively as he approached. “Hey,” Nick said. “If I want to apply to work here, how do I do that?”

“Oh.” The fox’s expression relaxed. He reached under the counter and pulled out an application. “Here. The manager’s in back, let me get him.”

He knocked on a door behind the counter. Nick turned to give Malaya an excited thumbs up, but she ignored him. When he turned back, a coyote in shirt and tie stood next to the fox at the counter. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Mr. Garrett, the manager. You want to work here?”

“Yes, sir.” Nick held up the piece of paper as though it were proof.

“All right, let’s go sit down.” The coyote came around and led Nick to an empty table. “You worked fast food before?”

“No, sir. I’ve mowed lawns, picked up garbage, cleaned out garages…”

The coyote’s gaze sharpened. “This your first job? Like, official job?” Nick nodded. “How old are you?”

“Um. Fifteen.”

“Oh.” The big ears went down, and the coyote’s tan fingers reached out to take the application delicately from Nick. “Sorry. You have to be sixteen.” He pointed to a line on the form near the bottom that said, “I certify that I am at least sixteen years of age and legally allowed to work.”

Nick lowered his head and didn’t say anything. “Sorry,” the manager said.

“Look, I’ll—is there anything I can do?”

“Sure.” The coyote stood. “Come back when you’re sixteen.”

He walked behind the counter and back into his office. Nick followed him with his eyes until he noticed the fox staring at him, and then he smiled. The cashier ducked his head, took out a cloth, and made a point of wiping off the counter.

“Sorry,” Malaya said as he came back to the table. She stood. “You ready to go?”

“Yeah.” Nick glanced back at the counter. “It’s cool. I mean, it’s the rules. I just have to find a place that can hire me, that’s all.” As they walked out the door, he said, “Anyway, their salmon burger isn’t all that great.”

Malaya laughed and elbowed him. “That’d be a lot more believable if I hadn’t seen how fast you ate it.” She reached inside her vest and then her hand dropped to her side.

Nick saw the motion, though. “I’ve got some gum if you want.”

She didn’t look at him. “Is it tobacco-flavored?”

“Heh. It’s Fruit Strips. I think it’s sugar-flavored.”

“Ugh.” But she held two fingers out and he dug the pack out of his own pocket, passing a strip over to her.

“Wow,” she said as she chewed. “This is the worst thing I’ve ever put in my mouth, and that includes the deodorant soap my dad made me eat when I was ten.”

“Your dad made you eat soap?”

“A bit of it.” She held two fingers a half-inch apart. “I said ‘fuck’ and he marched me to the bathroom and…yeah.”

“How did it taste?” Nick had heard of kids getting their mouths washed out with soap, but his mom had never done that. Of course, he’d never said the f-word in front of her, nor even the s-word or the d-word.

Malaya chewed. “Better than this.” But she kept the gum in her mouth all the way back to their apartment.

Kory called when they were just going up the stairs, and it sounded like his first weeks of school were even crazier than Nick’s. He asked how things were going, and Nick said, “Fine,” because he didn’t want to burden Kory with his problems. He had enough things to deal with on his own. It sounded like everyone there was cool with him and Samaki, and there was even another gay guy in their dorm. Nick felt a little bit of satisfaction at that; Kory had never really believed him when he said that it wasn’t a big deal.

Oh, sure, to their mom it was, and Kory had spent more time with her than Nick had, but Kory was also a lot more sensitive to that. Nick had learned early on the disparity between what was cool at home and what was cool anywhere else, and it didn’t bother him that at home they said Grace before each meal but at school he just dug in; that he could say the s-word and d-word with Khalil and Denz but not at home; that Kory could date a guy and it was fine as long as their mom never found out.

In that, Nick guessed he was kind of like his mom, more worried about rules and such than family. Kory was the one who tried to make everything work, who wanted a boyfriend and a mother and a brother. Nick had been fine with their mother until graduation, when Kory had pulled his boyfriend onto the stage to get a picture taken with them. After that, their mom had basically flipped out and forbad Nick from talking to him.

And, well, if Nick was made to choose between his brother and his mother, the choice was easy. “You doing okay on your own?” Kory asked him on the phone as he closed the door of the apartment behind him. Malaya had already turned on the TV and was sprawled on the couch.

“Yeah, it’s going good. A little weird still, but Malaya’s cool. She’s good company.”

The bat flipped her middle finger at him from the couch, and as though Kory could see it, he chuckled. “Sorry, is this the same Malaya the fruit bat from the Rainbow Center?”

“She’s cool,” Nick insisted.

“I was commenting on the ‘good company’ part.” Hearing Kory talk, Nick could picture his smile and it warmed his chest, made his room feel more like home even though there was no pool and it was stuffy in the late summer heat. “How’s things with Mom? You hear from her at all?”

“Uh…yeah.” Nick swallowed the plea for help that rose to his throat. “She’s doing good.”

Kory paused. “Well, good,” he said.

There was a pause during which Nick briefly considered asking Kory if he had any ideas about where a fifteen-year-old might find a job, but Kory had enough of his own troubles to worry about, and anyway, how hard could it be? Nick lived in the city now, and in his three weeks living there, he’d seen kids who looked about his age working in the market, carrying boxes through an alley, biking at breakneck speeds with delivery service signs on their bikes. Surely there was something he could find.

But over the next two days, he walked around to every business in a two-block radius that was open late at night. Only three of them were hiring, and at two of them the manager was not in, and the third one had the same line on the application that the Steakburger had.

“You have to go around during the day,” Malaya said as they sat on the couch watching the sitcom that came on after Nick’s favorite sitcom. “That’s when the managers are around. Our manager’s like that, she’s there the first couple hours and then she just goes and leaves Rita in charge. Rita can’t hire. Rita can’t do shit except order me around.”

“I could go around Saturday,” Nick said doubtfully.

“Managers don’t work on Saturday, but you can try it.”

“Well, I can’t skip school.” She raised an eyebrow. “I can’t!”

“What if you get sick?”

He shook his head. “I get people to get my homework for me…wait, you mean lie about being sick?”

She put a hand on his shoulder. “It won’t be the first time in your life. Get used to it.”

“No, I can’t.”

They watched a little more of the sitcom, and then Nick said, “Do you really call in sick when you need to do other things?”

“I haven’t at this job yet,” Malaya said, “but my dad used to do it all the time. Well, he was hung over, so sometimes he was technically really sick, but yeah.”

Nick just stared at the TV. “It sounds like something a guy on a sitcom would do.”

“Sure,” Malaya said. “And at the end of the day all your problems will be resolved and your brother will call with a punch line. The solutions to your problems ain’t always gonna be pretty. Being on your own sucks.”

He ignored the TV to look at her. “But.”

She rustled her wing. “But what? Yeah, it’s all we got right now, so make the best of it.”

“No, I was going to say…I’m not on my own. I’ve got Kory and Samaki and you. And you’ve got all of us.”

“Heh. Well, that’s nice if you need a hug, but it doesn’t put food on the table. I’m the only one of the four of us with a steady job.”

“When have you ever wanted a hug?” Nick asked.

“Exactly.”

He leaned back to watch the rest of the sitcom. “Well, you won’t be the only one with a job for long.”

But when he walked around the neighborhood Saturday morning, only one manager was in, and again Nick found the same barrier. This time, the manager, a red squirrel, told him he wasn’t going to find anyone who’d hire him until he was sixteen. “But,” Nick protested, “I want to work.”

“Do work around your house and ask your parents to raise your allowance,” the squirrel said, and turned to leave.

“I don’t live with my parents.” Nick didn’t mean to say it, it just burst out of him.

The squirrel stopped. “Oh, I’m sorry. Well, your guardian, then.”

“I don’t—I’m living on my own, just down by 6th and Milford.”

She frowned. “You’re on your own? Are you an emancipated minor?”

“I don’t think so? My mom is still paying for my school, but she won’t pay for swim team. I’m trying to earn money so I can join them.” He hoped the earnest story would help his cause.

“Huh.” The squirrel stared down at him. “Public school is free, you know.”

“I go to Carter.”

She frowned. “Carter out by the mall?” He nodded. “That’s a public school as well. But you live here?”

“I’ve always gone to Carter,” he said.

“All right.” She smiled. “Well, I won’t tell the school system. But if you have legal status as an emancipated minor, then we could hire you.” She put the employment application down and pointed to the bottom, just under where it said Nick had to affirm that he was sixteen. The line continued below: “or that I am an emancipated minor with the legal proof of my status,” and there was a box for the manager to verify that they had seen the status.

“How do I get that?” Nick asked.

The squirrel shook her head. “Through the courts, I think. We did a training on it but they said it almost never comes up. I guess if you were abused or if you’re better off on your own, you can get the courts to say you don’t need a guardian.”

He left the store with that idea in his head and headed for the library. He and Malaya had agreed they didn’t need Internet in the apartment; Nick had his phone and school, and any way they sliced it, getting Internet would be extra money per month that they couldn’t afford.

But the library was just half a mile away and they had terminals he could use. He looked up “emancipated minor” status and found that it would take a lot of court time, proof of abuse, proof of his maturity; in short, it was unworkable—unless his mother agreed to it. If she agreed that he was better off on his own, the court (some court, he supposed) would grant him the status, and then he would be allowed to work and earn money.

Malaya was, predictably, pessimistic. “She’ll never agree to it.”

“Why not?” Nick held out a stick of gum. They were waiting for their frozen dinners to thaw in the microwave.

“Because it would mean admitting she’s not your mother anymore. What flavor is that?”

“I got this old-timey licorice gum at the market when I was there. The clerk said it’s good for quitting smoking.”

The bat’s nostrils twitched. She took the gum, sniffed it, then popped it in her mouth. “Can’t believe you threw out my cigs.”

“I told you I would.” Nick grinned at her. “Anyway, she let me move out. Why wouldn’t she let me work on my own?”

Malaya shook her head. “Parents are fuckin’ possessive. Why would my dad want a ‘fornicating homosexual’ living under his roof? But he kept telling me to come back, even after he put me in the hospital and Margo was filing the papers.” Her muzzle wrinkled. “Best thing I can say about this gum is it’s better than the fruit shit you had.”

Nick grinned. “You’re welcome. Anyway, Mom’s not like that.”

“Pity.” The bat walked to the microwave and waited for it to bing. “If she put you in the hospital, you could get those papers for sure.”

* * *

Still, Nick spent the weekend—when he wasn’t at swim practice joking with Khalil and Denz, trying to beat their times and his—trying to figure out the best time to call his mother with the request. It would have to be soon, because Malaya’d told him it would be a few weeks after he started work before he got his first check.

But even when he knew his mother would be home and he could reach her, he just took out his phone and stared at it. It was just so he could work and earn money, which she wouldn’t give him anyway, so what was the big deal? It didn’t really mean anything.

It didn’t wipe out the Christmases, the Sunday mornings swimming in the back yard, the talks they’d had, the times she’d held him, or any of that. He’d still be her son, he just needed to have a piece of paper that said he could also have a job.

He sighed. Maybe he’d call Aunt Tilly first, or his grandmother. But no, he hadn’t even told them he’d moved out of his mom’s house. How could he call and ask them for money?

That was silly. His mom had probably called them already. And his grandmother had always said that he could call her if he ever had problems he didn’t want to tell his mother about. Surely this qualified.

“Nicholas!” His grandmother’s delight animated the crackle in her voice. “It’s so good to hear from you! How are you doing?”

He told her he was fine, listened to a few of her stories about her neighbors, including the one who was stealing her newspaper and then putting it back (“I can tell because the sections are out of order”), the ones who kept fish in their pool (“you would not believe the smell”), and the ones who brought her their homemade fish cakes (“they use fresh coriander”). And then she asked again what he’d been doing, and he took a breath.

“I moved out on my own,” he said.

There was a moment of silence. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t hear you. On your own, you say? What happened to your mother?”

“Oh, nothing, but we—we decided it would be better if I lived on my own.”

“Does this have anything to do with Kory?” The delight in her voice was gone, the crackle sharper.

“A—a little.” Nick didn’t know how to say it.

“Don’t tell me you’ve decided to be homosexual, too. Oh, Celia. I told her you boys needed a father.”

“No, Grandma, I just couldn’t stay there. Mom wouldn’t let me talk to Kory anymore.”

“She wouldn’t?”

“No.” He hoped, for a moment, that she would be on his side.

“Well, that was smart of her. I mean, when a fish goes bad you take it out of the tank. All the other fish will get rot otherwise.”

“He’s my brother. I couldn’t just not talk to him.”

“Oh, Nicholas.” His grandmother sighed. “I know it’s hard now, but it’s the best thing for you. When you’re older and less impressionable, you’ll understand why your mother did what she did and you’ll thank her for it.”

He bit his lip. “I was wondering, Grandma, if you could maybe help me out. It’s tough to get by and I can’t work yet.”

“Unions!” she said witheringly. “If a child can work, he should be allowed to. My brother Jeffrey worked in the salmon farms when he was twelve and nothing bad happened to him.”

Nick’s great-uncle Jeffrey had died of a heart attack ten years ago. He didn’t bring that up. “I know, it’s dumb, but it’s the law. If you could just help out until my birthday…”

“Your mother is responsible for you, Nicholas. This whole living on your own thing is just a mistake. I don’t know what she was thinking, letting you go.”

He sighed. “Thanks, Grandma.”

“I’m going to call your mother right now and give her what for.”

The call to Aunt Tilly went worse, if anything. Grandma hadn’t called his mother first; she’d called his aunt, so when he finally got through to her she spent ten minutes lecturing him on Christian duty. “Honor thy mother and father,” she said about ten times.

He’d been sitting on his bed for several minutes when Malaya poked her head in, one wing stretched out as she pushed the door open. “That didn’t sound like it went well.”

“It’s fine,” he said. “I haven’t called Mom yet, but I’m sure she’ll understand.”

“Oh yeah.” Malaya leaned against the door. “I mean, I don’t know her as well as you do, but from what Kory said…”

She let that sentence hang there. Nick scowled. “That was different.”

“Sure it was.”

“Kory walked out on her.” Malaya just looked at him. “That was different,” he said again. “We talked about it. I told her I didn’t want to stop talking to Kory and she said I wouldn’t do that under her roof, and I said I had a friend who had a room I could rent, and she said that was fine.”

“Did she say it like that?” Malaya inspected her wing, drawing her other fingers down the skin. “Or did she say, ‘Fine! Be that way!’?”

“I dunno.” Nick looked down.

“She wasn’t too happy when you moved out.”

“Yeah, but she didn’t stop me. She would’ve stopped me if she really wanted me not to move out.”

Malaya’s wings rustled. “Well, I guess you know her better.”

Nick wasn’t sure he did. He turned his phone over in his paws. “What’s for dinner?”

“Fruit and bean salad.” She grinned as he looked up. “Don’t give me that. You want fish, you cook it.”

“I will,” he promised, but it wouldn’t be tonight. He left the phone on his bed and went back to his homework.

* * *

Sunrises always cheered Nick up. He dressed for school while whistling a song from the radio, and when he left his room he found Malaya hanging from her bar glaring at him. “If I start recognizing what you’re whistling in the morning, you’re buying me sleeping pills.”

“It’s catchy!” Nick whistled a few bars again and raised a paw. “Off to school, see you tonight.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She closed her eyes.

On the bus, he took out his phone, not to call his mother, but just to prepare what he was going to say. He had a short walk from the bus to school and he could call her then.

Only the display on his phone said, “No Service,” and when he opened it, he couldn’t get any signal at all. Then he remembered what his mother had said, and he snapped the phone shut and shoved it back into his pocket. One more thing he had to find money for.

Fortunately, the phone still had all his contacts in it, so he could call Kory from the pay phone near the school. His brother sounded sleepy when he picked up. “Hello?”

“It’s me, Kory. Just wanted to let you know my phone was cut off, so don’t call me until I get it fixed.”

“Cut off?” The sleep fell away from Kory’s voice. “What happened?”

“Oh, Mom isn’t paying for it anymore. I just need to get some stuff sorted out.”

“She’s not?” Kory was quiet for a moment. “I can get you some money. It’ll take a week or so, but—”

“No, Kory, don’t, I’m fine. I’ve got a plan to get this sorted out.”

“What’s your plan?”

Nick eyed the students streaming into the school. It would be so much easier to tell Kory after he’d already gotten Mom to agree. “I’ll tell you later,” he said. “School’s starting in a minute. Sorry to wake you up.”

“Okay,” Kory said slowly. “But if you need money.”

“I promise I’ll tell you. Say hi to Samaki.”

Nick heard the rustling of sheets. “Nick says hi,” Kory said, and there was a murmured, “hey, Nick,” from a little ways away.

The thought of his brother and Samaki together at college kept Nick happy all the way to school and homeroom, right up until his new teacher looked at him and said, “Nicholas Hedley? Take your things and go to the principal’s office, please.”

He frowned. Khalil, two rows up, turned to look at him and mouthed, “What’d you do?”

Nick shrugged and got up. “Phone’s dead,” he said as he passed his friend. “Don’t text. See you in first.”

The sound of morning announcements filtered through a dozen closed doors surrounded him on his way down the empty hallway. He kept his tail curled close to him just because letting it swing in a school hall was such a strange feeling. There should be crowds around him, scents and colors and bodies, warm presences rushing in both directions. But the air was colder and the Neutra-Scent cleaner masked most of the residual scents, and the loudest sound was the click of his claws on the tile.

At the principal’s office, he smiled at the secretary, a snowshoe hare, and told her his name. She waved him toward the open door marked “PRINCIPAL” in big gold letters. Behind him, he heard the buzz of an intercom and her voice saying, “Nicholas Hedley.”

Inside, a rotund lynx sat behind a nameplate that read, “Principal Maro Tikla,” and in a rush Nick got like three jokes he’d heard last week about letting the principal put his paws on you. His smile widened when he saw Mr. Christian sitting in one of the chairs in front of the desk.

The lynx waved Nick to the other. “Please sit down, Nicholas,” he said in a deep voice. When Nick did, the principal went on. “Mr. Christian here has brought something to my attention that I wonder if you can verify for us.”

Only then did Nick notice that the porcupine wasn’t looking at him, wasn’t smiling. “Nick, this isn’t about your swim team performance at all, I assure you. I know you to be a fine swimmer and have always enjoyed coaching you.”

“Am…” Nick looked back at the lynx. “Am I being dropped from the swim team?”

Mr. Christian stared down at the edge of the principal’s desk. “This weekend, I took it upon myself to contact your mother to see if there was a way I could help out. I’ve done it before with families having financial troubles and I consulted Mr. Tikla first. Often the student isn’t very forthcoming and I can get a better idea of how I can help by talking to the parents.”

“It’s the policy of the school to be engaged with the entire family,” Mr. Tikla said.

Nick’s heart sank. He stared at Mr. Christian, whose quills all lay flat along his body except atop his neck and head where his downward gaze made them into a sort of spiky mane. “So you called my mother.”

The porcupine nodded. “She said you don’t live there anymore. Is that right?”

Slowly, he nodded. “But I’m getting along on my own. I’ve got money, it’s just harder to find the money for the swim team. I can do it, it’ll just take time. And I have to pay for my phone, too.”

“Where do you live?” The principal again, deep and gentle.

“Right downtown near 6th and Milford.” Nick gave them his address. “Didn’t my mother give you the address?”

The lynx shook his head. “This is the first we’ve heard of it. I’m afraid what it means is that you no longer reside in this school district.”

The words took a moment to sink in. “But…I mean, there’s…I’ve always gone to Carter.”

“You currently live in the Meadowbrook School District.” Mr. Tikla cleared his throat. “Meadowbrook is a fine school.”

“I can’t—I just started here. I’ve got classes, homework…”

“It’ll be difficult, but I’m afraid it’s the law.”

The two adults sat in silence as Nick tried to imagine starting at another school a week into the semester. Everyone had friends already and he was just getting used to the new classrooms. “What about swim team?”

Mr. Christian still wouldn’t meet his eye. “If you go back to live with your mother, Nicholas—”

“I want to emphasize that if there’s an abusive situation, we are not encouraging you to return. You should contact the authorities.” Administrative obligation fulfilled, Mr. Tikla leaned back and let the porcupine go on.

“Of course.” Mr. Christian cleared his throat. “If you go back to live with your mother, all this would be resolved, and you’d be happier, I’m sure.”

Nick couldn’t think of anything to say. He was still trying to process going to a new school, leaving behind all of his friends from Carter, losing the swim team, losing everything.

The porcupine said in a low undertone, “It’s the right thing to do, Nick. ‘Honor thy father and mother.’”

“Which,” Mr. Tikla leaned forward again, “we are saying in the full knowledge that you are of the Christian faith and not to imply any school policy associated with that faith. It’s just a personal appeal based on your life.”

“My mom,” Nick said, but the principal cut him off.

“If you want to discuss family issues, we have a school counselor. But of course, you’d have to be living at your mother’s house…” The lynx stroked fingers down his cheek ruffs. “In fact, if your brother had taken the time to speak to the counselor, he might not have had the…problems he had.”

“What problems?” Nick frowned.

Mr. Christian said, “The graduation.”

The bell rang for first period. Nick jumped, but the two adults didn’t react to it. “The graduation?” he said. “You mean the photo?”

“Of course, with an example like that…” The lynx harrumphed. “It’s no wonder you’re having troubles.”

“We don’t have to talk about your brother’s inappropriate behavior now.” The porcupine spoke gently. “Nick, we don’t mean to upset you.”

“No, it’s not that.” Part of him wanted to defend Kory, to tell them both that he loved what Kory had done, but part of him was approaching as full-on panic as he ever got, and that part also knew that sticking up for his brother wouldn’t help his case right now. “I mean…I can’t go to a new school.” He felt stupid saying it over and over.

“And you don’t have to.” Now Mr. Christian looked at him with what he might have thought was an encouraging smile.

“Can’t you—can’t you make an exception?” He searched his memory. “Isn’t there—what about Alan, that olinguito, he lives across the river, I know…”

Too late he worried that he might have gotten another boy in trouble. What if Alan hadn’t told the school about where he lived? But Mr. Tikla just nodded gravely. “Alan’s here under a very specific law that allows for students who meet certain criteria to attend Carter.”

“Well,” Nick said, “if it’s about being poor, I’m pretty poor. I’m sure I qualify.”

Mr. Tikla just looked uncomfortable, and Mr. Christian cleared his throat. “The thing is, Nick, we already have a lot of otters here at Carter.”

Oh. It was one of those things. Mr. Christian went on. “When I talked to your mother, she did say she missed you. I’m sure whatever led you to leave home, you can work it out with her.”

“I’ll…I’ll talk to her,” Nick said, because nothing else was coming to his mind. He’d expected some of the guys at school to tease him because of Kory and his graduation stunt, but the principal? His swim coach? “Do I have to leave school?”

“Oh, no.” Mr. Tikla leaned forward, extending one large arm to Nick. Meaty fingers stretched out toward him. “In fact, I think you should get to your first period class. Thanks for having this talk with us.”

* * *

He took terrible notes in class that day, unable to stop thinking about going back home, being with his mother again, having the obstacles in his life removed or smoothed over, and going home. Home. Dinner with his mother every night, a ritual he’d been desperate to escape just a few weeks ago, now seemed not so bad. Having her watch out for him at least meant that someone cared. She hadn’t reported his change of address to the school; maybe that’s what she’d meant when she said she was going to be paying for his education (though she had told Mr. Christian). She understood how all that worked, while he didn’t even know who to call or write to get his phone turned back on.

Sure, he had Malaya and Kory, and between them they could certainly figure things out. But being on his own had gone from exciting to inconvenient to frustrating to downright scary. Kory had had Samaki and the Rodens to help him; Nick had Malaya and a remote Kory who had a life of his own to live, and that was about it.

He called Kory again from the pay phone, but got no answer, so he left a voicemail. When he got back to the street by his apartment, he tried from that pay phone and this time his brother picked up. “Nick. What’s going on?”

Nick took a breath and then everything came out, the whole week of frustration and trouble, the swim team and job and phone and Grandma and Aunt Tilly. The only thing he left out was the principal saying that Kory’d been a bad example, his feeling that they were unwilling to make an exception for Nick because of his brother.

“Wow,” Kory said.

“So I don’t know what to do.” It was only a partial lie.

“You’ve got to move back.” There wasn’t any doubt in Kory’s voice.

Nick swallowed. “But I can’t,” he said in a small voice. “She won’t let me talk to you.”

“When your cell phone’s back on, you can talk to me from school.”

“She checks my phone.”

“Or from pay phones then. Or we’ll write e-mails or talk online. She forbade me from seeing Samaki and I still talked to him. Don’t worry, Nick, I’m not gonna leave you.”

Already Nick was breathing a little more easily. “What about Malaya?”

“She’s tough. I’m sure she’ll agree with me. You need to be at least sixteen before you move out.”

“I’ll go talk to her,” Nick said. “Thanks, Kory. Love you.”

“Love you too, Nick. Don’t worry about it, honestly.”

But he couldn’t eliminate that little speck of worry in his chest that kept him feeling tight and tense as he hurried to the bookstore and into the air-conditioned cool. Kory, too, had held him when their dad left, an incident so far in his past that Nick could only really remember the feeling of loss. He had no idea what their father even looked like.

Malaya was working the register, so he had to wait ten minutes until there weren’t any more customers before coming up. “Hey,” she said. “How was your day? As shitty as mine?”

“I dunno,” Nick said. “Did your phone stop working and you get kicked out of your school?”

Her eyes widened. “Impressive,” she said. “You beat me in the first month we’re living together. Congratulations. What’d you do to get kicked out of school?”

“Moved,” he said, and told her the rest of it, hedging the stuff about Kory because he knew she was better friends with Kory than with him and that she would probably tell him to prove how shitty school people were, if nothing else. “So if I move back with my mom, they’ll let me stay at the school and I’ll get all that stuff back.”

She was quiet, and then a customer came up and she had to help them, and Nick paced around staring at book titles and practicing his conversation with his mother in his head. When Malaya was free again, she came over to where he was. “So you want to move back.”

“Kinda.” It was harder to admit to her. “I mean, I really like living with you.”

“Ah, shut up.” She cuffed him gently with one wing. “I know I can’t buy you a phone and bribe your swimming coach and shit. It’s one thing if you never had that, but having it and losing it sucks. I get that. You can still come visit and stay over if you want.”

“But, I mean, will you be okay with the rent?”

Her eyes met his and she smiled. “I can find another roommate if I need one. Maybe I’ll take over the bedroom and see what that’s like. Dad always made me hang from a bar, but I kinda liked the beds at the hospital.”

Nick nodded. “As long as you’ll be okay.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” she said. “I’ll miss ya. But I’ll be fine.”

And then she had to go take care of a customer, and Nick walked slowly out of the bookstore.

At the pay phone, he waited, looking up and down the street. It was kinda dirty really, with garbage collecting in the corners of shop entrances and around the bases of trees and even trash cans, where people had tossed it and missed. The bookstore was okay, and the Steakburger wasn’t bad, but there really wasn’t a whole lot here. The whole street smelled a little funny, too, and the apartment was small and didn’t have a pool.

(But it was his because he’d made it his, not because he was born there, and the apartment had been Kory’s, and he liked Steakburger. And the homeless ocelot on the corner knew him now and said hi when he went by, and their neighbors the Ki-Yo family of mongooses had insisted on having him over to dinner sometime.)

He wiped his eyes and dialed his mother’s number.

“Nicholas,” she said when he’d said hello. “Thank God. I was praying you’d call. I talked to your swimming instructor on Saturday.”

“I heard,” he said. “You told him I moved out.”

“He said he wasn’t there on behalf of the school. Oh, did that cause problems for you? I’m so sorry.”

Sorry. Of course she was. “Mom,” he sniffed, “do you hate me?”

“Hate you? Of course I don’t hate you. I promise I had no idea that telling that nice porcupine you’d moved out would…would cause any problems.”

“It’s not just that,” Nick said. “I just…” He inhaled. “Mom, if I move back, would you let me talk to Kory?”

Her tone stayed gentle. “We discussed this, Nicholas. I think it’s important that you have good role models for your last few years of high school, ones who don’t encourage inappropriate behavior.”

“I don’t know,” he said miserably. “I guess…”

“Sweetheart,” she said, “you’re my only son. Of course I want what’s best—”

“I’m not your only son, Mom.” He didn’t have to think or worry about those words; they erupted from him. He paced, holding the phone.

“You’re the only son I have left.”

“Kory’s just at college. He—”

“Nicholas. I have told you already how I feel about that. I have one son and—”

“You have two sons!”

“Nicholas!”

His heart pounded and his blood raced. His paw hurt from how tightly the phone was held in his paw. “Say you have two sons. If you want me to move back, say you have two sons.”

She was silent. “I don’t have to move back,” he said. “I can go to Meadowbrook or whatever, I don’t need a phone, I can get money from somewhere. But I can’t turn my back on my brother.”

“But you can turn your back on me?”

“You know the one thing Kory never did?” His breath boiled in him, fierce and hot, and he could barely get the words out fast enough to keep his chest from burning. “He never told me to leave you. He never said to stop talking to you, to treat you like you were dead, never told me we don’t have a mom. He never even said we don’t have a dad.”

“You don’t have a father,” she said, but he ignored her.

“And you’re the one telling me to turn my back on my family, you’re the one who wants me to forget about Kory—”

“Because I love you!”

“I love you too!” he shouted. “And I love Kory! And you can’t change that!”

There was a moment there, a wavering moment, where he thought he might have won her over. And then she said, “Call me when you’re ready to come home on my terms.”

What?? “Maybe you have no sons!” he yelled into the receiver, but nothing responded but dead silence.

People walked to and fro on the street. Wolves, foxes, otters, mice, rabbits, deer, possums, and there a coati family, there a kangaroo rat, there a bat-eared fox keeping her comically large ears folded over her head. They ignored Nick, not because he wasn’t one of them, but because he was.

Shaking, he hung up and then sat down on the curb. The telephone post supported his back; the little kiosk sheltered his head from the sun. He squeezed his paws together and rubbed at the webbing. Well. He’d pretty much completely messed everything up now.

* * *

Malaya came out about fifteen minutes later with a cup of water. She held it down to him. “Curb’s filthy,” she said. “You’re gonna have to wash your tail.”

Nick took the water and drank without a word. When he’d finished the water, he didn’t hold the cup up to her, and after a moment she sighed and sat next to him. “Didn’t go well, I guess.”

He stared down into the white Styrofoam. Beads of water clung to the sides. “You know those stories, those fairy tales? The cartoons? The kids who are orphans?”

“Hey,” she said, but he kept going.

“I always felt sorry for them. You know, I never had a dad, but I had a mom, I had a home, and they had nothing. They had to go across the country or go live with a horrible foster family or discover a magic sword or something. And sometimes I’d dream about going on an adventure, you know? But the adventures always end with the kid finding a home and a family.

“And now I’m one of those orphans. Only there’s no magic sword, there’s no adventure.” He sniffed. “I’m an orphan whose parents are still alive. How pathetic is that.”

“Hey,” Malaya said sharply. “You don’t get to be more miserable than me. That ain’t how things work around here. Your parents are still alive, and that means someday you might see them again, you might patch things up. Your mom might come to her senses. Mine can’t ever.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I don’t think she will, though. She says she only has one son now. Well. She said that twenty minutes ago. Maybe now she says she has no sons.”

“And you’ve still got a home,” Malaya said. “And a family. You’ve got Kory and Samaki.” After a moment’s hesitation, she said, “And you’ve got a big sister.”

Nick sniffed again and looked at her. “Ah,” she said, “if you start crying, I take it back.”

“No.” He shook his head. “But I wanna hug you.”

“Sheesh. Little brothers.” But she wrapped her arms and wings around him and let him rest his head on her shoulder. And he figured she wouldn’t notice if his eyes leaked there, just a little.

“All right.” She broke the hug and rustled her wings. “I gotta get back to work. But the other thing I came out to tell you is…” She looked away from him. “I went over to Diner DeLite, the 24 hour place a few blocks away. They’ve got some folks working there who don’t exactly have legal papers, you know? So I talked to the manager and told him I might know a great kid who needed to earn some money. She said you could wash dishes, bus tables to start, maybe move up to waiting tables when there’s an opening.” She got up. “You know, if you want to.”

Nick looked up. “ ‘Great kid,’ huh?”

“Hey.” She pointed down at him. “You gotta learn to lie a little if you want to get ahead.” When he didn’t say anything, she grinned. “But it’s better when you don’t hafta.”

He got to his feet as well. “You just happened to be going over there.”

“I do lots of shit I don’t tell you about.” She waved. “I’ll see you when I’m done my shift.”

“Steakburger?”

“Maybe diner.” She grinned at him, turned, and went back into the bookstore.

Nick took a moment to survey the street, all the various people and the cars, the pretty windows and run-down stores. Then, with the pay phone at his back, he walked down the street and began to whistle.

4

Sinful

And back to the world of Out of Position, with the wife of one of the players. We meet her briefly in Out of Position, and then she isn’t really in any of the other books. But she has her own story, and it doesn’t spoil anything as it doesn’t intersect with the Dev and Lee series.

Penny pushed open the door of the large mansion, her sharp nose catching the familiar smell of bear. “Hello?” she called.

No answer. Genora's car was still out front, along with two others, so she was definitely home. Penny was perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes early, but still. She let the door swing closed behind her and stepped into the dim foyer, the patterned tile chill on her feet. Her tail swished restlessly and she rubbed her brown paws together, then took hesitant steps deeper into the house.

