Page 13 of Fat Enemy Mate

"How's the ankle?" I ask

"Worse. But I think that's normal." She admits.

"It is normal, I think, for humans; you take longer to heal,” I confirm, but she doesn’t reply to that, just holds my gaze for a moment.

We fall into silence as we eat lunch, and I try to give her some space, but I can’t help noticing what she’s doing. She’s scanning. First, the door and security panel, then the window over the sink, and the window on the far wall. Then the back door with the latch on the inside. Then she scans the kitchen, the knife block I’ve left out on the counter, the poker for the stove. I notice how she shifts slightly, tilting her chin; she’s listening.

I’ve watched plenty of people in all kinds of situations, especially in the patrols, especially amongst the best. Shewatches this room exactly like I would—she’s weighing up options and countermeasures.

"You're trained," I say, into the bowl of stock I'm stirring.

She doesn't reply for a minute, and I let it sit. After a moment, she takes a long sip of the coffee and replies, flatly, without looking up, "I've had to be."

"By who?" I ask.

"My father." She finally admits.

"He’s hard on you about it. I can tell, or you wouldn’t be this good." I smile.

"He's dead." She says it with no inflection at all. "But yes. He was."

I keep stirring.

"What did he do? Who was he?" I ask after a minute.

"He ran our small farm and the human network out here. The huts. He set them over near where we live, he stocked them, and he taught a small handful of people how to use them. He grew up watching shifters hurt humans. He raised me to know how to live in a world where I needed to protect myself; a lot of good that’s done recently." She pauses. "He was killed by shifters near our cabin last year."

The spoon in my hand stops moving.

I take a second to think about how to answer that. I'm very aware that what I say next is going to land in a way I won't be able to take back.

"That'll have been Cheslem," I say. "Or someone like them. Rogues. Not all shifters do things like that."

"That's what you’d say, though, isn’t it?" Her voice cracks. "Every one of them I’ve ever seen or met has been the same."

I lean back in my chair slightly. “Well, you’ve met me now, and all I’ve done is make you some bad coffee. Silvercreek runs its territory well, for everyone, and that includes humans. Caleb's wife is human. We've had humans living and working in the town for two generations, not many, but more so these days. Cheslem is a problem we’re dealing with. They aren't all shifters."

"You'd say that. You're one of them."

"I'd say that," I agree, "because I am one of them."

She doesn't have anything for that. She returns to eating, and I let the silence settle again, filing away the information she gave up. I can see why she doesn’t trust shifters, that’s for sure. When she finally puts the spoon down, she's eaten about two-thirds of the bowl. I clear it away without comment.

“You said your father set the hut networks. I stayed in one once during a snowstorm,” I say when I’m back at the table.

“Well, I guess they were meant for anyone in need.” She replies.

"How many are there? I only knew of a couple before finding the one you were in."

She looks at me, and there's a fraction of a second where I can see her deciding whether to give me an answer at all.

"Forty-three across this stretch of country, but he didn’t manage them all," she says, finally. "He started in the seventies, after his own father was killed. The network grew from there."

"Whoever stripped the one I found you in didn't strip all of them, I’m sure," I tell her.

"Let’s hope not for anyone else who needs them." She replies.

We fall into silence again as she holds her coffee and seems to be studying the contents carefully, no doubt hoping I’ll disappear. I need to ask her about the rogues and the camp itself, and try to ascertain how many there are and its location. But instead, when I open my mouth, something entirely different comes out.