“Someone’s going to have to go shopping today,” he said as he began cracking eggs into a bowl.
“Not it,” Claudio called from his pallet on the floor. He’d picked the phrase up from me and had found many opportunities to use it. “But I will take Genevieve hunting for breakfast, so the eggs go further.”
“I’ll go with them,” Zy volunteered. “And we’ll bring back something for dinner.”
I was getting tired of rabbit, but I would never have said that, and not just because the alternative was usually squirrel. The consistent supply of fresh—if gamey—meat was an advantage of living in the woods with three shifters, but I couldn’t help missing the ground beef and chicken breasts that had been staples of my precaptivity life.
“Before you guys go...” I added soap, then closed the washer lid and set the old-fashioned dial. “Did anyone wake up at all last night?”
“Non.”Genni headed into the bedroom, on her way toward the bathroom. “I dreamed of chasing squirrels.”
“No, why?” Zyanya asked. “What happened?”
Gallagher added milk and sugar to his bowl of whisked eggs. “It appears that Delilah took a nighttime stroll.”
“Did anyone see me leave?” I pointed to a faint series of dusty footprints I’d just noticed, leading from the front door toward the bedroom. “Or come back?”
Heads shook, and they all exchanged worried, curious glances.
“Eryx?” Gallagher called, and the minotaur peeked over the railing from the loft, his heavy bovine horns pointing across the room at the fireplace. “Did either of you see Delilah leave the cabin overnight?”
Eryx shook his head, presumably speaking both for himself and for the oracle.
Gallagher frowned. “Claudio, would you mind sleeping in front of the door tonight?”
“I don’t think that’s necessary...” I began as the washer spun up to its full, grinding volume behind me.
“I don’t mind,” the silver-haired werewolf said with one hand on the front doorknob. “Genni!Vite!”
“J’arrive!”she called out from the bathroom, and a moment later, the wolf pup returned to the living room smelling like toothpaste, her face damp and clean.
When the shifters had gone, Rommily took a turn in the bathroom and I sat at the table to watch Gallagher cook. Even after nearly a year with him, it still surprised me that someone whose entire life was founded upon violence and bloodshed could be so caring and thoughtful.
He would be a good father. Though I was sure of little else, I was certain of that. If the world gave him a chance to be.
“So, spill.” Lenore sank onto the chair next to mine and set a glass of ice water in front of me. “What happened last night?”
“I think I killed someone.”
“What?”
Rommily and Eryx joined us for breakfast, and while we ate, I explained what we knew about my nighttime activities. When I got up to clear the table, Rommily was still staring at her plate. “Look for the man in the mirror,” she mumbled.
“What? Rommily, what are you saying?” I leaned closer to hear her better, and she seized my hand so suddenly that my stack of plates crashed to the floor in an explosion of glass and syrup. But her grip on me only tightened. Her gaze found mine, and her golden-brown eyes were glazed with a white film. “The reflection cannot be trusted.”
“Delilah, don’t move.”
I pulled my hand from Rommily’s grip, and an instant later, Gallagher was there. The cabin spun around me as he lifted me into his arms, supporting my weight effortlessly beneath my knees and my shoulders. His shoes crunched as he carried me away from the broken glass.
“Cradled like a babe birthed in blood!” Rommily shouted, and when Gallagher turned, I found her still staring at me, her frame tense.
Eryx made a distressed sound deep in his throat. The cabin shook and his hooves ground glass into dust as he raced to the oracle’s side, but she would not let him lift her from her chair.
“The gift of life. The gift of death.” The oracle’s voice lost volume as her prophesy neared its end. “And but a heartbeat between...!”
With a grunt, Eryx lifted Rommily, chair and all, and carried her across the cabin, where he set her chair in front of the window seat. He knelt, a difficult act for someone so large and top-heavy, and took her small hands in both of his huge ones.
Rommily’s eyes cleared. They focused on his, then they filled with tears, and I watched, still cradled in Gallagher’s grip, while an intimate, inarticulate grief passed between the oracle and the minotaur, one unable to explain her words, and the other unable to ask her to.
