“Peace,” Liam rumbled, putting a calming hand on his brother’s arm. “He’s teasing you, Sean, and easy it is to do. No, lad,” he said to Mason. “Andrea’s a healer, but her gift comes from her Fae blood. Sean means a Shifter healer, one that’s blessed by the Goddess with a strong amount of healing magic. A Shifter healer, it is said, can bring another Shifter back almost from the dead. They’re powerful, rare, and extremely elusive. If I knew where I could get my hands on one, I would.”
“That’s it, then.” Mason slapped the arms of his chair and pried himself to his feet. He swayed on those feet, still feeling the effects of his healing and the painkillers. “I’ll go find us a Shifter healer, and we’ll be done with this problem once and for all.”
Chapter Two
The others argued. Of course they did—they were Shifters.
Mason had already made up his mind. He was going no matter what. He didn’t think it was prudent to say this to Liam, so he simply slid himself into a booth in the corner and let them babble.
“Hey.” A Feline Shifter took the opposite seat and rested his forearms on the table. He was Seamus McGuire, who’d not long ago been part of a compound of Shifters, the same Aleck had belonged to, who’d managed to avoid taking the Collar twenty years ago. Seamus wore a fake Collar now, its Celtic knot nestled on his throat. He’d agreed to live like a Shiftertown Shifter to be with a woman—a human woman at that.
The man had to be seriously nuts. If Mason hadn’t had a Collar he sure as hell wouldn’t hang around here. No woman was worth captivity, even pretend captivity.
“Aleck was a friend,” Seamus said, his slow voice holding a Scottish bite. “I wasn’t best mates with him or anything, but he’s not a bad lad. I appreciate you wanting to help him.”
Mason wanted to help Aleck to keep from being killed by him. He kept this thought to himself and waited for Seamus to get to the point.
“If you truly want to find a Shifter healer, you’re going to need help,” Seamus said.
“Possibly,” Mason responded, cautious. “Are you volunteering to go with me?”
Seamus gave him an incredulous look. “Tell my mate and her mother that I’m going to scour the world for a healer while my mate is carrying my cub? You’ve met Bree’s mum.”
Mason had, and agreed that she was an alpha in her own right. A Shifter didn’t piss off Nadine Fayette unless he wanted a takedown that burned like fire. She’d remind said Shifter of the incident every time she saw him too, such as when Mason had torn through her rosebushes when he’d been chasing a cub at the last cookout Bree and her family had held at their house. Mason could still feel the scratches of thorns and Nadine’s lashing voice. He’d replanted the bushes he’d broken and driven out there to check on them until he was sure they were thriving.
“So what do you suggest?” Mason asked impatiently.
Seamus started to take on an irritated, exhausted, and pained appearance, matching Mason’s feelings exactly. Seamus was an empath, and when other Shifters exuded strong emotions, Seamus would pick up on them and reflect them. This gave him the ability to help the Shifter get over the bad emotion, or something like that. Mason wasn’t clear on why being an empath was a good thing.
“Bree has a friend in New Orleans,” Seamus said as he held Mason with his golden gaze. “One with resources.”
“What resources?” Mason asked. “Better than the Guardian Network?”
“No.” Seamus flushed. “Sean says the Guardian Network can point the way toward a Shifter healer but not exactly where to find him. Healers can be elusive. No, Bree’s friend is a psychic.”
Mason regarded him with a slow blink, anger seeping into the mix in his brain. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Seamus lifted a hand. “I know it sounds weird, but Bree says she’s amazing. She’s found people for the police, has warned others of danger in time for them to save themselves, other stuff. I don’t believe in psychics meself, but Bree swears she’s the real thing.”
Bree, while a cute enough human woman, wasn’t herself the most reliable source. She’d been a Shifter groupie when she’d lived in New Orleans, and any woman who thought that hanging out with asshole alpha male Shifters was a wonderful thing had to have her head examined. And now Seamus was telling him Bree believed in psychics.
