Etienne (The Shifters of Shotgun Row Book 1)(19)

She bent down far too close to that thing for her own safety, and there was no way on this planet I was gonna go rescue her and become dead, too. “That thing’s ginormous.”

“It’s just a Carolina wolf spider.” She leisurely strolled back to the counter, coming back with a shoe box. Was she crazy? She needed a weapon far greater than any shoe.

“We are in Louisiana. That thing’s probably an alien.” My back was pressed against the wall, needing to be as far from that thing as possible.

The door swung open, and Bruno came barreling in Because the afternoon had been going so well—of course he did.

“What’s going on? I heard a scream.” Which was such a stupid butt lie or partial lie at least. If he had come for the scream he’d have come in minutes ago. Jerk.

Star stood tall. “Bruno, we’re so glad you’re here. Can you please take care of that spider for us?” She was playing him, and I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling. She reached in her pocket, pulled out a tissue, and held it out to him as if it were the weapon of choice.

“Sure, ladies.” He snagged the tissue before squatting down where she was pointing. It was a full three seconds before he was up, mumbling something about not wanting to ruin the critter’s habitat before faking a call from his office and skedaddling the heck outta there.

The door hadn’t even latched before Star and I were cracking up as she scooped the spider into the box. “Serves him right,” she scoffed as she taped the box shut.

“What are you gonna do with it?” Death by fire sounded most effective to me.

“Hardly. My buddy Hydrus over there loves spiders best of all.”

Hardly what? She couldn’t have known... But then again, I shouldn’t talk to dead people so…

She pointed to one of the reptile cages. “He already ate, though, so this big fella is for tomorrow.”

All the ewwwwwwws.





Etienne

I wasn’t supposed to kiss Tansy the night before. My gator thought I had a lot more business with Tansy to attend to, but he would just have to wait.

There was something serious going on with that girl. She was always preoccupied like how you were having a conversation while a fly was buzzing around your head. No matter how hard you tried to pay attention, you had to look at the fly.

There was definitely a fly around Tansy.

Also, there was something wrong with me. I didn’t know how to deal with this beautiful woman. I knew how to deal with other women, and they knew what they were getting into when they were with me. They didn’t call the next day, and I certainly didn’t call them.

But my long-legged, red-lipped beauty... I wanted to do more than call her. I wanted to wake up next to her in the morning and see her disheveled from the long night of me pleasing her. I wanted to raid the fridge at midnight and feed her leftovers. The last thing I wanted to see at night was her.

Something told me she was tough enough to handle the truth of who I was. She would probably be freaked out, but that was part of the process. Could she handle the rest of who I was? My friends and shifter brothers were all kinds of beings, and the fact they turned into other beasts wasn’t the most animalistic part of them.

My brothers were testosterone-fueled monsters whether they were shifted or not.

“These aren’t right. Do them again.”

A slam of paperwork on my desk snapped me out of my daydreaming and back into reality.

“In ten years, I’ve never had a report returned. Did you even look at them?”

Bruno clearly hadn’t had enough coffee this morning.

“I looked, and they are shit. Not enough detail. Half the shit isn’t even filled out. Look at the one on top.”

The report on the top of the stack was when Mrs. Thibodeaux thought her purse was stolen and called 911, only to find out she’d put it in the freezer and forgotten about it. She was ninety-three.

“She lost her purse. I didn’t know that required a detailed report.”

“Well, it does. So get it done. I don’t want to see you leave this desk before this shit is finished.”

Bruno had a stick up his ass the size of a cypress tree this morning.

“Fine. Whatever.”

I proceeded to write a report detailing all the places I’d looked in Mrs. Thibodeaux’s house for the purse, including her rabbit cage that contained no more rabbits because she’d killed them all and eaten them. I knew that because there were bones in the freezer where I found the purse.

I made the damned report eight pages long before I was done.

By the time I was done, my legs were itching to move. My gator was demanding more and more that I shift and swim lately. It was the only thing that quelled his growing restlessness.

Walking out of the station, I saw Tansy coming from the pet store again. Bruno was across the street, staring her down. She probably didn’t even notice. As she walked, he followed, and neither my gator nor I was pleased at the sight. What was he after?

It better not be Tansy. He might be a bear, but even bears could fit in my mouth.





Tansy

The fecker was following me. I could sense him. Not him, really, but his darn ghost. Here I was, carrying a box of creepy-crawly yucks Star thought would feed my lizard in gourmet style, and I managed to not see her twin, which was a majority of the reason I went and instead saw Bruno’s ghost who gave me the willies.