by Chant, Zoe
She glanced around the yard, which stretched away toward scrubby undeveloped land—and now she knew why Joey had chosen a home on the very edge of town. Clearly this was a shifter-and-allies only party. Some of the guests were in animal form, some human. Two or three small children, belonging to faculty friends of Joey and Doris, played among the trees, the smallest ones popping in and out of animal shapes—bobcat and opossum.
Godiva leaned forward. “Mattie saw me in Cang’s claws, which is why she called me after a whole night of inner debate, I gather. Poor thing! I reassured her that I was human, but in on the secret, and I’d never tell. That’s when she told me about the squirrel thing, and added that I could tell you.”
Doris and the other two nodded, Bird smiling to herself. Godiva suspected strongly that Bird was secretly imagining Mattie as a squirrel, and enjoying that inner vision.
“So let me get this straight,” Godiva said. “Mythic shifters can go invisible to humans, except their mates, right?”
“Pretty much,” Jen said.
“But regular shifters can’t go invisible. So if Cang had been a . . . well, say, a squirrel, and Rigo was a squirrel, and they got into a squirrel fight, all the humans on the beach would see those tails bristling and heard the squeaking.”
“True,” Doris said.
“But the shifters can all see the mythic shifters, unless they have a cloaking power.”
“Some do, some don’t. . .”
“But that day, Rigo and Cang weren’t cloaking.”
“Nope,” Jen said.
“So, in fact, all the shifters in Playa del Encanto saw me nearly take a nose dive into the drink that day, am I right?”
Doris said, “Every shifter who came to the beach that day, yes. And from what I hear, word spread pret-ty fast.”
Bird looked away, but couldn’t hide her laughing eyes. Doris was obviously trying not to snicker, but Jen just grinned. “Godiva, you were a hero. The local shifter world saw you and Rigo being heroes. They now know you’re paired with one of the toughest shifters alive, which will be reassuring to the quiet, law-abiding ones like Mattie, and will give the bad ones second and third thoughts about trying to step into Cang’s place. You are notorious. Get used to it.”
“If notoriety means an end to the zombiepocalypse,” Godiva said, “I’m all for it.”
But it wasn’t the notoriety. It was how, in a handful of days, she’d gone from feeling herself so closed out she might as well leave, to being thoroughly, irrevocably a part of the shifter world.
She felt like she’d come home.
The thought made her throat tighten and her eyes sting. She blinked quickly, fighting it back—the last thing she wanted was to be sniveling and snorting in the middle of a celebration. She sensed Rigo’s concern, and threw a smile his way. He gave a tiny nod, and turned back to stacking used serving dishes. Godiva realized the pause had become a silence, and looked up, to meet an understanding gaze from Doris.
And Jen.
And Bird.
They knew. She knew they knew. They knew she knew they knew—and they also knew how much she hated getting maudlin, and because they understood, Doris said nothing, and Jen turned to Bird to ask if her agent had gotten back to her about the doll book.
Bird’s whole face brightened. “She loves it! It’s off to the editor.”
As they speculated about when the book might come out, Godiva let herself relish this moment of the four of them in balance again. She hadn’t begun to realize how important these three women were to her until the morning Doris and Bird had come to her house wanting only to hear the truth—and help if they possibly could. That, right there, was proof of a real bond. And she’d come very near to letting anger win, throwing it all away.
But she hadn’t. She’d won that battle. All of them had won their own particular private battles. And the reward? None of them had ever expected romance, not at their age, but romance had found them.
As the talk slipped along with all the old ease, Godiva glanced over at the other side of the patio, where Rigo moved about quietly and efficiently bringing food to the cooks and taking away the empty dishes again, so that Joey wouldn’t have to. It was clear that Rigo had organized plenty of big gatherings on his ranch, for he easily slipped into host mode, though this was his first visit to Joey and Doris’s place.
Once in a while Rigo glanced up, and when his eyes met hers, there was that golden glow between them, lighting her up inside exactly as it had when she was eighteen.
While Godiva, Jen, Doris, and Bird talked about writing, and the writing group, and food, and a hundred other subjects, Godiva listened in on what she could hear of the guys’ conversation. She reveled in how Rigo and Mikhail talked about Rigo taking half the silver dragon’s coastal reconnaissance flights. Then how Rigo and Nikos went over all the details of that aerial fight with Cang, complete with swooping hand gestures. And how Rigo quietly oversaw the cleanup, too, as the students packed up their leftovers and then departed in chattering groups.
Godiva flicked a look Joey’s way, to meet a sweet smile of complete comprehension. He knew what she had just realized . . .
The Gang of Four had become a Gang of Eight.
* * *
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Epilogue
The month passed with lightning speed.
One morning that first week, Alejo carried his phone outside and walked around showing Godiva what she could expect to see when she visited. She and Rigo did the same for him, walking all around Godiva’s garden, all the way down the back path to the beach.