Nobody in the dining room, nor the den. She thought she heard noise from the kitchen, but when she got there, it was as empty as the rest of the house. Maybe out back...oh, of course, Genora had her tennis lesson. So that was likely still going on.

Beside the refrigerator, a pretty door with a large window led to a side patio, with stairs down to the yard and tennis court. She pushed the door open and stepped back out into hot sunshine, shielding her eyes as her feet navigated the warm wood of the deck. At the top of the stairs, she paused. The courts below were empty, though there were rackets and balls and an equipment bag lying there.

Only then did Penny's nose register the scent of bear and wolf, nearly drowned out by the lush flowery hedges that bordered the patio on either side. She turned, a smile ready. “Gen—”

The second half of her friend's name died in her throat. Her friend lay there on the deck atop a big brightly colored quilt and underneath a trim, fit wolf, neither of them wearing a stitch of clothing.

Penny made a little noise in her throat and her paw flew to the end of her muzzle. She and Genora stared at each other, and then the vixen scrambled down the stairs to the back yard because to get back to the kitchen, she would have to have walked past them. “Penny,” her friend's voice floated down, but no footsteps followed.

At the base of the stairs, she walked through the peonies to the basement door, in the shadow of the main patio, and leaned back against the cool glass. She could probably get back in this way, go upstairs, and hurry back to her own house.

And then what? Come back in fifteen minutes and pretend none of this had happened? She fingered the small gold cross around her neck. Confront Genora about her transgression? She closed her eyes and breathed in and out. All right. Genora was her friend. It was her duty as a Christian to talk to her, to help her. She must be doing this because she'd been tempted, and Penny could lend her strength.

Goodness, her tail was still bristled out and wrapped around her hip and her heart was pounding. She opened her eyes and looked out at the empty tennis courts, then flicked up toward the side patio, her ears cupping that way before she folded them down. Still, no sounds came from above, nothing over the droning of bees in flowers and the hum of the air conditioning unit a little ways away.

After a few more deep breaths, her tail had relaxed and her heart had slowed. The smell of wolf seemed to linger in her nose beside the smell of bear that belonged there, but there wasn’t much she could do about that. She turned to the basement door and made her way inside.

The basement was where Genora's husband Allen, an offensive lineman for the Chevali Firebirds, kept a big-screen TV, a refrigerator, an old ratty couch that Genora kept trying to throw out, and a shelf with some footballs he'd been given after games that weren't even under glass. The room smelled like musk and beer, and Penny hurried through it and up to the first floor. She turned the wrong way at the top of the stairs and ended up in the movie room and then turned back and got to the foyer again. She had her paw on the door handle when Genora's heavy footsteps sounded in the dining room and her friend called out her name.

The vixen stopped and turned. Genora emerged from the dining room in a large blue flower-print dress—one, Penny noted, that could easily be slipped on (or off). “Penny, listen,” she said. “About what you saw...”

“I hope you're not going to tell me it wasn't what it looked like.”

Genora laughed. “No, no, it was exactly what it looked like.” She gestured to the dining room. “Want an iced tea?”

Penny's ears flicked around, and Genora caught the movement. “Raef is packing up his things. He'll go around the house so he doesn't bother us.”

Penny folded her arms. “Oh, come on,” the bear said with a broad smile. “Are you going to never talk to me again?”

Support and strength, Penny reminded herself—and the one other question that was growing in her mind. All right. So she followed Genora into the dining room and sat down at the large polished wooden table.

Genora brought in two tall glasses of iced tea and drank hers halfway down before setting the glass on the table. Penny sipped daintily from the tip of her muzzle. “Whoo,” the bear said, licking her lips. “Worked up a thirst there.”

Penny pursed her lips, and Genora's smile faded. “All right, all right. I keep forgetting you're new to this.”

“I've been with Colin for years,” Penny said.

“And I've been married to a football player for a decade, Pen. Didn't you hear when Marge was talking to all of us about the things she went through?”

“So you're saying that because you think Allen might be cheating on you, that justifies you doing the same?” Penny couldn't help the tightness in her voice, but at the same time didn't like it, didn't like the annoyance that flickered across her friend's muzzle.

“I'm saying that Allen and I have an arrangement. I don't ask him what happens on the road and he doesn't ask me what happens at home.” Genora picked up the iced tea and put it down again. “And for the record, I know he cheats on me. He drunk-texted me once—well, never mind that. We just have one rule: be safe. No cubs, no diseases.”

“So he knows about...” Penny waved her paw in the vague direction of the patio.

“Yeah.” Genora took another drink, then put the glass down and stared at the table. “I mean...he probably suspects.”

“If he’s really…” Penny held up a paw. “No, it doesn't matter. Even if he is cheating, you should be going to counseling together, not—two wrongs don't make a right, Gen.”

“Two wrongs?” Genora smiled again. “Honey, there was nothing 'wrong' about Raef, and I hope to God—sorry, sorry—I hope whatever pretty little thing Allen's dipping his wick in is just as right.”

“But you're violating the bond of marriage!” Penny cried. “And—and just so another male can lie on top of you and—and I mean, why would you risk everything for that?”

The bear's eyes widened. “Did you see him?”

“So take a picture with him!” Penny gripped her glass. The cold soaked into her paw pads. “You don't have to be—intimate with him.”

Genora leaned in across the table. “I know I don't have to. I just really wanted to. And he did, too. He said he likes big gals.”

“You really wanted to?” Penny shook her head. “You wanted more?”

“Allen's gone for ten days.” She raised her eyebrows. “So's Colin, for that matter. Are you just lonely?”

“I miss his company, of course,” Penny said.

“And...his intimate company?”

The vixen stared down at her tea, at the ice cubes slowly, slowly melting. “I don't think that's your concern.”

Genora pushed her glass aside and set both paws on the table. “Pen. Level with me. Do you enjoy sex with your husband?”

“This isn't about me!” Penny stood up. “This is about you and your behavior!”

She'd only taken one step backwards when Genora rose, too. “Hey, don't go. We don't have to talk about that if you don't want.” The vixen stopped, trembling. “But then you have to admit that what I do isn't any of your business, either. Mmkay?”

Her fingers went to her necklace. “If you need support—to resist temptation—”

The bear smiled and held out a paw. “I promise you Allen and I are doing just fine. Okay? Now you want to play some games like we talked about?”

She was right; if Penny wouldn't discuss her own sex life, she had no right to ask Genora to discuss hers. Her mind squirmed around that logic—but I'm not doing anything wrong and she is!—but below that was the fear that gnawed at her that she was doing something wrong, only nobody would tell her. And she'd only been living in Chevali for three months, since Colin had been drafted and they'd bought a house near some of the other wives, and if she turned her back on Genora, well, that might be the right thing to do, but it would leave her even more lonely. Don’t associate with adulterers! screamed a voice in her mind, but a more reasonable voice reminded her that the wives had talked quite a bit about the prevalence of adultery in the football world, that it was just a fact of life, and even if Penny had tried quite hard not to hear those remarks, today was proof that she couldn’t ignore them forever. And hadn’t Jesus Fox preached forgiveness? Genora had been—was—a really good friend, and if she was telling the truth, then at least Allen wasn’t going to be hurt. Whether a husband and wife were allowed to rewrite God’s covenant of marriage was another question, and one that Penny decided could wait for another day.

“Yes. Thanks.” She reached out and took Genora's paw, and managed to smile back at her friend.

Genora had taught her how to play video football, UFL '08, which she said she enjoyed because it brought her closer to Allen. Penny had learned initially hoping that Colin would play with her, and he had once or twice, but she played far more with Genora and Amy, a cheetah who lived in the same neighborhood and was married to one of the Firebirds on the practice squad.

Amy had grown up with Crystal City money and so lived in the world of charity work, and Penny enjoyed that as well, so when the cheetah showed up with binders full of plans for organizing the next event they were putting on, Penny threw herself into that as well. By the end of the day, she at least felt normal again, even if she hadn't been able to scrub the image from her mind.

She said goodbye to Genora, hugged her, and said, “If you ever need help with anything, I want you to know you can come talk to me.”

“Funny,” the bear said. “I was going to say that to you.”

* * *

They didn't talk about it again, but two days later a package arrived for Penny from Amazon. She didn't recall ordering anything, and Colin didn't usually send her gifts without telling her to expect them. She tore open the cardboard and stared down at the book that lay there. “Sex Matters For Women”?

There wasn't a receipt or a gift label or anything. She folded the cardboard back over without touching the book and dropped it into a drawer in the credenza. A sex book indeed! Her mother had sat her down and taught her everything a vixen needed to know. And she and Colin had figured things out just fine. Mostly fine. He seemed to enjoy it, anyway, and her mother had said that the vixen didn't always, so that was fine. Just fine.

She called Genora. “Did you send me a sex book?”

“Oh, it got there.” The bear sounded pleased. “Look, you can throw it out if you want. I won't be offended. But it helped me out a lot like ten, eleven years ago, and Allen even noticed.”

“Well,” Penny said, “I mean, it's just—”

“Listen. I know it's none of my biz, but this way you don't have to talk to anyone about it. You can just read the book and see for yourself. Or throw it out! I promise I won't ever ask you again.”

Part of Penny wanted to say, “And if I read it, will that lead me to hire a 'tennis pro' and end up getting lessons in something else like you did?” But they had agreed that that wasn't her business, and regardless of what she thought or did with the book, Genora was really trying to help. “I probably won't read it, but thank you.”

“I go to church too.” Genora still had a little bit of pleading in her voice. “Doesn't the Lord want you and your husband to enjoy each other?”

“Of course,” Penny said immediately. “That's part of the covenant of marriage, but—”

“Well then, why not give it a try?”

“But it's not the most important part!”

“But,” Genora said, “does it get in the way of the other parts?”

Penny was silent for a moment. “Thank you for the gesture,” she said. “Are you still coming over later?”

“Of course. I bought some amazing peaches down at the market and I want to make a pie.”

So Genora came over and they made a pie, and then another one because there were peaches left over, and then they ate the last three peaches themselves while the pies baked and filled the house with the aromas of pie crust and cooked peach and cinnamon. All the while, a small part of Penny's mind remained fixed on the book in the credenza; every so often her eyes would flick over to it and then she would look away, ashamed. But Genora, good friend that she was, held true to her promise and never mentioned it, and if she noticed Penny's furtive glances or the slight tension in the curl of her tail, she didn't say a word about it.

“Amy's invited us antiquing tomorrow,” Penny said, reading a text off her phone as they were packing up Genora's pie for the bear to carry home.

“Lovely!” The bear beamed. “Can't wait. Meeting at her place?”

Penny nodded. “I'll walk down with you.”

So Genora left, and Penny poured herself a small glass of wine. Colin called half an hour later and told her about Crystal City, how beautiful and dirty and incredible it was all at the same time. “You should come out here sometime,” he said.

“When do you play there again?”

“Not this season.” He laughed. “But we could come here in the winter. It's probably nicer then. Right now it's hot and the air smells.”

“I'd love to go,” she said. “Good luck in your game. Miss you. God bless.”

“I miss you too,” he said. “See you Monday night.”

She put the phone down and tried to watch her show, but even the inhabitants of the advertising offices of Madison Avenue couldn't completely distract her. And then in the middle of it, there was a sex scene—edited for TV, of course, but it captured Penny's attention anyway.

She'd always turned up her nose at the actresses in those scenes, the way they threw their heads back and gasped, moaned, clutched at sheets as though in the throes of unendurable passion. They were actresses, she always reminded herself. They were paid to make sex look appealing, to entice teenagers into watching the show, no matter whether it then also enticed them to try it themselves and end up pregnant. But now she watched a pretty vixen on the screen gasp and clutch her husband to her and kiss him hungrily, muzzles locked together, flashes of only barely identifiably furry curves flicking past the camera in between shots of the kiss.

She'd kissed Colin at their wedding with what she'd thought was a passionate kiss, and had kissed him many times since, but never like that. What if...

Her ears flicked back toward the credenza.

On the screen, the male fox had finished and was taking a call from the office, sitting on the bed in his underwear while his wife lay behind him stroking his tail. “Of course I can sell them tuna paste,” he said, and then glanced slyly at his wife. “I could sell sex to nuns.”

Blasphemous, Penny thought, but the thought was weak. And when the show ended, she went to the kitchen to refill her wine. For several moments she stood with the glass in one paw staring down at the credenza, at the candlestick on it and the little glass figurines, the fox husband and wife that Colin's parents had gotten them as a wedding present.

She opened the drawer, took the book over to the couch, and began to read.

* * *

She didn't talk to Colin about the book that week, nor the next. At first she thought it was just something she should be reading and Colin wouldn't have to worry about it at all; only a few chapters into the book, though, it became clear that the husband was expected not only to be involved, but to be enthusiastically involved.

This could be tricky. She and Colin had actually made love more times than the number of words they'd spoken about it. When he was home, they didn't say any of the things the book suggested couples talk about, like asking what each other wanted to do, or what each other liked, or (Heaven forbid) what new things they might be interested in trying. They didn't even talk about their bodies at all. What happened was they would have a lovely evening together, maybe with friends, and then they would retire to the bedroom. Both wearing pajamas, they would slide under the covers, and then Penny would wait for Colin to reach across and touch her breast. If he did, then they would push the pajamas around and make love. If he didn't, then they just went to sleep.

She had liked the evenings when they just went to sleep the best. Now, reading the book, she began to wonder what the other evenings could be like.

Colin wasn't making it easy though. One night as they were going upstairs, Penny began to speak timidly. “Colin...” His ears flicked back toward her. “Do you think you're...I mean, are you in the mood to...”

“To what?” He didn't turn until he'd reached the bedroom. Then he stood at the door very properly and let her enter.

“To...to make love?” The words caught in her throat and she couldn't say anything more.

Colin turned away and shrugged. She thought he was going to respond, but he just went into the bathroom and shut the door. When he emerged, he just took off his shirt and climbed into bed without saying a word, not even when she climbed in beside him and said, “Good night.” And he didn't reach over to touch her that night.

So in the next few nights they were together, Penny didn't say anything at all for fear of upsetting him. And on the nights when he wasn't home, she worried about who she could possibly talk to.

Her mother had always said that Penny could call her with any marriage problems. But when they'd talked about sex, all her mother had said (beyond the usual conversation to make sure she understood the mechanics) was that she shouldn't expect to enjoy it. So here, again, she wasn't sure how to start the conversation.

The last week in September, though, she called her mother to tell her about the markets and to ask if she could come down to visit, and her mother said that her father was going on a business trip in November and that that would be a good time, and made a joking comment about getting some time away from him. Penny took a breath and said, “Mom, can I ask you something?”

“Of course, honey.”

Penny held the book in front of her and looked down at it. In the introduction, one sentence talked about women “becoming orgasmic” even out of season after forty years of mechanical, unenjoyable sex. “Did you ever enjoy...you know...'wifely duties'?”

Her mother didn't respond immediately. After a short silence, she said, “Is Colin treating you well?”

“Oh, yes, fine! I'm just curious because, you know, like you told me...” She trailed off and then read the title of the book again. “I mean, a friend got me this book and it says that women can enjoy...”

“Oh, I had friends like that too.” Her mother's tone became brusque and dismissive. “Always telling me that the Lord wants us to enjoy our relations and that if God truly blesses a marriage—ridiculous! If God blesses a marriage, there are cubs, and the most enjoyable wifely duties I had were raising you and your brother into the wonderful young foxes you are today.”

“Yes,” Penny said. “But—”

“When is your season due? Soon, isn't it? You just make sure to have time with your husband then and all will be well.”

“Mid-October.” Penny had it marked on her calendar. That was another thing the book had said; there was a whole chapter on female seasons, when (the author said) the drive for and enjoyment of sex was at its peak. But her last season had come in late June, just a week after the wedding, in fact, and while she had at least felt relieved after making love to her husband, like scratching an itch she still hadn't enjoyed it. At least, not in the way the author of the book claimed she could.

Then again, she'd spent six years practicing abstinence and taking pills to reduce desire (though not fertility; for some reason the Church frowned on that even in its young, unmarried female members), and had gone off the pills in anticipation of her wedding. Perhaps there was some residual effect, even though the label said that all the effects would be gone within two weeks.

There remained, though, one person with whom she might be able to talk, and that was the friend who'd gotten the book for her in the first place.

Genora and Allen were part of the little group that she and Colin spent time with. They'd invited the foxes to their local church, and even though Allen and Colin didn't play in the same position groups on the Firebirds, they both took part in the prayer circles that so few of the players paid attention to. When the guys were home, they hired a caterer to come barbecue in the backyard, and several other players and their families came over. Penny enjoyed those events, and enjoyed being with Colin at them. He talked about the charity work she was doing and her scrapbooking hobby, with as much pride as she told people about the work he was funding back at their alma mater, Ozark State. At times like that, she really felt they were a team, a good married couple in all the right ways: Colin worked hard and Penny managed the house, and they came up with good things to do with his money. She managed their engagements and he showed up, and she bought clothes for both of them and he told jokes.

“If we could only be married during the day,” Penny sighed, “it would be perfect.”

She'd invited Genora over for a glass of wine in the afternoon. The husbands were away in the northern Midwest for a game with Hilltown, and she'd had several phone calls with her charity group and Ozark State in the morning. One glass of wine had led to another, and another, and Genora's stories of her college days (which sounded much more entertaining than Penny's, if not quite as academically sound) had led to Penny's stories of her cousin on the West Coast, the one whose e-mails she always tsked at but, she'd confessed, also felt a little bit jealous of.

And then she'd taken a drink of wine, and Genora had asked about the book, and that had just come spilling out. She'd said the words and then her ears got very warm and she folded them down and she looked at the burgundy-colored liquid in the lovely crystal glass, the narrow goblet designed for fox muzzles. Genora stayed quiet, so Penny lifted her glass again and tipped it to the end of her muzzle. “But,” she said, “I suppose God sends us trials beyond what—no, that's not right. I mean, God never sends us what we want. No. God never sends us trials beyond what we can bear.”

And then she looked up at her friend the bear and laughed because she'd just said, “Bear,” but Genora just reached over and wrapped her large paw around Penny's wrist. “Are things still not good with you two?”

“Oh, it's really such a little thing when you think about it.” Penny set her glass down. “It's not important really. We'll have cubs, and Mom says that married couples with cubbles—cubs—stop having relations,” she whispered the word, “anyway. So really it's only for another month or two.”

Genora didn't relax her grip. “It's important to you. You think Colin isn't out there—well, you know, never mind about that. You think he doesn't enjoy your 'relations'? It's a lot easier for males to enjoy sex.”

“I don't know if he enjoys it.” Penny rested her paw over her friend's. “I really don't. He doesn't want it all the time, and he never says anything. I mean, you told me Allen yells...”

Genora's broad muzzle broke into a grin. “'Praise the Lord!'”

“Yes.” Penny looked down. “If Colin did enjoy it, wouldn't he say something about it?”

The bear squeezed. “You've got to say something to him. I know it seems like just a little thing, but it can be so important. Did you read the part of the book about what the husband can do?”

“Yes.” Penny's ears flushed again. She'd felt more aroused while reading that than she usually did with Colin. Imagining him doing some of those things... “He never will, though. I mean, he won't even...when we kiss, he doesn't...”

“Marriage is a two-way street,” Genora said firmly. “If you're going to make him happy, he should be willing to do it for you. At least once in a while.”

“But how do I...” Penny looked to the side, where the bottle of wine waited temptingly on the sideboard, but her paws were occupied. “How do I even bring it up? Last time he just ignored me.”

“Same way you brought it up with me.” The bear followed Penny's gaze. “Wine can be a wife's best friend.”

“Oh, I don't know.” Strong wine smell filled Penny's nose. “We don't—we don't sit around drinking wine.”

“You don't say.” Genora patted her wrist. “Three glasses and you're already dizzy. But that's good. You won't have to get more than two into him.”

* * *

Getting two glasses of wine into Colin proved easier than Penny would have thought. He came home from the Midwest road trip in a terrible mood. The Firebirds had won one and lost one, but the real reason for his mood was the distraction of one of his teammates, a tiger they'd sat at dinner with during the banquet to kick off the season. Penny remembered him, a pleasant fellow, but she wasn't really interested in whether or not he was a homosexual.

Her season had started the day before Colin came home; she could always tell because she woke up feeling suffocated by the covers. Even when she was on the pills, she'd wake up warm every day of her season, and the fur around her hips would itch. Nothing she couldn't ignore, but the signs were unmistakable.

Now that she was off the pills, she became aware of another sign: when Colin was around, she couldn't stop thinking about how attractive he was, couldn't stop thinking about the things she'd read in the book and imagining him doing those things: his fingers, his tongue, his body. Wine helped dull those thoughts, and also helped him calm down.

In public, he didn't rant so much about his teammate, but once he and Penny were alone and the evening was growing dark, he wouldn't stop talking about it. “It's bad enough we only get eight out of fifty players in our prayer circle,” he said. “Now there's this degenerate actively opposing the things we're doing.”

“It's terrible,” Penny murmured, refilling his glass. He barely noticed, though he did go on drinking.

“And he is completely unrepentant. It's sickening to see so many people just following him into sin, encouraging him, making him feel good about his spiritual decay.”

“But you said he might not be?”

“Whether he is or not, that's not the issue.” He took another gulp of wine, and wiped a drop from his chin, leaving a red stain behind. “Nobody's telling him that he needs to worry about his soul. They're talking about how he's a part of the team no matter what and the implication is that even if he is, it's no big deal.”

She let him go on like that through his second glass of wine, and midway through the third, his energy ran down. “I'm sorry to go on like this,” he said, “but it's nothing I was prepared for. Covering the best wideouts in the game, sure. But I only have so much energy to spare.”

He put his glass down and took her paw. Penny finished her second glass and set it down as well so she could hold both of his. “You haven't heard anything about this, have you?”

“No,” she said.

“Good. I'd hate to think it had gotten as far as our church.”

He relaxed but held on to one of her paws. She squeezed it back. “Colin.”

His ears came up. “Hm?”

“My—my season started.”

He stared. “Wha—how did I not notice?”

She lowered her ears. “I'm wearing some Cardiana #5 to cover it.” That was what her mother had told her to do during her season when they were entertaining or visiting. One didn't want other husbands to notice and get over-excited.

He leaned in close and sniffed, and his eyes widened. “So we can start a family?”

“We can try.” She smiled. “But can I—oh!”

He'd crouched down and lifted her in his arms. “Then let's go try,” he said.

Ask him, her mind said all the way up the stairs. Ask him ask him ask him. But still the words didn't come, not when he deposited her gently on the bed, not while he was in the bathroom and she struggled to get her clothes off, not until he came out of the bathroom in his pajama bottoms and stopped, staring, then averted his eyes.

“Penny,” he said. “Put on your pajamas.”

“Are you ashamed of my body?” She rubbed a paw down her stomach.

“Of course not, but...” He took a breath and looked at her. “There's no reason to be naked.”

“Weren't the First People naked? A husband and wife may be naked together, mayn't they?”

He licked his lips and nodded slowly. “They may...”

“Do you not like to look at me?” She wished she could read his expression better, but he was remaining very neutral, his ears up, tail still, and—she risked a look—at least there appeared to be a little bit of a bulge in his trousers.

“I do,” he said. “Very much. I mean—well, how would you feel if I just took off my pajamas?”

“I don't know.” She looked at him. “Why don't we find out?”

He gaped. “What's gotten into you?”

“I just want to make love to my husband. What's wrong with that?”

“What's wrong with the way we used to do it?”

There it was, the question she'd been waiting for him to ask. The wine bubbled around in her and before she knew it, she was telling him all the things the book had recommended, and she was telling him about the book, too, and about all the things that a husband should do to make his wife enjoy their relations, and all the while he just stood there listening.

When she ran out of wine-fueled energy, she stopped talking and still Colin just stood there. “Colin?” she said.

He took a breath. “So I've been neglecting you, is what you're saying?”

“Oh—oh. No, darling, I—”

“Then what is all this about a book, and all of these—these sinful—I don't even know what to call them. Perversions? Who gave you this book? Where did you get it?”

She swallowed and shook her head. “No, I just—Genora gave it to me, but—”

“Genora? Allen's wife? You told her about our marital life?” Now his ears were going back, his brow coming down.

“No!” Penny faltered. “She—she asked, and—we were just talking—”

Colin approached the bed slowly. “I love you,” he said. “But our life in here,” he gestured around to the bed, “this is our business and nobody else's. That clear?”

She nodded, aware of pressure behind her eyes, trying to hold it back. “I'm sorry, but—”

“God has a plan for us. No neighbors, no books, nobody else knows what it is. It's up to us to figure out. Right?”

“Yes!” She brought a paw to her eyes and tried to rub the moisture away. “That's why—I just thought it would be nice to try, to experiment, to see if there are things we can do. You know, to make it...different.”

“Different.” He knelt on the bed, looking down at her. “You want things to be different? Are they not good enough?”

“No, darling, they're fine, but...”

“I'll tell you what.” He put a paw on her stomach. “If you want to come to bed without pajamas once in a while, I think I can get on board with that. How's that sound?”

He was so lean, so muscular, so attractive. She wanted him on top of her, inside her, to scratch that itch that her season had brought with it. And she'd tried so hard, she really had, and he wasn't listening to her at all. So she swallowed her disappointment and pushed the corners of her muzzle up into a smile, and she nodded. “Thank you, darling,” she said.

He returned her smile and reached over to turn out the light. “All right,” he said, and positioned himself atop her. “Then let's start a family.”

“Yes,” she said, and she closed her eyes.

* * *

The Firebirds played three weeks in a row at home and then had a week off, so Colin was around—as much as a football player ever was—for a month. They did not talk about that night again. Once she did find him snooping in her dresser, and she suspected he was looking for the book, but she'd hidden it in one of her hat boxes. If he'd asked her for it, she would have given it to him (and then bought another one after he threw it out), but he never did.

Similarly, he grew slightly cooler toward Genora, but he never forbad Penny from seeing her or talking to her. Genora asked Penny once how it had gone, but Penny just said, “Terrible. I don't want to talk about it right now,” and the bear let it drop.

They went to the home games and Penny and Genora and Amy and the other wives sat together and talked about church and charity and video games, and whenever Penny wasn't in bed, it was a nice life, all in all.

But every evening reminded Penny of what she was missing, and even when her season passed, she lay awake for hours thinking about it. One night when Colin was out late, she tried one of the things the book said a wife could do on her own, and though she didn't think she'd done it quite right, she was amazed at how it made her feel.

Colin left at the beginning of November to play a few games on the road, and he put a paw on Penny's stomach. “You'll call me as soon as you find out?”

“Of course,” she said, and kissed him good-bye.

When he'd gone, she sat in her living room with her phone out for a long time, staring at the number. Finally she dialed, and brought the phone to her ear.

“Hello, Genora?” She took a breath. “I wonder if you could help me schedule a tennis lesson.”

5

Fatherless

Moving to the world of Argaea, we investigate one of the characters who looms large over the title character in Volle, but actually occupies very little page time. He’s also in the following book Pendant of Fortune, but again not very much. In this story, set before that series kicks off, we meet him much more in his prime.

At six feet tall, Duke Avery of Westermarch towered over every other wolf in the king's court, and over most of the cougars as well. He stood at his desk, pointing at the door that his assistant had left open, through which piping music issued. “Close that,” he snapped.

The young mouse in the cotton tunic didn't stop to question, just ducked his head and said, “Yes, sir.” By the time he'd closed the door, the Duke had seated himself behind his desk again.

The mouse's feet clicked across the stone and then even that sound was gone as he stepped onto the rug before the desk. “How are you this morning, my lord?”

Avery's side ached and his shoulder was stiff where that barbarian lance had poked it a decade ago. His fur itched below his left arm where the fringe of his vest dug into it; this vest had not expanded with his waistline, but he liked it better than the new clothes his wife had ordered. And he'd woken with a headache that neither water nor a thick slab of buttered bread had managed to quell. “I'm fine,” he growled. “What business do we have today?”

The mouse cleared his throat and recited. “You've a council meeting at Quarte—”

“I know that.”

“—and King Vekhin would like to meet with you privately half an hour before.”

Avery nodded his head. “Noted. What else?”

“The Earl of Dunwich requests the pleasure of your presence for luncheon.”

The wolf rubbed his whiskers. Dunwich, a stocky otter, no doubt wanted to once again request a posting for his son, who had twice failed the entrance exam to Avery's Academy. But Dunwich was one of the more influential nobles in Westermarch, and Avery would have to manage him in person. “Very well. Have him join me on the North Tower at the patio.”

“Yes, sir. Madame Besson will be here at Secundus following your request.”

Avery's claws dug into the leather cloth of his vest, twisting the hem below the desk, out of sight of the mouse. “Excellent,” he said, maintaining an even tone.

“And a petitioner from your land waits outside.”

“Hm. How long has he waited?”

“I believe he has been there all night, my lord.”

Avery waved a paw. “Admit him as soon as you leave. Thank you, Marcell.”

The mouse bowed and retreated. Music came briefly through the door as he left, then again as a thin skunk came through the door, his tunic shabby, a simple straw hat clutched in his paws. “Approach,” Duke Avery said as kindly as possible.

His question was a matter of land rights that Avery would have to have his steward look into. He directed the skunk to find Khintos and gave him a token so the young wolf would know Avery had approved the request. When his investigation was complete, he would send it back to Avery for approval. “Will it be complete before the next planting?” the skunk asked in a low, plaintive voice.

“That depends on Khintos. Make him aware of the urgency of the investigation and he will do all he can.”

“Thank you, my lord.” The skunk bowed and shuffled backwards.

Khintos was an attentive steward, one Avery had raised from cubhood when his parents had succumbed to the water disease. He was discreet and loyal and willing to remain in Westermarch while Avery and his family lived in Caril at the Royal Palace, which was perhaps his most valuable quality. And yet, Avery missed him sometimes. He would plan a return home soon, but not for something as trivial as this land dispute.

After a pleasant hour during which he completed a good deal of work related to a mission to the Southlands, Marcell reappeared. “Madame Besson,” he said.

“Show her in.”

Avery did not look up until the slender fox in her elegant green dress stood before his desk. “Please be seated, Madame,” he said.

She swept the dress and her tail around her hip, and waited for him to speak. He lowered his quill pen and met her eyes, raising one paw to brush his whiskers. “I presume you know what this is about.”

Her voice remained cool. “Enlighten me.”

He folded his paws together on his desk. “My operatives reported rumors flying around the tavern that Prince Gennic has been to the Academy. By an astonishing coincidence, they also reported seeing one student in the taverns more than any other, often in the soon-to-be-intimate company of, by my rough count, some twenty different males over the course of this year alone.”

“Our Volle is quite popular.” Madame Besson cracked a slight smile. “I had no idea.”

“Expel him.”

“There is no law against intimate activity outside the school. In fact, as a spy, it is often beneficial—”

Had she been anyone else in the world save perhaps the King, the Crown Prince, or Duke Avery’s wife, he would have interrupted her right there. He curled his paws tighter against each other.

“—to learn to navigate such situations.”

“As long as the information flows to the spy. Not away from him.” He couldn’t keep the growl from his voice.

“I am not convinced that he is responsible.” She shook her head. “He does well in all his classes—exceptional in some, but well in all.”

“Discretion is also a class!” Avery barked. “If he's going to spill his secrets to the first fellow who sticks his—” He coughed and brought a paw to his muzzle as the fox turned her muzzle to one side, ears dipping. “With whom he has a liaison...then he's no use to us.”

The fox's ears stayed down. “With all respect, sir, we have only twenty-six students in the Academy. Should we be in need of someone...”

“We'd be better off not having someone than having someone unreliable. I warned you that a student without a father would cause trouble.”

“There is only one other red fox. You spoke of the necessity of maintaining a number of different species...”

He exhaled. “You want to keep him.”

“I want him to have a chance. He has no family, no prospects. Most of the students in the Academy are noble-born and he has struggled so much. Most fatherless boys turn to a life of crime, and yet he is working so hard to succeed.”

Avery leaned across his desk. “Do you agree that his wanton and reckless pursuit of liquid indulgence and sexual gratification is a potential hazard to his career as a spy?”

This time, her ears came up and she straightened her back. “Potential,” she said. “Yes, sir. But not actual. Not yet.”

“You think he can keep secrets separate from sex?”

Madame Besson smiled. “I have no direct evidence of this, but yes, I believe it possible. Probable, in his case.”

Avery considered her. “If we keep him, then you bear responsibility for him. When I am told that one of my students has caused a disturbance—or if news of the Prince’s visit, or any of the Lords, were to bring harm to him…”

“I will take charge of it.” She remained calm. “You placed me in charge of the Academy because you trusted my judgment. Allow me to exercise it now.”

“Very well.” He pressed his fingers against his stiff whiskers. “Very well. Thank you.”

* * *

By the time Avery arrived for his lunch appointment, Dunwich had already ensconced himself on the patio with his two personal servants, both weasels in identical tunics and blue vests patterned with Dunwich's crest. The otter himself wore a gaudy doublet of blue velvet with mother-of-pearl buttons and a white flower tucked into the buttonhole.

He didn't rise when Avery walked onto the patio, but raised a paw and inclined his head in a simple bow. “My lord,” he said, without any of the deference with which other people said it.

“Dunwich.” Avery acknowledged him and then sat down across from him.

“I took the liberty of ordering the fish from the kitchens. It's not fresh here, but you know what they say: Better three day old fish than no fish at all.”

“You're the only person I know who says that.” Avery settled back into his chair. A hare hurried up to him in the blue and green livery of the palace to take his order. He asked for wine and fresh bread and the hare scurried away again.

