Etienne (The Shifters of Shotgun Row Book 1) Read online

  She looked lost.

  “Can I help you find something?” I slowed down and stuck my head out the window a little, turning down Roy again. He was going to get tired of me silencing his songs.

  She turned on her red heels, a bright smile on her lips until the moment she figured out who she was talking to.

  “Oh, yeah...no. I’ll find it, thanks.”

  She was ornery as fuck. “Look, there’s not too many places here. Where you headed?”

  She looked up and down the street, probably for somebody—anybody—to give her directions other than me. “Well, I’m looking for someone named Star? Pet store?”

  “It’s down the street. Let me give you a ride. It has to be hotter than the devil’s asshole out here.”

  She mouthed wow. “It’s okay. I can walk.”

  My gator growled. “I know you can walk, but let me drive you. It’s no trouble.”

  “Fine.” She stomped in front of my car, making her way to the passenger side. All the stomping made her ass wiggle. And all that ass wiggling made my gator want to come out and play.

  Didn’t think a gator in the streets would really do it for the Yankee girl.

  “Drive on.”

  We drove for a little while, and I couldn’t help myself. I was driving slower, taking in her scent. Even out of the bakery, she was all vanilla and sugar.

  “My eyes were the same color until I was eight.”

  Well now, why, for fuck’s sake, did I say such a thing?

  “What happened when you were eight?” She sounded downright bored.

  “My cousin shot me in the eye with a BB gun. After they took the tiny bullet out and my eye healed, it was a different color. They said maybe the metal made it change or something.”

  She looked at me for a few seconds like I had already turned beast mode. I slowed the patrol car down even more.

  “What?”

  “Look.” She bent forward, and my lungs stopped working. She had a couple of freckles on her nose, but unless you were this close, you wouldn’t know. Her fragrance was all over me. She was human, but something else lingered along with her humanity. This couldn’t be happening.

  “What? I mean, what am I looking at?”

  Fuck. I knew what I was looking at, but I didn’t know what she wanted me to look at.

  “Right above my eye. See the little scar?”

  It was the tiniest scar I’d ever seen. Looked like a teardrop.

  “Who did that number on you?”

  “You’re not gonna believe me.”

  “Try me.”

  “Cousin—with a bow and arrow.”

  “You ain’t shittin?”

  “Um, no, I’m not poopin’. Cried for days over this scar.”

  If she cried for days over that tiny scar, she’d pass clear out if she saw mine.

  Tansy

  What the freck was I doing? First, I get into the car with Yeti and then I over share, telling him all about my scar. I mean, sure, he told me about his eyes, but this wasn’t a quid pro quo kind of situation. He probably thought I was a vain city girl now, which was so not the case. Not that I was ready to open up about my near-blindness scare and how it somehow triggered my other gifts. ’Cause stinker dos on that.

  Ugh. Why did I even care what he thought?

  And why did he have to smell so yummalicious, all woods and bacon. Bacon, of all things. The best food in the entire universe. I needed to get out of the car and pronto.

  “I need to go.” I sounded frantic. Brilliant.

  “You’re almost there, darlin. Just another block.” I could already see it. It wasn’t like I was in a bustling metropolis. I couldn’t begin to fathom how a pet store even made it here with such a small population. Unless part of moving here meant getting three cats and a pair of dogs. If so, I was never going to fit in.

  Sure, I liked animals well enough, but in the wild where they belonged, not in a tiny cottage still filled with more knickknacks than anyone in their right mind should ever own.

  “I’m not your darlin’, and I need to go find Star.” I sounded like a queen B, and you know what, I was okiedaisies with that. ’Cause with him smellin’ that way and lookin’ that way, I was starting to feel things of a smexy nature, and I was so far done with that.

  “Gettin’ your tarot done?” I sensed an edge of humor in his question, not sure if it was at the cards or dropping of Gs at the end of words, a habit that drove Dante up a wall and one I embraced tightly after the incident.

