Joe nodded. “Jack might stick around for a few days—just to help you keep an eye on the new pup. I know,” he added before Honey could interrupt. “You can handle yourself and your family. But we feel responsible bringing him here. We just want to make sure he fits in and doesn’t try to hurt anybody.”

Honey looked down the slope.

I have a good feeling about Rabedy, she said. Anwatan was right to spare him, and you were right to bring him here. He has the potential to grow up strong and true.

“That’s all we can ask of anyone, darling—you and me included.”

He stood up and brushed the dirt from his jeans.

You’ll be back? she asked.

“Yeah, and I won’t be so long about it, either—that’s a promise. But you’ve got to promise me that the next time you get a hankering to walk in Raven’s world and hang around outside our building, you come up to the door and let us offer you some hospitality.”

I think I can do that.

Joe let a mock growl rise up in his chest.

“You do that,” he said, “or I’ll know the reason why.”

She bumped her head against his thigh.

You’re such a tough lone wolf, she teased. How does Cassie ever put up with you?

“With lots and lots of patience.”

He started down the slope to join the others, Honey padding at his side, her laughter ringing in his mind.

Grey

The way Raven had talked about the air and water clans that were coming, I’m expecting a turnout of all kinds of different tribes of cousins, but when we get to the meeting field, the only air cousins are corbae. Oh, there’s a big representation of the water clans, fresh and salt water, but the only birds are crows and ravens. Jackdaws, rooks, and magpies—local ones, as well as a pair of our mottled Australian cousins. I spy a few jays, but they’re mostly blue and none of them are kin.

We all come as five-fingered beings as a courtesy to the water clans who might have had trouble travelling here otherwise, and we’re now a couple hundred cousins gathered here on a peninsula not far from the city. The meeting field’s a big expanse of flat rock, duned beach, and grasslands, surrounded by the lake on three sides and a forest on the remaining fourth.

Dawn’s waking on the eastern horizon by the time everybody has gathered, and Raven’s people walk Odawa out into the middle of the big circle that’s formed. The trees behind us are black with crows and ravens and other blackbirds, sticking to their avian shapes. I wonder if the crow girls are among them, because I don’t see them on the meeting field.