Clay was on the second level, in the small kitchenette to the left. “Eat.” He thrust a plate of food at her and pulled out a chair at the nearby table.
A second ago, she would’ve sworn her stomach was too twisted up to eat. But now, it rumbled. She took the seat. “Thanks.” He had made her toast and eggs. Simple enough. Except for the muffin that accompanied it. Her appetite dulled. “Faith?” She picked up the offending piece of baking, barely able to stop herself from crushing it to a pulp.
He put down his own plate and grabbed a seat opposite her. “Tamsyn,” he said, eyes cat-sharp. “She sneaks in here and leaves things in the cooler.”
She couldn’t stand the suspense. Stupid muffin. “Who is she?”
“Nathan’s mate.”
That cut off her simmering jealousy midstep. “And Faith?”
His lips curved a little and she suddenly felt very warm. “Careful, Tally. Your claws are showing.”
“I’m human,” she retorted, knowing she shouldn’t be so happy at the sign of a thaw in his earlier mood, but she was. “The best I can do is grow my nails.” She stared at her stubby nails. “And I’m not exactly good at that.” He’d wait forever if he thought she would ask about Faith again. She shoved some eggs into her mouth.
Clay had already finished his toast and now took a sip of coffee. “Faith is Vaughn’s mate,” he said, looking at her over his cup. “Coffee?”
She let him pour her a cup, feeling silly. “Nathan and Vaughn are your friends?”
“Yes. So are Faith and Tammy.”
It shook her. The Clay she’d known had been her only friend, and she had been his. But now he was part of a pack and she was an outsider. “I’m glad for you,” she whispered, even as an ugly possessiveness bared its teeth inside of her. “It must be nice.”
His response was a grunt. “Eat.”
She ate, cleaning her plate far quicker than she would have believed possible when she first came downstairs. The muffin proved delicious. “Tamsyn’s a good cook.”
“How about you?”
Surprised by the question, she answered honestly. “Weird, but I like cooking. I used to do it with Pa Larkspur.”
“Pa Larkspur?”
She smiled. “Don’t be so chauvinistic. He’s the best cook in the county. His baskets bring in more money than any others at the picnic auctions.”
“Jesus. Baskets? Picnic? Just how country is the Nest?”
“Very.” His horrified expression made her laugh. “Clay, you live in a tree. I don’t think you should throw stones.”
“I guess the corn would provide some cover when grown,” he muttered. “Nowhere to climb or create a lair though. Not unless you build a house.” He almost shuddered.
She’d never thought about the farm from a predator’s point of view. “Well, yeah. But there is one thing you might like.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“There are caves.” She had spent a lot of time in them as a teenager, pushing away the love the Larkspurs tried to give her. She had never talked back, never created trouble at home. She’d simply disappeared to where they couldn’t find her and she couldn’t hurt them. “They’re deep enough underground that it doesn’t affect the farming operation, but the area’s riddled with them.”
A gleam of interest lit the dark green of his eyes. “They ever been mapped?”
“I didn’t find any records when I researched them for a school project,” she said, “but there have to be maps.”
He laid his arm on the table. “Why?”
“Because”-she leaned forward-“I’m certain the caves are man-made. They’re almost like proper tunnels in places.”
Interest turned to intrigue, the forest green getting brighter. “Your town have a big changeling presence?”
Catching his line of thought, she shook her head. “A small horse clan, and an owl one-predatory but not particularly dominant. They always used to vote me in as captain when they split us into teams for gym class.” And she was no superathlete.
“You’re a strong personality,” he said, surprising her. “Most nonpredatories would automatically see you as dominant, and as for predatory changelings, they decide according to the individual. Your owl schoolmates must’ve figured you were tougher than them.”
“Huh.” But it made sense. The owls had been scholars from a nice family, while she had been very hard-case. “Anyway, the horses and owls can’t have dug the caves. They hate being shut in.”
“That’s it?”
“Yep.”
“No snakes?”
She almost spewed coffee all over the table. “There are snake changelings?”
“Why wouldn’t there be?” He refilled her cup. “They’re rare, but they exist.”
“You think a bunch of snakes created those caves?” She shivered, recalling all those times she’d been alone in them.
“Changeling snakes, Talin.” A reprimand. “No more or less animal than I am.”
She bit her lower lip, feeling about five years old. But this was Clay, so she admitted the truth. “I can’t help it. Leopards are dangerous, beautiful. Snakes are creepy.”
“I think the snake changelings would disagree.” He leaned back in his chair, a predator at ease in his territory.
She felt his foot touch the rung of her chair, knew it to be a possessive act. But she was having too much fun to call him on it. “Are they as human?” She scrunched up her nose at his scowl. “You know what I mean. When you walk, it’s with this feline grace. What do they take from their animal?”
His lips curved again, full, tempting. “Calling me graceful, Tally?”
“I’ll call you vain in a minute.” But he was graceful, lethally so.
Both his feet touched her chair now. “Snakes are very…other. They tend to scare people on a visceral level, even when in human form. But that makes them no less human.”
“No,” she agreed, thinking of how the world judged her children.
“A long time ago, I saw one after she shifted. She had black-diamond scales that shimmered like an oil slick does in the rain-full of rainbows.”
The image was startlingly beautiful. “If they were there, under the farm,” she asked, “why would they leave?”
“A hundred things-maybe the colony disbanded or they decided to migrate elsewhere.” He shrugged. “Now, tell me about the dead children.”
That quickly, their little interlude was over. No more talk about mysterious changeling snakes and the quaint beauty of corn-farming country. But his feet remained on the rung of her chair. Taking strength from that, she began at the beginning. “I left the Larkspurs at age sixteen to enroll in a scholarship program at NYU.” Somewhat to her shock, she had proven very bright once given a chance, so much so that she’d graduated the purgatory of high school two years ahead of schedule.
Clay sat with such feline stillness, she couldn’t even see him breathe. “You never gave the Larkspurs a shot, did you?”
“No.” The simplest and most painful of truths. “The scholarship was one provided by the Shine Foundation.” She looked up to see if he recognized the name.
“Human backed,” he said. “Financed by donations from a number of wealthy philanthropists.”
“Its aim,” she picked up, “is to support bright but underprivileged children who might never otherwise have a chance to shine. That’s what the brochure says and I guess they really follow it. All the kids I look after are disadvantaged in some way.”
“What did you study?”
She folded her arms. “Child psych and social work.”
“You hated the social workers.”
“Ironic, huh?” She made a rueful face. “I thought I might be able to do a better job. But I never got into the system. I graduated at twenty-one, and was offered a position in the foundation’s street program.”
He didn’t push her to get to the point, and for that, she was grateful. She had to approach the horror obliquely, wasn’t sure she could survive full-frontal exposure. “We help get kids off the street and into school or training. Devraj-the director-makes sure there’s no corruption, no favoritism.”