Hotbloods (Hotbloods #1)(65)

“Of course I believe that,” I said. “You’re here, putting your life on the line to try to save Earth when you could easily just go somewhere else and not let it be your problem.”

“You should eat,” he said, pushing my plate toward me. “They’re probably cold by now. And we should get back to this paperwork.”

He picked up one of the pages and started looking at it. He clearly wasn’t someone who could take a compliment or any sort of praise at all. I wondered why that was. Perhaps it had something to do with his father.

I watched him for a second as he read, the way his eyes scanned the lines, the intense expression on his face. Everything about Navan made more sense now, and thinking about Ronad made my heart ache, especially when I remembered how he had called out Naya’s name so desperately, back when I’d hidden away in his room. That must’ve been so awful for him, to have the love of his life die in his arms, unable to remember who he was. I felt a flare of anger toward Navan’s father. Why were some parents so messed up?

Navan cleared his throat, and for a second I thought he was about to say something, but he didn’t, just continued to read, so I turned my attention to my food. The dumplings might have been sitting there for a little while, but they were still delicious, the dough buttery and flaky. I ate the whole plate, and washed it down with two cups of hot tea. Ahh. That felt better.

“The shifters certainly have been busy,” Navan said. “According to these reports, the villagers think it’s the work of the tonrar, or the devil.” He shuddered. “Which isn’t too far off the mark when it comes to shapeshifters, vile little things. In everything I’ve read so far, people have reported hearing wolves or seeing some sort of furry, four-legged animal. No one’s actually seen one of them try to take someone.”

“But what do you think they’re doing to the people?” I asked, thinking about the one that had been riding Ianthan, the way it had looked lying there dead in the alley.

“I don’t know.” Navan frowned at the paper he was looking at. “I’ve got some guesses, but I don’t think there’s any way to know for sure until we’re actually able to find one and question it.”

“We’re going to question it?”

“We’re going to try. Having the ability to shape shift, of course, certainly comes in handy when trying to evade capture.”

We went back to our piles, and I sipped my third cup of tea. The wind had picked up outside, and it rattled the panes of glass. The ship would at least be shelter from the wind, but I didn’t know how warm it would be, and I wanted to soak up all the heat that I could now.

I wasn’t sure how much time had passed, though I had long ago finished that third cup of tea when the old woman that had been sitting at the other table approached us. She and the waitress looked as if they could have been sisters. She wore a faded head scarf that had slipped back, to reveal her thick, steel-colored hair. Her skin was deeply lined and her eyes appeared milky, though she had made her way over to our table perfectly fine, without assistance.

“I heard you speak of tonrar,” she said. I glanced at Navan. How had she been able to hear that, all the way across the room? “Bad things have been happening here. People whisper that it’s the work of tonrar, but they are wrong. They make offerings to try to appease him, but people still go missing. Just a fortnight ago, my closest neighbor was out tending his sheep and he did not return for his evening meal. Gone, just like that. People are afraid. No one knows what to do.” She reached down and touched Navan’s hand. He tried to pull it away before she could make contact and feel that his temperature was not that of an average human, but she must’ve been stronger than she looked, because her fingers closed around his hand and didn’t let go. “But you do,” she said. “You know what to do. And you will do it.” And then she let go of his hand, patting it, like he was a little boy and she was his grandmother. She turned and walked away.

Navan and I stared after her as she made her way to the door and then walked out.

“She’s a seer,” he said finally.

I looked at him. “Like a psychic?”

“Yeah. She knew what I was—notice how she didn’t react when she touched my hand?”

“I did notice that.”

“There’s actually a lot more of her kind on Earth than people might realize,” he said. “Humans seem fond of stigmatizing the people who claim to have a sixth sense like that. Shunning them or medicating them or institutionalizing them.”

“Well . . . I think that’s because a lot of the time they seem crazy. Or they’re saying stuff that people don’t want to hear.”

“Humans seem to have a very narrow field of what they deem possible.”

“Not all of us.”

He smiled. “I know.”

We stayed in the restaurant for a while longer, but then we left. The wind had died down some, but it was still bitingly cold, and when Navan picked me up to fly us back to the ship, I nestled against him.

When we got back, Navan said he was going to leave me at the ship to do a quick fly around over the area and make sure that it was safe.

“How will you know?” I asked. “I mean, if there are shifters around, couldn’t they be in the form of something you wouldn’t even suspect, like a bird or something? Or what if they’re invisible?”