by Ever Coming
The guys were all around us, some sitting on their perches still, but even I could smell their animals ready to push their way through. They were in protective mode, their eyes glued to me. Good crew.
“I went to T-Mac’s after coming home from a visit to my sperm donor in Scarletville when Emily called and told me she’d found someone else.” He spoke far too quickly for me to be sure I caught all of his words correctly.
“Was Emily your girlfriend?” I saw the hurt flicker across his face. That would be a yes.
“Yeah. She broke up with me for a loser, a freaking loser, so I told her not to be stupid, and I would be home by morning, but I never made it. Bear killed me.”
“No, Julius, he didn’t.” Meemaw stepped in front of me, and I took it as a sign to go stand with my mate. Even from the back, her body looked almost real enough to hug, and if it weren’t for Julius now piping back in, I might’ve tried.
“I was there. I know.”
“You had an accident.” Meemaw took his hand. “Think.” What happened.
There was a pause far longer than comfortable as he stood there, holding Meemaw’s hand and his head fell down, his eyes on the ground.
“I hit a tree.” He finally broke the silence, his head snapping up as he screamed, “Bear threw it.” While he attempted to make his way to Bruno, Meemaw held him in place.
“Yes he did.” Meemaw took her other hand, turning his cheek to face her. “But you hit it with your car because you were drinking.”
“It’s not fair.” Something changed in both his voice and his posture, his anger now less hostile and scary and more sorrow filled. Not that I could blame him. He made a stupid-arse choice and paid the ultimate consequence for it.
“No, no it’s not.” She enveloped him in a hug, and they stayed like that, her giving him comfort and him accepting it.
“Let me take you someplace better.” She kissed his head like he was but a small child and wrapped her arms around his shoulder.
“Better?” He nodded.
“Away from the bear,” she promised, her smile warm.
“Can’t.” His panic began to return, and Etienne’s arm tightened around me, letting me know that under no circumstance was I to leave his side. “Can’t leave him. I tried. Oh how I tried.”
Poor guy thought he was trapped, and being trapped with Bruno was enough to make anyone freak out.
“Hold my hand. I’ll show you the way.” She grabbed his hand and instantaneously he was gone.
“Holy fucking shit! Did you see that?” Loic bounced up, going to where they had stood.
“Of course I did, dipshit.” Callum took a swig of his beer.
“Is—is he gone?” I’d never seen Bruno so frail. He was still a jerkface, but I kind of felt bad for him. He lost most of his adult life to a mistake that wasn’t truly his, being haunted at every turn. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
“I think so.” I snuggled into Etienne. “Meemaw doesn’t mess around.”
“Your grandma is badass,” Justice beamed. I couldn’t blame him, she had kicked some serious ass.
“Was,” I corrected, for that was the harsh reality of it. “And, yeah, she really was, wasn’t she?”
“You were, too, Tans,” Callum added as he grabbed another two beers, throwing one to Bruno.
“I did okay.” I grabbed Etienne’s hand, and we joined the guys around the fire, Bruno standing off to the side, but still sort of kind of part of the group. “Do you think Meemaw is gone gone?” I finally got up the courage to ask.
“Heck no.” Loic spoke with assurance I wish I had. “If she can do that, she won’t be able to.”
“What are you talking about, Loic?” Etienne finally broke his silence.
He’d been strong and silent, at my side when I needed him, without distracting me. Good mate.
“Marie is a fucking psychopomp. She brings a whole new meaning to the words bad ass.”
The guys in the circle all nodded as if he had spoken in English.
“What is a psych whatever you just said?” Because, apparently, I was the only one who had not a clue.
“A psychopomp—like a midwife to the dying,” Justice tried to mansplain to me. Bonehead. Except I understood, so maybe mansplaining wasn’t always a bad thing. Not that I’d let him know that.
“No freaking way. My Meemaw is a reaper. Holy shit.”
My Meemaw was a reaper. She helped people cross to the dead which meant I wasn’t going to lose her. Tears formed in my eyes as the impact of that hit me. Of course, that’s not what was filling the guys’ heads.
