Page 3 of A Waltz on the Wild Side (The Wild Wynchesters #6)

Mr. Jacob Wynchester spent all morning scowling at the same handwritten poem. Immersed in the worn leather-bound notebook in his hand, he exited the rear of his family’s three-story house and glanced up just in time to avoid being decapitated by a pair of large, very sharp swords.

“Watch out!” yelled his sister Elizabeth as she danced to the right.

“Isn’t the person swinging the sword the one who ought to be watching what they’re doing?” Jacob asked.

His sister-in-law Kuni parried, her long black braids swinging. She and Elizabeth zigzagged across the rear lawn amid a clatter of curses and clanging blades.

Jacob headed left, toward a big, whitewashed wooden barn almost half as wide as the Wynchesters’ sprawling house.

The barn door was visibly ajar. Jacob’s heart pounded. He always ensured it remained locked tight when he wasn’t there.

He shoved his poetry notebook into the pocket of his leather apron and cupped his hands around his mouth as he sprinted up to the open door.

“How many times must I remind you ne’er-do-wells not to access the barn without me present?” he shouted. “Insecure openings are exactly how we lose a python, and you remember how long it took the last time—”

A trim white man wearing a leather helmet fitted with mismatched goggles poked his head out of the door. “Sorry. I got distracted. Shutting now.”

The door closed in Jacob’s face.

He sighed and yanked it back open. “I was coming inside. Please remember that everything in this barn is a wild animal, with fangs or claws or venom. It is a privilege and a responsibility—”

And a fire hazard.

He gaped at the absolute chaos his brother-in-law Stephen had installed in Jacob’s private barn.

Slippery chutes and knotted ropes and grooved tracks covered every solid surface, and most of the space in between.

Each pathway was dotted with random objects: old boots, lined-up dominoes, feathers, wheeled trolleys, glass vials and bottles with varying quantities of colored liquids, hammers, razors, pulleys, trapdoors, and what looked like an entire row of fresh strawberries.

Most baffling of all: the dozens of precarious lit candles.

In a wooden barn.

Here, where a hundred different terrestrial or winged wild animals might bang into them and set the entire neighborhood on fire.

“I know what you’re thinking,” said Stephen.

“You really do not,” murmured Jacob, “or you would be running as fast as your legs could carry you.”

“This version is much more pragmatic than the last prototype,” Stephen assured him, peering at Jacob with one overly magnified light-gray eye. “The first item of note is the goose-launching station.”

Jacob enunciated, “Extinguish the candles.”

Stephen beamed at him. “I knew you would say that. I installed them specifically so you could see how quickly the flames can be doused. Watch this.”

He pulled a lever.

The entire room came to life. Every pulley in Stephen’s contraption dropped or lifted or tugged, sending all the objects crashing into one another, one at a time, until hoses sprang forth from a central cylinder like snakes from Medusa’s head.

Water gushed forth from each hose, not only extinguishing each flame with enough force to knock the candles over, but also drenching Jacob and Stephen and every other animal or object in a five-yard radius.

Stephen grinned in satisfaction. “What do you think?”

Jacob swiped water from his face. “I think I’ll kill you.”

“Impressive, isn’t it? Elizabeth says—”

“Listen to me . Those flames never should have been lit in the first place. This barn is ninety percent wood. And I am one hundred percent opposed to unexpected indoor downpours. Dismantle this abomination at once.”

“It’s just a draft,” Stephen said quickly. “You haven’t seen its final form.”

“If so much as a single gear remains after nightfall—”

“All right, so you can’t see the vision. But there is a need for a mongoose launcher, right? You said so yourself.”

“I said we frequently utilize avian talent in our missions. Which are ongoing, and the reason I’m in this barn.

The animals and I have to work today, Stephen.

We’ve a disaster to quell across town, a freshly forged statue to replace inside a walled garden, a stolen heirloom to recover, and a young mother who badly needs our—”

“ Meow! ” A small calico cat nudged open a square leather flap high overhead. Tiglet squeezed through the opening and dropped lightly to the dirt at Jacob’s feet, without banging into any of the newly installed chutes and tubes crisscrossing the barn like a mechanical spiderweb.

“Clever boy!” Jacob scooped the orange-and-black speckled cat into his damp arms, and despite some wriggling, was promptly rewarded by a wet-sandpaper lick to his cheek.

Tiglet had been the first of Jacob’s messenger kittens and was now a fully grown, multi-talented part of the Wynchester family.

“Take this, for example.” Jacob placed the cat back onto the ground and strode toward the rear of the barn, ducking all the tracks and pulleys. “Tiglet’s presence here means Tommy and Philippa need more feline firepower. That cues me to release Dionysus.”

