Shifter

by Jennifer Reynolds

  In a flash, Devan has his cell out. He photographs the note and sends it to someone. Darius, I presume. Immediately, I slide into his head. Crazy thoughts are swimming through him. He is trying to figure out where she is hiding me. How he could have fallen for her and many other things.

  I try again to break through to him. To tell him she hasn’t done this to me. My efforts are fruitless though.

  When I hear the toilet flush, Devan’s phone rings. I hear the muffled voice of my eldest brother asking what they should do. Devan tells him nothing at this point. They need to search the house. Darius tells him to hold off and let him get a search warrant.

  “Is something wrong?” Abby asks when she reenters the living room. Devan looks angry and serious.

  Don’t say something that will cause me to hurt you.

  “I’ll be there shortly,” he says into the phone and hangs up. He turns sharply to look at her, and his face falls. I can sense that he wants to be angry with her but can find it in himself to be. “That was my oldest brother. We might have another lead on Dimitri.”

  “Do you need to go?”

  “I do. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I understand. Do you need my help with anything?”

  Don’t say it. I can hear your thoughts loud and clear. You hurt her, and I’ll kill you.

  “No. I think we can handle it. I’ll call you in a few days.”

  He leaves the house quickly, leaving Abby looking a little sad. I can tell that his behavior has her a little worried. I wish I can warn her about what he is about to do.

  I walk across her desk to the sofa where she has taken a seat, trying to think of a way to communicate with her. I can’t hold a pen to write on a piece of paper. If I can somehow get her to open up a word document I might be able to type something out, but she seems far from doing that.

  “It’s time for bed,” she says, getting up from the sofa, turning off all of the lights, locking the front door, and setting her alarm. I watch her for any signs of distress, but she actually seems a little flustered. Her face is flushed, and she seems to be in a hurry to get to her room.

  I stand in the hall waiting for her to change clothes. Instead of calling me to bed, though, when she is ready, she very gently shoos Sebastian from the room and shuts the door. My heartbeat speeds up. There is only one reason why she would do that.

  Unable to control myself I lay flat on the floor with my head pressed against the wood, listening intently for any sound. For a long time nothing comes through, then all of a sudden her breathing grows ragged and heavy. I hear the soft thump as her pillows and blanket fall to the floor. The moment she begins to moan my body begins to tremble.

  Shit. Shit. I’m going to shift or at least try to shift. Before I make a noise that will startle her and cause her to rush me off to the vet’s office again, I force myself to a standing position and walk to the laundry room.

  -----

  She has to be sound asleep by now, which sucks. I’ve been writhing on the floor for an hour and a part of me wishes she would come looking for me. I could use some of Dr. Smith’s pain meds. The best I can do is force myself into unconsciousness. My powers aren’t strong enough to keep me under for long periods of time, and now that I’m sure I’m not going to shift, I welcome five minutes of freedom from the pain.

