Dani slid a freshly baked apple crumble out of Zed’s oven and set it on a cooling rack. The man had become downright pouty about the fact that she’d baked one for everybody in town except him, so she’d finally broken down and crumbled a bunch of apples. The contemplative exercise of peeling, slicing, and mixing had been good for Dani’s mental clarity. Everything felt so jumbled up since Maureen had been found dead, she couldn’t seem to think one thought at a time.

Tox results on Maureen hadn’t come back yet, but Ivy reported that nothing about her body seemed abnormal. It was more than likely Maureen’s body had simply succumbed to the effects of working with the rift. Still, her death nagged at Dani, in terms of its lack of logic and why Dani had believed her bullshit story in the first place. Dani liked to think she was a better judge of character than that, but clearly, she needed to up her cynicism quotient.

Why would Maureen go to these lengths to manipulate the rift? Why manipulate the rift at all? Dani had never met another dynakinetic who wanted to open a rift. They were too unpredictable, too dangerous. Maureen pretended to have experience, but how much of that was a lie?

And when she thought about the attack at the library, really thought it out, did Maureen have the strength to wrestle Dani to the floor? Could it be that Maureen wasn’t working alone? Could there be someone else out there, looking to unravel Dani’s work and hurt Mystic Bayou?

Dani had worked extensively at the rift site in the week since she’d made her confession about her “coworker” to Jillian, and never alone. Zed had accompanied her to the site every day, watching her back. She’d managed to repair most of the damage to the rift, convincing Zed that maybe an emergency warning to the Bayou’s citizens was unnecessary for the moment. But the work left her so exhausted that Zed had to practically carry her home every night.

And so, Zed would come home to his own apple crumble.

Watching the steam rise off her perfect brown and bubbly creation, Dani realized, she was baking for a man. And waiting for him to come home to their cave. She glanced down at the apron she was wearing to protect her favorite sundress.

Dani sighed. “I’m sorry, feminism.”

She wondered if feminism would forgive her if she explained that magical thing Zed could do with his tongue?

She took off the apron and checked the time. She’d planned on dropping by Jillian’s office and then coming right back to the cave for an early dinner and a thorough oral workout for Zed. She liked to think she was striking a healthy work-life balance.