by Holley Trent
A ticklish spot. He filed that information away for later.
The fingers of his left hand grazed the bend of her neck as he pushed back the fringes of her ponytail. He leaned in low, impelled by her scent and her feminine softness, poising his lips near her neck. Would she draw away if he kissed her there? Pretend to be disgusted? Or would she lean into it—enjoying it?
“Felipe, you stopped rubbing,” she whispered and closed the gap between them. “I’d pay for a back rub that good.”
“You don’t have to pay. Just…” His lips were right there, over the place where her neck and shoulder joined. His lips connected, and her body started, but she didn’t complain. As he kissed one side of her neck, he resumed his massage of the other shoulder.
“I’m on the clock,” she murmured.
“You want me to stop, then?”
“Stop talking. Keep rubbing.”
“And the kisses?”
The front door slammed, and Sarah straightened up.
Felipe swore an oath, adjusted his crotch, and slumped into the seat at Sarah’s right.
Tamara entered first, wearing the same scowl as before, and made a quiet beeline to the nearby pantry. She mumbled something about never being able to get the blood out before rooting through the closet’s contents.
On her heels were a tall, lean, dark-haired man and a tiny, but bold, woman wearing a black double holster over her blouse. Both had their gaze locked on him, but the man stepped forward first with a hand extended. “Patrick O’Dwyer. Welcome to my home.” He cringed. “Such that it is. I’m sorry your stay hasn’t been so hospitable so far. This place is usually as quiet as a monastery.”
It took Felipe a few beats to completely parse all Patrick had said, but when he did, he put his hands up and shook his head. “Don’t worry. I am happy to help.” He put his hand around Patrick’s and gave it a firm shake.
“Don’t let that get out,” the little woman with the guns said. She shrugged off her holsters and slid her firearms onto the kitchen counter near the breadbox. “Mr. Castillo, your brother is under the impression that the Shrews are the best at this sort of work. Said some old woman you all work with had caught wind of us. A psychic?”
Ah. That was how. “Yes. Uh…” He sifted through his cluttered vocabulary of three languages for the right word and grabbed the one he thought she’d know. “Fortuneteller?”
“Like, legit? Roma?”
“Yes.”
She gaped. “Wow. I thought the Gypsy fortunetelling thing was just a stereotype. Anyway, you caught us at a really bad time, and I’m sorry for that. We’re usually pretty methodical, less scattered.”
Realization settled into him and his jaw sagged a moment while he worked it out. This must be the ballsy boss lady Sarah had so much respect for. The one Sarah claimed would have her head if she fucked up. She didn’t seem to be much of threat. She was the kind of pretty that reminded him of women in soap advertisements. Delicate features. But he didn’t doubt for one minute she couldn’t hold her own in a fight, even without the guns. She was probably used to people underestimating her, and he wasn’t going to make that mistake.
Felipe stood and held out a hand again, this time easing away from Sarah. “You are Dana?”
She clasped her small hand around his and shook. It was a good shake—firm and confident, and a bit more intense than a woman her size should have been capable of, but what did he really know about these women? He hadn’t directly asked what specific quirks made Sarah weird, but from what he could glean, all five Shrews had different mutations and capabilities.
“That’s right. Dana Slade.”
“Felipe Castillo. Encantado.”
Patrick draped an arm over Dana’s shoulder and pulled her close, removing any ambiguity about to whom she belonged, if anyone. Dana rolled her eyes, but for the most part didn’t seemed bothered by the small act of possessiveness.
Felipe couldn’t blame Patrick for it. In fact, he understood the compulsion, even if he didn’t appreciate the steely glint in the guy’s eyes. He had no interest in Dana beyond the professional one. She was cute and all, but his radar was locked elsewhere.
“What do you want me to do?” Sarah asked, now leaning her forearms against the table and setting her tired gaze on Dana. She’d looked exhausted even back at the farm. After the scuffle, she had to be nearly ready to keel over. She was obviously the kind of woman who didn’t slow down until she was forced to. “Do you want me here unraveling this shit or finishing up the Castillo side-gig?”
