few days….well, everything except for one.”
“Let me guess. Does it start with X and end with Oh my effing God?”
The two of them fell back on the bed, laughing hard.
“He was unbelievable,” Kiera admitted when the giggles slowed down, still looking up at the ceiling.
“I sensed it the second Aleena and I saw you. Actually before that. As soon as you left the shifter camp, your scandalous thoughts hit me like a brick. Thank God I was not in mid-air, or I would have crashed… or worse.”
“I did not want to leave.”
“There is always tonight,” she cooed.
Coco’s suggestion already overwhelmed her. She was out of breath and wrapped up in the idea of being with Xander again, of giving herself to him completely. He had unlocked something inside her she didn’t know was there. Yearning, need and pleasure all rolled into the same primal urge.
“But how? It is so late already.”
Coco got up and threw off her robe. She stepped over to the window and took on her bird form. “Leave that to me. You should freshen up before dinner. Oh and find Reena before your meal. She wanted to show you something.”
When Kiera entered the laboratory, four spikes were laid out on the floor beside the counter where Reena worked. They were just like the ones she had seen while touring the shifter camps today. The tabletop was piled high with old grimoires on one end, and had green and orange liquids in beakers placed at about two-foot intervals along the countertop.
“It is all beginning to make sense,” she said to her friend.
Reena woman looked up from the two thick notebooks in front of her. “Well hello there, Kiera. What are you talking about? These experiments?”
“No. I’m guessing you added something to the boundary spell at the shifter camps, didn’t you?”
The color drained from Reena’s face. “If I could, I would add something to a boundary spell on your mouth! How many times have I told you we cannot speak freely here?” She dropped her pen, closed her notebook, and came to Kiera’s side, dragging her down the hall. “There,” she said, finally inside the greenhouse. “Better.”
“So? Is it you?”
Reena smiled and shrugged. “Maybe.”
“You dragged me here for maybe?”
“Of course not. I promise to tell you what I can as soon as I am able.”
“I saw spikes at the shifter camp today that look just like the ones in the laboratory. Is that part of what you are promising to tell me?”
“Oh, that? Well, yes and no. I work with the Nauru from time to time. They are the only ones who can erect such powerful containment spells. So…yes, from time to time I convince them to use a trick or two to help the shifters.”
“Which shifter do you work with exactly?”
Reena stared at her over her glasses. “Take a wild guess. Actually, don’t, because I do not reveal my sources.”
“Christ, you frustrate me with all your secrecy…especially now. Anyway, can you do one of those containment spells around my room?”
She shook her head. “Sorry love. The Chancellor will see right through it. I can get away with one here at the greenhouse because I need the spell here. You know? This is where I work, not in your room.”
“And the shifter camp?”
“Believe me, Minassus is happy not to have to deal with reading the thoughts of Commander Oslo and his soldiers. He already believes they’re plotting against him every waking hour, so who needs to eavesdrop on a thousand rumors when you can get the truth once from a reliable source?”
Kiera sank onto the nearest stool. “What exactly are you saying? The Chancellor has a mole?”
Reena sat beside her. “No. That is not what I’m saying at all, although I would not put it past him. What I mean is when he wants to know the truth, all he has to do is extract it firsthand, right from the mind of the person he believes has the answers. Face-to-face.”
“And how do you ward yourself against him in person? I thought that was not possible?”
“Simple. Don’t get on his radar to start with, and stay the hell away from him if he does.”
“Then as Coco likes to say, I am fucked. I cannot avoid the Chancellor for a week!”
“What does it matter? You know the truth about the shifter transformation spell. You have not run away screaming…not that you can go anywhere. He cannot replace you overnight, so if you do try to leave, he will find you.”
“Twenty thousand