Shifter (20 page)

“Excuse me. How do you know my name?” I ask, thrown by the fact that he spoke to me as if we are old friends.

“Abby, it’s me, Dimitri,” he says half-amused, half-weary.

“I fucking know who you are. I’ve seen the flyers,” I say still waving the lamp around as if it were a sword.

“Then why did you ask who I was?” he asks and sits up.

I don’t reply to this. Instead, I go on questioning him. “What are you doing in my house and in my bed naked?” Now, I’m rocking back and forth on the balls of my feet nervously, trying to remember where I left my cell phone.

“I’ve been here for months.”

“No, you haven’t. I think would have noticed you in my house.”

“I haven’t been human, so no, you wouldn’t have.”

“Come again?” I make a small back step toward my bedroom door and hallway.

“I’m a shapeshifter. A witch cursed me into cat form. You adopted me. I’ve been living in your home for the past few months as your pet Maine Coon, Dimitri.”

“Shapeshifters. Witches. Curses. Huh. Yeah. Okay.” My brain is spinning with all the craziness he is throwing at me.

I throw the lamp at him, turn quickly out of the door, slam it, and take off down the hall. At the end of it, he appears out of nowhere right in front of me. I scream again and spin back around. There he is again right in front of me.

“Would you just stop,” he barks.

“What the hell? How the hell?” I ask, spinning around again, looking for an escape route.

“I told you, I’m supernatural. You can keep running from me, but I’ll just appear wherever you are.”

Tears flood my eyes and run down my cheek. I am now truly scared. “What…what do you...want...with...me,” I cry and fall toward the floor. He catches me a second before I hit the ground and holds me to him. Fear consumes ninety percent of my mind and body. Fear for my life. For my body. For my sanity. The other ten percent is acutely aware of our naked bodies pressed close together. Despite my fear, I feel oddly comforted by his presence, by his touch.

“I don’t want anything from you,” he says soothingly, rubbing my back.

“Then why are you here. Why are you lying to me?” I cry.

“I’m not lying to you. And I told you, you adopted me.”

“You’re psychotic. That’s why you ran away from your family and why they are trying so hard to find you. You’re crazy. Oh my God. Please don’t hurt me. I’ll help you any way I can, just don’t hurt me.”

“Damn it, I’m not going to hurt you,” he growls and leads me into the living room. “Where’s your phone? I’ll call my brother and prove it to you. “

“No, I’m calling your brother to come and get you,” I spit and dislodge myself from him.

I go over to the counter that separates my living room from my kitchen to where my home phone sits in its cradle. My body feels the loss of his as soon as we are apart, but I don’t dare turn back to look at him. The phone rings twice before a grumbling voice answers on the other end.

“Devan, it’s Abby. I need you to come over, now. I just woke up with your brother naked in my bed. I don’t know what the two of you are playing...” A third scream escapes my lips as Devan appears instantly in my house before I can finish my sentence.

“You son of a...” Dimitri bellows and leaps in front of me, hiding me from Devan. He reaches around behind himself and wraps one arm around me, walking me backwards toward the hall. Suddenly, completely aware of my nakedness, I go willingly. I also realize that I’m now self-conscious about my nakedness. I hadn’t been a second ago when it was just Dimitri and me. No, then I hadn’t thought much about my nakedness or him seeing me naked. The thought of covering myself had only briefly crossed my mind, but now with Devan trying desperately to see around his younger brother, I feel the need to be clothed.

“I can clothe myself, but my power hasn’t completely come back, so I can’t clothe you. Go put something on,” Dimitri growls at me.

Looking first to Devan then to Dimitri, I cover my breasts the best I can with my arms and run to my room.

“You’ve got two seconds to get dressed before I come in after you,” Dimitri shouts.

“Way to inspire confidence that you’re not going to kill me,” I say, pausing half in and half out of my doorway.

“I can’t have you calling anyone else. They won’t understand, and if Mave gets a hold of me, I’m going to die.”

“What?”

“I’ll explain in a minute. Put some clothes on,” he spits angrily, glaring at Devan.

My first impulse is to flip him off, but when I see that Devan is still peering around him, I duck quickly into my room.

“What is your problem?” I hear Dimitri demand.

“What? I didn’t do anything,” Devan countered.

“You can’t just pop into someone’s home like that.”

“I didn’t know she was going to bare ass naked. Speaking of, why were the two of you naked?” I hear Devan ask, and the amount of jealousy I hear in his voice confuses me.

“She fell asleep in a bath towel, and I shifted. None of that matters. What the hell did you do to her tonight?”

“Why?”

“Because she came home crying. She cried herself to sleep. She was so upset she actually talked in her sleep. Something she has never done before. I didn’t completely understand all of what she was saying, but she said your name and Mark’s name and something about men being assholes.”

“I didn’t do anything to her tonight,” Devan said defensively.

“Then why was she crying.” The anger in Dimitri’s voice makes me nervous.

“Mark stood me up,” I say, coming back into the living room wearing a sports bra, tank top, and shorts. I glance at Dimitri to see to my utter disappointment that he is now wearing gray sweat pants. “I waited at the restaurant for a half an hour and he never showed. When I was leaving, I ran into your brother and his
date
.”

Dimitri scowls at his brother.

“What? I didn’t know she was going to be there,” Devan said, pointing at me.

“You knew she was planning on a date with Mark, and you had an idea of when. Besides, you could have taken your date out somewhere closer to home.” Dimitri says this last part as if it is code for something else. What that something else is, I haven’t a clue.

“Katie is from here,” Devan snaps back. He says
here
as if there is a difference in the people from here than the people from where they live. Apparently, the fact that she is from here means something big to Dimitri because he only nods without saying anything else.

