The Cage Read online

  “Have they?” She said this with typical lawyer neutrality, glancing down the hall. The female VPD officer had been joined by an equally hostile male partner. Not even bothering to give me a significant look, the attorney click-clacked away.

  “Crap,” I said, and Chase stole the opportunity to baby-pat my face again.

  * * *

  I called up Helene—she’s another ex-girlfriend of mine, who cleans houses—and drove her over to Paige’s with instructions to clean the basement like it was a crime scene. She didn’t ask questions. She did, however, take a phone picture of me with the snuggly on my chest. “Change your ways at last, Jude?”

  “Woman’s in a jam.”

  “You couldn’t leave him with Raquel?”

  “No.” Not tonight.

  “Yeah. You don’t have a maternal bone.”

  “Can the sarcasm, please?”

  “Now you sound like my mother.”

  “Why is it the business of every goddamn lesbian in British Columbia to give me a hard time?”

  “You reap what you sow. Mommy.”

  No winning here, I thought. “Clear out by sunset, okay? I expect the place to get busted and searched.”

  Helene nodded. “Rabbit hutch goes here, plants go there, leave the lights on. I was listening.”

  Would it make a difference? Who knew? I hugged her swiftly. “Thanks.”

  “Where are you gonna go?”

  “I’m not awash in options.” I’d fantasized about turning Chase loose on some well-fenced stretch of open prairie, me with a rifle in case a coyote showed up. As if I had a prairie field in my back pocket. As if I could shoot.

  “Check into the transition house for the night. His mother’ll be out tomorrow, right? You know they wouldn’t let the cops in.”

  How bad were things that I was tempted to take the rabid monsterchild to a house full of battered women? “I’ll be okay, Helene.”

  “I’m a rock, I’m an island,” she mocked, waving a mop at me as she descended the stairs. “Night. Mommy.”

  * * *

  “It’s not that I hate kids,” I said from atop my kitchen table, four hours later, as Chase gnawed my TV stand to slivers and my old queen manx, Fairytail, yowled disapprovingly from atop the bookshelf. “I was keen, even, in my twenties. My sister Alonsa had a baby, Hal—”

  My breath snagged. Years were gone, but it hurt to say his name.

  “Another blue-eyed cherub—not all that different from you. Well, except the obvious. I’d have done anything for that kid. But it was the eighties. People could toss a queer out on her ass without the least bit of censure. Alonsa’s husband got born again, and…shit, doesn’t matter.”

  “Aroo!”

  “Aroo to you too.” I saluted. “I go to Toronto, come out, fall in love. She’s got a kid. A girl, Michaela.”

  Chase hurled himself at Fairytail’s perch. A book teetered and fell—just Camille Paglia, thankfully. He chewed her spine, keeping a hopeful eye on the cat.

  “Three years together, we paid lip service to coparenting. After we broke up, I had the kid Tuesday and Friday. Then she finds a new partner. I offered to move to Duluth, not with them, you know, just in the orbit. Made the commitment, did the responsible thing. But then it was ‘Michaela needs to bond with Aster, you’re confusing her.’ Well, she’s not mine, I got no rights, I’m not saying I should have rights, but you don’t get it, furball, I can’t—Hey!” I threw a rubber ball into the kitchen before he could go after Susan Faludi.

  He boiled after it with a lusty howl. Claws skittered on the lino and there was a thump as he puppy-bounced against the wall.

  “You’d think I’d stop at two, right? But no, I had to fall again, about a year later. I thought a friend…no romance, see? And I tried to tell her, this has to be for keeps or I’m out, it’s too tough, and it was oh yes, oh yes, Jude, of course, Jude. She was so alone, so damned grateful for the childcare. My judgment that time…stupid. It got bad, I had to walk away. The shame I still feel over that…

  “I know it’s my fault, okay? I know you can’t go half-assed, have a kid on the fringes, can’t play Auntie and assume it’ll go your way, but it’s so hard….”

  Pathetic, Jude. Up on the dining room table, all self-pity, who’s really the basket case here? The kid padded into the living room with a triumphant look in his adorable cartoon eyes. I’d thought he’d have the ball, or what was left of it, in his jaws. But no, he’d found my oven mitts.

