“Arsinoe!”
Camden backs off and slinks away, ashamed. But it is not her fault. She feels what Jules feels. Her actions are Jules’s actions.
Jules rushes to the queen and inspects her quickly. There is no blood. No claw marks or tears in Arsinoe’s coat.
“I’m sorry!”
“It’s all right, Jules.” Arsinoe rests a steadying hand on Jules’s forearm, but her fingers tremble. “It was nothing. How many times did we push each other out of trees as children?”
“That is not the same. Those were games.” Jules looks at her cougar regretfully. “Cam is not a cub anymore. Her claws and teeth are sharp, and fast. I have to be more careful from now on. I will be.” Her eyes widen. “Is that blood on your ear?”
Arsinoe takes off her black cap and pulls back her short, shaggy black hair. “No. See? She didn’t come close. I know you would never hurt me, Jules. Neither of you.”
She holds her hand out, and Cam slides under it. Her big, deep purr is the cougar’s apology.
“I really didn’t mean to,” says Jules.
“I know. We are all under strain. Don’t think on it.” Arsinoe slips her black cap back on. “And don’t tell Grandma Cait. She has enough to worry about.”
Jules nods. She does not need to tell Grandma Cait to know what she would say. Or to imagine the disappointment and worry on her face.
After leaving the clearing, Jules and Arsinoe walk down past the docks, through the square toward the winter market. As they pass the cove, Jules raises her arm to Shad Millner standing in the back of his boat, just returned from a run. He nods hello and shows off a fat brown sole. His familiar, a seagull, flaps its wings with pride, though she doubts that the bird was the one who caught the fish.
“I hope I don’t get one of those,” Arsinoe says, and nods at the gull. This morning, she called for her familiar. Like she has every morning since leaving the Black Cottage as a child. But nothing has come.
They continue through the square, Arsinoe kicking through slush puddles and Camden lollygagging behind, unhappy about leaving the powdery wild for the cold stone town. Winter ugliness holds Wolf Spring in a firm grip. Months of freezing and partial thaws have coated the cobblestones with grit. Fog covers the windows, and the snow is mottled brown after being walked through by so many mud-covered feet. With the clouds hanging heavy overhead, the entirety of the town looks as though it is being viewed through a dirty glass.
“Take care,” Jules mutters as they pass Martinson Sisters’ Grocery. She nods toward empty fruit crates. Three troublesome children are ducked down behind them. One is Polly Nichols, wearing her father’s old tweed cap. The two boys she does not know. But she knows what they are up to.
They each have a rock in their hands.
Camden comes to Jules’s side and growls loudly. The children hear. They look at Jules and duck lower. The two boys cower, but Polly Nichols narrows her eyes. She has done one naughty thing for every freckle on her face, and even her mother knows it.
“Do not throw that, Polly,” Arsinoe orders, but that seems to make it worse. Polly’s little lips draw together so tightly that they disappear. She jumps from behind the crates and throws the rock hard. Arsinoe blocks it with her palm, but the stone manages to skip off and strike the side of her head.
“Ow!”
Arsinoe presses her hand to the spot where the stone struck. Jules clenches her fists and sends Camden snarling after the children, determined to plant Polly Nichols onto the cobblestones.
“I’m fine, call her back,” Arsinoe says. She wipes the line of blood away as it runs down to her jaw. “Little scamps.”
“Scamps? They are brats!” Jules hisses. “They should be whipped! Let Cam tear up Polly’s ridiculous hat, at least!”
But Jules calls Camden, and the cat stops at the street corner and hisses.
“Juillenne Milone!”
Jules and Arsinoe turn. It is Luke, owner and operator of Gillespie’s Bookshop, looking smart in a brown jacket, his yellow hair combed back from his handsome face.
“Small of stature but large of lion,” he says, and laughs. “Come inside for tea.”
As they enter the shop, Jules stretches up on her toes to quiet the brass bell above the door. She follows Luke and Arsinoe past the tall, blue-green bookshelves and up the stairs to the landing, where a table is set with sandwiches and a tray of buttery yellow cake slices.
“Sit,” Luke says, and goes to the kitchen for a teapot.
“How did you know we were coming?” Arsinoe asks.
“I have a good view of the hill. Mind the feathers. Hank’s molting.”
Hank is Luke’s familiar, a handsome black-and-green rooster. Arsinoe blows a feather off the table and reaches for a plate of small muffins. She picks one up and peers at it.
“Are those shiny black bits legs?” Jules asks her.
“And shells,” Arsinoe says. Beetle muffins, to help Hank grow new feathers. “Birds,” she remarks, and sets the muffin down.
“You used to want a crow, like Eva,” Jules reminds her.
Eva is Jules’s grandma Cait’s familiar. A large, beautiful black crow. Jules’s mother, Madrigal, has a crow as well. Her name is Aria. She is a more delicately boned bird than Eva, and more ill-tempered, much like Madrigal herself. For a long time, Jules thought she would have a crow too. She used to watch the nests, waiting for a fuzzy black chick to fall into her cupped hands. Secretly, though, she had wished for a dog, like her granddad Ellis’s white spaniel, Jake. Or her aunt Caragh’s pretty chocolate hound. Now, of course, she would not trade Camden for anything.
“I think I would like a fast jackrabbit,” Arsinoe says. “Or a clever, black-masked raccoon to help me steal fried clams from Madge.”
“You will have something far more grand than a rabbit or a raccoon,” Luke says. “You’re a queen.”
He and Arsinoe glance at Camden, so tall that her head and shoulders are visible over the tabletop. Queen’s familiar or not, nothing could be more grand than a mountain cat.
“Perhaps a wolf, like Queen Bernadine,” Luke says. He pours tea for Jules and adds cream and four lumps of sugar. Tea for a child, the way she likes it best but is not allowed to drink at home.
“Another wolf in Wolf Spring,” Arsinoe muses around a mouthful of cake. “At this rate, I’d be happy to have . . . one of the beetles in Hank’s muffins.”
“Don’t be pessimistic. My own father did not get his until he was twenty.”
“Luke,” Arsinoe says, and laughs. “Giftless queens don’t live until they’re twenty.”
She reaches across the table for a sandwich.
“Maybe that is why my familiar hasn’t bothered,” she says. “It knows I will be dead, anyway, in a year. Oh!”
She has dripped blood onto her plate. Polly’s thrown rock left a cut, hidden in her hair. Another drop falls onto Luke’s fancy tablecloth. Hank hops up and pecks at it.
“I had better go clean this up,” Arsinoe says. “I’m sorry, Luke. I’ll replace it.”
“Do not think of it,” Luke reassures her as she goes to the bathroom. He puts his chin in his hands sadly. “She’ll be the one crowned at next spring’s Beltane, Jules. You just wait and see.”