“Tansy cursed.” Because that was what mattered to Loic and all the guys now smiling at his comment.
“Fuck yeah, she did.” Etienne spoke as proudly as if I’d just won a Nobel prize. Silly mate.
Love you, I spoke in his mind before throwing my lips to his. It had been far too long since we last had a proper kiss. Hours even, and that just wasn’t acceptable.
Etienne
My mate was beyond. She’d stood up against a bear and his ghost leech, found a way to make things happen and, with her grandma, did.
“Another one?” I called to Bruno who looked like he had been carrying around a ten-ton boulder all his life and Tansy had just snipped the rope.
He huffed out a long breath, still looking at the fire. “Better not. My bear likes to run around drunk. It’s his thing. One more and I’d go grizzly on this place you’ve tried to make better.”
I thought maybe he’d just half-assed complimented us. Shotgun Row had cleaned up a little since Tansy got here. After we, or mostly the crew, set up the outdoor kitchen, the boys went to cleaning up the porches of their own houses, and Lazare even built some cypress stump benches for us to sit on around the fire.
Actin’ like we all cared and shit.
“Um, that might be kind of funny. I’m just sayin.” Of course, Justice thought it was funny for a grizzly bear to stomp around our place drunk off his ass. Of course he did.
“Tansy.” I said the one word, and it shut him up. They could bullshit me all they wanted, but I knew better. I saw them take care in how they handled my mate, making sure to thank her when she cooked.
They all loved her.
Not like I loved her, but it counted.
It counted a whole fucking hell of a lot.
They wouldn’t put her in danger any more than they would put themselves in danger.
“He’s relaxed, Eti. He’s with his kind.”
I rumbled down deep in my throat at her comparison to the wretched bear to my gator.
“He is not our kind.”
“Eti, he’s lonely. Look at him.”
Trying not to look creepy as fuck, I watched Bruno for a few minutes. He looked at the crew with some kind of longing. Maybe he just wanted in on the conversation. Maybe he wanted to be crew. But we had no alpha, and Bruno sure as hell wasn’t going to rule over us like he did at the station.
It just wasn’t going to happen with this rowdy bunch.
“We have to talk more when he’s not here. It can’t just be us. He has to fit in—visit more—and we have to build a place for him to live.”
Tansy let go of my arm and looked behind the group. “There’s that house back there. I’ve never seen anyone go near it.”
“No, Tansy, not that one,” Loic spoke over the laughs of the group and even over the constant sounds of the swamp.
“What? Why not? No one’s using it.”
“We said no, Tansy. Please, just let this go.”
She gave the rundown pale-blue shotgun house one more glance before taking the not-so-subtle hint and stopped talking about it.
What’s that about? she asked.
Not my story. That would be Loic’s story. And you’ll be waiting a long time for it, if you ever get it.
I ticked a glance at Loic, who handled it by grabbing the last full bottle of vodka and making it not so full at all.
There was a good reason Loi
c was always stoic.
Tansy snuggled closer against my side and yawned, hiding it with her fist. She forgot we could hear everything.
“Ready to head in?” I asked.
“No,” she lied straight to my face with a smile on hers.
“Come on, to bed for you.”
“To bed? Or to bed?” She lowered her voice, trying to mock me.
“I didn’t give it to her,” Justice said with his hands up.
I hadn’t noticed my mate had a shot glass in her hand. Tansy was fine with a couple of beers, but we’d seen her once on rum, and she was a fucking mess. A beautiful mess, but a mess.
“Alright, who did it? We don’t give the lady rum. She can’t handle it.”
“Handle me fine! Where’s that Roy?” Tansy asked, raising her glass to toast with the air or a ghost. Who knew? Roy referred to Roy Orbison. She made fun of me for listening to him every chance she got.
“Look what you did, whoever you are.” Lazare tried to be sly, sliding the bottle behind his bench.
“It was you! No rum for her. Look what happens. She’s...she’s…”
She was giggling like a drunken cheerleader.
Silly girl.