  “Hardly.” Except since he put the idea in my head, I planned to do exactly that. Maybe this Star chick could help me figure out this Meemaw dilemma, ’cause Meemaw sure as shit wasn’t gonna. She seemed happy as a clam to stick around. I liked having her around, too, but I feared there was a time window, and if so, I couldn’t be that selfish. “I mean, I don’t think so.” My answer sounded exactly like that. A lie. “I gotta go.”

  Not waiting for a reply, I unlocked the door and turned the lever before he grabbed my hand, forcing it down.

  “What the freck? You did not just manhandle me.” Although he sorta kinda did, and I didn’t hate it as much as I protested. Damn bacon he had for lunch had me all warmin’ up to him.

  “You are in the bayou, darlin.” He pointed out the window to a gator. A real live, not in a zoo, gator. Why couldn’t Meemaw live in the north, where the only thing that can kill ya is your neighbor. “Look before you get your ass eaten.”

  “Aren’t you a copper?” I’d seen in the movies that police hated that word, and I’d be darned if I was going to be the only one feelin’ the awkward. Not that he even flinched at the word. He was far more bemused than he had a right to be. Those things were legit deadly. “How have you not made this whole gator-in-the-road thing not a thing?”

  “Did your meemaw teach you nothing about life down here?”

  “She taught me how to make king-nuts.” I stuck out my tongue at him like a petulant child, and I could’ve sworn I almost tasted him. What was wrong with me? “She said they were your favorite.” Truth be told, they were a lot of people’s favorites. I liked a good king cake, but turning them into year-round donuts was not only genius but also an economic boon for her little bakery turned town hot spot.

  “Bless that woman. She was a treasure.” His eyes held true warmth. He might be a pain in my ass, but he held genuine affection for Meemaw, which had to count for something. “You must miss her.”

  Nope. Not gettin’ into that one.

  “Listen, Mr. Change of Subject, teach me how to not, as you put it, get my ass bit.”

  “There may be a day when you want to have a gator take a nibble.”

  He said it like the cheesiest freaking club pickup line in the entire universe. This place was like its own little pocket of weird. Meemaw said I would fit in well here. She was gettin’ a talkin’ to when I got home, for certain sure.

  “Did you just sexual innuendo my death?” If it weren’t for that ginormous leftover dinosaur outside my door, I’d have been long gone.

  “If you’re begging a gator to take a nosh, it’s not your death you will be facing.”

  I so wasn’t addressing that bologna.

  “Fine. Just tell me what I need to do because that thing is not coming close to stepping lively back to his swamp or wherever he lives.” True, he wasn’t attacking, either, but those teeth...shit, he had to have a bazillion.

  “He got no reason to be scared.”

  Duh.

  “So I need to get a gun.” And learn how to shoot one, but there had to be someone in town up to the task for a few bucks.

  “More, you need to watch where your sweet ass is going and stay clear of them. They mostly eat rotten meat, so you have no need to fret.”

  “I’m gettin’ a gun.” I announced as I pointed to the pet store. This time he drove slowly, his eyes not leaving me until I walked into the store. Probably staring at my ass, but at least I wasn’t being eaten, which was a pretty freckin’ huge
accomplishment if you asked me.

  Etienne

  I waited for her to move a few steps before getting out of the car and going around the back.

  “Damn it all, Loic. You can’t be runnin’ around town in your gator skin. Some of these new city people are bound to call the ASPCA or the Fish and Wildlife—some shit. Next thing you know, you’ll be two pairs of boots and a purse. Now, move your ass.”

  My gator was bigger and at least twice as strong as Loic. Knowing that I could beat his ass was the only reason he hightailed it into the nearest alley and shifted.

  “For fuck’s sake, Loic. What are you doing here?”

  He looked up at the sky and then sighed. “Nothin.’ Just stirring up trouble. You know how I love to make the ladies scream.”

  He was going to make the whole town scream, running around with that hammer out for everyone. He had a worse reputation than anyone I knew, shifter or human. I was surprised he wasn’t already a briefcase.

