I look at Petunia, who looks every bit as confused as I am. “What do you mean? He looks fine.”
“Look at his shoulders. He’s all bruised up.”
“I can’t imagine that anything could have happened to him?—”
“It looks like he’s been nibbled on by another pig.”
Oh.
Oh, no.
Petunia the pig, of course, has not been nibbled on by anything, or anyone.
But Grayson the pig shifter, however…well, there may have been some shoulder nibbling last night. And apparently, if you leave a trail of sexy little bruises on the man, you also get them on the pig.
“I can’t believe this. It looks like a whole pack of sows chewed on him.”
Well, that isn’t true at all, and honestly, it’s a bit insulting. It does not look like “a pack of sows” chewed on Grayson. My mouth isn’t that big.
“Rookie mistake,” Wayne mutters to himself. “I’m never going to live this down.”
“Wayne, it’s going to be fine.”
“My dad says?—”
I can’t listen to any more advice from Wayne’s dad. I put my hands on his shoulders and bend my knees a little so we’re eye to eye. “It’s going to be fine.”
He draws in a breath, then nods. “Yeah. You’re right.”
“Okay,” I say, opening Petunia’s pen one last time. “Let’s do this.”
CHAPTER 19
The show barn is worse than I thought. It’s crowded. There are multiple rings, with multiple divisions going on at the same time. Loudspeakers crackle to life regularly with announcements about division times and parking lot issues and a reminder to everyone not to give food to pigs that aren’t yours. It seems like every structure in the barn is draped in red, white, and blue bunting, which flaps in the breeze generated by fans positioned pretty much everywhere there’s room for a fan. The scent of grilling hot dogs and sugary fried dough and nachos covers the sawdusty barn smell.
Pigs squeal. Babies shriek.
And in all that chaos, I’m supposed to identify and neutralize the threat.
I can barely remember my cover name. There’s no way I’m going to be able to focus long enough to figure this out.
“Okay, it’s time to line up,” Wayne says, his face more serious than I’ve ever seen it. The kid’s really invested in us.
“Thanks for everything,” I say, grabbing my show stick and gently herding Petunia where the market boar division waits for the current division to finish judging.
Petunia looks back at me, a question in his eyes. I shake my head. “Not yet. But hopefully…”
Hopefully what? Hopefully I’ll magically guess who the bad guy is?
It was a mistake to go on with the show. I should have overridden Cressida and cancelled it myself, to hell with the consequences. At least I wouldn’t have the deaths of innocent people on my hands.
But Cressida had forbidden me to cancel, and she doesn’t make mistakes.
Never.
The judge in the ring is pointing at pigs, holding up numbers to indicate how they placed. He’s just identified his top two pigs when I realize that Cressida definitely has made a mistake before.
Because she was in that coffee shop that day when The Witch was there, and she hadn’t picked up on it. She’d gone to the bathroom, leaving her mentor to face The Witch alone.
