Page 26 of Shifters in the Night

When he walked out, Eva was standing in front of Lia’s SUV with the hood up. She was tinkering with something while Lia shook her head. “I can’t believe this. I’ve told my boss for months this stupid thing was making a funny sound but he told me it was all in my head,” Lia was saying. “Probably because no one respects your opinion when you describe the noise as ‘awockawockawocka.’”

“Well, it’s a pretty minor issue and not every mechanic would have spotted it,” Eva said, making one last adjustment before closing the hood. “Watch your fingers.”

“You have to let me pay you for the repair,” Lia insisted. “Just give me a heavily padded invoice and I’ll take it to my boss. He deserves it.”

“Oh, please, it took me three minutes,” Eva said, waving her off. “As much as I’d like to punish your boss for being a jerk and ignoring you, I have a certain ethical code I try to follow.”

“Well, let me buy you dinner or pie or something,” Lia said.

Eva’s response smile was so warm it could have melted all of the desserts in the parish. “I hear the Ice Cream Depot is amazing. Maybe you can buy me a banana split.”

Lia grinned in response. “Deal.”

They were talking about cars and ice cream, his brain rejoiced. He was safe! He was sorry to have missed it, though. He loved talking about ice cream and cars.

“Here they are,” he said, handing the sunglasses to Lia.

She peered down at the frames and pulled a pair of stylish rose gold aviators from her pocket. “Well, these are great, but they’re not mine.”

“What?” Jon took the sunglasses back.

“Mine were in my car, which was why I was so confused when you said you found them,” she said. “And Eva was nice enough to fix my weird rattle while I was looking for them.”

“Then whose sunglasses are these?” he asked.

“Maybe someone else wandered drunkenly through your yard after I did and dropped them?” Lia suggested, chewing her lip.

“Unlikely. I don’t get a lot of foot traffic in my yard,” he said.

Lia made a face that reflected a lot of doubt. “Maybe you should say something to Jillian or Alex? Alex said something about making sure you get ahead of problems in the Bayou. Strangers wandering through your remote yard could definitely be considered a problem.”

Jon nodded, but he wondered at her mentioning Alex so casually, like she was on a first-name basis with him. He was more than a little ashamed at the hot, sharp stab of jealousy he felt in his chest and tried to tamp it down as quickly as possible. He didn’t want her to see how much he hated the idea of her spending time with someone who so clearly had his life together at a level Jon couldn’t even imagine. Alex Lancaster had all fancy city polish and the impressive title. He’d gone to law school, for goodness’ sake. Jon didn’t even have current proof that he’d passed his mechanics course because he’d done it so long ago, the paper had worn out!

He tried to exchange those feelings of jealousy for happiness, happiness for Lia. Because if she was talking to Lancaster, that meant that her job was going well and that was the whole point of her being in the Bayou. Doing well at her job was what made Lia happy, he could tell from the way she talked about it.

“Jon?” Lia said, gently nudging aside his thoughts of Alex. “Will you talk to Jillian or Alex about this?”

“Sure,” he said, nodding and shoving the glasses in his back pocket.

And in an unconscious decision that would come back to haunt him later, he promptly forgot about them.

* * *

Jon wasn’t sure what he expected, standing on his brother’s porch at twilight, beer in hand, but it certainly wasn’t for Will to look down at the beer and sigh. “We’re going to talk about feelings, aren’t we?”

Jon frowned at him. “What?”

“Ever since I moved back here, Bael or Zed or any one of my circle of idiot friends shows up on my porch with beer – it means I’m going to have to talk about feelings.” Will shook his head. “And while there’s nothing wrong with having feelings and I usually find the talks really helpful, it’s just the sight of Zed in tears is unnerving.”

“We don’t have to talk about our feelings,” Jon said, frowning.

“Do you need to talk about your feelings?” Will asked.

Jon thought about it for a long moment. He was feeling a lot more things than he usually did, all at once – things that he normally didn’t feel. Talking about them couldn’t hurt, he supposed. “Probably.”

“Come on in.” Will pulled the door open to make way, welcoming him into the strange little space where he’d made a life with Sonja. The low ceilings and white-washed walls showed the age of the century-old house, but it was clean and comfortable. Over the years, several of their friends had lived in the maison des fous, but Will and Sonja had made it their own with modern, plush furniture and framed black-and-white photos of the aforementioned “circle of idiots.”

“You didn’t think to use that fancy phone camera thing to record Zed crying? For posterity?” Jon asked as they walked onto the back dock. It was so much like their childhood home that he could see why Will liked it here.

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