“Okay,” Jackson interrupted. “Why don’t we mingle a little bit first before you get cozy with the wildlife.”
He led me into the crowd and started introducing me around. I couldn’t possibly remember all their names, but some of them were hard to forget. There was the woman with the blonde hair and oversized blue eyes named Tinker. Based on her unusually tiny frame and Barbie-doll figure, I was pretty sure I knew how she got her name. All she was missing was a set of dainty wings. Then there was the guy with the flaming copper hair that they called Red. But there were more Bobs and Marys than I could remember.
“Hungry?” He nodded toward the crown jewel of barbeque fare displayed on a table near a smoldering pit. Most of the barbeques I’d been to served hamburgers and chicken, but Cairo had gone big and smoked a whole pig. I guess it was no worse that carving up a whole turkey or a chicken, but something about looking at the animal’s face turned me off to the idea.
“I think I’ll stick to something boring,” I said, heading for the less dramatic offerings next to the grill while he headed for the smoked swine on the table.
“That pork is about the best thing you’ll ever put in your mouth,” Cairo commented as he joined me at the hamburger table.
“I’m sure it’s amazing. I’m just not a big fan of pork,” I lied. “A good old burger is just fine with me.”
His cocky grin gave him away before he asked. “So, you and Jackson . . .?”
I smiled while I loaded my plate. “I’m not sure what we are. We’re still working on that part.”
“Well, I’m biased, but he’s a good guy. He can be an asshole sometimes but he’s honest. He’ll let you know exactly where you stand with him.”
“That’s good to know,” I said. “I’d rather get my feelings hurt than be lied to.”
“What kind of bullshit are you telling her, Cairo?” Jackson approached with a plateful of pork and potato salad. He took a bite of the meat and nodded his head. “Yep. It was worth the ride.”
Cairo looked across the yard and then grabbed my free arm. “Come on, Katie. Let’s go say hello to Jasper before Dottie wanders over.” He motioned toward a brown alpaca standing at the fence, staring at the party like he wanted to jump the corral and join in. “He’s the friendliest one of the herd, but Dottie doesn’t like to share him with anyone. She gets jealous and tends to nip.”
Jackson offered to guard my plate while I took a few minutes to meet the sweet-looking beast. I followed Cairo over to the fence where Jasper was eagerly waiting as we approached. I swear the animal was smiling. He ignored Cairo and came over to me so I could run my hand over the soft tuft of fleece on the top of his head. “Oh my God, is he cute,” I gushed, momentarily losing my mind while I envisioned a space for one in my backyard.
“Yeah, they’re cute all right,” he snickered. “But I could do without that one.” He motioned to the larger cream-colored female headed toward us.
“I guess that would be Dottie?”
“Yeah, and I’m not in the mood to wash spit off my face.”
We turned to head back to the party. Jackson was still standing next to the table where I’d left him but he had company. A tall brunette with teeny-tiny cutoff shorts was leaning into him, laughing at his comments and rubbing her hand up and down him arm, the way you’d expect a man like Jackson Hunter to be fawned over. It shouldn’t have bothered me as much as it did, but we were here together and it was a date.
I shoved my displeasure down my throat and formed a wide saccharin smile as I approached them, saying nothing as I retrieved my plate from the table. He wasn’t my property, and I guess it was good to test the waters around other women early in the stages of our relationship, before I found out he was a womanizing prick.
After a very uncomfortable moment, I felt his hand on my waist. I could feel both of their eyes on me as I took a massive bite of the burger and looked anywhere but in their direction. My appetite had gone from ravenous to nonexistent, and for the life of me I couldn’t manage to swallow the food in my mouth. I thought I might have to run for the nearest bathroom to spit it out.
“Katie, this is Angela,” he finally said. The large lump of burger slipped painfully down my throat as I turned to meet the beautiful woman with her arm wrapped around my date. “Cairo’s wife.”
Shit.
