Silver Basilisk - Zoe Chant Page 0,33

that they talked about the weather, or made plans for dinner, or other ordinary things. The extraordinary had become ordinary for them. Or, if not ordinary, it was part of their view of how the world worked. Godiva trusted Doris, Bird, and Jen. So she would trust this new truth, even if it felt a little like getting into a vast pool a toe at a time.

Jen sat down and finished her coffee, saying, “I don’t know what gender my kid is, but I’m sure I’ve got a shifter bun in the oven, because the kid barely even wriggles when I shift, or walk through the Transfer Gate. And that thing used to goose me in the bones the first few times I used it.”

“Is that how you got pregnant in your fifties?” Godiva asked.

Jen grinned. “Can’t say for sure, except that it does happen, if menopause is still holding off. My midwife had a patient a couple years ago who was a year older than I when she discovered herself pregnant.” She laughed. Godiva could see that Jen was truly happy, a far cry from the quietly miserable widow of last year.

Godiva thumbed up the last crumbs of an insanely delicious apple-walnut-cinnamon fritter thing that Linette had been experimenting with (mental note: tell Linette two thumbs up) and thought about how her agent would demand a summary of the story synopsis. She said, “So basically, the Oracle Stone is actually empty, but everybody has to run around and pretend it isn’t until they catch this renegade red dragon, am I right?” she said.

“Right,” Jen stated, as Doris and Bird nodded.

“And shifters are rare in the world, but they tend to gather with others of their kind, which is why Joey has this secret army of student followers?”

Doris said, “It’s no different than you and the women you’ve been helping for years. You still talk to a lot of them, even though you no longer see them every day, right?”

Godiva thought about this, looking back to when she’d first arrived in town and began making friends. Yes—there was Cathy in the knitting group, and tough old Edna, who had been dancing in flapper gowns as a teen when Godiva was born. Edna lived in the retirement home overlooking the sea, as she had trouble getting around, but her mind was still sharp as a pin. She’d been one of the first Godiva had helped get out of a very nasty scam by a bunch of creeps preying on widows.

Over the years Godiva had helped women stuck in situations like her own, and finally not like hers at all, but who still needed help. In the early days Godiva had mostly offered a safe place to crash on her couch when women had nowhere to go. Then when she started researching her mysteries, she shared what she knew of police procedure, and who to talk to and who to avoid among local law enforcement. She’d shared contacts with pro bono lawyers, and real estate agents, and social services of various sorts who could help women who were not the victims of outright criminals, but still very much victims. And for the most part, she stayed in touch with these women—her own personal network.

“I see what it is,” she said after some thought. “It would be way off base to say this town is mainly old women, it’s just that I happen to know most of them. We communicate. So, it’s the same with the shifters? Play del Encanto is a typical town on the coast of California. It just happens to include shifters among its population, whereas San Clemente and San Diego and Huntington Beach, not so much. Am I right?”

Doris looked relieved. “That’s pretty much it.”

Godiva smiled back, but she was thinking: And there’s no place for me in that world. Of course, one could say that about anyplace. That much she’d come to understand with every move she’d made over her long life. So the question was, did she see herself trying to make a place for herself in this shifter world?

But she didn’t say that out loud. She knew these three women. They were loyal, and she could depend on their friendship. But in keeping the shifter secret from her, joining together in that secret one by one, they had expanded their loyalties to their men, and through them, into this other world. If she said something, they’d say Of course you’re welcome! But Godiva knew that to