Felipe scoffed. “Hola, Sarah, I am sitting right here. I don’t need finishing.”
Patrick made a snorting sound before easing away from Dana. He strode to the refrigerator and pulled it open. “I don’t think it’s too early for refreshments, given the circumstances,” he said. Glass beer bottles clinked together as he withdrew them by their long necks.
Felipe looked down to see Sarah glowering at him.
He blew out a breath and crossed his arms over his chest. “¿Qué?”
“¿Qué? I’ll tell you what. Don’t come in here doing that guy code shit.”
“I don’t understand.”
Patrick handed him an uncapped beer bottle and leaned in close and whispered, “Don’t argue with them. They’re right even when they’re wrong.”
“Ah.” Felipe pushed his seat closer to Sarah’s and winked at her.
Dana refused a beer, but Tamara, now holding a large first aid kit, reached between Felipe and Sarah and grabbed a bottle for herself.
“That’s so cute, you’re all pairing off two by two like you’re boarding Noah’s Ark,” she cooed, sarcasm tingeing her voice.
Sarah sighed. “Nobody’s pairing off other than the queen and duke, here.”
“Wait—” Patrick sputtered his beer and there was a bit of annoyance in evident in his furrowed brow. “I don’t rate high enough to be king in my own house?”
Dana picked at one of her immaculate fingernails and said nothing, but her grin was telling enough.
“If you say so, Sarah,” Tamara continued, already near the front door. “I don’t like him personally, but there’s no good reason not to use him.”
“Use me? Ha. Los cojones.”
“I don’t even need to know what that means, but bite me,” Tam snapped, and the front door slammed shut behind her.
Patrick, Dana, and Felipe all started talking at once.
Patrick asked, “Can you tell me more about these shapeshifters that have been infiltrating the Were-cats?”
Dana asked, “How dangerous is Jacques and how many people like you are employed by him? What kind of supernatural stuff are we dealing with?”
Felipe said, “I should stay here and help.”
They all continued talking over each other for a few beats until Sarah slammed her palms down on the tabletop. “Yo! Shut it.”
They did.
“Look, I’m exhausted. I’m so tired my face is numb, so excuse me for being less than sociable right now. Let’s all take turns like we learned in kindergarten.”
Felipe hadn’t gone to kindergarten, but that particular moment didn’t seem like an appropriate time for sharing.
She pointed. “Dana, you talk.”
Dana gave her employee a long blink—a tacit warning, perhaps—then slid her gaze over to Felipe. “Are you catching most of what we’re saying, Felipe?”
“About…fifty percent.”
“Sarah, translate?”
Sarah sighed.
Dana resumed. “You said you’d heard of these shapeshifters before. Seen them at the circus. Tell me about when you first saw them.”
Sarah caught him up. He knew most of those words, but shapeshifter? That didn’t translate neatly.
He tipped his chair onto its back legs as he thought. When was the first time? They’d seemed to be pretty much an institution. Where the circus went, they went, and whenever they showed up, they always had new troupe members in tow. “I think m
y first real recollection of them was when I was around eight or nine. We were in Germany, I think. I saw one of them shift. A troupe member had tried to run because he was so close to home, and the Visa shifted into this snarling beast to overtake him. I think that incident scared the entire crew enough to not attempt to run anytime soon. Anyhow, every time they met us, they brought us new performers.”
“You mean, locals?”
Felipe tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling’s wood paneling. Had there ever been a troupe member who was just typical? If there had been, he couldn’t remember them. “Weird ones, of course. Everyone at the circus is a bit weird. I always thought Jacques had an uncanny knack for having the ear to the ground about local lore, but I think he was getting some help from the Visas. They were infiltrating local groups.”
“What’d he say, Sarah?”
She told her.
“He uses them the way I use Sarah,” Dana said. “Send her out in disguise to root out information.”
