“Hey, Lola,” Mallory said. “I have a special delivery for Jared. Can I come up?”
Lourdes pressed the buzzer without answering. She pointed to Lala, who reached under her puffy vest and handed Mave a Smith & Wesson Shield pistol. The twins both pulled out Browning Hi-Powers.
Here we go, Jared thought. Here we go.
He gently kissed Sarah’s forehead and hugged her, then reached out and held his gran’s hand. She kissed his.
No one spoke. Wee’git burst skywards as the sorcerer wound up his tree.
Mallory said, “Knock, knock!” The door opened.
Lourdes raised her pistol.
Mallory lifted the small cooler and waved it around. Ice swished inside. “I’m unarmed.”
“Good,” Lourdes said.
“But my fellas aren’t,” Mallory said.
His gran gripped Jared’s hand hard as three men followed Mallory into the apartment, each of them with his pistol up. Mallory grinned at Lourdes, then pressed her forehead against her sister’s gun barrel. Lourdes lowered the pistol to aim it at the floor.
“Hey Jared, how’s tricks? I brought you something from your mom,” Mallory said.
She came over to him and opened the cooler with a flourish. His brain saw the ice, the bloody ice, and wanted to not see his mother’s right hand. But it was her hand. Jaggedly sliced from her arm.
“That was unnecessary,” Lourdes said.
“Beg to differ,” Mallory said. “Jared doesn’t take anything seriously and we need him to know we’re very, very serious. Are you ready to go for a ride?”
“Yes,” Jared said.
29
YOU SMELL SO GOOD
Back in the van on the cold metal floor. Zip-tied wrists. Déjà vu all over again. Mallory pushed him flat, straddled his hips, pleased with herself. Above her, on the white-painted metal ceiling, there was a smudge the colour of rust.
“I told you we’d be together,” she said.
Bumping down a rough patch of road. No one in his head but him, the charm she’d wrapped around his neck isolating him in a cone of silence. Two of the coy wolves up front, one in the back, watching them. The coy wolf guarding him wore khaki pants and a black T-shirt. His hair was mostly grey, cut in a high fade and with a wide bald spot. If he was wearing a human skin, couldn’t he change it for a young one? His boots were shiny. The fringe on Mallory’s leather jacket swayed with the momentum of the turns. The other two coy wolves were younger. Jeans, sneakers and black hoodies.
“Hey,” she said, giving him a light slap. “You awake? Are we boring you?”
She reached under her shirt and brought out a small, wicked knife. She carved patterns in the air, then rested it against his throat.
“Stop it,” the oldest coy wolf said.
Mallory let the knife rest against his skin. “Why don’t you go up front? We need some time alone.”
“Granny G said we don’t fuck around with him, because he’s the only one that can bring her back.”
“I’m in charge.”
“Are you? You aren’t a coy wolf. You aren’t an ogress.”
“Her real name is Jwasins. Did you know that?”
“Get off him.”
Mallory glowered but didn’t move. He flipped the safety off his pistol and pointed at her head.
“I’m the future mother of Tricksters that will bring us to new worlds,” she said.
“Any bitch can do that,” the coy wolf said. “Get.”
She smiled. “You hurt my feelings.”
“I’m devastated.” He grabbed her hair and yanked.
Jared flinched as Mallory’s knife opened his skin like a paper cut. She tumbled to the front of the van as they pulled to a sudden stop. Jared slid, and the coy wolf put a foot out to hold him in place.
“Everything all right, Dad?” the driver called out.
“It’s fine,” the coy wolf said, reaching into his pocket for a handkerchief and dabbing Jared’s nick. “Just some jumped-up human pretending she’s special.”
“I’m an otter,” Mallory said. “And you’ve made an enemy you’ll regret.”
“I’ll cry myself to sleep tonight,” he said, keeping his pistol aimed at her. “Stay where you are. Don’t get up.”
“He’s mine,” Mallory said.
“I’ve known Granny G longer than you’ve been alive. You should take her promises with a grain of salt.”
“When I tell Jwasins what you said to me, she’ll take back your skin.”
“Little girl,” he said. “I’m doing her a favour. Not the other way around.”
“She told you to obey me.”
“She said you knew where the Trickster lived and you’d bring us there. I’m not taking orders from you. If that’s the price of this skin, I’ll fuck off right now and take my boys with me.”
Mallory dusted off a sleeve of her jacket, reminding Jared of a cat that’s missed its jump up to a counter and needs to pretend it meant to miss. The toe-sucking sorcerer wiggled through the van floor, aiming for Jared’s feet.
“Get!” Daddy Coy Wolf said, giving it a kick that surprisingly connected.
The toe-sucker yelped and dropped away.
“Humans,” Daddy Coy Wolf said. “Greedy bastards, the lot of them.”
—
They parked somewhere, clearly not yet at their destination. Daddy Coy Wolf told Mallory to ride shotgun and send one of his sons back. The young coy wolf studied Jared nervously. He spoke mind to mind with his dad, leaving Jared out of the conversation. Mallory played with the radio until Daddy Coy Wolf told her to cut it out or he’d leave her on the side of the road.
They sat together in the back for a long time. Jared closed his eyes, listening to the traffic as his hands went numb. He heard the familiar hum of fuel pumps and smelled the greasy chemical stink of a gas station. He wished they’d just get on with it. Then the son turned Jared over and clipped his zip ties.
“Out,” he said.
A truck, driven by another coy wolf, rolled up beside the van. They were in the farthest parking spot at an Esso gas station with a 7-Eleven convenience store advertising Tim Hortons coffee. There was a Travelodge across the road. From the road signs, he guessed they were just off the Fraser Highway, somewhere
