Chapter 6: Three A.M.

The first one came in at three in the morning, four days later, while the rye was in the oven.

I heard the bell and came out wiping my hands, ready to tell whoever it was we didn't open till six.

A wolf-kin woman was standing just inside the plywood door in a parka over pajama pants.

She was tall and gray-eared, about thirty, with her tail tucked so hard between her legs it was almost out of sight.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I know you're closed. I'm the one who wrote six years."

Behind her, two more women were waiting on the sidewalk under the streetlight, not quite willing to come in.

One was a lynx-kin girl with tufted ears and a nose ring, maybe twenty-three, hugging herself.

The other was a big bear-kin woman in her late thirties.

She had a scarf wound up to her chin and a grocery bag in one hand.

"We found each other in your comments," the wolf-kin bride said. "Three is when they're all asleep."

I held the door open.

"Come in before you freeze."

They sat on flour sacks in the back because there wasn't anywhere else.

I put cardamom buns in front of them still too hot to touch.

The lynx-kin girl ate one in four bites, burned her mouth, and started crying, and then started laughing at herself for crying.

"Sorry," she said. "I haven't eaten since my last Heat. Nothing stays down."

"How many?" I asked.

"Three. He's a cat-kin too, he's twenty-five, his father's on the port board." She wiped her face. "He says I smell desperate."

The bear-kin woman unwound her scarf.

Her hands weren't.

Her knuckles were swollen and red, and her fingers shook when she reached for her bun.

"Eleven years," she said. "Forty-four Heats. The last one, my kidneys started doing something the healer didn't like. He gave me a pamphlet."

"Same pamphlet," said the wolf-kin bride. "Blue one, with the sunset."

"I've got that pamphlet," I said.

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