  Chapter 13

  ~~~Abby~~~

  “No, he hasn’t called,” I tell my sister for the hundredth time in three days. “I tried to tell you guys that he only asked me out to thank me for helping him.” I knew this was the truth, but his lack of phone call was beginning to upset me; I just refused to let anyone see it.

  Our date had gone well, or so I thought. He had even kissed me on my front porch. Maybe I shouldn’t have invited him into the house. That might have given him a bad impression of me. He might have taken it as a sign that I was easy, or maybe he saw it as a sign of desperation. My promise that I wasn’t going to sleep with him probably hadn’t meant anything to him. I’m sure he hears that all the time from women who soon after are dropping their panties for him.

  “But he said he would,” Carry argues, sounding a little like a spoiled child who was told by a parent that they were getting ice cream for dessert, but the parent had forgotten and not brought home the treat.

  “And when has any man in our lives ever done what they said they would.” My tone is bitter, but considering our father had been the last decent man in our lives, and he had died while we were still in high school, and we are now pushing thirty that’s saying a lot.

  “True,” she concedes. Her ex-husband had started out as Prince Charming but had quickly turned into Lord Voldemort when she found out she was pregnant with their third child. After their second child, he had sworn he was going to get a vasectomy to save my sister from having to go through all the pain and discomfort of having her tubes tied while trying to take care of two small children. Of course, he never did, and the condoms and birth controls pills hadn’t worked as well as they should, if they were using them as instructed.

  And I’m not even going to let myself remember my ex and the vile things he had done to me.

  “Look, he said he had a lead on his brother. He’s probably dealing with that, and I am the last thing on his mind.”

  “I’m sorry, sweetie.”

  “Don’t apologize to me. I knew what this was from the beginning. Everyone else made it a big deal.” She knows when I am lying and trying to save face. Thankfully, she isn’t calling me on my bullshit. She is letting me deal with the rejection the only way I know how.

  “Can you call him?”

  “I don’t have his number, and even if I did, I wouldn’t. I’m not going to appear that desperate. I spent too many years chasing after men who didn’t want me, and you saw where that got me with Rick. I’m not doing it again.” Okay, I had the number on the flyer, but I wasn’t going to use it.

  “The situations aren’t the same. You know that, right?” Carrie says.

  “Obviously, but I’m still not going to do it. I’ve told you over and over again that I’m not chasing another one. If a guy wants me, he needs to make the effort. I’m not putting myself out there just to be pushed aside,” I counter.

  “What if he is waiting for you to make the first move?”

  “Then he can wait.” I say this with so much venom I scare myself.

  “I’m sorry that you’ve been so damaged,” Carrie says with a sigh.

  “Not your fault, you didn’t do it. Besides your ex-husband wasn’t a peach either. I don’t understand how you aren’t any more jaded than you are.”

  “I know what he did to me wasn’t my fault. I know that it is not the fault of every other man that walks the earth. You haven’t gotten to that point. We found assholes, which isn’t surprising considering how Eddy was. Most girls marry their fathers. In our case, we married our stepfather. Why Mom left Dad for that asshole, I’ll never know, and since I refuse to ever speak to that woman again as long as she is married to him, I’ll never get to ask. That doesn’t mean you can’t trust any man.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Dimitri’s ears pop as if he has heard something. I pull the phone away slightly but don’t hear anything. I put the phone back to my ear in time to see him stalk toward the kitchen. Taking his actions as typical weird cat behavior, I turn by attention back the phone and say, “When you find one you can trust, let me know.”

  “Will do. Listen, I have to put these heathens to bed. I’ll call you in the morning. Night. I love you.”

  “I love you, too. Give them kisses for me,” I say.

  I hit the end button, then flip through my missed calls, which aren’t many considering the thing lives by my side, to see if he has called and I have somehow missed it. Returning a phone call isn’t a psycho move. Calling him because he hasn’t called me is, despite what Carrie says.

  He hadn’t called.

  Dimitri walks into the room as I am turning from my desk. He looks at me
curiously then turns his head to the front door as if he is hearing something I do not.

  “What is it, boy?” I ask, bending down to pick him up.

  His extremely intense look at the door worries me. A loud knock shakes the door as I am approaching it to see what he is hearing.

  “Who’s there?” I ask in a timid voice as I look through the peephole. I curse under my breath when I can’t see anything because I haven’t turned on the porch light.

  “Police, ma’am. Open the door,” a loud commanding voice calls from the other side.

  “Police,” I say, doing what the voice commands. “Is something wrong?”

  “Open the door, ma’am,” the man dressed in a blue police uniform commands from my front porch.

  Opening the door wide, I say, “What’s going on?”

  “Are you Abigail Sinclair?”

  “Yes, sir. And it’s Abby.”

  “Ms. Sinclair, Abby, I’m officer Richards. I have a warrant to search your house.” He hands me a legal looking sheet of paper that I barely look over. Reading it wouldn’t have done me any good if I had. I don’t speak legalese.

  “Search my house? For what?” I ask, looking from the police officer to the group of people behind him.

  “We have reason to believe that a Mr. Dimitri Sullivan is being held captive in your home,” the police officer says with complete sincerity.

  “Excuse me,” I say back with absolute confusion.

  Instead of answering, the police officer begins dispatching his people all over my home. Wanting to comply to not get into any trouble, I flatten myself against the wall beside the door and let them enter my house.

  “Why do you have locked files on your computer, ma’am?” a police officer seated at my computer asks.

  “My job requires them to be password protected.” I call out the password from my position as my small home fills with police officers. I tell myself to change the password once they have finished searching my house.

  “Bedroom’s clear sir,” a voice calls from the back of my house.

  “Don’t forget to look for signs of a dog. Dimitri had a dog. He’s missing also,” the hard tenor of a familiar male voice coming out of the darkness says.

  My head jerks at the sound of his voice. I can’t believe it. Days with no phone call and he shows up with this. Oh, he is one dead mother…

  “Mr. Sullivan, why are you here?” Officer Richards asks, turning an annoyed look at the man stepping out of the shadows.

  “I wanted to be here when…”

  “What is going on here?” I ask, cutting him off as tears burn my eyes.