  “You got pants or something?” It was just like Loic to shift without a strip of clothing near. His mohawk stayed perfectly straight after he shifted, though. Go figure.

  I threw my hands in the air and walked back to the car and fished out a pair of cutoff sweatpants and then threw them at him.

  “Tansy thought you were going to take a chunk out of her ass.”

  He peeked around the corner. “Teal dress. Legs for days? Ass I could just…”

  “Hey. Knock it the fuck off.”

  One of his eyebrows went up in question. “Problem there, Etienne?”

  “No problem. It’s just she’s Marie’s granddaughter. Marie asked me to look out for her.”

  “Oh yeah?” He slipped on the shorts. “Is that all she asked you to do to her? Because I’d be happy to take a shift with her.”

  My gator surged toward him, using my body as the bullet. “Watch your mouth, Loic. Don’t make me beat your ass again.”

  “Please. It was hot that day.”

  “Bull-fucking-shit.”

  “Whatever. I’m out. I found some logs I can scavenge right outside the Row. You know how people like to make furniture out of cypress.”

  I nodded. Locals and outsiders alike loved furniture and all kinds of things made from scavenged cypress. It was illegal to cut them down, so they relied on us and people like us to find them. Loic made more money than me, digging those things out of the water.

  My beast was restless as fuck today. I almost tore Loic’s throat out, and now the only thing he could think about was Tansy. He wanted to be near her for some reason.

  And sometimes you just have to do what your animal wants you to do or risk him tearing right out through your abdomen in defiance.

  Bastard.

  Not even bothering to get back in my car, I walked the rest of the way to Starry Eyes, Star’s pet shop. As I opened the door, a bell on the handle announced my arrival.

  Plus, every animal in the place went silent.

  Their fear stung my nose. It wasn’t like the fear of an opponent. It was the fear of a lesser being—a weaker creature.

  “I asked you not to come in here,” Star mumbled just low enough for only me to hear.

  “I’m looking for someone.”

  “She’s over there. Looking to buy a fish or a bird. Do what you have to and then leave. My animals are scared shitless.”

  “They aren’t scared of you?”

  She turned at the opposite corner of the room, walking around. “They know they aren’t my kind of meat.”

  “Anything not moving is your kind of meat, Star.”

  She laughed a little, still too quiet for human ears. “True. But they don’t know they aren’t for lunch.”

  I walked across the shop, trying like hell to be a little incognito and failing. Even over the smell of fear surrounding me, sugar and cinnamon and vanilla made my insides warm.

  And I was cold-blooded as fuck.

  “What is that sound?” Tansy’s voice pulled me out of the cookie-smell trance.

  “What sound?”

  “It sounds like some kind of tuba or something? Or someone fluffed.”

  “Fluffed?”

  “Yeah, you know...farted.” She whispered it like it was a bad word.

  “Not sure.”

  Star’s voice interrupted me. “Stop calling your mate in my store, gator. Sheriff or no sheriff, get your ass out of here right now.”

  Of course, it was low enough for Tansy not to hear, but there was no mistaking the malice in her command.

  Tansy turned to me, eyes wide. “Why are you still here?”

  “I was just going to make sure you got home okay. Your grandmother asked me to protect—watch out for you.”

  Protect was a mate word, and Tansy was not my mate no matter what Star or my dumb-ass beast thought.

  “Let’s go outside,” Tansy said in a sugar-laced voice.

  I followed her outside. She even let me open the door for her. My shit-eating grin was only erased by the absolute rage on Tansy’s face when she finally turned around outside the pet store.

  “You listen and you listen good, ‘plain glazed.’”

  Did she just call me by the name of a donut?

  “I came down here to live a peaceful life, doing what I love for my grandmother. Just because I’m not from here doesn’t mean I need some meathead sheriff watching out for the little woman. You got it? I take care of my own—my own…”

  “Shit. You take care of your own shit.”

  “Yes. But I don’t have to be so filthy about it.”

  Filthy was my gator’s trigger, and not in the emotionally disturbing way. In the way which made me want to scoop this woman up and lay her down in the nearest nest.