“Come on, to bed with you.”
In her fake low voice, she parroted me. “Bed you me. Come on!”
Love you still, even brunk.
As I carried her over my shoulder to our house that was fit for a hobo but housed a queen, I smiled at the swamp and at the noise of my crew in the background and at my mate’s ass right next to my face. This was all that mattered, that my mate loved me and was mine.
Tansy loved the fuck out of me, brunk or not.
Epilogue: Tansy
“Did you really de-haunt T-John’s?” Callum threw another log on the fire before perching on his stump chair.
“She said she did, didn’t she, asshole?” Justice chucked a pebble at Callum’s head, hitting him square in the shoulder and earning him a scowl and a “fuck you.”
“I’m sure there’s a better term than de-haunt.” Loic was not one to be left out.
I’d been living with the guys officially for a couple of months now, unofficially longer. It was nice. Home. Where I belonged. Even with the guys being, well—the guys.
“It works.” Technically speaking, it wasn’t an exorcism, even if that was the common term. “I didn’t expel them like in an exorcism. Meemaw and I just helped them go home. Four of them, anyway. The rest will need to wait until another day because I just can’t. That place is too dark.”
Meemaw and I spent six hours there, me trying to convince the ghosts they were dead, and her trying to convince them she was helping them and not making it worse. We managed to get out a mom and her baby, a child, and a young man who was less than cooperative or trusting. Knowing all three were no longer trapped in that awful place was amazing but darkened by seeing all those we had yet to save.
“You didn’t have to help at all.” And there Meemaw sat, on the stump I’d demanded be made for Bruno for the odd occasions he stopped by.
“Hey, Marie,” the guys said in unison, no longer shocked by her random appearances.
“Meemaw, you can’t just pop in and be all know-it-all ish on me like that. Besides, you and I both know if I wasn’t there, you still would be dealing with Mortimer.”
It was an argument we’d had repeatedly ever since I pieced together the plan for how we might be able to help them.
“Fine,” she conceded. Finally. “But you don’t need to give up your life to help me do my job.”
“The bakery is running smoothly, and I have the time.” After a two-week intensive baking training, Gina took over my duties as baker. I still came in and helped, but I was no longer tied to the place. It was freeing, and the first step to baby time.
Etienne, and rightly so, felt the stress of the bakery and the insane hours would be too much for me during a pregnancy. Now that the bakery was good and solid on its own two feet, baby-making time had arrived, and we took every opportunity to work to that end.
Life was good.
“That’s not the point.” So maybe Meemaw hadn’t conceded. Arggggg. She was stubborn. At least I knew where I got it from.
“Marie, I learned a long time ago that sometimes it is easier to just agree to whatever she says.” I smacked Etienne in the shoulder. “Oww.” He gave me the are-you-kidding look. “It’s true.”
“You’re a good mate, Etienne, but that doesn’t mean she should expend all her energy helping those who haven’t moved on—”
“Discussion over.” I cut Meemaw off. “I have an announcement.”
It’s sexy when you change the subject like that. All in your face, I’m not even pretending to hide it, like. Good Mate.
You think I’m sexy all the time. And I him.
Damn straight I do. I love you.
Love—
“You do realize we are all here. Having a private conversation like that is fucking rude,” Loic hissed. He wasn’t wrong.
“Whatever, Loic. You’re just jealous.” Callum glared at him.
“Fuck yeah, he is,” Justice added. “We all are, but that doesn’t make it less rude.”
“Fine,” Callum conceded.
Announcement?
“Oh right.” I kissed his cheek. “I accepted an offer on the house today.”
Putting Meemaw’s house up for sale had been a logical, yet difficult thing to do. All the memories of my time there begged me to keep it, but there was no way I’d ask Etienne to leave his home, his people, our crew. “Some woman from Chicago. Full price. Cash.”
Even the Realtor had been shocked at that, mumbling something about city folks.
“’Bout time you got rid of that thing.” Meemaw shocked me. I had been scared she was going to be upset, if not mad. I so had that one wrong.