Dunwich chuckled. “How goes the information business?”

“Fine as far as you know.” Avery smiled.

They exchanged pleasantries until the fish was served, and Avery was relieved to find that it was not actually terrible. During the hotter months, the day trip from the nearest lake often rendered the fish far too aromatic for his sensitive nose to take—though Dunwich and other otters cheerfully ate it up regardless—but the weather had been moderate of late, and today, though the sun beat down on them, a breeze played through his fur and he was quite comfortable.

Dunwich was first to broach the subject Avery knew was on his mind, about halfway through his fish. “My boy Tarwin could have been a great Master of Ship, would he just put his mind to it. He has such a way with people.”

“Mm.” Avery waited.

“But he wants to travel. Imagine that! Well, you've traveled quite a bit in your time, but you're a wolf. Otters—we like our water. It's all very well to travel up and down river, but he wants to see foreign cities, meet different people...” Dunwich gulped down a bite of fish and then a swig of wine, and resumed talking before Avery could have gotten a word in even if he were inclined to. “It's those bards, you know. 'The People of Winter,' have you heard that one? What about 'The Land of Sand'?”

“And don't forget 'Up the Mountains.'”

Dunwich threw up his paws. “Mountains! An otter, going up a mountain! He might as well ask to explore the vast southern desert. Come to that, he has asked for that as well.” The otter shook his head. “I've told him and told him...”

“You’ve only one home.” Avery recited the words with him.

“Yes!” Dunwich leaned across the table. “You understand. I mean, your son—”

“We are not talking about my son.”

“Of course. No. I simply meant, as a father who—well, you and I, we both know—that is, my lord, can you find it in your heart to help me?”

Avery sighed. “Has your boy learned to write since the last time he applied?”

“There must be something he can do for you that doesn't require writing. He's able and willing and I just know he would do anything to earn a chance at your service.”

Avery shook his head and took another bite of fish. “If he cannot write, then...” He stopped, swallowed his fish, and then tapped his muzzle. His eyes met Dunwich's. “Tell me, sir. Does young Tarwin share his bed freely?”

“Well.” Dunwich coughed in surprise. “A father, you know, doesn't make inquiries, but, er.” He raised his eyes and then smiled. “A lord does hear certain stories. Let us just say that the lad does his father proud, eh?”

“Mmm. Does he do his father proud with males?”

The otter's eyes widened. “My lord. I—if you require it, then of course—er, I mean, I shall ask the boy—I mean, I'll have Poc here ask him.” The weasel servant to Dunwich's left only let the look of terror flash over his face briefly before composing himself again. “I hadn't realized that you enjoyed the company of young males. Are things not well with your wife, or—”

“Not me, you idiot,” Avery snarled. “I have a delicate assignment that requires someone unknown to the Academy to seduce one of our male students.”

“Oh, I see.” Both Dunwich and Poc looked relieved. “Poc, do you know anything about Tarwin's...er, that is, what he prefers to...”

The weasel coughed delicately. “I am not certain that this is the appropriate venue in which to discuss young Master Dunwich's activities, but based on my observations, I believe he would approach the task with the same enthusiasm he brings to all of his endeavors.”

“There you are, then.” Dunwich leaned back. “Is the student, er...well, never mind, that doesn't matter, even if not, Tarwin may be willing to do it.”

“Do find out.” Avery reached for his wine, finding his humor much improved.

“If he is, er...will he be allowed to...that is...?”

“I will certainly consider his application more closely if he consents to this assignment. If he completes it successfully, of course.”

“Of course.” Dunwich's broad muzzle broke into a smile. “Thank you so much, my lord.”

* * *

The King wanted to discuss some information with him about a possible sympathizer in the Tephossian court, a noble who had contacted their agent there. Avery promised to interview the agent and follow up on the lead. “It could be the difference between another war and a lasting peace,” the king told him.

Avery thought of that during the relatively boring process of the council meeting, during which his only responsibilities were to report that the expeditions he'd reported on at the last meeting still had not returned. A lasting peace with Tephos? It wouldn't mean his job was over, but a large portion of it would be, perhaps enough for him to take his family and return to Westermarch. If they even wanted to go. His wife certainly enjoyed the capital, and his son...

He returned his thoughts to the meeting, the bulk of which was taken up by harvest reports. Avery didn't begrudge old Lord Corrigan his reports; the cougar only got to speak at the council meetings for planting and harvest, though he clearly loved doing it and made the most of his speeches.

And then there was dinner, an informal affair for the palace's residents. Not everyone partook of the communal dinner, but those who didn't dine in their chambers came down to the banquet hall for a reason. In Avery's case, that reason was conversation. He slipped into it easily with anyone he happened to spend more than a few moments next to, and always found out some little useful nugget of information to store away.

They had been eating for an hour when the Royal Steward rose and announced that the musicians would now perform for the guests' benefit. “Do please excuse me,” Duke Avery said to the raccoon lord who'd just told him that one of his neighbors had been harvesting his crops early this year. Early harvest might mean undeclared debts, a desire to have his crops first to market so he could trade them quickly for coin. Avery filed that away and returned to his office to collect some papers to take to his chambers.

He found Dunwich waiting in his antechamber. “Hello there,” he said. “Did you not come to dinner?”

“I eat in my chambers.” The otter patted his stomach. “My own fish, prepared by my own servants.” One of the weasels was not with him, but the other was, and Avery couldn't tell them apart.

“Of course. Won't you come into my office?”

“Oh, no.” The otter waved a paw. “I merely came up to inform you that Tarwin has agreed to your plan, whatever it is. Well, Poc told him the seduction part, and he asked how far he would have to seduce and Poc said that he didn't know, and they came to ask me and I didn't know either, and he said it didn't matter and then I told him to stop talking.”

Avery smiled, showing his fangs. “I'm delighted to hear it.”

“So, er, when does this, this mission begin?”

“Please ask him to meet with me here in this office at Secundus tomorrow.” Avery looked down at the otter. “Are you sure of this, Dunwich? Whoring out your son?”

The otter fidgeted. “Heavens, my lord, why must you—that is, it's in a good cause—for the good of the crown—isn't it?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Then—well, aye, there's no question. It's his duty, and if it provides him what he wants, then aye, though I wonder why you call it that.”

Avery chuckled softly. “I've no wish for you to come back to me afterwards and tell me you'd no idea what you were doing. So there it is for you, plain and simple, and if your conscience tells you to stop, then simply tell him I found someone else and there'll be an end to it.”

“Conscience?” The otter laughed and patted Avery's arm. “My lord, you know me better than that.”

“Consciences are like prickle-bushes,” Avery said. “They grow in the most inconvenient of places and can snag your fur quite painfully.”

“Well, no worries on that score. The Dunwich house is more than pleased to help the noble Duke of Westermarch and the crown, with our minds or our coin or our bodies.”

The wolf extended his arm, and Dunwich grasped his paw. “You're a good and loyal lord,” Avery said.

The otter's smile broadened. “I trust that you will not forget it.”

Once the otter had left, Avery resituated himself behind his desk. There were always more reports to go over, more information to sort and file, notes to make and compare to each other. This report had come in from a lesser Barony to the south about movements of another Barony, asking the King to send more soldiers down, but they also talked about heavy rains and Lord Corrigan would want to know about the weather conditions as that would affect the crops this year. And last year, Avery found from his notes, the second Barony had been the one requesting assistance from the King. Little political battles, and he had to keep his nose to each one of them so they did not become big political battles.

Nons had sounded a long time ago when Marcell tapped on his door. “M'lord?”

“Mm?” Avery didn't look up from his desk.

“Your wife wishes to know—”

“Fifteen minutes.” He waved a paw.

“Yes, sir. Shall I lay out your nightshirt?”

“Please.”

Avery glanced out the window toward the crescent moon. High enough in the sky now that he could likely return to his chambers and have a peaceful night. Still, he made one more page of notes and then filed it before standing, stretching (he always forgot how hard it was just to sit at a desk for several hours at his age), and leaving his office, turning the key in the lock as he left.

His chambers were indeed quiet; nobody sat in the chairs of the parlor or the small dining room. His nose caught the aroma of the dinner his wife had enjoyed and of the guests she'd entertained that evening. All gone now, and the door to the other side room also stood firmly shut. He entered his bedroom and closed the door behind him.

“Evening, dear.” His wife lay in bed reading. Beside her in his spot on the bed, Marcell had laid out his nightshirt.

“Good group tonight?” He pulled his vest off, and the shirt, and then his pants.

“It was adequate. Duke Porter and his wife, and Lady Xovin. We discussed the deplorable state of the palace's tailors and where we might go to get our garments mended if not here.”

“I thought the tailors did fine work here.” Avery pulled his nightshirt on and ran two fingers over the stitching.

“They do, when it's one of the royal family requesting it.”

He climbed into bed and reclined back against the pillows. “Do you want me to have a word with them?”

“Oh, heavens no.” She leaned over to kiss him on the muzzle and then went back to her book. “I have no complaints. But the Porters have been waiting on a vest for two weeks now and Lady Porter wished to wear it to the dance next week.”

He closed his eyes and remained silent. After a moment, his wife went on. “You haven't decided about the dance yet?”

“Did they mention anything about the Zhens?”

His wife frowned. “Who are the Zhens?”

“Bobcats.” Avery yawned. “They and the Porters border a Duchy and there were rumors they were discussing a new trading compact. But if the Porters didn't mention anything...”

“No, I think I would have remembered. They did talk about the Quinns.” She related some of that conversation, parts of which were interesting. Avery filed them away to note tomorrow.

“As far as the dance...it would mean a lot...”

He cleared his throat to cut off the words. “I shall have to see how busy my schedule is.”

“All right. Good night, dear.” She turned another page in her book, and he turned over onto his side.

* * *

“Madame Besson.”

She walked in a moment after Marcell announced her. Avery rose from behind his desk until she was seated, and then sat down as well. “I believe I have a solution to our problem,” he said.

The fox dipped her head in acknowledgment, her ears flicking and then returning upright. “Other than simply expelling the fox you don’t like?”

“He should be here shortly.”

She tilted her head. “He? Volle?”

“If our suspicions are correct, then it seems reasonable to test them.”

“Your suspicions.”

“Indeed. I have recruited a volunteer who is willing to determine for us how much information your Volle will give up under the right circumstances.”

Her back stiffened. “Are you suggesting that someone—”

Marcell's voice interrupted her. “Tarwin of Dunwich.”

The young otter bustled into the room behind the mouse, a broad smile on his muzzle. He walked right up to the desk and shoved his paw across it. “Ah, you must be Duke Avery, eh? My father told me you've a very pleasurable job for me, and I just want to let you know that I won't let the pleasure get in the way of the job. Orders first and pleasure second! I know many otters wouldn't think that way, but I'm not like most otters. I'm dependable and reliable and trustworthy and dependable—did I say that already?”

Avery stared at the babbling youngster, but composed himself quickly and reached out to shake his paw. “Pleased to meet you. I'm glad to hear it. I'd offer you a chair, but...”

Madame Besson stood. “He may take mine, because I wish to know no more about this test.”

“But—” Avery stood as well.

“No, no.” She waved a slender black paw. “Should you procure some evidence that Volle is unreliable, I will do as you order and expel him from the school. But I will not inquire from where that information originates. I trust that you will make certain it is true before taking action on it.”

“Of course.” He inclined his head. “Marcell, please show Madame Besson out.”

Tarwin didn't even wait for the door to close before slipping into the chair she'd vacated. He straightened his aquamarine vest and leaned back. Avery could tell he was trying to appear casual, which betrayed an inner nervousness. “So I'm to help test whether this Volle person is unreliable, and it involves slipping his clothes off and getting him worked up?”

“Er.” Duke Avery nodded. “He's well known for his frequent liaisons out in the taverns around the Academy, and we worry he might not be trustworthy with state secrets if he were to go on to be employed by the King.”

The otter lifted a paw, smiling broadly. “Well, I haven't the broadest experience with other males, you understand. Father said I should say that right off. I mean, of course, I've been on two-day ship voyages, and the crew were all male, so I'm not un-experienced, but it might help if you can tell me what this fellow likes and all. I mean, I know how to dress and what to say for a female otter—and a few other species—but for a male...” He scratched behind his ear. “What species is this fellow, anyway?”

“Red fox,” Avery said. “You can't miss him.”

“And what kind of information do you want to get out of him?”

Avery had put a bit of thought into this. “The students sometimes meet with higher-level Lords to discuss problems facing the monarchy. They are warned not to talk about which Lords have come to meet with them for security reasons. In practice, that information isn't terribly secret, and people find out through many other channels. But the students are specifically told to keep those meetings secret.”

“Ah, so you want me to ask him who he might've met with.”

“Indeed. I know of two Lords who have visited the school in the past month, and if you can coax him into telling you either of those names—or preferably both—then that would be a betrayal of a school secret and grounds for expulsion.”

“Right! Seems easy enough. Taverns around the Academy, fox named Volle, visitors of noble persuasion to the school. But...”

The wolf lowered his ears and his voice. “What?”

“I'm wondering...” The otter hesitated.

“Tch.” Avery shook his head. “I've told your father, I'll consider your application very strongly should you succeed in this mission.”

“Oh, not that. I trust you. Only just wondering why you want this fellow expelled. I mean, I get that he hasn't done anything but you're worried he might, but why? What has he done?”

Avery set his paws flat on the desk. “You don't need to know that.”

Tarwin nodded quickly. “All right, all right. Father warned me about you, too.”

The wolf showed his teeth in a wide smile. “Good.”

“So...” Tarwin glanced away. “When you want this done by?”

“It shouldn't take you longer than a week.” The wolf kept his gaze on the otter so that when Tarwin's eyes flicked back, they met Avery's stare. “Marcell will give you instructions for contacting us if you encounter any difficulty.”

He bent back to the reports on his desk. Tarwin shifted in his chair and started to say something, at which point Avery brought his muzzle sharply back up. “Any more questions?”

“No, sir.”

“All right, then. Marcell!”

The mouse reappeared silently and led the otter out. When the door had closed, Avery exhaled. With any luck, this whole mess would be wrapped up in a few days, and he could focus on really important matters.

* * *

It was only three days later that Marcell informed him that Tarwin was waiting to see him, “looking quite pleased with himself indeed.”

Avery's spirits, dampened that morning, lifted along with his ears. It was not only gratifying to him to have been right, but to have devised such an elegant solution and have it work was enough to make him forget that morning's argument for a few moments. His mind, he thought, was still as sharp as his sword had been. “Show him in.”

Tarwin did not so much walk in as strut, and he took the chair without being asked. “Wish all the work you'd have for me would be this pleasant, sir,” he said before Avery had a chance to speak. “And so easy!”

The wolf leaned forward. “He told you school secrets?”

“Did he ever!” The otter laughed. “He said the school's been visited by Prince Gennic and Baron Darger, and he even told me that Lord Corrigan is to come speak to them next week.”

The joy of being proven right ebbed slightly, tempered with the nausea that flaws in his organization always brought. Part of him had hoped that Volle would prove more resistant, that even with as much trouble as he'd caused—the fights, the liaisons, the unpaid debts—he would at least be trustworthy. “And he was a red fox?”

“Aye, introduced himself as Volle, and he came up to me, no less.”

“In a tavern?”

“Well!” And here the otter sat straighter. “I did go wait in the taverns like you said, and mind you I got a good many offers I turned down to stay with my job. But I thought to myself, I said, What would Lord Avery have me do if this fox doesn't show right away? So I asked a few people where a fellow might go to have a good time with another fellow if he doesn't want other fellows to see the two of them, if you know what I mean.”

“I do,” Avery growled, not bothering to correct his title.

“They did too. Very nice chaps, two of them offered to come with me. I had no idea that the taverns here offered so much entertainment for a young country otter! But they directed me to an alley behind the tavern, I think it was the Three Swords, you know, the one just across the street and over one from the Academy?”

“I know the establishment.”

“Right, so, the alley behind it, 'pears that it's a favored place for some of the students. Another bit of information for your lordship, free of charge.”

“Much appreciated.”

“Anyway, well...” He paused. “How much detail do you want, sir?”

Avery sighed. 'Want' and 'need' were probably two very different things in this case. “I will have to question him about the encounter, so I suppose as much detail as possible.”

“Right!” Tarwin settled back. “I tried extra hard to remember exactly how it happened.”

The wolf brought a paper out and got his pen ready. “Go on.”

“All right. So I think it was on the third day just past Sexte—I remember hearing it ring and thinking that'd be funny—”

“That's when the school lets out.”

“Oh, right, so it makes sense. Anyway, it wasn't more than fifteen minutes after that I was waiting in this alley. Doesn't smell too good, but there's stacks of old crates, you know, from the taverns, so there's a little bit of privacy and I guess that's why they like it back there. I see this fox walking back and I make like I dropped something, see what I mean?”

Avery made a note and then shook his head. “Please just tell me,” he said, thinking he would probably regret that.

“Course. Sorry, sir. Making like I dropped something means I bend over. Facing away from him, so my tail goes up and he can see what's under it, you know what I mean? Sorry, sir. I mean he can see my ass.”

Once again, Avery thought, he'd been right.

“Anyway, he must like it. He comes up to me and says 'I haven't seen you around before. You waiting for anyone in particular?' And I say, 'Well, maybe I'm waiting for you.' You like that, sir? I thought of it myself.

“It worked, too. And I told him my name, I said, 'I'm Tarwin, and who are you besides devastatingly handsome?' He liked that, he perked his ears up and put a paw on my waist and said, 'I'm Volle,' and I said, 'Vahl?' and then he spelled it for me, 'Vee oh el el ee.'”

Avery frowned slightly and flicked one ear, making another note. “Go on.”

“I said the other fellows told me a lot of students from the Academy came down, and asked if he was one and he said he was, and I acted real impressed by that, like told him how smart he must be and how it was really unusual to find someone so smart with such a good body. And I put my paw down on, well, you know. Sorry! On his sheath. But through his pants. He liked that. But then I took it away and said, How do I know you’re really from the Academy and not just saying it to impress a stupid alley-boy like myself? You like that one, sir?”

“Very clever,” Avery said.

“Volle liked it too. Or maybe he just liked the rubbing. He tried to put my paw back and I wouldn’t have none of it. So he made like he was going to find someone else in the alley and I made like I didn’t care. See, sir, I made sure to bathe and scent myself nicely, which most of those alley boys and even the tavern boys, well, I’ll just say that I’m not surprised not to see many long-nosed folk in those places. I was a little worried when he disappeared but I thought, Duke Avery had confidence in you, and you can have confidence in yourself, and I waited, and sure enough, he came back.

“He said, ‘Look, I have met Prince Gennic.’ And I said, ‘Oh, you have not,’ and he insisted he had. He told me what the prince wore, a green shirt with brown leggings and a jeweled scarf, and said he wasn't wearing a crown and he talked very softly. And when I still made like I didn’t believe him, he told me Baron Darger had come, that he is missing his left front fang and that he smells like sandalwood.”

Both of those descriptions sounded very true. Avery made a note and nodded.

“So then I say I'm convinced, and I go back to rubbing his sheath and what's sticking out of it by this point. Then he opens his pants, and I'm rubbing his cock, but he wants me to take him in my muzzle, so he pushes me down to my knees, and—”

Avery raised a paw. “Did he say anything else?”

“No, sir.”

“And that's how things...finished? In your muzzle?”

“Aye. I thought you wanted details.”

The wolf shook his head. “No, I think I have enough here.”

“Oh!” Tarwin raised a paw. “When we’d done—when he’d done—he tells me there’s a Lord Corrigan coming to visit later, and says he’ll come back to tell me about him once he’s been. I say I’ll be waiting for him. Then he tells me I can't tell anyone any of this, and I promise him I won't.”

“Thank you, Tarwin.”

The otter’s eyes shone. “Did I do well, sir?”

“You did admirably.” In answer to the question that was in the otter’s patient stare, Avery said, “I cannot promise you entry to the Academy if you haven’t your letters, but I do have a small group under my direct command whom I use for very specific, delicate tasks. If such a job might appeal to you—”

The young otter sprang up from his chair. “It does indeed, sir!”

“I cannot guarantee travel or even assignments that will be as enjoyable as this one.”

“It doesn’t matter, sir. I’ll do whatever you need, whatever you like.”

He’d certainly proven himself in this matter. “Very well. Come back and see me tomorrow, and send Marcell in on your way out.”

* * *

Madame Besson returned that afternoon. Duke Avery received her just after Sexte and waved her to the chair on the left. She sat, eying the other chair. “Your test has succeeded, I expect.”

He nodded. “I have sent for Volle, but I wanted to brief you first.” He gave her a short, edited account of Tarwin's story.

She sighed. “You are certain this otter is telling the truth?”

“I made sure of it. He knew about Baron Darger and the Prince's visit, and even about Lord Corrigan's upcoming visit. How could he have found out about them otherwise?”

Madame Besson was no stranger to the intelligence game, having worked in the field alongside Duke Avery many years ago. She rested her muzzle against one paw, seriously considering the question. “He could have wanted to please you so much that he found the information you wanted and made up the story.”

“Who knows about Lord Corrigan, though? I can see that perhaps the tavern-goers might have spotted Darger. He's never shy about where he goes even when nobody's meant to know. But the Prince is a different matter. And he described Darger's smell and the Prince's attire. Someone would have to have been in the room with them to know those details.”

Slowly, she nodded. “It could have been another student. He might have gotten the information from another one and made it into Volle in his story.”

“Mm.” Avery turned this over in his mind. “Possible. I had to tell him the name of the student, though. Couldn't get around that. He did ask why, but I didn't say anything. Could they be friends?”

“Doubtful. You approached him through his father, correct? So even if Volle had foreknowledge of the test, there is no way he could have somehow ensured a friend of his would be selected.”

“No. But it remains a possibility.” He folded his paws in front of him and inhaled. “Well. There is a way we can possibly check for that. Marcell!”

The mouse opened the outer door and stepped inside. “Sir?”

“Please go to Lord Dunwich's quarters and bring Tarwin here, then wait with him in the antechamber until Volle arrives. Watch how they greet each other.”

“Yes, sir.”

Madame Besson had cupped her ears backwards and now faced them forward again. “You expect them to recognize each other?”

He shrugged. “I expect Volle at least to know enough to keep quiet about their friendship, if it exists, but Tarwin is not so well trained. Marcell will observe anything of importance.”

For a moment, they sat in silence. “I cannot think of anything else,” Madame Besson said. “I would like to interview this Tarwin to see if he is trustworthy. I appreciate your judgment, of course.”

“As I appreciate yours and hoped you would agree to just that.” Avery nodded. “I cannot think of any other possibility either.”

“Then I suppose we wait.” The fox straightened her skirts and sat with paws on her knees. “Will you be attending the dance tonight?”

Avery rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I haven't decided.”

“I will be, if that helps your decision.” Madame Besson smiled. “I understand the music is to be the best in many years.”

“I don't pay attention to that.”

“No, I know you do not. Still, I thought you might have heard.”

“Maybe if I have a chance to go, I will.” He pulled a paper from the desk. “You should read this letter, if you haven't.”

Matters of state occupied them until Marcell opened the door. “The student Volle to see you, sir.”

“Show him in.” Avery inhaled and steeled himself for a moment he found himself not looking very much forward to.

A young fox entered the room, straightening his plain tunic and self-consciously brushing at a couple of the dirt stains on it. He bowed to Madame Besson and then to Duke Avery and looked inquiringly at the empty chair.

Avery nodded. “Please sit.”

Volle swept his tail around behind him and took his seat carefully, sitting with excellent posture. One wouldn't know he was from a destitute family except for his clothes, Avery thought, and those could be remedied...if only he could be counted on to keep them on.

His eyes rose to Marcell, still standing at the back of the room. The mouse met his gaze and shook his head from side to side. So the two of them hadn't greeted each other as friends. Well...Avery's instincts had rarely led him astray, so he found it best to follow them.

Volle waited patiently. The wolf met his eyes. “We're here to discuss your conduct outside the school,” he said. “My operatives have reported to me many times upon the trouble you've been party to.”

When he paused there, Volle said, “If it troubles them, I can come report to you myself, sir.”

Avery glowered and leaned forward. “This is no joking matter! You've revealed school secrets to a common whore in a back alley. Yes, we know—what?”

The fox had raised a paw. “I beg your pardon, sir, but may I speak?”

Avery considered and then waved his permission. Volle cleared his throat. “First, I have not revealed any school secrets. Second, I do not consort with whores. It isn't a moral principle; I just can't afford it. So I respectfully challenge these accusations.”

“We have the witness in question just outside. Marcell, please bring him in.”

“The otter?” Volle's ears lowered and he frowned. “He's a whore?”

Avery remained tight-lipped as Marcell brought Tarwin through the door, then beckoned the otter forward. “Here,” he said. “You recognize this fox?”

Tarwin came up as Volle twisted his muzzle around to inspect the otter. “He's a fox, sir. I mean...he's not dressed like he was—or like the fox in the alley was.”

“Alley?” Volle laughed. “I've never visited the alley. That's for sops like Camarole who don't want anyone to know they like getting serviced by males. His girlfriend would die if she knew.”

Madame Besson's breath hissed inward. Avery snapped his attention to her. “What?”

She took a steady breath. “This fox in the alley. Did he wear...a tunic with a brown vest and a clasp?”

Tarwin brightened. “Oh, aye! Tunic was a sight cleaner than this one. Sorry, friend,” he said to Volle.

Volle smiled. “No offense taken.”

“What...what did the clasp look like?” Madame Besson asked faintly.

“Ah...” Tarwin closed his eyes. “Gold, I think, like a circle with a cross in it maybe?”

The vixen brought her paws up to cover her muzzle. Avery leaned toward her. “What is it?”

She exhaled. “That was Camarole.”

“No, no,” Tarwin said. “Said his name was Volle. Spelled it out and all.”

“What?” Volle stared and then laughed. “Ah, that bastard. Using my name so he won't get in trouble.”

“Who is Camarole?” Avery demanded, though he thought he already knew.

Volle waited for Madame Besson to answer, but spoke up when she remained silent. “He's the other red fox in the Academy, sir. One year older than me. Model student, of course. Wouldn't dream of getting into a tavern brawl. Though it sounds like maybe he said some things he shouldn't have?” He turned to Tarwin. “What did you do to get school secrets out of him, and can you show me?”

“Tarwin.” Avery turned to the otter. “Was this or was this not the fox in the alley?”

The otter clasped his paws together and stared down at Volle. “Well...could he stand up, sir?”

“Stand,” Avery ordered, but the insolent fox was already doing so.

“I...” Tarwin stood close to Volle. “I don't believe it was. The other fox was taller, sir, and smelled a little different. I don't rely on my nose like this one, but...”

Volle put one paw on his pants. “If necessary, sir, I'm willing to allow the fine otter here to inspect other physical characteristics. Only to make an identification, of course.”

“Would you swear,” Avery said, ignoring Volle, “that this was not the fox whom you...met in the alley?”

Tarwin looked at Volle another second and then gave a quick, decisive nod. “Aye, sir. He—he sounds different. Not just the voice, but the way he talks, you understand? Mind you, I wouldn't say no to a quick inspection elsewhere, you know, just to be sure, but—”

Avery growled, “Out. Both of you. Marcell!”

He tried to fold his ears down as the mouse led the two young fellows out the door, but he couldn't help but hear Volle's words. “So, if you're not busy now...”

“And what do we do now?” Madame Besson's words brought his muzzle up.

The large wolf rubbed his side, where his old wound twinged. “We do what we must. I shall send for Camarole and we'll dismiss him from the Academy.”

“You're certain enough?”

He nodded. “I look at it in two ways. If everything is as it appears, then Camarole is untrustworthy and should be expelled. I will hear what he has to say, of course, but I expect he will soon enough confirm Tarwin's story, especially if the otter himself comes in. But on the very slim chance that this is not what it appears...” He took a breath. “Then somehow, this fatherless fox has outsmarted both you and me. And if he has done that before even graduating from the Academy, then...it would be a great mistake to fail to cultivate this talent.”

“I see. You make some excellent points. I will return with Camarole at Secundus tomorrow and we may proceed at that time.” She half-rose and then paused. “I hope I will see you at the dance tonight, sir.”

Avery nodded and bent back to his desk, but he was thinking about what he'd said, and his eyes did not see the papers.

* * *

King Vekhin had filled the banquet hall with flowers and emptied it of tables. Tapestries depicting great battles and former rulers still lined the walls, but the smells of food and drink no longer filled the air as they had at dinner. Instead, hundreds of people crowded the floor, dancing in couples in an elegant pattern set by the musicians at the far end of the hall.

Duke Avery remained at the near end of the hall, one arm around his wife's shoulders, the other clasping her paw. She rested her paw on his hip, the two of them moving together with practiced ease. He bent his head to nuzzle her ear, breathing in her scent and watching the wag of her tail.

“Thank you for coming,” she said softly.

“It was a hard day.” He squeezed her paw. “I thought this would be nicely relaxing.”

Closer to the middle of the hall, he spotted Madame Besson dancing with a handsome fox, and he wondered idly whether she might marry. Next to her, another fox was dancing with Tarwin: Volle, with a much nicer outfit than he'd been wearing that afternoon. He looked away.

“It means a lot to him,” she said very softly into his chest ruff.

Beyond Volle, down at the far end of the hall on the stage, a young wolf played the flute alongside the dulcimer and the vielle. Avery didn't have to look down there to see him, to feel the weight of his son’s gaze. “It's not approval,” he growled.

“It's not disapproval.”

He exhaled past her ear. “One of my students, fatherless, proved to be rather clever, or at least more trustworthy than a student from a well-respected family whose father has done all the right things.” He'd looked up Camarole's father in anticipation of an angry petition to the King, and had discovered a rich textile merchant who had provided garments to many nobles, who had led an exemplary life, who sponsored the Church and was one of the leaders in the Fox House in Caril. “So I suppose that children may often do what they do, and it is no reflection on the parents. Beyond a certain point, the cub's tracks come out from the shadow of the father and whatever ridiculous path he chooses is his own.”

“Nobody thinks his path reflects on you. And even if it did, it’s not ridiculous. Point your nose to all the joy he brings.”

Avery breathed in the scents around the hall, all the people dancing, and smelled exertion and pleasure and desire. “And yet he could have done so much to keep these people safe.”

“He would have been so unhappy there in your school.”

“So people must die for his happiness?”

She buried her nose in his fur. “I'm just happy you're here. Thank you.”

A good husband knows when not to press an argument, especially one so old it has layers and layers to peel back from it every time. He held her a little tighter and moved his feet with hers to the music, and he did not look at the stage.

6

Paths

The genesis of this story was a request to see the character Xiller from my book Volle meet Rukis’s character Puck from her Off the Beaten Path series. Rather than engage in some weird crossover universe, I opted for the simpler expedient of cosplay. Since Puck is blind and I had recently invented a blind character for another short story, I went back into Kesh’s past and made him a little bit of a geek.

My arms were starting to get tired. “How much longer?” I asked.

Jenny's voice came from somewhere down my right side. “This last swirl is tricky.” Her brush tickled my hip fur again, the rich smell of the temporary ink floating up in a wave to my nose.

I sighed and wriggled my fingers. “Can I put my left arm down?”

“Oh. I guess so? Don't smudge anything though.”

“How would I tell?” I lowered my left arm carefully to my side, but keeping it an inch away from the fur there wasn't much easier than keeping it straight out.

“That's the point. Just don't brush the fur.”

“I thought this stuff dried quickly.”

“So did I.” The brush on my fur stopped, and Jenny's voice got more exasperated. “But you smudged one of the patterns on your shoulder and it took forever to get out and re-do—”

“I remember. I was here.”

“—so just be careful, okay?”

I flicked my ink-free tail. “The whole point of this is for someone to touch it eventually.”

“The whole point?”

“Enh.” I wiggled the fingers of my right paw. “A majority of the reason to walk half-naked around a fantasy convention.”

Jenny dabbed at the fur with her brush, tickling lightly, but I have good self-control and I did not twitch. Except for my tail. “All right,” she said. Her claws tapped on her phone. “Let me just see here...okay, I need to go a bit higher here.”

The brush was already right at the hem of my boxers. “Really?”

“Goes almost to his butt.” She set the phone down. “Of course, we could just skip that. I mean, your shorts will probably cover it.”

But not, of course, if I wanted to take them off. “Go ahead.” As her fingers pushed up the hem of my boxers, I said, “If I'd known he has this many markings, I would've just...”

I didn't have anywhere to go with that, and Jenny knew I didn't, so she just kept brushing the ink into my fur. After a second, I said, “Cren just told me they were sexy markings.”

“We're not talking about him,” she said firmly.

“I know.” Outside in the hotel hallway, a group of people walked by laughing, talking about a friend of theirs who'd gone home with her boyfriend and was going to miss the parties tonight. I listened to them while Jenny's fingers brushed up my hip and I thought about Cren anyway, even though his touch was nothing as gentle as hers.

Then she brushed ink into a stripe coming around the front of my thigh, and my sheath noticed the touch and responded. I bit my lip and tried to think of less sexy things, but the self-control that served me so well when she was tickling me deserted me, and my only hope was that she was kneeling at an angle where she wouldn't notice.

She finished and then gave a short little puff of breath with a “heh,” and I knew right away that she'd seen. “Really, Kesh, aren't you supposed to be gay?”

“It's been two weeks!”

She moved around to my other side. “That's all it takes? Lucky Puck doesn't have marks on his sheath. You'd have to do those yourself.”

