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I choked on my own breath. “Oh, no, he isn’t!”
Sunny gave me an exasperated, thin-lipped smile. “For a smart girl, you really are clueless.”
“Did you have a vision or something?”
“Nothing like that.”
I can’t even say how much her lack of vision disappointed me. If it was something she saw in a psychic episode, then I might possibly believe. Did it really matter? “I’m not in love with him.”
Sunny snorted. “You hear that?” She tilted her ear out.
“What?” I hadn’t heard anything. “What do you hear?”
“My bullshit meter.” She shook her head. “It’s clanging like a fire engine on its way to a five-alarmer.” She stood up. “Get your shit together, woman. You’re coming home with me, and that’s that.”
“Okay.” At least it was better than going back to Billy Bob’s. I couldn’t trust myself around that man. And no, I wasn’t in love with him.
“I’ll follow you out to the cabin,” said Sunny. “Jo Jo is babysitting Jude, and I promised him I wouldn’t take too long.”
“Are you still worried about him?” Jude was going on five-months-old, and he’d passed six full moons without a single shift. Therian babies aged slower than human babies, so Jude was about the size of a three-month-old human infant now. Even so, they usually shifted under the first full moon after their births, but with hybrid therians, it could take up to a year, and on the rare occasion, they might be born without the ability. In those cases, the child was usually put up for adoption in the human world. It was dangerous to keep a non-shifting child in a shifter home, especially on the full moons.
“Babe keeps telling me I shouldn’t worry, but I’m worried. What if he doesn’t ever shift? What if he’s as human as I am?”
“At least, he’ll have you. You won’t have to give him up like other shifter families.”
Her mouth went slack, and her eyes widened. “It’s too horrible, Chav. I can’t believe therianthropes give up their babies if they don’t transform.”
“It’s out of love, Sunny.”
“I know,” she said. “Enough of this depressing as shit talk. Go get ready.”
“Fine,” I said. “Give me ten minutes, and I’ll be ready to go.”
She tapped her watch. “Tick tock.”
“Bossy bitch.”
“Yep.” She smiled. “Hurry up. These milk jugs are going to explode soon.”
I made a high-pitched noise and watched, satisfied, as her smile faltered and she looked down at her leaking boobs. She grabbed a pillow from the sofa and threw it at my backside. I squealed and jumped as it brushed passed me.
Another knock startled us both, and I realized I hadn’t shut the door when Sunny arrived. A tall man, burly chested with dark hair and an unruly beard stood in the doorway. “Sorry, ladies. Didn’t mean to sneak up on you,” Roger Messer said.
“It’s okay, Roger.”
“I’m done with the cleanup.”
“That’s so great of you,” Sunny said, holding my favorite throw blanket over her wet shirt.
I cringed and made a mental note to throw it in the wash as soon as possible. “If you send us a bill—”
Roger shook his head. “This one’s on Blondina and me. You gals have been through enough, God knows.” He reached into his utility apron. “Found this near the corner of your porch. Figured it was some kind of spice y’all used in the kitchen.” He held out a twisted root about three inches in diameter. I could smell it now. Faintly. It was sassafras.
I took the item from him. When Sunny moved in for a better look, a foreboding welled inside me, and I instinctively stopped her. I don’t know why I didn’t want her to touch it.
“What’s wrong, Chav?”
“I don’t know.” I examined the twisted twigs. The dark wood had been woven into an eight-point star.
