The Cage Page 2

  It was worse than I thought. He was all wobbling puppy butt and baby fluff. He had big eyes, long flirty lashes. He batted them at a chew toy, looking like some kid’s cartoon dawg—bink-bink.

  A quiet “Aroo!” trickled through the baby monitor.

  “Awww,” I said. Believe me, a dead cynic couldn’t have kept from saying “Awww.”

  I was entranced until he caught the first rabbit.

  Even baby-clumsy, he was fast. He shook the rabbit into a puddle, sending fur flying, then rolled in the pudding. He chewed one of the plastic toys to chips. The shoe went in stages; he’d run around with it for a while, settle in for a chaw, run some more.

  And my God, the peeing. Every nook, every corner. All my lovely bamboo panelling.

  “Boy dogs,” Paige said, by way of apology, or explanation.

  “This was why the bleach, last month.”

  “To kill the smell, yep.”

  Okay, stop staring. I got up as he began dragging the first of the ivy plants around the room, spraying potting soil. His tail was wagging. It had only been an hour.

  “He’s laying waste to the place.”

  “As long as he’s happy.” She quirked a brow. “Speaking of which…”

  “Mmm?” I was already considering how to entertain the little bugger next time. He needed grass, more plants…

  Paige kissed me.

  It was awkward—disastrous. My head was elsewhere; she caught me by surprise. She was nervous, too, so the move came out a bit of a lunge. Our lips met for a second; then our teeth clacked, pinching my tongue. I pulled back, reflexively, tasting blood. And whatever she saw in my face…she turned bright red.

  It might be for the best. I squelched the urge to apologize. “I should leave.”

  “Hey—it’s okay. I wouldn’t want to date me either.”

  “You’re plenty dateable, Paige—”

  “Don’t, Jude.”

  “What do you want me to say? You’re dead gorgeous. You’re funny, smart. But your sister’s newly dead, you got this murder trial…”

  “I’m hot, but I’m a basket case? You don’t want to take advantage? I didn’t take you for old-school butch, Jude.”

  “How could you not be a basket case?” I stared out the window. “You’re in mourning and there’s a rabid frigging monster in your basement.”

  A faint “Aroo” trickled from the speaker.

  “So? You think you’re such a catch?”

  “I didn’t say that.” A flare of light in a truck, across the street, caught my eye.

  “You’re freakishly tall, for one thing. And that librarian gave me your entire romantic history. You dare call me damaged goods when—”

  “Someone’s watching the house,” I interrupted.

  She cat-stepped across the living room, pissed, and looked sideways through the curtains.

  “Reporter?” I whispered.

  “Deenie’s sidekick,” she gritted. “Valmont Robb.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I’ll bundle up something kid-shaped and walk you to the door.”

  “To the…”

  “You were leaving anyway, weren’t you?”

  “But—”

  A furious glint in her eye. “I may look like a mess to you, but believe me, I can handle myself.”

  Ten minutes later I was out in the cold on the porch. Paige had a fake baby bundled in her arms, a fake smile plastered on her face. See, folks? Nothing going on here.

  “Good night,” she said.

  I gave the fake kid a pat. “I never set out to be a parent, Paige.”

  “Funnily enough, neither did I.” She pivoted, closing the door in my face.

  Well. I’d needed to back her off, right? Nicely done.

  I walked home in the dark, past Robb’s truck with its Kansas plates, pretending I hadn’t seen him, my lip throbbing, my mind full of a strange mix of regret, sexual fantasy, revenge, and puppy eyes.

  * * *

  Next morning I couldn’t help myself; I called her.

  “He’s overheating down there,” she said, before I could stumble half-assed into an apology.

  “What?”

  “There’s no airflow in the basement. It was okay last month; I guess it was colder. But by two, he was roasting.”

  A pulse of alarm. “He’s okay?”

  “Yeah, but summer’s coming—look, I can’t talk now.”

  “Something’s up?”

  “Sitter cancelled, and I need to see the Crown about Robb being here last night.”

  “Can’t you call the police?”

  “It’s complicated; Vancouver PD’s divided on the werewolf issue.”