“The brushing is very...it feels good.” I couldn't even adjust myself or hide it behind a fold in my pants, or sit down or hold a notebook in front of it. There it was, just pushing out the front of my boxers.

“Yeah, I can tell.” Her fingers moved up the hem of the boxers on that side. “Just think about something unsexy. Anyway, it's not like I've never seen you bulging out before.”

My ears flattened. “All right, that was an unsexy enough time.”

“What? When you and that red fox, what was his name...?”

“Oh! I was thinking of the beach.”

“Oh god, the beach.” She laughed. “Yeah, all right.”

And fortunately, my erection went down so I was presentable by the time she'd finished. “There. Now your convention hookup will be impressed by your dedication to the role.”

“Hopefully by the time he's looking at those markings, he'll be impressed by other things.” I swished my tail. “Thanks, Jenny.”

“No worries.” The smell of ink faded considerably as the screwtop lid scraped closed, and then Jenny's possum scent came up to my nose. “Here, since I saw you...”

She took one of my paws. “Oh, no,” I said, “you don't have to this time.”

“Fair's fair, and anyway, I kind of like it.”

So I let her guide my paw to her breasts and gave them a brief grope each. We'd worked out years ago that since I see with my paws and nose, if Jenny catches a revealing glimpse of me, I get to feel something revealing about her. I wouldn't ever really know what a female body feels like otherwise, so I appreciate it mostly from an intellectual standpoint. And Jenny's not really interested in guys mashing her tits, or sticking their paws on her tail or whatever, but she says the way I feel is different and interesting, so she's willing to let me do it once in a while. Three times now, over the five years we've been friends.

“Okay, and now I'm changing into those shorts, so you can leave the room unless you want to get groped again.”

She pretended to think about it. “You know, I would, but I need to get changed myself. Yell if you need something.”

I waited until she'd gathered up her clothes and the bathroom door had clicked before pushing my boxers down and taking them over to the dresser where my bag sat. I put them into the dirty clothes compartment and then felt around in the main compartment for the shorts Cren had bought me and the belt pouch I was going to wear under it with my phone, ID, room key, and so on.

The belt pouch sat snugly against my hip, hopefully not smudging the ink. The shorts were, Cren had told me, patterned to look like a loincloth, with wide stripes of fur down each hip. He'd painted them with the markings that would've shown through if Puck wore a loincloth, and had tried to dye the fur to look the color of my sandy fennec fur rather than the white they'd come in. I had no idea how well he'd succeeded, but I slipped them on and hoped for the best.

When Jenny came out, I caught the strong scents of vinyl and lycra. “C'mere, let me see you,” I said, and she walked over to stand in front of me. As I felt the lycra on her arms and the vinyl belt at her waist, she leaned around and rotated my shorts an inch.

“There,” she said. “Now they line up pretty well. I did an awesome job.”

“I'd expect no less from Vicious Vixen. How does the tail feel?”

“You tell me.”

She turned and let me feel the fluffy wrap she'd fastened around her furless pink tail. “Very foxy,” I said. “You look amazing.”

“You look pretty good, too. Ready to go slay the crowds?”

My cane leaned against the dresser, and beside it, the gnarled wooden walking stick I'd gotten. I wrapped my fingers around the wood and tapped around myself experimentally. Heavier than the cane, more unwieldy, but I navigated by sound and whiskers as much as the cane; the white and red stick served more as a warning to those I was approaching, and I only really used it in crowds, like when we'd gone to the Creators panel.

I planted the walking stick in the carpet and said, “I believe the weather will favor our upcoming journey. Let's set forth.”

Once I've done my first walkthrough of a place, I know it pretty well (another thing I sometimes use a cane for; whiskers are good for navigating past moving things, but the cane helps me find furniture). I could've found the elevators without Jenny, but even though she knows I'm pretty self-reliant, she likes to do things for me, so I let her.

Noise and scents burst over me as soon as the doors opened onto the party floor. People shouldered past me into the elevator and Jenny's paw pulled me out. We stood there in the elevator lobby and absorbed the environment, her with eyes and me with ears.

“Sounds like more parties to the left,” I said.

“Oh, but Kesh, you should see this gorgeous cacomistle who just went to the right. She's alone and she's wearing this sheer green dress.”

I squeezed her paw. “Sounds like she might need a superheroine.”

“No, no, I'm not going to leave you right away. We have to go to at least one of these parties together.”

“No, we don't.”

I tried to let go of her paw, but she wouldn't let me. “The flyer for the people who are running CostumeCon in 2015 said their party's in 902, which is...to the left.”

“All right. Let's go show off our costumes, then.”

Most hotels have Braille numbers on the doors now, but it's easier to have someone lead you to the right door, especially if they also help part the crowd for you. Jenny forged ahead determinedly and I bumped into a few people, but not so much that anyone commented on it. Scents rushed by me, spandex and cotton and musky fur, deer and a trio of hares and a fox and coyote, and I listened to their conversations, the snatches I could catch.

Mostly they were talking about what kind of booze was in the parties, or arguing about Game of Thrones. One person stopped Jenny so abruptly I almost bumped into her and said, “Hey, Vee-Vee! You better get your own movie soon!”

“You know it!” A slap of paws. “Hey, you look amazing,” Jenny said. “Did you sew that yourself?”

While that was happening, a paw landed on my side. Fingers pressed into the bare fur just under my ribs and claws tickled my skin. Predator, then, and big to judge by where the breathing was coming from. I sorted his scent as soon as I caught his breath: wolf. Wolf who had been drinking margaritas. “And who are you, besides the sexiest little fennec in this hotel?”

I straightened. “I'm Puquanah, a shaman of the...Well, I'm not of any tribe right now.”

“A shaman, eh?” The fingers slid up and down my side. “So you can...tell my future?”

“Hey.” Jenny's voice rang out sharply. “I didn't hear him say you could touch him.”

The fingers on my side stilled. “I don't hear him objecting.”

“Costumes aren't consent. Kesh—I mean, Puck, come on.” The possum's familiar grip closed around my paw. “Sorry, we have to go to a party.”

The wolf's paw hesitated just above my loincloth-shorts. “Well, maybe I'll see this cutie later, then.”

Jenny knows how to whisper to me. As we walked on down the hall, she asked, “Did you like him?”

“Nah,” I muttered back. I couldn't catch his scent around, so I knew he wasn't in hearing range. “He didn't even know who I was.”

Of all the conventions I've been to, FanCon has the best parties. There are three kinds of (public) parties: the room party that's the hosts and two of their friends desperately hoping someone else will come in; the party with free booze that's always crowded, drunken, and sticky; and the truly social party where there are some interesting people and it just feels like a fun place to hang out. The parties thrown by convention runners most often fall into that last category, and the party in 902 was no exception.

Jenny and I got drinks, and I sniffed out the food table where there were wrapped chocolates (never take loose candy or chips from a bowl at a party, ugh). We parked ourselves near a couple chairs and talked about her job, both of us also scanning the room for interesting people as we did.

I heard more conversations about movies and books and TV, someone deep into her explanation of an engineering problem she'd solved, someone talking about how long it had taken her to make her costume, a pair of people talking about the other parties on the floor and when they'd leave this one to go back to those, and one person talking about what his vision for the 2015 CostumeCon was. “Anyone look good?” I muttered to Jenny. “No real good conversations.”

“There's a cute raccoon over there, but she's with a guy and I think they're together. I can't quite tell, though, they're not talking much.”

“Oh, the CostumeCon guy stopped talking. Is he looking at us?”

“I don't know, which one is he?”

“Uh.” I parsed the voice in my head. “Tall, deep voice.”

“There's a big lion looking our way.”

“Might be a lion.”

“Now he's walking towards us. And smiling.”

We lowered our voices even more. “He's going to tell us about the con,” I hissed. “Get a phone call!”

But before Jenny could say anything, a voice boomed out right by us. “Hi! I'm Jory. I'm the treasurer of next year's CostumeCon and I just wanted to say hi and welcome to our party.”

“Puck,” I said, holding out a paw.

He laughed, so I guess he'd been holding out his paw and I missed it. A moment later he grasped mine and squeezed hard, pumping it up and down. “You're really in character! Awesome! We could use that kind of dedication at CostumeCon.”

“I'm Jenny, and we did go this year. It was a lot of fun.”

“I wasn't on staff this year, but we're planning all sorts of things to make next year better. Did you see the decorations...?”

He chattered on about his convention and the money they were going to spend on decorations, themed rooms and so on, and I tuned him out, flicking my ears around. More conversations about TV, and then a mild argument that wasn't as hushed as the slightly drunk people probably thought it was.

“I'm going back to the room.” Another tall, deep voice, but without the growl of Jory.

“Dude, it's like nine-thirty.” Thinner, reedier voice, shorter.

“Exactly. Doesn't Ace Markham come on at ten?”

“You don't come to a convention to watch Ace Markham, dude, you can do that anytime at home.”

“They're getting to the glass planet finally.”

“And it'll be sitting on your DVR when you get back Sunday night. Look at the people here.”

A slight pause, and then Tall and Deep said, “I have been.”

“The night's barely started! Okay, just one more party, and if you strike out there, I will personally escort you back to the room. You can sit around in your costume and watch TV.”

“You said you'd help me figure out which guys might be interested.”

“Uh-huh. And what was the first thing I said you had to do?” Tall and Deep mumbled something in response. “That's right. And have you even talked to one person?”

“There was that lion who's running the convention.”

“Doesn't count. Now look. Anyone here you're interested in? What about him?”

Whatever Tall and Deep said in response was lost as Jenny said something that made Jory roar with laughter. I tried to face the voices and hold my drink in a way that showed off my bare chest, but I had no idea if they were even looking at me. I heard Tall and Deep say, “Yeah, he's cute,” but then Jory was in my face, almost literally.

“And Puck, wait, should I call you Puck? What do you usually do at conventions? How are you liking this one?”

“Puck is fine, or Kesh. I like the creator panels,” I said politely. “And just meeting all the great people here.”

“Yeah, FanCon's the best. We're hoping to be this big someday.” His voice filled my ears and now that I knew he was talking to me, politeness kept me from sweeping my ears to the side. I could barely hear anything else in the room. “But CostumeCon really prides itself on doing things focused toward costumers. Like we have not only a masquerade, but a costume parade. I mean, did you see the masquerade at this con? I guess it's okay, but ours is only a little smaller. Did you go to this one?”

“No,” I said, and started to say more, but Jory talked over me.

“Oh, display not your thing? Well, the other thing we do that FanCon doesn't do is we have a Variety Show Friday night that allows you to do skits. So like, say you had a Ransom to pair with. You guys could put on your own skit.”

“I'm not really—”

“Hey, look, that's not for everyone either. I mean, we really want to cater to the fans, the costumers.”

Jenny spoke up. “Kesh is, uh...”

“I'm blind,” I said. Sometimes you just have to be abrupt.

“I know,” Jory said cheerfully. “I read the books.”

“I mean, really.” I waved a paw in front of my eyes. “Nothin'.”

There was a long pause. “Oh. Shit,” Jory said.

I braced myself. “It's fine,” I started, but he grabbed my arm.

“Are you okay? Can I lead you to the drink table?”

“I have a drink. I'm fine.” I tried to wrest my arm away from him.

“Is there anything you need?” He didn't let go, but at least he stopped pulling.

I twisted my arm slightly. “I kinda need you to let go.”

“Whoa.” His paw released me. “So sorry. Hey, you know, CostumeCon complies with all accessibility laws for handicapped people. We've got wheelchair ramps and...uh. I'm not sure what we have for blind people, but Brian would know.” He turned, his loud voice projecting elsewhere in the room for a blessed moment. “Hey! Brian!”

“We're fine,” Jenny said.

“Oh, gosh, I'm so sorry.” Jory turned back to us. “Look, I'm sure Brian's over there somewhere. I'll just go get him. You guys stay here. But call me! If you need someone to walk you around, or...I'll be right back.”

I felt the vacuum left by his departure in more than just the brush of air on my whiskers. “Let's get out of here,” Jenny said.

“Yeah...” But I hesitated, listening for Tall and Deep again. I didn't hear him or his companion anywhere. “Okay, right behind you.”

We hurried out into the hallway, me trusting Jenny to clear a path and not to stop short without warning. She had her paw around mine and she not only pulled me forward but pushed back when she had to slow or stop, so I didn't run into her. “Well, sorry about that,” she said. “How about you pick the next party. But at least make it one where there's one other female?”

My ears perked and flicked around, mapping out the hallway and the conversations going on. “No promises. But you can leave whatever party if you don't like it.”

“Only if one of us gets lucky.” She squeezed my paw.

“I'm lucky even if I don't get a hookup,” I said, and she laughed at that. “Now let me listen.”

So we walked on slowly. I listened to the parties as we passed them, hoping to catch Tall and Deep again, but even though I didn't hear him at the second one, the tone of the conversations sounded upbeat and fun, and I could smell at least three different kinds of alcohol. And there were at least three female voices. “Let's try this one,” I said, and Jenny guided me in.

“Want a drink?” she asked.

“I'm okay for now.” I could feel a wall behind me and we seemed to be out of the way. “I'll wait here.”

“Okay.” Jenny's paw gripped my forearm. “I'll be right back.”

Then she was gone. I leaned back against the wall and breathed in scents and listened for conversations. I heard at least two people talking about costumes, one complimenting someone else's and another talking about how much time it had taken her to make hers. There was a conversation going on around a corner, it sounded like from the echoes, which was kind of interesting: a light-voiced guy and a girl talking about their speculation on the future of Castle Destiny, a show I enjoyed because the dialogue was great. I listened to them for a little while and then I caught the word “fennec,” and my ears perked. I was careful not to focus in that direction so if they were looking, they wouldn't see that I was listening.

“Yeah,” another voice responded, muffled: facing away from me. “He's cute, I guess.”

“You guess,” the first voice replied scornfully. Lighter than Deep and Tall had been, with a predatory growl and a languid pace that made me think cat of some kind. Tiger, maybe. “He doesn't have tits so you don't give a shit.”

“It's more because he has a dick that I don't give a shit,” his friend replied. “Look, you want to go for it, go for it.”

“You think he'll recognize me?”

“You know, Wex, ask me a few more questions like that and you might grow a pair of tits yourself. Just get the fuck over there.”

“Fuck you.”

“I told you, not interested.”

With that sparkling exchange, their conversation ended. Maybe-tiger made his way through the party, but I lost track of him in the muddle of people and movement and talking. Jenny should've been back by now, but I couldn't hear her anywhere. It was nice to know that people thought I was cute; first the wolf in the hall, then Maybe-Tiger, so at least my costume was a success. Or my body, which the costume showed off. That felt good, and not just for the obvious reason.

I swished my tail against the wall, and just then Maybe-Tiger's voice sounded in front of me. “Hi,” he said, and he sounded different than he had with his friend, more tentative, younger even. But it was definitely the same voice. Was he getting into character? His scent, now that I knew who he was, was cougar, not tiger. Still big, still feline.

“Good evening,” I said, ducking my head slightly to get into Puck's mindset.

“I just saw you across the room,” he said. “I'm a soldier and I don't really know anyone here. It looked like you might be alone like me.”

“My name is Puquanah, or Puck for short.” I smiled up at his voice. “What's yours?”

He cleared his throat. “I'm Xiller,” he said.

So he had been getting into character. My nose caught the worked leather he was wearing and the brass fittings as well. “It's a pleasure to meet you, Xiller.” I transferred my walking stick to my left paw and extended the right. “What brings you here?”

He grasped it, holding for a moment and then releasing. His grip, strong and confident, reassured me about the person in the costume. “I...I shouldn't say.” He had the young, naïve manner down pat. “I'm getting trained...”

Nice adaptation of the story to a convention hookup. “Do you not have a place to stay?”

“Oh,” he said, and there was a trace of amusement in his tone, “I do, but...” He hesitated. “Might I ask, are you here by yourself? I, uh, I only ask because I...the shamans I've known have always traveled with a companion.”

“I did have a companion, but...he is elsewhere amusing himself in...other ways.”

He let out a very light chuckle and then stifled it immediately. “Then might I assume you are free?” I didn't answer right away, and he moderated his tone. “I mean...would you be able to...to show me around the area?”

The decision didn't take long to make. This guy sounded nice, he was really going all in on the cosplay, and he was interested in me. I wasn't sure if this was going to lead to private time, but it seemed to be at least wandering toward that neighborhood, and a big cougar would be just the thing to help me forget Cren.

“I'd be happy to,” I said, with as much genuine pleasure as I could put into it. Puck, after all, would absolutely help out a lonely soldier to the extent that it was within his power. And if he were in my situation, well...

“That's a relief.” I could feel his smile. “I really don't want to go back to the quarters they assigned me tonight.”

“There's just...I mean, I do have a friend, and I should tell her...” Where was Jenny? I turned my head and listened, but I still didn't hear her voice anywhere. I held up a paw to 'Xiller.' “If you'll excuse me a moment, I need to...perform a short ritual...”

“Oh, do you believe in the gods?”

Attempting to be canny, trying to catch me out of character. “That's rather personal,” I said, “but since you ask, no, I don't. But this is a ritual...of communication with people I know.”

“Carry on,” he said, amused.

I reached into the inside pocket of my shorts and flicked on my phone. The Bluetooth clip in my ear chirped. “Text Jenny,” I said.

A double beep told me it was ready for me to dictate. “Someone asked me to show him around. I will find you later.”

That should be good enough. The program asked if I wanted to send, and I said, “Yes,” and then I listened for 'Xiller's' breathing and turned to him. “Ready to go?”

He offered his arm to lead me around before I'd even asked, and I accepted because I liked holding onto him, which was probably the reason he'd offered in the first place. “What would you like to see?” I asked as he led me out into the hall.

“Oh, I'm new in the palace. What's nice here?”

I pretended to think about it. “The gardens are nice, and of course the main hall is beautiful. The tapestries...so much history...” I couldn't imagine what palace Puck would be in, but I improvised as best I could. “Mostly I see the healer's area, of course. With the war going on, I am kept very busy.”

“Do you, ah...” He cleared his throat and guided me around a small group of people talking: raccoons, my nose told me. “Is there anything interesting about your quarters?”

“Mine? Oh, well, I...” I let the hesitation hang there for a moment. Puck was also not too shy about his desires—voicing them directly, maybe, but not about letting those he trusted know. “They are comfortable and adequate, and my window looks out onto the,” parking lot, “um, stables.”

“They sound lovely.”

My heartbeat sped up. This was really happening. I fought to keep from smiling too broadly. “I suppose we may pay them a visit, if you like.”

Just then, Jenny texted back, signaled by a chime in my ear and the phone reading her words to me: “So sorry met cute porcupine talking about Queenblade you okay?”

“Do you need to check with your friend?” the cougar rumbled next to my ear.

“Uh,” I said, throat dry. “Yes.”

So I told the phone to reply that I needed the room, and Jenny shot back a text a moment later that just said, “Go for it!”

We had reached the elevator lobby at that point, and 'Xiller's' paw still rested on my arm. I tapped my walking stick on the ground. “All right. I mean, my quarters aren't anything special, but I'd be happy to show them to you. If you like.”

By way of answer, he pulled me to the elevators. “Up or down?”

“Up,” I said.

A moment later he helped me into the elevator. “Which, um... floor?”

I held up a paw. “Allow me. The wrong combination of elements could be dangerous. I've had a lot of practice at this.”

He laughed and stepped back. I ran my fingers over the numbers, finding and pressing the right one quickly, then stepped back into him.

At our floor, we stepped out into quiet and the scent of a sanitized hallway. I led 'Xiller' down the hall to our room, moving confidently down the hall until I knew I was close to our door; my whiskers could feel the slight motion of air from under the door in the still hallway, and I knew where to insert my card key. “I share my quarters,” I said, “but the other person...won't be back.”

The door closed behind us. A moment later I heard the heavy clunk of the security lock fall into place. “Just to make sure we're not disturbed,” the cougar purred.

“Good idea.” I tried to sound casual, but I was too excited, tail flicking back and forth. And then he put his paws on my sides and lowered his muzzle to my nose.

He kissed pretty well, I gotta say. And the warmth of his paws on my sides felt good, too. I reached out to touch him for the first time and found the leather and brass I'd smelled. Following it to its edge, I felt cotton below it, but not the smooth processed cotton of a modern t-shirt. This was rougher, almost linen but not quite the right feel: period clothing. “Nice,” I murmured, and then felt the solidity of the muscles under the shirt.

“Thanks.” He rubbed strong fingers down either side of my spine. “I've got some catching up to do, though.”

The paws disappeared from my side, followed soon by the shuffling noises of someone pulling off leather fake armor and a period cotton shirt. I cocked my head, listening and imagining. When the heavy costume hit the floor, I felt him step forward and I brought my paws out to meet him.

They met bristly cougar fur and warm muscle. I traced my finger pads along the ridges of muscle and bone, building up his image in my mind: about half a foot taller than me, not the most muscular guy I'd ever gotten to put my paws on, but definitely in the top five (more than Cren, I thought with a little smugness). He had a strong jaw and he flinched when I touched his whiskers. “Sorry,” I said. “Just trying to 'see' you.”

“It's okay.” He put his paws on my waist and rubbed there, fingers finding the top of my hip bones. Now, in addition to cougar, I could smell his excitement and arousal as well, especially when he shifted his weight and his tail came curling around his legs to brush against mine. So I slid my paws down over his shoulders, down his sides to the pants he was wearing, which were the same rough cotton tied at the front with a cord. He had harder leather bracers on over his thighs, which were fastened with some more complicated arrangement of cords that he attended to when my fingers fumbled over them.

Under all that, it turned out, he wore sheer boxer briefs that felt so nice under my fingers (I love the feel of lycra and lycra-assisted fabrics) that I brought my fingers to the front and up the warm hardness there without even intending to (no, honest). He shivered again and brought one of those strong paws down on my shoulder. “You're the healer,” he murmured. “Is there...anything wrong there? I want to be in good health for my mission.”

“Yes, you do.” I brought my fingers back there and felt the shape. He was erect, all the way out of his sheath, pushing at the fabric of the boxers. “I'll have to do a closer examination.”

His legs trembled just a bit. “Go ahead.”

So I found the waistband and pulled it down carefully. He helped me slide the boxers to the floor and stepped out of them, then waited. I reached out and found his hips, then slid my fingers to his sheath and up his length, the skin warm and taut against my pads. “You seem in excellent health,” I said. “But if you'd like to come over to the bed, I'll give you a more thorough examination.”

“Lead on, healer,” he said.

I made a mental note of where he'd dropped his clothes and then guided him through the room to my bed. He sat on it and waited.

My own erection was pretty full at that point, so I wiggled out of my shorts and dropped my phone's earpiece on the nightstand before joining him on the bed. “Is this part of the examination?” he murmured.

“Trust me,” I said, on all fours as I approached him. “I'm a healer. This may seem unusual, but it's all very necessary.”

His fingers brushed my thigh fur, so I was ready when they stroked along my balls and then up my sheath and shaft. “I hope you don't mind if I return the favor.”

“Not at all.” I found his erection again and brought my paw up and down along it. “I think it's very courteous of you. Most of my charges don't think to offer.”

His paw curled around my length. “You do this close an examination for many of your patients?”

“Well,” I admitted, “no. Only the very handsome ones on secret missions.”

He purred, bringing his muzzle to mine again, and we kissed there on the bed, paws holding each other's warmths. My tail wagged and the arm that supported most of my weight shivered. As we kissed, he stroked me, and I moaned back into his muzzle.

“Lucky me,” he panted as we broke the kiss.

“Me too.” I let myself down to my side, close against him.

He curled one strong arm behind me and held my shoulders. “How closely do you need to examine this? Like...with your muzzle? Or, uh...” He trailed off.

“This is fine.” I slid my paws along him. “I would need specialized equipment to examine you...another way...but is this all right with you?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I just like being close like this.”

Hot body and sweet too? I didn't want to hope that this could be more than just a convention hookup, but this guy was pretty awesome. “Can I ask,” I said, starting a regular stroking along his shaft, “how you ended up here by yourself?”

“Maybe...” He panted and pulled me closer. “...after.”

I wasn't that close, but then again it usually took me a little while. “All right.” I varied my strokes a little and got him to squirm against me. “I think my examination's almost over.”

“Uh...huh.” He pressed his muzzle into my shoulder.

It actually took me the better part of three more minutes to get him off. I kept thinking he was close and then his shivers would subside. I tried to find the rhythm again, and the second time I managed it. I could tell when he passed the point of no return, when he got all tense and squeezed me, moaning into my shoulder, and then he shuddered and jerked against me. Warmth hit my fingers and 'Xiller' squirmed, hips bucking. I didn't have an arm around him, but I pressed close as he held me until he relaxed, breathing hot and deep into my fur.

“Gosh,” I said, “I hope I didn't smear your paint.”

He laughed and kept me tight in his one arm. “You're fine,” he said. “Now it's your turn.”

There wasn't much I could do about it even if I wanted to refuse, since he had me in his arm and my shaft in his paw. So I leaned into his shoulder, breathed in the smell of his musk, and lost myself in the sensations of his paw stroking me up and down.

Much like his character, he wasn't very experienced. But once I told him to stroke more firmly, he hit the right spots and then was smart enough to keep doing the same thing over and over. I let the waves wash over me, the delicious novelty of a new scent, a new paw, a new presence dragging the most intimate of moments out of me.

“I take a little while,” I said softly as I felt his interest flag. “Sorry.”

“It's cool.” He nuzzled one ear. “I got nowhere to be.”

The climax was all the better for the buildup, growing from a warmth in my groin and spreading out to my feet and the tip of my tail. I gasped and stretched my legs out, my feet against his, one paw on his side while the other clutched the sheets between us. And when I came, I yelped once and bucked into his paw over and over. The smell of my musk mixed with his as I heard his satisfied purr against my ear, and finally I slumped against him, panting noisily.

We lay there for a little, happy against each other, post-orgasmic glow warming me all over. Cren could go fuck himself, I thought, my paw searching out the cougar's sheath to trail up and down it. His shaft was mostly retracted, but he squirmed and purred as I found his tip. Xiller's paw landed on my ears and made me jump at the unexpected touch, but I settled against him and let him stroke them, the touch adding a pleasant tingle to my contentment. He remained quiet, so I said, “You have the makings...of an excellent healer...”

He laughed. “Once this mission is over...er, perhaps I will consider it.” Then he cleared his throat. “Ah, my real name's Seth.”

“I'm Kesh. Nice to meet you.”

His paw landed on my side. Despite myself, I flinched, then relaxed into the hug. “So,” he said, “you come to these cons often?”

“Not really.” I kept my voice low, aware of the brush of his whiskers against mine, the short coarseness of his fur. “My friends talked me into it.”

Soft feline pawpads stroked down my side to my hip. “You make a really sexy Puck. I don't know the stories that well...only read them once.”

“I was going to gain more weight for it, but my...I, uh, decided not to.” It felt comfortable lying next to him like this. I imagined Puck with Ransom, Volle with Xiller, as different as those pairings were.

Fingers squeezed my side just above the hip. “I agree with the decision. I mean, pudgy Puck is cute and all, but you're really sexy.” His whiskers shifted against me, and I brushed my muzzle up and down.

Then he stopped and tensed slightly. “Hey,” he said with a little chuckle, “you're freaking me out a bit with the eyes. It's really good, but we're, like, out of costume now.”

Here it was. I pushed my muzzle against his shoulder, hiding my eyes. “Sorry,” I mumbled.

“No, you're really good, just...hey, is something wrong?”

“I'm, uh. I'm blind,” I pushed out. And then I waited.

He didn't say anything for seven seconds. I counted them. And then he said, “Oh.”

“I have been since I was five.” I tried not to slip into the dull recitation of a confessional, but it was hard when he wasn't responding. “It's okay. I get around fine and I have a good job.”

“I'm sorry.” He spoke distantly past one of my ears, not moderating his voice, so it sounded very loud. “I—it must be really hard.”

It was like he hadn't heard me at all. “No, it's fine. I mean, technology's great now. My phone talks to me and I can browse the Internet by talking to it. My whiskers and nose still work so I get around fine.” Dammit, I was repeating myself.

“Cool.” His paw lifted from my side and patted it. “Ah, you mind if I clean up in your bathroom?”

I rolled away from him, onto my back. “Sure. Go ahead.”

* * *

It was nice of him to pretend not to be weirded out by it. A lot of people haven't met an actual blind person, and maybe it was just looking into my eyes that made him feel strange. I've heard that before.

It wasn't so nice of him to try to sneak out once he was done cleaning up. I mean, I'd just got finished telling him that my ears and whiskers worked, so you'd think he would guess that I'd be able to feel him coming out of the bathroom, or hear him put on his clothes and pick up his armor. He probably didn't care that I could hear the door close, because by that time he was gone.

Asshole. I pressed my fingers to my eyes and with my other paw, fumbled for my phone. I clipped the speaker back into my ear and said, “Text Jenny. Where are you?”

It didn't seem fair that my tear ducts still worked when the rest of my eyes didn't. But hey, there you are. I didn't cry much, though, and I was done by the time Jenny's reply came through in my phone's silky voice. “Same party. You?”

The last thing I wanted to do was put on my shorts and go back out there, in case I ran into 'Xiller' again. I imagined him pointing me out to his friends in that party, telling them about the poor blind fox. And then I thought, fuck him. Puck wouldn't sit here feeling sorry for himself—well, okay, yes, he had at first, but Shivah had helped with that. I sure as hell wasn't going to let one asshole cougar keep me here on the bed wallowing in self-pity. So I texted Jenny that I'd be right there, because then I'd made a promise and even if my momentary courage left me, I'd have to follow through.

Fifteen minutes later, clean and clothed again, I took Puck's staff and stepped out into the empty hallway. One elevator ride later, I emerged back in the crowded party floor. It smelled different now, the reek of alcohol thicker, the little pockets of musky arousal stronger as I passed by them. I found what I was pretty sure was the same party Jenny'd been in and stopped just inside the door. The mass of people felt confusing and god, what if 'Xiller' had also come back to this party? I couldn't just look around and find Jenny and I couldn't pick out her scent in the fug of the fifty people here, not to mention the fifty who'd been here and left their scent behind.

Part of me wanted to be mad at her when she didn't come find me right away, but I recognized the signs of a bad mood coming on and headed it off as best I could. It wasn't Jenny's responsibility to look out for me; if I wanted that, I could've just stayed in the damn room and waited until she got back. So I just leaned back against the wall and tried to relax, as air currents and scents pushed my whiskers back and forth.

And then someone stopped in front of me, someone who disturbed the air a good two feet over my head, or at least way beyond the tips of my ears. A deer—no, elk. That explained the height. I smelled linen and cotton, nothing that was obviously a costume. “Are you, uh, are you okay?”

My ears shot up and my tail frizzed a bit at Tall and Deep's voice. “I'm—” I cleared my throat of the squeak lodged in it. “I'm fine.”

“Did you lose your Ransom?”

I should've known that dressing as Puck would invite that question, over and over again. “I don't have a Ransom,” I snapped. “He's—sorry. I'm sorry. You couldn't know.”

“Hey.” My left whiskers registered movement toward my shoulder, and I braced myself, but he didn't actually touch me. “No, I mean, I saw you before and you were with a Vicious Vixen...”

“Yeah, she's here somewhere.”

“She's right over there. Want me to get her for you?”

“No,” I snapped again, and again folded my ears down. “Sorry. I mean, no, it's fine, I can text her. Or she'll come over when she's ready.”

There was that awkward silence that comes in conversations when people don't know each other. Sighted people look uncomfortably around the room, so I looked away while keeping my ears perked toward Tall and Deep. “Well,” he said finally, “do you mind some company while you wait?”

I was about to tell him that he didn't have to, and then I realized that if Jenny was visible from where I was, that he must have already realized that I was really blind. I know, I know, I shouldn't be self-conscious about that, but after Cren and then 'Xiller,' I wasn't feeling too confident, you know? Same as if your boyfriend walked out on you because you were too short or the wrong species or something, and then you jerked off some guy and he walked out on you for the same reason. You'd start to wonder if that's how everyone felt, right?

“Nah,” I said. “I mean, I'd be glad—you can wait with me.”

He settled around to my right, his bulk warm even though he wasn't touching me. “So,” I said, “who are you dressed as?”

He chuckled. “I'm just dressed as me. I'm Deya.”

I swiveled my ears to my right. “I'm—Kesh. I'm meant to be Puck, though.”

“I know.”

I cleared my throat. “I'm not just pretending to be blind.”

“I figured that, too.”

“I'm just making sure.” I took a breath. “I figured it was obvious when I couldn't see Jenny.”

“Well, yes.” He paused. “Also, one of the shaman lines on your lower stomach is smeared.”

“What?” I reached toward the still-damp fur. “Dammit, I thought I was careful.”

“I figured you might not have noticed, but then yeah, I figured it out.” He sounded hesitant, reluctant to talk about it.

“Thanks for telling me. I guess I'll just...go around looking slovenly for the rest of the evening.”

He shifted against the wall. “It doesn't look slovenly. It looks like...uh, it looks like maybe you had a good time earlier.”

“Well, looks can be deceiving.” I paused and then said, “So people tell me.”

He made a startled noise and then laughed, spontaneously and loudly enough to stop conversations around us. I grinned despite myself and some life came back into my tail.

“Sorry,” Deya said. “Sorry.”

“Don't be. It was meant to be funny.”

“All right,” he said. “Well then, let's hope the rest of your evening looks up. I mean—gets better.”

I shifted my weight a bit, just enough to get close to him. “I think we're on the right path,” I said.

