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Hundreds of schoolchildren crossed at the intersection of Lincoln and Hook, and Miranda and Delilah sat in silence.
“Why did you lie to me?” Delilah couldn’t mask the pain in her voice.
Miranda turned to Delilah and looked at her sympathetically in spite of the pedestrian line now ending. Several horns honked behind her in response.
“Sweetie, I never wanted to lie to you,” Miranda said, lightly brushing Delilah’s cheek and finding a tear running down. “I knew you were running from something, and I wanted to keep you safe. That’s all it is.”
Miranda put the car back into motion, acknowledging the rude insistence behind her. The remaining car ride was mostly silent.
They were coming up on a huge spread of neon lights to their front left, all advertising Fang Tech products and different shops, accompanied by holographic billboards. Miranda stopped across the street from an empty, narrow alley, going to great lengths to avoid parallel parking.
Delilah started to open her door, but Miranda interrupted.
“Before we go…” Miranda paused, seeming to collect her thoughts. “I feel terrible about what I did to you. You know I never intended toforceyou to confront your fears like that.”
Delilah played with her hands in her lap, trying to cheer herself up.
“But I was the only one who could help you,” Miranda added. “My options were either to let you roam the streets and risk losing you or to traumatize you. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to live with myself, but I’m going to protect you from now on, no matter what.”
Delilah fell still. She wasn’t sure if she could ever completely forgive Miranda, but she didn’t want to torture her either. So, for now, for Miranda, she would try to act happy, and hopefully her happiness would become real.
“For now, try to follow me!” Miranda called out as she opened the car door. “It’s easy to get lost here!”
They stepped out of the car and onto the busy street. Cars were blaring by, and the wait to cross was interminable, but they made it and Miranda headed into the shallow alley, Delilah following close by.
“What’s funny is for all that time we spent stuck in traffic, we probably could have just walked,” Miranda announced absentmindedly.
Delilah thought Miranda might have been screwing with her, leading her into an empty alley like this. She looked at her for some hint that this was an elaborate practical joke.
Miranda moved her hand up to a rusted electrical box that looked like it was from the fifties. Delilah wasn’t sure what Miranda was doing until she pushed a well-concealed button on the side of it and it opened up, revealing a modern number pad.
“I can never quite remember this,” Miranda said, pulling out her phone. “Oh, you’re standing a bit obvious to cars, Delilah. Can you move over a bit?”
Delilah obliged.
Miranda punched a long complex sequence of numbers into the number pad, emphasizing that the long code was to prevent people from stumbling in. Just then, an innocuous panel in the wall slid open. Delilah would have never noticed it. There was no visible seam.
“You can access our shops from the street, but not the park,” Miranda said. “This is a protective measure… an extra layer of safety just in case. Graham developed it when he realized you couldn’t just have an open-air shifter haven in the middle of the city and not take precautions.”
Delilah followed Miranda down a dark layer of stairs leading to a bar. As Delilah made her way through, the patrons all stared at her, recognizing she didn’t belong. Walking past table after table of shifters was incredibly bothersome to Delilah, even if she was glad to see her kin from so many walks of life.
“Don’t mind them.” Miranda waved at a few shifters. “This is neutral territory. If anybody attacks anybody here, they’re thrown out and shamed for life.”
“Good to know.” Delilah tried to avoid eye contact with everybody as much as possible.
“Shifters from all walks come here, but it’s mostly home to the Grimmaw and Sable packs,” Miranda told her as they exited the building, coming to a large open plaza.
Curiously, the businesses all appeared to be access points to rear, not front, entrances.
“What is there to do here?” Delilah asked, marveling at all the businesses. She saw a boutique, several restaurants, a teahouse, a large skyscraper, a thrift store, and a marketplace.
“Pretty much what you see!” Miranda said. “I think the only things you can’t see from here are the gardens and the park. The garden is just down the hill, if you follow the path down, and you’ll find the park at the edge of the path, too.”
“People don’t ask questions about any of this?” Delilah wondered as they came to a teahouse. The alpha and beta were sitting there at one of the tables, and Delilah told herself not to be nervous.
“We just tell them it’s employees only,” the alpha said. “Most people leave it at that. And if a passing airplane flies overhead and sees what we keep here, it’s no big deal. It’s not like we transform in the middle of the square.”
“I’m not sure if you were properly introduced yesterday,” Miranda said, gesturing toward the two of them. “This is Graham. He’s alpha of the Grimmaw pack. He and Jude, the beta, run Fang Tech together.”
