Page 54 of Legally Mated
“Give the boy a prize! Yep, that’s your man. And yourroadblock.”
“What was hedoing?”
Ravi leaned back and hooked one elbow over the back of his chair, his other arm stretched out along the side of the table. “The usual kind of thing that happens in this situations, except he had more material to work with. You sure you want todothis?”
Laine pulled his pie back over in front of him and picked up his fork. “You said youlikedhim.”
“I do. But—and this is something that never ceases to surprise me—I like you too. If you stick your foot in this, you’re going to make at least one enemy for sure,maybemore.”
“That’s never stopped mebefore.”
“I think this goes beyond your tendency to remind judges that you’re just as familiar with the nuances of the law astheyare.”
Laine shrugged. “I’lllive.”
Ravi stared at him for a moment, then shook his head in disbelief. “You’re fucking crazy, youknowthat?”
“Whatever you say. Just tell me what youfoundout.”
“Well, first off, did you know that Balding grew up near the Salma Woodenclave?”
Laine paused, his fork jammed in the middle of his pie. “No, I hadn’t paid that much attention to him, until you mentioned him before. What’s that got to do withanything?”
“I’ve got this friend who teaches at the Iowa University. Sociology. So I called him up and asked him what he knew about the shifter enclaves, and he told me about a study that was done back in the sixties on human attitudes toward shifters and their relation to how near the people were to anenclave.”
“I’m surprised anyone would care.” Laine pushed the pie away again. What he’d already eaten sat in his stomach like lead. “I’m not going to like this,amI?”
Ravi shrugged. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know if it’s useful, but I know you don’t like to discount anything before you’ve heard it.” Laine nodded, and Ravi continued. “So, they did the study because there was a short-lived peace, love, love-thy-neighbor movement around sixty-five, sixty-six, and some people wanted to see the shifters included in that, and someone knew someone who held the strings to a very small purse, and that’s how our study was born. Anyway, turns out that the closer you live to an enclave, and the longer you live that close, the more negative you feel about them. People in the cities don’t mostly care, unless there’s an enclave not far, but even then, it’s the people out in the countryside that hold the worst opinions and tell the most extreme stories. I can get you a copy of it if you want, it was surprisingly interestingreading.”
Laine ignored that for a moment. “And Balding lived close toSalmaWood?”
“Spitting distance,” Ravi said with cheerful emphasis. “But, that brings me to the next lead, and if you want to cough up the money for it, I’ll find someone out there to look into itforyou.”
“You think somethinghappened?”
“I think the depth of his rage at them indicates an incident of some sort. And as I started interviewing his old students, I started noticing a pattern. It’s like he’s convinced that shifters are just waiting for any opportunity to attackhumans.”
That wasn’t a promising thought. “So, there was anattack?”
Ravi shrugged. “I’ve got a friend down that way, we used to go drinking together before I moved to the Land of Elvis. You want me to ask him if he can throw a few hoursatit?”
“Sure.” Laine stopped and thought about it for a moment. “Maybe more than a few, if he finds out something useful.” Balding was a good lawyer in his day, smart, completely in control. He’d only started teaching when a heart-attack had left him with too little working cardiac muscle to stand up to the long days of an active law practice. It would be hard to find something on him around here, even harder to use it without getting crushed. But an old story? From before he learned thatcaution?
This could be just the stick heneeded.
Chapter45
Quin and Hollandfinished Mutch’s tour of the enclave the day after we approved the contracts. While he was there, Mutch and Quin signed the one turning funds over to the omegas, that being the only trust that already had enough people to sit on the full board, and offered to contact the short list of humans that Quin had pulled together who could be considered for the other boards. I’d asked Holland about including Laine on that list, and he’d tilted his head to one side and given me a considering look, but when the list was printed, Laine’s was there, on the board of the education trust. I’d smiled my thanks at Holland, who’d accepted it gravely, as an Alpha’s Mateshould.
The day after that, the omegas gathered in Holland’s kitchen for breakfast and strategizing. Well, the omegas and I. Bax, Jason, Holland, Cale, and Seosamh, plus me. We filled the chairs around the kitchen table, our tiny cabal. Ready to upset the world order as we knew it, with our pens and paper and our hereticalthinking.
The board of directors of Prytulok Mercy Hills.Sanctuary MercyHills.
Holland bounced Zane against his chest. The baby was noisy, cranky, and a patch of dampness was growing on the shoulder of Holland’s t-shirt. “He’s teething,” Holland told us, and I gathered from the rest of them that it was normal for the baby to be like this when his teeth werecomingin.
“So Bram’s okay being on the health care board instead of this one?” Jasonasked.
Bax nodded. “It’s more his interest, and between him and Adelaide, they’ll know what they want, and what they need. Adelaide’s already making up a list, and Bram’s going to ask around and see if anyone at the college is interested in being a part of it too.” He dumped out a box of cookies onto a plate in the middle of the table, and got up to go check on the coffee maker, burbling away on thecounter.