7

Challenge

And this is a story from Love Match itself, the novel being serialized in my Patreon. Rukis had done a picture with the two fox characters Pom and Dom which was clearly not canonical because they’re both straight, but…I challenged myself to find a way to work it into the universe anyway. Some spoilers for Love Match herein, but fairly minor ones.

I was sitting on my bed with my World Cultures textbook reading about Xiaqin and their change from communism to a weird brand of capitalism while Dom looked at my laptop. The arctic fox had offered because, he said, he could fix most simple computer issues and it wasn’t worth paying three hundred bucks to a computer place for something he could do in an hour. All he asked was that I play against him for a week. I didn’t think that was enough, but he said it was. “You’ve gotten a lot better this year. It’ll be good for me.”

That was nice to hear, too. So I listened with one ear as he tapped away, listened to the CD drive open and close, the whirr of CDs spinning up and back down, more tapping. “There we go,” he said finally. “I thought it might be this thing. Is it okay if I back up your data and reinstall the OS?”

“I have no idea,” I said. “What does that mean?”

He laughed. “Don’t worry about it. I have a spare hard drive here. You don’t have a lot of stuff so it should only take about twenty minutes total.”

“Okay. Do you need to be here for it or do you want to grab some ice cream? My treat.”

So we went and got ice cream down at the corner store and came back licking it off our muzzles. The evening was still warm enough that we had to eat it fast before it melted, and I’d gotten some on my paws, so I went to wash up while Dom checked on the drive.

When I got back, he was staring at a block of text on the screen. His ears flicked back to me and he said, “When did you say Marquize gave you this laptop?”

“Uh. June last year. Right before we went away for the summer.”

“Okay.” His shoulders relaxed a little. “So you didn’t write this, then.”

“What is it?” I leaned closer and saw the title: Pom and Dom.

Dom just stayed quiet for a second, and then said, “Well. It appears to be a story about what would happen if Pom and I took a shower together. I haven’t read much farther.”

The words took a moment to sink in, and then my ears folded back. “Oh.”

He half-turned, amber eyes meeting mine. He was smiling. “We all know about Marquize, if that’s what you’re worried about. I mean, he’s so quiet about it and so uninterested in girls that he might as well be wearing a huge rainbow flag on his butt.”

“Really?” I felt a little better about that. “I mean, nobody ever talks about it.”

“Not around him, and not around you ‘cause you’re his best friend and, well, to be honest, some of us kinda wonder about you too.” He paused long enough for me to talk, and when I didn’t say anything right away, he shook his head. “But you don’t have to say anything. It’s your business.”

I gestured at the screen. “I’ll delete that.”

“No, no,” he said. “I kinda want to see how it turns out. You want to read it?”

I did, but I didn’t want to say I did. “Won’t that be weird?”

“Not for you. It’s not really me, you know, it’s Marquize’s, whatever, year-and-a-half old fantasy of me. Not that I want to know why he’s fantasizing about me, but maybe there’s stories about everyone in the class on there. I’m not going to go looking for them, but I want to see if he’s got me just, like, being gay, or if I get raped by tentacle aliens eventually.”

“Uh, well.” I swallowed.

“If it makes you feel better,” he said, “he’s made us both seventeen in it. Okay. Let’s go.”

* * *

It had been a long, hard workout, and Pom was exhausted. The trim red fox leaned against the showers and let the water course through his fur, chasing the sweat out of his pads and leaching the heat from his skin. Being a senior at Palm Gables was proving to be every bit as challenging as his older classmates had warned him, with the coaches riding him hard and his classmates pushing him more than ever.

He was tired from playing tennis for hours, but he was also still keyed up, restless. His large ears flicked around while he thought about what he might do that evening. Dancing was probably too much energy, but sitting around and watching a movie wasn’t enough.

Clicks of claws sounded on the shower tile. He turned to see Dom, the arctic fox, reaching for the shower at the far end of the shower room. Dom smiled at him and then ducked his head under the water, letting it soak through his thick white fur.

Pom liked the arctic fox’s look in winter better than the blue-brown of summer. It hid his muscle lines, true, but if you looked you could see them below the fluff, like a ridge of mountains under snow.

When that thick fur was wet, Dom’s musculature showed through again. He had thicker legs than Pom and was larger in the hips and back, but had about the same upper body build on his frame. And when he turned, Pom could see very clearly the outline of the arctic fox’s heavy sheath and sac.

Seeming to be aware of his gaze, Dom turned away from him and drew his paws down his body to soap up his fur. But that view, Pom liked even more, because he thought privately that the arctic fox had the best butt in the whole class. He’d never said anything about it, but quite often in the evenings, he’d pictured himself thrusting into that rear while his paw made for a poor substitute.

* * *

“Whoa,” I said when I got to that part.

Dom laughed. “Is this your first porno? It’s pretty tame. Next page? I’m gonna bet that’s where Pom gets an erection and Dom—in the story—offers to help him take care of it.”

I was a little worried about how much I was enjoying the image of Dom naked in the shower. But that was Dom-in-the-story, like he’d said, not my friend sitting in front of the laptop. “Yeah,” I said, wondering whether he’d notice if I reached down to adjust my pants.

* * *

He’d never thought Dom would be into that, though. As far as he knew, the arctic fox had a girlfriend back home in Pelagia. He’d never shown pictures of her, but he talked to her on the phone and talked about her pretty convincingly, as if she was real. Pom believed she was.

He sighed. Not that there weren’t plenty of boys to fantasize about at Palm Gables, but for three years he’d been good friends with Dom. Their rhyming names, their similar species, all of that had thrown them together, but they also had pretty complementary personalities. He was more active and outspoken; Dom was quiet and thoughtful. They always had fun together and were still roommates after three years.

So if something were going to happen between them, surely it would already have happened. Dom must know that Pom was open to males; he’d dropped enough hints. And yet, as far as he could recall, they’d never been alone in the shower together. In their room, where they lived, their habits kept them within certain routines. Here in the shower, though, maybe they could stretch their boundaries.

His ears caught the cessation of water from across the shower. He looked over and saw Dom with his paw on the faucet handle, The arctic fox was looking right at him, and with a start Pom realized that he was out of his sheath, very hard and pink against his white fur.

“Uh,” he said, turning away his hips. “I was…thinking about this girl.”

“Uh-huh.” The arctic fox’s eyes gleamed at him across the slight haze from the hot water. “Hot girl?”

“Yeah.” Stop talking to me, he wanted to say, you’re making it worse! But there wasn’t any reasonable way to say that.

And then claws were clicking across the tile again, getting louder. “As hot as me?” The arctic fox’s paw brushed the wet fur of his hip, then his inner thigh.

Pom swallowed. “Ju-just about exactly as hot as you.”

“I wondered.” And then Dom’s fingers were trailing along his length, and Pom shut his eyes against the fiery cascade of sparks that touch sent through him. He tried to say something, but his breath came out as incoherent moans.

“Honestly, I’m flattered,” Dom said again in his soft voice. “I’ve thought about you too, y’know.”

“Thought…” Pom muttered thickly, still very aware of the other fox’s fingers trailing up and down, so good that he thought his cock might burst out of his sheath altogether. “Thought you had a girlfriend.”

“I do.” Dom winked at him and wrapped his whole paw around Pom’s length. “But she’s there and I’m here, and we can play around as long as we tell each other about it. Besides.” He gave Pom’s shaft a squeeze. “She doesn’t have equipment like this.”

“Guh.” Pom reached out and pressed his paw around Dom’s sheath and sac and found a hard shaft there as well. Finding his friend equally aroused was an immense relief; Dom wasn’t just going to give him a pity hand job in the shower. He was enjoying this as well.

“That’s nice,” Dom murmured. “But say, it looks like you might need somewhere to put this pretty soon.”

The red fox’s eyes lowered and met his friend’s. “What’re you offering?”

By way of answer, Dom arched his tail and half-turned. He pulled Pom forward and pressed the fox’s cock into the crease below his tail.

“Have you—have you done that before?” Pom asked, gasping.

“Not with a person.” Dom smiled over his shoulder. “Toys, though. My girlfriend likes to peg.”

“Wow. Holy shit.” Pom leaned forward and pulled the shorter fox against him.

“A little shampoo should work.” Dom reached for it. “It’s gentle and I don’t think it burns.”

* * *

“That’s pretty hard to believe,” Dom said.

“What? The shampoo?” I blinked.

“That physical position. Oh.” He shook his head. “You’re not there yet. Never mind. When you get there, just remember, that position is pretty challenging.”

“Okay,” I said, my heart quickening a little.

* * *

As the arctic fox rubbed shampoo under his tail, Pom felt that this was getting a little bit away from him. He wanted to assert himself a little more.

Even though Dom was stockier, Pom knew just about how much he weighed. Maybe a little with water soaking his fur, but He spun the other around and smiled, pushing him against the wall.

The surprise on the arctic fox’s face was gratifying. “Wha?” he said, but Pom pressed his muzzle down to the other fox’s and shut off his sounds.

“Mmf!” Dom slid his arms around Pom’s wet body and it felt so good, tight and warm, all the wet fur sliding together and the muscles below pressed close. His hardness throbbed against the other fox’s body, and the longer they kissed, the more he rubbed into Dom’s slick fur, the more Pom realized that he could easily just finish this way, and he didn’t want to.

So he pulled his muzzle back and crouched, sliding his paws down that white-furred rear. He paused a moment to enjoy the feel, and then moved to the well-muscled thighs.

“What are you doing—oop!” Dom yelped as Pom straightened quickly, lifting the fox against the wall.

“I’ve never done this,” Pom said, straining, “but I’ve seen pictures.”

The arctic fox wrapped his legs around Pom’s waist and scooted his rear a little farther up the red fox’s body. “So have I,” he said. “You gotta be pretty strong, right?”

Pom flexed his biceps, hefting the other fox a few more inches. “I think I can manage.”

“Can you keep me up as long as you…need?”

At first, Pom didn’t reply, adjusting his hips around so that the point of his shaft met the shampoo-slick passage beneath the arctic fox’s tail. He smiled at Dom’s indrawn breath and let his own tongue loll out of his muzzle. “You ready?”

Dom nodded once, quickly, and linked his paws around the red fox’s neck. Pom braced himself and then thrust forward up into the other’s warmth.

He had to stop after that first thrust and clench his teeth. The feeling was everything he’d read about and fantasized about, and more. It wasn’t only the tight pressure around his hardness, the fiery sensations radiating out from his groin; it was the weight in his arms and the jerk of Dom’s legs around his waist, the way the other fox groaned and clung to him, the closeness they felt together.

The fact that his muscles were straining to hold up the other fox added to his urgency and to the pleasure. His legs trembled with the weight, and he shuffled them to brace himself better.

“You okay?” Dom panted into his shoulder.

Pom pushed up inside the other fox. “I should…be asking you that.”

“I’m…good.” The arctic fox leaned back and brought a paw down to his own shaft, keeping the other around Pom’s neck. “I’m real good.”

“Good.” On the next thrust, Pom’s knot took a little more work to get in, and when it came out, Dom shuddered. Pom pushed up again, the pressure in his shaft aching as his knot swelled.

He pushed in again and this time Dom squirmed as the knot stretched him.

* * *

“Um,” I said. “What’s a knot?”

“Oh.” Dom chuckled and turned back to me. “It’s that thing at the base of your penis that gets swollen when you get hard.”

I lay my ears back, a little embarrassed. “Oh. I never heard it called that.”

“You know that only canids have it, right?”

“Um.” I scratched my ear. “All the porn Bret showed me, I know some guys had one and some didn’t, but I didn’t know what it meant.”

“Now you know. Did you get to the part where Pom says he wants to tie me?”

“No?”

“Well, that just means pushing the knot all the way in so you stay locked together after.”

“Okay.” I wasn’t sure what to make of Dom’s casual attitude about it all, but he went back to reading and so did I.

* * *

“Is it too big?” Pom asked.

Dom grunted and pushed back, letting the red fox slide the rest of the way into him. “Don’t…flatter yourself.” He’d started stroking himself with one paw.

“The knot, I mean.”

The arctic fox smiled up. “I like it in me.”

“Good,” Pom said. “Cause I want to tie you.”

“Mmkay.” Dom tightened his legs around Pom’s waist and worked himself free of the knot, then squeezed the red fox’s shaft, pushing himself up and back down.

Pom gasped and let the other ride his erection for a few thrusts, but then his body took over again and he pressed Dom to the wall, slamming his hips forward. As his body shook and he felt his passion crest, he shoved his knot hard against Dom’s rear, ignoring the arctic fox’s grunt and gasp, and the pressure on his knot as it forced its way in made him cry out and come, sliding the rest of the way in and shuddering as he emptied himself into the wet white body in his arms.

Dom made a squeaky whimper and pumped himself harder, faster. Just as Pom’s orgasm was dying down, Dom threw back his head and moaned, his paw moving fast over his shaft, and his whole body shook in Pom’s arms. A moment later, the smell of come mixed with the smell of wet fur, and Dom moaned again, gasped, finally relaxed, and held up a paw dripping with white.

Neither of them said anything for a moment, just looked at each other and enjoyed the shared feelings. Pom still felt warm inside Dom, and the arctic fox seemed to be happy resting in the red fox’s arms.

But Pom was also aware that he wasn’t going to be able to hold up Dom forever. He panted, not ready to pull out yet. “Am I going to have to hold you up until we untie?”

“We could sit on the floor,” Dom suggested with a giggle.

Pom bent his knees experimentally and shook his head. “Nah. I’ll just hold you for a few minutes.”

“Mmmkay.” Dom reached up and rubbed the red fox’s chest. “I’ll try to be light.”

Pom nodded and flicked his ears. “So, uh. This was good, right?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“So we can maybe be doing it again?”

“I think so.” Dom grinned. “But maybe not in the shower.”

Pom readjusted and hefted the arctic fox’s weight, his knot tugging at the tie. “I guess we could try other places too. Maybe even a bed.”

“Maybe.”

“But I don’t really know about, like, dating.”

“You mean like should we tell people? I don’t think it’s any of their business. We’re both gonna be playing and getting more famous, right? Don’t want that to come out.”

“Right.” Pom exhaled in relief. “So it’s okay to keep it secret.”

“Absolutely.” And Dom arched his head up and licked the red fox on the nose, and Pom pulled the other fox against him and held him tight.

* * *

“You done?” Dom asked.

“Uh. Yeah.” I stepped back, trying to hide my erection.

“So what’d you think?”

“I dunno…I mean, I haven’t read very much of this kind of thing.”

He chuckled. “You think he captured me?”

“Uh…” He’d been really casual about things, so I asked the question I really wanted to, but in a jokey way. “Do you like having cocks in your butt?”

“Aside from that, I mean.”

Well, he wasn’t going to answer that. I didn’t really think he did like it, so maybe he was taking it as a given that he didn’t. “How much was there in the story aside from that?”

“Not much, I guess.” He laughed again. “I don’t know, I don’t think I’d be quite so…compliant. You know?”

“Yeah, I guess. I mean, I dunno how I would react if that happened.”

Dom did some typing, and the file on screen disappeared. “I think I’ll just leave this where it was. If Marquize wants it, he knows where to find it. And,” he said, “if he really didn’t want you to see it, he shouldn’t have given you administrator privileges.”

“I don’t know what that means.” I returned to my bed, sitting down and sweeping my tail around my hips.

Dom shut the laptop and swiveled in the chair to face me. “Are you gay?” he asked bluntly.

My jaw seemed frozen shut. I made some kind of noise, and then pried my teeth apart and said, “N-no.”

He just stared out of that fluffy white muzzle, and finally said, “Look, it’s cool with me if you are. I won’t tell anyone. That stuff Marquize wrote at the end of the story wasn’t completely wrong, about that maybe being a problem down the road. The only reason I mention it is ‘cause you guys are really good friends, and if he’s gay then maybe he wants you guys to be something more. You don’t have to tell me if he’s already mentioned that, or if it happens in the future. But you’re both nice guys and a bunch of us were kinda hoping Marquize might find someone. I don’t think any of us thought it would be you, though, not after you almost got beat up for fake assaulting your girlfriend.”

“I didn’t,” I started, before I understood that that’s what he’d said already.

“I know.” He smiled and leaned forward to pat me on the knee. “If you’re bi and you like Marquize, then maybe you need to be the guy in the shower with him. Metaphorically,” he said when I tilted my head and flattened my ears. “See, I think he thinks he’s Pom in this story, really liking someone but afraid to come up to them. The me in that story basically came up to him and said, ‘I like you, it’s okay if we have sex.’ That’s all I mean. Maybe he likes you, and if you like him, then…”

He let that trail off, and I didn’t say anything. His paw squeezed my knee and then he scooted back and got up. “For future reference,” he said, “if you don’t want people to think you’re gay, then just a casual, ‘nah, dude’ when they ask you is probably best. Don’t freeze up and look terrified. Your friends won’t care. Some of them are maybe even rooting for you.”

“Thanks,” I said, and got up. “For the computer, and for all that. And, uh.” I scratched behind my ears. “Honestly, I don’t know. I’m not definitely…but I’m not definitely not. You know?”

“I get it.” He smiled, and his tail swished behind him. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone. But you should talk to Marquize about it.”

After he’d left, I went back to sit on the bed. Talk to Marquize? I couldn’t do that, at least not yet. What if I got his hopes up and then decided I wasn’t? I couldn’t be like the arctic fox in the story, all confident and walking up to let someone stick his penis in me. I was going to have to go a lot slower, if I even wanted to go at all.

Maybe I’d talk to Marquize eventually. It was at least nice to know what he wanted and how he dreamed of it. That was something.

8

Festival

My novella Winter Games featured a horny little pine marten named Bret who was working the front desk. Some readers wanted to see him in his own story.

Did they have to make the chairs in the police station so uncomfortable? Bret squirmed around in the plastic, grabbing an armrest and letting it go, the scores of countless claws under his paws making him a little nervous. His own claws were well-manicured and clean, not the kind he'd dig into plastic.

“Sit still,” growled the big wolf, typing two-fingered at the computer. “Zip code?”

“81611,” Bret said. “Look, I promise you I haven't done anything wrong.”

The wolf, black all over except for a blaze down the front of his muzzle, turned and fixed Bret with one yellow eye. The pine marten went still, except for his mouth. “The guy said I could have it. And you,” he resisted the urge to point, “you were not wearing a uniform. That's entrapment.”

The black wolf, still wearing only a black tank top with the band name “Squirrelex” on it and ripped jeans, shook his head. “It's only entrapment if I suggested something you weren't otherwise inclined to do.”

“You came on to me!”

“And you offered me stolen property in exchange for sex.”

Bret shook his head violently. “I did not. I said I didn't know what to do with it, and you said it looked nice and I said you could have it.”

“If I had sex with you.”

“You didn't let me finish! I was going to say, 'if you really like it.'” He pleaded with the cop. “Honest.”

The black wolf finished his typing and shook his head. “It's still stolen property. The band reported it missing this morning.”

Bret put his head in his paws. “Okay, maybe. But I didn't steal it. I got it from this guy who said—well, but first, I mean, I was there because—it's kind of a long story.”

The wolf leaned back and folded his arms, perking his ears upright. Bret gulped, tried to get comfortable in the chair, and began.

* * *

The White Springs music festival was the best time of year, and Bret was stuck behind the hotel desk because Lon had flaked out on his shift again, and Bev still wouldn't fire him. Outside, the mountains sang, almost literally, riotous explosions of wildflowers blooming against the bright green of the slopes, and in the next valley over, a short bus ride away, six stages had been set up where bands rotated on and off. Beside them were backstage areas where a pine marten in the know could meet members of up-and-coming bands and where a pine marten dressed to the nines with a little bit of confidence could hook up with some of those band members if they were agreeably inclined. And Bret with all his connections stood behind the marble counter, dressed in the not-quite-hideous hotel uniform, greeting all the festival-goers with his brightest smile. Even his usual hints didn't work on this crowd; any likely gay boys would be so intent on getting out into the crowd that they'd completely miss his practiced extra look, extra smile, extra touch.

And there were a lot of gay boys this year, because Kettlebow was playing tomorrow. The alt-pop band with the smart lyrics and rainbow-furred arctic fox lead singer, who'd performed at the Rally For Marriage, who'd penned the YouTube sensation “Taultie Logic” about the Supreme Court bull who stubbornly voted against gay rights at every opportunity and the even more viral “Get Your Gay On,” who had an estimated fifty kajillion gay fans, they had finally come to White Springs after (Bret knew) years of asking.

So every other guest checking into the resort had pride jewelry or a Kettlebow t-shirt or tattoo, or both. And some of them were cute, and some were achingly hot, and Bret felt like last month's news as they thanked him and took their keys without even seeing his face.

Only an hour to go, his feet positively dancing behind the counter in anticipation of his release from this confinement, and a tall, twitchy brown lemur came up to the desk. Piercings all over his face glinted through his fur, rainbow loops up both ears, “Get Your Gay On” t-shirt. “Welcome to Lonnegan Resort,” Bret said. “Name?”

“Oh, uh.” The guy fished for his ID and gave it to Bret along with his name.

* * *

“What was his name?” the cop asked.

Bret shook his head innocently. “Don't remember.”

“Hm.”

* * *

The lemur, now, he got Bret's look, got the smile, and when Bret slid the key cards over the counter, the lemur's long, warm fingers rested atop the marten's. “So you like Kettlebow?” Bret said.

“Love 'em.” The lemur bobbed his head. “I saw 'em in Crystal City, the show last year where they jammed with Ford...”

“Oh, man.” Bret's eyes widened with genuine jealousy. “I'd have killed to be there. How'd you score tickets?”

“Oh...y'know...it's kind of an involved story. Uh.” The lemur looked around and then over his shoulder. “I gotta go up and drop this stuff off in the room and I should go over to the Springs later, but I don't have to go right away. So, uh, if you, I mean, if you want to hear the story, I guess...”

“Love to.” Bret pounced on the opportunity.

So he had something to look forward to when he finished his shift. He finally, finally got to clock out and take off that horrendous vest with the name tag. His distressed leather jacket and moderately tight jeans (just enough to show off, not enough to irritate his fur) were a much better look.

To judge from his reaction, the lemur thought so too. “Whoa,” he said when he saw Bret. “Wow. You look different. Like, good different.”

“Thanks.” Bret grinned and kicked out the other chair at the table. It didn't go off as smoothly as in the movies, but it worked well enough. The lemur grabbed it and sat down.

The story was an interesting one and boiled down to the lemur getting some expensive...

* * *

Bret cleared his throat. “Candy,” he said.

The black wolf raised an eyebrow. “Candy.”

“Yeah, uh, special, you know, imported, um, chocolate. From Switzerland. Really top grade stuff.”

“And the bands love that?”

“Oh yeah,” Bret bobbed his head. “Yeah. Cause performing takes a lot of energy, so they need, you know, a sugar rush. And when they're successful, they don't want that Hershey's shit from the store.”

The wolf folded his arms. Bret pushed it a little more. “They have flavors in Switzerland that you can't get here. Praline, and, and honey lavender and...”

“Go on with it,” the cop said, and Bret thought he detected the hint of a smile.

* * *

They were getting along quite well, well enough that the lemur invited Bret up to the room to sample a little of the candy. Bret accepted the invitation, but when they got to the room, he declined the sample. “I don't really eat candy,” he said. “Um, I'm watching my figure.”

“No worries,” the lemur said, and proceeded to strip down to his underwear, pausing partway through to raise his head and meet Bret's eyes. “You gonna do this with your pants on?”

“No, no.” Bret slid out of his jacket and folded it, setting it on the dresser, where his pants joined it a moment later. The lemur had a good body, a little thin, but that wasn't unusual for someone who indulged in candy all the time. He wasn't unhealthily thin, so that was good.

“C'mon.” The guy patted the bed beside where he was sitting, and Bret hurried over.

“You're not going to have some candy?”

The lemur shook his head. “Figured we'd either eat together or have sex, so I'll wait 'til you go.”

“Appreciate that.” Because the guy still seemed nervous, Bret reached out and made the first move, putting a paw on the lemur's thigh and ruffling the fur there. The guy smiled, and Bret's other paw reached around and rubbed along the long brown tail.

It didn't take too long for them to get their underwear off, and for Bret to make the first move there, too, dropping his muzzle down to the guy's crotch and applying the benefit of his years of experience. He'd never been with a lemur before, and it was always exciting getting to experience a new kind of guy.

* * *

“Get on with it,” growled the wolf.

Bret smiled innocently. “I just thought you might want to hear a few more details about how the encounters went.”

“You had sex with the lemur guy. I get it.”

“Consensual sex. Oral.” Bret straightened and pressed his toes down to touch the floor. “All right, well, he was very satisfied...”

* * *

“Oh wow,” the lemur moaned. “That was awesome, dude.”

“Okay, so, my turn?” Bret stretched. Even though he worked at the resort, he rarely got to stay in the actual rooms, and the sheets and mattress on the bed felt luxurious.

“Great start to the weekend. Mm.”

Bret let his eyes drift shut in anticipation of what was to come. “Any time,” he said.

No response. He reached over and drew a paw up and down the lemur's side.

“Mmf?” The lemur stirred.

It was pretty clear that the guy was half-asleep, and had no intention of returning Bret's favor. Which didn't bother the marten all that much; he enjoyed giving as much as receiving and there'd be other people at the festival he could hook up with. Better to get over there soon than lay around here waiting for the guy to wake up.

“You know what?” Bret smiled and patted the taut stomach. “I'll maybe see you around the festival tomorrow.”

“Mm.”

He dressed while the lemur drifted back off into sleep, and with his paw on the door handle, he looked back into the room. The naked lemur lay on the bed, brown tail twitching, fingers flicking along the smooth sheets. Over there on the nightstand was the box of candy he'd shown Bret.

Bret walked over to it and opened it. Each of the chocolates was individually wrapped. “Hey,” he said, “mind if I take that sample for later?”

The lemur stirred and waved a paw. “Go ahead,” he said.

* * *

“I thought he was asleep,” the wolf said.

“Oh, he was drifting in and out.” Bret relaxed back into the chair. “But he'd offered me some before, and he just confirmed that I could take some with me if I wanted.”

“Right.” The wolf sighed. “So then what?”

* * *

Chocolates in paw, Bret rode the elevator down and thought about the evening. It was barely nine o'clock; he could be over in White Springs by nine-thirty and there'd be plenty of time left to party. He slipped the chocolates into the pocket of his jacket, texted a few of his friends to see where they were, and set out on his way.

At nine-twenty-five, the bus dropped him off outside the White Springs Festival Grounds, and he breathed in the warm summer evening air, the scent of flowers and people and Neutra-Scent misters, the sound of thirty thousand people talking in low tones and the Friday night bands playing on three of the stages. He'd checked the program on the way over and was only interested in one of the bands, an Oceanian duo called “Under Down.” His friend Mike was already over by the stage and their friend Larissa should be backstage helping by now, so Bret handed over his ticket, got his wristband (ugly neon orange), and hurried onto the grounds.

The duo, a pair of female wombats who sang and played guitar, were great live. It took Bret most of the set to find Mike, a big squirrel, mostly because his usually bushy tail was all bound up to stop people from stepping on it.

“Hey Bret!” Mike's big fluffy hugs were one of the reasons Bret liked to hang out with him. “Awesome set, huh?”

“Yeah, they're great.” Bret grinned. “Better live. Hey, check out what I got.”

Making sure they weren't being observed, the pine marten reached into his pocket and pulled out the chocolates, showing Mike quickly before shoving them back into hiding.

The squirrel whistled through his front teeth. “Are those...”

“Swiss chocolate, yeah,” Bret said. “I got a guest over at the resort offered me a couple. You think Larissa might be able to get us backstage with these?”

“Maybe.” Mike scratched his cheekruffs. “There's only two pieces. You think we could cut them up maybe?”

“I dunno, I never use the stuff.”

“C'mon.” The squirrel pulled Bret over to a corner where he produced a knife. Hidden from view, they—

* * *

“What kind of knife?” the cop interrupted.

Bret gulped. “Ah, from, you know, the concession stand. One of those plastic ones. It cuts chocolate pretty well.”

The black wolf shook his head, and after a minute Bret went on.

* * *

Four pieces of chocolate were more reasonable than two, and Bret worried that if they cut them any smaller, the people who ate them wouldn't be able to taste them. So he pocketed the four pieces and they texted Larissa to see where she was.

Some band called “Touch of Stripe” was just starting on the adjacent stage, the harder-edged kind of alternative that Bret didn't like as much, but the lead singer was a cute twinky tiger, so he paused to admire the guy's tight pants and bare midriff before following Mike around the corner of the stage to where a short hedgehog tapped her foot.

“You guys want to meet Under Down, yah?” Larissa's Anglic accent came out more strongly when she was busy or stressed. “Look, I can take you back for like five minutes, but that's it.”

“Can you get us to the Green Room? Or wherever Kettlebow is?”

The hedgehog rolled her eyes. “Right. You know how many people want to get in to see them? I'd get my spines ripped off if I pushed you jokers ahead of the queue.”

“What if we have this?” Bret pulled out the chocolate and held it up on his palm.

“Ooh.” Larissa sniffed at it. “Pretty good stuff. Might get you to a place where you could wave to the band as they leave the Green Room.”

“Aw.” Bret's paw dipped.

Mike clapped him on the shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “Let's at least go that far. We can figure something out from there.”

Larissa held up a paw. “If I take you guys to this area, you stay there, you got it? I don't want to have to be explaining to someone why the guys who got arrested for harassing Kettlebow happened to be friends of mine who happened to have passes I was given.”

“How do they know—” Mike started.

“They have numbers on them,” she snapped, turned the paw palm up. “All right. Let's have the chocolate.”

Bret handed it over obediently, and Larissa produced from her pocket two passes. “Clip these to your belts and follow me.”

Bouncing on his feet, Bret followed her back past curtains and into a small maze of makeshift rooms behind the stage. A grizzly bear in uniform stopped her. “Hey Riss,” he said. “VIPs only back this way.”

She produced two of the cut pieces of chocolate. “My friends forgot their VIP badges,” she said.

“Ah, gotcha.” He pocketed the chocolate. “Go ahead in.”

They pushed through the curtain, Bret feeling very proud of himself, and emerged into another large space with a few people milling about. “All right,” Larissa said. “I need to get back to work.” She pointed to a red door. “That's the hallway to the Green Room. There'll be a crowd of people there. Stay in that hallway, and when the band leaves, you leave too. If I find out that you've been causing trouble...” She made a slashing motion across her throat.

“Cross our hearts,” Mike said.

Bret tapped Larissa's shoulder as she turned. “Um, what about the rest of the chocolate?”

“What do you mean?” She glared at him.

“Well, you only used two bits to get us in here.”

“And I'm keeping the other two.”

“Both of them?”

She shook her head and sighed. “Fine.” She reached into her pocket and dropped one of the chocolate pieces back in Bret's paw. “I thought you didn't eat chocolate.”

“I don't, but who knows who I might run into.”

“Agh.” She tossed her head back. “Tell me about it later. Or don't. I really don't want to know.”

Bret clapped Mike on the back as the hedgehog left them, and they headed for the red door. “Well, we've got one piece left and we're a step closer to the band, right?”

“Right.” The squirrel grinned. “So that's something!”

Beyond the red door, though, the hallway branched, and by the signs for the Green Room, people were stacked up two deep. A uniformed stoat waved Mike and Bret toward the back of the crowd, where Mike leaned against a wall and Bret fidgeted back and forth.

“They'll never notice us here,” he said. “We're just two in a crowd of thirty. We might get to touch one of their paws.”

“Well, what else do you want to do?” Mike asked. “Get a selfie?”

“Maybe.” Bret lifted one paw to his cheek and scratched, thinking. “Hey, do you know if any of the band are really into chocolate?”

Next to them, a boar in a rainbow t-shirt turned. “Kettlebow?” He had a higher voice than Bret would've thought possible from such a broad chest. When they nodded, he laughed. “Well, the drummer is. But the band gets all the chocolate they want. You some kind of supplier?”

“No,” Bret said. “I was just curious.” His ears flattened and he sighed, leaning back against the wall.

“Hey,” Mike said after a moment, in a low voice, “if the band's in the Green Room...where are their instruments? Maybe we could at least see them.”

“They're locked up, I'm sure.” Bret shook his head. “Anyway, Larissa said to stay here.”

“Well,” the squirrel said, “I mean, I just hate to get this far and not do something really unique, y'know? And we got one piece of chocolate left. That might get us out of trouble.”

Bret looked again at the crowd of people in the hallway. He imagined the rainbow-furred arctic fox coming along the hallway barely seeing the sea of muzzles and ears, his small pine marten's features lost in the crowd. Then he imagined Larissa screaming at them for getting her in trouble.

Well, they just wouldn't get her in trouble, that was all. “Right,” he said. “Let's give it a shot.”

* * *

“Let me get this straight,” the cop said. “You pushed your friend into bribing a guard with...chocolate...into an area restricted to VIP access.”

“Really,” Bret said, “I mean, what's a VIP except someone who gets into VIP spaces?”

“And the only thing she asked you to do was to stay there.”

Bret cleared his throat. “And not to get into trouble.”

“And after about...ten minutes? You left the area.”

“Okay. But we were going to be very careful.”

The wolf looked around the station meaningfully. “I see that that worked out great.”

Bret linked his paws together and exhaled. “Anyway...”

* * *

The corridors were confusing, the more so because every so often they would spot a guard, whereupon they turned and walked the other way. At one point they found themselves in a large room where a number of different boxes were stored, all of them packed carefully and labeled with band names.

