“I’m not crying!” This in a voice thick with tears and pizza.
Lila sat back down. “Well, thank God for that. If you were crying, it’d be super awkward.” Like now, for instance. Textbook example of why she hated tears. Should she reach across the table and try to hug a strange child? Who might turn into a tiny bear without warning? Should she pour milk? Or heat milk? Or just call Child Protective Services? And offer them milk when they came to get the kid? Actually, she should have called CPS the minute she saw the kid stuck in the basement window. And arguably last night.
But who did you call to report a bear-girl? A cop? A scientist? A Hollywood agent?
And if you weren’t going to call Someone In Authority, then what?
Did the guy with the Caesar haircut count as Someone In Authority? A caseworker, the kid had said. But not a very good one. Perhaps he had. Um. Other qualities. She’d noted what he didn’t have: respect for boundaries or a wedding ring. Maybe those issues were related.
Get the guy out of your head. “I’m sorry I upset you.” Lila got up, went to the fridge, and grabbed a bottle of chocolate milk. She handed it off to Sally, who was blotting her tear-stained face and runny nose on a long red napkin, except there weren’t any red napkins and it was actually Lila’s scarf, fuck. “Argh, that’ll teach me not to hang it up.” Lila pulled it out of Sally’s grasp and hung it on one of the pegs on the wall next to the fridge. “How can I help you? You’re here for a reason.”
“Uh-huh. ’Cuz of you.”
“That makes no sense.”
“I feel safe here.”
“That,” Lila said, “makes less sense.”
“Plus you’re not scared of me! Not even a bit!” The child’s surprised delight was as warming as it was puzzling. “And you didn’t call the bad guys.”
“Only because I had no idea which bad guys to call. Or even which good guys. Look, if your folks are missing, shouldn’t we call the cops? Or are you the one who’s missing? In which case shouldn’t we call the cops? Or CPS? Or an agency that’s at least CPS adjacent?” Did werebears have their own Child Protective Services? Cub Protective Services? Lila thought about the puzzling call she’d endured last night
I’m afraid we don’t deal in cubs. You need to call the IPA.
and thought they probably did. The voice on the other end had been annoying, which she’d expected—what after-hours call to a faceless bureaucrat wasn’t annoying? For both parties? The lack of surprise, however, had (irony!) been a surprise. In fact, now that she thought about it, the operator’s utter lack of surprise (or any noticeable emotion) while dealing with a woman calling from a Saint Paul suburb to report a bear cub in her house was both unexpected and chilling.
And not even your average bear cub. She’d Googled the cub’s interesting coloring last night at the hotel. Sally Smalls was a sun bear, a species out of Southeast Asia. The alternative name was, hilariously, the honey bear. Completely by accident, Lila had picked the perfect snack to calm Sally down.
Sun bears were rare, too…tagged as Vulnerable on the list of endangered species.
Or at least, ordinary sun bears were rare.
The IPA. Do you need the number?
Curious. She’d ponder when she had some leisure. For now… “Look, Sally, CPS or the equivalent can at least set you up in a foster—”
Sally nearly choked on her milk. “No, you can’t! They’ll kill me! They’ll tear me to pieces and go after my family and tear them up, too!”
“That’s a pretty damning summation of the foster care system. How long have you been on your own, exactly?” Lila had assumed the girl had only recently gotten lost. Or run away. Or been abandoned—fuck, she had no information here. “Calm down, you don’t have to—what are you doing?” The girl had stopped flailing; now her head was cocked sharply to the left and her knuckles whitened around the bottle of chocolate milk. “Are your Bear-Girl senses tingling?”
“Don’t call me Bear-Girl. Do I call you Human-Lady?”
“Fair,” Lila said, then watched bemused as Sally got up, practically ran to the fridge, then started poking around. “Also, and no judgement here, but what the hell are you doing?”
“Looking for baking soda.”
“Sure. Sure. Totally normal thing that strange children do all the time in my kitchen.”
“Ha!”
“How did you even know I have that?”
“Everyone has that,” was the prompt reply. “And the box is almost always full. And old. This isn’t even your baking soda, is it? I bet it belongs to whoever lived here before.”
“So you’re a werebear and a detective? Do you have an agent? I’m pretty sure you could get your own TV show. And I’d watch that show.”
“My folks would be mad. Gotta get through middle school first.” Sally fumbled with the box of baking soda, then dropped it, spilling white powder everywhere. “Sorry! I’ll fix it.”
“That’s…” Lila watched in amazement as the child scooped up piles of soda (it had been a big box), rubbed them on her arms and legs, then scooped more. And sprinkled it in her hair, then rubbed it…under her arms? “…not fixing it. What are you doing?”
“Sorry. I’m a klutz. Wow, this stuff gets everywhere, huh?”
“Not really.” Laugh? Cry? Take away what’s left of the baking soda? Start looking for a new apartment? No, not that last one. Never that last one. She was in it to win it. Or until she died a terrible death at the hands of whoever was after the kid. Hopefully the former. “Not unless someone’s doing it on purpose.”
“Don’t worry,” Sally said and, oddly, Lila was reassured. “He won’t dare hurt you.” Then she set the near-empty box of soda down on the table, trotted to the basement door and down the steps.
Bbbbbbbbbbrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaatttttttt!
“Great,” Lila said to her empty kitchen. She rose to answer the door, thinking that whoever changed doorbells to the traditional melodic-yet-dull ding-dongggggg was an overlooked genius.
Chapter 8
God, that’s an irritating doorbell. Sounds like a robot yukking it up over a dirty joke. Oz wound the old-fashioned buzzer again and heard measured footsteps—because of course they were measured, of course they weren’t frantically fleet or running in the other direction or frozen in place—straightened from his habitual slouch and controlled the urge to run his fingers through his hair. He looked fine. It was all fine. He was fine.