  I leaned over, making sure no one heard what I was about to say, namely other shifter ears. “I think deep down, maybe you like to be filthy once in a while, Tansy. In fact, those red heels you’re wearing make me think about it a lot.”

  I straightened to my full height. Tansy barely came up to my shoulders. “I’m well aware you can take care of yourself, Tansy. But I keep my promises. If you need anything, you know where to find me.”

  Tansy

  Infuriating. The man was infuriating to the four-gazillionth degree. What was wrong with him, following me around like a stalker. Sure, he wasn’t creepy like that Bruno dude he worked with, but that didn’t make his following me any less annoying.

  Sugar! His ability to fill my belly with a thousand butterflies made it almost worse. With Bruno, I could give a firm, polite decline at every invitation and ignore the looks and comments at work. That was so not the case with my Yeti. Not mine. No. The Yeti. Yeah, that.

  With him, my eyes drifted in his direction, unbidden, his voice powerful, all manly and smexy, dripping with power, but not a scary power, a protective one. And sweet apple pie, he smelled yummerific. I wanted to lick him up and down. I wouldn’t, obviously, because he was annoying.

  Meemaw was so going to get an earful. Not only did she send me out to a store I’d zero interest in, with no agenda, but she sent me past a freckin’ gator and not a baby, either, one the size of my old apartment.

  Stomping back into the store, I kept my focus entirely on the door, or so I tried to project because I could feel his eyes burning a hole in my backside. He needed to keep his eyes to himself. I swung the door open and, before I knew it, I was walking through a ghost. Stinks. They hated that.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, looking up to see a far-too-youthful ghost, who from the looks of it, died during my childhood, donning a shirt decorated with my favorite cartoon character from back then. Poor thing couldn’t have been more than six when she passed. I hated my gift.

  “You see me?” Her little smile was bright as the sun. How long had she gone unseen, and why was she stuck at a pet store of all places?

  “Yeah, but we should be quiet ’cause people aren’t supposed to know.” Or, more accurately, once people found out, they’d wind up running me outta this
town, and if I was goin’ to make a new life for myself and help Meemaw, I needed to keep my abilities to myself.

  “Miss Marie used to tell me the same thing.” Yeah, Meemaw and I were going to have more words than the dictionary. She knew of my struggles seeing the dead, and yet not once did she share with me her ability to do the same. Arggggg. “Said it made people scared. I’m not scary.”

  No. No, she wasn’t. She was adorable and had somehow not lost her happy in all the years she’d been trapped here. Maybe Meemaw could help me figure out what the poor girl needed to move on. That was not my gift. In fact, I stunkified the room with how un-gifted I was in that arena.

  “No, sweet girl, you are not.” I looked around quickly before bending down to her eye level. “What’s your name?”

  “Star’s coming. Shhh.”

  I jumped up, brushing off my legs as if I was just being vain and not talking to the undead.

  “She hears really well, and Miss Marie said it wasn’t time for her to know yet.”

  I gave her a nod before going back to peruse the fish because I needed some excuse to be here other than my dead grandmother told me to.

  “Need anything?” The owner was back, a small parrot on her shoulder. She was wearing a long, flowy skirt adorned with beads and a tank top with the Earth crying on it, as in tears and eyeballs. I tried not to stare at it while I figured out the meaning of it because the eyes of the planet were placed directly in front of her boobies. Whoever designed that was a fool or a genius, as far as sale-ability went. I was undecided as to which.

  “No. Just looking.” I shrugged and was met with an awkward glare. “My meemaw said I would like it here, and I’m just getting around to stopping by,” I added trying to look less like a weirdo, which, in all honesty, I totally was.

  “Miss Marie, right?” Her smile softened as I nodded. That could’ve gone either way since from the lack of actual pets in her life, her trips would have seemed peculiar to say the least.

  “Yeah.” I held out my hand, reeling it back in as the parrot opened his beak, leaning toward it. What was it with animals here trying to eat me? “I’m Tansy.”