“I guess the bands that ship their gear here, this is where it goes.” Mike leaned against the door as Bret hurried around inspecting the labels on the boxes. “Don't bother. Kettlebow travels with their own stuff. It won't be in here.”

Bret paused with his paw on a box marked “Box of Foxes.” He traced fingers along the cardboard and tapped to see if he could tell what was in it.

“Hey.”

They both turned. At the doorway of the room, a fat raccoon lounged. “You guys aren't with the crew.”

“Uh, no. Sorry.” Mike started toward the door.

Bret grabbed him by the elbow. The raccoon didn't seem “We're not regular crew, but we're here because we've got a bunch of...candy...for the bands.”

“Really.” The raccoon folded his arms.

“Show him,” Mike said.

Bret dug into his pocket and pulled out the last piece of chocolate. The raccoon leaned forward and sniffed at it. “Okay,” he said. “Just don't hang out around here.”

“Hey,” Mike said. “You can have this if you can take us to Kettlebow's room.”

Reflexively, Bret closed his paw over the chocolate, but as the raccoon's face lit up, he uncurled his fingers and let the candy sit temptingly on his paw pad. The guy reached out for it, then hesitated, his slender fingers wavering.

“I got three more hours to work tonight,” he said.

“So it's for after,” Mike said.

Bret held his paw up more encouragingly. The raccoon looked at both of them, and his eyes narrowed slightly. “I guess one piece would be enough for me to take one of you back there.”

“Oh,” Mike said cheerfully, “you want a blow job, too?”

The raccoon closed the door and grinned. “Now you're talkin'.”

So a moment later Mike was on his knees sucking the guy's cock.

* * *

“Hold up. Your friend Mike was a squirrel, right?”

Bret nodded. “Yeah.”

“Interesting.” The wolf eyed him. “Did the guy pick the squirrel to perform oral sex on him? Most people would worry about the teeth. Especially when there's another option.”

“Hey, what can I say?” Bret spread his paws. “I mean, I certainly didn't commit any indecent acts to try to get into a restricted area. My friend isn't here, and what he did, y'know, I couldn't really help.”

“Sure. You certainly don't seem like the kind of guy who'd get on his knees for just any random guy. Like for candy or anything.”

“Hey,” Bret said. “First of all, that other time was just a couple guys having consensual sex and the candy was a separate thing. And second, this wasn't a random guy. He was clean. Mike told me.”

* * *

“He was pretty clean,” Mike whispered, wiping his mouth.

“Shh.” Bret tagged along beside the squirrel as they followed the swinging ringed tail back through a maze of back hallways in the main amphitheater.

“The band's not there, you know, and you can't take anything. You can touch the instruments if you want,” the raccoon called back.

“That's cool,” Bret said. “We're just big fans of the band. Can we take pictures?”

“Uh...” The raccoon considered. “Just don't get me in any of 'em. Lots of guys could've let you in there.”

“Yes, sir,” Mike said. He elbowed Bret and dropped back. “See?” he whispered. “It was worth it.”

“I guess.” Getting close to the band's instruments would be cool, but it would be even better if the band were there themselves. He called up to the raccoon. “When will they be back?”

“Tomorrow. And you better be gone by then.” The guy strode down the hallway with a powerful gait that they had to hurry to keep up with, turning corners sharply and not acknowledging any of the people coming the other way. Bret glanced at them, but they were all very busy themselves and none of them was inclined to investigate the squirrel and marten.

The more he thought about it, the more he thought it was pretty cool. Here they were, if not meeting the band themselves, at least getting into their dressing room. They could touch the guitar that Jesse would be playing, sit in the chair that Pell Matthews would be sitting in, at least get close to the band in that way. Maybe they could pick up a little souvenir when the raccoon was looking the other way.

He stopped at a door with a gold star on it, fiddled with some keys on his belt. The door swung open and he held one paw on the door. “Five minutes,” he said. “Go ahead in.”

Five minutes wasn't a lot of time, but they'd make the most of it. They walked into the dressing room, and Bret got his camera out.

* * *

He called up his photo album. “Look. Here I am with the guitars. Here's me and Mike in front of the vanity. Here's the raccoon.”

The wolf leaned over the desk and studied the picture of the large raccoon, back turned, ringed tail hanging down behind him. “Didn't he ask you not to take a picture of him?”

“I'm not going to publish it anywhere,” Bret tapped the album shut. “Just wanted the memory.”

“And that wasn't the guitar stand you offered me, was it?”

“No. That was a different one. I told you, the guy said I could take it.”

“The raccoon?”

“No.”

* * *

About four and a half minutes into their five, the raccoon's radio crackled to life. He grabbed it and put it to his muzzle. “Right,” he said. “I'll be right there.” The radio clicked back onto his belt and he turned to Bret and Mike. “Okay, fun time's over. Let's go.”

So the pine marten and squirrel hurried out of the dressing room. The guard bent to put his key into the door and a voice said, “Hold up there, my fellow.”

Bret and Mike turned, and their jaws dropped. There in the hallway was an arctic fox, short, his fur dyed all the colors of the rainbow. He was shirtless, showing off a skinny chest and thin summer coat of fur, and his cutoff jean shorts were too loose to show much definition, but short enough to show off his thighs.

He stopped in the hallway and posed, pretty much, his long tail ringed with rainbow colors, the bare chest swirled in the patterns everyone who'd seen the video knew by heart. “You guys fans?” he said in a sweet, high voice.

“Hell yes,” Mike said before Bret could unstick his jaw.

“It's all right, um,” the fox bent to look at the raccoon's badge, “Jake. I'll take care of these two.”

Mike's paw gripped Bret's arm so hard that the marten might get bruised, but Bret barely even noticed. “Pall Matthews,” he whispered.

The fox's little ears perked forward. “Sure is,” he said. “You boys wanted to stick around the dressing room a bit?”

“I've gotta go,” the raccoon said. “You're sure...”

“It's fine,” the arctic fox said with a careless paw. “Go ahead.”

So the guard tromped off down the hall, and Bret and Mike stood with their eyes wide as Pall Matthews swished his way toward them and into the dressing room.

Bret couldn't think of anything to say, just stood there, but Mike was more at ease, asking about their last few gigs, about the other band members, and Pall replied easily, leaning back on the bureau. Bret got distracted over by the guitars again, his attention caught by a bright yellow one, and he slid his fingers along it since the guard wasn't there anymore. Next to it was a rainbow-colored guitar stand, empty.

Only a little while later did he notice that the conversation behind him had died out, and he turned to see the arctic fox's shorts down around his ankles and Mike on his knees in front of him, bound tail flicking back and forth.

“Holy...” Bret murmured.

The rainbow-furred fox caught his eye and smiled. “You can come over if you want.”

* * *

Bret coughed. “Since you don't want details, anyway, Mike and I took turns and it was entirely consensual.”

“And then he told you that you could take the guitar stand.”

“Yeah.” Bret nodded. “The rainbow one. But I didn't know what to do with it, and you know, Mike took off to go home. So I was just walking around with this thing and I was just thinking that it was a neat souvenir, but it was just a stand, and I don't even own a guitar, and the pictures are probably better souvenirs...so when you came over to me and said I looked lonely, I just thought you might like it. And as you have heard, I gave three blow jobs tonight and didn't get a single one back, so...”

“Really?” The wolf's eyes gleamed. “It was two by my count. Because your friend blew the guard.”

“Oh, right. Well, I mean, blowing the Pall Matthews impersonator was kind of like two.”

The cop laughed shortly. “So you figured out it wasn't him.”

“Well, when you told us the band reported the stand stolen...and also, you know, I figure the real Pall Matthews doesn't need to wander around his dressing room at odd hours looking for fans if he wants blow jobs.” Bret didn't mention that the impersonator had had a very distinctive piercing that a diligent Internet search had revealed was not present on Pall Matthews' cock.

The black wolf shook his head. “You were still in possession of stolen goods. I'm going to have to write that up. But in light of your statement...I think I can let you off with about a dozen very stern warnings. You're lucky you didn't have any 'chocolate' on you when I brought you in. Or one of those plastic knives.”

“I would never,” Bret said with a paw on his chest.

“See that it stays that way.” The cop cracked a smile. “All right, get on out of here. I'll finish writing this up.”

Bret stood and stretched. Out of the open window, the faint noise of parties continued. He didn't think he would be seeking them out, though. “Thanks,” he said. “I'll stay out of trouble, I promise.”

“Well, if you do...” The wolf reached into his desk and came out with a small business card. “Once the festival's over, things get kinda boring around here.”

“Oh.” Bret took the card and read the black wolf's name and phone number. “Yeah, I'm just over at...”

“Lonnegan, I know.” The wolf turned back to his computer. “Maybe I'll see you sometime.”

“I'd like that.” Bret pocketed the card, warmth in his chest and also a little lower. He smiled and thought about the wolf as he'd first seen him, just a fit, attractive guy who was looking around for someone to spend some pleasurable time with at a music festival. He decided he'd like to remember him that way. “But not here.”

“That's up to you.” The wolf's ears flicked and he went back to his typing.

Bret nodded, and made his way out as quietly as he could.

9

Price Tag

One of the favorite characters from Dude, Where’s My Fox? was the snobby fashion fox Cristal who refers to himself in the third person. Some readers wanted to see him get his comeuppance, and I don’t think I quite captured that, but I found it amusing to write his story in second person, and that suggested the ending.

For about the tenth time in the last fifteen minutes, you scan your image in the mirror, looking for flaws in the fold of your jacket, the turn of a shirt cuff, the colors in the scarf and the pocket handkerchief. You search for a mark on the pants, one hair out of place in the russet fur of your muzzle, one stray whisker at an embarrassing angle. And for the tenth time, your brown-furred fingers pick at an imaginary flaw, straighten an already-straight fold, brush away a speck of lint.

You tell yourself that the car ride there will muss the suit, that Barrington won't have a full-length mirror in his office, that the minute adjustments will all be lost in the regrettably necessary chaos of transportation. Not for the first time, you wish someone would go ahead and invent a damn teleporter already, so you could be whisked to your destination in the same state of perfection you can create here in your dressing room.

At precisely 6:15 pm, your assistant raps at the door. “The car is ready,” she says.

“As is Cristal,” you say, and she opens the door.

Always professional, Athena, whether scheduling appointments or bringing eligible males to hotel rooms. The arctic fox smiles at you and gives you a critical, appreciative examination. You know that she won't hesitate to tell you if something is wrong, and you also know that nothing is. When she smiles and nods, you nod back with a little less of a smile and follow her out, both of you keeping your tails at the proper angle with the proper curve.

You sit up straight in the back of the car, paws held in your lap with the fingertips lightly touching. Your guru has taught you some relaxation exercises which you run through now. Breathing in, holding the breath. Focusing on pleasant thoughts. Resisting the impulse to straighten out the pants legs, already wrinkling in the car, resisting the temptation to think about this meeting.

Athena doesn't help. “His secretary didn't explain why he wanted to meet so late.”

“He's very busy,” you say. “The meeting with his partners was scheduled for four o'clock and he did not want to make Cristal wait until tomorrow.”

“Of course he'll back you.” Athena has your hauteur and confidence—arrogance, other people say, but that is the word insecure people use to describe the self-assurance they envy. “Who else is there in the fashion world?”

You examine the tips of your claws, making each one of them match, left to right, down your fingers. “There are some who market themselves better than Cristal.”

“You always say that, but you've done so well up to now. And this is just the beginning of much bigger things.”

You know this to be true. You can already see the storefronts in Port City, Lutèce, Crystal City. You have your logo designed already, by a (talented) friend of a (talented) friend, and you know how it will look on the elegant black marble you've already talked to an architecture firm about. You can see the insides of the stores, the colors of the shirts and the highlights around the cuffs and collars, the pants, the suits, the ties, the cufflinks. And the polite, knowledgeable assistants, ready to teach the ignorant rich how to look better than the other ignorant rich.

You will spend some time in the stores, of course. Maybe you'll pose as one of the assistants, and afterwards the other assistants in the store will tell the customers in hushed tones, “That was Cristal himself who was helping you!” Your guru has told you that you should find space in your life to get away from the spotlight, to rest from being the center of attention, and this is one way that appeals to you. You have your small cottage out on the Island, of course, but lately you have been inviting so many industry friends out there that it's no longer a haven. When you wanted some private time with that attractive red panda you'd met, you had to bring him up to your bedroom because someone was sitting in literally every other room in the house.

And yet, you have trouble with your guru's advice because you love the activity even as it tires you out. When this deal is signed—when—you will be in the middle of still more meetings, you will be sought out for interviews, you will be consulting with and consulting for twice as many, three times as many people as you do now. It will be exhilarating and exhausting, but that is what your thirties are for. When you turn forty, you plan to have a giant party at one of your stores—in Milano or Firenza if you have opened one there, Port City if not—and retire, perhaps to write a fashion column for whichever publication seems worthy of you.

Focusing on the future helps distract you from the present. You glance at the car's clock: 6:31. Athena is just pulling the car into the garage below Barrington's office building. Traffic was lighter than expected.

When she parks, you get out quickly and close the door, leaning over it to examine your reflection in the window. Of course it is always important to look your best, but when you are about to close a deal to become a Big Name in the world of fashion (a Bigger Name, you correct yourself), there is no margin for error.

Athena has the hand mirror when she comes around the car. “Everything looks fine,” she says, holding it up and varying the angle so you can examine your collar and the fur below your cheekruffs again.

“Hold it there a moment.” She obeys, allowing you to turn and inspect your ears, your whiskers, your teeth. You once, as a seventeen-year-old working for Kay Armistead, saw her fire a raccoon who had a poppy seed stuck between his front teeth, and you have never failed to inspect your own since that day.

On your signal, Athena takes the mirror and inspects herself. She looks lovely, as always, but nobody is really going to be looking at her. “Are you ready to go up?” she asks.

You check your phone. “Three more minutes,” you say as she puts the mirror back in the car and locks it. “Desperate people arrive early to meetings.”

She nods, takes her phone out, and sets an alarm for 6:40 before checking her messages. You take deep breaths and try to ignore the dank smell of the parking lot.

When Athena's alarm chimes, she shuts it off and the two of you walk toward the elevator bay. Even though it takes the elevators fifteen seconds to arrive, you step out onto the 12th floor offices with two minutes to spare: prompt but not too eager.

The doors to Silla Investments are closed, but when Athena presses in the intercom button, they buzz open immediately. She holds the door for you, and then trails behind as you head down the hall, past empty desks and cubicles toward the back corner office with the real oak door and “Ford Barrington” in gold letters on the outside nameplate.

His secretary is gone as well, so Athena sits at her desk, taking out her phone. She will be just a quick text away if you need her; you both know that. Still, you hesitate at the door. The silence of the office is unnerving, more than you thought it would be. Your whiskers twitch with the unease of a fox in the opening scenes of a horror movie. Ridiculous, you tell yourself. The financial markets close at five; why does an investment firm need people to stay late? The office is sleeping, not dead; quiet, not sinister. You gather yourself and knock firmly on the door.

“Come,” Barrington's deep voice calls.

You put a paw on the gold-plated doorknob, turn it, and enter.

“Close it behind you,” he says, although you're already doing that. It clicks shut, and you stand again in the marvel that is Ford Barrington's office.

Silla Investments has done very well for itself in the last five years, and nowhere is that success more on display than in the office of the senior partner. From behind his thick mahogany desk (“it once belonged to President Brundage's Secretary of the Treasury,” he told you on a previous visit), the great red deer surveys you, and you make an effort to straighten, to present yourself as a fox of importance and significance, definitely not one who feels dwarfed by the opulence in this room.

It is ironic that your elevated standing is what allows this feeling. For example, few people surely would recognize the two paintings on the wall behind you as VanBeeks, much less original ones. Fewer still would know that the crystal glasses on the bar in the back left corner were not Waterford, but Lalique. Most people probably knew the name of the 18-year-old scotch that Barrington liked to pour into his Lalique glassware, but they probably did not know that his family had bought the distillery fifty years before, that that brand's reputation had been terrible before that. Even the carpet, you know, is natural fibers, soft on the paws; the chairs are Louis XIV period (replicas; why would you have originals in an office building?); the view of Port City out of the windows that span two of the walls is incredible.

And knowing all this, the red deer behind the desk gesturing you to one of the chairs is perhaps most impressive of all. He inherited his father's money and founded Silla Investments, and has a reputation as a ruthless but visionary investor. To have secured one meeting with him is a coup; to have him come to the point of offering you funding is a validation of all you've worked for. You could go to just about any other investment firm in town and tell them you were seriously considered by Ford Barrington, and they would shovel money into your paws. But you don't want their money. You want his.

And this fifty-one year-old savant, the toast of the financial district just as you are the toast of the fashion district, is about to give it to you. You can see it in the smile, the quick wave as he directs you to sit in one of the replicas. Someone about to give bad news doesn't feel that excited, and the excitement does tinge his scent.

“Pleasure to see you again,” he says, his Anglic accent coming through more strongly. “Quite sorry it has to be so late.”

“Cristal is pleased to accommodate,” you say with an incline of your head. Your tail wants to twitch, but you restrain it.

Barrington smiles broadly. “Good of you. Well, the chaps here quite liked your portfolio and we do think there's a future for you beyond the runway, as it were.”

“Thank you.” You try to keep your smile in, with a bit less success.

“I just have one or two more questions for you.” He gets up then, all six and a half feet of him, shoulders almost as broad as the desk he walks around. You follow him with eyes and ears, around the corner, to where he sits on the edge of the desk looking down at you.

“Of course,” you say. From here, it's impossible to ignore the unfortunately standard navy blue of his suit, which really does not go with his fur, or the tie that someone on TV undoubtedly said was a “power tie,” or the way one of his shirt cuffs hides inside the jacket cuff while the other sticks out, but, you remind yourself, money is his job, and fashion is yours. Perhaps if he could look at your bank accounts, he would be similarly horrified.

(But there really is no excuse for that suit. Even the dullard assistants at the Business Wearhouse would be able to tell him that a nice charcoal would be a vast improvement.)

“You must know that this referring to yourself in the third person business doesn't always play well with the media. If you're going to be in front of them, you'll have to be prepared for that.”

You blink. “Cristal explained in the presentation,” you say cautiously, “that it is about viewing Cristal as a brand.” You put your paw to your chest. “Cristal is proud of these accomplishments.”

“Yes, yes.” The deer nods. “But what will you do when some Crystal City rag calls you 'the most pretentious name in fashion'?”

You smile toothily. “Cristal has been called that already. The quote will go on the wall of the store. Fashion is about elegance, and those who do not understand elegance call it pretension.”

“Quite. You could put that quote next to it.” He seems pleased by that. “You've listed Port City, Crystal City, and Lutèce as your first three markets. Would you be willing to sit down with a business consultant from our firm to do a thorough vetting of all three markets? We just want to make sure that from our end, we're hitting the best places from day one, right?”

“Ah...Cristal would be willing to discuss the markets.” In your heart, you've seen those three, but you could perhaps give up one for another destination. “But the centers of fashion are there and in Etrusca right now. These stores are not for Midwestern teenagers to find clothes for prom.”

Barrington laughs and nods. He doesn't have antlers, not this time of year, but he has a thick mane of red hair that waves when he throws his head back to laugh. “Of course not. Silla only buys the best. All right, delightful, delightful. Last question, and then we can get to those papers.”

His desk is covered in papers, and until this moment you hadn't attached any importance to any of them. But when he gestures, your eyes follow his gesture to a particular stack, on top of the others, with little colored flags stuck in them where signatures are needed. There is your future, there is your black marble and retirement party. “Yes,” you say, sitting up and attentive.

Barrington's thick hands drop to his lap. “Have you ever sucked off a chap to close a business deal?”

He says it as casually as anything else, even as his fingers open his belt, unzip his navy blue pants, and pull out a half-hard shaft, flopping reddish-pink against the now even more unsuitable blue. And when you tear yourself away from that disconcerting sight to look up at his head, his eyes are boring into yours, dead serious.

“I—Cristal has not—would not—have not needed to,” you stammer, and then curse yourself to get control. “Are you asking...?” You let the sentence hang, not wanting to finish for fear of hearing the answer.

He grips himself, stroking. “Come on now. We had you investigated, followed. Of course it's not a terrible thing, being a pillow-biter in the fashion world. Rather expected, I dare say. But I certainly don't believe you haven't slept your way to where you are now.” Your eyes keep being drawn down to the motion, then returning to his bizarrely calm face, and every time you look down, he's harder and bigger.

“Cristal has not.” To your dismay, you find your paws trembling, and your tail twitches. “Cristal has enjoyed the company of other males, yes, but there is nothing wrong or illegal about that.”

“Of course not. You can even get married now. So?” He leans back, both hands on the desk, fully erect now. “Why not enjoy this company? You're a cocksucker, right? So?”

You lick your lips. “If Cristal refuses...?”

Now his eyebrows lower, and a trace of annoyance flickers along his ears. “I can't make the business loan contingent on sexual favors, of course. That's illegal. But if I don't feel that there's a sufficient level of trust between us, then we might want to start you off smaller. You know, there are some very fashion-starved markets in the Midwest that could use your unique brand.” His lips pull back in a smile. “We could design the most stylish high school dances in the Bible Belt.”

The bright pink of his shaft fairly glows against the dark pants, and your eyes keep dropping to it. You've been avoiding thinking about this seriously, but now you're forced to. Would it be so bad? Fifteen minutes and it would be over. Fifteen minutes—maybe five, maybe ten—to Port City, to Crystal City, to the world. And while you technically haven't slept with anyone to gain an advantage, you certainly have taken advantages that came with people you slept with—Kopi at that first Kay Armistead job, Ryan at the Saks buyers department. You did let Karol Boscinski under your tail, but come on: Karol Boscinski! And you didn't ask him to appoint you to that designer studio the next summer; he called you up and told you he liked your work.

This is different. This, no matter what Barrington says, is sex for business. And Barrington is quite clearly straight—or at least posturing as straight. He might be closeted, might actually be straight and just getting off on power trips. You have known more than a few people like that, gay or straight, although few to your knowledge have actually carried out this stereotype quite this boldly. So it wouldn't be a liaison that might have happened anyway. It definitely is not based on mutual attraction. And the knowledge of this moment will be in your memory forever, a speck on your past that you can't brush away.

You could walk out, refuse any of his money, and walk to one of the other capital firms. But they are not the best, and they might limit you to Port City, to granite rather than marble. Besides, who knows what Barrington might say about you to his colleagues? In fashion, you know, news of meetings gone awry spreads faster than a common cold; nearly every lunch you take includes the words, “did you hear about...?”

And yet, if you accept his offer, you can never undo it, never forget it. All of his money and everything you buy with it will be marked. You imagine yourself as a kind of Lady Macbeth, wandering through your stores trying to clean them of this stain, and inwardly you wince against that image. Get a grip, you tell yourself sternly. It's just a blow job. You can do it and forget about it and just enjoy all that it has made possible. The world is opening up here for you.

But at what price?

Barrington clears his throat, a bass rumble in the room. “I'm getting cold,” he says pointedly.

And so you stand up, and you make your decision.

10

Maxon’s Decision

People asked me at this point who some of my favorite characters were, and Maxon from Shadow of the Father has always been high on that list. He started as merely an antagonist and became much more complicated. So I wrote a story that has some spoilers for Shadow of the Father in it, but goes a ways toward explaining his background and motivation.

Divalia felt too large for him after so many years. His memories of it were blurry, but he was sure that a decade ago, there hadn't been so many houses clustered outside the walls, nor so many beggars on the road leading to the East Gate. Maxon had dressed simply for the journey, his Steward's sigil tucked inside his leather jerkin, so he didn't appear worth targeting to any but the most desperate of beggars: the ones who were truly crippled and blind, not just pretending.

He ignored them, focusing on the task at hand as a way to keep his more painful memories at a distance. Every time he'd visited Divalia in the past, it had been with Sheffin, the Lord of Dewanne. The late Lord of Dewanne, he corrected himself, and the thought stabbed at his heart as it had every time he'd thought of it during his journey, only a thousand or so times. Though he'd run Dewanne more or less by himself for a decade and a half, he still felt unsure without Sheffin to approve his decisions, like the twelve-year-old cub he'd been when his Lord had taken him into his service. Whose judgment did he turn to now? Delia? Hardly.

He presented his sigil and orders to the guards at the gate. They saluted him and let him pass, into the city proper: taller buildings, more colorful garments, healthier scents coming around every corner. Maxon kept his eyes on the Castle whose turrets rose above all the other buildings, and the great cathedral at its side. Perhaps the Cathedral should be his first stop, to make a short prayer to Canis.

But no; if he went to the Cathedral first, he would be obliged to go directly to the Castle afterwards, and he did not want to go to the Castle before making a very particular stop.

So he guided his mount to the left of the Cathedral. Here inside the city walls, his memory served him better. The shop faces might change, but the streets themselves did not, and he'd been told what name to look for.

At a sign showing the heads of six geese, he rode his mount around to the back. A young weasel took a copper coin and his mount from him and guided the mount to the inn's stables. Maxon made his way inside and sat at the bar, behind which a grizzled wolf whose right ear was mostly gone polished tankards.

The inn appeared mostly empty at first sight, but not at first sniff. In the shadows around the edges of the bar, shadows hunched over tankards and conversed in whispers. Only two other patrons sat at the bar itself. Maxon paid them only enough attention to determine their species (rat and bear) before taking his seat.

The wolf bartender did not seem anxious to take his order, so Maxon cleared his throat. “I was told by a friend,” he said clearly, “that this inn serves an excellent cherry mead.”

At that, the wolf put the tankard down and stared at Maxon. The fox bore the scrutiny calmly, keeping his ears upright and returning the wolf's gaze steadily. The rat had also lifted his head to examine Maxon, but the steward ignored him.

“Aye, betimes we have such.” The wolf walked slowly over and leaned across the bar, presenting his intact ear. “Get it from different suppliers, though. You have a favorite?”

Maxon inclined his head and whispered a name into the proffered ear. “Oh aye,” the wolf said. “I know that mead. Care for it brought to you here?”

He'd read the letter every night on the journey and knew the phrases by heart. “I was hoping to purchase a cask,” he said. “May I see the stores around back?”

“Certainly. Go 'round the stables and I'll have someone meet you there.”

“For your troubles.” Maxon slid a silver across the bar.

“No trouble 'tall.” The wolf pocketed the coin so smoothly that though Maxon had been staring at it the whole time, it appeared to vanish.

So the fox went back to the stables, and some ten minutes later, the weasel boy appeared again. “Come with me, sir,” he said.

“Very well.” But the boy didn't move, and after a moment Maxon sighed and gave him another copper. Then the weasel led him across the alley and through another one, out into a moderately trafficked street and down to a warehouse where he knocked three times at an old wooden door.

A voice murmured through it a moment later, and the weasel bent to the crack between the door and the frame and whispered something that even Maxon's fox ears couldn't hear. Latches thunked against wood and the door creaked open.

“There you go, sir,” the weasel said, and hurried away down the street.

Maxon stepped into the warehouse, but only got as far as one step before a paw emerged from the shadow to press against his chest. The door slammed behind him, and he blinked, trying to adjust to the darkness. There would be enough light through the crack in the door for him to see in just a few seconds...

“Maxon!” The pressure on his chest vanished, to be replaced by a warm body. Arms circled him and held him tight, then released him.

“Dewry,” he said, stepping back and straightening his jacket. “This seems rather an unnecessary amount of caution.”

“Not unnecessary, I can assure you.” Now Maxon could see the fox before him, and the sight left him speechless as Dewry talked on about the number of enemies he had made in Divalia.

Maxon himself lived a rather ascetic lifestyle, and even among the foxes of Dewanne he was considered thin. The ladies of the court of Dewanne were forever pushing honey cakes on him. But next to Dewry, Maxon felt the very picture of health. His young friend had lost weight and acquired a lean, hard edge that belied his age—no, Maxon reminded himself, Dewry was nearly forty years old, little more than a decade Maxon's junior. The steward still thought of himself as a fox in his forties, and of Dewry as a cub in his early twenties, but this lean fellow in front of him, with grey creeping around the edges of his muzzle and ears, bore as many marks of age as Maxon himself. And his clothes, though whole, appeared stained and dirty in places, his tunic no longer bright white but dull. He smelled clean, but a harsh kind of clean, lye and abrasive sand rather than soft scented dusts.

And too, there was Sheffin in his build and scent (what he could catch below the lye), in the way the fur creased around his eyes (though with Sheffin it had been laughter, often; with Dewry hardly ever), in the curve of the ears where they met his head, even in the nervous motion of his paws. Or maybe that was from Kayley's side. Regardless, there was enough of his former Lord and lifelong friend to make Maxon catch his breath.

“Well?” Dewry was saying. “You said you would find out what can be done about this naming of some other heir.”

“Yes.” Maxon collected himself. “Delia—Lady Dewanne—has overseen the orders and I cannot countermand them. I came to tell you that—that it is best you remain in Divalia.”

Dewry's smile didn't falter. “I'm not. I don't belong here.”

Maxon gestured around them at the large warehouse. “You seem to have done very well. I will refrain from asking how.”

At that, Dewry's eyes slid to one side. “I did what needed to be done,” he muttered. His eyes rose to challenge Maxon. “I had no alternative.”

“I know.” The steward sighed. “I tried. I told you how I tried.”

“You tried, and so did I, and perhaps neither of us did as well as we might have hoped. So let us leave it at that.” Dewry folded his arms. “It's to be that brat from Vinton, then?”

“He is very young.” Maxon reached out to grip the other fox's shoulder. “If you were to present yourself to him, to offer your counsel—”

“Ha. As if she would allow that.”

“If you but present yourself to him, make a friend of him, allow him to insist on your behalf...” The expression on Dewry's curled lips told Maxon what the other fox thought of that idea, and his words trailed off in the face of Dewry's scorn, allowing Dewry the space to give voice to it.

“Supplicate myself to him, you mean. Me, of the blood of the lords of Dewanne, prostrate myself before this mountain bumpkin and beg him for a place to grovel at his feet while he rules my city?”

“You don't know him,” Maxon began, but Dewry cut him off.

“Know him? I know him. I have friends in the Castle, you know. They tell me of him, how he scorns the fine foods of the palace, sulks and stomps around, and wants nothing more than to go back to his mountainside cave and suck at his mother's teat. Well, let him go! Give him the goats and their kin and give me the city of foxes!”

“How have you gathered so much information about him in such a short time? The arrangement was not announced formally until Sheffin's—your father's death.”

“I told you, I have sources in the Castle. He came here two years ago and when I was told of it, I was curious. I knew that Father had an interest in that other fox family, so I did too. You'll hate him, I can assure you of that.”

Maxon stiffened. “How I feel about him has no bearing on my duty here. It was Lord Dewanne's wish—”

“Was it really?” Dewry leaned forward. “Or was it hers?”

The steward met the other's gaze. “It makes no difference.”

“Truly?” Dewry searched his eyes. “Tell me to my face that it makes no difference to you.”

Maxon kept his voice steady. “It is the order,” he stressed that word, “of the House of Dewanne.”

Dewry turned away in disgust. “You know the course my life has taken. Would you not allow me the chance to have just a little of what my father had, at the end of it? If not for the spare affection he felt for me, then at least for the love he bore my mother?”

The memory of Sheffin returned, but a young Sheffin, glowing with delight at this vixen he'd found. “She'll be my mistress, Maxon,” he'd said. “Father had a mistress and she was very kind to me.”

“Your father's mistress was a raccoon.” Even then at the age of fourteen, Maxon had applied himself to learning how the court functioned. “There was no chance of offspring. Kayley is a vixen, and you're promised to Delia of the House of Rightcrest.”

“It will be fine.” Sheffin, eighteen, had been full of the confidence of nobility. “I'll just tell this Delia that I'll only lie with Kayley out of season. And if an accident happens and there's a bastard, all the better. That's insurance in case we only have vixens, or a misfortune befalls our son.”

But it had not worked that way, of course. Delia had proven stronger of will than poor kind Sheffin, and had learned of Kayley once the 'accident' had already happened. Kayley and her cub had been denied any access to the palace, and poor Sheffin had been unable to stop it.

“Whoever may have influenced his judgment,” Maxon said, “in the end, it was his signature that graced the order, and he told me in his own voice that he wished this order carried out.”

Dewry turned away from him and walked a few paces, then spoke in a low voice. “So you serve her now, too.”

“I serve the House of Dewanne.”

“I am the blood of the House of Dewanne!” Dewry shouted. “She's—she's just Rightcrest, she was the right age at the right time and her parents were good at politics and she married my father!”

Maxon's heart ached again, because Sheffin's son truly did deserve better. But to serve the House of Dewanne, he could not tell Dewry what he had been told in confidence by Sheffin: that Yilon, the second son of Lord Vinton, was in reality the second son of Sheffin, and was also of the blood of the House of Dewanne, by secret pact with Lady Vinton. Only three living people in the world knew this: the cub's mother, who had remained in Vinton, Lady Dewanne, and Maxon himself.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “It has been good to see you again.”

“Get out,” Dewry snarled.

* * *

Maxon stopped at the Great Cathedral, open to all when services were not in progress, and prayed to Canis to show him the path for his mission, and to take Sheffin's spirit into His pack. He rose and made his way to the Palace after that, announced by a seemingly interminable line of servants until he found himself in the first-floor chambers of Lord Volle of Vinton.

