Page 74 of The Human’s Heart

Shaking my head in amusement—Toby was one of the gentlest souls I knew, yet everyone was scared of him—I slowly walked over to the bar, doing my best to focus on what was right in front of me and ignoring everything else. It was way easier said than done, but I was working through it.

Jett was already behind the bar, and he gave me a back-slapping hug when I joined him. “It’s good to have you back.” He’d visited me a billion times and was nearly as excited about my new coven house as I was.

In fact, he’d loved it so much that Ailin and Sebastian had offered to make him and Ward one right beside ours. He was having trouble accepting it—the hypocrite—but I was pretty sure he was going to tell them yes the next time they asked. I couldn’t wait.

The new house would come in especially handy when Toby turned Jett, which they both agreed to and planned on doing in a few months, once I no longer needed Toby’s blood. I was excited for that too.

Jett was looking forward to it even though he was a little nervous. But after seeing how well I was doing, he was ready to jump in with both feet.

I said, “It’s good being back. Everything’s really weird though, so I might be a little slow moving today.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. Just… it’s a lot. Very noisy and smelly.”

He chuckled at that. “I bet.”

“But I’m excited to get back to work.”

He sent me a smile. “Let me know if there’s anything you need, alright?”

“Will do. Thanks.”

I walked over to a customer and concentrated really hard on them and only them. They probably thought I was a weirdo with the way I was staring at them, but that was okay. I didn’t care.

After about an hour, I started to realize that a few of the patrons had this… certain smell. Almost woodsy or something. Or at least it reminded me of being out in the middle of the forest.

Every one of those woodsy-smelling people were in the same group, and after staring at them for a while, I had the feeling they were shifters. Wolf shifters, to be exact.

When Arzu walked by, I snagged their attention and whispered, “Is that group over there wolf shifters?”

They glanced at where I was pointing, then turned back to me with a grin. “Yep.”

“I knew it. They smell woodsy.”

For some reason, that made them chuckle as they continued to their table.

After that, I started sniffing out everyone in the bar. Hopefully I wasn’t being too obvious about it, but I found a lone witch who was talking to some kind of water animal shifter. I thought they might’ve been a mermaid. Two fae came in together, had one drink each, and left.

There was a group of three vampires hanging out in the corner, and they actually seemed to know Toby. They tried to get him to sit with them, but he said he was guarding his fledgling, and they all gave him respectful nods, looked at me with more nods, and then walked off to their corner.

It was… kind of nice, actually.

There were a ton of humans, and now that I could scent them, it was so very obvious who was a human and who was a supe. No wonder all the supes in my life had such an easy time telling everyone apart.

Of course I got the drow scent from Arzu and Drin, but I recognized that one because of Zay’s dad, Obi. And then I got the grizzly bear shifter scent from Quinn, even though he was all the way by the door.

It was really cool how I could kind of focus my nose on certain things or specific people, no matter where they were in the bar.

This was going to be a fun power to play with.

Jett yelled out, “Last call!” And I was honestly surprised. Apparently playing what-type-of-creature-are-you with myself made the time fly by. I’d thought I still had an hour or two left.

After Quinn shut the door so no one else could come in but the current patrons could go out, he walked over to the bar like he usually did at closing time. I put a water in front of him, and he took it gratefully, drinking half of it in one go.

“You know, I can always bring you a water when you run out. Just give me a signal or something,” I said.

“Mm. I might have to take you up on that. Thanks.”