A Fiend in Need - MaryJanice Davidson Page 0,2

going to Minneapolis.”

“We’re?”

“Sure! I’ll be your cool sidekick. We’ll have adventures and—”

“Stop. Go ahead and jump.”

“Awwwww, come on, Antonia,” she whined. “It’s just the thing I need.”

“It’s the last thing I need. And I don’t bargain with monkeys on Chicago rooftops, okay?”

“Okay, okay, calm down. Just tell me why you’re going and then I’ll climb down. Otherwise, if you leave, you don’t know if I’ll jump or not.”

“You won’t—”

“Just think, you could be minding your own business—”

“It’s what I should have done this morning, by Rayet!”

“—when bam!Giant killer migraine. All because you didn’t hang around and finish a conversation.” Bev slowly shook her head. “Tsk, tsk.”

Antonia scowled down at her. Bev pushed her reddish blond bangs out of her eyes so she could see if the woman was going to dart off over the rooftops to avoid communicating.

“Okay,” she said at last. “I’ll tell you why I’m going and then you climb down and go back to your life and stop with the goofing around on rooftops.”

“Deal,” she said promptly. “So why are you going to Minnesota?”

“Well… the pack lets me hang around because I’m full of useful little tidbits, you know?”

“I can imagine,” Bev said, impressed.

“But the problem is, I think some of them are, um, scared of me. And the ones who aren’t scared don’t like me.”

“I can imag—uh, go on.”

“So there’s the mate thing.”

“You mean, finding a husband?”

“Yeah. It’s a real drive among us, because compared to you guys, there aren’t hardly any of us. And the thing is, nobody wants to be my mate. They don’t know if their children will, um, be like me. And it’s not like I haven’t tried to be nice to guys, right? Even though, if I fooled a guy into mating with me I wouldn’t have much respect for him. But still. It doesn’t matter if I’m nice or awful. Nobody wants to take a chance on a deformed cub.”

“Oh.” Bev’s heart broke a little for the beautiful woman leaning against the ledge. If someone that thin and that pretty can’t get married, there’s no hope for the rest of us, she thought grimly. “So maybe you’ll meet someone in Minneapolis?”

“Well, all my—my visions, I guess you’d call them. All my pictures of the future—and it really is like there’s some sort of divine camera in my head, and the pictures she takes are never wrong—anyway, they were always about somebody else. Michael, your future wife is going to be on the third floor of your building on such and such a day. Derik, you have to go save the world. Mom, if you go out driving in this weather you won’t come back. But they’re never about me, you know?”

“Sure.”

“So, I’m twenty-five, right? That’s old to be an unmated female. And there isn’t a werewolf in Massachusetts—maybe the whole world—who wants me to bear his cubs. So I sat down last week and thought and thought. I was trying to make a vision happen, which I’d never tried before.”

“And it worked?”

“Duh, it worked. I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Oh, you’re back,” Bev said. “Good; it’s harder when I feel sorry for you.”

“Save your pity, monkey. Anyway, this thought pops into my head: If you help the queen, you’ll get what you need.”

“And?”

“And that’s it. Well, almost it… an address popped into my head right after. So off I go.”

“To help the queen and get what you need,” Bev repeated thoughtfully.

“Yup.”

“Why aren’t you flying? Or is it so you can occasionally stop and help a monkey stop doing something silly?”

“Don’t flatter yourself. Fly? Stick myself in a tin can that hurtles through space at a zillion miles an hour, a thousand miles up on the air? Breathing recycled monkey farts and choking down peanuts?” Antonia shuddered. “No nono no no no no.”

“Werewolves are claustrophic?” Bev guessed.

“And the monkey gets a prize!” Antonia patted her, mussing her short red curls. “Good, good monkey!”

Bev knocked her hand away. “Stop that. I can’t help not being as evolved as you are.”

“That’s true,” Antonia said cheerfully. “You can’t.”

“Is that your big problem with humans? We can’t leap tall buildings in a single bound?”

“Not hardly. Although, that’s a good one.”

“So what else?”

“This wasn’t part of our deal.”

“Yes, but…” Bev smiled at her, and Antonia actually blanched. “You’re dying to tell me. You can’t wait to tell me. So… tell me.”

“Okay, you asked for it. Not only are you not evolved— which, granted, you can’t help—but you’re the most rapacious, bloodthirsty species the planet has ever seen. You