“And to fetch,” he said in English. “However, I am yet uncertain if she intends to enslave me.”
“In your dreams,” Sarah murmured.
The sound of pitter-pattering on the tabletop drew Felipe’s gaze downward, and he found Patrick drumming his fingers meditatively and staring at some spot on the wall to Felipe’s left. Patrick seemed to be fixating on it. Given he was a cat part of the time, that was probably typical for him.
Dana gave him a nudge when he didn’t say anything after a minute of drumming.
“Shit. Sorry, I was just trying to figure out how long those assholes were infiltrating the Were-mountain lions. I only recognized one. The other must have been a spotter who held back. I feel like an ass for admitting it, but I’d been suspicious for a while about the new guy, and turns out he was legit and one of the long-term members was the Visa. I don’t know how to feel about that.”
Sarah bobbed her shoulders. “Sounds like a typical military tactic to me. Send long-term sleepers into non-hostile groups, so if you ever need to exploit the groups somehow, you already have the intelligence and a built-in saboteur. I suspect the Visas have people in groups like yours all over the place. They probably send them out way before they confirm the circus venues. There must be hundreds of them.”
Sarah and Dana looked to Felipe for confirmation, but he couldn’t give them the information they needed. He had no idea how large the Visa population was. He didn’t know much about them at all.
“I’m betting they’ve got someone planted in the Bear group, then,” Patrick said.
Sarah grunted agreement. “They’re just amping up the hostility that’s already there. Don’t even have to work that hard because they know we’ll just blame each other if anything happens. Patrick, you need to call Billy. If those new Cats Jacques has are Billy’s granddaughters, he needs to know…even if the nincompoop is just going to shunt the chore of fetching them right back to us.”
Ah. Sarah’s unwillingness to involve Felipe in Shrew operations made sense to him now. They were putting out fires at every turn, and she likely thought he was one of them.
Sarah scraped the corner of her beer bottle’s label and raised both eyebrows. “Paddy, you should have overthrown that guy when you joined. I would have.”
Felipe didn’t doubt it. Everything he knew about the Shrew so far pointed to her need to be in control…even when she wasn’t needed.
“I didn’t join. I got fuckin’ drafted.” Patrick stood and collected the empty beer bottles from the table.
“Let’s be real. He’s the leader just because he’s old and nobody else wanted the job. I know you don’t like the politics, but you’ve got to consider your own personal safety at this point since obviously he’s not considering yours. And Dana’s safety, too. She’s tied up in this mess along with the rest of us.”
Including Felipe now. He disliked this Billy character and he hadn’t even met him yet. Where was he, anyway? What kind of leader wouldn’t come when his people were injured? Sure, the Were-cats were probably recovering just fine from the Visa attack without medical intervention, but shouldn’t he have been there to strategize? To promise action of some sort? Why was Patrick cleaning up the mess and not this Billy guy?
At that, Dana rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms and sighed. “Let’s not go there right now. We do need to get Billy on board, though. I know you have some questions for him, Sarah, and do what you need to get the answers.” She put her hands on the table and shifted her bleary gaze to Felipe. Another tired Shrew. They were all burning the candle at both ends, it seemed. “As of right now, the Shrews are terminating your case. Terminado.”
Felipe snorted and simulated a bow from his chair. “No offense, but gracias.”
Dana narrowed her eyes and leaned her elbows onto the tabletop, tenting her fingers and tapping the tips together. “Don’t misunderstand me, Felipe. What I mean is, there’s no longer a case, but we will not allow you to engage in stupid shit before you reconnect with your brother. I made your brother a promise. It’s merely shifted from professional to friendly. Does that need translation?”
“No.”
Sarah nudged his side with her bony elbow and gave him a told-you-so look.