“Pass,” Mason said. “Got any other ideas?”
“No harm in asking her,” Seamus said. “Who knows? She might at least point you in the right direction.”
“There’s no such thing as psychics,” Mason said stubbornly. “They’re frauds who use your body language to ‘read’ your mind. Any Shifter can do that. If this woman finds people, she’s either a good investigator on the quiet, or she got lucky. Same with warning of impending disaster. There are disasters galore out there, every day. Any psychic has a good chance of predicting one.”
“So what?” Seamus said. “By your argument, if she’s a good investigator, she might be able to help you.” He leaned across the table, his golden eyes sharp. “Let me put it this way, lad. If I go home and tell Bree you didn’t want to meet her friend, both Bree and Nadine will come out here, round you up, and drag you off to New Orleans themselves. You want a road trip like that? Easier if you volunteer to go on your own.”
Mason let his growls rumble. “Seamus, why the hell do you let a bunch of females tell you what to do? They’re not even Shifter.”
Seamus lost his annoyance and let out a laugh, his pained expression clearing. “Tell you what, lad, the day you fall in love, you come back to me and ask me that again.”
Mason pressed his hands on the tabletop to keep from balling his fists. “All right, all right.” New Orleans was a nice distance from Austin, and Mason felt an urge to get out of town. He could talk to the psychic to make Seamus and his family happy, take a few breaths away from the chaos that was his home, and decide what he wanted to do.
Mason became aware that all the other Shifters in the room were watching him. Shifter hearing being what it was, they’d likely followed the whole conversation.
“It’s settled then,” Liam Morrissey said. His eyes glinted with humor but also understanding. “You go find us a Shifter healer, lad. We’ll keep Aleck alive until you get home.”
* * *
Jasmine Samuelson stared at the rune stones she’d just cast on her blue velvet cloth, and her heart constricted. She shoved the stones aside, took out her personal tarot deck—the one she used to read for herself and no one else—and quickly dealt three cards in a row.
She sat back and sucked in a breath. Jazz called this deal her “quickie” tarot—the first card was her past; the second, the present; third, her immediate future. The wind chimes outside the veranda door sighed, though there was no wind.
Every rune she’d drawn and every tarot layout for the past few days had told her much the same thing. Even the fortune cookies she’d had when she’d ordered Chinese takeout the other night had warned of it.
A stranger was coming. When he arrived, Jasmine’s entire life would change. Forever.
Jazz wasn’t opposed to strangers—she made her living working in a New Age shop in town, and she read palms and tarot for those she didn’t know all the time. She enjoyed it, meeting all kinds of interesting people who had all kinds of interesting problems.
She wasn’t opposed to change either. Life shouldn’t be stagnant.
What Jazz was opposed to were dire portents laid out in her cards that this stranger would scare the shit out of her, and change her life in a massive way. It was enough to make her call in sick at work, close all the shutters in her house on the river, and hide in the shadows.
The house embraced and protected her, full of magic from many generations of magic-touched women and men, stretching back to the eighteenth century. Her boyfriend, Lucas, didn’t understand why Jazz wouldn’t let him move in here, but the truth was that the house didn’t like him.
Hanging out with Lucas could be a lot of fun, when he was h
aving a good week, and he’d been bugging her for them to move in together. But that either meant Jazz leaving the house that had been her home most of her life or having Lucas come to live here. She’d have to face him sooner or later with her final decision, which might mean that she and Lucas would break up.
Maybe that’s what the coming stranger meant. The end of her relationship, or perhaps Jazz having to move out of her house.
Is that all I’m afraid of? Jazz admonished herself after she hung up from telling the shop’s manager she wasn’t coming in. A breakup or a move? A lot of people go through so much worse. But leaving this house wasn’t simply a move to a new building and she knew it. Jazz’s past was here. Her present. Her future?
She sat down again in the dining room and shuffled the cards, slowly dealing out the Celtic cross. She studied each card as she laid it down, then contemplated the entire spread when she was finished.
