Blood Rock (8 page)

“Uh … no,” she said.

“Well, they’re words that the FCC—that’s the Federal Communications Commission, which you will learn about in Civics class—won’t let people say on TV,” Vladimir said. “We don’t use them at the Clairmont Academy, and I won’t say them here, but if you’re web savvy I’m sure you can look them up on Wikipedia as a guide for what
not
to say to your teachers.”

“Doctor Vladimir,” Fremont said. “To point a student to …
such
a
list
—”

“What happened to Yonas?” Vladimir asked, smiling at her. Idly he picked up the Rubik’s cube and stared at it. “Our job is not to hide the truth from our students; it’s to teach them how to learn the truth and use it responsibly. Huh. Two sides. Not bad.”

“I had four,” Cinnamon said reproachfully. Her tail was twitching something fierce now, and she had started to rock in her chair—but she still answered. “I was shooting at five, just so I could see the pattern on six.”

Vladimir stared at her, then tossed her the cube. “Show me.”

Cinnamon twitched as she caught it. “We gots to go,” she said, grimacing, but stared at the cube for a second before turning it a few times and flipping it back to him. “Four back at you. The counts, the pairs, the lonelies, and the pretties. I still wants to see what the other ones are.”

“Wholes, evens, primes,” Vladimir muttered, turning it. He held a side to us—it had 6s in the corners, 28s at north, south, east and west, and 496 at the center. “Are these the pretties?”

“Not all of them,” Cinnamon said.

“We call them perfect numbers,” Vladimir began. “That’s because if you add—”

“Fucking
clown,
” Cinnamon snapped, abruptly turning away from him.

“Cinnamon!” I said, shocked beyond words. “
What did I say
earlier?”

“Who cares? I can’t pass another fucking test,” she said. “We
gots
to
go
—”

“Not before you apologize to Doctor Vladimir,” I said sharply.

“There’s no need,” Vladimir chuckled, winking at me. “I can go on a bit, and I
do
have the look. But she is right, you do need to get going right away.” He turned to a set of cubbyholes beside Fremont’s desk and pulled out a folder and some papers. “The Academy is
not
a public school and we hold our students to a
very
high standard. Classes start Friday,
not
Monday, and we expect our students to get cracking over the very first weekend. We distribute textbooks here, but it will really help if you can get some of the supplemental books for her grade level, and after some assessments on Friday, I may have a few more suggestions—”

But I was barely hearing him. I just stared down at the folder he had placed in my hands, then held it up to show it to Cinnamon. It said, in bold gilt letters:

Welcome to Clairmont Academy:
A Guide for Students and Parents

“Yonas!” Fremont said, as Cinnamon seized the folder and her eyes started welling up. “You—you can’t just let her in, just like that—”

“Sure I can,” Vladimir said, shrugging. “We each get one pass. Just because you used yours doesn’t mean I can’t use mine.”

“But … but her accreditation,” Fremont said. “Her behavior—”

“Katie, you’re new here,” Vladimir said, a little less patiently. “A good ten percent of our good-reco kids will go bad and a similar percent of the bad-recos will go good. You know this. And as for her behavior, she
is
an extraordinary needs child—”

“Thankyou thankyou thankyou,” Cinnamon said, hopping up, tugging at her collar. “I’ll do my very best, I promises, but, like, we gots to go—”

“Sit down, Cinnamon Frost,” I said. “I’m sure I have forms to sign—”

“We can’t
wait
for that,” Cinnamon said, whirling. “Fuck, Mom, we
gots
to
go
—”

“Cinnamon!” I said, astonished. “What’s wrong with you?”

And then I saw it. Cinnamon wasn’t acting out because she was angry. She was terrified—and her whiskers were visibly growing out.

—

“I—I can’t stop it,” Cinnamon said, eyes in tears. “I … I’m
changing.
”

“I knew it. I just
knew
it. When does the moon come up?” Vladimir asked, whirling to look at Fremont’s wall clock. It showed
3:54
pm. “How long do you have?”

“An hour,” Cinnamon said, clenching her fists. “Fuck! Not even.”

“Is it really the full moon
already
?” he asked. “Shouldn’t you have another day?”

“I haven’t changed in three months,” she whispered. “I can’t hold no longer—”

“That’s not healthy,” Vladimir said, frowning at me. “Changing is part of who she is. You shouldn’t be trying to suppress her gift.”

“I didn’t tell her not to change,” I said angrily. “She was
poisoned
.”

“Silver nitrate?” he asked sharply. “What’s that called, hyper-argyle-something?”

“Hyperargyria,” I said, squatting so I could look Cinnamon in the eye. Her eyes were actually
glowing,
and her pupils had narrowed to vertical ovals. “It damn near killed her.”

“Damnit,” Vladimir said. He looked at Fremont, who was gasping like a fish, and then he came to join me, watching the fine growth of fur on Cinnamon’s face. “Cinnamon, honey,” he said loudly. “Cinnamon, can you hear me?”

“I don’t knows,” she said. “Speak up a bit.”

Vladimir nodded and drew a breath as if to yell, but I poked him and shook my head. “Oh!” he said. “That wasn’t nice. Cinnamon, do you need a safety cage?”

Cinnamon clenched her fists, staring at them, then nodded.

“We have one in the basement,” Vladimir said.

“No, we don’t,” Fremont said, horrified. “Marian Joyce was complaining it was cramped so … I’m having it replaced.”

“You’re WHAT?” Vladimir said, clearly angry.

“Classes don’t start until Friday,” Fremont said, eyes frozen on Cinnamon. “The new one is going in this weekend. I didn’t think—”

“No, you didn’t,” Vladimir snapped.

“How could I have known?” she cried. “The next full moon isn’t for, what, a week?”

