Midnight Wolf (Shifters Unbound #11)(25)
The main path was lined with small stone buildings, their facades decorated with pediments, some curved, some triangular. Plaques adorned the walls with faded names and dates, or words about death and finality. Some of the tombs were in disrepair, some deliberately damaged. She shuddered. Who would be weird enough to vandalize a tomb?
Tamsin shared the Shifter wariness of burying the dead, and sensed the ghosts that lingered here, the chill of souls left too close to their bones.
“Give me a Guardian anytime,” she said in a low voice to Angus, and he nodded.
Tourists moved in a clump down one of the walks as though huddling together for comfort. Cemeteries could be spooky, or they could be peaceful. This one was a little of both.
Angus led Tamsin down an empty lane, tombs closing in on them. Some of the monuments were simple flat graves with markers, which looked even more exposed and lonely than the enclosed tombs. At least people had left flowers to brighten up some of the graves, even though the dates listed on them were nearly two hundred years in the past.
Angus looked as uncomfortable as Tamsin felt. “I hear you,” he said.
“They have to bury people aboveground in New Orleans,” Tamsin said, chattering to break the humid silence. “The water table’s too high for them to dig graves. So they brick up their families in these buildings instead.” She shivered.
“I know.” Angus’s answer was subdued. “I’ve lived in southern Louisiana for twenty years. I know all about the water table.”
“Can’t wait to get back north,” Tamsin rattled on. “I bet you’d be happier in dry woods too. All this humidity must play hell with your fur.”
Angus’s dark hair was damp with perspiration and misty rain. “You get used to it. If you like northern woods so much, what were you doing running around the bayous?”
Tamsin shrugged, but her heart beat faster. “If I don’t tell you, they won’t be able to beat it out of you later.”
“Mmph.” Angus grunted. “Whatever.”
Tamsin had no intention of confiding the real reason she’d been in Shreveport with Dion—she wasn’t wrong that it would be dangerous knowledge, dangerous to Angus and his cub. Besides which, Angus was Gavan’s brother. Angus struck her as an entirely different person from Gavan, who’d been a total asshole, but maybe that side of Angus’s personality just hadn’t manifested yet.
Dion had claimed he’d known about Gavan’s plans, and she’d been trying to prevent him from finding out if he was right, not assist him. And then he’d gone insane and attacked the Bureau agents who must have been following him, instead of simply evading them and disappearing. She’d had to run before checking out whether the information she had was still good. And now she’d have no chance, with Shifter Bureau all over her ass.
The quiet grew more intense. Angus halted under a tree, which rained droplets upon them. The tomb next to the tree held seven people, Tamsin read, a whole family buried there from 1878 to 1934. Their names were fading, forgotten. Sad.
“Like I said, I want the Guardian’s sword when it’s my time to go,” Tamsin whispered.
Angus opened his flip phone. The beeping as he pressed the numbers sounded irreverent in this place.
“I’m here,” Angus said into the phone, his tones clipped. “Where’s my cub?”
His eyes narrowed as he listened. Tamsin couldn’t hear the person on the other end, which was strange. Was there such a thing as a Shifter hearing baffling app?
“Fine.” Angus’s word was sharp. “Just hurry up. I’m getting wet.”
He closed the flip phone without a good-bye and bent a gaze on Tamsin.
“Well?” she asked.
“He wants us to stand here. He’s coming.”
“He’s bringing your cub here?” Tamsin folded her arms, pretending she wasn’t shaking. “That’s kind of mean.”
“I don’t care. As long as he brings him.”
Angus closed his mouth and looked away.
Another opportunity to run. She could shift into a fox and stream around these tombs and over the wall into the city before Angus could turn around and see her go. Humans weren’t quite as amazed when they saw a fox, even one larger than most wild ones, as they were when they caught sight of a wolf or a leopard or a lumbering grizzly bear. How many grizzlies ran through the swamps of Louisiana?
Foxes were far more common in the wild. The downside was that, instead of fearing foxes, people tried to shoot them. Foxes ate chickens and generally made nuisances of themselves. It was a popular sport in England to dress up in fancy riding clothes, gather about fifty hounds, and ride twenty horses over the countryside in pursuit of one itty-bitty fox. Obviously that fox was a terrible monster that must be subdued at all costs.
Tamsin had always wondered if the Fae had created a few fox Shifters as a big joke. They’d think it funny to let loose fox Shifters in front of an English hunt.
Her mind was babbling these things to keep herself from thinking about what was to come. Her instincts were coming alert, looking for her chance to get away. She’d wait until Angus’s cub was safe, and then—gone.
But who knew what Haider would do? Would he try to tranq her right away or wrap her in spelled cuffs so she couldn’t shift? Were his guys carrying Collars? Or would they not bother with a Collar and take her straight to a firing squad?