“Never mind any of that. The fact that I have bad taste in men is obvious. What I want is the truth about whatever the hell is going on around here. I go to bed curled up with a sweet cuddly cat and wake up to an extremely naked man in my bed who tells me he is a shapeshifter whom a witch has cursed into a cat. On top of that, he can disappear and reappear just like that,” I say, snapping my fingers. “And I’m guessing you are a shapeshifter too, considering you’re his brother and you just popped into my house out of no damned where.”

“That is pretty much all of it. The redhead who keeps hounding you about having her cat is Mave, the witch who cursed me,” Dimitri says.

“And why did she curse you? What did you do to her?”

“I slept with her and never called her back. I didn’t do it on purpose,” he adds hastily, seeing the look on my face. “I was drunk. We did very little talking. I don’t even remember half of what I said to her. I didn’t even know she had put her number in my phone until the night she showed up at my door ranting and raving. Devan here was supposed to keep me from doing anything like that while I was drunk. The next morning when he came to get me, he deleted her number and neither one of us thought any more about it.”

I want to be pissed at him. It is such an asshole thing to do. On the other hand, he was drunk. She should have known not to trust anything he said, and yes, it is wrong of him not to have called her, but that happens. Granted, if it had been me, the next time I saw him out I would have chewed his ass, not gone looking for someone who obviously didn’t want me. That was extreme overkill for what he had done. Unless…

“Did you knock her up?” I ask and hope, why I hope I don’t know, but I hope he hadn’t.

“No,” he shouts angrily. “That was the first thing I asked her. She’s just crazy. Somehow, in the very brief time we spent together she convinced herself that she loves me. I guess she thought I felt the same or claimed to have felt the same. I knew her all of an hour before I took her to my room. We had sex for a few hours after that.”

I gave him a doubtful look about the ‘hours’ part, but he went on.

“We fell asleep. I woke before she did the next morning and left quickly. I didn’t see her again for a month. She showed up on my doorstep, yelled at me, then turned me into a kitten.”

Devan snickers, and Dimitri pops him on the arm.

“It’s not funny, man. I was this little ball of nothing that she caged and sent to the pound. I had just enough magic in me to turn myself into a Maine Coon before they found me on the front stoop of the shelter.”

“Why a Maine Coon?” I ask. Devan is still holding in laughter. I guess if a witch turned my little sister into a fur ball, I would be laughing too. Then it dawns on me that I am taking this all too well. I have questions, but I believe what they are telling me. I don’t know how I believe it. I mean, the appearing out of thin air was convincing, but still.

“The cat she turned me into was a flea-bitten alley cat. I knew that as soon as the people at the shelter saw me they would put me to sleep. I looked sick and malnourished. My only hope was to live. Maine Coons get to be big cats. Plus, they are pedigree. They don’t kill healthy pedigrees, or at least I hoped they didn’t.”

Devan couldn’t hold it in any more. With the word flea-bitten sputtering from his lips, he rolls forward laughing his ass off.

“It’s not funny, you ass,” Dimitri says, punching his brother in the arm again.

“Yeah...it...is.”

“It kind of is,” I say, smiling at Dimitri. “But it’s not that funny.” I glare at Devan pointedly, telling him to be nicer to his brother.

“It’s funny because Dimitri’s base form is a wolf. A big wolf. I keep picturing this large wolf suddenly turning into this itty-bitty kitty cat. Man, I can’t wait to tell the pack about this.”

“The pack? You have a pack?” All my humor leaves with his slip. “There are more of you?”

“Sweetie, there is a whole supernatural world out there. We and our pack are only a small portion of it,” Devan says.

“How can that be? How have you kept yourselves hidden from humans? I mean I know in the television shows and books they find ways but in the real world it doesn’t seem possible.”

“We use magic. And humans rationalize the impossible. Most of the time when they see something their brains can’t comprehend, they seek the most plausible explanation and stick to it. Rarely do we have to interfere. But if we have to, most beings can use some sort of magic to alter memories and such,” Dimitri explains.

“Are you going to have to do that to me? When you leave, I mean,” I ask, unsure if I want that or not.

“That depends on how you feel about all of it when I finally go, and if you can keep our secret,” Dimitri says.

“When you finally go? Aren’t you leaving tonight? Isn’t that why your brother is here?” I ask again unsure if I want him to leave.

“No, I’m sorry, but I can’t leave tonight,” he says, looking intently at me.

“What?” Devan and I exclaim at once.

“Look, I can keep your secret, but I want out of all of this,” I say, not holding his gaze as I say this. A part of me doesn’t want him to go, and I’m sure he can tell that I’m lying.

“Dimitri, man, you’ve gotta come home. Mom and Pop have been worried sick. Also, the weres are getting out of control. We need all hands on deck.”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t. I don’t have all of my powers back. I can’t shift into anything but a cat, which means the curse hasn’t lifted. This is only like the third time I have been able to shift into human form. I don’t know how long it’s going to last. It could be a few hours, maybe a few days. Until I am completely free of the curse, I can’t leave this house. Without all of my powers and my ability to shift into my true form, I’m helpless. Mave wants me dead, and the weres will eat me alive. I’m safer here.”

“How? I don’t have any supernatural powers. I can’t go up against a witch,” I say worried that he does think I can protect him somehow.

“You don’t have to do anything. As long as you carry that stuffed animal on your key chain with you at all times, Mave can’t get to you.”

“Excuse me?” Confused, I look around for my keys, finding them on the counter leading to the kitchen, and examine the tiny black and white panda looped through the key ring.

“Do you remember all of those toys Dr. Smith gave me a while back?”

“Yeah, but what does your vet have to do with any of this?”

“Dr. Smith is an Angel. Those toys are protection charms. I have them all over the house and car. I even put one down in your purse. I knew that you would assume one of the kids did it and would leave it there until one of them got it out.”