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Horst was just finishing up in the office when Emma and I returned to the checkout area, each pushing a cart.

“No, no, don’t you worry about it, Kathleen May,” Horst called as he walked backward out of the office. “You’re an angel, and I appreciate your help. And remember to let me know what your mother thinks of that hand cream. You can tag me on social media—#IveGotThePipe.”

I managed not to roll my eyes, but, I mean, only just. You couldn’t accuse Horst of being shy about self-promotion. The man always had samples of his lotions and moisturizers secreted about his person somehow.

Actually, maybe I should be studying his business acumen. He seemed to be doing pretty well, even leaving his illicit activities aside.

Horst turned, his face less cheery than the tone of his voice, and offered me a tight smile that I assumed meant Kathleen hadn’t found what they were looking for. Then his gaze fell on the cart in front of me.

“What’s all this?” he asked.

Wordlessly, Emma left the cart she was pushing and walked around the checkout area to get behind the register. I began unloading the supplies she said were necessary onto the counter—a food bowl, a litter box, bedding, a water bottle, a hammock, food, toys, a wheel.

“Glory O’Bryan,” Horst said. “None of this looks like cat stuff.”

“It’s not.” Finishing with my first cart, I pushed it aside and turned to get the second one, which contained the cage.

And the actual rats.

Plural.

Which I was still trying to wrap my head around myself.

“I thought the plan was to return the rat,” Horst said.

“That was the plan,” I said. “But it turns out they also sell their rats to people who want to feed them to snakes.”

“And?”

I turned to Horst while Emma worked her way through scanning and bagging the smaller items.

“If we return her, she might be eaten by a snake,” I said.

Horst cocked his head to one side. “Which is pretty much the natural life cycle of the rat. They’re born, they scare a person or two, and then they get eaten.” He shot me his winningest smile, the one I was still sure he practiced in the mirror ten times every morning. “It’s what the rat expects.”

Here’s the thing about being an animal lover—it’s very difficult to explain how you feel about animals to someone who’s not an animal lover.

Maybe it was because I’d grown up in a town full of shifters, where the squirrel you saw running up a tree might turn out to be the guy who changed the oil in your car.

Or maybe it was because when I looked into that rat’s eyes, I saw a small, vulnerable creature who needed my help.

Or maybe it was because when we got back to the rat area and saw the remaining female rat curled up all alone in a sad little heap, it reminded me of how I felt when I lost my own sister.

Look, I know I can’t save every animal in the world. But if the opportunity presents itself to help another creature, I have to take it.

Oh—and there’s my well-known history of bad decisions.

Honestly, going all-in on rat ownership probably wouldn’t even make my personal top ten list. As bad decisions go, it had nothing on, say, my very brief goth phase in high school, during which time I secretly donated all my non-Hot Topic clothing to the local thrift store and my mother was so furious when she found out that she refused to buy me any new clothes for a year.

I moved around the cart to heft out the box that contained the ridiculously heavy cage, which Emma insisted was the one “all the rat people” purchased. “I just have to do this,” I told Horst as I struggled to wrangle the long, flat box from the cart.

He was next to me in a blink, taking the box from me and muscling it onto the sales counter with ease. “I get it.” He reached up and gently touched his shirt pocket, where, I knew, Oomy was curled up, safe and sound.

He knew how I felt because that was how he felt about his kobolds. I didn’t need to explain it to him—he just understood.

I suddenly felt all warm and gooey inside, like the molten chocolate chips in one of my fresh-baked cookies. I really hoped I didn’t look like I felt, because if I did, I probably looked like an idiot.

And then Horst looked down. “Why are there two boxes with airholes?” he asked.

I had a feeling he was going to be slightly less understanding about my decision to quite literally double-down on the rat situation. But before I could even start to explain, Emma paused in the middle of scanning the box with the cage and looked up at us. “Oh, that’s right. He was wearing a cape.”

Horst whipped his head toward her. “Who was wearing a cape?”

“The guy that bought the rat.” Emma resumed scanning.

“You didn’t think to mention that before?” I asked. I mean...how was a cape average ?

She just shrugged. “I didn’t think about it until just now.

We get some weird people in here occasionally.

” A nearby display of mealworms made me wonder if Quill, the Unseelie queen who enjoyed adding freeze-dried worms to her food, was one of those people.

“Like, aside from the cape, he was a regular dude.”

Horst pressed his fingertips on the counter and leaned slightly forward. “What color was the cape? Periwinkle? Vermillion? Mustard yellow? The kind of fabric that’s purple in some lights and green in others?”

I started loading the bags of scanned items into the cart. “Are you just guessing colors or do you know a lot of people who wear capes?”

“I’ve worked with a lot of magicians,” he said. Then he added, in a barely audible mutter, “Among other things.”

Emma shook her head. “No, it was black. Or wait—more like gray. With a hood.”

“A gray cape,” Horst said, and he paled under his swarthy tan. “That’s just what we need.”