  “Well…I’m coming by to look at the air.”

  “What if Chase bunny-barfs on a reporter? He ate that entire moccasin.”

  “I have an ex-girlfriend who used to run a daycare. She’s broke and she has a one-year-old.”

  “I can’t leave him with a stranger, not with Robb…”

  “I’d be downstairs.”

  “I thought you were done with me and my rabid frigging monster.”

  “Cut me a break, Paige. He is a rabid frigging monster.”

  “Well.” I could see her fighting a smile. “That’s true.”

  “Listen. Maybe I was an asshole last night—”

  “Maybe?”

  “Let me make one call, sort out the ventilation issue, and clean up a bit while you put the law on Robb. Deal?”

  “Fine.”

  * * *

  “So how is it you’re once again with a woman with a kid?” Raquel, naturally, had said yes. Who could pass up a chance to give me a hard time and get paid?

  So I’d chauffeured her over, made the introductions. She cooed over little Chase, who was sleeping off his wolfie binge. Paige, satisfied, had run off to court.

  Once she was gone, Raquel demanded a complete rundown on her, for transmission to the entire East Van lesbian grapevine.

  “I’m not with anyone. I’m fixing up her basement.”

  “Is that what you’re calling it—Abby, no!” She darted across the room to strong-arm her toddler down from the TV stand, and I escaped the interrogation.

  With the basement door safely locked, I could survey the damage in the ear-ringing silence.

  The air was stuffy, as Paige had said; it also reeked of baby wolf pee. Dirt from the plants was everywhere, mudded in with bits of fur, dog toys, moccasin, sawdust. A rabbit eye stared at me from the floor.

  What was I doing, cleaning up after a kid who would probably get himself shot by someone like Richard Deenie?

  Apologizing for last night, that’s all.

  Concentrate on the air. It was a problem—ventilation ducts are notoriously good conductors of sound. Best I could do was run a pipe to the garage, insulate the duct inside and out, and hope the noise of the intake fan would cover a certain amount of puppy howl.

  Aroo, I remembered. It hadn’t seemed loud on the baby cam.

  Which has a volume knob. And what about when he’s bigger?

  One problem at a time.

  The basement was depressing. Bare walls, bamboo or not, and a few bunnies weren’t enough. The kid needed things to climb up, jump on, destroy. Grass underfoot. He had to go to that pack good-tempered, Paige said.

  Raised planters, maybe, something to lurk beneath…but plants meant lights. We’d—dammit, Paige would need grow lights for the plants.

  I got absorbed in thinking about solar panels, and jumped a foot when my cell rang. It was Raquel, calling from upstairs.

  “Why are you phoning me?”

  “Because I’m whaling on the door and you damn well can’t hear me.”

  I bolted for the stairs. “Kid okay?”

  “He’s asleep.” She snapped her phone shut in my face. “That guy’s back. You said a red truck?”

  I closed the padded door, eased past Raquel, and checked on the bassinet before peeking outside. The truck with the Kansas
plates was parked half a block away.

  “What’s this about?”

  “The trial. He’s trying to scare Paige.”

  “Should we call the cops?”

  “She was gonna talk to that Crown attorney.”

  “Stalkerman’s here now.”

  “Some of the police think we should be allowed to shoot werewolves—a lot.”

  “We call, we get the wrong cop, we make things worse?”

  I nodded. “They see ’em as an enforcement problem, go figure.”

  “Gotcha.” She sighed. “Let’s get a picture of him. Document the stalking. Maybe Paige can go door to door, insinuate to the neighbours he’s hanging around waiting to break into their houses or molest their kids.”

  “Good idea,” I said.

  She put a hand on my back. “Don’t worry, Jude.”

  “I’m just doing her basement,” I repeated. Chase cooed from inside the bassinet. I felt cobwebby threads of affection, sticking, somewhere deep and internal.

  “Cut it out,” I growled, and he beamed.

  Raquel had her camera zoomed in on Robb’s unshaven mug. “What’s Paige doing down there, anyway? Holding mini-raves?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Her eyes flicked to the baby monitor. So much for secrecy. I’d been on camera all morning.

