Gela has to take her hand off the table and hide it in her lap so he won't see it begin to shiver. It's slipping away from her, spiraling out of control. She can't think of a good enough explanation and even if she could she has a feeling he wouldn't accept it, or worse, that he would acquiesce but stealth around behind her back anyway, nosing for clues, reading into things. Telling other people about it, asking if they'd heard anything strange about her, from her, and she can barely stand the thought of that.

Again, then.

"I'm a shape-shifter," she says suddenly, sitting upright. "Like Jude is, or the man who used to live here, the one who turned into birds and dogs.

I'm the same."