Page 13 of The Turning of the Tables

I had a poster-size print of a photograph of that wall framed in my room. Noah had laughed and told me he’d give me the concept drawing. But it wasn’t the same. I still took it—I had that, too, also framed.

“Noah?” I was louder this time.

I heard movement. “What, Seth?” came his irritated reply. I didn’t blame him. Noah did not keep normal-people hours. Artists rarely did. He’d worked the five to one a.m. shift last night at Hands and Paws Shelter—that’s how he knew Taavi Camal, Hart’s boyfriend, who also worked there, although Taavi worked much more normal people hours—and part-time. Noah was a chronic night-owl. I’m the opposite. It means we rarely cross over each other—Noah’s in bed when I get up, I’m in bed by the time he gets home. Sometimes we have the same days off, though. That’s nice.

“Is Lulu here?” I asked him through the door. Lulu is Noah’s significant other. We’d fought about Lulu when they’d first started dating because I didn’t think Lulu was good enough for Noah. I still didn’t, but I didn’t really thinkanyonewas good enough for Noah. I’d mostly gotten over it, although Lulu and I were really only civil to each other.

“No, why?” Noah was definitely grumpy with me.

I opened the door. “I just got contact traced,” I told him. “I wasn’t going to open the door if Lulu was here.” Lulu was human, and if I had Arcana, Lulu could have gotten it fromme. I might not be Lulu’s best friend, but I wasn’t about to give them Arcanavirus if I could help it.

Noah blinked blearily up at me, wrapped in a too-long silk robe that had to have been Lulu’s. Lulu was a couple inches taller than Noah, and tended to wear heels that made them even taller than that. Including heeled slippers that I did not understand in the slightest, since I was under the impression that slippers were supposed to be comfort shoes. But whatever—not my feet.

We might be twins, but Noah is slight, much shorter than I am and built more thin and willowy, where I’m basically a human tank. We’re both blond, fair-skinned, blue-eyed, and prone to freckles, I just look like I was destined for an offensive line, and Noah comes in somewhere around ‘figure skater’ rather than ‘football player.’

Fortunately, Noah isn’t susceptible to Arcana anymore—he already had it when we were fifteen, and that’s how he ended up at Hands and Paws, although back then he’d needed the shelter it provided to homeless shifters. I’d somehow not contracted it back then, even though we’d been nearly inseparable. But because Noah was a wolf shifter, he was perfectly safe around me, even if I had gotten infected.

“Work?” he asked, the words coming less thickly now as he woke up, a worried furrow on his brow showing that he was taking this seriously.

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“How do you feel?” he asked, stepping forward and standing on his toes to put one long-fingered hand against my forehead.

“Fine, Nono.”

“Did you have a mask on?”

“Yeah, of course.” And here was why I had dreaded—alittle bit—telling Noah. Because he would go full mother hen on me.

“What happened?”

“The victim had it,” I replied. “And it was still active when the autopsy was done, so everybody at the scene got traced.”

“From yesterday?”

“Yeah.”

“Where did you go other than work?”

“Just work. You know me—I have no life.” I was not going to mention the evening of amazing sex I’d had the daybeforethe case. Because I was not going to talk about my means-nothing sex life with my brother.

Noah gave me a look that said he didn’t believe me.

“What?”

“You didn’t go out again?” he asked.

“Again?” I tried to play dumb. I should know better.

“You were out late the night before,” my incredibly nosy brother said bluntly.

My neck started feeling itchy. “That wasn’t anything. I was just… helping a friend.”

“What friend?” Noah wanted to know. Because Noah lives for gossip, and I am sadly lacking in gossip at least ninety percent of the time.

“A friend of Hart’s actually,” I answered him. “He’s in town to do some work for Ward and Mason.”

Noah’s eyebrows rose. Goddamn it, but I can’t hide anything from him. “A friend of Hart’s,” he repeated.