  “Orchids,” I said. “We’re setting her up to grow orchids.”

  JULY

  “When Pammy was five, she began spending a couple days a month on my uncle’s farm near Cheyenne,” Paige told the packed courtroom. “He and a local fellow were werewolves, the friend’s daughter too.”

  “They ran in a pack?”

  “Yes. The adults socialized the girls.”

  “Meaning?”

  “They learned to avoid people and domesticated animals.”

  “Mr. Deenie says lycanthropes are untameable beasts.”

  “What does he know? He learned the truth with the rest of the world, in 2002, and he’s no scientist. My family had generations of experience in dealing with this.”

  The Crown had done a decent job of making out Deenie as a sadist and misogynist. The jury seemed to dislike him heartily. In response, he was playing on that thread of…was it racism? Not in my backyard-ism? We like to think we’re liberal out here on the West Coast. Still, the idea of having werewolves for neighbours wasn’t sitting well.

  Rabid frigging monsters, right?

  Courtrooms always look impressive on TV. In my experience, the real thing never measures up: the taxpayer’s dime won’t pay for the kind of glitz you get on even a crummy lawyer show. Everything’s set up in the same place Judge’s bench, jury box, witness stand—but it all looks run down. The people involved don’t come up to TV standards either; they’re real, and as a result they look fake, like they’re auditioning for parts in a community theatre production. The sheriff’s uniforms look badly fitted, and the air smells dusty.

  But Paige had gone all out. She was wearing a brand-new cream-colored suit; her hair was newly cut, her nails buffed. Her make-up was subtle, emphasizing her fragility. She looked like a rosebud wrapped in white chocolate.

  If she couldn’t convince the jury her sister hadn’t been a threat, it was Game Over. Worse. It would be open season.

  “There has been some research since monsterkind was discovered,” the Crown said. “None of it indicates that lycanthropy is in any sense controllable.”

  “We aren’t talking about taming anyone,” Paige said.

  “No?”

  “As humans encroach on forest habitat, mother bears keep their young with them for longer periods of time. There’s more to teach them, you see, about how to cohabitate with humans. The cubs learn it, and nobody says they’re domesticated. They’re living smarter, avoiding people, increasing their chances of survival.”

  “This is the same?”

  “If bears can do it, of course lycanthropes can. In all the time we lived near Cheyenne, there wasn’t one human disappearance on a full moon. No pet slaughters either, by the way. In fact, towns benefit from the presence of an active pack.”

  “How’s that?”

  “A well-socialized lycanthrope pack keeps the rest of monsterkind away.”

  Deenie was scribbling furiously, probably planning to follow up on that in his cross-examination.

  “This werewolf uncle of yours, where is he now?”

  “Richard Deenie’s so-called mentor, Kevin Solve, shot him in 2003.”

  “The family friend?”

  “His house was burned…with him in it.”

  “And his daughter? “

  The skin around her eyes pinkened.

  “Miss Adolpha?”

  “He murdered her. Her and…everyone I love.” Not one tear fell. “Because he hates werewolves, and he thinks it’s fun.”

  “Objection,” Richard Deenie drawled.

  “He likes being patted on the head for being a serial killer. He shot my sister and bragged about it, and she never hurt anyone.”

  “Objection.”

  “She was no danger to him.”

  “You’re one hundred percent certain of that?”

  Not a sound in the courtroom. The kid reached over from Raquel’s lap, tugging my sleeve. I pulled free.

  “I had a newborn. Would I have let Pammy move in with me if I wasn’t sure it was safe?” Paige said.

  Everyone—reporters, spectators, jury—looked at Raquel and little Chase. And me.

  The Crown acknowledged this with a nod. “Your witness.”

  Deenie had been drooling over the prospect of getting his shot at Paige, and his cross-examination was brutal, the questions fast and furious. How did Paige know her sister never killed anyone? Could she prove it? How many werewolf maulings were there in Canada each year? Wasn’t living in the middle of a big city a bit different from keeping Pammy on the country fringes of Cheyenne? Neighbours ten feet away, close quarters…

  “I grew up with Pammy. How’s that for close quarters?”

