Maroulla departed, declining Liam’s offer to escort her to her waiting car. He settled himself into the armchair Maroulla had vacated.
“Do you feel better about everything?” he asked.
Naomi took a deep breath, and let it go. “Yes, I was so worried about meeting her, but she was so nice! I’m going to have a tutor to teach me all the stuff I should have learned about Shifters.”
Liam nodded. “Yes, I knew about that. Our Ward here in the Northeast has a couple of Facebook groups, one for official communications and one for general discussion. We’ll get you set up on both of those.” He paused, grimacing. “The discussion one was set up as a direct result of the situation with Beatrice. I don’t know how much of the story you actually know?”
Ducking her head, Naomi avoided his gaze, unable to banish the feelings of guilt, even though she hadn’t been involved, or even knew anything about it. “Only that she was here, stalking Katerina, and she lost her ever-lovin’ mind and broke into Troy’s home to try to kill them both. I haven’t wanted to ask Katerina, it seemed kind of insensitive.”
“Okay, I’ll give you the whole story. Hang on a minute.” He crossed the room to where the refreshments table stood. “Do you want more coffee?”
“No, I’m good.”
He came back, carefully carrying a full cup, and came to sit beside her on the sofa.
“It starts back in the summer. You haven’t met Alessandra and Julian yet, they live on Staten Island. They’re friends with most everyone here, and are a kind of extension of our Other community. Anyway, they were out for a drive in the country, not far from here, when they ran across a cat in distress. Katerina’s sister, uum, her name is Melanthe, I think. She’d been lured into the woods by a shapeshifter, who Changed into a black leopard and attacked her. She found a place to hide where the leopard couldn’t get at her, but she was very pregnant, and was forced to give birth in her Changed form.”
Naomi gasped in horror, and he nodded.
“She had two babies… kittens. But the leopard, it was discovered much later that it was Beatrice, had her trapped in there, a kind of a burrow beneath a fallen log. She finally managed to get out, and found Julian and Alessandra having a picnic nearby. She led them back to where her kittens were hidden in a kind of den deep under a fallen log, where the leopard couldn’t get to them.”
He paused, his expression one of wry amusement. “This is where things get a little complicated. At the time, Julian was a mage who had been cursed to grant wishes as a Djinn, and Alessandra had found his bottle. Anyway, Melanthe had immediately recognized Julian as Other, of course. So she Changed to human and told them what had happened, and led them off into the woods where she’d hidden her kittens. At this point, Beatrice… the leopard… arrived on the scene and confronted them. She was raging, and Julian didn’t have the magical power to protect them, as his magic was bound by the curse. So he called on his Djinn mentor, which was Jacinth. She came, took one look at the leopard, and called for a prince of the Djinn, a guy named Kieran.”
He paused again, and Naomi stared at him with wide eyes.
“You’re making this up,” she accused.
“No! I swear I’m not! So the Djinn prince guy, Kieran, he chases off the leopard. It’s discovered that one of the kittens is so clawed up by the leopard trying to reach it in the den, it’s in dire straits. So Alessandra used one of her wishes for Julian to heal the kitten.”
“Ohmigosh!” Naomi stared at him in delighted amazement. “She did, really? And is it true about there only being three wishes?”
“Yes, and yes.”
“And she used one of them to heal a shapeshifter baby.” Her eyes misted. “Ohmigosh, that’s so amazing, that she’d do that. I can’t wait to meet her.”
“You’ll meet them sooner or later; they come up from the city to visit now and then. Alessandra is an herbalist, and works in hospice. She also freed Julian from his curse, but that’s a rather special story; I’ll leave it to them to tell you. Julian owns an antique shop in Manhattan, I know the women here take the occasional trip into the city just to visit with Alessandra and cruise Whimsies, his shop.”
“I so want to go,” Naomi told him, hugging herself with excitement. “What fun! But okay, go on with the story, you’ve totally got me hooked.”
“Okay, fast forward about a month. Beatrice had apparently set her sights on Douglas. Douglas, however, already had Jacinth living with him as nanny to his children. There’s a tale there, too, but in consideration of moving forward with this story, I’ll let Jacinth tell you the details. Apparently, at that point Beatrice moved her attention to Troy, another partner in the clinic. At this point, keep in mind, no one knew that the Rogue terrorizing the neighborhood was Beatrice. And Beatrice…” he paused for effect, then continued, “…was working at the clinic as a vet tech.”
“Oh, my god!” Naomi shrieked, then clapped her hand over her mouth, casting an apologetic look around the parlor, although it was empty except for the two of them. “Sorry,” she apologized. “But… oh, my god!”
“Right. Beatrice was acting according to our obviously incomplete knowledge of Rogues, clearing the area of any single shapeshifter females. Melanthe was married, by the way, but her husband was off on tour in the Navy, so she was living alone.”
Naomi nodded her understanding. That was the way of the Rogue, to claim a territory for herself and kill any females that could possibly be competition.
“She targeted Katerina next, and managed somehow to provoke a large dog into attacking Katerina, in her cat form, in a park. She was rescued by humans who were in the park, and Troy took her to his home to care for her.”
Holding up her hand for him to pause, Naomi asked, “Did he know about shapeshifters?”
“No, but cats are his specialty at the clinic. Jacinth was caring for the children and couldn’t leave them, so she called the clinic, and Troy went to get Cat. She goes by Cat in her cat form,” he added, and Naomi laughed.
“Okay, what next?”
“Once she was able to Change back, Katerina was afraid to go to her home, where she lived alone, so she found this bed and breakfast, which also is conveniently down the road from Troy’s farm, and moved in here. But as Cat, she stayed with Troy, since she liked him, and, well, you know how that turned out.”
She laughed. “I do! I’ve been invited to the wedding.”
