“Who else would send a bull made of fire to my house after I helped kill a djinn-possessed giant? Stop eating. It might have been a person,” I told her.

“I don’t care.”

“Andrea! You don’t know what this will do to the baby!”

“It will make it nice and strong.” Andrea bit into the piece of meat, shredding it with her sharp bouda teeth.

“It’s evidence.”

“You have all that evidence over there.” She waved at the rest of the bull corpse, spread in about a hundred pieces across our lawn. Curran had torn it to pieces with his bare hands. “I’ve been starving all day and eating that bird-food trail mix. I’m pregnant, hormonal, and tired, and I am damn hungry. I’m going to sit here and eat my meat.”

“She’s right,” Desandra told me, biting into a chunk. “It’s really decent. Tastes like grass-fed Angus to me. So kind of your fiancé to tenderize it.”

That was it. I was done. I just didn’t even care anymore.

I marched my way up the driveway to the house. An enormous white tiger sprawled in my driveway, flicking her tail at a small flock of butterflies that bounced on bright wings around her brilliant white fur. I circled Dali and the butterflies and went inside. Curran sat on a couch in the living room. He was back in his human skin. The couch was covered in blood. That was fine. I was having second thoughts about the color anyway.

I sat next to him. Watching him rip the bull apart wasn’t just frightening. It was one of those things I would never forget. It was imprinted in my brain. Curran’s control was absolute, so when he opened the door and the feral lethal monster shot out and reveled in unrestrained destruction, it made your blood run cold. He’d had less outlet than usual since we moved out of the Keep. There people recognized what he was. If he wanted something, he had only to pick up the phone and people would run to do his bidding. Here, he was trying his best to be a good considerate neighbor. To be a normal human, not in the true sense of the word, but in the meaning other suburban families would accept and find nonthreatening. I hadn’t fully understood how hard it was for him until now.

It was over. People saw it. They stopped and stared, and there was no going back. And I couldn’t be happier about it.

“Julie asked me if we are getting a divorce,” I told him.

No response.

“I told her that we couldn’t get one since we aren’t married.”

Silence.