Yep, something scary was coming. Jazz shoved the cards together then sat back and curled her fingers into nervous fists.
A second later, her cell phone rang. Jazz’s heart jumped high as she grabbed for it, then she let out a relieved breath when she saw who it was.
“Bree!” she cried into the phone. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear from you …”
* * *
Mason’s shirt stuck to his chest as his motorcycle took him through the wet heat of southern Louisiana on his way into New Orleans. Early this morning, he’d ridden out of Austin toward Houston on the back highways, a hoodie zipped up to conceal his Collar. Shifters were allowed to travel within their own state, as long as they didn’t stay outside their own Shiftertown too long, but Mason didn’t need anyone noticing a Shifter sliding out the other side of Houston and on down the road into Louisiana.
Now the heat of the afternoon clung to him, the sun blaring through thin white clouds, the humidity soaring. Austin could be humid in the summer, but nothing like this. It was like riding through soup.
Mason was heading to see Bree’s psychic with very little information to go on in his search. According to Sean, the Guardian Network only indicated that three Shifters in the world were genuine Shifter healers. No names or addresses of course, though the database indicated they were male. One had last been seen somewhere in the Baltic countries. Another hung out in South America. A third drifted around the United States and Canada. All of them wandered, never staying in any one place long.
Healers did that, apparently. They were elusive, reclusive, and reputed to be nearly as crazy as ferals. Goddess-touched, Sean called them, as were the Guardians, but healers brought people back to life instead of sending them to death.
The healing magic messed up their brains, Sean went on, and they didn’t like to be around other Shifters. Or anyone, for that matter. A Shifter had to be truly desperate to search for one.
Mason tightened his grip on the handlebars, his fingerless gloves stretching. It was too hot for anything but the muscle shirt he wore beneath the hoodie, but he kept the jacket zipped to his chin.
The I-10 took him through hot green lands to industrial areas alongside the wide river. Then the freeway skimmed a huge lake to finally spill him into the heart of New Orleans.
Mason followed Bree’s directions to a place called Jackson Square, a green area with a big church, crowds of tourists, and slow-moving, horse-drawn carriages taking said tourists around the old town. Mason moved his bike leisurely through the traffic to Decatur Street, gazing like any tourist at the old city with its stuccoed walls and intricate wrought-iron balconies.
Mason rode around a corner from Decatur into a tiny street, killed the bike, and approached the shop called Inspirations, where Bree told Mason her friend Jasmine worked.
Two young women in halter tops and shorts were heading into the store at the same time. Mason yanked the door out of the first woman’s grip and ducking past her into the shop to scope it out for danger.
The shop’s interior looked innocuous enough. It was small but held many shelves and display cases filled with books, stones of all colors, statues and figurines, bottles of oil, decks of cards, jewelry, crystals, incense burners and incense, and various and sundry objects whose function Mason couldn’t determine.
He turned back to the women and stepped aside to let them in, nodding at them to let them know it was safe.
The first one glared at him. “I guess no one learns manners these days. How rude.”
The second was about to agree with her friend, then she looked up at Mason and halted, her eyes softening as she smiled. Mason had seen that smile from human women before, one that said they wouldn’t mind anything he did and kind of hoped they’d end up somewhere private.
So—one woman was disgusted at Mason for being protective, and the other wanted to rush off alone with a guy she’d never met.
Human females were seriously crazy.
Mason did his best to ignore them as he approached the counter. He didn’t see any “No Shifters” signs, but he kept his Collar hidden, just in case.
The woman at the cash register was folding up silk scarves to place on a display. She glanced up as Mason reached her, did a double take, and dropped the scarf.
Mason caught it for her, the silk soft against his rough fingertips. “Hey,” he said in a low voice. “I’m looking for Jasmine.”
The woman kept on staring, ignoring the scarf Mason held out to her. “Is she here?” Mason prompted, shoving the cloth closer to the woman.
The woman jumped. “Jazz? No. She’s not here. Not today.”
