Free Under Her Skin by Margo Bond Collins Page B

kind of information-spilling was probably why I had seen Kirstie only occasionally during my time with Preston.
    Rita came back in with a pitcher and passed around lemonade, giving up on trying to keep her daughter quiet.
    Attempting to keep the children quiet was useless, of course. I had heard the rest of the story, anyway. And the longer I sat there with them, the more the Bryant children fell into their old habits of confiding in me.
    I felt myself relax.
    This will be okay.
    And then Johnny Bryant walked into the room in, as Kirstie would have said, his own human shape, wearing nothing but a low-slung pair of jeans.
    I was beginning to realize that although our shifter and human shapes were different, there were some similarities. Like a bobcat, Johnny Bryant wasn’t particularly large, but he was muscular and compact. Like Kade, he radiated more power than his size should have allowed—unlike Kade, though, that power didn’t call to me in any way.
    “What is she doing here?” Johnny Bryant asked, running a hand through his tawny-blond hair.
    “I came out to talk to the children,” I began, but the bobcat shifter cut me off.
    “I wasn’t talking to you,” he said.
    Kade’s calm reply helped me maintain my own cool. “She really is here to talk to the kids, Johnny.”
    “You vouching for her?” The man’s scowl suggested that having Kade speak up for me would only barely make up for my mere existence.
    “Yes.” The single syllable sent a wave of relief through me. I hadn’t realized until now exactly how anxious I had been that Kade might not fully believe me when I said I had no desire to hurt anyone.
    “We should report her to the Council.” Rita’s soft tones cut through Johnny’s masculine glare.
    “Absolutely not,” Kade said. “She hasn’t done anything to hurt anyone. I will introduce her to the Council soon. Anyway, if I understand correctly, she did quite a lot to help your children last year.”
    Preston, still sitting on the couch, had unthinkingly reached down to clasp his sister’s hand. “She did, you know,” he said. “We talked about how I was held hostage, not kidnapped, and that the bad man was gone, and none of it was my fault. And she has a lot of toys in her office.” His spirited defense of me made me smile, and he essayed a shaky grin back at me.
    His mother, watching the exchange, said hesitantly, “She did help Preston.” Her eyes narrowed and she spoke more forcefully. “But I still don’t know how we missed what she is. And I don’t know how you can stand to be around her.” She pointed at Kade. “Aren’t you supposed to protect us from things like her?”
    I froze at the way she spat out the word ‘thing.’ As if I weren’t a real person at all, despite all the ways I had helped her family.
    Despite the fact that we were both shapeshifters—that both of us might be considered ‘things’ by the humans surrounding us.
    But Kade’s measured response ignored all those things. “I’m supposed to protect the entire community from dangers. I don’t think Lindi is a danger to any of us.”
    I did my best to look unthreatening, clasping my hands in my lap and clamping down internally on every serpentine instinct I had, despite the almost overwhelming urge to open up and take the temperature of the room.
    Hot, I was guessing.
    I could almost imagine the scents of anger and fear.
    But imagining was all I would allow myself do.
    I didn’t know what this Council Rita had mentioned might do if they discovered a lamia in their midst, but I was fairly certain it wouldn’t be anything good.
    There had to be a way to keep the Bryants from sharing what they knew about me.
    Because if they did, I was likely to be in big trouble.
    I didn’t relax until Johnny Bryant slumped back into a blue recliner, his posture apparently calm—but I could read the tension underneath the lazy pose.
    Like a cat watching potential prey.
    “Fine,” he said, a wave of his hand