Felipe grabbed her wrist and held her hand flat against his lap, preventing her from repeating the action. That elbow had hurt. He switched to Spanish. “I am an adult. It is my neck. I choose to stick it out. Listen to the hateful Romanian—place me as you see fit. I’m eager to be useful. Besides, I have connections on the inside that can help get your Cats out, and any others that may be there against their wills.”
Sarah translated.
“Fabian, you mean,” Dana surmised.
“Yes. I can’t sneak back in, even invisible, because of the fortunetellers, but that doesn’t mean we can’t send in a Shrew that hasn’t been seen.”
Patrick’s jaw slackened. “The fortunetellers?”
Felipe shrugged. “They work in the sideshow, but a few of them are remarkable psychics and natural witches. They don’t have very good foresight, but if asked, they could tell if a person was nearby. And, alas, they know me too well. Practically raised me and Fabian.”
“And they’d give you up like that?” Sarah asked.
Her tone of unvarnished incredulity made him turn his head and study her expression. Of course she’d be angry. She was an outsider. She’d probably grown up in a good, solid, normal home where love was given freely and she slept in the same room every night. His upbringing had been all about self-preservation. The same had been true for the fortunetellers. While they cared very much for each other, when constantly forced to choose between life and death, giving away the information and living to fight another day was the usual course of action for them all. There was plenty of guilt to go around, but guilt was a far easier burden to bear than the pain Jacques inflicted on them for lying.
“So, we would have to send someone in who hasn’t been seen before,” Dana mused.
“Right.”
“Someone who’s not recognizable either physically or psychically and who the Visas here haven’t seen.”
“Correct.”
“And Sarah, you can’t shift your face plates enough to be pull it off, and you’ve already been near the circus,” Dana thought out loud.
Felipe looked at Sarah. Her face plates?
She caught his gaze, but didn’t respond to the unasked request for translation.
“That eliminates everyone here. All the Cats have met all the Shrews, and for all we know, there was a Visa you didn’t catch who’s relayed some intelligence to Jacques now. We’re shockingly low on options.”
Sarah tried to pull her hand back from Felipe.
He wouldn’t let her and ignored the resulting growl.
“Maybe not. If we can’t get through the perimeter without tripping the alarm, then maybe we should disable it.”
Felipe had no idea what she was going on about. Must have been a metaphor he wa
sn’t equipped to translate. Dana seemed to be following well enough, as did Patrick. He nodded and joined Dana in her pacing.
Sarah poked Felipe with the hand he wasn’t suppressing and drew his attention away from the pacing couple.
“Sí?”
“Is the troupe ever permitted to leave the grounds unsupervised?”
It was a smart question. Felipe took this one in English. “Very rarely. The only time it happens, really, is when it benefits Jacques in some way. Promotion, for instance.”
Patrick stopped pacing and snapped his fingers. “One of the Cats works for the big daily paper out of Asheville. I wonder what would happen if one of their reporters took a sudden interest in fortunetellers. People love that New Age shit.”
“I like how you think.”
“Great. I’m going to go see what I can rustle up and check on the hurt Cats.” With a brief farewell kiss for Dana, he strode from the room.
Sarah wrenched her hand free of Felipe’s grip and stood. “I’ll see if I can squeeze any information out of those Visas.”
“Nope.” Dana crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head. The hard set of her jaw said she would be taking no arguments. “You need sleep. The task you were assigned evaporated and the stuff with the circus and the Bears is on hold until we connect some dots. I’ll talk to Doc and deal with the medical stuff here. Take Felipe, get a couple of rooms, and check into the usual place for tonight. I’ll see you in the morning. Bring donuts.”
“But I—”
“No. Whatever it is, save it. You’re no good to me if you’re exhausted, and nothing’s going to happen here in twenty hours or so that’s going to surprise us any more than we were today. Go rest, and we’ll debrief tomorrow at seven.”
Felipe expected Sarah to rebut, and she’d even opened her mouth to say something, but shockingly, no words came out. He looked from Sarah, to Dana, whose eyes had narrowed into slits, and back to Sarah, who sighed.
