The cub rolled over and over, shaking its head and bawling and then
and then
and then
she wasn’t a cub anymore. If Lila had turned her head, she would have missed it. Where the cub had been now crouched a little girl with the cub’s coloring—long, wild black hair halfway down her back, and dark eyes with an upward tilt, with fair skin and golden undertones—who looked about ten. She was naked, so Lila could see how scratched up the
(girl?????)
artist formerly known as Cub was, and then something she could actually understand happened for the first time in the last twenty minutes: the child burst into tears.
“Never mind!” Lila shouted at whoever was still knocking. “If you’re IPA, it was a false alarm. If you’ve got pizza, I don’t want any.” This was a rather large lie. A deep-dish pie loaded with sausage and mushrooms would go down just fine with a beer or five. “If you’re stumping for a politician, leave the brochure in my mailbox. If you’re the two random kids from earlier, go home, it’s a school night. If you’re a bear, there’s no cub in here.”
There. That ought to cover everything.
To the little girl sobbing in the corner: “Hi, I’m Lila. Don’t worry, the noise and the situation definitely aren’t getting on my nerves or anything.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Calm. Calm-calm-calm. Project so much calm. Be fucking calm, dammit! “What happened? Should I call someone? Do you know your parents’ numbers? Are you friends with a great big wolf? Am I hallucinating? It’s okay if I am. You can tell me. I won’t be mad.”
The little girl sniffled and wouldn’t look at her.
“You’re shivering.” Because of course she was. The rental house was agreeably old, with lots of dark wooden floors and very little carpet, and the heater struggled, especially since it was only about fifty-five degrees outside. “Let’s get a blanket on you, and a sweatshirt, maybe? Are you hungry? I could get you something more substantial than honey.” That was another lie, she realized. The fridge held a twelve-pack of LaCroix coconut water, a box of Little Debbie Swiss Rolls (they were better chilled), a half-gallon of skim, and the ingredients for Flanders’s cocoa. The honey she used for her tea and random bear cubs was nearly empty. She’d planned to get groceries in the morning.
At least the knocking had stopped.
The child sniffled, wiped her nose on her forearm, leaving a shiny trail up and down her arm
(urgh)
and still wouldn’t look up.
“Look, it’s okay. We’ll figure this out—uh, whatever this is—and get you home. Wherever home is. And by ‘we,’ I mean someone in authority. Maybe a bunch of them.” She rooted around in a box marked Who the hell knows? Maybe the living room?, found a blanket, and draped it over the cowering kiddo. “There’s nothing to be scared of.” Most likely. But what the hell did she know? Maybe Lilydale was crawling with bear hunters. Maybe it was Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” only with bears. “It’s gonna be okay.”
No sooner had she run out of platitudes than she heard the rear porch door twang (the hinges were old and stretchy), followed by the sound of wood splintering, followed by the slam of the door against the wall as two kids or a politician or a pizza delivery person or a bear came in without an invitation.
Chapter 3
There was a swinging door between the kitchen and living room, and Lila blessed it. Which was a switch from earlier, when she’d been carrying boxes and mistimed the swing (“Ow, God damn it!”).
But now the contrary thing concealed her for a crucial few seconds, and when whoever-it-was pushed at the door and came through, she had the barrel up behind his ear before he was all the way in.
“Jesus, you Domino’s guys are persistent,” she hissed. “I told you. I. Don’t. Want. Any. Pizza. Jackass.”
“Please. If I was delivering pizza, it’d be Green Mill.”
That startled a laugh out of her. She had to give it to him, he didn’t sound rattled in the slightest. And he was distractingly good-looking. Not every guy could pull off the classic Caesar haircut. Or had eyes the color of forest moss.
Forest moss? Time to get laid. Not by this guy, though. Most likely.
His looks made up for his clothes: He was wearing scruffy slacks, a shirt he hadn’t bothered buttoning up all the way (which revealed the shoulders and abs of a swimmer, which was even more irritating), he didn’t have a coat, and…was that blood on his shirt cuff?
“Trespassing,” she prompted. “That’s you. That’s what you’re doing for some ungodly reason. Right now. In my house.” She started to walk him back into the kitchen. Once he’d kicked the door in, she hadn’t heard anything but footsteps, so hopefully her half-assed plan was going to work. She wasn’t afraid of him—not exactly—but there was the cub to think about. And he had just broken in. But she had no sense of real danger from him, and her gut instinct about people had yet to let her down. Still, precautions had to be taken. “Also, you noticed the gun, right?”
“The one you’re aggressively cleaning my ear with?” He tried to move his head away; she followed the movement with the barrel. “Yeah, that didn’t escape my attention.”
“You want to see aggressive cleaning? Break in again.”
He rolled those green, green eyes at her and scoffed. Scoffed. She should have been irked but had to give it to him: The guy had some plums. “Aw, c’mon. This is America. This isn’t the first time I’ve had a gun in my face this month. Which is a huge problem, by the way. How many hoops did you even have to jump through to get that thing? Not very many, I bet.”
Seriously with this?
