Rachel
Her journey home wasn’t as satisfying as it could have been. With a child in her stomach, the ability to walk off her frustration just wasn’t present anymore. The walk would have been far too long for her, leaving her feet and knees in pain by the time she reached home.
So Rachel got in a cab and fumed the whole way back. The cabby wisely didn’t say anything, keeping to himself the entire time. She paid him and thanked him for the pleasant ride, and then walked up to the unit, taking the stairs cautiously, thanking the people who had assigned the women to units for not putting her in an upper floor.
She only had to pound on the door once before it opened.
“Hi,” she said lamely.
Elle’s face narrowed immediately. “What’s wrong?”
“Can I come in?” she asked, working hard to maintain control of herself so that she didn’t break down on her friend’s doorstep.
The door opened wide instantly and Elle almost pulled Rachel inside. No words were exchanged; none were needed. Her distress must have been obvious, because as soon as the door closed behind them Elle pulled her in to a hug as best they could.
“Tea?” she asked, motioning for Rachel to have a seat on her couch.
“That would be godly.”
Elle moved about in the kitchen, leaving Rachel to herself for the time being. She just sort of lay back into the couch and replayed the events over and over again in her head, trying to come up with a different ending. But she always came back to the one thing she couldn’t change. She was human, and Hector was a shifter. He was welcomed in Cadia, she would not be.
Rachel knew from talking to him that there were humans living there, mates of some of the shifters, brought by happenstance. But that had all happened when Cadia had been at war with one of its rival shifter territories. Things had been different back then, the rules more relaxed, in a way, things constantly changing. Now with the war over the borders were no longer porous, and she wouldn’t be welcomed there, according to Hector.
The only solution was for Hector to remain in Cloud Lake. But how to do that without him breaking the rules? If Andrew had already done all he could, and yet even he couldn’t prevent Hector’s recall order, then how was she, a solitary human with no clout in his world, supposed to change things? It just seemed impossible to her, giving rise to another wave of despair within her.
Rachel lost track of Elle while she was moping around, but when a steaming cup of tea appeared in front of her she was yanked back to reality, the smell of chamomile and something else practically assaulting her senses in a most lovely way. She drew in a long breath through her nose, allowing it to infuse her body while she leaned forward and took the cup into her hand.
“Thank you,” she said to Elle, lifting it in a sort of miniature “cheers” motion.
“Anything for a friend.” Elle sipped on her own tea, sitting back into a comfortable-looking rocking chair.
“Including a pity party?” she asked with a sad smile.
“That’s going to have to wait until—”
Whatever Elle was going to say was cut off by the door opening again. Rachel turned in surprise, carefully not spilling her tea as Laura and Angela marched inside, divesting themselves of jackets and shoes.
“What are you two doing here?” she asked.
Angela looked up and gave her a wink. “We’re here for you, dummy. Everyone needs a support system from time to time, even the mighty Rachel. You think after all you’ve done for us, that we wouldn’t be there for you when you needed us? Come on!”
The other women all smiled and the two newcomers settled carefully into the couch next to her. Rachel accepted the pats on the leg and half-hugs with good nature, and then turned to look at Elle.
“What?” her friend said, eyes twinkling. “You sat on the couch looking miserable for like ten minutes, not saying a word. You need this, and you know it, even if you don’t want to admit it. So just accept that you have friends who care for you, and tell us what’s going on so we can either deal with the situation or insult the person behind their backs.”
Rachel couldn’t help but laugh, like the rest of them. Elle was ruthless when it came to protecting her friends, but just then she was glad to have Elle on her side.
“Thank you,” she said, looking at all of them in turn so that they knew how grateful she was for their presence and friendship.
“Now make with the details,” Angela said.
Rachel snorted. “It’s not that entertaining, I don’t think.”
But she told them anyway. Everything, minus some of the naughtier bits between her and Hector, laying bare what had happened to him, between them, and how he was in major trouble. She finished with the events of earlier that evening and how Hector was trying to distance himself from her, in what she figured was a desire to make her life easier now that he was no longer in it.
“Wait wait wait,” Angela said as she concluded the story. “So you’re telling me that he was gone for two minutes and the embassy went up in flames?”
