Bastian chuckled. “Well, she’s done it flat out to me. Me, Neal, and Travis, plus a handful of goons with guns who were trying to buy the resort out from under Scarlet. Damned unnerving, I’ll tell you. Like there was nothing else in the world for a while there.”
A third figure joined them, a sultry dark-haired woman with sea-green eyes. Conall only caught fragments of what she was saying until Bastian nodded his direction in reminder.
“My apologies,” the woman said without a trace of embarrassment as she sat close beside Bastian and twined her fingers into his. “I’m Saina. Gazelle has hypnotized me, and let me assure you, sirens are not easy to work magic on. I’ve never felt anything quite like it.”
“Sirens?” Conall was surprised into saying. Surely he was reading that one wrong.
But she nodded calmly. “I’m a mermaid,” she confirmed. “And my kind knows a lot about entrancement. This was nothing like our magic.”
“Basilisk, maybe?” Jenny theorized.
Conall had to see the word on Saina’s mouth a second time to make sense of it as she said, “Basilisk? I’ve heard of those, but I’ve never met one. And she’s pretty clearly a gazelle shifter.”
Bastian nodded. “The point is, we don’t know exactly what she can do. We’re not sure she knows what she can do. But you should be prepared.”
“... not sure you can prepare him for her with a week of warnings,” Jenny laughed.
Bastian’s wry smile suggested he agreed. “You have to understand, too, that she’s got none of the background you’d expect. She’s never... been in a car, or a boat, or even seen a bicycle. She’s never used a phone, or browsed the Internet. She’s watched maybe six movies in her entire life, and almost no television. She doesn’t understand commercials.”
“She doesn’t get any jokes that rely on modern culture,” Jenny said wryly.
Conall’s expression amply conveyed how many jokes he had planned to tell.
“She’s never been in a city, or traveled anywhere off the island,” Bastian said pointe
dly.
“I’m not sure she’s ever worn shoes,” Jenny added.
“She doesn’t have ID,” Bastian warned.
“She spent a few days as a gazelle just a few weeks ago when an earthquake frightened her.” Jenny said.
It was Saina who finally said what they were all clearly thinking. “You can’t just take her back to Boston with you.”
“She’d be so frightened,” Jenny agreed. “Crowds? Airports? Oh heavens, can you just imagine her shifting on the airplane when it took off?”
“I could get a private jet,” Conall mused. “Bypass most of that. I have a lot of private property.” But he could not picture the gazelle grazing on the groomed lawns of his family’s land.
“What would she do there?” Bastian asked. “It might be years before she could handle being out with people who weren’t shifters.”
“She wouldn’t have to,” Conall said defensively. “She would be safe in my home and have everything she needed.”
They all looked at him skeptically.
“Would you replace her old cage with a fancier one?” Bastian finally asked.
Conall’s elk was outraged at the idea.
A shadow fell over him and Conall looked up to find a great hulking man with tattoos spilling out of his staff polo shirt towering above him.
“Lydia sent me,” he said. “I’m...” His name could not have actually been Wrench.
Lydia had been the person with her work cut out for her. “Conall,” he replied as curtly. “Is she ready early?”
“Hardly,” certainly-not-Wrench said. “Lydia wanted to make sure someone had gotten you ready.” He nodded at the others. “But I ain’t gunna be able to add anything to what they can tell you.”
“... n’t think anyone can really prepare him for gazelle,” Jenny was saying with a shake of her dark hair.