Page 146 of Shifter Situations

Afternoon

I’d never been more relieved than I was when Sloane said she was ready to go.

I didn’t want shit to do with our old apartment or Annette’s office-space-turned-fake-residence. That whole fucking building could burn, and I wouldn’t think twice about it.

Some of the topics we’d speculated while there were bugging me, but none of it could be changed now.

Did it matter that our neighbor had dozens of fae crystals that were siphoning our power through the walls? Not anymore. We weren’t being drained, and we’d all regained strength that we didn’t know we had.

Was I concerned about not being able to sense supernatural creatures inside the building we no longer lived in? Nope. I thought she may have been trying to cover up her own tracks, not hiding everyone.

Were we pissed that we’d possibly been eating cookies that were blocking us from feeling our mate bonds with Sloane? Fuck yes, but I was also intrigued by the unknown magic. Purely in an academic sense; not in an I wanna test it out again sense.

Had it been shitty to see our apartment trashed beyond recognition? Yeah, though it didn’t matter in the grand scheme of all the issues on our plate. None of us had wanted to go back. We’d grown accustomed to seeing our mate every day, and we didn’t want that to change.

I’d beelined straight for the library as soon as we had arrived home, and now that I was here, I couldn’t take my eyes off the walls.

They were lined, floor to ceiling, with black shelves stacked full of books. Every section had thin, gold lettering at the top of the shelf labeling them as fiction or nonfiction, and beneath that were subsections. Everything from supernatural and human history to paranormal fiction to ancient tomes that no longer had words on the spines.

To my right, a few leather chairs sat with sleek tables in between them. And to my left, the shelves extended away from the wall to create small alcoves.

Across from me, a single, massive window overlooked the front lawn. The sunshine highlighted all the knicks and knots in the wooden flooring, giving the youthful room an old and cozy atmosphere.

As I moved around to the sitting area, I noticed one of the chairs appeared more used than the others. There was a fuzzy, black blanket tossed over the back and a book balancing on the left armrest.

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells sat with a pink ribbon bookmark stuck in the middle, taunting me to pick it up and lose myself in the science fiction fantasy. I grinned, thinking of leaving a list of my favorite quotes and questions atop my mate’s current read.

I collapsed in the leather armchair on the left of Sloane’s, curiously peeking into the small black box on the side table. The lid was glass, and it was filled with Alec Bradley cigars, only a few singles not of the same brand.

I was sure they were the ones that Sloane had offered Lucifer. Their labels stuck out as much as their aroma.

Gatekeeper. Magic Toast. Black Market.

“Found my stash?”

“I did. Do you mind?”

“Not at all. Having them gone gives me an excuse to drive down and see Jenny.”

She took the cigar—Magic Toast—from my hand, punching a hole in the end with a tiny black… Thing. Her thumb glowed red as she placed it against the other end, lighting the cigar.

“Who is Jenny?”

“She’s the best. She’s also the only human who knows that I’m not quite like them. She watched me fall from the building across the street from her work. When I asked her to help me realign my arm, she didn’t flinch, and I decided that I liked her.”

It went against every rule for a human to know anything about us.

So, of course, naturally, Sloane would break it.

“How many people do you think know that there are supernaturals and other realms?”

“I don’t know. A few, at least, but then I’ve never thought about it enough to come up with an actual number.”

“I wonder how many of them know that we’re immortal?”

She bounced her fingers between us as she sat on the left arm of the chair. “We’re not Immortal.”

“What do you mean?”