Shrew & Company Books 1-3

by Holley Trent

  Sarah nudged her lover, willing him to be kind—to not spook the young Bear—and he seemed to catch the psychic drift.

  His tense shoulders fell away from his ears, and the hard set to his jaw relaxed.

  He nodded.

  “You goin’ in with me, too?” Chauncey asked Felipe.

  Without even a moment’s hesitation, Felipe nodded once more, and Sarah felt her heart fill to bursting.

  Must be PMS.

  Occasional asshole though he was, Felipe was also a decent man.

  Chauncey padded to the table and picked over what was left of the Visas’ lunch.

  Sarah turned to Felipe and gave him a gentle punch on the arm. “That’s kind of you.”

  He shrugged. “I remember being fifteen and an orphan. It was scary, and I had Fabian.”

  “Still.”

  “If you can be kind, so can I. I trust your judgment, querida.”

  She leaned against the doorway and watched Chauncey shove the end of Mr. Tolvaj’s sandwich into his mouth. “Why?”

  The wrinkles at the corners of Felipe’s eyes deepened as his eyes narrowed. “Because I—”

  “Y’all think y’all can find me a pair of pants or somethin’ before we go? I lost mine when I shifted,” Chauncey cut in.

  She waited for Felipe to finish what he’d started, but he pressed his together and turned.

  He climbed the stairs without a word.

  She sighed and turned to Chauncey. “Yes, love, we’ll swing by a Walmart if we have to and get you some sweatpants.”

  The Visas climbed the stairs after Felipe, and she cringed. “We’ll have to get you two some clothes, too,” she called up after them. “You gotta look the part.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Mr. Tolvaj said at the top of the steps.

  Sarah waited for Chauncey to climb up next. She bobbed her head toward the stairway. “Go on.”

  He shifted his weight.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I won’t have anywhere to go after—”

  “Don’t worry about it. If push comes to shove, I know some folks who’ll take you in for a while.”

  “They good folks?”

  She scoffed. “Oh yeah. The best folks.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Sarah didn’t like the boys going off without a foreman—or forewoman, in their case—carrying out a mission that was technically Shrew business. Whether she liked it or not, though, she knew she’d only get in the way if she were there. The Visas could take care of themselves. Chauncey—a boy so much like her naïve little brother—merited some concern. But, the overwhelming majority of her anxiety was attached to a gorgeous, intelligent, reckless man who’d been nothing but trouble for her from the day she’d met him.

  She’d known Chauncey for only a few hours, and while she’d be sad if something bad happened to him, she didn’t think her world would be devastated because of it.

  With Felipe, she wasn’t so sure that’d be the case. She couldn’t calm the wild maelstrom of emotions he elicited, and wasn’t so sure she wanted to.

  Not even when she hurt.

  He’d said that he was it for her. He could have been, and she wanted to imagine how the day-to-day lives of a couple that wasn’t quite human would play out.

  Would they wake up like the typical Dick and Jane every Sunday, and drink coffee while reading the newspaper?

  Would they go to movies and stroll the streets hand in hand afterward?

  Or would every day be intrigue and subterfuge? Knives and guns?

  Even that sounded nice. Deranged, but nice.

  “Stop pacing, you’re making me anxious,” Tamara said from the cabin’s sofa.

  She looked up from the newspaper’s horoscopes and glowered at Sarah.

  Sarah rested a hand over her unsettled belly and blew out a shuddering breath. “Sorry. This feels like all those times when I was deployed and got cut out of missions because I looked too much like a woman in my fatigues.”

  “You’re pulling your weight. Quit fretting.”

  “But—”

  “Ugh.” Tamara rolled her green eyes, grunting, and set down the newspaper. “Yes, yes. You’re in love with the asshole.”

  Sarah stopped pacing.

  Tamara laughed so hard she wheezed. “Your eyes are as big as the moon.”

  Sarah blew out a breath. “Am I that transparent?”

  “No. I’ve watched the two of you together. At first I thought maybe you just needed to get laid and that he’d do.”

