Shifter (7 page)

“Nah, I just wanted to say hi. I’ll let you go. Remember the next time hottie knocks on your door; let him in. And I mean in every sense of the word.”

“You are bad.”

“I’m a married woman. I’m a woman married to a man whose job takes him all over the country for long periods of time. In ten years, when I’ve had enough of his kids and his absence, I will contemplate cheating. For right now, I love my life; therefore, I have to live vicariously through my single friends.”

“You’re living through the wrong friend then, sweetie, because the only person giving me any is me.”

“Tapping out now. I don’t need to hear any more about you and that purple vibrating thing in your dresser. I have my own vibrating monstrosity. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

I click the end button, sit the phone down beside my new annoyance, and move my mouse to pull my computer out of sleep mode. Swiping his paw away from what remains of the man’s name, I mouth “Dimitri Sullivan.” He meows as if to answer me. “You like that name?” I ask, typing in the name, then say the name again. He meows again.

“Dimitri? Is that your name, little guy?” It is an odd sort of name for a cat, but he does seem to like it. I say it again, and again he meows. “All right then, Dimitri it is. But if that fine piece of ass comes back to my door, we won’t tell him that is your name. It’s a little too creepy and stalkerish.”

I spend the next hour or so searching for Dimitri and his brothers online. Dimitri the cat looks over my shoulder the entire time as if he is reading the sites with me. I don’t really find much on them. There is a Whitepages’ listing for his brother Devan that only gives a post office box number and no phone number. All three brothers’ names come up as employees of Sullivan’s Architects, a Nashville based company owned by their father, Daniel. If there are any other siblings, their names aren’t on the website.

Dimitri’s bio on the company website says that he joined his father’s firm a year after his brother Devan and two years after their brother Darius. All three boys graduated with their Master’s in Architecture from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. The company has branches all across the United States and each son heads his own set of them.

I widen my search away from the Tennessee area and discover the oldest brother also has a Kentucky address. That is if the two people are the same people. Again, all he has is a post office box but no phone number. Wait….didn’t Devan say his oldest brother lived next to him? Were they all in Kentucky?

I tried searching around the area of Kentucky the Internet says this Darius is from for the other two but find nothing. The youngest brother, especially, is a ghost. This lack of information makes me wonder if maybe he is the black sheep of the family. Their picture on the Sullivan and Sons Architect website makes them look like your average, run-of-the-mill family, but pictures can be deceiving. Dimitri could be the family drunk. He might have felt the pressure of having to follow in his father or brothers’ footsteps. All of these possibilities cause me to lean toward the idea that Dimitri doesn’t want his family, or anyone else, for that matter, to find him. I wouldn’t tell Devan that of course, if he ever came back around.

I feel my face flush at the thought, then say to my Dimitri as I run my hands down his furry back, “I can’t look like this if he comes back.”

