Okay.The woman he’d come to admire was certifiable. On the list of terrible things that had happened to him in the last twenty-four hours, this was the absolute worst. He didn’t begin to know where to go from here.
The insane lady known as Cara took another swallow of her tea. She placed her mug down with care and regarded him steadily. She didn’t look nuts. But she had to be.
“Why don’t you tell me what happened today?”
Zach stilled his tapping fingers, sighed, and told her. As he spoke, Willow systematically moved all his footwear to the living room before moving on to his coats. Spike watched the process with an air of resignation.
Cara listened to Zach, and nodded when he was done, as though satisfied.
“If you hadn’t sensed those women, they’d still be there. They are lucky you exist,” she pointed out.
“Well, the cops think I had something to do with it. Because I couldn’t tell them how I found them.”
“Ah.” Cara breathed the word. Her hands sketched graceful designs in the air.
The movement was soothing. He took a deep breath. “They interrogated me at the station.” Zach waved his hand, dropped it to the table, and spread his fingers to stop them from drumming. “They asked me if I bit them.”
There was no doubting the sharpening of Cara’s focus. “Why would they ask that?”
“Apparently, these sickos bit the women.”
“All three of them?”
“Yeah.”
Cara froze. “How long ago were they bitten?”
Zach frowned at her. Why did that matter? “I don’t know.”
“When were the women grabbed?”
Zach considered the news report. “Two of them were some time last month. The last one was three weeks ago.” He watched her. “Why?”
“Might be nothing, but I should go check.” Cara stood. “Are you feeling better?”
Zach wrote her sudden concern off as just another strange thing to end a very strange day. He needed time to himself. Away from the craziness. Away from the crazy lady too. “Yeah, I’m good. Thanks.”
Cara’s sharp glance made him wince, but then her expression softened. “Can you take the day off? You need to rest, Zach. Empaths can die from absorbing too much negative energy. You have to be careful.”
Zach only responded to the first part. “Yeah, I’m booking the day off. Shouldn’t be an issue.”
“Okay.” Cara stood and gestured to the donkey. “C’mon Willow, let the man get some rest.”
To Zach’s amazement, the creature abandoned arranging his parka on the couch, grabbed a boot by the laces, and trotted obediently toward the door.
Cara adeptly snatched the boot from the donkey as she passed by. “By the way, I have just the cat for you.” She replaced the footwear in the closet. “She’ll evict the mice from the kitchen. Mice are fine in their place, but that place isn’t in your teapot.”
Zach regarded her helplessly. “Okay.”
Cara followed Willow out the door and closed it behind her, leaving Zach’s brain reeling. Cryptids? Empaths?
He stood and headed for the bathroom. He had enough craziness in his life, without entertaining any bizarre theories. But minutes later, as the hot water cascaded over his body, he considered his fractured mind, the woman who’d somehow arrived just when he needed her, and the energy that had lanced his brain like a boil to let the poison flow away.
Crazy? When he’d tried to tell people what he felt, they’d thought he was nuts. What right did he have to think that of Cara, because she dared to explain it?
Was there more than one level of crazy?
He pushed his face into the hot spray and let it chase his thoughts away.
