“Son, there ain’t nothing you could do in there that I haven’t already seen.”
Zach glowered at her. He dropped his towel into the bowl. Then he stalked out of the kitchen and into the night.
Jessie took a step after him. She handed Kade her towel, but Cara shook her head and gestured for her to stay.
“He needs time,” she said, “and we should give it to him.”
15
In the depths of Cara’s garden, Zach found a bench just beyond an elaborate vine-covered arbor.
Somehow, the yard seemed larger inside than it had looked from the outside. Was it? Was magic real too?
The late afternoon sun cast slanted shadows across the garden. The place had a tranquility that reminded him of Cara, as if her calming energy had flowed into every leaf and blade of grass. Butterflies and hummingbirds were busy in the spring flowers, and the place was alive with bees. A bright-eyed rabbit sprang out of the foliage, stared at him, and hopped away.
He noted the eyes were a reassuring, normal brown.
What did that mean? He’d just discovered that nothing was as it seemed. Kade’s transformation had rocked him to the core. Everything he believed about the world dried up and blew away when the man’s face had lengthened and shifted and changed.
Everything Cara had told him was true.
And Jessie? She was also one of these things? A Cryptid. Like him.
How was that possible? His parents had been as human as they came. Simple dairy farmers. His brother and sister too. He’d run and fought and played with them all his young life and hadn’t seen a single sign of anything odd. But Cara had said that sometimes it didn’t develop unless there was a trauma to trigger it. Had it always been inside them? Dormant? Unnoticed?
Or... Maybe not. His grandmother had a reputation for figuring things out. She’d passed away when he was only seven, and his father told him she’d foreseen her own death. Was that a Cryptid thing? And his mom, she’d always had an amazing rapport with animals. If they ever had an issue with the cows, she’d march out there, and the animals would relax. Let her do whatever needed to be done. Perhaps some of these things weren’t hiding. They were in plain sight. As Kade said, you just needed to open your eyes.
Kade. He’d seen the way Jessie had looked at him. What he’d sensed from the big Were had been subtle, but there. Anattraction. Wouldn’t have been a big deal, except he’d sensed it from Jessie too. You couldn’t lie to an Empath.
He couldn’t entirely blame her. Kade was an impressive creature. All muscle and teeth. And those eyes. Pure animal magnetism. He gave a guy an insecurity complex just by breathing.
Zach scratched the stubble on his chin. It was on its enthusiastic way to beard status since he hadn’t shaved in three days. He had no right to be jealous. He hardly knew Jessie, or she him. He’d sensed a connection that day at the hospital, but it meant nothing, now. She’d been through hell and back over the last few weeks. The entire world had altered since that day. And altered again, now that he’d discovered Cara’s craziness was, in fact, real.
He sat there as the day slid firmly into evening, and he still didn’t think he was ready to face them. To acknowledge the truth. And then move on.
Zach felt her coming long before he heard the soft step behind him. Much like Cara, Jessie had a distinctive energy, positive and determined. The connection he’d sensed that day in the hospital was still there, at least for him. He wondered—was it still there for her too?
“Thought you might be ready for some company,” she said.
In answer, he moved over on the bench. She lowered herself onto it and looked around. “Cara certainly has a green thumb.”
“The garden is beautiful,” he admitted. “Tons of happy insects and birds.”
“Other things too. Including plants with an apparent appetite for bodies.”
Bodies? Zach looked at her.
“Kade killed a Dire Were when he rescued me,” Jessie explained. “He fed the body to something in this garden.”
Zach glanced around with an entirely new appreciation. “Kinda kills the urge to go for a stroll.”
“Yeah, no kidding.”
“Kade saved you?”
“Yeah.”
Zach’s heart twisted. How could she not be intrigued by the big Were when he’d saved her life?