  “Tamara!”

  The blonde shrugged and lifted the paper to eye level again. “At least he’s not a coward. That’s good. You need someone with a backbone, even if it disappears on occasion…” She furrowed her brow and she set down the paper once more. Likely for good, this time. “Along with the rest of him. How does that work, anyway?”

  Good question.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t asked, and I’m sure even if I did, he wouldn’t know how to explain it. Best I can understand, his mind is still there, even if the brain isn’t. It holds the physical part of him in a sort of stasis in the air until he draws everything back in.”

  “How long can he stay in that form?”

  “Another thing I haven’t asked.”

  The truth was that she hadn’t really cared. She liked him better as strong, hard flesh than invisible.

  “I bet Doc would find him and his brother interesting.”

  Sarah guffawed. “Yeah, she would.”

  She thought of one more thing Doc would find interesting, and wedged her hand into her jeans’ pocket for her phone. She’d woken up the touch screen and was about to dial out when heavy footsteps on the porch’s wooden planks made both women literally drop what they were doing and pull their guns.

  Patrick appeared in the doorway first, acting as a human crutch for Chauncey whose right ankle and calf were bloody ruins.

  Sarah sprang to action, running into the kitchen to get clean towels and the first aid kit. “What happened?” she called out, running hot water onto a rag. “Where’s—”

  “Don’t worry,” Patrick cut her off. “Your boy is fine.”

  “Where is he?” Sarah returned to the living room and handed the first aid kit to Tamara while she bent and carefully unlaced Chauncey’s sneaker.

  He laughed. “I guess it’s a match, then. You’re a couple. Otherwise you would have had some retort.”

  Sarah flicked the wet rag at him, and having faster-than-average reflexes he jumped back before it could make contact.

  Patrick laughed and rolled up his shirtsleeves.

  “Two by two, going to the ark,” Tamara muttered.

  “I don’t know what we are.” Sarah studied the blistered skin above Chauncey’s anklebone.

  She plucked up the phone she’d dropped and handed it up to Chauncey. “Turn that on and call contact number three, will ya? Tell her the Shrews need their medic at Patrick’s. Tell her it looks like silver this time.”

  “Okay.”

  “What happened?” she asked while he dialed.

  “They got in okay.” Patrick extended a hand for Chauncey’s ruined sock and shoe.

  She gave them to him.

  “Did their jobs. Gene got really excited, according to Chauncey.”

  Chauncey nodded and pressed the phone to his ear. “Yup.”

  “And then?” Sarah pressed, now impatient. Where the fuck was her man?

  “And like Mr. Tolvaj said he would, they called off the other Visas that had infiltrated the Bears, and things went according to plan. They got Gene cornered, tried to make him understand the Cats weren’t responsible for the Bear disappearances, and they all shifted back into their normal forms. Li’l dude got angry. They let him rage, and he made a lot of threats. Chauncey had made it almost all the way back to the farm where I was parked when Gene caught up to him. He tossed some of those silver knives at him.”

  Sarah cringed.

  Patrick had once taken one of
those knives in the side for Dana, so she knew the young man was experiencing more pain than he was letting on.

  Brave kid.

  She squelched her unusual desire to hug him. She’d never been a hugger, not even before she’d come home on that stretcher, angry at the world and bitter.

  Maybe something in her had broken after those mutations set in.

  “Chauncey managed to jump in the SUV, and after that we took off.”

  Sarah stopped dabbing Chauncey’s wounds. “But where are—”

  He put up his hands in a calming gesture, effectively silencing her. “While Gene was distracted, I think Mr. Tolvaj and Felipe decided to get a head start to the next circus site before word got to them. They wanted to get there before the circus packed up. The Visas who had infiltrated the Bears confirmed what the fortuneteller told Felipe. They needed to know where the troupe had idled because they had some new abductees to deliver.”

  She ground her teeth, rage seeping through every pore and making her skin burn with furor.

  Asshole.

  Didn’t they have an agreement? Hadn’t he said he’d always include her?

