Page 27

CHAPTER 27

Sunset’s colors bathed the ranch in warm gold and pink tones, and the air was balmy but not overly hot. Out in the pasture, Jay was working his pony in the late light, and waved to them. It was a perfect rural Arizona evening.

Costa walked so fast he was half jogging, and the women had to run to catch up.

“Why the hell won’t you just tell me?” he snapped.

“I told you it wasn’t that bad!” Delgado shot back. “I just don’t want to predispose you beforehand, that’s all.”

“You’re doing a great job of worrying me beforehand!”

They arrived in the central ranch yard. Delgado had parked here, and most of the Costa clan were gathered, blocking Costa and Diana’s view of whatever they were looking at.

“Move,” Costa growled, shoving his way between two aunts.

He had no idea at first glance what he was seeing. His first thought was that it was an eagle fighting with some kind of furry animal. Then he began to parse out the details: there were wings, and there was an animal, and the animal was a small bear, no, a large wolverine, and the wings were mantled over its back. The wings were attached.

The wolverine was wearing a tracking band on its ankle, such as the SCB put on people it wanted to keep tabs on.

It was Farley.

Costa cursed loudly, which caused two of the aunts to shush him. Farley jumped and shifted back to a naked human, still wearing a tracking band on his bare ankle—it was designed to expand and contract through a person’s shifts. He sat down heavily in the dust and hastily tried to cover himself. Delgado stepped forward and wordlessly handed him a bundle of clothing.

“Thanks for the demonstration, buddy,” she said.

“What the hell was that?” Costa snapped.

“Language!” said Aunt Brill.

“Nice way to talk about a person who’s right in front of you,” Farley retorted, trying to put on his pants without exposing himself to the assembled female relatives.

“It happened for the first time at the SCB,” Delgado explained. “Can we go inside and have some coffee or something? It’s been a long day.”

Diana moved close to Costa, her hand brushing his. He looked at her swiftly, looking for panic, but instead she merely looked fascinated. Leaning close to Costa, she whispered, “I already have wings. Do I get a second set of wings?”

“Do you want a second set of wings?”

“Not really.” But she slid her fingers into his, and they went into the ranch house hand in hand. Costa noticed Delgado watching this and attempted to appear smooth, which failed when he almost ran into the doorframe.

The ranch house was filled with cooking smells, and Vic was with Molly on the sofa, playing a game on a tablet while keeping an eye on Emmeline in a playpen. Costa had completely forgotten that they had guests.

“Nicole still here?” he asked, bending over to fondle Emmeline’s hair over the top of the playpen. The child gave a happy squeal, as if she recognized him. She was lying on her back and playing with a mobile hooked to the playpen’s edge.

“Nicole went back to Seattle while you were off grid,” Vic said. “I’ll give you the rundown on my investigation in a little while. I understand you have business.”

Delgado took them off to a quiet corner, Farley included.

“Okay, so what happened?” Diana demanded. “Why does he have wings? Do I get wings? More wings, I mean.”

“We didn’t know until he shifted,” Delgado said. “I mean, he didn’t know either. Actually, why don’t you tell them.”

She turned to Farley, who was still buttoning his shirt.

“Yeah, it was a complete shock,” Farley said. “So I was in and out of you guys’ lab at the SCB, they were trying to figure out what that stuff they injected me with was doing, and I just felt weird, you know? Like I had the flu or something.”

He looked at Diana, who nodded. “It’s a little better now,” she said. “I still feel kind of achy, tired and strange.”

“Yeah, same. Anyway, nothing seemed to be different, so they had me shift, and—wings. I guess.”

“Do they work?” Costa asked.

Farley and Delgado both stared at him. “I didn’t think to try,” Farley said. “Can I try?”

“Not yet,” Costa said hastily, thinking about the possibility of their main witness flying off into the desert. “So the wings were just there? Did they grow when you shifted, fledge out and so on? Or just appear fully formed, like they’d always been there?”

“Yeah, just there. Like they’d always been there. And—I can’t really explain it, but you know what it’s like when you’re shifted, right? How the animal side of you just accepts things? And my wolverine half was okay with it but not okay with it at the same time. It was just this crazy weird feeling. A little like what I guess animals must feel when they’re radio-collared.” He gestured to the anklet. “Kind of like the way my animal side feels about this. It’s there and it’s not hurting me and I’m not gonna try to chew it off, but it’s not supposed to be there.”

