Shifter (22 page)

“I’m coming,” she calls as the knock comes again.

I wish
, I think. My body continues to burn from the feel of her. At the door, she peers through the peephole

“Hey, Jack, everything all right?” she asks, opening the door enough for Jack, her next-door neighbor, to see me. Something must be wrong because Jack barely leaves his house, let alone comes to her door.

“That is what I wanted to know. I thought I heard a few screams in the night, and I heard another one a few minutes ago while I was getting the paper.”

“She’s a screamer,” I say from behind her clear enough for Jack to hear me. Her face turns beet red, and she turns to glare at me, not that this phases me.

Jack jerks his head in my direction. The range of emotions that pass across his face offends me. I can tell he never thought he would see a man in her home. There hasn’t been one here since she moved in the house, I knew.

“Sorry, I didn’t realize you had company,” Jack says, turning. “As long as you’re all right, I’ll go back home and mind my own business.”

“She’s fine. I’m taking real good care of her,” I say, stepping into the living room. Jack looks from me to her and back again. Anger rises in me at the confused and doubtful look Jack is giving her.

“You sure?” Jack asks, looking at her with an expression I understand well. His look says that I’m only playing her. That I’m not the type to stay tied down to any woman.

“I’m fine, thank you,” she says in a soft voice.

Jack nods, and his nod says, ‘You’ve been warned. I will not interfere anymore,’ and walks back to his house. She turns to scold me for my comments. Instead of finding a man in her kitchen, she finds my big, fluffy cat form. My anger at Jack causes me to shift.

“Wow,” she says to me, and I nod. “Great. You know you should probably keep yourself hidden while in human form when people other than your family come over. All of my neighbors have seen your picture dozens of times these last few months. If they see you, one of them is bound to call the cops. As a matter of fact,” she says and looks back at the door. “Nah, Jack is too caught in his own depression to have paid any attention to your face plastered all over the neighborhood.”

I nod in agreement again, and she continues. “I was hoping you would be human for your parents.”

Again, I nod my head, annoyed that that is all I can do in this form.

“I wonder what triggers your shifts,” she mumbles as she opens the fridge to put away my uneaten breakfast.

I shake my head, then jump onto the counter, grab the pack of bacon with my teeth before she can put it away, and drag it over to the stove.

“What, you don’t like Fancy Feast?” She laughs at my scowl. “You know this might hurt your cat stomach.” I shake my head in denial, so she fries me some bacon.

“You know, when other humans are here you can’t react as if you can hear them,” she tells me as I lap a glass of coffee and nibble the food.

Really, like I hadn’t known that. What did she think I had been doing all these months?

“And I would appreciate it if you didn’t jump on my kitchen counters. You’ll get hair all over the place,” she says.

I roll my eyes at her, and a second later, my hair begins to recede into my body. She stares, shocked by the sight for a long moment, then the thought that the look isn’t a very flattering one for me crosses her mind, and I growl. She laughs at me and says. “No, keep it long. You look funny. Just stay off my counters and my kitchen table. I don’t mind you roaming on the rest of the furniture, but it feels unsanitary for you to be in the kitchen.” 

I give her the cat equivalent of a snort, but nod my head. Unsanitary, my ass.

She cleans up the kitchen and living room, bathes, and works for a little while, waiting for Devan’s call, which doesn’t come until four in the afternoon. I hear her tell Devan that his family is more than welcome to come, but they wouldn’t get to actually see me because I’ve shifted back. In the background, I hear my mother say she doesn’t care, and five minutes later, they appear in the living room.

My parents are very young looking. Both look as if they are no more than about forty years old. Abby looks at them for a long time, then looks at Devan and I. I can see that she is thinking that my brother and I look very young for our ages. We are supposed to be in our thirties, but if we cleaned up right, we could pass for barely over twenty. Both of our parents are tall, with dark hair and eyes. We most definitely got our looks from them.