  “I can’t believe he’d just—”

  “Sarah,” Tamara chided, holding a roll of sterile gauze out to her.

  “What?”

  “It’s not your business anymore. Your job was done the moment Dana pulled you off the case. He didn’t need babysitting, remember?”

  “I remember better than anyone. But I can help. I’m good at what I do.”

  “We’re all good, but that doesn’t matter.”

  “He ain’t want you to get hurt, so he weren’t gonna say nothin’,” Chauncey said. “He was real torn up about it. Thought you’d be mad, but figured it was the better choice if you didn’t know. What’s that sayin’? Easier asking for forgiveness than permission?”

  “It was my choice, not his. Where is he?” She asked him as regular-old-human Sarah, not Sarah with the weird psychic gift. Her voice was pleading, maybe even a bit desperate, and she didn’t care one bit who heard it. There were bigger things at stake than her pride. Future things.

  A ball of cells that might become future thing, if all went well.

  Getting a Shrew pregnant was nothing short of impossible, and she’d laughed at that in the big box store’s bathroom while the Visas made their purchases. She’d done it on a whim. Her usually-reliable body had been sluggish from brain to feet for weeks, and she wanted to eliminate pregnancy from the list of possible considerations before consulting doc. She’d squatted over that toilet, holding a little plastic stick, and laughed so uproariously that the lady in the neighboring stall asked if she needed help.

  It was almost comical it had taken another freak of nature to manage it. She didn’t want to lose her freak before she’d had a chance to tell him. Before he had a chance to step up.

  “I saw them Visas drawing him a map,” Chauncey said.

  “Sarah!” Tamara chided again, now holding out a spool of medical tape.

  “What?”

  “Your horoscope says to avoid taking risks today.”

  Sarah screamed wordlessly, her pitch reaching heights she hadn’t heard since back when her body had been forty percent covered in third-degree burns.

  None of the Shrews had ever seen her burns, her scars. They went away during her mutation period, only to leave other sorts of scars behind.

  “Are you fucking kidding me? That’s rich! Even the smallest things in my life come with some degree of risk. I can’t risk painting my fucking toenails, because the moment I get to the second pinky, Dana mobilizes the Shrews to some new job and I have to jam my feet into my boots.”

  There were other risks, too. Those she couldn’t say aloud.

  She couldn’t risk drinking one of the beers Patrick had stocked in his fridge especially for her, because the alcohol might have consequences above and beyond the usual. She couldn’t risk telling a man she loved him, because there was a chance he wouldn’t say it back.

  Risk was a goddamned joke, and she wasn’t afraid of it. She laughed at risk.

  “Look, I’m not going to sit back and twiddle my thumbs again like the FBI made me on that last case. It won’t make a difference whether we do this delicately, or if I go in with guns blazing. And I mean both guns. One in each hand and a knife clamped between my teeth, if necessary. If something happens to Felipe and I didn’t do anything to stop it, I’ll never forgive myself. He needs me.”

  Tamara sighed.

  Patrick looked up, his lips set in a tight line while he considered her.

  Moments passed, and then, “You want to take the van? It’s got gas.”

  Just like that, he understood. He would have better than anyone in the room. Tamara certainly wouldn’t. She’d never been in love, and Chauncey was just a kid. The moment Dana stepped onto Patrick’s porch on behalf of his pub staff, whom had all thought he’d gone missing, the Shrew had enthralled him. He understood love, and most of all, he understood that if the right person came along, you fell fast and hard. It didn’t make sense.

  It wasn’t supposed to make sense.

  “I don’t know. Chauncey, where are they?”

  “Not as far as you’d think.” Chauncey wincing as Sarah put his foot down. “Heard they got in some trouble in Tennessee. A few of the circus hands got outstanding warrants for somethin’. Felipe thought that was funny as shit.”

  “The circus hands?” The fine hairs on Sarah’s neck stood on end. The muscles in her back and legs tensed, ready to uncoil.

  “Uh-huh. One of them Visas said one of them guys got caught on some security camera footage killin’ a guy in an alleyway. Cops think he was just a bum, but I think he was one of us—a weirdo. Probably fought too hard.”

