Wolf Who Rules

Only when Oilcan turned eighteen, able to be her legal guardian, did they settle back into a normal life. With money from licensing her hoverbike design, she set up her scrap yard business, moved into a loft, and laid claim to a sprawling garage between the two. Her grief, however, had been too fresh to deal with her grandfather's things; Oilcan and Nathan Czernowski packed up them up and stored them away in a room at the back of the garage.

Even now - looking at the small mountain of boxes, draped in plastic, smelling of age - it was tempting to just shut the door on the emotional landmines that the boxes might hold.

" Domi," Pony said quietly behind her. "What are we looking for here?"

"My grandfather created the spell at the ice cream factory. I need to find his notes on it so I can fix it quickly. I figure it's in one of these boxes."

Pony nodded, looking undaunted by the task. "How can we help?"

Backing out of the whole tree mess wasn't really an option; she already had too many people involved. The dust, however, was making her nose itch.

"Can you take these boxes out to the parking pad?" She waved toward the square of sun-baked cement. "After I look through a box, you can put it back."

The first box she opened was actually some of their old racing gear. Inside were a dozen of their FRS walkie-talkies, heavily shielded against magic. She'd upgraded the team to earbuds, and mothballed the handheld radios.

"Score!" she cried. "This is just what I wanted!"

"What are they?" Pony picked one up. "Phones?"

"Close. I want to make it so the Hands can communicate over distance better. These are a little bit clunky but they're easy to use."

Oddly, Stormsong thought this was funny. She took the box, saying mysteriously, "This should be interesting."

***

Tinker supposed it could be worse. Her grandfather had been methodical in organizing his things. Oilcan kept everything carefully separated as he packed the boxes. Still she couldn't find anything filed under Reinholds, Refrigeration, Ice Cream, or the type of compressor that Reinholds used.

" Ze domi," Stormsong murmured politely.

Tinker sighed. Random searching wasn't going to work. "What is it, Stormsong?"

"I want to thank you for yesterday."

"Yesterday?" Tinker found the Aa-Ak box and sat down beside it. "Can you put these boxes in alphabetical order?"

Stormsong started to rearrange the boxes, but switched to English, losing her polite mask. "Look, little one, you're a good kid - your heart is in the right place - so I guess I do have to thank you for that stupidity you pulled yesterday. If you hadn't come back, I'd be dead. But I had made my peace with that - being sekasha is all about choosing your life and your death - so don't ever pull that shit again. You really fucked up. When that thing hit you, you should have been so much dead meat - and would have been a huge waste - because you are a good kid. The kind I would have been happy dying to protect - do you understand?"

Tinker blinked at her for moment, before finding her voice. "I thought I figured out a way to kill it."

"It wasn't your place to kill it."

"What? I lost at paper, scissors, stone?"

"You know what I hate about being a sekasha? It's the domana. We sekasha spend our lives learning the best way to handle any emergency. We train and train and train - and then have to kowtow to some domana who is just winging it because they've got the big guns. Do you know what? Just because you've got the big brains, or the kick ass spells, doesn't mean you know everything. Next fight, shut the fuck up and do what you're told, or I'm going to bitch slap you."

It took Tinker a moment to find her voice. "You know, I think I like you better when you speak Elvish."

Stormsong laughed, "And I like you better when you speak English. You're more human."

Tinker controlled the urge to stick out her tongue. She deserved Stormsong's criticism since she had screwed up. Still, she suddenly felt like crying. Oh joy. The last few weeks had left her rubbed raw. Instead, she pushed the Aa-Ak box toward Stormsong, saying, "I'm done with this one," and moved on. At least, having had her say, Stormsong took the box away without comment.

Under "Birth" Tinker found birth certificates for everyone in the family but herself. She pulled Oilcan's and had Stormsong put it in the car. Under "Dufae" she found the original Dufae Codex carefully sealed in plastic. She'd only worked with the scanned copy that her father made.

"Wow." That too she pulled out and had put in the Rolls to take home with her. The next book started with E's, and toward the back was a thick file folder marked simply: Esme. "What the hell?"

Tinker pried the file out of the box, flipped it open and found Esme Shanske looking back. She ruffled quickly through the file. It was all information on Esme. NASA bios. Newspaper clippings. Photographs. It threw her into sudden and complete confusion.