“But you had no idea about the wings until you shifted?”

Farley shook his head. “Not at all.”

Costa looked at Diana. “I think you’d better shift.”

“I was just thinking the same thing.”

As they went out the back door, Aunt Maura called, “Dinner’s in ten minutes!”

“We’ll be there!” Costa called back.

Behind the main ranch house, there was a small playground area with kiddie swings, an inflatable pool that was rarely filled in the summer due to water shortages, and a homemade miniature golf course that Costa remembered helping build with Marco when they were kids. Dusk was gathering rapidly, turning the hills blue and the sky purple.

Diana reached for the buttons on her shirt, and Costa leaned close to Farley. “You’re going to turn your back and not turn around until she’s shifted.”

Farley gulped and spun around. “Got it.”

Costa carefully averted his eyes, for the most part, but he was peripherally and viscerally aware of Diana disrobing. She folded her clothes and put them on a patio chair. “Okay,” she said.

Costa turned back. The roadrunner was standing at the edge of Aunt Lo’s rock garden.

He had seen plenty of her in the desert recently, but now he looked at her closely, trying to determine if anything was different.

Roadrunners were large birds, relatively speaking, about two feet long from their tail to the tip of their spearlike beak. Aside from their general shape, they looked very little like the cartoon. Diana’s feathers were mottled dark brown and cream, with long, nearly white legs. She held herself low and lean, like a running velociraptor—which, indeed, she more or less was.

Seeing Delgado and Costa both watching her, joined after a moment by Farley, she straightened up and preened a little, nibbling at the feathers under one wing. She stretched her wings out, tentatively flapped them, and turned her head around on her supple bird neck to look at her back.

“Two wings,” Costa said, relieved.

“She doesn’t look any different,” Delgado said. “Do you mind if I take a picture of you to show the lab?”

Diana shook her head, a weird effect on her roadrunner body, and Delgado took pictures from a few angles. Diana obligingly spread her wings and turned to display different angles. Then, while Delgado flipped through the photos and texted them to work, Diana shifted back and reached for her clothes.

“Nothing?” she asked, sounding disappointed.

“You look completely normal,” Costa said, finding himself deeply relieved. “Maybe it didn’t take. You might need several doses or something.”

“I only got one dose,” Farley said. “Maybe it doesn’t work if you already have wings.”

As much as Costa hated to agree with Farley, it wasn’t a bad theory. Then Aunt Lo came out to call them in for supper, so the work conversation was put on hold until after the food.

As usual, the table groaned under a delicious spread, with a huge pot of spaghetti and Aunt Brill’s patented marinara and meatballs, garlic bread, a salad from Aunt Maura’s winter garden, side dishes of sweet golden corn and yams and Aunt Lo’s beet salad. There were two kinds of pies for dessert, with homemade vanilla ice cream.

Emmeline ate some mashed yams sitting in Costa’s lap, took half a bottle, then was passed between the aunts until she was placed in her playpen and fell asleep on a blanket.

“I’m never leaving here,” Vic said, as they all drifted into the living room with coffee or, in Molly’s case, a glass of juice. “Roll me to a bunkhouse. I’m a city kid, but I’ll learn to wrangle horses. You don’t even have to pay me, just feed me.”

Costa grinned, and accepted a small jot of brandy in his coffee from Uncle Roddy. “Did you learn anything from the shifter underground?”

Vic tilted his head towards Molly. “Let me get Princess Hummingbird settled in the guest bedroom with a story, and then I’ll fill you in.”

Vic and Molly went off to one of the guest rooms. Delgado and Farley appeared to be looking at family albums with Aunt Maura. Costa decided to steer clear of that entire situation, so he and Diana went to a sofa by the window. Now that it was dark, there was little to be seen, just reflections and the pale glow of the halogen light by the entrance to the ranch yard.

“You still feel okay?” Costa asked Diana.

“I really do.” She took his hand, ran her lightly callused fingertips over the ridges of tendons on the back. “I think if it was going to do anything, it would have by now. I have to say, I’m a little disappointed.”

