Chapter 14: Brough Ridge

Hattie's mother met us at the top of the ridge road with a shotgun across her arm.

She was a broad woman in a canvas coat, with the same red hair as her daughter gone mostly to grey.

She looked at the stolen Council truck, then at the black cuff on my wrist.

"You've put my whole pack on a bounty list," she said.

"I know," I said. "I'm sorry. We'll go if you say so."

"Don't be stupid, I've known you since you had your front teeth out."

She lowered the gun and hugged her daughter so hard Hattie squeaked.

Then she turned to me.

"I'll shelter you. There's a price."

"Name it."

"My sister went up to Highgate for a Hold, nineteen years ago," she said. "She never came down.

"If you stand in front of that Council, her name gets read out loud. Not whispered in a back room. Read."

"It will be," I said.

She looked at Ansel for a long moment, and he stood there taking it.

"You," she said. "The hound."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Can you chop wood?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Then you can eat."

Supper was in the long kitchen of the main house, with eleven Brough wolves crowded around a table made from a barn door.

There was venison stew, a pan of cornbread, and a lot of shouting.

Dad and Hattie's mother argued about carburetors from the first spoonful.

Hattie's cousins wanted to see the cuff, and then wanted to see the cuff burn a bounty wolf's hand, so I had to tell the diner story twice.

Hattie did the voices.

Ansel sat at the end of the bench, and nobody had told him where to put his hands.

I watched him hold the spoon with both hands.

"Eat," Dad told him, and pushed the cornbread across. "Sit up, son. You're not on duty."

Ansel's head came up at the word.

"Thank you, sir," he said, very low.

Hattie's mother refilled his bowl without a word, and he ate all of it.

Later, when the cousins were arguing over a card game, Hattie caught my sleeve in the doorway.