Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
“A bout half of the community who live in single-family homes own their own forms of transportation to get around the ranch. We don’t allow full-sized vehicles beyond the parking lot,” Henri jumped right into his explanation as we left through the door at the back of the building. It was next to the huge living room slash conference area where we had met the elders when we’d arrived.
Before the start of my tour, we had taken a quick detour after leaving the nursery and gone to check on Matti and Sienna. My conscience wouldn’t allow me to leave without making sure they were okay. I’d had an upset stomach more times than I could count, but they hadn’t. I’d peeked in the door, with Henri at my back, and found my friends passed out. After a quick refill of their glasses of water from the tap—Henri had explained they had an excellent filtration system for the whole building—I’d snuck back out without waking them up. They’d still looked like s-h-i-t.
Outside, there was a giant metal building directly behind the clubhouse that I hadn’t noticed yesterday. Along the front of it were three oversized garage doors, one of which was open, revealing rows of golf carts, UTVs, and I didn’t know what else. He gestured to it. “Everything in there is available to anyone who lives here, but we ask that you clean whatever you use if you get it muddy, plug it in to charge if the battery is low, and return it as soon as possible in case someone else needs to borrow it. No one will steal your belongings, but don’t leave them in the vehicles.”
I said, “All right,” since he was ahead of me and couldn’t see me nod.
“We’ll take one now so we can get around faster,” he said, entering through the opened bay.
Knowing exactly what he was doing and where everything was, he unplugged the first side-by-side two-seat all-terrain vehicle in the front row. It had a short bed in the back. From where I stood, there were multiple cables strewn across the floor, some of them connected to the sides of golf carts, but most of them were hung up on hooks along the walls.
“Are they electric?” I asked when I got to the garage door.
He kept doing what he was doing. “Some. The ones in front are. We replace them as the older UTVs stop working, and only when they’re beyond repair. Nobody likes the smell of gas, but it’s wasteful to get rid of them if they’re still running. The tanks are kept low. If you use one, you need to put gas in it. There are portable tanks along the wall in the back. We write the dates of when we fill them up so we can use the oldest ones first when needed. Keep an eye out for that.”
“All right,” I agreed again. “Where does the gas come from?”
“Someone takes them into town to fill them up every week or two,” he explained. “Leave the keys in when you return them. Back them in, if you can.”
I pressed my lips together, fighting the urge… and I lost it. I smirked. “Yes, sir.” My friend’s cousin leaned to the side of where he was by the ATV, and I gave him a little smile.
Just as quickly as he’d appeared, he was gone again, setting the cord he’d been holding over one of the random hooks on the walls. “Ready?”
At the vehicle, I slid onto the bench and buckled the thick seat belt across my chest and lap. Henri did the same, then started the UTV and pulled out of the building, turning a hard right almost immediately onto one of the wide gravel paths that connected the structures in the community together.
The trees soared over us, old and majestic. I wondered what they’d look like in the fall. Some of them were bound to change color; they weren’t all pine. The air somehow seemed even fresher and more inviting than it had yesterday. I wasn’t subtle about taking in more than one big lungful of it, my skin reacting just as much as my nose did, goose bumps popping up along my arms.
But as I glanced to the side to ask Henri if the magic in the air affected him, I kept my question to myself.
He was glaring forward. The angle of his jaw was strained, and I was pretty sure the muscle between his cheek and ear was kind of bulging. His bone structure gave him a striking profile.
I had to stop checking him out sometime soon.
“You all right, Fluffy?” I asked him, noticing that his lips were pinched.
“Yes.”
I called BS on that from the way his back molars seemed clamped together at the moment, but all right. “Okay.”
He didn’t want to confide in me? That was fine. He’d made that clear in the kitchen, hadn’t he?
I focused on the homes and buildings that I’d only seen from a distance. For the most part, they were all the same size, with some slightly bigger than others. A woman standing outside of a small cabin waved as we drove by, and I was only mildly surprised when Henri greeted her back. I did too, figuring I needed to be friendly with my, hopefully, future neighbors.
Only after that did I let myself peek again at the broody-looking man to my left.
How does he feel about mating?
I looked away.
Ahead, the path we were on split. There were multiple ones that wound through the trees; none of them were paved, but they were all in good condition and free of debris. I’d lived at enough campgrounds to know how often weeds grew and overran everything . The gravel mini roads connected every building either to a main path or, in a few cases, to each other. There were even speed signs with the number 5 every hundred or so feet. While the forest was thick, plenty of sunlight snuck through, making the village seem just as unreal as it had the night before. It was adorable.
It was so adorable.
I couldn’t help but “ooh” and “ahh.” There were so many cabins and houses tucked in the trees. Most of them were log homes, blending into the surroundings perfectly, but there were a few that seemed new, painted neutral shades, with metal siding halfway up them.
The man behind the wheel drove a whole 7 miles an hour down the road. Eventually, we slowed down when we got by a house with a fenced-in garden. In one of the beds, a little boy was kneeling, and at the sound of us approaching, he lifted his head.