I wiped my hand on a napkin and extended it, but like Cairo said, there was no fucking handshaking around here. She gave me a brief but genuine hug and smiled with her perfect teeth. “Jackson was just telling me about your shop.” She turned around and lifted the back of her shirt to show me the six-inch wide tribal mark on her lower back—undeservedly dubbed the “tramp stamp.” She lowered her shirt back down and grimaced. “Too many margaritas one night. I need to get that damn thing removed.” Her eyes brightened. “Hey, do you do removals?”
“Sorry,” I said with a sympathetic, limp smile. “I just put them on. If it makes you feel any better, I kinda like them.” Of course, I didn’t have one on my own lower back, but I hated the idea that some asshole thought they had the right to put a derogatory stigma on the position of a woman’s tattoo. No one seemed to have a problem with penis ink.
Cairo joined us and Angela shifted her attention to him, wrapping her arm around his waist and kissing his cheek. “I hope my husband warned you about Dottie over there. She can be sweet when she wants to be, but she can be a real bitch a second later.”
“So, you and Cairo . . .”
“Are married.” She glanced at Jackson with a knowing look. My discomfort must have been written all over my face until he’d said the magic words that released me from my awkward state. She grabbed a couple of beer bottles from the ice bucket next to the table and took me by the wrist with her other hand. “Come on, Katie. You and I have things to discuss.” Jackson’s face took on a look of worry as Angela delivered the threat.
I looked at the bucket and then back at him. “Don’t forget who’s driving.”
We walked down to the river and sat on the edge of a small dock. “How long have you known Jackson?” she asked, opening the bottles and handing me one.
“Not long. He came into my shop a couple of weeks ago and managed to make my blood boil in record time. The man doesn’t have a filter, does he?”
“That’s Jackson,” she confirmed, taking a deep swig of her beer. “He doesn’t get attached very often. To women, I mean. But he sure likes you.”
My heart skipped just a little when she said it. I don’t know how he managed to make me feel that way after knowing him for such a blip of time, but damn it, that man had a hold on me. “Really. How can you tell?” I tried to ask the question casually, but she seemed to be a smart woman. I’m sure our mutual attraction was obvious, especially after my poor attempt at hiding my disappointment when I saw her with him, before I found out she was married to his close friend.
Something wet touched my skin, and then a head wedged into the gap between my arm and ribcage. An oversized mutt with a shiny sable coat practically knocked me off the dock as it insinuated itself into my space.
“See. Even his dog likes you.”
I raised my arm to accommodate the dog’s large body, getting a wet muzzle in my face in the process. “This is Jackson’s dog?”
“Well, that’s debatable. She lives here now, and I’ve gotten pretty attached.” She explained how Jackson had stayed with them temporarily when he first arrived in Savannah and asked them to “dog sit” while he set up house in the city. “He’ll have to fight me to get her back. That’s a country dog. She doesn’t belong in the city. It was Easter Sunday. Found her eating out of a trash can behind a gas station. That’s her name—Easter.”
The dog shoved her cold nose into my face a couple more times and then turned and ran back to the party. I watched Jackson drop down on his haunches to greet her, wrestling her wiggling body to the ground. “I don’t know him very well,” I said, staring at the reunion. She was grinning when I looked back at her.
“What are you grinning at?”
“Nothing.” She shook her head and leaned back on her palms. “It’s just good to see him happy. This whole Sapanth thing has been tough on him.” She turned to look at me. “Has he told you about them?” When I didn’t answer immediately she frowned. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“It’s okay. He told me.” I failed to mention the circumstances around him feeling compelled to share his background with a group of shifter bikers in Atlanta. No need to out myself to a stranger who I’d known for less than an hour.
“Then you know about Kara?” she asked.
“Yeah. Along with the fact that he’s on the run.”
She laughed. “Is that what he called it?”
I was about to interrogate her about that last comment when a loud noise came from behind us. We both looked back at the party as a chair went sailing across the yard. It stopped in mid-air and fell straight down to the ground, as if an invisible barrier had been thrown up in front of it. If I was seeing things correctly, a grizzly bear was standing on its hind legs and heading straight for the smoked pig on the table.
