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Teresa hesitated. Her gaze dropped to my shoulder, then came back to my face.

“Okay,” she said. “Nakhil can take me.”

I nodded, and she turned and walked away.

9

TERESA

“Thank the gods you’re here,” Drev said as he burst through the door to Otho’s clinic two days after my disastrous last encounter with Rauf. “Come take a look at this.”

“Is it your goat?” I was repaying my debt to Otho for the supplies I’d taken from the clinic and I’d been on my feet since the moment I’d stepped through the doors, rushing to fulfill his commands. He was a harsh taskmaster. Or just a busy one.

Anne couldn’t get back soon enough.

“No, Goataro is doing well.”

“What did you call him?” I’d heard plenty of strange animal names before, but hearing something that sounded like a diminutive come out of a minotaur’s mouth was… bizarre.

Drev shrugged. “He needed a name.”

Drev was already heading back toward the door. I grabbed my bag from under the counter and followed him, ignoring Otho when he called after me.

The farm’s truck was parked outside. I thought of it as Rauf’s, and for a moment I expected him to get out and come toward me. The cab was empty.

I’d spent the last two days of trying to forget what it felt like to kiss Rauf, which was proving impossible when I could still remember how eagerly he’d kissed me back. I couldn’t think about it without wanting to go right back and finish what we’d started.

I was beginning to worry everyone in town could tell what had happened.

“Drev, I’m not sure I can come out to the farm today.” I stopped beside the cab.

“It’s here.” He waved me around to the back.

A goat-shaped lump lay beneath a tarp in the truck bed. Drev pulled it back, and I climbed onto the rear step to examine the body.

“We found him by the clearing,” he said. “Near where we found the others. All but Goataro.”

I put on gloves and lifted the goat’s lip. There was something black around his mouth. At first I thought it was mud, but when I rubbed a little between my fingers, it felt greasy.

“Did you see anything oily out there?” I held up my hand so Drev could see. “It looks like this one ate something.”

“And that’s why it died?”

“I really can’t say. You said you found it in the clearing?”

“Nearby.”

I looked back at the clinic. Otho still had a couple of hours of my time coming, and he’d probably found twice that much work for me to do. Drev could go back and look around while I finished here. I could give him a bottle in case he found more of the black stuff.

But I wanted to see Rauf.

I could look for whatever this goat had eaten without ending up in his bed. Couldn’t I?

“Let’s go see if we can find this stuff,” I said. “It might give us a clue.”

Drev reached for the tarp, then hesitated.

“Does Rauf know you came to see me?”