It was Shiloh.
With a white T-shirt covered in multicolored handprints, his satyr legs tucked under him, my new friend had the most mournful expression on his face. It managed to get even worse when he must have realized it was us, because he looked even sadder as he lifted his arm and waved, a small shovel in his hand.
“I’m not slowing down to talk to him. Part of his punishment for running off is that he’s grounded, and that means no socializing. His family asked everyone to not come by their house until he’s not in trouble anymore.”
I winced, but I’d been grounded before. “Is Pascal in trouble too?”
“Big trouble.”
Henri and I both waved as we drove past the house, and I snuck a glance over my shoulder afterward to find Shiloh staring after us.
I waved at him again as slyly as I could, and that earned me a cute smile and a happier wave.
“He’ll be all right,” the man beside me promised, probably noticing what I’d done but not bothered too much by it.
Soon after that, Henri pointed toward a newer structure that kind of looked like a home but didn’t at the same time. There weren’t enough windows. Two satellite dishes were mounted to the metal roof. “That’s the teenagers’ building. Anyone is technically allowed in, but we try to give them their own space in there.”
The teenagers here had their own space? “That’s so nice,” I told him. “How many teenagers live here?”
We kept driving. “Between the ages of thirteen and eighteen? Eighteen.”
“Wow.”
He nodded and pointed at a discreet-looking brown building off into the distance. “We’re on a community well. Someone is usually doing something to maintain it. We try to conserve water as much as possible. Keep that in mind while you’re with us.”
While you’re with us.
Beyond all the homes, we came to a huge field with five massive greenhouses. He explained that they grew as much food as they could, that everyone was expected to participate in their upkeep, but that there were two members who worked in the greenhouses exclusively as a full-time job.
There were also several henhouses and another structure where they grew mushrooms for the community’s herbivores and omnivores.
After that, Henri drove me to a field of solar panels and told me all about how the ranch used a mix of solar, wind, and hydropower from a nearby river to provide electricity for the entire property. He also stressed the importance—again—of conservation and how much work it was to keep this place running in harmony.
Matti hadn’t exaggerated with his warning about everyone pulling their weight around here. In the distance, we spotted more vehicles that he explained were the ranch’s employees getting around to do their duties.
We had just waved at an older man peeking through his front window when Henri asked, “Is there anything you’re good at?”
Keeping my attention through the windshield, I folded my hands on my lap and made a decision. Then I peeked at him. “Making quesadillas. Kickball. I’m really good at whistling.”
The way Henri turned to look at me….
I smiled.
Another muscle in his cheek, this one higher and further away from his jaw, flexed. “Being a brat too, I see.”
I burst out laughing . “Are you kidding me? I’ve never been a brat.”
He faced forward, that cheek muscle popping again. Was he trying not to smile? Because that’s kind of what it looked like to me.
“I was just trying to cheer you up, you look tense, but shouldn’t the elders have asked me about that before they agreed to let me stay? You’re trying to figure out how I can help around here, aren’t you?”
“No and yes.” He wiped his expression clean the same way he had yesterday, like that was something he was used to doing, he did it so easily. Going from being a little amused to all business that fast was a talent. Or maybe it took a lot of practice. “Everyone contributes regardless of what they’re comfortable doing.” The side of his mouth twitched. “The kids are our road maintenance crew. They keep the paths clear.”
I snorted. “Are you serious?”
He was. “They make it a game; it isn’t child labor.”
They’d thought of everything. Literally everything. This place was a well-oiled machine.
“There’s another section where we have other buildings,” he explained just as his phone rang. Henri pulled it out, took in the screen for a moment, and answered. “Henri.”
Henri now. Not Blackrock. I catalogued that for later.
He listened, and his eyes narrowed by the second. “Where?... Send me the coordinates. I’ll be there as soon as I can. … I can’t go straight there. I’m by the greenhouses, and I’ll need to stop by the clubhouse first.”
I cleared my throat, but nothing happened. I did it again, louder, in the middle of him doing a full U- turn with one hand. “Ahem,” I tried for the third time.
Nothing.
I stuck my hand in front of his face and wiggled my fingers. That finally did it. “If this is an emergency, I can go with you.”
His eyebrows slammed down, flat.
“You’re wasting time,” I told him like he didn’t already know that. He’d mentioned the greenhouses and the clubhouse; whatever was going on was ranch business. “Let’s go.”
I could tell he was contemplating my offer from the way his eyes bounced from one of mine to the other, but so much faster than I would have expected, he nodded. “You won’t get in the way.”
Not a question but a statement, and I barely managed not to sigh or wink at him. “Yes, Fluffy. I will not get in the way, and we can pinky swear on it if you want.”
He put the phone back to his cheek and said he’d be there soon.
Then the werewolf man broke the community’s 5 mile an hour speed limit even more by 5 whole miles and took us off the path.
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