The Bobcat's Tate Read Online Free PDF Page B

sleigh bed, a Victorian-era nightstand with an oil lamp sitting on a doily, and hand-painted folk art pictures of cows and chickens.
    Lainey’s suitcase was on the floor next to the bed.
    “All right, let’s go get you some lunch, and then we need to make sure that you’ve got something to wear at the wedding. If you don’t have anything, there’s a store in town we can go to, or Ginger could lend you something. She’s about your size.”
    “Why would I be going to the wedding?” Now Lainey was following Marigold down the hallway, down the stairs, and back to the kitchen. Marigold, like her great-aunt, apparently moved really fast when she was excited about something.
    “ You’ve got to go, of course. Because he’ll be there.”
    “Who will be there?” And is “Blue Moon Junction” a code name for “giant nut house”?
    “He will be. Your fated mate,” Marigold said, as if she were perfectly sane and Lainey was the crazy one.
    Imogen was talking on an old -fashioned black wall phone with an actual phone cord, but when they came in, she started and looked guilty.
    “I’ve got to go. Remember, Bea, not a word,” she said in a loud whisper.
    There was a pause as she listened to a squawking voice on the other end. Then she said loudly, “I SAID, I’ve got to go, and remember, not a word!” She banged the phone down.
    Marigold rolled her eyes. “ Beatrice, the gossip columnist, wears a hearing aid. This is great. Just great. Now everyone’s going to know.”
    She turned to her aunt , put her hands on her hips, and frowned. “You promised, Aunt Imogen. Not that I expected you to keep your word.”
    “Promised what? Oh dear, it’s time to gather the eggs.” Imogen left the kitchen, looking mildly guilty.
    “No it isn’t, we gathered them this morning,” Marigold said to the slamming door. “Who gathers eggs in the afternoon? Nobody, that’s who.”
    “She’s long gone,” Lainey pointed out. “Probably off to call everybody else in town.”
    “I know. I’m just venting. We’ve got chicken salad sandwiches in the refrigerator. Let’s go sit on the back porch and talk about what you’re going to wear to the wedding. Chop chop. Time’s a-wasting. We’ve got to figure out your hair, your jewelry, your makeup…”
    “I wasn’t even invited . And I don’t have a fated mate.” Her mother had told her in no uncertain terms that the whole concept of fated mates was a myth, an old wives tale that no respectable, modern shifter would give any credence to. Only ignorant, backwoods shifters even talked about fated mates any more, her mother had insisted.
    Blue Moon Junction’s one claim to fame was tha t they had a month-long festival which lasted for all of October, where single shifters from all over the East Coast gathered, supposedly in hopes of finding their fated mates. Lainey had mentioned it to her mother once, pointing out a magazine story about all the shifters who met their mates at the festival, but her mother had turned up her sculpted nose at the notion. “It’s infatuation, not fate,” she’d said scornfully. “All those shifters, acting like animals. Disgusting.”
    We are animals , Lainey had thought to herself, but she knew how much her mother prided herself on being an assimilated, civilized shifter, one who acted like a human and never an animal.
    She turned her attention back to Marigold. “Explain to me what all that Cypress Woods Witch stuff was about.”
    “ Well, basically, Myrtle is super old, supposedly a hundred and twenty, and she’s always had the sight. She used to live by herself in an area of Blue Moon County known as the Cypress Woods, and she’d wander into town, her eyes looking all milky, and make some kind of obscure prediction, and it would always come true. Supposedly. Then she’d go back to the woods. Eventually, when she got old, she got Alzheimer’s, and now she lives in a nursing home. But apparently she still gets visited by the spirit from