“How can I not feel sorry for her, believing she’s destined to turn evil, and not wanting to?” Tamera asked. She looked at Kester beside her. “Isn’t there, like, some way to prove she’s innocent? Not only right now, but that she won’t turn Rogue in the future?”
“Not unless you can look into her soul,” he told her. “Hey! What about that Djinn prince guy?”
Katerina shook her head. “He reads minds. Thoughts, you know? He can’t see if she’s going to turn Rogue if even she doesn’t know. All he’d see is that she is worried about turning, which we already know from Liam.”
“Unless, of course, she really is one and is manipulating the situation,” Kester put in.
“She’s not!” Liam insisted, feeling the slow burn of anger forming. “For God’s sake, she’s locked herself into a leopard enclosure at the zoo for the last year, to keep from hurting anyone. Why would she do that, if her goal is to be out hunting and killing?”
Troy thought that over. “If she knows we caught her mother and sisters, and Beatrice, she’s bound to know the Council knows about her and is looking for her. So she does this, to make it look like she’s innocent.” He raised his hands in a peaceful gesture. “I’m not saying that’s what’s going on here. I’m just bringing up possibilities.”
“And that reminds me,” Liam told them. “Naomi didn’t even know about the Council. She was never taught that Shifters have laws, either. Hell, she didn’t even know Djinn actually existed! Also, she locked herself in that zoo long before Beatrice arrived here in the Valley.”
“How old is she?” Katerina asked. “And what’s she been doing, up until the time she got herself into that zoo?”
Liam looked chagrined. “I didn’t think to ask,” he admitted.
Tamera had her laptop out in a flash. “What’s her name? I’m going to assume she was living and working somewhere in New York City.”
“Naomi Kerrigan.”
Her fingers tapped across the smooth surface, and suddenly she began to laugh.
“What?” Katerina demanded.
“She’s twenty-five years old, and… a librarian!”
Liam felt his jaw drop. “A librarian?”
Katerina hooted. “The Rogue Librarian… I love it!”
“She’s not a Rogue,” Liam said testily, but both women were giggling, and he rolled his eyes.
“It sounds like the title of a bad romance novel. Where did they find her family? What city?” Tamera finally asked, wiping her eyes as her hilarity faded.
“Um, Palm Beach, I believe.”
“Right,” Tamera confirmed, scrolling down the window she still had open on her laptop. “She graduated with a Major in Library Sciences, and after that it looks like she moved to Sarasota and worked a couple of years in a public library before heading up this way. Oh, my gosh!”
“What?” Katerina demanded, and Tamera looked up, grinning.
“She was on staff with the public library in New York City, on their new Bookmobile!”
“Seriously? Oh. Em. Gee. I like her already!”
“I know, right?”
Kester frowned. “Hello? Possible killer Rogue?”
“A Bookmobile librarian?” Katerina scoffed at her brother. “Not a chance.”
Troy mumbled, “Women!” under his breath, and Liam cast him a sympathetic glance.
Liam’s phone buzzed, and he read the incoming text. “It’s Maroulla. She wants to FaceTime,” he told them.
“I’ve got this,” Tamera said, opening up a window on her computer and connecting the app. She smiled as the elderly woman’s face appeared on the screen. “Hi, Maroulla. I’m here with Kester, Katerina, and Troy. And Liam, of course.”
“Excellent. Well, first things first,” Maroulla said decisively. “We had a quick Council meeting on Zoom and discussed the situation. We all agreed that we have to get that young woman out of there, and back into human form. Spending months as her cat isn’t helping the issue at all. We’ll take care of getting her released to us on our end. We’ll have the Sanctuary work up documentation, have her reported as being an exotic pet, and suggest that apparently someone dumped her at the zoo. It’s not ideal, but the important thing is to get her out as expeditiously as possible.”
