CATHY
Anne promisedshe'd send me information soon about the shifter, so I left the office and texted Roma.Are you home?
I am, with no plans to speak of. Just doing a little work at home.
Good. I'm on my way. Need to talk.
I didn't want to freak her out, but now that I knew some of the truth, I needed her to fess up, pronto. If she’d known about this, I needed to know why she hadn’t told me sooner.
After driving straight to Roma's apartment complex, I parked in her second spot, which was never used anyway, and hurried upstairs to her apartment. She lived in a high rise, complete with security sitting at a desk in the lobby. They waved me on my way, she must have already notified them I was coming. My best friend, Andromeda Quinn, let me in before I'd finished my first knock. Her long black hair was back in a messy bun and her hazel eyes looked concerned.
"What's going on?" she asked, her voice heavy with worry. My best friend in the world, former, if she didn’t know about Bran and I didn’t figure out a good way to phrase it so she flipped out on me.
I paused, trying to decide how much I should tell her and how much I should just outright ask. "Can we sit down?" I kicked off my flats and left them by the door, not even waiting for or needing an invitation. I had been over here enough times that I just automatically made myself comfortable. It would have been even weirder if I had asked for permission.
The suede couch was covered in a red and green blanket and lots of fluffy pillows, with Roma's laptop open on the glass coffee table in front. She'd been working all snuggled up. I scooted the blanket over and plopped down. "So, I'm just going to jump right in, okay?"
Roma lowered herself into her little nest and covered up, flinging the blanket over both of us without having to ask. We had always been comfortable together, and it was just a mark of how close we were that she didn’t think anything of tucking me into her tiny couch with her. Trying to choose my words carefully, I bought myself a few seconds by repositioning and tucking my legs up under me. I wasn’t any more comfortable, and I still didn’t know what to say.
"Out with it." Roma fixed me with a stern glare. "What is it?"
"Okay. Okay." Steeling my spine, I sucked in a deep breath, then said, "Roma, I know Bran is a troll."
The room went silent as a grave as Roma stared at me with unblinking hazel eyes. "Bran...is a troll?" She burst into giggles, then started to laugh so hard that eventually, I joined her. "Bran, a troll!" She chortled and laughed so hard she snorted.
We laughed until there were tears in our eyes and we could barely stay upright. "I know it's so crazy," I said. "But I've just come from Anne Fortuna's office." I wiped my eyes and took in a calming breath, fighting the giggles. "She's confessed everything. Roma, I've been on three dates. A werewolf, a muse, and a dwarf."
"A dwarf?" she asked in a hushed voice. "Was he super short or something?"
"No, quite tall, actually, but," I pulled the diamond necklace out from under my shirt. Of course, I'd kept it, after trying about thirty times to refuse it. Louis had begun to look hurt and offended, "he gave me this. It's real."
Roma leaned forward, grabbed the necklace, and nearly choked me to death looking at it. "That thing is huge."
"He insisted." I shrugged. "I did try to refuse the gift, especially as I knew I wouldn't be going on a second date with him pretty quickly into the first."
"Man, I got lucky," she muttered. "Bran is a dream."
"Bran is a troll!” I screeched, then clapped my hand over my mouth. "Not that he's not totally hot, but I saw his real face, Roma." I'd called her Roma since our college days, bunking together. She hated being called Andy.
Once we met and clicked, we’d fought long and hard after the first semester of freshman year to get the pencil pushers in the office to keep assigning us together. Supposedly, roommate selection was supposed to have been random.
Blah, whatever. Fair shmair. Besides, it would have been far easier for them to just let us do what we wanted to do instead of fighting us on it.
"Catharine McAllister. Bran Smith is not a troll." She sniffed, eyes twinkling. "He's a goblin."
It was my turn to burst out laughing, and seconds later, Roma joined me. Finally, we got it all out of our systems and stared at one another. For my part, it was a little bit of a shock. Roma'd had a little bit longer to get used to the idea, I guess. "A goblin?" I asked, trying not to sound like this was the first I'd heard of non-human entities. "How is he a goblin?"
"Well, he just is. They're not the half-twisted monstrous creatures lore makes them out to be.”
“Or at least, most aren't. He's one of the good ones, which I guess doesn't give me an excuse for not telling you. But I’ve only known for a little bit too."
I nodded my head slowly. "A goblin. Whew. You said one of the good ones though?"
"Yeah, well, do you remember Tanni?"
"Sure, of course." She'd been a dorm mate with Roma and me one semester and we'd kept in touch. She was a hotshot virologist nowadays.
"She's working with the goblins because they have this virus that deforms them. That would be bad enough, but it warps their minds sometimes, too. It makes them violent, unpredictable, and sometimes animalistic."