  “You two know each other?” Officer Richards asks us, a look of dread spreading across his face. He knows this isn’t going to end well.

  “We’ve met a few times,” Devan answers in a cold unfeeling voice. “She was one of the few people in this neighborhood who would talk to me.”

  “Devan what…” I don’t know how to finish my thought.

  “Dimitri has been spotted coming in and out of your house,” he says, eying me coldly.

  “No, he hasn’t. What the hell are you talking about? I promise I haven’t…” I stammer, then decide he isn’t worth it.

  “Save it,” he snaps.

  “Ms. Sinclair why is you basement door locked?” another cop asks.

  “Why do you guys keep asking me dumb ass questions? It’s not abnormal to have shit locked,” I snapped.

  “Just answer the man, Miss Sinclair,” the officer demands.

  “Because I wanted it locked. The fucking key is hanging right there on the wall beside the door.”

  “There is no need for such language, ma’am,” Officer Richards says, letting a hint of smile creep across his lips.

  “Really. You’re telling me that if you were a single female and I barged into your home in the middle of the night with a dozen men and started asking you why you had doors that potential burglars could come through locked, you wouldn’t be a little pissed and using foul language. I mean, don’t you teach single woman to take such precautions?”

  He doesn’t say anything, but the smile in his eyes says I have a point.

  The police took thirty minutes to search my house to Devan’s full satisfaction. I refused to look at him the entire time. I could tell that as time passed, he got angrier and angrier. Constantly asking the police officers if they had searched in this place or that. At one point, Officer Richards warned him that if he didn’t let them do their job, he was going to arrest him for obstruction.

  Finally, as the last of the officers are exiting my house, I turn to Devan and ask again, why he is doing this to me.

  “I told you. We had a witness state that they saw Dimitri coming in and out of your house. I didn’t want to believe it at first, but after seeing the note on your calendar with his name and some date on it, I knew she was telling the truth.”

  I can’t help bursting into laughter. I am so angry I could cry, but I didn’t want to cry in front of him; therefore, my body turned the anger into laughter.

  “What’s so damned funny?” Devan asks, fury seeping through his words.

  “Dimitri is my cat’s name. This cat right here,” I say, holding up Dimitri who has been watching the entire scene calmly, unlike Sebastian who had crawled up under the sofa and was hissing and growling at anyone who came near him.

  “When I first adopted him, I couldn’t think of anything to name him, then you came with the flyer, and every time I said the name Dimitri, he would react. I figured he liked it, so I named him after your brother. I knew it was weird, that’s why I never told you.” I start laughing again.

  “She’s right, sir,” an officer says, bringing both Devan and Officer Richards a few sheets of papers. “I found these in a locked filing cabinet. They’re vet bills with his name on them.” They are the bills from last week’s visit.

  “Plus, we found this,” another officer says, handing them Dimitri’s collar.

  “I know it’s weird,” I say again. “But he really likes the name. He meowed every time I said it and kept pawing at the flyer, so I went with it. He answers to the name and everything.” As I say this, I see a strange, contemplative look pass over Devan face. He turns his gaze down to the cat in my arms, eyeing Dimitri intently as if he is trying to decide if the cat…what? Knows something about his brother? Is his brother? Okay that last one is completely impossible, but the look on Devan’s face is unnerving, especially because as I follow Devan’s gaze down at my cat, I see Dimitri looking intently back at him.

  I jump slightly when Dimitri meows at the man in a way that suggest he is trying to say something to him. The two of them are staring at each other as if they communicating somehow. Devan’s brow furrows in frustration, yet it seems that whatever it is he is trying to hear, see, or sense from my cat isn’t coming through. After a minute, Dimitri also slumps in my arms, seemingly resigned to not being able to communicate with the man.

  “What about the witness?” Devan finally asks, startling Officer Richards and I from our contemplation of the two of them.

  “Who was this witness?” I ask the officer, knowing that there isn’t a witness and if there is, the person is a vindictive liar.

  “I can’t give out that information, ma’am,” the officer says, putting a hand up to stop Devan from answering instead.

  All of a sudden, I knew. “Is she an extremely tall red head? I think her name is Mave or something like that. And she is way too beautiful for her own good.”

  Devan and the police officer look at each other sharply. “You know this woman?” Officer Richards asks.

  “Yes. She’s the one I told you I’m having problems with,” I say, looking directly at Devan. “She is some psycho who believes my cat is hers.” I hold up Dimitri to show them which cat she thinks is hers. “Though he looks nothing like her cat and isn’t even the same breed. You can talk to my vet if you want to know more about her. I think they have her information.”

&nbs
p; “We’ll do that,” the officer says, noting her name and the information on a flip pad.

  “You can press charges against her for lying to the police, right?” I ask with a hint of satisfaction in my voice.

  The police officer only smiles at me.

  “Abby, I’m sorry about all of this,” Devan cuts in, attempting to step closer to me.

  “Save it. I can’t believe I fell for your bullshit. Why would you go out of your way to take me out just so that you could check out my house?”

  “That’s not why I asked you out.”

  “Why then, if you already had a witness who said she saw your brother in my house?”

  “The witness came forward the day we went out. I didn’t know anything about it until the next day.”

  “You know what, I don’t care. Get out of my house. I’m sorry your brother is missing. I wish I could help. And I will keep an eye out for him, but I don’t want to ever have to look at you again.”

  “Abby, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t. I know we barely know each other, but you should have come to me instead of doing all of this. Just go.”

  When he doesn’t make a move, Officer Richards puts a hand on his arm and pushes him out the door. “I’m sorry for the intrusion, Miss Sinclair.”

  “Don’t worry about it. You were only doing your job.”

  He nods at me and leaves. I shut and lock the door behind him. The tears come the second I am alone. Committing his second real act as a house cat, Dimitri nudges my hand away from my face and licks first my chin then my cheek before burying his head in my neck. I pet him and thank him for comforting me.

  “I’m all right, Dimitri, or at least I will be,” I say to my fur ball and go into the kitchen. I sit him down in a chair, walk over to the fridge, and pull out a pint of moose track ice cream. “This and a nice horror flick should help me forget about him. You want to come cuddle with me?” I ask, heading to my bedroom. He quickly runs after me.