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“Piper? Do you have a minute?” She hesitated at the bottom of the stoop.
“Sure, Gillian, of course I do.” I strained a grin. I did every week she came. Still, she smiled as if she were surprised.
Chapter Three
“That doesn’t smell so good,”Charlie said, his nose crinkled.
I hadn’t even taken off the lid and he’d smelled it. They told me he wouldn’t shift until he hit puberty, but something was changing. I just wish it wasn’t his smell. He was sitting at the kitchen table, fear in his eyes that he’d have to eat whatever was emitting that stench.
I lifted the lid of the Dutch oven sitting on the wood stove, only to replace it fast. The ingredients I’d used didn’t seem to have worked the way they were supposed to, even before I burned them.
“It’ll taste better than it smells.” I had my doubts, even without his sense of smell.
“You said that about yesterday’s dinner too.” He wasn’t trying to be mean. There was a panicked look on his face, as if I were going to force this inedible thing on him.
Well, I might’ve been considering it…
“Yesterday was a mistake. This one I followed the instructions very carefully.” I thought I had. Catarina had written down the recipe and steps for me in painstaking detail, right before she kicked me out of her office. She was the onewho gave everyone assignments around here, which had been my reason for seeing her. She’d declined me a job but offered me a recipe. Looked like neither situation was working out.
Somewhere or other I’d heard that kids needed stability, like family meals and stuff like that. Damned if I wouldn’t make this work. If I didn’t have Charlie, I would’ve been ripping open a protein bar for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Buddie walked into the cottage, his nose twitching as he looked at the pot on the stove. “I saw you were low on wood again. I brought you some of ours.”
“Thanks. It was really cold last night. I burned a lot.”
“Sureyou did.” He rolled his eyes.
We all knew it was a lie, but it was easier to keep on lying than deal with the truth. Buddie had his own problems. I wasn’t dumping more of mine on him. He wasn’t the one who could fix the issue anyway.
I glanced over at Charlie, who was staring at me as if even he was catching on to things being out of sorts. He had too many worries at his age. He didn’t need to be concerned about the daily issues or people not wanting us here, or at least me.
Buddie glanced at Charlie and then me. “Plus I know Rastin keeps borrowing wood from you ’cause he’s lazy.”
Charlie seemed to latch on to those words, and the frown on his face softened.
“Well, as long as he returns the favor, no harm.” I smiled at Buddie, who nodded.
Buddie lifted the cover of the pot and closed it up even faster. “The guys were afraid something died in here. I’ll let them know you were just cooking again. Want me to take Charlie with me to the roast?”
He didn’t really have to ask. He took Charlie to the roast every single night.
“Yep. That sounds like a good idea.”
“They’ll feed you too, you know.” Buddie was eyeing the pot as if he thought I’d try to eat it after he left. He didn’t know I had a stash of rolls and honey just in case. “It might be good for you to come every now and then too. Socialize a little in a more casual type of way.” He leaned a hip on the table, watching me.
“Can you come? Please?” Charlie asked, coming to stand beside him, both of them giving me thecome onface.
I wasn’t strong enough to say no with the two of them staring at me like that.
“You might like going.” Buddie shrugged, as if refusing to actually commit to that statement fully.
“Please, please, please,” Charlie said, launching into a fresh round of begging.
It was like they could smell my weakness. Considering that they were shifters, maybe they could.
They didn’t understand what the roasts were like for me. They all stared—not like they hated me, the way they used to. But at least back then, they hadn’t tried to talk to me, touch me, gawk at me. I’d also have Groza’s goons watching me, not blatantly enough for anyone else to notice, but the whole situation got my back up.
As if that wasn’t bad enough,they’dbe there. Groza and Duncan, getting all cozy, acting all coupled up. I’d done my best to avoid them, but it seemed as if I couldn’t leave the cottage without running into one of them.