  I started bawling like an old drunk, because it was too late. I was caught again, the hooks deep as ever they’d been, barbed through all the scar tissue and old hurt, and as he lifted his tiny leg and damn well made widdle on my oven mitt, I swear it was the sweetest thing I’d ever seen.

  * * *

  At about two thirty, Paige got to a phone.

  She was panicking. “Can you hide the door to the basement? Make a secret panel or something?”

  “A secret—”

  “Deenie’s befriended some police who think lycanthropes are dangerous. They’re going for a grow op warrant on the house. They’ll say they’re looking for pot and then—”

  “Let ’em search, Paige. We’re not there.”

  “Oh! Good. Is he okay?”

  “Getting up his second wind. In fact, his little ears have pricked up. Say hello to Mommy, kid.”

  Chase struggled to his paws. “Arrooo?” It came out a question; then he flopped again.

  Her voice came through the speaker. “Hi, baby, hi, baby. Thank God.”

  “Who told you about the raid?”

  “One of the guards. Gloating.”

  I’d been on the table for hours. Now I stood and stretched. Hell, Chase was torpid, and I had my boots on. I stepped down to a chair, then the floor. The littlest werewolf didn’t move.

  “So where are you?”

  “My place.”

  “You took him home?”

  “What could I do, take a pet suite at the Hilton?” I splashed water onto my face, ran a comb through my hair.

  “What if they go there next?”

  “They can’t get a warrant to search for pot here, in the dead of night, on the grounds that I’m your…”

  “My what?”

  Weighted pause. “Your friend, Paige.”

  “All they have to do is shove their way in and bag him. They can apologize to the skies once they have video of him changing back at dawn.”

  Bust in first, consequences later. She was right. “It’s not gonna happen. Paige…”

  “Shit, my time’s up.”

  “It’ll be okay.”

  “Don’t screw this up, Jude.” She was gone before I could promise anything.

  A scritch. I opened the bathroom door. The kid was there, tail thumping, couch upholstery dangling from his fang. He tried out a growl on me.

  “Don’t even think it,” I said. Stomping past him, I found my work gloves. He wobbled a step behind, exhausted but game. “Tearing around takes it out of you, huh kid?”

  Bink-bink. Cartoon puppy eyes. Cuddle me; I’m not dangerous at all.

  “You’re not gonna bite me,” I told him.

  Bending, I extended my gloved hands. He growled.

  “No!” Deep voice: he did me the honor of looking awed.

  I got him by the scruff and under his chest, holding him arms-out away from me. His body was hot, and I could feel the wham-wham of his heart through the leather as I carried him upstairs.

  Then he shocked a bit, twisting.

  The smart thing would’ve been to drop him; instead, my arms pulled inward, protecting. I felt hot puppy breath on my neck, a touch of nose. He was alert, almost quivering.

  “Easy. Easy.” My mouth was cottony. I turned sideways, checking the mirror. He was staring bug-eyed up over my shoulder, through the skylight in my bedroom…

  …at the moon.

  “Aroo?”

  “Aroo,” I agreed. For some reason I was near tears.

  I se
t him down like a bomb, leaving him in the shaft of moonlight, up on my bed, in my loft with all my good stuff, everything I’d pulled off the ground floor that afternoon. I rescued the urn with my mom’s ashes, threw a last apologetic look at the fish tank. “Enjoy the change of locale, kid.”

  Weak-kneed, I stumbled downstairs and started making calls.

  * * *

  The police didn’t turn up until four.

  By then, I had thirty people downstairs. Saffron had awakened most of the local women’s chorus, and there was a big ol’ overtired koombaya going on in the remains of my living room. Alison was shooting the gathering in Super-8, while a baby dyke named Kathleen Ph34rless exhorted her to get into the digital age, man. Jennifer was doing henna tattoos on Freddie May, who was bare-chested and on his back on the table. Helena had swept the shreds of Camille Paglia off my floor. Raquel lay by the hearth with her one-year-old, Abby, and the baby’s father, the three of them half asleep, watching a Disney movie on an iPad.

  Upstairs you could hear the occasional thunk, awoo, smash—Chase had gotten his second wind.

  Long as he’s happy, I thought, as I answered the bang-bang-bang of the front door.

  “Judith Walker?”

  Showtime.

  “Hey, Officers,” I said, not too smartass, not too perky. Through the chain, I saw the female constable I’d seen that afternoon.

  “We have a report of screams at this address.”

