Clarice got up to make herself dinner, and it was Gil’s mysterious dad that she found herself thinking about again. What would it be like to share a kitchen with him? Or a bedroom…?
She opened a few cabinets, wishing she had something easy to make. Everything was raw ingredients, or unhealthy, and she knew that her desk job wasn’t doing her circumference any favors. Chips were so easy. And crunchy. And salty.
She opened the fridge. A single-serve yogurt had so much sugar, and it wasn’t much of a dinner anyway. She had a loaf of bread that wasn’t fresh anymore, and some sliced cheese. Grilled cheese at least had plenty of calcium, and she could open a can of tomato soup to go with it. Tomato was a vegetable.
It looked like cooking, even if it wasn’t,really, and Clarice felt very virtuous when she set her place and put the plate on the table. She finished the meal with a carefully measured portion of chips and one dill pickle, arranging them artistically. It wasn’t that she hated cooking, it was just that it felt so pointless for one.
The neighbors were having a fight about… Clarice didn’t really want to know. It was probably dishes. Or money. Or taking the trash out. The walls were paper thin and the two didn’t seem to like each other much. She thought about turning music on but knew from experience that it wouldn’t really drown them out, only add to the cacophony.
On cue, her phone rang.
Clarice gave her plate a wistful look and answered the phone instead of biting into hot cheese. She didn’t have to look at the number; she only got calls from one person at this time of night. “This is?—”
“Clarice, I know it’s late, but could you possibly drive out to Hendershot Road and show a house?”
Hendershot Road was twenty miles out along Belle Lake, and it was gravel most of the way. Clarice stared at her grilled cheese sandwich and Veronica went on. “I know it’s a long ways out, and you’ll have to stop at the office for the paperwork, but it’s amotivatedbuyer, and the property is practicallyperfect. They’re looking for a little starter farm and it needs some fixing-up, but the bones are so good. Amazing mountain views, some fields that havebeen fallow for a few years. Thirty acres, in an area that doesn’t have many properties left of that size; they’re all either carved into tiny subdivisions or you have to commit to several hundred acres. It’s right in the sweet spot! And such a nice couple! They said they could meet you there in forty-five minutes! Oh, Clarice, do you mind?”
Forty-five minutes was going to be really tight, since the real estate office was downtown. If Veronica would let Clarice log in remotely, she’d be able to download all the information from here while she ate her dinner, but Veronica was weirdly paranoid about a lot of things.
Maybe not so weirdly, if there reallyweresupernatural cultists living among them. “Of course I don’t mind!” Even if shehadminded, Clarice was too nice to say no, and she’d gathered up her courage to ask Veronica for more opportunities last week. She couldn’t turn them down now, just because they were inconvenient.
“You are the best, darling! Ciao!”
Clarice got one bite of her already-cooled grilled cheese sandwich and put the rest with the soup in the fridge. She’d have an energy bar to get her through. She hurried to get her purse and keys, pulling on her sweater and coat. She startled Horatio, who had been drowsing on the back of the couch, and he hissed at her from behind it after he fell off.
There was a bright side. If Clarice could close on a house, she’d be one step closer to herownreal estate brokerage, and maybe she could afford a home of her own. A home thatfeltlike a home.
4
BRUNO
Bruno found himself thinking about Clarice for most of the following day, turning over their brief and alarming interaction in his mind. Was she convinced by the story of Gil sneaking into her car? Had Bruno said anything suspicious? Did she look particularly doubtful of the explanation?
Was she single?
For no reason at all, he kept circling back to that last question, and he had no idea why, beyond the fact that she was absolutely adorable. He wasn’t looking for a relationship, and she wasn’t a shifter; Bruno had vowed not to date anyone who didn’t understand what being a shifter, and the parent of a shifter, truly entailed. Not afterTracy.
Tracy swore she was okay with Bruno’s armadillo side. She treated it like it was just a quirk at first, a funny private joke. But it wasn’t so funny when their baby turned into an armadillo in her arms, and it was even less funny when she packed her bags and left in tears. “Knowing you were...what you are is one thing. I can’t be the mother of ananimal.”
Bruno had tried to rationalize it through with her. Gil was still their baby Gil. He just had an ability and like all toddler learning new skills, he wasn’t good at it right off the bat. If she could just get through until Gil had control over it...
Tracy wasn’t willing to weather it, and Bruno knew too well that it wasn’t just Gil that she couldn’t bear. The way she looked athimhad changed. She didn’t see Bruno, she only saw the monster.
Am I a monster?his armadillo asked slyly.
Bruno snorted in amusement. “You aren’t a monster if you’re asking the question,” he said out loud. It was one of those in-jokes that they had. A lifetime with a voice in your head meant you either got to know them well or went completely insane. It also cemented his certainty that dating Clarice would be a terrible idea. People who weren’t shifters would never understand one.
Despite his best intensions, he couldn’t get Clarice out of his mind all day, playing their conversation over in his head in the breaks between clients, at school pick-up, and during the drive home after picking Gil up from Tiny Paws.
Gil was more subdued than usual, and Bruno didn’t question his good luck as he went through the motions of hanging up their coats, emptying their lunch boxes, and setting things up for the next day, still thinking about Clarice. Veronica Chase was considered nothing but trouble in shifter circles, but did that extend to her assistant?
It was hard to think of Clarice as trouble.
She seemed so earnest and kind.
Maybe she was trouble of another type…
Bruno stumbled and nearly pitched into the kitchen island. He looked down to find a tangle of clothing.