  Sarah barely registered her feet’s movement as she ran from the room onto the porch, barreled down the stairs, and made a beeline for the van.

  “Wait,” Chauncey called from the door. “You don’t even know where you’re goin’!”

  “Text it to me.” She slammed the driver’s door shut and cranked down the window while turning on the ignition. “And tell Dana where I am. In case she needs to collect my body later or something.”

  She regretted it the moment she said it. She had to be careful this time. This time, it wasn’t just her life at stake. Her life, up until recently, she couldn’t give two shits about. Now she had things to look forward to that didn’t involve bullets and blades.

  She put her foot on the accelerator, poised to burn rubber down the mountain, when Dana ran from the woods at her usual superhuman trot and put herself right in front of the van’s grille.

  Sarah stopped just in time, sighed, and poked her head out the window. “What?”

  “Not. Without. Backup,” the Shrew said. She slapped and hand down on the van’s hood and made the vehicle bob.

  Sarah suspected that if she got out to look, there’d be a petite handprint in the metal. It didn’t stand a chance against Shrew strength.

  “Dana, let me go. I was without backup for six weeks in that last case.”

  Dana narrowed her eyes at her, and in a flash, was at the passenger side, pulling the door handle. She got in, slammed the door, and fastened her seatbelt. “

  And look what that case did to you. New policy. I don’t care who you are and how tough you think you are, but none of my girls are working solo again in cases like that.” She gestured toward the driveway. “Are you going to go? I imagine we need to make up some time.”

  Sarah studied her boss’s serious mien for a moment, thinking of how this woman she’d met in a botched research study designed to make them sweeter—kinder—was the best friend she had. The man who’d recommended Sarah for the study had said she was incapable of developing true friendships. He couldn’t have been more wrong, and fortunately for Sarah, Dana had known better. She’d known there was something in Sarah worth saving.

  Worth protecting.

  “We do.”

  Sara
h cranked the transmission into drive right as Patrick yanked the back passenger door open.

  “Fuck, woman."

  Dana sighed and rubbed her eyes. “What is it, dirty cat?”

  He tossed in a familiar duffel, climbed into the middle seat, and shut the door.

  “Got the guns and your double-holster, Sarah. Chauncey drew me a map.”

  “I love you so much,” Dana said, without a hint of sarcasm.

  “You wouldn’t marry me otherwise, would you?”

  Sarah looked from one to the other with one eyebrow cocked. “Are congratulations in order?”

  “Save ’em for later,” Dana said with a shrug. “After you get your man.”

  “Right.” Sarah paused, scanning the tree line, studying the workers on the expansion’s roof, and watching the cabin’s front door.

  “What are you waiting on?” Patrick asked.

  “Just making sure no one else is going to jump in. Van’s getting crowded.”

  Dana slapped the dashboard. “Go!”

  And Sarah did.

  ___

  The trailer park was eerily quiet as Felipe approached on foot with Mr. Tolvaj in his wake.

  He’d never seen Jacques resort to staging the staff in these sorts of living arrangements. In the past, Jacques had always known where they were going next, even if they didn’t know where the stop after that would be. That didn’t seem to be the case at the moment.

  The motor homes were parked practically mirror-to-mirror in a pay-by-the-week lot with minimal facilities just outside of Asheville.

  Felipe could tell by the campers’ orientations that they were ready to be pulled out at a moment’s notice. They all faced the road.

  “What’s the plan?” Mr. Tolvaj whispered. He stood on tiptoes and peeked over the untended hedge they’d been using for cover.

  Waiting on the old fortuneteller,” Felipe murmured. He scanned the rows of tin cans once more in search of the camper he’d always shared with his brother. It wasn’t there. Could he have moved in with someone else to conserve space, or had something happened to the only home they’d known since they were teenagers?

  He scoffed. Home. The closest thing to home he’d felt since age four had been at Sarah’s house, and Sarah was, for some reason unknown to him, chillier than an ice cube as of late.