Shifting Selves Read Online Free PDF Page B

to help another. “He got into a boat, and he wasn’t alone.”
    Will nodded at me once, a short acknowledgement of gratitude, then rounded on his other son. “Brandon, let’s have some words.” He stalked far away from the rest of us, leaving his son to follow dismally behind him.
    Above me, I caught a flicker of movement as Simon shifted back into cat form and raced silently along the branches, looking for a good spot downwind to eavesdrop. He might lack any skill with weaponry beyond his own sharp claws, but there was a reason we called him our ninja.
    I sat on the shore and waited. Mac, I realized, was watching me, might have been watching me the entire time. “I didn’t know you could do that,” he said quietly.
    I should have ignored him. I should have offered a polite answer. I should have done a whole lot of things other than flirt with the man who’d spent the last several weeks avoiding the crazy half-fire chick. I should have accepted that he didn’t want me and my bonfire full of baggage, and it was time to move on.
    I’ve never been very good with shoulds.
    Instead of letting him go, I smiled and let my eyes fill with vague, silent promises. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”
    I swore his breath hitched in his chest for just a moment. It was enough. I felt warmth thread through my body, heating my cheeks, dropping through the core where the magic lived and heading even lower.
    “Aidan.” Brandon’s voice snapped me back to the present. He walked toward us slowly, his father’s disappointed gaze on him the entire time. Brandon looked dejected and, for a moment, far younger than his years. I imagined that whatever his father had wanted to know, the interrogation hadn’t been pleasant. “There’s no one around. Could you make it rain now?”
    I was unable to resist his pathetic expression, the face of a kid who just wanted something pleasant to wash away his doubt and pain. I quickly wrapped my magic around the water hovering in the air and, for good measure, pulled some from the lake as well. I let it circle above us before dropping slowly, drenching the three of us in a cold shower I knew at least one of us desperately needed.
    It was a cozy ride back. Neither Vivian nor Simon had their own car, so they’d been dropped at the lake by a friend of Vivian’s. Being the shortest, Sera squeezed into the back and immediately resumed her silent interrogation of Brandon. Eventually, the poor kid was going to confess to kidnapping the Lindbergh baby if it meant Sera would stop staring at him. Will hadn’t shared with us the details of his conversation with his son, but I wasn’t too bothered. Simon would fill us in later.
    Vivian was squished between me and Simon in the middle. She was quiet, as she usually was, but it wasn’t her normal silence, that of an introvert more interested in studying the world than talking about it. This time, her silence was heavy and draped in sadness.
    “What’s wrong?” I kept my voice low. I don’t know why I hoped for privacy while surrounded by shifters, but I couldn’t stay quiet and ignore her misery. Vivian had spent hours listening to my various woes. It was her turn.
    “It’s nothing,” she muttered. A moment later, she changed her mind, whatever she’d been holding inside all day breaking free in a rush. “Olivia says we might be able to be friends. That’s it. I’ve been trying, and I thought, now that the killings were over, we could, you know. She says she doesn’t give second chances. And I can’t even tell her I left to protect her.” She ended her disjointed rant with a small grunt of frustration.
    Simon lightly stroked her arm, an easy, comforting gesture. He already knew, I realized. So did Sera.
    That far-too-familiar sense of being an outsider crept over me, and I forced it down. I knew where that led. Frustration, anger, fire. Madness. I needed to be zen if it fucking killed me. It wasn’t their fault they were more