“Do you know where she is, then? I need to find her.”
Another jump. Mason wasn’t good at guessing human ages, but the woman had lines on her face and gray in her hair, and was very slender. She wore a flowing, thin silk jacket over a wispy shirt, probably wise in this climate. Mason’s hoodie was stifling him.
“No,” the woman said. “I can’t tell you that. You’d better go.”
She made no move to take the scarf from him, and in fact, looked scared to death. Mason heard the two women come up behind him. The one who’d said he was rude asked, “Do you want me to call the police?”
That was all Mason needed. If he ran from the cops, they’d chase him, maybe shoot him, and then peel his jacket back from his bloody body to see his Collar. Then it would be Shifter Bureau, a cage, and possible death. Broderick, as Mason’s alpha, would be arrested for letting Mason out of his control, and then Liam would get hauled in for not keeping a Shifter in his Shiftertown inside the state lines.
How did Liam, Seamus, Ronan, Spike—all the Shifters mated to humans—deal with them? Their human mates looked at them and melted. Even Nancy, mated to a feral, for the Goddess’s sake, was ready to do anything to save him.
Mason cleared his throat and tried to quirk his lips into a smile. Charm came so easy for Liam and Sean, but Mason had to work at it. Maybe it was their Irish accent. Women loved accents.
Mason wasn’t foolish enough to try one. He said in his own, plain-old voice, “I’ll buy this scarf then. For my auntie Cora. She likes scarves.”
The woman behind the counter softened the slightest bit at the mention of his aunt. “Do you want a box for it?” she asked.
“No, no. I’ll just …” Mason looked at the piece of cloth, not knowing what to do with the thing.
The woman’s mouth now blossomed into a smile. “I’ll wrap it up real nice for her.” She rummaged on a shelf below the counter and brought out tissue and a folded box, then tapped keys on her register. “That comes to eighty-two fifty-nine.”
Mason felt the growl in his throat but suppressed it. Small price to pay to keep these people from giving him to the cops. He hid his grimace with another smile, dug out cash from his pocket, and laid it down.
A few minutes later, he walked out carrying a gray-and-black striped bag with Inspirations on it, which contained a slim box wrapped in colorful paper, a brochure about the store, and a complimentary stick of incense.
As he mounted his motorcycle, he saw the two women plus the woman from the register at the door watching him. The door was closed, but his Shifter hearing picked up what they were saying.
“Doesn’t he look like Orlando Bloom?” the woman who’d called him rude asked.
Sudden excitement tinged the voices of the others. “You think it’s him?” “Yeah, he does look like him.” “Yeah, I bet that’s him!”
Mason started his bike, lifted his hand in farewell, and eased out into the narrow street.
“I swear to you—that was Orlando Bloom …”
Mason let out the snarl that had been building in his throat. Whoever this Bloom guy was, Mason felt sorry for him.
He was about to pull into traffic on the main street again when his coat vibrated. Mason stopped the bike to pull out his phone.
“What?” he shouted into it.
“That’s how you answer the phone?” The voice of Bree came at him. “I’ve been trying to call you all day, Mason, but I couldn’t reach you.”
“I’ve been on the road. Your friend isn’t at her store.” Mason couldn’t keep his irritation at bay. “What do I do now? Hire a psychic to find her?”
Bree snorted. “Don’t be a smart-ass. That’s what I’ve been trying to call to tell you. Jazz stayed home today, but I know where she lives …”
* * *
Jazz stood on the front porch of the graceful house and watched the biker come up the drive. Bree had warned her, but Jazz’s heart banged like crazy, her blood cold as he rode slowly under the stately trees and turned the bike to stop it right below the porch.
The stranger who would change her life.
Well, no one could be stranger than a Shifter. Jazz had vowed never to have anything to do with them again, and now here she was, agreeing to see one as a favor to an old friend.
Mason McNaughton, Bree had said his name was. A little wild, even for a Shifter, but he needed to hire Jasmine. Needed her help.