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And just like that, even though she’d said it like an insult, I thought back to those whispered words and smiled.

There were worse things than her seeing me as a snake.

Chapter Twelve

“I can’t believe you actually showed up.”

Porter peered at me as though he had no idea what I meant. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Don’t you have better things to do than make sure my mom’s cat takes her medicine?”

“I find your family oddly calming. It was a small thing, and Molly does require the medication.” He offered a rare, slight smile. “Also, I got to run into you here.”

“Don’t try for charm. It doesn’t fit you. Besides, I’m not here to flirt. I needed to ask you something.”

“Last I checked, we have phones.”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t the kind of thing I wanted to ask on the phone.”

“No? Well then, I’m certainly curious.”

I rolled my eyes, even though I doubted he meant it the way Kelvin would, saying the same thing. “Why don’t you come with me? I know a great vegan place. Well, I mean, great for vegan food. It’s vegan, so there’s only so much you can do.”

He huffed softly at my rambling, but nodded. “Sure.”

Twenty minutes later, we were seated at the little place that my mom had told me about when she’d gone on a vegan stint. The smells were delicious, and they tended toward a fusion of Thai and Indian food, with lots of curry. I figured that was on purpose.

Make a sauce tasty enough and no one cared if you filled the rest of the plate with rice and veggies.

We ordered before Porter looked expectantly across the table. “What was it that you wanted to ask?”

I tried to consider how to phrase it. “Well, we have a little bit of a lead with the whole Were thing, but I need to know about any rituals the Natures might do or used to do?”

“Rituals?”

“Yeah. Like, I don’t know, dancing naked under the moonlight.”

And boy did mentioning that get me thinking of Porter doing exactly that. He was lithe and cute, so I imagined he would look quite good like that. He’d appear almost ethereal out there, like he didn’t quite belong in the forest, too delicate, but the moonlight would shine off him, reflected again outward.

Oh, fuck, I could get behind that sort of ritual.

“We don’t do that,” he said.

“Could you maybe try it?”

His expression didn’t break or change, as though he had no idea what I meant or that I was blatantly coming on to him.

It made me again realize he was frustratingly naïve. Which was weird, as sex was totally a part of nature. I’d seen wildlife documentaries, I saw what the animals did in them! They were freaky and they did it anywhere they damned well wanted. Sex was probably one of the most natural things a person could do.

Of course, saying that out loud made me feel like my mom that time she found porn on my brother’s computer after he’d fallen asleep with the videos still going.

Guess he was rather content afterward…

She’d sat there and told him how natural it was as his age, and I could have died from the second-hand embarrassment.

In fact, I’m pretty sure I knocked over a glass of water just to help him escape it.

“I’m talking about things you did as a clan, maybe that you used to do. A certain ritual, or prayer, or offering?”