“What’s wrong?” Graham asked, taking a bite of his sandwich and giving her a sidelong look.
“I’m not ready for this to be over,” she confessed quietly.
Graham was quiet. “Does it have to be?”
It was as close as he’d come to asking what they were going to do with the future.
“I don’t know,” Alice said miserably. “I wish I did.”
Before them, the ocean wrinkled away to the horizon, dotted with a dozen small boats.
“I haven’t seen boats out there before,” Alice observed.
Graham squinted out at them curiously. “We don’t often see a lot like that,” he said, letting her change the subject without argument. “Must be some kind of fishing competition or something.”
Alice might have tried taking the conversation to the topic of fish, but Graham’s pocket abruptly buzzed and he withdrew his phone curiously.
The screen made him frown and stand. “I have to go,” he said apologetically. “Scarlet said immediately, and she never says that.”
He paused only long enough to kiss Alice—one of those kisses that left no sense of thought to worry with.
The worry came rushing back as Graham disappeared in the direction of Scarlet’s office and Alice gazed out at boats with her chest aching.
Chapter 28
There were five guests waiting in the courtyard outside of Scarlet’s office next to a pile of gigantic suitcases. They looked sweaty and winded, and Scarlet was giving them a smile that Graham knew entirely too well: she was furious and frustrated and fighting very hard to give absolutely no impression of it.
“Please wait here a moment,” she said with a polite nod of her head, and she clicked her way across the courtyard to meet Graham and draw him out of earshot.
“There a problem?” Graham asked with a growl. “You said you needed me immediately.” He eyed the guests; they didn’t look like the kind of threat that he had anticipated when he got Scarlet’s text.
Two of the women were fanning themselves and one of the men, slightly overweight, was sitting on a suitcase like his legs had given out in the heat. The second man was the only one who was slightly menacing, and he was frowning thoughtfully at labels on the potted plants.
“I wish there was only one problem,” Scarlet hissed. “But this is the most urgent. They aren’t shifters.”
Graham scowled across the courtyard. “Friends of shifters?” Scarlet had talked about relaxing the shifter restriction for friends of guests, especially for events like weddings.
“No,” Scarlet said with a humorless laugh. “They don’t even know about shifters. They are furries.”
“Furries?” Graham repeated, confused.
“Humans that dress up like anthropomorphic animals. Those suitcases are entirely costumes. Fursuits.”
Graham almost laughed.
“It was a last-minute reservation,” Scarlet said defensively. “The charter has already left, and I can’t send them back to the mainland on the boat until morning. We’re going to have to put them up for the night. I need you to get the word out to the entire staff, and every guest, that we cannot have anyone shifting in public, or talking about shifting, or doing anything only shifters can do, until we get rid of them. No magic.”
She groaned then, though her posture remained perfect and to the guests she undoubtedly looked like she was simply having a nice, casual conversation. “And oh, Gizelle... will you find Conall, see if he can keep her out of the way. She’s already on edge, the last thing I need is her getting scared. Make sure that Liam keeps the elders off the common grounds. We need to avoid a scene.”
“What’s our story?” Graham asked.
“That we’re fumigating the hotel for an infestation of cloth-eating bugs and have no other openings. We’re moving the existing hotel guests to cottages, and I’m having Travis quarantine the building. The humans will be put up on the beach for the night in a tent. In the morning, we’ll have Travis take them in the boat to that new all-inclusive hotel on the mainland. On my dime, of course.”
Graham winced. This was not a good thing for a resort already in dire financial straits.
But if there was one thing Scarlet was good at, it was guarding secrets, and Graham knew that she would bend over backwards to protect the trust of her clients.
Chapter 29