Noah's Boy-eARC by Sarah A. Hoyt

until he cornered me, and then…” He blinked. Then shrugged. “I shifted. I have a memory of blood, of…” He shook his head. “Then there was this gentleman. When I shifted back to human, there was this old man I knew. He sold chestnuts down the block.” He rubbed the back of his hand under his nose in a gesture that seemed to Kyrie must have come from a much younger Tom. “Turned out he was an orangutan shifter but…but his own family didn’t know about it. He had”—wave of the hand—“ten children and a wife, and they were all very kind to me. Took me in for the next day. Gave me clothes. But he wouldn’t tell me what happened to the man confronting me. Always said I didn’t want to know. I’ve wondered if…if I ate the man with the knife.”
    “Well, you probably didn’t eat the knife,” Kyrie said, then regretted her words and sighed. “Look, why would you eat him? Kill him, maybe, if you were really upset. Though I’ll point out you don’t want to know could have meant anything . Like, he was a shifter too. Why torture yourself? You haven’t eaten anyone since; you probably didn’t eat that guy either.”
    Tom gave her a sideways glance. “I might have.”
    “Yeah, well. I was about to say you might also have flown around, but in fact you probably did.” She reached out and touched his cold wrist. “Let it go, Tom. Nothing you can do about it. It’s not much use telling you that a full-grown man with a knife chasing around a half-naked teen probably deserved to get eaten—but it’s still true.”
    He managed a wan smile. “I— It’s just my seeing that kid. It’s like he doesn’t know he shouldn’t eat people.”
    “And he might not, but Tom, you can’t fix everyone and everything. One day one of your…strays is going to hurt you badly.”
    He took a deep breath. “I know. I know.” A glance at the clock on the dashboard and he started the car. “And we’re now all out of time and should get to The George as soon as possible, or Anthony will be late again, and his wife will be upset.”
    Kyrie managed a smile in return, as soon as Tom edged out of the parking lot, kicking up gravel as he went. She cast a worried glance in the direction in which Rafiel had disappeared, pursuing the creature. “When it’s dark,” she said, “and dinner traffic calms down a little, you can go look for Rafiel. If he hasn’t called yet.”

Chapter 6
    They heard the sirens as soon as they turned onto Fairfax Avenue, where The George sat. Definitely fire engine sirens. A scent of smoke came into the car’s air circulation.
    Tom clenched his jaw and told himself that Goldport was a large city. Okay, not massively large, but large enough, particularly during the school year, when students from CUG—Colorado University at Goldport—swelled the numbers of residents to triple its population. Large enough to support several restaurants and a few dozen skyscrapers’ worth of office buildings. Large enough to have its own newspaper and three hotels. Large enough to have a symphony orchestra.
    Large enough for the fire raging somewhere along Fairfax Avenue to be, in fact, anything but a raging inferno in his own diner. But Tom’s jaw clenched and his cheek muscle worked, and in his mind he knew very well where all that screaming of sirens came from. As he got closer, it was obvious they were going in the same direction as the sirens, and he clenched his teeth even harder—so hard it hurt.
    And when, within five blocks of the diner, he saw that the billowing clouds of smoke were coming from about where the diner was, he let out his long-held breath and along with it a wordless curse.
    To Kyrie’s startled glance, he said, still through clenched teeth, “It was the damn fryer. I bet you Anthony forgot the timer again. His wife probably called and he stayed on the phone and…Let’s hope at least it didn’t kill anyone.”
    As they got to the diner, he found the parking lot was so cluttered