There was a chorus of assents, and Tamera ended the call. She sat back against the loveseat cushions, leaning into Kester’s embrace.
“Well, this will be interesting.”
“I feel sorry for her,” Katerina said, her gaze moving from face to face. “If she really is an innocent in all this, I mean… can you imagine, growing up with your mother and aunt being Rogues, and encouraging you and your sisters to go out and… and kill people, you know?”
“From what she told me, the girls were expected to be Rogue,” Liam confirmed. “Naomi was the odd one out for not wanting to be. Although she didn’t say so, I got the impression she took some abuse for not falling in line with the rest of them.”
“I’m going to suggest that Jacinth be here, for the initial meeting,” Troy rumbled. His concerned gaze rested on Katerina’s face. “She was the one that was able to identify Beatrice at that carnival you went to.”
Katerina nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll ask her. Even if none of us sense anything off about her, I think we’ll all be able to breathe more easily if Jacinth confirms.”
“I concur,” Tamera said. “So… now we wait.”
“Now we wait.”
Chapter5
“Okay, we’ve got a go,”Liam strode into Troy’s office two days later, phone in hand. “We can pick her up from the zoo this afternoon, or any time after. I get the feeling they’re anxious to get rid of her.”
Troy glanced at the clock on his desk. “Douglas is just in from his rounds in the barn, let me see if he can cover.”
A quick phone call later, Troy picked up the file on the desk before him. “Douglas is a go. If you can give me ten minutes to get these prescriptions called in, I can drive. We’ll take the mobile van. Not only will we look official, it’s got plenty of room in back for her cage, plus room to move around once we’re away and she can Change.”
“I have to admit, when I went into veterinary practice, this was far from what I had in mind,” Troy admitted as they pulled away from the clinic, half an hour later. “I knew nothing of shifters, or Rogues, or Djinn, or anything.”
“I heard that your introduction to our world was a little dramatic,” Liam said.
Troy snorted. “My cat turning into my girlfriend—naked, no less—and a wild leopard clawing its way through my front door. We were saved by Katerina’s friend, Jacinth, who turned out to be a Djinn, and some Djinn prince, who then whisked us away immediately to testify before your Council. I’d say it was a bit dramatic.”
Liam winced. “Uh, yeah. In fact, that sounds more traumatic than dramatic.”
“You got that right. But it turned out all right.” The big vet smiled, flexing his fingers on the steering wheel as he pulled into traffic on the highway. “It was worth it, to have Katerina in my life. I was solitary until then. Had my dog, my horses. Now there’s the Kazakis family, and shifters, and Djinn, and now the group from Morocco.”
“And let’s not forget the mysterious couple who run the bed and breakfast,” Liam added with a laugh. “Maroulla said no one even suspected they weren’t strictly human, until those kidnappers from Morocco came after Tamera the second time.”
“Lethal, too. Not that Mahmoud, or Stephan, or whatever his name really was…. didn’t deserve it, given what he’d put those women through. But death by quicksand.” He grimaced expressively. “Not a great way to go.”
Liam turned in his seat to stare at Troy. “Quicksand?”
“You hadn’t heard that part, huh?”
“Not a word.”
“Apparently Angus can put up, uh, I guess what you’d call magical defenses. Or something. Intruders coming onto his property with ill intent—and yes, that’s how it was explained to me—sink in quicksand. A couple guys with tranq guns tried for Tamera, a few days after she returned from Morocco, and got caught in it. They were rescued by some shifters who’d been keeping an eye on the Inn, and sent to the Council. But the top guy, who called himself Mahmoud, even though that was apparently not his real name, he came after Tamera when she was out in the woods. She climbed high in a tree to hide from him, and he got sucked into the quicksand, and that was that for him.”
“That’s… disturbing,” Liam decided, his flesh creeping at the thought.
“Yeah, no joke. Apparently the ground is perfectly fine for anyone else. Katerina swears she’s been over those woods gazillion times in her cat form, and there’s no quicksand.”
Liam thought that over. “So, the land itself is… sentient? It somehow knows someone’s intentions,” he ventured cautiously, “and turns to quicksand under the feet of bad guys?”
“Apparently.”
Thinking of roaming through woods with hidden, potentially sentient quicksand, made Liam gulp. “I’m not sure I could go in there, now that I know.”
“I’m with you on that.”
When they reached the zoo, Liam directed Troy through the maze of parking lots and service roads to the back, where several zoo employees waited for them, gathered around a medium-sized cage resting on the sidewalk.
