He gave me a quick smile before looking back at the road. 'I have the feeling that if we stay, things might get interesting.' From where the highway was, the river looked small and relatively tamed. I put my hand on his thigh, and said, 'We could head home-or drive to Seattle, Portland, or even Yakima and find a nice hotel.' I looked out from the highway and down onto the river. 'I'd intended to take you this morning,' he answered slowly. 'ARE WE DOING THIS BECAUSE GORDON SEEKER TOLD us to?' I asked Adam, as he drove us the short distance to the Maryhill Museum of Art. 'The calf aches a little, but the feet are fine.' I wiggled my bare toes and did a few deep knee bends. 'How's your leg and feet?' he asked as I washed up. It was not so much a matter of speed but of exquisite manners and distraction. Unless I really paid attention, I never noticed him getting the food from his plate to his mouth.

At least you ate one of them.' He ate almost as fast as I did, but he was better at it. 'Are we ever going to be able to control the mating bond when it does that?' I asked, shoveling in hash browns as fast as I could without having them dribble out the side of my mouth. The mating bond had clearly given him insight at an inappropriate time again. I almost matched Adam's appetite when we sat down for breakfast-cooked in utter civilization on the quarter-sized stove. I'd been hopping back and forth from human to coyote yesterday it would make anyone hungry. And I suspected that the imprisoned feeling was the effect of the antihistamine itself, which left me sluggish. It didn't take a Carl Jung to see where the otters had come from. It didn't matter that I knew quite well that the dream meant nothing. After, because, not being prescient, I never knew when the sword of Damocles was going to fall. I felt the same way after vampire, demon, or fae attacks, too. I woke up with the dry mouth and feeling of impending doom that were not unfamiliar after I'd taken antihistamines. They looked like the otters who had watched me pull Benny's boat out of the brush. So I didn't eat the other otters who swam around me. I dreamed that I was freed at last, and I feasted on an otter that filled me more than an otter should, appeasing my hunger for a moment. I grew hungry, and there was no surcease, no ease of the great appetite of my captivity. No matter how hard I struggled, no matter how hard I fought, I could not move.

That night I dreamed I was encased in stone. They never make any sense, but they are consuming and difficult to throw off the next day.

ONE OF THE REASONS I HATE TO TAKE ANTIHISTAMINES is because of the dreams.

River marked by patricia briggs