Page 26 of Break Out the Girl

I watch her brow furrow as she keeps her hand on my chest. “Can I ask you something? Since… well, you're obviously the one who knows the most…” she trails off.

“Ask me anything,” I murmur.

“Why do you think I haven't shifted yet?” A frustrated shadow crosses her beautiful face.

I look down at her and release a sigh. “I know about your heart problem, Aurora.”

She blinks, then sighs.

“Fuck, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. No doubt your father kept track of every little detail of my life.”

“He did,” I say gently. “And perhaps it’s because of your heart, you’re not shifting. The metabolic demand could place too much strain on your body. Your innate form may be deliberately dormant. To keep you alive.”

She kicks at the planking. “Well that sucks.” Then she looks up. “But Imran was really sick, and he shifted.”

“Imran’s case was entirely different, chérie. There was nothing left in his body to save. He knew it, and his spark knew it. He chose to expend every remaining ounce of his life force to get in one magnificent shift before dying. Your body is fighting to live. Quite the opposite.”

The look on her face is so bereft, when I take her in my arms, she doesn’t pull away from the comfort.

But a sharp, wooden creak from a nearby jetty shatters the moment.

We snap apart.

“Hey, you. What the fuck are you doing? This is a private jetty.”

A gruff, heavy-set man steps out onto the deck from a small boat, maybe a fishing boat? His suspicious eyes dart from my face straight to Aurora.

I don’t wait for the gears to start turning in his tiny, desperate mind. Before he can even begin to think of fugitives and a $100,000 reward, I am down the jetty.

The cold, reptilian blood rushes to the surface, drowning out any human warmth that I still carry. My pupils flatten into razor-thin vertical slits as I step into his space.

“Look at me,” I command.

His small eyes lock onto mine, and instantly his expression smooths out into a dull, glassy vacuum. I sense Aurora behind me.

She puts a hand on my back. “Gently…” she whispers.

Ah, yes. No need to brouiller his brain. I reduce the output of my power, then start asking my questions. “We need a boat to discretely get across the bay to the islands. What vessel should we get?”

“Boats…” the man mumbles, his voice hollow and mechanized. “The crabber is flat-bottomed, it’s got a trolling engine, quiet really. Fits four people at the most. Or the dinghy—she’s a sixteen-footer, holds six. Sails, of course, so no noise at all, and the centerboard pulls clean up. Skims right over the sandbanks.”

He pauses, his glassy eyes staring at nothing. “Or you’ve got the jet boat down at the end slip. Internal drives, so there’s no prop to catch on the mud flats, and it’s way quieter than an outboard motor. Fast, too. Load it right up and you can outrun almost anything.”

Aurora and I exchange a fast look. “What else?” I ask her.

“Fuck, I don’t know. I know shit about sailing.” Aurora turns to the empty shell of the man again. “Anything you’d tell beginners about sailing from here to the islands?”

The man’s glassy eyes twitch, a violent tremor rippling through his frame. His head jerks stiffly toward the outer bay.

“Stay away from the western shelf…” the man blurts out, his voice rising in a thin. “Don’t go out by the flats. The deep water’s gone bad down there recently. People go out… boats come back empty. Feral things in the surf. Teeth in the tide. Stay away from the west…”

I click my fingers. “Enough. Now listen to me carefully, you haven't seen anyone on the jetty this morning. You came out here to check on your craft, and found nothing amiss. Leave now and do not return to this area for the rest of the day.”

His head drops forward, his chin hitting his chest as the final wave of the mind-wipe takes hold, leaving him entirely dazed as he staggers back to the main docks.

I look at Aurora, who is staring at the dazed man with a mixture of awe and residual fear. “Will he be alright?”

“He will, chérie. Now let us take this information back to the warehouse.”