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“Scum,” he muttered. “Next ones who come here? We should send back their heads, really freak the others out.”
“What, like in the post?”
He abruptly snorted with laughter with such genuine amusement that I couldn’t help but join in. Odd how we could be so easy in each other’s company when every day used to be a struggle. He was right. Margo was good for us.
“If you’ve both quite finished,” came Perdita’s sardonic voice from an open window below us, “maybe you could come inside and give me a hand.”
We exchanged a horrified look before scrambling off the roof. Inside, we found Perdita in the kitchen, staring up at an open press as though it had personally offended her.
“I can reach this,” she muttered. “Every day that I’ve lived in this house, I’ve been able to reach this shelf, but the baby turned a little, and now I can’t stretch high enough. Ridiculous.”
“What do you need?” I asked, gently guiding her to a chair.
“Syrup,” she said. “All of it.”
“Ice cream again?”
“I have the bowls ready and waiting.”
I glanced at the counter to see two massive tubs of ice cream, slowly melting next to three bowls. How long had she been listening to us?
Victor cleared his throat, his guilty-looking gaze darting everywhere but directly at Perdita. “I was kidding about the head thing.”
She arched an eyebrow. “I should hope so."
I served out the ice cream, amused by Victor’s obvious discomfort.
“You know,” Perdita said after we had dug into the ice cream, “we could try some more conventional methods to find out about the harbingers. The world has gotten smaller. Old stories have found their way online. It’s possible we could find something useful on the internet. Even if it’s not written as fact, it’d be nice to get a hint of what they want, what they do, how to ward them off, that kind of thing.”
Victor and I exchanged a surprised glance.
She sighed. “I’m so bored of maternity leave. The pack won’t let me lift a finger, and you two know what it’s like to be left out of the excitement.” She made a face. “I need to at least feel like I’m doing something for Margo. I can’t shake the sense that we’re to blame for everything that’s happened to her, and I don’t think I can take an entire month of waiting without doing anything.”
Our presence had triggered Margo’s power, we had encouraged that, and then we had sought out the harbingers’ attention once it all went wrong. If anything, we had brought the harbingers to our doorstep. There was one thing bothering me though.
“Why did they give us a month?” I said. “We could leave, hide Margo. Why give us so much time to make a decision?”
“It could be a lie.” Perdita pursed her lips. “They could be watching us to see how we react.”
“In the old days, we would have hunted them down,” Victor said through a mouthful of ice cream.
“In the old days, you would have had a much lower life expectancy,” Perdita said in a wry tone. “Especially with that attitude.”
“We’re a whole pack,” he said. “We’d have to win against them, right?”
“Unless we ran straight into their creepy death magic,” I said. “Back on the mountains, some presence drove us out. Chased us. It wasn’t anything I’d experienced before, and I don’t want to feel it again.”
“We’re not on their mountains now,” Victor persisted. "The month will give them time to prepare, too.”
“You might be right,” Perdita said. “If we have questions, they likely do, too. About the pack, how it all works.”
My blood ran cold. “They could be watching to see how Byron makes his decisions.”
“What even are our options?” Victor asked. “Attack them, wait for them to attack, or hide Margo. There’s not much else that I can think of.”
“If they assumed we’d decide to hide her,” Perdita said, “then they could be waiting to follow.”
“But Ryan saw Vira leave,” I reminded her.