Despite the fact that she has been expecting them, she jumped two feet in the air when they appear out of nowhere in her living room. She was in the kitchen trying to decide if she should have cooked something or at least set out something to drink.

“What do you give rich people to drink?” I heard her mumble at one point. I also hear her fretting over the state of her tiny modest home. “I bet it looks like a shantytown home compared to their home.”

Luckily for her sanity, they don’t seem to even notice her when they first arrive. Mom goes straight to me. She doesn’t pick me up to cuddle me or shower me with kisses, to my disappointment. I know I should be too old for such things, but I could use her comfort. No, she simply sits down beside me on the sofa, which I’ll have to reassure Abby that she doesn’t seem to notice or find lacking, and rubs my cheek lightly for a second. She does this because she doesn’t want to make a scene in a stranger’s home.

“My poor boy,” she says telepathically so only I can hear her.

“Thank you for taking care of my son,” I hear my father say.

“I haven’t done much. I promise,” Abby says, wishing they would forget she was there.

“He says you’ve been really good to him. We are very grateful,” my mother says, getting up and going over to shake her hand.

“You’re welcome,” Abby replies, looking completely confused by her statement.

Devan laughs lightly and says, “We can communicate telepathically, remember?”

“Oh, sorry, it was late last night, and I was real upset,” she says pointedly to Devan. Our parents catch her look but don’t ask. “There was so much to take in. I wish I were able to do that with him. Our conversations have been one-sided today, it’s annoying.”

“You can’t hear him or talk to him?” my mother asks.

“Nope,” Abby answers, confused by her question. “Should I be able to talk to him?”

“I told you, Mom, my powers are all messed up,” I tell my mother. “I can do the telepathy thing with supernaturals now, but not humans, especially not pure blood humans like her.”

Mom turns to look at me when I say this, and Abby nods her head realizing what is happening. I can tell she feels left out, but she says nothing. For the first time, the fact that she can’t hear me really hurts me, and I have this overwhelming need for her to be a part of the family.

Letting us talk amongst ourselves, she takes a seat in a chair out of the way. She seems to be doing her best to stay out of our conversation, which is easy considering that we rarely speak, and I don’t much like it. She is completely lost in her own thoughts when I jump onto the arm of her chair and head-butt her arm, causing her to scream out in surprise.

“He wants to know what is wrong,” Dad says.

She looks up at the man, then to the rest of us to see that my mother and brother are sitting on the sofa talking quietly to one another.

“Oh, uh, nothing. I was thinking about work,” she lies.

“No, she wasn’t. Something is wrong. Ask her again,” I say to my dad.

She looks from my dad to me over to Devan and my mother. Suspecting what she is thinking, my father says, “They are discussing Mave and Sam. Sam is trying to contact a coven she had been a part of in Missouri before she came to Tennessee. She hasn’t been able to figure out what kind of curse Mave used, and wants to come by sometime soon to talk to the two of you. Also, Dimitri wants to know if you are sure there is nothing wrong,” my father asks again.

“Yeah. Yeah. I’m fine. Do any of you want something to drink? I’ve got bottled water, iced un-sweet-decaf tea. . .” she says, getting up and going to the fridge.

I follow right on her heels, whining low in my throat. My dad is right behind me. She ignores me. I beg Dad to ask her again.

“Tea for me,” my dad says aloud. Forgetting to use his telepathy, he says to me, “You can insist all you want, son, but if she doesn’t want to talk about whatever it is that is bothering her, I’m not going to force her.”

She pretends she doesn’t hear him and says, “Here’s your tea, Mr. Sullivan.” Devan and Mom hadn’t asked for anything put she pours them drinks anyway.

“Please call me Daniel,” Dad says, taking the cup from her. She nods and repeats his name.

“And I’m Katelyn,” my mother says when Abby hands her a drink. Abby laughs a little. “Is my name funny?”