“What the hell?” I said as I scanned the crowd and spotted another one lashing its huge paw at a guy standing near the grill. Its deadly claws slashed across his face, tearing open his skin in a series of wide bloody streaks that were visible even from a distance.
“Fucking animals!” Angela spat, climbing to her feet. “Stay here—” she began, but the look in her eyes suggested the dragon was already beginning to emerge. With fascination, she cocked her head at me and whispered, “Well, I’ll be damned.”
I climbed to my own feet and gazed at her astounded face for a moment, feeling my eyes shift from blue to green. Then we both turned back to the mayhem in the backyard. The bear heading for the pig stopped in its tracks, a wall of bricks forming around its feet from all sides and growing taller by the second until it completely encased the animal in a cell of clay walls.
Angela grabbed my wrist as my claws protruded and the texture of my skin began to change. She wasn’t frightened when I turned to look at her. She just shook her head and motioned toward Jackson. I whipped my head around just about the time he was smashing his fist into the other bear’s snout and sending it flying a good thirty feet across the yard. He’d knocked it out cold.
“It’s over,” she said. “I’m getting real tired of strangers coming into my fucking house and ruining my fucking parties.”
“They’re shifters?” I asked, feeling my dragon recede.
Her brow raised. “Well, aren’t you?”
I had no time to explain the subtle differences between me and those bears in her yard. By the time we ran back from the river, the mysterious brick wall had disappeared and the bears had shifted back into a couple of stunned men. Even the guy with the slashed skin was beginning to heal.
“Okay!” Angela shouted across the yard. “Show’s over. Eat the goddamn pig!”
I glared at Jackson, who was helping Cairo clean up the spilled bucket of beer. When he looked up at me his eyes were full of heat. I knew what that heat felt like, because mine felt the same way after almost emerging back on that dock.
“You and I need to have a talk,” I said. “Now take me home.”
21
I liked to sleep a little late on Monday mornings since it was the one day of the week the shop was closed, so the knock on my door at seven a.m. was not appreciated. The more I tried to ignore it, the louder it got.
“What?” I barked as I opened the door, not caring who was on the other side.
“Before you slam the door,” Jackson said, “hear me out.”
Instead of having an argument when we got back from the barbeque the evening before, Jackson had simply dropped me off and left without a word, leaving me standing in the driveway with my jaw hanging down to my knees. I thought it was over and I’d never see him again. In fact, after he unceremoniously dumped me off in my driveway, I didn’t want to ever see him again. At least that’s how I felt at the time. This morning I just felt sad, like I’d lost something important.
I swung the door open and stepped aside. “Fine. Come in.”
He sat at the kitchen island while I started the coffee. Nothing was getting settled until I got some caffeine in my system. In the interim, I tolerated the awkward silence by shoving a bagel into the toaster oven while he just sat there staring at my backside. “Would you like one?” I asked stiffly without turning around.
“No, thanks.”
I threw the tub of cream cheese on the counter and swung around. “What the fuck was that yesterday, Jackson?”
“You mean the bears?” he replied, skirting around the fact that he’d knocked one of them clear across the yard. Last time I checked, human beings didn’t have that kind of strength.
“You told me you weren’t a shifter.” He gazed at me for a moment before responding, and I got the impression he was weighing his options to determine the best way around the truth. Seemed unfair since he knew what I was. Did he really think I would judge him for being a shifter?
“I’m not a shifter,” he finally said. “I just have . . . abilities.”
“Like superhuman strength?” I said with sarcasm and disappointment in my tone.
His head slowly nodded. “Something like that.”
I glared at him, debating whether to kick him out or give him a chance to explain. He’d been lying to me by omission, and that was a killer for even a well-established relationship. “What happened to blunt honesty?”