“It isn’t
legal
to offer an extraordinary needs program to a werekin without a safety cage on site, full moon or no,” he said. “We’ll have to tell Cinnamon
and
Marion not to come in on Friday, and how will
that
go over with Miss Frost, much less the Joyces—”

“Stop fighting stop fighting
stop fighting
,” Cinnamon said softly, and Vladimir and Fremont both shut up. “For the love,
keep quiet
.”

We all froze. Cinnamon’s little fists were trembling, and I swallowed as a tiny bit of blood beaded in the clench of her hands. But her shaking subsided, her fur faded, and her whiskers slowly drew back in.

“Mom, take me home,” Cinnamon said. “We gots to go. Take me home
please
.”

“Of course, Cinnamon,” I said, putting my hand gently on her shoulder and handing her a wet wipe. I always carried them. Werekin blood, even a scratch, had to be cleaned up. I gave Fremont and Yonas an apologetic word and ushered Cinnamon out. In moments we were stepping through the doors onto the setting sun, and I sighed: this place
was
beautiful.

“Wait,” Vladimir wheezed, running (well, limping) up behind us. “Whoo. Ah, wait, please wait,” he said, holding up the folder. “I don’t want to hold you up, but, please. We would love to have Cinnamon as a student at the Clairmont Academy.”

“Doctor Vladimir, I’m Cinnamon’s guardian,” I said. Actually, we were still working through the adoption, but as far as the law was concerned I was still legally responsible for a werekin minor. “I don’t want to get sued, or, God forbid, go to jail if something happens—”

“I’m sure we can make adequate arrangements before classes start.”

“Oh, gimme that,” I said, taking the folder and handing it to Cinnamon, who cried with delight. “Cinnamon would love to be a student at the Clairmont Academy.”

“Thank you thank you thank you!” Cinnamon said. “We—
ah!
” And then she raised a hand to her cheek, felt her whiskers, and said meekly. “We gots to go.”

We got in the car and drove off.

“Well, that went—are you OK?” I said. “Are you going to make it?”

“Just drive,” she said, leaning back in the seat, eyes closed, holding the folder tightly in her hands. “Just get me home.”

“Damnit, we still need to go by a pet store,” I said. Cinnamon snarled at the word ‘pet’, and I winced, but we still needed to go. I had planned a real safety room in the house we were buying, but the closing was on hold until the Valentine Foundation actually started coughing up the payments they owed me. We still didn’t have a cage at the apartment; we’d been planning to go get one this evening. “We’ve put this off too long—”

“Forget it,” Cinnamon said with a growl, leaping between the seats to land in the back, tail thwacking me in the face as she went. “Take me home. Lock me in the bathroom.”

“That’s too small,” I said.

“You
wants
me to tear up your bedsheets?” she said, a growl growing in her voice.

I glanced back: she was on all fours, eyes glowing, pupils oval and staring at something ahead of me. I turned—and slammed the brakes before I rammed the car stopped in front of me.

“Jesus!” I said, as the Prius squealed to a stop amidst a chorus of angry horns. Ahead, on Clairmont road, early evening traffic stretched off in an endless line of red taillights. I could see a distant blue flashing light, complete with a knot of rubberneckers. “Fuck! This is
not
fair—”

And then a low, gut churning growl rumbled through the Prius.

Swallowing, I carefully reached up and adjusted the rear-view mirror, and stared straight into the yellow eyes of a huge tiger. Cinnamon was snarling, nose wrinkled, eyes oval against the sun. The steel collar about her throat had become chokingly tight as her body swelled, and she tugged at it with a paw broad enough to claw my face off.

She seemed to fill the entire back seat with fur and rage. I’d never seen her like this: real tigers had nothing on the werekind. She was absolutely terrifying. But oddly, the threat of messy death was not the first thing on my mind.

That horrible paw raised again to tug at the collar, and I said sharply, “Cinnamon Frost! Stop messing with that, you’ll pull out a claw.”

She snarled, then roared at me, a fearsome sound that stung my ears and reverberated in my gut.

I blinked—I couldn’t
not
blink at that sound—but did not flinch. She reached to claw at the collar again, and I got worried. “Are you choking?”

The tiger’s eyes tightened, its nose wrinkled up, and I could see huge fangs in the rearview as she flinched back. But among all that, I saw the head twitch … in a clear no.

“Good,” I said. My right ear hurt, and the steering wheel creaked under my grip, but it stopped my hands from shaking. “We’ll get Saffron to fit you with a larger one. I don’t want you choking, but I don’t want some vamp tearing into you because you’re not wearing her collar.”

Cinnamon snarled again, striking the back of the seat with that paw so hard I felt the seat squeak. The car rocked under the blow; I understood her strength, but where was she getting the mass to shake a ton and a half of plastic and metal? The steering wheel grew damp under my death grip, but I didn’t turn, didn’t back down, didn’t give her any reason to strike.

“If I can find a p—”
don’t say pet,
don’t
say pet
“—a … store,” I said slowly, swallowing as her crackling snarl rippled through the car, “can you wait in the car until I purchase a cage?”

The tiger lowered her head, shaking it. A definite no.

“Great, wonderful,” I said. But I had an idea, and pulled out of the traffic to the left into a nearby driveway so we could turn around. “Don’t worry, Cinnamon,” I said, reaching up to put the gearshift into reverse; when I did so, my hand was trembling. “I know what to do.”

Only when my hand was calm did I flick the Prius in reverse, put my hand on its seat, and look over my shoulder to back up, coming face to face with Cinnamon’s tiger form. Her head was big enough to bite mine off, her body was twisted in rage, her claws were raking the seat—but her voice was mewling in terror, and the human in her eyes was wide and pleading.

“All right,” I said, backing out. “No choice. We go to the werehouse.”