Stephen took a step backward. “Is Dionysus a cuddly little messenger kitten?”

“Dionysus is a Highland tiger.” Jacob prodded the wildcat to follow Tiglet, who pranced ahead with a self-important sway, his calico tail waving high in the air.

The much-larger wildcat prowled right behind, claws out and teeth bared.

“Only scare the villains, please,” Jacob scolded the duo as he pushed open the door to let them out of the barn. “No mauling this time.”

Tiglet and Dionysus took off, streaking over the grass and out of sight.

Elizabeth and Kuni didn’t even pause their sword fight.

Taking advantage of the opening, a tiny, plump hedgehog waddled into the barn.

Before Jacob could reach for him, the audible clink of swords fencing on the other side of the walls ceased abruptly. He stepped out of the way just as the barn door flew open and his sister Elizabeth barreled inside, sword strapped to her hip.

“Tickletums!” she squealed. “My baby! My heart!”

She scooped up the hedgehog, pressed him to her ample bosom, and swirled around the barn’s interior in wide circles, the blade of her sword bumping into absolutely everything she passed.

“My love,” Stephen chastised his new bride gently. “Please have a care for my craftsmanship, or I shall be forced to launch the integrated self-defense sequence. You won’t like it.”

“But my little Tickletums made it all the way back from Regent’s Park,” Elizabeth cooed, still waltzing. “That’s his farthest distance yet. A personal record. Our sweet Tickletums has now graduated into a full homing hedgehog.”

Kuni poked her head into the barn, her black eyes sparkling in her pretty brown face.

“Beth, if we’re done fencing, then we have to get back to our cases.

My client will return in an hour, and I—” She caught sight of Jacob and made a sympathetic expression.

“I’m sorry you’re always stuck in the barn with the animals. ”

“I like the animals,” he said. “And I’m the only one able to train them.”

“I could build—” began Stephen.

“No,” Jacob said flatly.

“But you never even leave the property,” Kuni insisted. “Just because you’re the only one who can do a thing doesn’t mean you don’t deserve a respite once in a while.”

“I respite,” Jacob said.

Elizabeth nodded. “Once a week, at your poets meeting.”

“Just like you and Kuni only spare an hour a week for sword and dagger training.”

Stephen took off his goggles. “I could go to a poetry meeting with you, if you want company.”

“No,” Jacob replied.

“If you’d like to hear Jacob’s work, forget it,” said Elizabeth. “Even his poetry group probably hasn’t heard any of his poems yet, and he’s attended their sessions for ten years.”

Twelve years. Jacob was a founding member of the Dreamers Guild. And no, he did not share his poetry there, either. No matter how much his friends prodded him.

“It’s not good to be stretched so thin all the time,” Kuni insisted. One of her hands rested on her own stomach, just below the row of hidden blades stitched beneath her bodice.

Jacob knew she and her husband, Graham, were hoping for children of their own.

He also knew better than to ask about it.

If there were any news, he would be the first to hear.

Some things took time—and luck. He understood how uniquely frustrating it was to be hounded about when he planned to achieve something that was ultimately outside his control.

“We’re all stretched thin. So if you’ll excuse me—” His head jerked toward Elizabeth, who had taken a step backward to whisper to her husband. “What did you just say?”

“It’s this fellow Sir Gareth Jallow,” Stephen said helpfully. “Elizabeth is obsessed with—”

Elizabeth elbowed him in the ribs. “I said not to mention him out loud.”

Jacob’s entire body tensed. “I thought you didn’t read poetry. Balderdash for romantics, you said.”

She coughed into her fist. “I don’t. That is, not usually. But everyone reads Sir Gar… who must not be named.”

He sighed. “I can hear the man’s name.”

“You really can’t,” said Kuni. “You explicitly warned us never to say those syllables in your presence.”

Jacob crossed his arms. Was he jealous of Sir Gareth Jallow? Absolutely. Bone deep. But did he hate Jallow? Yes. Maybe. Sometimes. With self-loathing. And anger. This was not who he wanted to be.

In other words, it was complicated. Which was why Jacob would rather not discuss his feelings. There was no telling what unedited words might burst from his mouth.

He glanced at his pocket watch. Blast the interruption! It was time for the next mission already. “Stand clear of the exit, please.”

The others scrambled aside.

Jacob pushed the barn doors open wide and gave the whistle.

Ferrets began to stream down the barn’s walls and across the dirt floor from every shadowy nook. They arranged themselves in rectangular formation behind Jacob as he marched from the barn like the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

“Close the door when you’re done cleaning up!” he called out without looking back. There was no time to delay.

He and his scampering furry army had a legal trial to disrupt.