“In what?” Costa asked. He turned his hand around to squeeze hers. “Not being the world’s first four-winged roadrunner?”

Diana laughed softly. “It would certainly have been interesting. I guess that must be what happened to Emmeline.” They both turned to look at the baby in her crib. “But why on earth do they want to put wings on people?”

“I think I can answer that, sort of,” Vic said. He had just come in and angled to join them at the window. Sitting on the end of the couch beside Costa with his elbow on his knee, he went on. “There are rumors in the shifter underground of really unusual fighters. People with talents and skills, and sometimes shift forms, that they’ve never seen before.”

“Oho,” Costa murmured. “Okay, that makes more sense.”

Diana looked back and forth between them. “They’re giving people wings to compete in shifter fights?”

“More like to clean up in shifter fights,” Vic said. “I mean, I didn’t know this was exactly what was going on, and neither did any of my informants. But remember the card I showed you. Regular fighters are tracked and logged, and their shift forms are known. Think about how it might go if you were betting on a fight between a low-ranked raccoon shifter and a bear. But then the raccoon turned out to have wings. You could get some unexpected betting upsets. Anyone who knew what was going on could clean up.”

“That is insane,” Diana said flatly.

“People will do a lot for money,” Costa pointed out.

“That’s true, but why give wings to a baby? She can’t fight.”

Costa was still chewing that over when Delgado arrived to join them. “Hey, Chief, I was just talking to your aunts, and since there’s plenty of room, I think I’m gonna spend the night out here. Farley too. I need to check in, but I can’t get a cell signal.”

“Use wifi calling,” Costa said. “I’ll show you how.”

A couple of minutes later, he was thoroughly frustrated. Delgado’s phone simply wouldn’t get on the wifi. Costa went to find Aunt Brill, probably the most technologically adept of the elder relatives.

“Oh, it might be down again,” Brill said over her shoulder as she and Aunt Lo loaded the dishwasher. “It happens now and then. Try the computer, or she can use the land line.”

Costa sighed and tapped the household computer to wake it up. Brill was right, there was no wifi signal. “Use the phone,” he told Delgado.

“You guys really are living in the previous century,” Delgado remarked. She picked up the cordless phone, a clunky white model that was fifteen or twenty years old if it was a day. Then she frowned and tapped the buttons a few times. “Hey—I’m not getting a dial tone. You don’t have to press anything for an outside line, do you?”

“What? No, you don’t.” Costa snatched it from her and listened. She was right, no dial tone. He pushed some buttons. The screen was lit up, but it was blank. “Aunt Brill, did Uncle Roddy do something to the phone?”

Uncle Rodrigo woke with a snort in his armchair, nearly spilling his cup of spiked coffee. “What? Me? Who? I was nowhere near her!”

Aunt Brill came out of the kitchen, drying her hands on a dish towel. “What’s wrong?”

“Phone’s down,” Costa said. He set the phone back in its cradle. Alarm bells were jangling in the back of his mind. “Vic, there’s a tethered phone upstairs in the hall, the old-fashioned receiver kind. Go see if it’s working.”

Vic nodded and took the stairs two at a time.

“What’s wrong, CeCe?” Aunt Brill asked him quietly.

“Nothing, I hope,” Costa said just as softly. “When did the wifi go down?”

“I don’t know. It was working earlier when Lo was updating the family farm blog.”

Costa gave her a startled look. “We have a blog?”

“You haven’t been checking the blog?” She snapped him with her dish towel. “I know you know about it. Lo sent you an email.”

“Do you have any idea how many emails I get in a typical day?” Somewhat guiltily, Costa recalled that he had all family emails set to go to a particular folder that he checked once in a blue moon. Mostly his aunts sent him memes, chain letters, and links to petitions with topics like saving a local artesian well or amending sales regulations for eggs from small chicken farms.

Vic came downstairs. “No dial tone,” he reported.

“Great.” Costa swept a swift gaze around the room. Aunt Brill looked curious but uncomprehending, Uncle Roddy blank. The other aunts were clattering around in the kitchen. Jenny and Jay, as far as he knew, were up in their house on the back of the ranch. As for his people, Delgado looked quietly alert, Diana alarmed but calm, and Farley blankly worried.

“Okay, people,” Costa began, “I think we have a situation,” and just then the lights went out.