Chapter 6

~~~Dimitri~~~

Not only did I degrade myself to the point that I let her pick me up when Devan knocked on the door, but I humiliated myself when I saw my brother standing on her front porch by throwing myself into his arms. My only saving grace is that he didn’t know me. I rushed right into telling him about Mave and the curse that it took me a second to realize that he hadn’t heard a word I said.

To make matters worse, she had to go and lock me in the bathroom. Oh, if Devan ever finds out about this, I’m never going to live it down. She is lucky that I have supernatural hearing, or I would have scratched a hole in her door to get out.

Even though he doesn’t know what has happened to me, he knows that something has happened, and my family and my pack are looking for me. I shouldn’t have doubted that fact, but when no one had showed up to get me at the shelter or during the last month, I had actually begun to worry.

Normally, Devan isn’t a trusting person, but I’m glad he saw something in Abby he liked that caused him to share so much information or I wouldn’t know anything. I’m sure their “witness” is Sam. She’s a powerful witch and would be able to at least point them in the right direction. I didn’t like his flirting with Abby or her flirting with him, though. Devan’s a good guy, but the two of them aren’t right for each other.

I felt defeated when he left, but I am glad he is gone. Although, I hadn’t expected Abby to act the way she did; crying herself to sleep and all. At no point in their conversation had he said anything that should have incited such a reaction.

I paced outside her bedroom door for the longest time trying to puzzle it out until her friend called and woke her. I quickly deduced the problem from their conversation. Anger the likes of which I have never experienced before swept over me. I want to kill every person who has ever had a bad thought toward her. I did perk up a bit at the mention of her purple vibrator. That conversation pushed aside all of other thoughts, and I wondered if she would use it after she got off the phone with her friend.

Of course, she didn’t, though, the conversation did shift to me, and I took advantage of it to try to give her a clue about who I am. All she got out of my actions was my name. I could live with that. For now. Having her call me by my actual name makes me feel a little bit human.

I hear her say, “I can’t still be looking like this if he comes back here,” and it pulls me into the present.

I don’t know what the hell she is talking about. Apparently, she is continuing a conversation she has been having in her head. I don’t like the way her face turns all red with her words. The color makes her look as if she has been having dirty thoughts. I watch her face as she thinks about whatever it is that she has been thinking about and reveling at her hands in my fur. What does she mean she can’t look like she does when/if he comes back? She looks fine.

Women. I leap off her desk, circle the sofa cushion a few times, then flop down to contemplate my life some more. Finding this unsuitable, I jump back over onto the arm of the sofa, where she begins to slightly stroke my back. All I ever do these days is take stock of everything that is or has happened to me. I feel a little satisfied with the day, despite her locking me in the bathroom. My powers are coming back. Slowly. Obviously, not enough for Devan to hear my thoughts, but nonetheless, they are coming back.

I still can’t do anything to things outside my body. I can grow and shorten my hair and nails, alter my color, and the biggest thing of all is that when I eat that nasty ass food I can alter the way it tastes and smells once it hits my mouth. I can’t change the texture or the look, so I have to force myself to lower my mouth to it, but once I’ve taken a bite, I can trick myself into thinking I’m eating a burger or a steak. I have also sped my growth up slightly. She hasn’t noticed. Probably because they told her I was going to be a big cat, so she is expecting the rapid growth.

What is she doing now?
I wonder. I was nearly asleep with the feel of her hands on my back. Why did she have to stop? I hadn’t thought I would like anyone petting me. When the kids came over, I hid. They weren’t rough with me or anything; I just didn’t like them touching me. I didn’t like her sister doing it either, though, she doesn’t seem to like cats much and doesn’t feel the need to touch me that often.

Abby on the other hand, makes me feel calm when she touches me, makes me feel as if this entire messed up situation is going to be just fine. I don’t know how she does it or what it is about her that calms me, but she does.

If I was human, I probably wouldn’t have given her much thought. I know that is sad, but it’s true. To hear my brothers talk, I didn’t pay attention to most women. When I did, boy, I picked real winners, let me tell you. I’m not saying she isn’t pretty; she is lovely, and she isn’t all that overweight. I actually like women with curves. I like them soft and smooth.

Okay, I gotta shift directions. I’ve never had a boner in this form, and I don’t want to start now with her looking right at me. Well, she isn’t actually looking at me as much as looking through me. She is thinking hard about something.

No, it is more the aura she has around her. She seems happy on the surface, but the feelings radiating off her are ones of self-doubt and deprecation. She hates herself. I mean hates herself. She isn’t one of those people who talks to herself all of the time, despite the fact that she lives alone, but when she does, nine times out of ten, she is putting herself down over something.

Trying to figure out what has her contemplating so hard, I turn to look at the monitor. A page full of exercise equipment stares back at me. A part of me wishes I was human enough to chide her for it, but I can’t fault anyone fat, skinny, or somewhere in between for wanting to get into shape. I’m glad she isn’t dieting. I hate when people diet. They always go to the extreme.

Feeling bad about her sad mood, I nudge her hand with my head. She smiles down at me and begins to pet my head.

Sighing hard, she says to no one, “I’ve got to do it. I don’t have the dedication for it. Maybe if I have it here, in the house, right in front of me, I will feel guilty and pushed into doing it. I’m sick of being this way, and sick of men like Devan being nice to me to save my feelings.”

Knowing that what Devan thought about her matters to her annoys me. On the other hand, I really wish I could have told her that Devan was being honest. I could tell by the tone in his voice that he had thought she was something special. Devan had only one type of girl. He fell for any woman with a bright smile and intelligent conversation. The problem is that most of our women are pains in the ass, not that that is their fault. They are the product of generation after generation of man handling.

Pack life has been getting better for them. We as a gender are learning to control our animal instincts. Our males tend to be more animal and primal. Whereas our women are more human and reasonable.

Unfortunately, Devan prefers more laidback easygoing women, and most of the women we know are on guard at all times and very high strung. Abby is definitely his type, and this chaps my ass for some reason.

“I have to do this,” she mumbles.

I watch her turn back to the computer and order a treadmill and a set of wireless headphones. I assume she bought the headphones so that she can hear the television over the machine. With her order confirmed, she gets up and goes to the kitchen to make herself a grilled cheese. I follow her.

“You are being exceptionally needy today,” she says over her shoulder. “Is it because of our visitor or because I cried? I know we’ve had an unusual day today, but I like that it has brought you out of your shell.”

Wanting desperately to talk to her, to explain everything, something I never thought I would want to do, I hop into a chair and watch her. She pulls the low-fat butter and a package of cheese from the fridge.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she says with resignation in her voice. “I bought the sweat machine. I’ll worry about what I eat when it gets here.”

There couldn’t be anything in the look that I gave her that would warrant such a statement. I don’t give a shit if she eats four hundred of those stupid sandwiches. I like that she eats. As a shifter, I am used to eating a lot. She doesn’t eat anywhere near as much as we do. If she ate half of what we did, then I would say she overate. One or two measly grilled cheese sandwiches were nothing for me.

Chapter 7

~~~Abby~~~

Time seems to be moving slowly. My encounter with Devan feels as if it happened years ago, though it had actually only been a little over a month. Nevertheless, enough time has passed that I had all but forgotten about him. Okay, that is a lie, but we’ll pretend it’s the truth. Therefore, when someone knocks on my door, interrupting my playtime with Sebastian, I freeze halfway through throwing his favorite plastic ball that has a bell in the middle of it across the room. He doesn’t play fetch like a dog, but he does like to chase the ball, and sometimes he even manages to swat it back to me. I like to confuse him by throwing a second and third ball while he is chasing after the first. He gets all discombobulated and doesn’t know which he should chase after first.

I had spent the last hour on the treadmill and am in the floor playing with my cats. I am supposed to be stretching—something I try to do before and after I walk—but it is obvious that I’m not doing any such thing. When I plopped down in the floor, Sebastian came running up to me and proceeded to attack my hands. Why, I’m not sure, but I think he thinks my hands are separate creatures not attached to my body that are always out to get him, so he attacks them when he is in a playful mood.

Dimitri, on the other hand, has been steadily watching me sweat my ass off on the machine while I watched reruns of
LOST
. He does this every time I get on the machine. The horrid smell of sweat and my labored breathing must amuse him.