“I wasn’t trying to lie to you, Katie. I was planning to tell you, but—” He shut his mouth and considered his words. I got the feeling he was trying to figure out how to explain what he’d probably worked so hard trying to hide from the world.
“Jesus, Jackson! I’m a fucking dragon! Trust me, I can handle whatever this is.”
“I had an accident when I was sixteen,” he finally said. “I grew up outside of Chicago. We used to play hockey on the lake as soon as it froze over in the winter.” Before continuing he looked me squarely in the eye and shrugged. “I got careless one day and stepped on a thin patch. It took them forty minutes to find me under the ice and pull me out.”
One of my worst fears was drowning under a frozen lake. Even if you managed to find an air pocket under the ice, hypothermia would most likely kill you in minutes, and here was Jackson recounting that very scenario. I had to stop myself from physically shuddering at the thought. “My God, Jackson. How did you survive?”
His eyes glanced at the counter and then raised back up to mine. “I didn’t. They pulled a corpse through the ice. By the time the ambulance got to the hospital I was pronounced dead. My parents—” He stopped, the words hitching in his throat for a moment before he was able to continue. “An hour later I hopped off the gurney they left me on while they waited for someone to wheel me down to the morgue. Then I walked out of the room. Just about gave everyone a heart attack. I still don’t remember a thing past waking up that morning.” He laughed quietly. “I had some pretty powerful skills I wasn’t even aware of until I went to the gym a week later. Almost threw a two-hundred-pound barbell through the roof when I went to lift it.”
The bagel started to smoke in the toaster oven. “Oh, shit!” I burned my finger dragging it off the rack. When I turned back around he was grinning at me.
“What’s so funny, Superman?”
“I don’t know,” he mused. “Here you thought you were the biggest freak in the room.”
“I still do. I’m a dragon, and all you can do is throw a bear across the yard. And what the hell was that brick wall all about?”
“Most of the people you met yesterday were shifters. The bears got a little carried away by that pig. Cairo should have stuck to chicken and burgers if he knew they were coming. But I don’t think he did. They were guests of guests, just like you.”
Suddenly I remembered my dragon peeking out in front of Angela. “Shit,” I muttered
. But I guess if she threw barbeques for shifters, it really didn’t matter. I was more concerned with her level of discretion. “Angela saw me start to change while we were on the dock watching you wrestle with the bears.”
“I know. She called me last night to congratulate me on my taste for shifters.” I knew what Angela meant. She was referring to his previous relationship with Kara, and now with a dragon. “I cleared a few things up and asked her to forget what she saw.”
“And will she?” I asked.
“Your secret is safe. What the hell do you think she is, Katie? The woman turns into objects, for God’s sake.”
The statement almost blew right over my head. “What do you mean she turns into objects?”
“Cairo and Angela are not your garden variety shifters either. They’re Dimensionals.” He waited for the strange word to sink in. “Their whole clan is. Where do you think that brick wall came from?”
“Dimensionals? Does that mean what I think it means?” I asked curiously, remembering what
I witnessed at the barbeque. “They turn into . . . brick walls? What the hell for?”
He grinned. “Good thing one of them did. I don’t know if I could have taken both of those bears. But seriously, Katie, why does a shifter change into anything? Who the fuck knows? And it’s not just walls. I’ve seen Cairo flatten into a makeshift bridge to get his car over a flooded street.”
I went back to slathering my charred bagel with cream cheese and took a bite as I turned back around. “All right. I’m over it. But no more secrets. I don’t want to know how many women you’ve slept with or your ATM pin, but I sure as hell don’t want to find out through the grapevine that you’re Spiderman, or some other super hero,” I said, suppressing a grin.
“Agreed,” he conceded. “And by the way, that goes both ways.”
“Of course.”
He got up to leave. “I’m heading out of town for a couple of days. A little unfinished business in Atlanta. I’ll be back by Thursday night.” He stared at me for a minute, considering his next offer. “You could come with me.”
Crossroads of Bones (A Katie Bishop Novel Book 1) Page 19