Then she glanced at Aahz and frowned slightly.
“But I don’t know you and your connection to this, big guy”
I was so shocked, I couldn’t say anything. She had called Aahz ‘big guy,’ and knew I had traveled with Tanda.
No one said anything.
Clearly Tanda and Aahz were shocked as well. From what Tanda had said, we were a lot of dimensions away from our homes. Yet in the middle of a dust storm, in a strange dimension, we had found someone waiting for us. Someone who knew my name.
“Cat’s got your tongues, I see,” she said, laughing. She turned around and motioned that we should sit down at the table. “I bet you’re getting hungry by now, after all the dimension-hopping you’ve been doing.”
I wanted to ask why she thought a cat had my tongue, and how she knew what we had been doing, then decided against asking that, in exchange for what I thought was a better question.
“Are you a Shifter?”
Again she laughed, the wonderful sound filling the cabin and blending in with the faint crackling of the fire in the oven.
“Not hardly. But my father said you might be getting a little tired of their costs by now. How much of the treasure have you given away so far? Thirty-five percent? Forty percent?”
“Only twenty-five percent,” I said.
Then it dawned on me that she knew about the treasure as well. And that we had been negotiating with the Shifters. How much did she know, and how did she know it?
Aahz gave me a stern look and I shrugged. He always thought I talked too much, and clearly this was one of those times he just might be right.