  “Just a party.”

  “Mind if we look around?”

  “I do mind, yeah.” I spoke clearly, for the pick-up mike.

  “I hear another scream now.” She gave me a push, trying to swing my door wide, only to get hung up on the steel-toed boot I’d accidentally-on-purpose jammed in it.

  Her partner helped. The boot and the chain both gave, and I stumbled backward into my foyer.

  One of the leather kids, Roman, caught me.

  “Hey there, Officer,” he swished. “This a bust? Wanna borrow my cuffs?”

  “What’s going on here?”

  “Full moon party,” I said. “In honor of Pam Adolpha.”

  She scowled. “Where’s the kid?”

  “Do I look like a babysitter?”

  Junior chose that moment to let go with a little “Aroo!”

  “What the hell was that?” The female officer’s hand drifted to her pepper spray. Then she paused; Alison had moved in with her camera. The choir broke into four-part harmony, drawing her eye. They were parked on a couch I’d propped in front of the door to the stairwell. At their soprano edge, singing along while giving her best glower from a scary high-tech wheelchair, was the city’s best-known civil rights lawyer.

  You stay in one place for a while, you make friends. They make friends. They’ll dissect your love life and your dietary habits behind your back, but some days it pays off. That’s how it works in my neighbourhood. Most of my guests lived walking distance from here.

  An “Aroo!” upstairs ruined the otherwise golden moment.

  “I asked you…” The constable kept her voice calm. “What is that?”

  “It’s the dog,” I said, straight-faced. “What do you think?”

  She spent another second thumbing her pepper spray, weighing her odds—the film crew, the legal lioness, the sheer number of witnesses. Little Kathleen Ph34rless had her phone out, no doubt Tweeting events in real time.

  The constable slumped. “Keep the noise down.”

  Nobody was so dumb as to start cheering before they were gone. But we spent the next few hours giving each other sleepy high-fives, carrying on like we’d faced down the armies of Rome.

  * * *

  Paige showed up at my place about two hours after dawn.

  “Your kitchen ceiling is dripping,” she said.

  I’d just put down a bucket to catch the leak. “Baby boy got to my fish tank. You should’ve heard it.”

  “And there are twenty women in your living room.”

  “That many?”

  “They’re semi-naked.”

  “It’s hot out, Paige. By the way, you officially owe favours to every cool person in East Van.”

  “Just tell me you haven’t slept with all of them.”

  I pretended to count heads. “Only five. Well, six.”

  She chose—conspicuously, I thought—to ignore my attempt at charm. “Where’s my son, Jude?”

  “Follow me.”

  Baby Chase was snoring in the wreckage of my bedroom. Paige squelched across the carpet, crunching broken aquarium glass, and scooped him into her arms.

  “Oh, Jude. All your stuff,” she murmured, head down against his.

  “It’s what they do, right?”

  “Werewolves?”

  “Children.”

  “You never wanted to be a mom,” she said.

  “That was kind of a half-truth.”

  “You weren’t wrong. He is a monster, and I am a basket case.”

  “A victorious basket case.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “By next month they’ll have convicted that fucker Deenie, right? The sidekick’ll go off home and make trouble for someone else?”

  “What are you saying? All’s well that ends well?”

  “You’re not damaged goods, Paige. When you bit Robb yesterday, I realized. You’re anything but fragile. You’re tough. And that’s…”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s your strength I’m attracted to.”

  She stirred the dampened shreds of my buckwheat pillow with her toe. “So no more bullshit?”

  “There’s always more,” I said. “But not that flavour.”

  “Your sales pitch could use some work.” She patted the empty space on my bed.

  “You dig honesty.” I slipped into the nook, curled around the baby, and kissed her properly.

  The kid waved a fist, belching fish.

  “Da,” he said to me. Bink-bink. The hook sank deeper.

  I faked a cringe. “Tell me he’s already said Mumma, once at least.”

  “Nope.” She twinkled. “Gonna tell him to cut it out?”

  “Da!”

  “I’m gonna say keep it up, Chase,” I told them both, and planted a kiss on his little feral head as my hand wound into hers.

  Copyright 2010 AM Dellamonica

  Art copyright 2010 Marcos Chin

  Acquired and edited for Tor.com by Stacy Hague-Hill.

  Books by A.M. Dellamonica

  Indigo Springs

  Blue Magic