AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Easy enough. I’m going to make some tea, and you’re going to eat. Arne?”
“I’m fine. You want help?”
“No,” she said, making a shooing motion with her hands toward the table. “Sit and chat. I’ll get this.”
“She uses this fancy tea,” Arne whispered as we tucked into our soup. “Has it shipped in from the UK, and she won’t let me touch it.”
“Shifter,” Marian called out as she filled a red kettle. “I can hear you whispering.”
“Also shifter,” Arne said back to her. “I know you can.”
Marian rolled her eyes, but a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.
“The soup is wonderful,” I said, blowing on another spoonful. The chicken was tender and moist, the broth almost obscenely buttery, the wild rice the perfect texture between chewy and soft.
“Thank you,” she said, adjusting the gas flame beneath the kettle, stray water droplets hissing in the heat. “It’s Arne’s grandmother’s recipe.”
“Your grandmother is a genius,” Connor said to him.
Arne accepted that with a nod. “How was the drive?”
“Good,” Connor said. “Weather was fine, cops were few, and the vampire only screamed once.”
“There was no screaming,” I said dryly. “He managed not to drop the bike, although there were a few close moments.”
“There were no close moments,” Connor said, giving me a sly smile that put a bloom of heat in my chest.
“How do you know each other?” I asked, looking between Arne and Connor.
“Marian’s one of Georgia’s kids,” Arne said. “Marian’s sister, Cassie, is the one whose kid is being initiated tomorrow. So they’re cousins of some variety.”
“And William is Cassie’s son,” Marian added.
“Big family,” I said, and Arne smiled.
“You’re telling me. It was like marrying into a small college. Probably not unlike Cadogan House.”
“Only different by degrees,” I agreed.
“Will we see you at the initiation?” Connor asked.
“Unfortunately not,” Marian said. “The girls have dance recitals tomorrow, and we promised them we’d both be there before the initiation was scheduled.”
“It looks like the girls are doing well,” Connor said.
“They’re adjusting,” Arne said. He glanced at me. “We used to live at the resort, but we left when the girls were younger. Decided they needed a different upbringing. Less violence, and more honesty.”
“Honesty?” I asked.
Arne looked at me. “The shifters in Grand Bay still pass as human.”
I lifted my brows. Supernaturals had been out of the closet for more than twenty years. “Why?”
“Partly habit, I think,” Marian said as the kettle began to whistle. She turned off the burner, poured water into a mug. “The clan’s been at the resort for decades, and they never had a reckoning, I suppose you’d say, with the community. They’ve been part of it for decades, and it’s a relatively close-knit relationship. They both root for the high school hockey team. Shifter kids go to school with humans—”
“Which screws up everyone’s sleep schedule,” Arne said.
“Totally,” Marian agreed. “They’re integrated, is what I’m saying, even if the humans don’t know it.”