After that, they fell into a new habit, the breakfast call to Alejo as soon as Rigo returned from his morning flight.
Another new habit was Rigo joining the writing group. He said he loved hearing her read her pages, and seeing the audience reaction. She began to rely on him for gauging how successful a scene was.
She also found that it was 100% easier to sit through Bill Champlain’s pages when she could feel Rigo alternately boggling at Bill’s weird idea of what women were like, or his inner laughter when Wilhelm Stryker single-handedly mowed down yet another 3,784 gangsters/mob bosses/secret agents/terrorists.
After the second time he went with her, as they were driving home, she said, “Do you think I should tell Wendy about that horrible Cindy character in Bill’s book?”
Rigo looked pained. “That’s a tough one,” he said slowly. “It’s so petty and cruel. I guess I wouldn’t, unless she decides to come to the group. She deserves fair warning.”
“That’s what I thought,” Godiva said, relieved. “It’s too easy to picture how much it’s going to hurt her. It’s just so pointlessly mean. She’s still trying to shed the toxic residue of being married to Bill. I don’t want to knock her back down. And I’m afraid that will.”
“When I think about it, I want to boot his ass into next week,” Rigo said, low-voiced. “Wendy’s got a big heart. I learned that the first day I met her. And I get a kick out of that little chamaco of hers.”
Godiva grinned at the image of Wendy’s earnest little boy with his thick glasses and his days-long secret games out in the garden.
Relieved to find Rigo on the same page about Wendy—least said, soonest mended—she said, “So about the dresser question. We can easily fit another into that room.”
Rigo pulled into the garage, then turned to her, his face a silhouette. But she could feel his smile. “Just that bottom drawer is plenty. Really. When you open my closet in Kentucky, you’ll see that I don’t have much more there than I do here. I’ve always traveled light. Probably habit from years on the rodeo circuit.”
So Godiva gave in on the question of a dresser, but on her own she moved the stack of books out
of her closet so that his clothes—including his new tux, bought for Jen’s wedding—could hang there next to her things. She relished looking at them there.
As the days went by, she saw that he also didn’t need a study of his own. He liked prowling among her books. No surprise that their tastes aligned a lot, especially their shared love of wisecracking narrators in mystery novels. But best of all, he knew before she had to say anything that when her study door was shut, that was writing time. He respected that, and usually used that time to go running on the beach or to visit Mikhail, to spar together or just talk.
Mikhail, so silent, so austere and quiet, seemed to like Rigo’s brand of easy-goingness. Even Bird commented on the growing bond, confiding to Godiva that Mikhail didn’t make friends easily, as he was so used to years of solitary vigilance for that faraway empress.
Because of this friendship, Rigo frequently came back to Godiva with all the latest shifter news, which included whatever Mikhail could pass on from Guardian circles. For example, the lack of success in tracing the provenance of the handwritten charm book, which Doug Barth had stolen from another shifter—who (he said) had also thieved it.
The good news was, Cang’s organization had completely broken apart, probably as soon as Cang’s ashes stopped steaming. But not before Guardian agents nabbed a couple of Cang’s minions, in hopes of discovering who had been backing Cang. The minions didn’t seem to know that, but they did reveal that Cang had so distrusted everyone else, he’d kept the charms and how to prepare them totally to himself. So at least those were no longer a worry.
And so the days slipped into weeks, until the day of Jen’s wedding arrived.
Jen was definitely showing by now, looking splendid in a filmy, draped Greek thing that reminded Godiva of ancient statuary.
Jen paused to admire them. “I figured Rigo would look great in a tux. I was right. But Godiva, you look awesome in that haori.”
“Thanks.” Godiva preened as she ran her hand down the silk jacket embroidered with hot pink peach blossoms on deep green. Beneath it she wore a top and a long skirt in a lighter shade of pink. She’d gotten her finger and toe nails done in hot pink to match the haori’s blossoms. “Emily brought it for me from Japan when she went last. I seldom get to flash it.”
“Well, it’s flashing now,” Jen said. “Okay, time to run. Who’s first?”
She took Rigo, then came back for Godiva. When Godiva found herself standing on a cool tile terrace, Jen let go, shivering a little.
Doris and Bird had been waiting for them. “You all right, Jen?” Doris asked with a quick, anxious look.
But Jen just waved a hand. “Too many transfers in a row and my bones feel like they got stashed too long in the deep freeze,” she admitted. “However, it’s only you six. I’ll be fine in a few minutes.”
Bird spoke up. “Mikhail is holding a table for us over at that end of this terrace. It looks like your entire island is here, Jen.”
“Pretty much,” Jen said with a laugh.