“You’re not mad, Meemaw.” It was a statement. Go, Meemaw.
“Why would I be? It’s not like I need it.”
“I’m hoping we will be friends.” I pushed my feels over Meemaw’s comment down and changed the subject back to the contract I had folded in my pocket in the least responsible manner ever. “She’s a city girl, too, and while I love you guys, I sometimes wanna talk fashion with someone who gets it. Milla Robichaux. That sounds like a friend name to me. Goodness, last time I met a Robichaux, I got mated.” I was babbling on and on as Etienne’s jaw tightened.
“What’s wrong?”
“Milla Robichaux is his cousin,” Callum barked out in laughter.
“The one who…?” My eyes shifted from his mismatched eyes to the scar on his face, and he gave a subtle nod.
Yeppers. Things were about to get interesting.
Turn the page for a sneak peek at the next book in The Shifters of Shotgun Row. Justice.
Justice
“This is the last time, fuck nuts. Next time, you go all the way into the next town and get a dozen gallons of paint and Pine-Sol or whatever else in the shit you think up.”
In the last two months, Etienne had gone into some kind of nesting frenzy. He’d cleaned everything. He’d repainted his house and sealed the roof. The dumbass had even built a new set of stairs to his porch even though the old ones were fine. There was something seriously whacked out about the gator, lately. Etienne jerked the massive pile of crap out of my hands and mumbled off checklists in his head.
I turned to his mate who was calm as a cucumber, sipping on her lemonade while flipping through a magazine. “What the shit did you do to him, Tansy? I mean, fuck. He’s been acting like that Jeff dude on Flipping Out, except meaner and not so much juice in the lips. What’s up his ass?”
Tansy rocked back and forth on the porch swing Etienne had built for her when the weather turned cooler. She swung there every chance she got. She ticked her eyes to him and then back to her Vogue with a shrug. “He was so busy this morning, he didn’t even come in to get his king-nut. I think he’s sniffing the white lightning behind my back.” The dig was
aimed at Etienne, but the bastard scrubbed the floor harder, like he didn’t hear.
“Oh? A little nose candy for the gator?”
Tansy slapped her knee. It wasn't that funny. “It’s a shame. We should have an intervention or something. Wait, can shifters take drugs? I mean, would cocaine even do the same things to you? Does cocaine even make people clean? I don’t understand life right now. I think I need a drink.”
I laughed at her question. She had a lot of them. I didn’t mind. She was like the queen of Shotgun Row. We did whatever Her Highness wanted or needed, with pleasure. “It would take a truckload of snow to make us even twitchy. I don’t know what’s wrong with this one. Wait, what the hell is that smell?” A light breeze whipped in from the swamp but with it a spice, no, maybe a warm smell laced through the tang of the bayou. I’d never smelled anything like it before, but I knew the smell by instinct.
Tansy rolled her eyes and got up from the swing, patting my chest as she passed. “That, my friend, is Fabuloso that my mate cleans with, and it was fabuloso for about two days, and now it’s shitaloso.”
I held up my hand. “No, not that.”
That’s when three things happened all at once. One, I pulled Tansy’s palm to my nose and inhaled deeply. Two, Etienne dropped all his cleaning shit and got in my face like Mike Tyson, even though I thought the rat bastard wasn’t even looking.
And, three, I knew Etienne’s mate was pregnant.
“Get your hands off my mate, you cocky-ass mother fucker.” Etienne had both of his hands around my neck and was squeezing. He pushed me backward so that my head knocked against the siding of his shotgun house.
“Pregnant. Mate.”
Those were the only two words I could mouth to him. I grabbed his wrists, trying to pry his meat hands from my neck before I kneed him straight in the nuts. He didn’t flinch.
“How dare you touch her. I oughta choke you and hang your ass out as gator bait.”
Tansy did her mate right. She lifted Etienne’s shirt slightly and put her hands on his skin. “Eti, honey, calm down. I think Justice has something important to say.” At the sound of her voice, we both turned to see Tansy a particularly pale shade of ghost, and her breathing was shallow.