“Please,” Volle said, standing to clasp Maxon's paw, “allow me to express my deepest sympathies on the death of Lord Dewanne. He was a good friend in his time here, and I know how much he meant to the people of Dewanne.”

“Thank you,” Maxon said. “It is appreciated.”

“He spoke of you many times. I know he held you in the highest regard, both as a Steward and a friend.”

Maxon took a breath. A good Steward should not show emotion. “We should arrange for the succession as quickly as is convenient. The trip back to Dewanne is long and the mountain pass will be inaccessible soon.”

“I sent for Yilon as soon as I heard you were in town,” Volle said. “He should be here momentarily.”

“Which means you should make yourself comfortable.” Lord Vinton's lover, a white wolf he'd introduced as Streak, smiled at Maxon. “It will take Yilon twice as long to respond to the summons as it takes for it to reach him.”

Volle, a middle-aged fox who nonetheless was younger than Maxon himself, sighed. “I told him it was urgent.”

“Then it will be three times as long.” Streak signaled to the young raccoon who had announced Maxon for the final time. “What would you like to drink, Maxon? Deliar will fetch it, and some sweet wine for myself and Lord Vinton.”

“Sweet wine will be adequate, thank you.” Maxon took the papers from his leather pouch and placed them on the table. “While we wait, perhaps we can review the documents so you can be sure there is no error.”

“Yes, of course. But I'm sure everything is in order.”

Of course everything was in order, Maxon thought. Lord Vinton was in the enviable position of becoming—publicly, at least—the father of two Lords. Sheffin's blood might flow in Yilon's veins, but it was Lord and Lady Vinton who'd shaped his mind, and who would be publicly acknowledged as his parents. Unless the deception were exposed at some future time and the cub's true bloodline re-established, he would effectively be of Vinton's bloodline no matter who his true father was.

Maxon had asked Sheffin about this, years ago, and his Lord and friend had smiled. “It will be taken care of,” he'd said. And yet there was nothing in the papers he'd left, no promise Lady Vinton had made in writing to reveal the cub's parentage. Delia had been equally mysterious about it, though less kind; she'd said it was not a steward's station to know.

And yet, that was Delia, and Maxon could not expect the kind of friendship from her that he'd been fortunate enough to receive from Sheffin. She was Lady Dewanne, and the ruler of the land for which Maxon had given up a wife and family and any other life but his service.

Volyan, the elder of Volle's sons, arrived first, wearing a slender yellow vest that hung open. His strut and the confident manner with which he showed off his body let Maxon know him very quickly. He had no doubt that if he wanted to find Volyan tonight, either an alehouse or a brothel would be the best places to look. No...not a brothel, he amended. Volyan didn't have the air of someone who needed to pay for his companionship.

“The brat's late again, huh?” Volyan dropped into a chair. “If you'd punish him properly, that'd break him of the habit.”

“Our guest,” Volle said pointedly, waving toward Maxon. “The Steward of Dewanne.”

Volyan's ears remained upright, not at all abashed by his father's unspoken rebuke. “Welcome to our city and our home,” he said, unnecessarily formally. “I hope your journey was pleasant.” Then he snorted. “I'm sorry for what you're about to experience on the return.”

“Volyan,” Streak said, sharp. “Be kind to your brother.”

“Yilon will be a challenge, but I believe him to be of excellent character,” Volle said to Maxon.

Brothers quarreled, Maxon had heard, so he shouldn't take Volyan's assessment of his brother with any weight. But the mild corrections of Streak and Volle worried him more.

When at last the younger Vinton cub appeared, calling out to his father, Maxon turned to see a plainly dressed young fox, ears splayed to the side, eyes sliding away from meeting those of anyone else in the room until he glared at his brother, though Volyan hadn't said a word. “Have a seat,” his father said, and Yilon leaned back against the wall next to the doorway and folded his arms.

Volle sighed and said something about hoping to have postponed this day, while Maxon prepared his official statement and watched Streak. The white wolf's expression was a curious mix of apprehension and relief.

“This is Maxon, the Steward of Dewanne,” Volle said.

Maxon rose to his feet and faced Yilon. “It is with deep regret that I announce the passing of Sheffin, thirty-first Lord of Dewanne. We...mourn him and salute the Lady Dewanne, who will be serving as Lady Regent until his designated heir can take his place.” Yilon’s fingers felt numb. The steward cleared his throat again. “As you know, Lord Dewanne died without official issue. He did designate an official heir, whose selection has been confirmed by the Lady Regent. In accordance with the laws of the realm, the designated heir must present himself at the court in Dewanne for his Confirmation; he can then return to Divalia to be sworn in by the King.”

Yilon's eyes remained turned away, his ears flat. Maxon went on. “The designated heir is Yilon, second son of Volle, seventeenth lord of Vinton, and Ilyana Rodion.” Still Yilon didn't react. “We will have to leave as soon as possible,” Maxon went on. “The road to Dewanne becomes impassable in the winter months, and should any nobles wish to visit the court for your Confirmation, they will have to arrive before the first storms.”

“We certainly would like to attend,” Volle said. “Yilon.” The cub snapped to attention. “We'll have dinner tomorrow and see you off the day after. I expect you'll want to say good-bye to some people. And we'll arrange with Master Ovile for some books to take along with you.”

“The day after tomorrow?”

Yilon looked shocked. Maxon coughed and stepped in. Clearly the cub hadn't been listening to him at all. “It is imperative that you present yourself for Confirmation at the earliest possible convenience.”

Volyan taunted his brother until told he too would be leaving. “Why? I'm already the heir?” he said.

Volle indicated Maxon's leather case and papers. “We were waiting for Dewanne's official pronouncement. For various reasons, it was...” He glanced to Maxon for help.

Travel dust still in his lungs brought on another cough. “Lord Dewanne wisely took the time to evaluate every option, the better to decide which would be best for the land.” That was the official story, the one to explain why the designation of an heir had taken so long. Had Sheffin named Yilon his heir years ago, questions would have swirled around him. Instead, the old Lord had taken the time to build up a friendship with Lord Vinton so that it would not seem at all unusual that he would choose one of his friend's cubs to succeed him.

“He didn't want to commit to anything,” the white wolf said, with more disdain than Maxon cared to acknowledge. “No matter how...”

His lover put a paw on his arm. “He's gone now,” he said softly, kindly. “Nobody's harmed.”

In the ensuing silence, Yilon said loudly, “Fine. I'll go start getting ready.”

He turned and left. His father called his name and then went after him.

“I'm sorry about him,” Streak said. “You must trust me, he's not a bad cub. He's smart. He just...”

“He's a mama's boy,” Volyan said. “He cried the first week he was here.”

“He spent fourteen years in Vinton,” Streak said. “He regarded the move to the capital in much the same way you are thinking about the move back to Vinton.”

“I don't really have to go, do I?” Volyan asked. “Life was just going to get fun again with the brat gone.”

“If your father says you have to go, then you have to go,” Streak said.

“Can't you talk to him?”

The white wolf shook his head. “We've discussed it. Anton is old and you're the heir of Vinton. It's time for you to take on the duties of the heir.”

“I...” Volyan opened his muzzle, then looked at Maxon and closed it again. “I'll talk to Father about this.”

Volle came back in on those words. “Talk to me about what?”

“Later.” Volyan gave Maxon another look. “Enjoy your trip across the kingdom.”

And then he was gone. Volle looked at Streak. “What was that about?”

The white wolf lifted his head and sighed. “You know. Growing up.”

The two of them didn't touch, but the emotions passing between them made Maxon look away and fold his ears down out of respect. He'd seen that between Delia and Sheffin sometimes, and it was in those moments that he understood why they were together. Other times it was harder to see, but Maxon could look back on those moments he'd witnessed and remind himself of them.

It heartened him to see that. He only wished that he had as much confidence in the fox's son.

Volle extended a paw to Maxon. “Thank you for coming all this way in person. I know the journey is not easy.”

“It was important to me to meet the heir in person.” Maxon coughed into his paw.

“I know he didn't make a very good impression,” Volle said. “But his masters all talk about how exceptional he is.”

“When he puts his mind to it,” Streak added.

“He was very excited to go through the ceremony of adulthood. But it was very recent and he is still absorbing all of what it means.” Volle clasped his paws in front of him. “He's going to make an excellent lord for Dewanne.”

“Yes,” Maxon said. “I look forward to the opportunity to get to know the young lord more closely.”

“Please give him a chance,” Streak said, standing. “We joke about him but he really does have a good heart.”

Maxon inclined his head, waiting. Streak and Volle looked at each other. “You must be very tired from your journey,” Volle said. “I believe the castle steward has a room prepared for you?”

“Yes,” Maxon said. “Thank you, my lord.”

* * *

He spent most of that evening trying to relax and thinking about Yilon. He had attempted to find the young fox one more time, without success. “He's gone out of the palace,” Volle's servant had told him. “He does that sometimes.”

Back in the comfortable chambers he'd been assigned, Maxon sat on the bed and combed through his tail's fur. He kept thinking back on the meeting with Yilon, trying to understand what was bothering him. Yilon's attitude was part of it, of course; the selfishness that he saw in Volyan as well. In Volle it was more subdued, but it was still there: leaving his wife in Vinton while bringing his lover to Divalia (although yes, they had had that moment and Maxon could make allowances for it).

He took dinner in his quarters and fell asleep quickly, and when he woke in the morning he had solved the problem...he thought. Before the sun had been up more than an hour, he found his way back to Lord Vinton's chambers. “The Lords are out in the garden,” Lord Vinton's personal servant told him. “May I help you?”

“I was looking for the young Lord. Yilon.”

“None of the family are present.”

“Ah. May I see where the young Lord sleeps while he's here?”

The weasel clasped his paws together. “May I ask what business you have with Yilon's sleeping quarters?”

“He is to be the future lord of my land. I owe it to my people—and his—to find out as much as I can about his character. You needn't worry. I won't take anything.”

His attitude worked. The weasel looked abashed at having even implied any impropriety and stepped back into the chambers, gesturing at a small room off the entrance. Maxon inclined his head in thanks and stepped into the room.

Clearly, Yilon shared this room with Volyan, but it wasn't hard to work out which cub slept on which side. Volyan's side held not only his scent, but the scent of several females. Yilon's side held only a bedroll and a chest and barely looked as though anyone lived there.

Maxon opened the chest and pulled out a tunic. He brought it close to his nose and inhaled. There was Yilon's scent, sharp and piney, like the mountains. But not the mountains of Dewanne.

Maxon knew Sheffin's scent nearly as intimately as his own. And just as he saw Yilon reflected in Volle and Volyan, he smelled no trace of Sheffin in his supposed heir.

He dropped the shirt in the chest, closed it, and walked back out the door without another word.

* * *

Dewry would not see him at first. Maxon had to send two messages, which did not reflect well on Dewry's maturity either, but at least, he told himself, at least this was Sheffin's blood for sure and certain. And Dewry had been quite angry with him.

But after the second message, Maxon met the other fox in the same warehouse. This time, though, the warehouse bustled with the noise and smell of activity. Dewry led him outside to a dank alley that smelled of piss and rotting vegetables. “Well?” the younger fox said, arms folded across his dirty tunic.

“If you wish to return to Dewanne,” Maxon said, “you may come with me tomorrow. We leave at dawn.”

Dewry's eyes lit up. His arms reached out to hug Maxon, then dropped to his sides. “We?”

The steward stepped back and raised a paw. “Myself and Yilon.”

As quickly as they had lit up, the amber eyes darkened. “Go with you? No. I go as the heir or not at all.”

“Listen to me.” Maxon took a breath and instantly regretted it. “Yilon is the heir. There is nothing I can do to change that. But he may prove...unsuitable.”

“Ah.” Dewry's mouth twisted into a smile. “You've met him.”

“I have not finished rendering my judgment of him yet, and in any event that judgment may have limited value. My opinion matters little.”

“You're the Steward. You could petition the King.”

Maxon rubbed behind his ear. “I believe that you understand Dewanne. Should Yilon prove insufficient to the task of governing, your presence in Dewanne would be most convenient for both of us. But,” he said, raising a paw to Dewry's growing excitement, “you will come only to await the outcome. You will make no move against Yilon.”

The younger fox smiled. “I promise. May I bring one friend?”

In Dewanne and again in Divalia, Dewry had a habit of surrounding himself with undesirable elements. Maxon hesitated. “I can pass you off as a guard,” he said. “But there is no room for another. No, only you.”

Dewry's ears flattened. “I have to travel alone? With you and that idiot? And you and I won't be able to talk at all, will we?”

“When Yilon is asleep. Dewry, it is two weeks, and at the end of it perhaps you will realize the destiny that your father hoped you might one day inherit.”

That was at least half-truth. Sheffin had indeed said he wished Dewry could succeed him, but that had been very early in the cub's life, the first few years of Sheffin's marriage. After that, he rarely acknowledged his bastard except to provide for Kayley when she needed help.

But the words had the effect on Dewry that Maxon had hoped. “He did, didn't he?” The fox stroked his whiskers. “Very well. I'll be at the palace gates dressed as a guard tomorrow at dawn.”

They took their leave without embracing. Maxon worried over his decision all the way back to the palace, and before he entered the gates, he turned and walked over to the Cathedral again.

There he knelt and prayed to Canis and Sheffin for guidance, but all that came to him were some words Sheffin had spoken to him nearly a decade ago: I trust you, dear friend. You should also trust yourself.

“I hope I am doing what you would have wished,” Maxon breathed. He made the Star of Canis on his chest and left the Cathedral.

11

Under Pressure

This is a weird one. It’s not related to any of the books I’ve written; it was sparked by a request for a SF or contemporary story, with the word prompts:

Ambulance Halloween Shipyard Mole-People Foxes Weapon

and the quotes:

“This is heavy”

“Great Scott!”

So this is what you get when you start with that.

Two shadowy shapes with long bushy tails climbed the gates to the cemetery. They wore black shirts and pants, and the bright white tips of their tails had been swirled in dust and mud, but the creamy underside of their muzzles still shone softly in the moonlight.

“I wish you’d let me rub dirt on your chin,” the first figure said, watching the other climb down. He kept his voice pitched low, though half a dozen of the houses that ringed the cemetery were blasting music and light enough to cover his voice easily.

“Scott, move.” He stepped to the side, and the other dropped to the ground beside him. She didn’t bother to keep her voice particularly low. “You didn’t rub any on yours.”

“There wasn’t any point after you didn’t do it.” Scott hefted his backpack. “Let’s go.”

They looked at each other, and then the female fox said, “Well?”

“I sent you the map, Gen. Unless you want to carry this contraption and I’ll navigate.”

“You are such a wuss. Do you whine like this around Nigel?” Gen took her phone out and pulled up Scott’s message.

“If you want the kind of relationship with me that Nigel has, you’ll have to make some adjustments to your anatomy. And also I’ll have to talk to Nigel about threesomes. Anyway, you’re welcome to carry the pack. This is heavy.” He shifted it from shoulder to shoulder.

“I can’t believe we took off Halloween night to do this,” Gen muttered. “All right, it’s this way.”

“I’m sorry that you’re missing some amazing party.” Scott followed as she set off, staring down at her phone.

“I wanted to work,” she snapped back. “They could really have used another crew. You know, if you wanted to prove to me that you’re a good EMT, there’s an easier way to do it. You could actually do the job.”

“I’ve been doing that, but apparently it’s not good enough for you.” Scott flattened his ears.

Gen sighed and turned left at a large stone cross. “You’re perfectly adequate. Just don’t make up stories about things you did that happen to not be documented anywhere.”

“I’m better than adequate. You just—” He snapped his muzzle shut. “You know what, I’m just going to wait until we ask Portia.”

The female fox paused, checking the map, and then went ahead. “All right. There’s a row of graves up ahead and hers should be the fourth one down.” They trudged on, and then Gen said, “I’m surprised there aren’t more people here. On Halloween, I mean.”

“Technically,” Scott said, “this isn’t a hundred percent legal.”

“What?”

“Oh, come on, we climbed over a fence. And you can’t just rent one of these devices.”

Gen stopped at the row of graves so suddenly that Scott bumped into her. “Did you steal that? I swear, if—”

“You know me better than that. No, I did a, um, favor for Professor Anderson, and he loaned it to me and I promised to document it for his research.”

“The police don’t do this enough for his research?”

“They’ll only talk to someone who’s been dead less than a week. They won’t dig up someone who’s been buried.”

“Oh my God, Scott, you told me there wouldn’t be any digging!” She stopped again, paws on her hips.

“I said you wouldn’t have to do any digging.” Scott set the backpack down and pulled a collapsible shovel out of the side pocket. “I’ll do it all. We don’t need to excavate the whole grave, just get down to the coffin and drill a hole in it.”

She glared at him, her eyes gleaming with starlight. “If I say you’re a good EMT, will you turn around and go home now?”

“Probably not.” He showed white teeth in a grin. “I promised Professor Anderson. And anyway, aren’t you even just a little bit curious?”

Her ears flicked back and then came up. She pointed. “It’s that one there.”

“All right. Just chill and I’ll get to work.”

It took the better part of an hour for him to clear a hole down to the wood of the coffin. “Hit it,” he said, panting.

Gen looked up from her phone where she was sitting against the adjacent headstone. “Now you have dirt on your muzzle,” she said.

“Har har. Can you at least get the drill out of my pack? And keep an eye out for cops.”

She found the drill and passed it across to him. “You want me to turn this thing on?”

“Professor Anderson gave me pretty specific instructions for it.”

“Have you done it before?”

“Well.” Nearly all of his body disappeared down the funnel-shaped hole, and the whine of the drill came a moment later. “No, but…”

“I can read instructions as well as you can.”

He didn’t answer right away. “Scott?”

“This smells funny,” he said, his voice muffled.

“‘Funny’ like someone who’s been dead for six months?”

“No.” He scrambled up out of the hole. “‘Funny’ like a place where someone who was dead used to be.”

“They buried an empty coffin?” Gen stared at Scott’s dirt-smeared muzzle as it emerged. “Or…maybe she faked her death, and…”

“She didn’t fake her death.” Scott brushed dirt out of his face. “And no, she definitely used to be in there. I can smell her. But she’s not there now.” He slumped against her headstone. “Who would steal her body and then re-bury the coffin?”

“Oh, shit.” Gen tapped on her phone. “They didn’t. They stole her from below.”

“They? Who’s they?”

“Just check and see if the bottom of the coffin is still there?”

Scott gave her a weary look and climbed back down in the hole. When he came back out, his eyes had widened. “It’s not. How did you know?”

Gen held out her phone, and he read the article off it. “You Won’t Believe These Five Things The Mole People Have Done.” Scott peered at it. “Huh. They do an erotic dance with the fleshy appendages around their noses?”

“Below that,” Gen snapped.

“Oh.” Scott read, and shook his head. “That’s stupid. Why would they rob graves?”

“They deny doing it, but,” here her voice got dramatic, “every time a body disappears from a cemetery, there’s a mole colony near it.”

“And why do they call them ‘colonies’ when if it was foxes or wolves, we’d say, ‘a neighborhood’?”

“It’s what they prefer,” Gen snapped back. “So come on, let’s go down to the shipyard.”

“The what?” Scott shook his head and got to his feet. “No, I’m going to fill in this hole and then we’re going home like you wanted. I’m not going to harass a mole colony.”

“You’ll disturb spirits, but not living people? That’s great, Scott. Terrific priorities.”

He shoveled dirt back into the hole. “It’s Halloween. This is the night when you’re supposed to disturb spirits. Is there a night when you’re supposed to disturb mole people?”

“I dunno.” Gen giggled. “Mole-oween?”

“I’m tired, I’ve desecrated a grave for nothing, and you still think I’m a shitty EMT.”

“I said adequate.”

“Oh,” Scott flung another shovelful of dirt into the hole. “‘Adequate’ is what you say to people you have to keep working with or are sleeping with when you mean ‘shitty.’”

“I wouldn’t say that to Natasha.”

“I’ll send a card when she dumps you, then.” Scott shoved dirt back into the hole and stomped it down.

Gen waited until he was done, and then said, “It’s an adventure, isn’t it?” When Scott didn’t respond, she said, “I mean, it’s not a hundred percent legal to just go visit the mole people, either, but the police are pretty busy on Halloween. I bet they wouldn’t question a couple EMTs down at the shipyard if we told them we’d been called down there.”

Scott folded up his shovel and leaned on the headstone. “I guess it’d be nice to find out what happened to Portia’s body.”

“And I’ll let you drive.” Gen flashed him a smile.

* * *

Scott pulled the SUV into the lot by the shipyards. He and Gen, both in uniform, walked over to the downships. There were more police than normal, but they were more concerned with the drunk college kids trying to get past them and they waved Scott and Gen through.

“They’re supposed to ask if it’s an emergency,” Gen muttered to Scott as they strapped themselves into the seats. Ten more people joined them before the chime sounded and the doors rattled shut. “We coulda gotten a shuttle to ourselves.”

“You really wanted them asking us more about our business?” Scott leaned back in the seat.

“Huh.” The vixen peered at the display in front of them. “You been down here before?”

“No, but I did a paper on them in college.” Scott took out his phone. “And we have fifteen minutes to check the Internet. Plus there’s a visitor’s guide in the seat pocket there.”

“So…” Gen dropped her voice enough that Scott had to perk his ear toward her. “Are we just going to walk up to them and ask to see the bodies they took?”

“I have an idea about that.” Scott lowered his voice and spent the rest of the trip hashing out his idea with Gen, with frequent references to his phone.

So when they arrived at the bottom of the trip, Scott led Gen confidently off the shuttle and out into the dimly lit cavernous reception area. Small lights like stars sparkled overhead and green glowing signs pointed the arriving passengers toward “Downtown” or “Granite Ridge” or “Kingsland Caverns.”

Three mole people in reflective yellow vests stood around the room keeping an eye on the shuttles in the bank of six that arrived from Scott and Gen’s shipyard as well as two other banks that came down from other towns. Scott approached the nearest one, and braced himself to face the wiggling appendages around the fellow’s nose that looked like live worms.

“Excuse me,” he said pleasantly, and the mole stood straighter.

“Evening, sir,” he said. “Need directions?”

“Well,” Scott said, “we’re on assignment from Plum County Hospital and we had a patient a while ago who passed away from a head injury, but she’d been displaying some other symptoms at the time—dizziness, shortness of breath, vomiting. Turns out they’ve got a couple more now with her symptoms and they’re wondering whether she actually had poritis. I mean, if she did, we might have an epidemic, and as the body’s gone from the—”

“Sir,” the mole interrupted, now even stiffer. “All of those rumors about stealing bodies from cemeteries are nothing but stories made up to vilify the mole people.” His eyes kept darting over Gen and Scott’s shoulders to the other passengers disembarking. “I do think you should consult with our head of security here, because she will be able to provide you with concrete proof. About the falseness. Of those stories.”

“Yes, all right,” Gen said. “Where—”

“Down those stairs, door marked ‘Head of Security.’ Can’t miss it. Enjoy your visit to the Underground.”

The Head of Security wasn’t in her office on Halloween night, but the Deputy Head of Security was, and when Scott had presented their story to her, she grew visibly agitated (in that the appendages around her nose wriggled alarmingly). “Where’s the release order?” she demanded

Scott hesitated, and Gen stepped in. “Ah, we were told that because officially this is all off the record, there wouldn’t be a release order. In fact, we’re officially not even working tonight. In case there are questions.”

“Oh.” The Deputy Head of Security’s paws fluttered. “Let me just…I’ll call…please wait outside.”

The two foxes retreated obligingly to the antechamber. “Think it’ll work?” Gen muttered to Scott.

He shrugged. “Who cares? It’s an adventure.”

When the Deputy emerged from her office, she was considerably calmer. “Someone will be here to take you where you need to go,” she said. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

The coffee was terrible, but both Gen and Scott waited until the Deputy had shut herself back in her office before dumping it out in the trash.

* * *

The mole who woke Scott from a light doze twenty minutes later was about a foot shorter than he was and dressed in a white collared shirt and jeans. “Sorry,” he said, adjusting his glasses as the fox shook himself awake. Gen yawned beside him. “You two are the ones from the hospital, yes?”

“Yes.” Scott stifled a sympathetic yawn. “Are you the one taking us to…the place?”

“Well, ah, I’m more the, shall we say, the public relations expert between the mole colony and the Uplanders.” He blinked. “I’m sorry, it’s very bright in here. May I ask you to accompany me to my office?”

They expected there to be a car, but instead the mole, who introduced himself as Chani, led them into a tunnel and from there out into a large cavern. The foxes’ night vision took a moment to adjust, because if they’d thought the arrival hall was dimly lit, this larger cavern had no lights at all. A phosphorescent material clung to the walls of the cavern and the stones below their feet. “If you like,” Chani said, “I can procure some night goggles for you. But foxes usually can see well enough.”

“We’re fine,” Scott said for both of them.

“Then just follow me. The path can be a little confusing, so stay close. It’s about a fifteen minute walk.”

There were no cars in the cavern. Several moles rode bicycles, but otherwise everyone walked. A pair of raccoons without night goggles and a squirrel with them walked by, gawking at everything around them. Scott and Gen kept their eyes on the white shirt in front of them, but their eyes strayed from time to time to the strange liquid-looking spires, the rounded arches in the reddish stone and the signs on the buildings, the words so incongruously normal: Tonkin Bookstore, Grocery, Post Office.

“When you said adventure,” Scott murmured to Gen, “did you envision being led through the city to talk to a bureaucrat?”

“Shh.” She lifted her muzzle. “It’s pretty and I’ve never been.”

Chani took them down a wide alley to an apparent dead end, but as he rounded the turn, they saw that three tunnels led away from the alley. Their host went on down a curving set of stairs in near-complete darkness, but his white shirt remained visible bobbing down below them. Every so often, currents of wind brushed their whiskers, telling them that other passages offered themselves. But Chani walked confidently down his path and the two foxes followed.

“What if,” Gen began, but even her whisper echoed in the tunnel, so she stopped.

Scott’s grin was ghostly in the dark tunnel. “I’m sure Mr. Chani would have told us if he intended to kill us and harvest our bodies.”

The mole ahead of them squeaked. “My name is just Chani, and please don’t even suggest such a thing! What would we want with bodies?”

“Sacrifices to your dark god,” muttered Gen.

“For someone in the medical profession,” Scott said, “you have read an unhealthy number of trashy Internet articles.”

“One fox’s trash is another’s treasure,” she retorted.

“Sometimes trash is just trash.”

“I guess we’ll see,” Gen said tartly.

Chani, in front of them, now said, “Please shield your eyes.”

Dim light filled the tunnel as he pushed a door open. “Ow, my eyes,” Scott said, staring directly at it.

Gen elbowed him as Chani said, “I did warn you.”

They emerged into a low tunnel where two large moles in uniforms studded with silver buttons snapped to attention. Chani presented a pass that they sniffed and ran their fingers over, and the bureaucrat said, “These two are Uplanders from a hospital, here on business with me.”

The guards waved them through. The door behind them opened onto a cavern similar to the one above but with a lower ceiling. No stores here, merely orderly cubes of stone with no windows, only entrances that bore neatly carved names of government offices and the people who administered them. The same phosphorescence decorated the ceiling and buildings, but more sparsely, making the are better lit than the tunnel but dimmer than the main street above.

“Is this the government sector?” Gen asked.

“One of them,” Chani said. “This area houses Public Health and Housing, Education, Social Services, Civil Works, and I forget the rest. But Public Health is the one we want.” He pointed ahead of them to a building that looked exactly like all the others. “It’s that one there. I’ve arranged a meeting with the Assistant Commissioner of Public Health.”

“When?” Scott said, but Gen talked over him.

“We’re very grateful for your prompt attention,” she said.

“And,” Chani said, lowering his voice as they were now walking past other moles, “I would like to talk to you both for five minutes before we enter this meeting. Just to, ah, to set straight some of the misconceptions you have been reading about.”

Scott smirked at Gen, who rolled her eyes. “We’d be delighted to learn the truth,” he said.

Chani led them into the building he’d pointed at and told the mole behind the desk that they’d arrived, then asked if he could use a conference room. The other mole gave him a room number, and Chani beckoned Scott and Gen to follow him down three flights to a small room with five chairs around a large stone table.

“Don’t you have windows in your buildings?” Gen hugged her arms to herself and looked around.

“What would they look out on?” Chani waved them to two of the chairs. “We prefer being enclosed. Your Uplander open spaces and rooms are quite unsettling to us.”

“This is a bit unsettling to us.” Scott sat, his tail twitching. “Kind of like a tomb.”

“Yes.” Chani took his seat. “I am familiar with the expression. And in that vein.” He cleared his throat.

“Sorry about Gen,” Scott said.

“Hey!” Gen tried to swat him, but he dodged.

“I mean, most of us don’t really believe all that trash about stealing…” He paused. The coffin had been empty, after all. “It’s—”

“Please.” Chani held up a paw. “There is some truth to it.”

Scott’s jaw hung open for a moment. “You…” He swallowed and snapped his muzzle closed, his ears perking up.

“I told you.” Gen elbowed him.

“On a limited basis,” Chani said, “and in cooperation with certain local authorities, yes, we do tunnel up into burial grounds and remove some recently deceased Uplanders.”

“Why?” Scott leaned forward. “I mean…why?”

“You make a biological weapon out of them, don’t you?” Gen folded her arms.

“No!” Chani looked shocked over his glasses, and his snout appendages flailed in dismay. “A weapon—to attack whom? My goodness!” For a moment he seemed unable to marshal his thoughts. “The very—is that what they—but that’s preposterous.”

“Told you.” Scott elbowed Gen back.

“No, it’s very simply…we use the bodies for study in our universities. There are tensions, you know, and any official use of Uplander cadavers would be subject to discussion and politics and…” He waved his paws, his snout appendages calmer now. “It is much easier to ‘steal’ them while the authorities profess no knowledge of it. It is not an official program here either, but you know, being part of the public health world as you are, that certain things are more easily done behind stone than before it.”

“Under the table, you mean.” Scott held out his paws under the table.

“Er, yes. At any rate—oh, hello.”

Chani stood, and Scott and Gen clumsily followed suit as an elderly female mole entered the room. “You’re Chani,” she said, “and you’re the Uplanders.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Chani said.

“I’m Verania.” She sat down abruptly and leaned back. “What’s all this rubble about a plague?”

Scott cleared his throat. “Poritis,” he said. “We only just identified it at the hospital, and our records showed a lemur who passed away from an unrelated injury had been showing symptoms consistent with the disease prior to her passing. We exhumed her but found the body gone and the bottom of the coffin penetrated.”

“Yes, I see.” Verania’s claws were a half-inch longer than Chani’s. She rapped them on the table. “What are the symptoms of this poritis?”

“Dizziness,” Scott said promptly. “Shortness of breath. Vomiting in extreme cases. It resembles anemia or malaria because the active agent, a virus, attacks the victim’s red blood cells. We were sent to get a tissue sample from the body to see whether we can find traces of the virus for epidemiology to track the spread.”

“I haven’t heard about this yet. Chani will send a message to Dr. Watkins at the Uplander Bureau of Public Health and ask him about this poritis.”

“Of course,” the spectacled mole said, but made no move to leave the table.

“So,” Gen said when Verania appeared to have disappeared into her own thoughts, “Would it be possible to…that is…could we get a sample?”

“Oh, no,” the old mole said. “Absolutely not. You have no paperwork, no authority. I’ll wait to hear what Dr. Watkins has to say and on his request I’ll send a sample up to your hospital. What’s the name of it?”

“St. Martin General,” Scott said. “I’ll write down the number of our boss there.”

As he wrote, her eye fell on his backpack. Her nose twitched. “Brought medical equipment, did you?”

“Er…” In the small enclosed space, the smell of the distinctive chemical used to attract spirits had become more obvious. “We’ve got a Summoner, yes, of course. If possible, we wanted to talk to her spirit and find out her movements before her death so we can track the spread of the disease.”

“I see.” Her attitude softened, became more respectful. “That is unusual. Chani will expedite the request.”

Chani was leaning over the table to try to get a glimpse of Scott’s backpack, but as Verania said his name, he snapped back to attention. “Yes,” he said. “As soon as I get the Uplanders back to Main Street.”

Scott hefted his backpack. “Shall we, then?”

* * *

All the way back up to the main street behind Chani’s bobbing white shirt, Gen kept giving Scott quick looks, eyes shining in the blackness. He just smiled back.

“I think we can find our way from here,” Gen said as they emerged into the bright upper cavern. “We’ll send our boss an e-mail and tell him to expect your call.”

“I’ll get it out as soon as I get back to the office,” Chani said. “I understand there is some urgency here.”

“Of course.”

They shook paws and watched Chani hurry back into the tunnels. “That,” Gen said to Scott when the doors had closed, “was a rather inspired bit of improv.”

“Thanks.” He glanced toward the shipyard port. “You figure we should maybe get out of here?”

“I’d like to stay and look around.”

“Mm.” He rubbed his whiskers. “It’s just that when Chani sends that message, there’s the teensiest chance that he’ll get a reply saying that Dr. Watkins has no idea who we are and there’s no record of us at St. Martin General, of course, because we work at Plum County, so he might come back here looking for us…”

“True.” Gen looked around. “But I’d say we have at least twenty minutes, wouldn’t you?”

They shopped for twenty minutes and then hurried back to the port to get a shuttle home (“Upland,” the sign said). On the nearly-empty shuttle, Scott set his backpack on the ground and looked down, his ears splayed to the side. “I’m kind of sad we won’t get a chance to use that,” he said. “Not that I want to talk to dead people in general, but…I kinda miss Portia.”

