“Earl Grey, mint, chamomile . . .”

“Chamomile.”

I walked to the kitchen island, pulled a tin labeled TENSION TAMER off the shelf, and spooned some loose tea into a diffuser. Apparently his tension was in need of taming. This conversation would suck.

Silence stretched.

“Where is Christopher?” Kate Daniels, the ice breaker.

“Asleep in the hammock on the porch. He had a rough couple of days.”

“Julie said he burned Bullfinch’s Mythology.”

Barabas sighed. “I bought a beautiful leather-bound edition for his birthday and hid it in the closet in the spare room. He found it yesterday as I was about to leave. I went to say good-bye and found him burning it in the fire pit outside.”

So not only had he burned a book, he’d burned the book Barabas bought him. Of all the people Christopher cared about, Barabas was the most important. I was a distant second.

“Did he say why he burned it?”

Barabas shook his head. “He stayed with it until it was ash, pacing back and forth around the fire pit. When it was gone, he got a blanket off the couch, lay in the hammock, and covered his head. He didn’t even take Maggie with him. She was crying by his hammock until I put her with him. He got up in the afternoon to go meditate with you and then went back into the hammock. He’s been withdrawn since then.”

“I’m sorry,” I told him.

“I can’t figure it out. Was it something about the binding? He has other books bound in leather.”

“Maybe he didn’t like one of the myths.”

Barabas sighed. “Sometimes I wish I could open his head and fiddle with his brain to put it back the way it needs to be.”

I poured water into our teacups and pushed honey toward him.

Beating around the bush any longer would just waste his and my time. “I was rude to you yesterday. I’m sorry. I’m trying to stay myself, but it’s been difficult lately.”

“Apology accepted,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry, too. I know you’re under a lot of pressure. And you’re right, I wasn’t there.”

Well, this wasn’t awkward. Not at all. I stared into my tea.

“Do you know why I left the Pack?” Barabas asked.

“No.” I never understood it. He had so much going for him there. Jezebel seemed absorbed in keeping track of Julie and guarding my back. She threw herself into it. Barabas, however, ended up running the Pack’s legal department. He was viewed as the Beast Lord’s personal lawyer. He didn’t have the longest tenure or the most experience, but people deferred to him anyway.