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Delilah looked at the notes on the fridge absentmindedly. Several discussed the importance of labeling and dating your food then there were some passive-aggressive comments written underneath them.
“I mean, I guess not…” Delilah finally admitted.
“Exactly,” Jude said.
“If we go to the park, will Miranda be there too?” Delilah asked. “I’d kind of like to hear her side of the story.”
“Miranda will be there,” Graham said. “She’s in the Grimmaw pack, too.”
Delilah bit her bottom lip. “Okay.”
“Okay?” Graham asked.
“Okay. I’ll go with you,” Delilah said. “As long as Miranda’s coming, I’ll tag along.”
She went back to the front of the diner, saying nothing further but giving the two of them a nod of acknowledgment. As soon as she was out of earshot, Graham whispered, “Well, that went much better than expected.”
Jude nodded. Now, they would just need to see if she showed.
Chapter 10
Delilah
Thehailhaddieddown, but thankfully not until toward the end of Delilah’s shift. It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy interacting with customers, as personal interaction was the best part of being a waitress for her, even if some customers were intolerably rude. However, with so much on her mind, trying to act like she wasn’t bothered around Miranda was proving to be a difficult task.
“What’d you tell them?” Miranda had asked her earlier that day.
“I said I’d check out the park if you came, too.”
“Did they tell you—”
At that point in the conversation, Delilah pretended she had urgent work to attend to and over-polished the counter. She hoped Miranda couldn’t tell that she was dodging the issue, but Miranda had proven remarkably insightful. So instead, the dread of confronting her weighed on Delilah.
What could she really say, in public? There was no practical way to talk about it as long as they had customers without both causing a scene and exposing what they were to the world.
At the end of their shift, Delilah walked with leaden feet to Miranda’s car. The impulse to run away was still present. She didn’t know why, but she couldn’t keep what had happened with her pack from affecting her decisions.
Miranda drove a bright yellow VW Bug with immaculately upholstered leather seats. Delilah had noticed that Bean Me Up’s well-maintained condition mirrored Miranda’s own habits, as evidenced by the neatness of her car’s interior. In the cafe, Miranda had even attempted to teach Delilah a 'lifehack' for cleaning tiles using baking soda, hydrogen peroxide, and dish soap. However, to Delilah, it seemed like way too much effort for a negligible result.
“Are we going to talk about why you’ve been acting so weird around me?” Miranda asked as Delilah looked out the window, her head on the glass. “I mean, I know why. I’d just love my friend Delilah back on planet Earth.”
“How did you hide it from me?” Delilah turned to her friend, looking her coldly in the eyes.
“Is that really the first question you want to ask me?”
Delilah nodded.
Miranda took a deep breath, flipping her turn indicator left and turning at Madison and Hook. Even within the confines of Miranda’s Bug, people on the street still stared, either at the bright yellow passing car or the two attractive women inside. It made Delilah self-conscious because she worried they could see what she really was.
They came to a sudden traffic jam involving a large string of pedestrians crossing ahead.
“It’s not really advertised because of course it isn’t. But there are ways of masking your scent,” Miranda honked as a car ahead came to an immediate stop for no reason.
Delilah drew back into her own thoughts. She had heard of masking scents by using another shifter’s clothes—she’d done that herself when escaping her pack. But she’d never heard of eliminating it altogether.
“What do you mean?”
“The Grimmaw pack makes a special scented cologne and perfume,” Miranda said. “Of course, it looks innocuous enough, but it’s very expensive, and one of the main ingredients, saffron, is hard to track down. I think that’s the main thing that makes it work? But just rubbing saffron on yourself wouldn’t completely mask your scent. It also uses a plant called bloodflower, which I’m told is also quite rare. To regular folk, it just seems like a premium cologne and perfume, but to us shifters, it can be a lifesaver.”