Gen patted his knee. “I read on the Internet that the people who talk to spirits usually wish the hadn’t. Anyway, we got to go to the mole colony,” she said before Scott could reply, “and I’m going to call this a successful adventure. You know how much these kinds of stones cost back home?” She held up an aquamarine necklace and studs for her ears. “Natasha’s gonna love them.”

“Yeah, but still.” Scott leaned back in his seat. “Oh well. Maybe I can do some work for Professor Anderson again next month.”

“We could go back to the cemetery if you want to dig up another grave.”

Scott twisted his muzzle up in a grimace. “No thanks.”

“Hey.” Gen put a paw on his arm. “For what it’s worth, that was pretty good back there. You made up a really plausible sounding disease and were cool under pressure. So maybe that’s enough to prove you’re a good EMT. Maybe I don’t need to hear the story about how you saved a dozen lives.”

“Or maybe you believe it anyway?” He raised his eyebrows.

“Hah.” She leaned back as the pilot announced their departure. “Give it some time.”

“There’s always next Halloween.” Scott grinned.

12

Goodbye

I and my patrons decided to shift gears in 2016, to post sections from another novel in progress as the bonus reward rather than writing a new side story. I’ll still write some side stories, though, because I’ve had a great time doing it. To close out this year of writing stories, one patron suggested the last one have a theme of “goodbye.” I hadn’t gone back to Science Friction yet, so that’s where this story is set, and there are spoilers for that book in it. Also, this story is about the main character from that book, not a side character, but in my defense he’s still my favorite from it.

Grace had come over to help carry Mike’s boxes down to his uncle’s pickup truck, and his topless muscular chest and arms distracted me enough that I consciously tried to stagger my own runs down to the truck. The fennec went out of his way to carry the heaviest things in the most ostentatious way, and while I’m sure Mike’s uncle wasn’t impressed (Uncle Jeff was “supervising” because of his “hernia trouble,” which Mike told me was sporadic based on how much he wanted to do something), Mike and I were, always.

My soon-to-be-ex-roommate soon began matching his trips to mine. When I noticed, I said, “Fuckin’ Grace, huh?”

The rabbit paused, lifting a box, and nodded. “I told Uncle Jeff he’s gay and Jeff said all bodybuilders are like that.”

“What, gay?”

“No, showoffs.” Mike snorted and cracked a smile.

This was technically the second time he’d moved out, and the first time he hadn’t smiled at all. Just over a year ago, he’d been trying to have a relationship with me and I’d proven pretty bad at it. I mean, like, the professor I was fucking ended up staying in the room adjacent to the one I was taking Mike to to try to make things better: that kind of bad. Mike took it pretty hard, and when I got home from the vacation I found a bunch of his things in cardboard boxes and no rabbit.

He’d gone to stay with Grace for a while, but the fennec didn’t really tolerate bullshit, so when I came over to talk things out, Grace made Mike stay and listen (he threatened to physically restrain him and seemed disappointed when he didn’t have to). I might not be good at relationships, but I am pretty good at talking my way out of my own fuck-ups, and so Mike reluctantly moved back in. We’d mutually agreed to cut out the sex stuff and had almost succeeded in doing so, but I wasn’t exclusive with my professor either, and I told him and he was fine with it. So I was learning.

Meanwhile, Mike and I had almost gotten our friendship back to where it was when the relationshipping went sour, and now he was moving out again. “You have any dates lined up in Cuyahoga?” I asked as we walked downstairs with a couple of the lighter boxes.

Grace bounded up past us. “We left you another box of books,” Mike called, and the fennec flashed him a thumbs up. To me, he turned his rabbit ears and shook his head. “I only got my apartment set up last week.”

“You didn’t update your Grindr profile yet?” He rolled his eyes at me. “Hey,” I said. “Grace says he gets hooked up like once a week off that.”

“If I had a body like his.” Mike didn’t finish, shifting the box in his arms to navigate the landing.

“Plenty of people want a cute, smart bunny, too.”

Using “bunny” earned me a glare. “Maybe when I get there,” he said, and strode the last few steps out to his uncle’s truck, ending the conversation.

When all the boxes had been moved down, Mike and his uncle took us out for a pizza dinner. As they went to the counter to order, Grace leaned over to me. “Hey, I asked Mike why Cuyahoga, and he said, ‘It’s a job.’ Is he not excited about it? I mean, I don’t wanna pry.”

I sighed. “It’s in his field, it’s with a professor he’s heard of, and they offered it to him. He didn’t exactly have a lot of choices. None of us did.”

“Yeah, but you, at least, you got some research you’re excited about to work on. He’s going to be, what, genome sequencing some lake plant?”

“Eastern thornweed. Invasive species but it has some interesting chemical benefits. He’ll be working in parallel with some guys in wherever it comes from, somewhere in Xiaqin.”

Grace sipped his water and didn’t comment. “I mean,” I said, “none of us really gets to do what we want right away out of grad school. If we’re lucky we get a situation that lets us work on it on the side while we do the research that gets published.”

“I’m not gonna settle for that.”

I was going to tell him that he wouldn’t have a choice when his turn came around, but on second thought, who the hell was I to tell him that? Of all the friends I had, Grace was the one most likely to be able to bend the establishment to his desires.

As I thought that, his sharp nose turned toward me again. “You get to do what you want, don’t you?”

“What?”

He tipped back the rest of his water. “You said, ‘none of us gets to do what we want.’ I thought this position in Pelagia was right up your alley.”

“Ye-es. I mean, it’s cool stuff, yeah.”

“He’s excited about it because it’s professionally advantageous for him to be excited.” Mike plopped down in the seat next to me, his uncle across from him.

“Look,” I said, “it was the best job I was offered, and I can either be excited about it or gripe that it isn’t in the exact field I want to work in. Being excited makes me a better employee and makes me generally happier so I decided to go that route. Nobody,” I repeated for Mike’s benefit, “gets to do what he wants out of grad school.”

“Plus,” Mike leaned over and stage-whispered to Grace, “he’ll be working for a lady, so no more closet nookie.”

Uncle Jeff’s eyebrows went about as high as his ears, but he buried his nose in his beer and didn’t comment.

“We don’t do it in the closet anymore,” I said stiffly. “We do it in his bed. Do you really want to hear more about this?”

It was Mike’s turn to avoid talking by taking a long drink of beer. “That’s what I thought,” I said, and turned back to Grace, who had a big grin on his face, the way he always did when we started fucking around with each other. “So yeah, I’m excited about this research. It’s cool stuff, y’know, and plus it’s got a bunch of corporate people interested in it so they’ve got a lot of money.”

“That is cool.” Mike surfaced from his beer, licking his lips free of suds. “I mean it. This Cuyahoga thing is all government-funded, and who knows whether it gets renewed next year, or in a couple years when there’s a new president. Dr. Kilcic told me I have the position for ‘at least a year,’ and that ‘if this funding dries up, we trust you can find something else to do here.’”

“Publish or perish,” I said, raising my Coke Zero.

“If I’d gotten a corporate-sponsored position,” Mike went on, raising his beer in response, “I’d have snapped that up in a second even if it was in Gateway. I’ll live in negative twenty degree winters to have that kind of job stability.”

“Fahrenheit or Celsius?” Uncle Jeff asked.

“Who the fuck cares?”

“Corporate stuff sucks, though.” Grace jabbed a finger across the table at both of us. “What if you don’t get the results they want to see?”

“Dr. Attuck said we’re not under any pressure to change the results.” But I’d thought about that a lot before accepting the position, and I’d talked to Dr. Forrest about it. He’d said that ultimately there was no way to know, but that if Attuck was smart, she’d be able to keep getting money out of them well past when I was ready to move on.

“Of course she’s gonna say that.” The fennec snorted.

“Look,” I said. “Next year, you send us regular updates on how your job search is going so we can laugh at all the compromises you make, okay?”

“I won’t,” he said, “because you’re my friends and I don’t want to make you feel like losers.”

That was as good a way as any to make us laugh and change the subject. Grace might be an arrogant son of a bitch, but he was a good friend and knew how to own a conversation.

* * *

We saw Mike and his uncle off, and I even got a hug from him. “Don’t be a stranger,” I said. “And set up that profile.”

“Nag, nag, nag.” But he grinned. “You can fly out and see me sometime.”

“That’s an expensive booty call.” I kept it down because his uncle was on the other side of the truck and rabbits, big ears, all that. I’d learned my lesson from sort-of dating a fox.

“Kidding.” He patted my shoulder. “It’s been a good few years. Mostly.”

“Mostly,” I agreed. “Thanks for sticking with me.”

He pushed his nose into my cheekruff and kissed me, quickly, and then pulled back. “Gotta go,” he said. “I’ll text you.”

They drove off, and Grace draped an arm over my shoulder. “You need company tonight?”

“Got it,” I said. “But thanks. Lunch tomorrow?”

“Sure.” He squeezed me and waved, walking off toward his apartment.

So I went upstairs and tried not to notice how much emptier the place was. I wasn’t going to stay long anyway, just long enough to clean up and change and make myself a pretty little pine marten for the evening.

Dr. Forrest looked pretty good himself when he answered the door, in one of those casual cotton collared shirts I’d gotten for him, a green checked one that set off his fur but also had gold trim to tie it together. But his ears were back and he didn’t look nearly as jaunty as he should in that shirt. “Come on in,” he said, and just touched his nose to mine, with a brush of a kiss.

“What’s wrong?” Waiting for him to tell me what was wrong, when he was showing it clearly, never worked.

He seemed to appreciate the direct approach; I got a smile and a gesture to come into the dining room.

When his wife had moved out, she’d taken most of the classy furniture. I’d been helping him refurnish this house that he kept referring to as “modest,” while it was larger than the house I’d grown up in, or indeed most houses I’d been inside of at any point in my life. He had three bedrooms upstairs, two home offices, a rec room, a living room, a sun room (I didn’t know what that was; it turned out to be an enclosed porch that you sit in to enjoy the sun without actually being outside. It had a great view of the hills behind his house, which we enjoyed a lot more once we put a mattress out there.), a formal dining room, a basement that contained the laundry room and an exercise room that I’d gotten him to start using, and a massive kitchen that the cook basically owned.

The cook was the only servant he had; his wife had hired a maid, but Dr. Forrest—Laurence, I should remember to call him, though that still seemed weird—didn’t use many of the rooms and preferred to keep them neat. But he didn’t cook a whole lot and he’d gotten used to the cooking of Ormer, so he retained him when Mrs. Forrest left.

(Ormer was a maned wolf from Platania who made a lot of meat dishes from his native country and was also proficient at the Sonoran cuisine that was so popular in the area. I hadn’t grown up with servants and the concept was a little weird, but Ormer enjoyed cooking and he got paid well and the dinners were amazing.)

The dining room table was covered with papers, as it often was (we usually ate in the smaller nook just off the kitchen). Laurence fell back into one of the chairs and stared down at the table.

I sat next to him and said, “So what’s…” And then I saw the writing on the paper in front of him, and I leaned over and took his wrist. “Oh.”

“It came this morning.” He gestured at the divorce agreement. “I know it’s been a year or more and we haven’t lived together for most of that time. I know I’ve had very good company in that time.” He smiled and perked his ears toward me. “I’ve known this was coming. But it still reminded me of the wedding.” His eyes drifted toward a credenza whose bare top, I vaguely recalled, had once held a wedding picture. “We went to Beeches and got married in fall, as the leaves were turning. People said a fall wedding…well, anyway, the leaves matched our fur and it was beautiful.”

I rested a paw on his arm and tried to think of something to say. Not much came to mind, but I’m a resourceful pine marten. “Hey, you know, that was still…you know, there was some good in your marriage, right? I mean, you’ve told me a couple stories of the early years. It sounds like you guys had fun. Before you…” Got interested in your male graduate assistants? No. Realized the error of your ways? No. “Drifted apart.”

He got my meaning even if I hadn’t said the words, and his forlorn expression melted into a smile. “We did have good times. And truth be told, I’m not sad the marriage is over. It’s mostly the timing.”

“Oh.” And here I really didn’t have a lot to say.

“Don’t get me wrong.” He turned his arm to grasp mine. “I’m glad it arrived now and not in another two weeks.”

“Yeah.” I lay my ears back. “Look, if you want to cancel the trip to Lacinta, I totally understand.”

“No, no. I’ll be over this by then.” He squeezed my wrist. “You’ve been excellent company.” He stopped and gave a short laugh. “More than that. I never thought that when I started having, er, dalliances with my assistants that it would lead to the end of my marriage.”

“Sorry about that, but—”

He held up a paw. “And to one of the more enjoyable years of my life.”

“Oh.” My ears stayed back, flushed, for a different reason. “I’ve really enjoyed it too. If I didn’t have to take this job in Pelagia…”

The paw he was holding up came forward to brush my lips. “Hush, Vaxy. I know the academic life, you know? I’ve seen friends and colleagues contort themselves and their careers to make relationships work and they almost always fall apart anyway. This is a good, clean ending.”

“I got my tickets to come down here the last weekend of September. It’s not going to be a complete ending.”

He smiled and pulled my muzzle to his for a kiss. The kisses still weren’t big-romantic-movie quality, but they were pretty good. When we broke it off, he said, “I know, but lives go on, and things change. You’ve got a whole life ahead of you and you should find someone young and spry to share it with.”

“I’m not complaining.”

“No, but how much longer can this go on? A year? Two? Three?” He shook his head. “Like with my marriage, I’ll cherish the good times—and there have been a lot of them.”

* * *

I hadn’t been living with him really, but I spent a good three nights a week there. Which I think had helped smooth things over with Mike in that we both had time apart and we didn’t have to move out. It also helped me because I got to have regular sex.

And while I haven’t exactly had tons of sex in my life (my life list numbers somewhere between Grace’s and Mike’s, and yeah, I’m on both of theirs), I do know that nobody’s fucked me like Dr. Forrest. Mike and I had sort of an almost-relationship thing going, more on his side than mine, and I had a boyfriend in college for almost a year, but Dr. Forrest is so earnest about sex. And he’s got that professor personality and then when the clothes come off he’s different. I get to see the guy under the robes—literally and metaphorically.

It had gotten to the point that we didn’t always have sex when I stayed over. Sometimes it was enough to curl up together in bed. This night, though, when I crawled into bed with him and found his underwear on, I pulled it down and gave him a grin I knew he could see in the dim bedroom. “Uh-uh,” I said. “No underwear tonight.”

He ran his paw down my side and over my rear, claws parting the fur. “So I see.” Two fingers worked their way to the warmth below my tail, rubbing there. “Do you want the full business tonight?”

“Oh, I very much do.” I lowered my muzzle over his sheath.

It had been a long time since I’d had anyone else’s bits in my muzzle. Dr. Forrest knew that Mike and I had had a sexual relationship, and that it was more or less but not necessarily completely over. Grace and I still fooled around, too, but all of that had settled down to cuddling and hand jobs, and nobody seemed to mind.

And I liked Dr. Forrest’s bits. They fit nicely in my mouth, my tongue knew the shape of them and where to press and lick, and how they went from a little excited to very excited, and when to stop if I wanted them to get very excited somewhere else.

While I was occupied with that, he was occupied with a bottle of lube and then my rear, so I was squirming about as much as he was when I finally pulled my muzzle off him and said, “All right, professor, let’s have that business.”

“I thought you’d, ah, never ask,” he panted, smiling up at me in the dim light. “How would you like to, ah, proceed?”

“I want to be on my back,” I said, and so I very shortly was, with my legs in the air. His long fox body stretched out atop me, still a little middle-aged soft, though I’d gotten him to the gym and could see the results—and feel them when I brought my paws to his sides and guided him into me.

The smell of his breath washed over me and then his muzzle came down to mine. His hips pumped in and out, he held me, I held him back, and in a short, pleasurable time we both enjoyed a very satisfying climax.

I kept him in me, holding him atop me as he murmured next to my ear, “This is much better than the closet.”

“Mm, I don’t know.” I nuzzled him back. “I sort of miss the closet sometimes. It was exciting, you know?”

He chuckled, panting against me, and slid his arms under me. “Maybe. But we didn’t get to fall asleep together after.”

I held him back. “This is true.”

Neither of us mentioned that I’d be leaving in under two weeks. It wasn’t important then.

* * *

The actual goodbye was, at Laurence’s request, very low-key. I drove by his place with my car crammed full of all my stuff, and we had a small lunch. When it was over, I stood, and he hugged me. We kissed, and he said, “You’re going to do very well, I know.”

“I’ll see you in a few weeks,” I said, and then I walked out the door.

I could probably have driven to Pelagia in two days, but I wasn’t due to move into my new apartment for three, so I took my time, wandered up the Golden coast, and thought about my life. Laurence, a lot; Grace and Mike, some.

Laurence had advertised for a new lab assistant and admitted that he’d been putting it off because he didn’t want to hire someone until I was gone. “It isn’t like the work is piling up,” he’d told me. “Once classes start, I’ll be busier, but even then I’ll be able to handle it for a little while.”

“Don’t hire someone too sexy,” I’d said, and then I’d felt bad. “I mean, of course you should hire someone sexy. That closet shouldn’t go to waste.”

“We’ll both be moving on,” he’d said, “but it doesn’t have to be right away.”

Grace, meanwhile, had taken a part-time job at the gym to supplement his income as a teaching assistant. “It’s gonna be weird without you and Mike,” he’d said.

“Fortunately you still have Wally.”

“His brothers are coming into town next week. I might come visit you up in Pelagia.”

“Oh, you should,” I’d said, and Grace being Grace, he went and bought the tickets that morning.

So I had a visitor to look forward to and a visit back to look forward to, and that along with the sun sparkling along the water should’ve been enough for an eager pine marten heading north to the next stage of his life.

Should’ve. But even as I took pictures of the scenery and sent them to Laurence and Grace, I felt more isolated than I had since—well, since I enrolled at Hoffridge. Even then, though, it had felt like an adventure, moving to sunny southern Golden from my home in the wintry upper Midwest. I’d been leaving behind friends, a couple of whom had come to visit me, but none I really missed.

On this trip, though, I kept sending texts and pictures to everyone, but mostly Laurence and Grace. The fennec replied promptly to each one, but Dr. Forrest was more reticent (that’s a word I learned from him), sending “I’m glad you’re having a good trip. It’s all beautiful,” just before I went to bed that night.

The weather stopped being beautiful right around the Golden border, and I had another ten hours to get to Pelagia. I saw a lot of rainbows, but couldn’t appreciate them as much as I would’ve liked, being focused on the drizzle and wet road. And when I finally pulled into my apartment complex at 8:30 pm, the office was closed even though I’d called the manager and she’d said she’d be around until 9.

“I was around,” she told me the next morning when I came by, grumpy from my $50 night in a hotel. “You just have to ring the bell for the apartment over the office. I stayed up until ten-thirty waiting for you.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I missed the sign that told me to ring that bell.”

“I told you on the phone.” She seemed as sure of that as I was sure that she hadn’t, so I let the matter go and gave her the check and got my keys so I could lug all the boxes from my car up into my new furnished place. Then I spent an hour making a list of all the things that were wrong with the furniture. Then I went over to the University and checked in with the staff there, got my office, and brought my one meager box of office stuff in. Dr. Attuck was out until the following week, but I met a couple of her other post-docs, a muskrat and an arctic fox who seemed pleasant but distracted (and both definitely straight, and the fox was female anyway).

By the time I got home and collapsed into my slightly lopsided bed (“it’ll take two weeks to get a replacement frame; can’t you just put something under one of the legs?”), I was about as grey as the weather. Grace was going to visit; at least that was something.

I texted Laurence to see if he’d be up for a little adult Facetime, and caught him sitting up reading a book. I managed to talk him out of his clothes and with a little awkward angles of our phones, we had a nice moment shared over a distance. Even though it was physically satisfying, though, it wasn’t the same as having a warm body to curl up with.

That happened when Grace visited. “This bed sucks,” he announced just from sitting on it, early in the morning after we got back from the airport. “When’s it getting fixed?”

“Next week, maybe?” I was gathering my stuff together at the time and hurrying to get to the office. Dr. Attuck had dumped a whole stack of virtual articles on me to read and I wasn’t even halfway through them yet, but I still had to come in and help her set up the lab for a couple of research projects she wanted to get going. At least the work was taking my mind off the cloudbank that seemed to have settled permanently over the city.

“I’ll take care of it,” he said. “Text me where to meet for lunch.”

“Okay,” I said, hurrying out the door.

When I came back that evening, Grace was sitting on a level, sturdy bed checking his phone. He wore only a pair of boxers, and the tip of his tail hanging off the bed twitched over a neat stack of tools. “Hey,” he said, gesturing down. “You didn’t have a bunch of the tools I needed, so I picked up a few.”

“Thanks.” I dropped my backpack. “So you want to go to dinner now? I don’t really have much here to cook, but I guess I could go out to the store.”

The fennec set his phone aside and raised an eyebrow. “I’m sitting on your bed in my underwear and you’re thinking about dinner?”

I only really took in the bulge of his package then. “Oh. Uh, if you want, sure, we can…”

He laughed and got up, stopping me from unbuckling my pants. “I’ll get dressed. Let’s get some dinner.”

So we did, and after that we got back and tried out the bed, and it was nice to have someone else to curl up with. But Grace noticed that something was off, and as the night before he was heading back to start his school semester, he turned off the movie we were watching in the middle. “This sucks,” he said. “Why are we watching it?”

“I dunno. It was on.”

“Yeah.” He pulled me against him on the couch. “Anyway, I wanted to ask you something.”

“Shoot.” I relaxed back into his muscles. There was something comforting about having them around me, but still, I preferred a softer, redder fox.

His fingers played along my side. “Are you happy up here?”

“What, you mean in your lap? Aah, stop!” He’d started to tickle me. “Okay, okay. Well, no, I mean, not yet, but it’s only the second week, right? I’m still finding my feet.”

“You seem really different here, though. I mean, the last couple years, pretty much since I’ve known you, you’ve been a lot more energetic. You didn’t even initiate sex with me, not once.”

I could feel his sheath against my back, and I wiggled a bit. “I pawed you off like three times.”

“Yeah, but I started it. And I haven’t forgotten I still owe you one.” His paw came down to rest lightly on my groin. “But do you miss Hoffridge?”

“Sure I miss it. I miss all you guys.”

“Mike’s gone.” He ticked off on his fingers. “April and Beth are gone. Wally’s an asshole and you never liked him. And I’m here. That only leaves one guy you might be missing.”

“Well, yeah.” I exhaled. “And he’s not making it easier. He’ll respond to my texts but it’s like he doesn’t want to stay in touch with me.”

“It can’t be that you don’t text him enough.” The fennec snorted past my ear.

I squirmed. “He likes seafood. I thought he’d appreciate the mussels we got.”

“And the waitress?”

“She reminded me of this waitress at a rooftop bar who was sassy with us once.”

“And the tablecloth?”

“Look.” I shifted around to face him. “If you have a point, could you get to it?”

He chuckled. “The point is, you’re not over this guy. And you don’t seem to be all that interested in moving on. This city, this job, they’re not really doing it for you. So why not chase the one thing that does do it for you?”

“I can’t just walk away from this post-doc,” I said. “And I have a year lease on this apartment.”

“Who wouldn’t even fix your bed,” he pointed out.

“They were going to. You just got impatient.”

“That’s not the point. Vaxy.” He held my eyes. “Life’s too short to fuck around.”

Notwithstanding that little gem of wisdom, we did just that not too long after—paws only, again. He pressed me afterwards on why I didn’t want to do more than that, and I said, “You made your point, okay?”

“I just wanted to drive it home.” He was lying on top of me and growled that into my neck. “But I guess you’re not into that.”

I was, but not from him. But I didn’t want to get into that, so I squeaked and let him tease me, and enjoyed the last night we had.

* * *

Dr. Forrest picked me up at the airport. He didn’t get out of the car as I tossed my overnighter into the back and slid into the passenger seat. “Hungry?” he asked.

I leaned over to kiss him, and he returned the kiss, but did it like I was a relative at a holiday dinner. I leaned back in the seat, getting the feeling that this visit was going to be depressing.

Then I remembered Grace’s words and my own indomitable pine marten spirit and I said, “Would you mind swinging by your lab before we go home?”

He’d been lost in his own thoughts, but that startled him. “Of course,” he said. “I suppose.”

It wasn’t until we were parking in his spot at the garage that he said, “I’m sorry, I’m a little distracted. What did you want from my lab?”

“I just want to see something,” I said. Then, because he looked about to follow up with another question, I added, “I’ll tell you when we get there.”

On the walk to the lab, I looked around the campus—sunny as usual, with a light breeze coming in off the ocean. The smell and feel of it was familiar and comfortable. I reached out for Dr. Forrest’s paw, and he didn’t pull away. “I missed you,” I said.

“I got your texts.” He reached up and adjusted his glasses, and then said, “I missed you, too.”

“Did you hire someone yet?” I asked as we got in the elevator.

He shook his head. “It’s not that busy. And the lab is quiet—I like when it’s quiet.”

But his ears and tail didn’t really indicate that he liked it. I wondered if he liked it quiet because he could be sad about all the good-byes, and that made me sad. I wanted to hug him and tell him about my decision right then, but a few more minutes wouldn’t hurt and would make it more meaningful. Or at least more dramatic and exciting.

He unlocked the lab and waved me in. “What did you need?”

I headed right for the closet, Dr. Forrest trailing behind me. He caught my destination and then figured out my intention. “Vaxy.” He tried to catch my paw, but I hurried forward. “Vaxy, no. I have a bed at home—you don’t have to—”

But I got to the door and opened it, then grabbed him when he didn’t follow me in and shut the door behind us. Then I wrapped my arms around him and lifted my muzzle to his for a kiss—a proper one, not a holiday-relative one. He hesitated but met my lips and then I got a little of the enthusiasm and excitement that we’d had—especially here in the closet, taking breaks from experiments.

“So I wanted to tell you about a decision I made. I told you about Dr. Attuck and the post-doc and it’s a lot of work and I’m not really excited about it, and Pelagia is okay but it’s gloomy all the time and I’ve been down the whole time I’ve been there.”

“Take a breath,” he said, but with a smile and his ears focused on me.

I did, and then exhaled. “But Grace pointed out that I don’t have to stay up there. I mean, I have commitments, but maybe they’re not what’s really important.”

Dr. Forrest’s expression turned to alarm. “Vaxy, you can’t quit a post-doc. People in this community talk. You’ll have twice as hard a time getting another one.”

“If I did,” I said. “Would you want me to move back here? Would you want to keep going with what we had?”

“I don’t want you to quit your position.” He rested a paw on my shoulder.

“That’s my decision,” I said. “Just tell me: if I did quit. If I moved back here. Would you…?”

I searched his eyes and saw the answer before he gathered the courage to say it. “I’d be disappointed if you quit a good position for me.”

“If I left for other reasons, then. If Dr. Attuck died and the program lost its money and I had to come home.” I was already smiling because I could see the longing in his eyes and it made me feel good that I wasn’t the only one who felt that.

“Well, then…” He hesitated. “In that case…I suppose…I did greatly enjoy your company. And I missed you. But…”

I lifted a paw to his muzzle. “I’m not quitting.”

“What?” His eyebrows rose. “Then what was the point of that?”

“I realized that I hated having to say good-bye to you. Not so much Hoffridge, though I do miss the sunshine.” If there’d been a window, I would have smiled wistfully at it. “So I don’t want to do it anymore.”

“But…” He shook his head. “I fail to see how you’re going to avoid that if you’re continuing your work in Pelagia and—I can’t leave my position here.”

“No.” I took his paw in mine. “I mean, I’ll say little good-byes, but I want to keep dating you. I want to come down for vacations and for you to come up and see my shitty apartment, and for us to plan trips together and, how did you put it, see where this goes.”

His ears perked at that, and again I saw the flash in his eyes that he didn’t quite dare put into words. “Long distance is hard. We talked about that.”

“Have you been happy since I left?” He didn’t answer. “No, you haven’t. You’ve been working in this deserted lab, probably going home and ordering out from that Sonoran place and watching your old DVDs. And I haven’t been happy up north either. But if I knew that you were here waiting for me…and if you knew that I was waiting for you…it’d be easier, no?”

He let out a breath, and with it, seemingly, his tension and reservation. “Yes.”

I beamed up. “So?”

He gathered my paws in his. “All right, you maddening little pine marten. All right, we will continue this relationship and see where it goes. And I will come up and see your ‘shitty apartment’ and maybe meet your Dr. Attuck.”

My ears flattened. “Oh no. Uh, I mean, she’s really—I don’t know how that would even go.”

He laughed and pulled me against him. “I could give her some good tips on how to manage you.”

I settled against him. “I don’t think she and I are going to have that kind of relationship.”

“Good.” He kissed between my ears.

I looked up at him. “Now,” I said, “how about you fuck me here in the closet. For old times’ sake?”

“Of course.” His eyes gleamed. “And for new times’ sake as well.”

“That too.” We kissed again, and I felt the good-byes slough away from my heart, leaving only sunshine and warmth in their wake.

Acknowledgments

I want to recognize the people whose contributions made the stories in this volume possible. All of these people contributed at various levels throughout the year, helping me out tremendously with their support. These stories are the least I can do to say thank you to the patrons below:

Gold level patrons

Ashley Jade “Blaze” Wiles

Sirberus Khaos

K Fox

karmakat

Chandra

Pockets

Aiden Fox

Silver level patrons

Glassan

Dynaphus

Christopher Bryan

Crimson

JLeet

iqbunny

Dmitry P

Copper level patrons

Tom Romsang

blargh

Kogawakenji

Reyfar

Nate Hopp

William A Cook

Rankine

buu38

Fabi

Rei Loire

Ryan McKown

Sketchy Wolf

L E

JS

Bryan Ezawa

TomLeo

Shane Elfield

Nicholas

Christian Lopez

Marcwolf

Nielas Sinclair

Baylei

Michael Reyes

Semilico Tiger

Brandon Ingalls

Marc Gold

Setsune Wiefel

Canis Rufus

Cyle

About the Author

Kyell Gold has won twelve Ursa Major awards for his stories and novels, and his acclaimed novel "Out of Position" co-won the Rainbow Award for Best Gay Novel of 2009. His novel "Green Fairy" was nominated for inclusion in the ALA's "Over the Rainbow" list for 2012. He helped create RAWR, the first residential furry writing workshop, and was one of the instructors at its first session in 2016.

He was not born in California, but now considers it his home. He loves to travel and dine out with his husband Kit Silver, and can be seen at furry conventions around the world. More information about him and his books is available at http://www.kyellgold.com.

About the Illustrator

Rukis is a freelance illustrator and writer who grew up in the Appalachian region, working with animals and on farms from a young age. After earning a Bachelors in Traditional Animation, she started a career in freelance art, writing and illustrating a small collection of comics and novels in the Anthropomorphic fandom. You can see more of her work at http://www.furaffinity.net/rukis.

Also by Kyell Gold

For more information about Kyell Gold’s books, please visit his website: http://www.kyellgold.com/books.html. If you would like to get monthly updates on upcoming publications, excerpts of works in progress, and writing tips, sign up for his mailing list (your e-mail address will not be sold or used for anything else).

Out of Position (Dev and Lee)

Out of Position – Dev the football player and Lee the gay activist discover how to navigate their relationship.

Isolation Play – The continuing story of Dev and Lee, as they contend with family and friends in their search for acceptance.

Divisions – As Dev’s team fights to make the playoffs, Lee fights to keep his sense of self.

Uncovered – The playoffs are here, and Dev needs his focus more than ever. So when Lee becomes too distracting, something has to give.

Over Time (2016) – Dev and Lee try to plan their future while dealing with crises all around them.

Dangerous Spirits

Green Fairy – A gay high school senior struggling through his final year finds a strange old book that changes his dreams and his life.

Red Devil – A gay fox who fled his abusive family in Siberia seeks help from a ghost who demands he give up his gay lifestyle.

Black Angel (2016) – A young otter struggles to understand her sexuality as her friends prepare for post-high school life and dreams of women in other times plague her.

Argaea

Volle – The story of how Volle came to Tephos, a spy masquerading as a noble, and the first adventure he had there.

The Prisoner’s Release and Other Stories – The story of how Volle escaped from prison, and the story of what happened after, plus two other stories following characters from “Volle.”

Pendant of Fortune – Volle returns to Tephos to defend his honor, but soon finds himself fighting for much more.

Shadow of the Father – Volle’s son, Yilon, must travel to the far-off land he is meant to rule, but he will have to fight treachery to take the lordship.

Weasel Presents – Five short stories from the land of Argaea, including “Helfer’s Busy Day” and “Yilon’s Journal.”

Forester Universe

Waterways – The full story of Kory’s journey to understand himself and what it means to be gay.

Bridges – Hayward seems content to set up pairs of his friends. But what does he really need for himself?

Science Friction – Vaxy never took sex seriously, until he found out the professor he was sleeping with was married…

Winter Games – Sierra Snowpaw was an unsure high school student when someone he thought was a friend changed his life. Now he's fifteen years older and still looking for answers.

The Mysterious Affair of Giles – A servant in a British manor house tries to solve a murder.

Dude, Where’s My Fox? – Lonnie chases down a fox he hooked up with at a party as a way to get over his breakup.

Losing My Religion – On tour with his R.E.M. cover band, Jackson mentors the new guy in the band as his own life falls apart.

Other Books

The Silver Circle – Valerie thought the old hunter was crazy when he warned her about werewolves—until she met one.

In the Doghouse of Justice – Seven stories of superheroes and their not-so-super relationships.