“Oh, no,” Abby says embarrassed by her outburst. “It’s just—Dimitri, Devan, Darius, Daniel—I was expecting you to have a D name.”

Mom laughs. “Yeah. I think we over did it with the Ds. It started out with Daniel junior. He died a long time ago. Hunting accident,” she says before Abby can ask. “Then Darius came along and we decided to go with D names. Mind you, we weren’t expecting to have four boys. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“Just one sister. We’re real close, though.”

Conversation picks up easily after that. I continue to watch her as much as possible. Occasionally she catches me eying her, though I do try to make myself focus on my father. I catch him watching me with a smile on his face. When I ask him why he is looking at me like that, he shakes his head. My mother, thankfully, doesn’t seem to notice me looking at her. I think Devan does, but I never catch him looking at either one of us. His mood seems to get gradually worse and worse the longer they stay.

“Are you sure you don’t mind if Sam comes by?” my mother asks, as they are getting ready to leave.

“No. If it will help stop that woman and get Dimitri back to normal, she is more than welcome. Can she do that popping in and out thing that you guys do?” Abby replies.

“No, but I’ll drop her off,” Devan says. “Just call the second he shifts. He has to be in his human form. Dimitri says Mave didn’t touch him, but Sam says a spell that strong should have come with some sort of physical contact and would have left a mark. I’ll also stop by tomorrow and drop off some stuff for him.”

“Thanks, he could really use some clothes,” she says without thinking. Her face turns red again as she realize what she has said.

“Nudity is part of shifting,” my father says without missing a beat. “If you spend too much time around us, you will become immune to seeing naked bodies.”

“I don’t think I will ever get used to that,” she says, her face growing brighter. I try to enter her head to see what she is thinking. I see images of myself naked from the night before and my shirtless body from earlier this morning. Snippets of her thoughts flow in and out, and I realize that she is thinking that she has a hard enough time taking her eyes off my half-naked body, never mind my naked one.

My father laughs, and everyone says their good-byes. She plops down on the sofa when they leave, as if she is relieved they are gone. “Next time, I think I’ll leave you guys alone. That was uncomfortable with all of you conversing that way.”

I want to tell her I am sorry she was uncomfortable, but all I can do is leap onto the sofa and sit quietly beside her.

-----

“Abby… Abby wake up,” I whisper to her sleeping form early the next morning.

She rolls over mumbling and opens her eyes. To my surprise, she doesn’t scream at the sight of me crouched down beside the bed.

“What time is it? How long have you been human?” she asks, flipping on her bedroom light and rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

“It’s one in the morning. I’ve been human about a minute,” I say, taking a seat at the foot of the bed. She looks me up and down, and a small frown crosses her lips, as she takes in my appearance, making me smile. I wonder if she is disappointed that I have on clothes. I look her over, trying to decide if she has on shorts or if she is just in a shirt and panties.

“What’s with you and shifting at night?” she asks, sitting up and letting her blanket pull around her thighs. Disappoint floods me when I see that she is wearing shorts. She catches me looking at her and yanks the blankets back up. As if she is suddenly aware and fearful of her appearance, she begins to flatten her hair while searching for a clip.

“I’m not sure. Don’t call Sam though. We’ll wait until I shift at a more suitable hour.”

“You sure? She may be our best chance at stopping Mave.”

“Yeah, but it’s too late now. I seem to be shifting regularly. Chances are high I’ll find myself human during the day sometime soon.”

“You want me to make up the sofa?”

“Nah. I’m not tired. Product of being a house cat. I sleep all of the time. If I’m still human when I get sleepy, I’ll make it up myself.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I’ll let you get back to sleep. I just wanted to let you know I was human in case you hear me moving around in the house.” I move to get up and head back to the living room.

“You want to watch some TV with me?” she asks in a tone that suggests that she doesn’t want me to leave. “I’m up. For now at least. I’ll probably fall back to sleep soon, but if you want, you can…”