Godiva looked around—and stopped dead. “Wait. Wait. Wait. When you said Nikos lives in a castle, I thought you were kidding. Or maybe meant a fancy house like a Victorian three-story, with a cupola or two. This . . . is a real castle!” She gazed in amazement at the spectacular spired castle built along the top of a mountain ridge.
Jen laughed. “I’ll give you guys a tour in a bit. But first, we’re starting things hetairoi style, with a flyover.”
She excused herself and went to join Nikos, who lifted his hand in greeting to Godiva and the others. He was flanked by Bryony, who Godiva recognized from the day of the Cang battle, and a handsome young man who was introduced as Mateo. The two were Nikos’s lieutenants.
Jen joined Nikos in a sparkly flicker as they both shifted, Nikos into a gorgeous sable winged unicorn and Jen to a golden phoenix. The hetairoi also shifted, and in a rush and thunder of wings, the entire group took off over the terrace ledge.
Godiva’s stomach almost dropped when she saw the steep slope below. But then she tipped her head back, staring up in amazement as the hetairoi formed around Jen and Nikos in formation, some flying high as sentinels, others flying low in strict order.
Their animals represented all the colors of the rainbow, gleaming in the slanting light of the setting sun as they soared in a slow spiral around the castle spires, then struck out to make a broad circle over the curve of a harbor below.
When they reached the sea, they banked as one, flying in perfect unity until they vanished behind a rocky mountain, then reappeared on the other side. When they landed on the terrace again, they gathered again into a group, with all the guests forming a circle around them.
Nikos and Jen stood under a bower of flowers to exchange their vows. The wedding was simple and beautiful, finishing just as the last bit of the sun sank fiery red into the vast Mediterranean.
Then one by one colorful lamps were lit, and Nikos called out, “Come, guests! Feast with us!”
Godiva and Rigo sat with Doris, Joey, Bird, and Mikhail. Joey was as talkative as Mikhail was silent, but they all knew each other well enough by now to be comfortable with everyone’s natural rhythms.
After the feast, Jen took them through the castle. Then Joey and Doris had to leave, as Doris had a commitment at her temple and couldn’t explain that she was attending a wedding on the other side of the world. Bird and Mikhail went down to listen to the musicians, who were playing music from all over the Mediterranean.
Under a sky brilliant with stars, the young people gathered on a lower terrace for dancing.
Godiva and Rigo watched for a while, then Godiva said, “How about walking off some of those incredible Greek dishes?”
Rigo held out his hand. They strolled along a breezeway with columns to either side, the ceiling carved with fantastical animals and humans cavorting together. They held hands, which was by now a habit when they walked together.
“Some of these animals I’ve seen today,” Godiva commented, peering upward. “You know what I’m enjoying most? The fact that I get to keep learning,” she said, grinning.
“Same.” Glancing around, Rigo added, “Alejo would love this place. All the old things so well preserved, made new again.”
“You’re right,” Godiva said, letting go his hand to slide hers around his waist. “That reminds me. What about Alejo? I know in shifter terms sixty-something doesn’t mean much, but isn’t it a long time not to find a mate? I am now going on record to say that I am totally in favor of mates, yessiree. He deserves one. He’s amazing, handsome, sweet.”
A horrible thought occurred. “Do you think the way he grew up with me slagging you at every turn, and then the long weird silence, turned him off?”
“No, no,” Rigo said, and she had the felicity of sensing that he truly meant it.
Rigo went on, “Alejo’s dated a lot. Especially when he was young. But none of them were the right ones. One or two were, well, disasters. One of those made him wary enough to concentrate on other things. And he’s constantly busy. He puts work first, especially as the ranch is so isolated that he doesn’t meet many new people unless he goes out.”
“Summer is still hot, and he says the humidity back there is steamy, with squadrons of mosquitos the size of tanks. We’ve got weeks and weeks before autumn, and my stay at your ranch. I think,” Godiva said slowly, “maybe we need to straight-arm him into a visit to Playa del Encanto. Not to matchmake. That practically guarantees a backfire. Just to visit. Meet people. Some of whom will be female people. It’s the law of averages.”
Rigo smiled down at her, his eyes tender. “Though she be but little, she is fierce,” he quoted.
Rigo even reads Shakespeare, Godiva thought happily. But she crossed her arms with mock affront as she said, “I happen to really like Hermia, one of Shakespeare’s few heroines who definitely rocks. Howsomever! If you’re implying that I’m in any way bossy . . .”
“Never.” He grinned, and kissed her.
More
Paranormal Romance by Zoe Chant
The Silver Shifters series
Silver Dragon
Silver Fox
Silver Unicorn
The Hollywood Shifters series
Hollywood Bear
Hollywood Dragon
Hollywood Tiger
A Hollywood Shifters’ Christmas
The Upson Downs series
Target: Billionbear
A Werewolf’s Valentine
See Zoe Chant’s complete list of books here!