Meg retrieved a notepad and pen and wrote down the three sets of cards in their proper order, and then added the communication card. She left the pad on the counter, facedown. Then she scooped up all the cards and dumped them in the drawer. She would ask Henry to make her a special box big enough to hold all the decks. A box with a lock. A lock with two keys. She would keep one. Who should hold the other? Simon? No, too easy to find a key if left at Howling Good Reads or his apartment. Henry or Tess?

Grandfather Erebus. Yes, the Sanguinati should hold the other key to the box.

There was no evidence of what anyone had been doing in the sorting room by the time Nathan leaped over the counter and came in to sniff around. A Wolf didn’t need evidence. His growls made it clear that he knew exactly who shouldn’t have been in the sorting room.

He trotted into the back room and returned a minute later in human form, wearing a T-shirt, denim shorts, and sandals—clothes he’d left in a bin in the storage area.

“I need to talk to Simon.” Nathan gave her a hard stare. “Are you expecting any deliveries?”

“No.” A message, yes, but not a delivery.

“Jake will keep watch and give warning if anyone comes in.”

“Okay.”

She waited. Winced when she heard HGR’s back door slam. Then she braced her hands on the counter beneath the sorting room’s open window and shouted, “Henry? Henry, I need to see you.”

Not telling Nathan about the cards was one thing. But someone needed to know. And it had to be someone who could know about the terra indigene prophecy cards that were mixed in with make-believe images.

When Henry walked in, Meg picked up the notepad and hugged it to her chest. “I don’t know what it means, but there’s something you need to see.”

•••

Gathered in HGR’s office with Henry and Vlad, Simon stared at the paper with Meg’s list of images. “We don’t have any bison in the Courtyard—at least, not on the hoof.” They’d killed the one yearling they kept and had packed every available freezer with bison meat, but there was no reason for Meg to see a vision about that. “And the terra indigene in Talulah Falls wouldn’t use revolvers or rifles to kill the bison we gave them.”

“Rifles,” Henry said. “The bison are killed with rifles.”

“There’s a revolver on the card too.”

“I don’t think Meg saw the revolver. She wrote down ‘rifle’ because that’s what she saw.”

Vlad rubbed his chin. “Selective seeing when there is more than one object on a card? That’s an interesting thought.”