Page 7 of Shifters in the Night

“Yes, she was dressed,” Jon said, rolling his eyes. “In really nice clothes and a handbag that probably cost more than my truck. I guess she’s with one of the companies moving into town. Her boss sounds like a bit of a jerk.”

“Lia Doe works for New Ground Construction, the company that’s building the apartment building off of Main Street?” Jillian asked.

“I know that, but how would you know that?” Sonja asked, turning on Jillian.

“I’m cc’d on the emails,” Jillian said, pressing her lips together as if she’d suddenly remembered she was supposed to be on maternity leave from her position as community liaison between the League and Mystic Bayou. As director of operations, it was part of Sonja’s job to keep workaholic Jillian from liaising until at least the next month.

“I thought we agreed you wouldn’t be checking your emails,” Sonja said, giving Jillian the best disappointed parent look Jon had ever seen.

“I don’t remember an agreement, per se. It was more of a general …” Jillian answered.

Sonja tilted her head and stared Jillian down until Jillian cried out, “OK, I’ll stop reading the emails. But it would help if people would stop cc’ing me. I have control issues! You know that!”

Sonja snickered and threw an arm around her friend.

“Jillian,” Jon prompted her gently. “Lia works for New Ground?”

“It’s a company that specializes in building shifter-friendly apartment complexes,” Jillian offered. “Lia is the logistics coordinator, which means she spends a lot of time running back and forth between the company and the community, laying groundwork and smoothing ruffled feathers. She has successfully overseen the construction of similar buildings all over the country. She seems like someone who works hard and is really good at her job, which are two traits that I admire.”

“I have a meeting scheduled with her this week,” Zed added.

Jillian scowled at him. “You couldn’t have said that before I opened my big mouth?”

Zed threw up his hands “Well, I was going to say something, but you just barreled in with all of your information, which is part of your charm, but if you keep it up, Sonja’s going to trade your phone for one of those kiddie versions with no wi-fi and three pre-programmed buttons.”

“So are you going to try to see her again? Or just let fate bring you back to the dairy case at the same time?” Sonja asked.

“That’s gonna take at least two weeks,” Bael supposed. “I mean, until the dairy expires.”

“You could drop by for the meeting,” Zed told Jon. “You could say you’re a concerned citizen who wants to talk to the mayor and wouldn’t you know it, she happens to be there and you have the chance to talk to her again.

“I don’t want to stalk her,” Jon said. “If I’m supposed to see her, I’ll see her.”

“Are you afraid of getting punched in the face again?” Will asked.

Jon thought about it for a moment, sipping his beer. “Little bit.”

3

LIA

Walking on city sidewalks in high heels was very different from walking on rural sidewalks. Lia had never stepped on so much “surprise gravel” in her life.

She straightened her sensible grey suit jacket as she walked past the strange

Mystic Bayou Parish Hall. Her boss, Victor Bannister, had tried to insist that she drive one of the company’s Range Rovers from New Ground’s temporary offices. But it seemed counter-intuitive to drive a few blocks down Main Street. People in Mystic Bayou seemed to value common sense, self-reliance. They didn’t seem to put much stock in showing off, if the preponderance of rusted, early model pick-ups parked along the curb were any indication.

Either way, the walk gave her a chance to get an unfiltered look at her new hometown, no matter how impermanent. Mystic Bayou was a charming little village, much smaller than the places she was used to working – which was why she and her fellow employees were living and working in a complex of mobile homes down the street instead of a nice hotel. There were no hotels in Mystic Bayou, just a number of cement block businesses, most of which seemed to be owned and operated by someone named Boone. And there was a post office that served ice cream, which made no sense, but Lia would have to investigate it later. She wished she’d had more time at the grocery store earlier, which despite not having Victor’s preferred dermatological products, was far better stocked than she’d expected.

There was only one unused building she could see in the town’s “business district,” which appeared to be a defunct laundromat. No space went to waste there because it was so difficult to build. Mystic Bayou was remote and surrounded by mostly untamed wilderness and locals were (up until recently) a bit reluctant to let outsiders come in, even if it was just for construction.

Mobile homes seemed to be a solution the town had embraced when the League moved in years before. The League researchers and staff lived in trailers on the other side of the campus in a sort of village, engineered to look like comfortable Cape Cod-type cottages. But since the Pope Lick Monster Incident, more and more people were moving to the Bayou, far outpacing the housing available in the entire parish.

Dr. Ramsay did her best to obscure the location of her study, which was released to the public when existence of the supernatural world was first dominating the headlines. Jillian’s report The Bayou: A Whole-Hearted Approach to a Blended Community was an in depth look at how humans and magique had been living together in harmony for decades. And while it helped calm the public uproar, it also brought widespread attention to the unnamed town in its pages. And since the internet existed, it was only a matter of time before a few dedicated sleuths spread the town’s location around, leading to a considerable boom in tourists that wanted to visit the Bayou and people who wanted to move there permanently. Humans, because they wanted to live in the place where the legendary creatures they’d admired their whole lives lived, and magique because they wanted to live in a town that was practically designed for them.

The Bayou had a few hundred small, single-family homes, most of which had belonged to the same families for generations. But it had no apartment buildings, no hotels, nothing. That’s where New Ground was stepping in – building a fifty-unit apartment complex, which would be handed over to a property management trust run by both the League and the parish. The trust was technically New Ground’s “client.”

Victor’s company had done this in dozens of towns with large shifter populations, but this was the first time they’d worked so closely with the League. Getting approved had been a grueling process, involving multiple interviews and so many PowerPoint presentations. But New Ground had an advantage of being a one-stop-operation, making the construction process as painless as possible for a population that couldn’t bear scrutiny from human vendors.

---