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He just rolled his eyes.
***
The weather was cool and just crisp. I grabbed a jacket, and we walked across soft grass to the firepit nearest our cabin, found a crackling fire and four shifters sitting in Adirondack chairs around it. Two chairs were empty.
“Can we join you?” he asked.
“Sit,” said a shifter on the opposite side, his face silhouetted between bright fire and dark lake. “Take a load off.”
Connor took one empty chair, and I took the chair to his right, sipped the bottle of beer as I considered the company. Some of the shifters watched us, considered. Others watched the fire or the lake.
“I’m Rose,” said the woman beside me. Her skin was tan; her hair was short, dark, and slicked back. She wore a tank top over leggings; a wide, tasseled scarf was bundled around her neck. She pointed to the older woman beside her. “This is Patsy,” she said, then moved counterclockwise around the circle. “That’s Gibson, and my sister Ruth.”
They all acknowledged the introductions. Gibson was a young man with dark skin and cropped hair. Ruth looked a lot like her sister, if maybe a few years younger.
“Connor,” he said, and they laughed. “And this is Elisa. She doesn’t bite. Unless you ask nicely.”
The shifters chuckled good-naturedly, seemed to relax.
“You’ve stirred up Cash,” Rose said, drinking from a plastic tumbler. “He’s usually pretty low-key, but he doesn’t like being questioned.”
Connor stretched out his legs, folded his arms. “I’m not questioning him. I’m questioning what the hell is happening in this clan that two people died in a matter of weeks. Coincidence bugs me.”
“Loren had his place,” Gibson said. “He was—as all the elders are—concerned about keeping the clan together, keeping it stable. I can’t fault them for that.”
“I can,” Connor said, “if saving the clan hurts the individual shifters.”
Gibson lifted a shoulder. “Who’s to say it does? Things are different out here than they are in Chicago.”
Beside Rose, Patsy shook her head. “That’s an excuse, and you know it, Gibbs.” She looked back at Connor. “Describe this resort, physically.”
Connor frowned at the fire as he considered. “Comfortable. Kitschy. Dated.”
“Bingo,” Ruth said, pointing at him. “Frigging bingo.”
“Bingo,” Rose agreed. “It’s dated. The grounds are the same. The cabins are the same. We don’t want to spend communal money on fancy decor, fine. But the place is falling apart. The floors are stained. The edges are worn. The dock disintegrated five years ago, and it still hasn’t been replaced.”
“I thought there was a dock,” Connor said, lifting his gaze to the waterline. “I figured I just misremembered it.”
Rose nodded. “There was a dock. It wasn’t original, so it wasn’t replaced.” There was disdain in her voice.
“Hell, shifters weren’t original,” Ruth said, “and that didn’t stop us from moving in.”
“Right?” Rose agreed. “I’m fine with not changing things, with retro. But when things start to fall apart, and we pretend it isn’t happening? No. Unacceptable.”
“You’re stagnating,” I suggested.
“Something like that,” Ruth said, nodding. “We’re so busyprotecting the clan that existed twenty years ago that we aren’t paying attention to the clan that exists now.”
“Why the obsession with the past?” I asked. “What’s the appeal?”
“They were at the top of the pile back then,” Rose said as the fire popped, sent up a spark that blossomed in the air like a Roman candle. “The resort was basically new, the elders young and strong. Cash and Everett were married. There was money in the bank, and being a shifter was still secret. And because of that, sexy.”
“You’ve got a secret power,” I offered, “so you’re basically a superhero.”
“Exactly. Times were good—or seemed to be in hindsight. There was always the usual drama. Humans curious about the ‘cult’ that lived together in the abandoned resort, humans who came around to freeload or preach, someone’s wife runs off with someone else’s husband.”
“Or wife,” Ruth said with a grin.