Rachel nodded. “That’s what he says. There was no fire when he left. He wasn’t gone for long, just enough to walk outside, see the guy hit the girl, chase him, lose him, run back to see if the woman was okay, and then see that the embassy was on fire.”
“That seems…awfully coincidental,” Laura said into the quiet that followed. “Like, even in a wood building fire doesn’t spread that fast. Does it?”
The women looked around. Rachel hadn’t thought to ask anyone that question. “It’s an old building, and like you said, it’s wood. It could be enough. Dry enough that it just went up in a flash? Or maybe there was a big spark that ignited a lot of it in one go?”
No one had an answer to that particular line of thought.
“Let’s say someone did light the fire,” Elle proposed. “Just assuming that. The question is, why?”
“It’s not like the town doesn’t have any anti-shifter folks in it,” Laura suggested. “We’ve only been here for what, a few months now, and we’ve already seen that. There aren’t many, true, but they do exist. Maybe one of them was watching, saw Hector leave, and took his chance?”
“Maybe,” Rachel said. “Could be.”
“You don’t think so,” Angela stated.
“It doesn’t feel right,” she said. “None of the anti-shifter folks have done more than simply protest at city hall. To go from that to lighting the freaking embassy on fire? That’s a big stretch. Not impossible, mind you, but usually there’s at least a buildup to actual crimes, isn’t there?”
None of the others disagreed, but they didn’t have any actual suggestions either, leaving Rachel right back where she started. With nothing.
“And where’s Hector now?” Laura asked.
“I don’t know. He basically said it would be better if I didn’t see him again. A clean break.” She shook her head, rolling her eyes in frustration. “The big dope. He was trying to make it so I would be angry with him, hate him maybe, so that it would be easier on me when he left. So he’s probably at the embassy, I would assume. Maybe getting drunk? Who knows.”
The other women exchanged looks.
“What?” she asked.
“He cares for you,” Elle stated.
“I know he does,” she said vehemently. “I’m not blind! I care for him too. A lot. But that doesn’t help me fix his situation.”
“True,” Elle replied. “I still think there’s something too coincidental about this fire. Are the shifters not investigating it?”
“No,” she said. “They can’t see a reason for it to be deliberately set, though I think I’m bringing them around to the idea that maybe it was. Hell,” she said with a snort. “They couldn’t even entertain the idea at first that someone had killed the shifter whose body they found, and then used the fire as a cover.”
“What?”
“I’m serious,” she said in response to the looks of surprise she got from all corners. “They literally could not fathom the idea at first. They don’t even know what an autopsy is! I guess when people kill other people there, they just sort of do it up straight, not bothering to hide the fact. So this sort of, of, um, skullduggery—there’s a good word!—doesn’t even compute to them.”
The other women all expressed various signs of disbelief.
“Yeah, tell me about it. Hector is going to the fire department in the morning. Apparently they have a report or something about how the fire was started. Hopefully that will tell us some more, and maybe we can make a case for the fire having been deliberately set. That might overshadow his actions, and maybe he can find a way out of all that to stay in Cloud Lake after all.”
Rachel knew it sounded like a longshot, and that was because it was one. The odds that they could not only prove the fire was deliberately set, but that Hector was set up, were astronomical. But she would keep working at it, keep trying to unravel the mystery of how everything had gone to hell so quickly.
“What do I do now though?” she asked as the conversation eventually died down a little later.
The trio of women looked at each other before glancing at her.
“I think you know the answer to that,” Elle replied.
“I need to go back,” she said.
“You need to go back,” Angela echoed, while Laura nodded along.
“Shit. These cab rides are getting freaking expensive,” she complained.
“It’ll be worth it when you tell him the truth about how you really feel,” Elle told her as they all rose.
“I…what?” she asked, looking back and forth at everyone.
“Why else would you be going back?” Laura asked. “Come on now. Don’t be naïve here. You need to march in there and tell him that he can’t leave, and tell him exactly why. If he feels the same, he’s going to be forced to find a way to fix the situation.”
“That sounds like the plot to a cheesy movie,” she remarked, but Rachel was already putting her shoes on, getting ready to head back out into the night.
“Maybe, but what if it works?” Elle asked with a grin.
Rachel smiled and nodded, but in her head she could only hear one question.
What if it didn’t?