  He stood close enough to breathe on her. He asked about Pamela’s sexual habits, alleged she was a boozer, dug into her spotty job history. Had Paige ever had to drug Pamela, to protect herself or others? Did she know how to get rid of a body? If Pammy killed someone, would she cover it up?

  Paige sat there and took it. She looked sweet and young, harmless and delicate and exactly like her sister, and she didn’t crack. The longer it went on, the more it felt as though everyone in the room wanted to throttle Deenie.

  Chase was getting restless: moonrise was seven hours away. I was about to suggest Raquel take him home when the judge adjourned for the day.

  We met Paige just outside the courtroom.

  “That looked gruelling.” Raquel kissed her on the cheek and handed over the baby.

  “I’ll do a year in that witness box if that’s what it takes.” She was checking her make-up, thinking ahead to the next tangle: with the media. Adjusting her young mom costume.

  “I gotta pick up Abby from her play date. You guys’ll be okay?”

  “Fine,” Paige said. “Thanks, Raquel.”

  “Ciao.” She waved and was gone.

  I gave Paige a long look. “Want me to disappear, too?”

  “You want to?”

  “You probably look more harmless without a freakishly tall bodyguard—”

  That’s when Valmont Robb popped around the corner and tried to rip out a pinch of the baby’s hair.

  I’ve never seen anyone move so fast. Paige had his sweaty mitt between her jaws before I could draw breath. Without hesitating, she bit, growling, into the meat of his hand.

  Robb jerked free with a shout, blood running down his wrist, and grabbed for her throat.

  I half caught his fist with mine. Pain, a bruising clash of knuckles…Then Paige shoved the baby, snuggly and all, into my arms.

  “Get him away!” Sheriffs were wading in to collar them both.

  I staggered clear of the scrum, flailing my way int
o the snuggly to free up my hands. I got my forearm between the crowd and the kid’s head. Chase was goggling at me, emitting a low growl. Would he change if he got upset?

  I pulled him close, whispering, “It’s okay, it’s okay. Everything’s cool, little guy.”

  He had that intoxicating baby smell: new life, baked bread, talcum. Nobody else tried to get a sample off him as the sheriffs dragged Paige and Valmont Robb off.

  The crowd stayed clear of me, babbling: “Is Paige one of them?”

  “What’d he do?”

  “…tried to grab the baby…”

  “She broke the skin, he was bleeding, that makes him one of them now…”

  “Only if she is. If she is, her sister bit her…”

  “Socialized my ass.”

  “Grrrr…”

  “It’s all cool, junior,” I said. “All okay. What are we gonna do?”

  He did that thing where they put an itty-bitty hand on your cheek and your heart tears itself to shreds.

  “Cut that out,” I said.

  He welled up.

  “Okay, okay. Sorry.” Wait, watch, think. I bounced him, pacing the government-issue carpet, glaring at anyone who got within five feet. Down the hall, a VPD constable was watching alertly; from her expression, she was anti-lycanthrope. This was out of control….

  Maybe twenty minutes passed. Chase calmed; the bystanders milled for a while, until they were sure the show was over. I waited for Paige.

  Instead, Paige’s hero, the fire-breathing Crown attorney who’d brought Deenie to trial, appeared.

  “Paige and Valmont Robb are being charged with assault,” she said. “They’ll be locked up until morning.”

  “That’s bogus.”

  “It’s in case Paige is a werewolf, in case she’s infected Robb.”

  “They’ll run tests?”

  She frowned. “Full moon’s tonight. That’s test enough.”

  “Oh.” It was neatly done; Robb wouldn’t be out and about while the kid was wild-nighting in the basement. Then again, Paige was locked up, too.

  The lawyer served up a tight, feral smile. “They’re desperate. Deenie can keep badgering Paige on the stand, if he wants, but by now he must know he can’t make her look bad. His best chance is to prove Pamela was a biter.”

  “Right. But with Robb locked up for the night, they’ve lost their shot.”