Page 47 of Minnie: Double, Double, Toil and Trouble

Zachariah scoops up Natty a split second before I react. He cradles the boy against his chest as a prisoner with a shaved head and tattoos runs past, screaming at the top of his lungs.

The only person acting relatively normal is Alyssa, who’s standing at Zachariah’s shoulder and eyeing the chaos like a bodyguard. When we make eye contact, she raises an eyebrow and smirks as she glances from me to Zachariah and back again.

“Everyone, sit down,” a guard booms and draws her taser. It crackles as she flips it on and holds it threateningly in front of her chest. “Hands on the table, where I can see them.”

That seems to break through the chaos. Prisoners and visitors climb back out from underneath tables. The pancake-waffle brothers shuffle back to their table with their heads bowed. A few prisoners test their luck and charge the guard, but the taser makes quick work of them. And one hulking man slams into the double doors, but three guards quickly subdue him. Prison break thwarted.

I take Natty from Zachariah and settle in my chair with the boy on my lap. Zachariah sits down across from us, palms flat on the table.

And then our eyes lock, and I can’t seem to tear mine away.

Chapter 24

Minnie

As the guards haul away the prisoners they tackled or tased, Zachariah stares at me, like I’m a complicated puzzle he’s trying to figure out. “What just happened?”

I open my mouth to reply, when Natty lets out a whimper.

“Minnie?” the little boy whimpers again. His lower lip trembles and I place a kiss on top of his head.

“Everything’s okay, Natty. You’re safe.”

Zachariah nods. “Minnie and I would never let anything happen to you.”

Alyssa sits back in her chair. “Plus I’d shiv anyone who tried to hurt you.”

“What’s a shiv?” Natty says in a tiny, scared voice.

Alyssa answers in the kind of high-pitched, gentle voice people reserve for kids and pets, which somehow makes her words even worse. “It’s a special toothbrush with a pointy end for stabbing—”

“Teeth,” I yell. “For stabbing teeth… to make them clean.” I cringe. Oh great, now I’m going to have to convince Natty not to hit his teeth with his toothbrush. As if that particular ritual wasn’t hard enough already.

But at least it seems to calm the boy down, and Zachariah looks around with a frown. “What the hell happened? I think I almost shifted, and you looked…” he stares at me. “Different.”

I start to blush, but then I remember the fiery pink magic connecting us. Somehow, I’d forgotten about it in the fray, but now it’s all I can think about. “Who the hell are you?”

Because I know for a fact it’s not Zachariah. The proof is in the pudding, or in this case, the magic. It’s no longer there now that the ward is back, but I saw it with my own eyes. And it’s only ever connected me to one man. Gorg, or Not Gorg, as the case may be. Whoever the hell the chameleon is, he’s now found a way to impersonate Zachariah, too.

His eyes widen and he seems very Zachariah-like when he frowns. “I’m a Bayan,” he says, referring to his supernatural species.

Would the chameleon know that? Probably. I bet it’s public record.

“Don’t play dumb with me,” I snap, tightening my grip on Natty. “I know you’re not Zachariah.”

“That’s Daddy,” Natty says.

I shake my head. “No, it isn’t.”

He leans forward. “Yes, it is. I mean, I am. I’m Daddy. I mean, Natty’s daddy. Fuck. Fudge. Minnie, what’s going on?”

“Fudge,” Natty repeats.

I’d laugh, if I didn’t know he was an impostor. “I know you’re the chameleon shifter. Gorg, is it? Or maybe Violet?”

His eyebrows knit together. “Did the ward do something to you?”

I roll my eyes and channel Formula M. “As if.”