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“What is it? Tell me what you see, Madame Anna,” Janice demanded.
Liliana closed all her eyes tight.
The future she’d seen was not close or certain. There was still time to help steer the rabbit-kin and the Celtic wolf onto a path that would allow both Pete and Lou Willoughby to survive.
Liliana consoled herself with that thought, chanting in her head, This fate is not set. The future is never certain until it becomes the past. It was something her first mother and her older sister both said often, whenever they saw a dark future possibility. She gulped in deep breaths to calm her jangled nerves.
Inside her mind, the screams of the good-natured rabbit-kin mechanic still rang. His blood and Pete’s stained her inner vision.
“The red wolf is the opposite of a danger to you and your kin.” Liliana twisted the fabric of her skirt between her fingers. “Trust him. Danger will come to your husband some time before a year has passed. If the red wolf is there, he will protect your Lou. He will sacrifice his own life, if necessary, to keep Lou safe. If he is not there, your husband will die.”
“Oh.” Janice’s eyes got very big. “I shut the door in his face.”
“You must make amends for that social offense,” Liliana advised her. She wondered what path would help to make certain Pete would be there when Janice’s husband needed him. The image of the Celtic wolf protecting the rabbit had been very flickery, very unlikely. “Be kind to your Normal neighbor, the golden-haired man who teaches your son.”
“I’ll bake a cake for the PTA!” Janice exclaimed.
Liliana’s lips twitched with amusement, piercing the dark mood of the bloody visions lingering in her mind. Every person used the talents they were given. If her husband’s life could be saved with excellent cooking, then Janice Willoughby was uniquely qualified.
“Your cakes would make even the fiercest Other into an ally.” Liliana patted her hand, a brief, rare gesture.
Janice blushed at the compliment. “Will it really work? Will that be enough to make sure the Celtic wolf protects my Lou?”
Reluctantly, Liliana opened her fourth eyes again.
With Janice following a path to friendship with Pete’s beloved, will Pete be there to protect Lou?
The image of the lone red wolf standing against the vicious pack of killers while the rabbit-kin escaped still flickered, barely possible.
Liliana cocked her head to one side, wondering. That should have worked. Janice would follow her advice. Liliana had guided Janice for years.
Why is the future where the red wolf protects the rabbit-kin still so uncertain?
An ugly image assaulted Liliana. Powerful, brutal, and vivid. Close in time and almost certain.
Liliana jumped up onto her chair. She lifted her hands to defend herself. Her reflex was to extend her arm blades, but the danger wasn’t to her. She squeezed her fourth eyes shut, but she couldn’t shut out the image of Pete’s lovely blue eyes, wide and staring with death, his face twisted in a silent scream of agony and horror, his body wrapped in a spider-kin’s web. It was the one death that genuinely terrified the brave wolf: death by widow spider bite.
It would claim him soon, probably today.
“No,” Liliana whispered.
“What is it?” Janice asked, fear in her voice. “Is my Lou going to die?”
“No, no, no!” Liliana said more forcefully. She jumped off the chair and retreated to the corner of the room by the inner door. The spider-kin turned her back on her best client and twisted the fabric of her skirt until it nearly tore. “No more questions today. I am tired.”
It was what Liliana said to clients who stayed too long. Janice had not been there that long, but Liliana desperately wanted her to leave.
“But...um...okay.”
With her face in the corner and her back to her client, Liliana watched Janice pull a pay card out of her purse. Liliana hadn’t noticed until that moment that she’d opened her second eyes, the ones she used in combat to see all around. They sometimes opened instinctively when she was frightened or upset.
Janice punched a number into her wrist phone, authorized it with her thumb print, and dropped the pay card in the elaborate jar Liliana kept beside the round table. People used to put paper folding money in the jar. Now they put pay cards in it. Barely anyone used paper money anymore.
“I have to know though, Madame Anna.” The rabbit-kin hesitated at the door. “Is my Lou safe? Will the Celtic wolf protect him?”
“If the red wolf dies…” Liliana swallowed the lump in her throat and leaned her forehead on the corner walls. “If he dies, take your husband and your children and move away to another city. Without the Celtic wolf, Fayetteville will no longer be safe for your family.”
“What’s going to happen to him? The red wolf, I mean.”
