Tiger Magic

The sensations in his body and mind confused him and made him angry. Without a word, he turned from them and started down the green.

He headed for Spike’s house. Spike had gone with Carly, which left Jordan alone with his mother and grandmother again. Dylan should have stayed with them. Tiger would make sure they were all right, as well as see if looking after Jordan would soothe his jangled nerves. He had to think, and he had to make some decisions.

The simple cell phone Liam urged him to carry at all times buzzed on his belt. Tiger snatched it up, hoping it was Carly, not Liam demanding he return home.

The number was not one he recognized. He clicked on the phone as Connor had taught him and growled, “Yes?”

“It’s Walker. Get somewhere you can talk to me alone. I’ve got a lot to tell you.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Carly answered the phone at the small desk tucked away in a corner of Armand’s gallery, all but hidden so customers wouldn’t see that they worried about anything as gauche as business.

Connor was napping in the back office after having complained some more about last night’s lack of sleep. Spike and his tatts had earned the interest of an artist who’d come to see Armand, and the artist was looking Spike over, having him stand in sunlight and so forth.

“Gallery d’Armand,” Carly said in her best quiet but friendly tones. “How may I help you this afternoon?”

“I need you to get away from Connor and Spike,” Tiger’s voice was almost a whisper. “And meet me.” He gave directions to a spot in the warehouse area south of Ben White, near the freeway.

Get away from Connor and Spike? Carly didn’t dare glance behind her at Spike, who might read in her body language that she was suddenly nervous. “I’m not sure I can,” she said.

“Talk to me like I am a shopper. Don’t change your voice.”

A shopper. He meant a gallery patron. Carly drew a breath. “Well, I’m certain we could accommodate you, sir,” she said briskly, “though it might be a little bit of a challenge.”

“Don’t take Dylan’s truck. The Bureau men know what it looks like.” A hesitation. “So do the Shifters.”

He wanted to evade Shifters too? Shifters like Liam? What the hell had happened?

Carly couldn’t ask with Spike behind her, even though he was all the way across the gallery. She’d learned by now that Shifters had great hearing.

Tiger’s voice was quiet, but she read the agitation in him. He was asking her to make a choice.

Liam had been adamant that Tiger not leave Shiftertown, and Carly had seen the rage between Liam, Tiger, and Dylan. Tiger wasn’t the most normal of guys, even for a Shifter—she’d seen that in the way others treated him and in the way the others lived their lives. Liam, Sean, Spike, Ronan—they had children, families, friends, a defined place in the Shifter world. In the same way, Carly had a loving mother and three great sisters, friends, and a job with Armand and Yvette, a childless couple who treated her like a daughter.

Tiger had no one. In the warmth of the Shifter community, the Shifters either feared him or watched him, ready to stop him when he went over the top. Tiger was alone in a crowd.

What Carly had observed in the three days she’d known him was that every time Tiger went berserk, it was to defend himself or someone else. Couldn’t they see how gentle he was with the kids, how much the kids liked him? No child trusted a person they’d seen hurt others.

Carly’s father had been a bad person. Difficult for a twelve-year-old girl to understand when her father leaves without a word. An adolescent takes it personally, and Carly did. She’d spent a long time wondering what had been wrong with her before realizing that she hadn’t done anything wrong at all.

Thinking back over what life had been like with her father—his alcoholic tempers and compulsive gambling, his daylong harangues at her mother—Carly had come to the adult conclusion that he’d had a lot of problems he hadn’t bothered to acknowledge, problems that had made Carly’s home life hell for twelve years.

Tiger was absolutely nothing like him.

All this went through Carly’s head in the few seconds Tiger waited for her answer.

Carly could turn around and call out for Spike, telling him that Tiger was running from Shiftertown for whatever reason. Or she could believe that Tiger had a very good reason for wanting her to meet him and to keep Spike and Connor from finding out and following.

She chose.

“I’ll take care of it,” Carly said, speaking in her helpful-assistant tones. “Don’t you worry.” She heard Tiger’s breath of relief, and she decided to risk a question. “And how did you find the number for our gallery? Were you referred?”

Tiger sounded puzzled as he answered. “Phone book.” And he hung up.

Carly bit her lip as she reached into the desk drawer where she kept her purse and pretended to look for something. Connor was in the office, where a back door led to the small parking area on the alley. She knew she’d never get past him without waking him up. If she went out the front, past Spike, even with the excuse of going out for gelato or whatever, Spike would follow her.

She felt Spike’s gaze on her. Carly pulled a lipstick from her purse, frowned at it, and said, “Yvette, I’m just going to the ladies’.”

Yvette, who’d been in low-voiced conversation on the other side of the gallery with Armand, nodded. Carly’s palms sweated as she dipped her hand into Yvette’s purse resting next to hers and took out Yvette’s car keys. Carly slid them noiselessly into her own purse, then took up the purse and put it over her shoulder.