Page 48 of Shifter's Homecoming

“Hell yeah, I am,” Trent said.

Troy let out a whoop that made everyone cover their ears. He ran for his brother, catching him in a kind of flying-wrestling hug that toppled them to the floor. They wrestled there for a minute or two, grunting like two boys on the playground, until Trent caught Troy in a headlock.

Troy went limp. “You got me,” he said. “I don’t know how, but you got me.”

Trent let him go, then jumped to his feet and pulled Troy up. “I’ll kick your ass any day of the week, Snapper. You just say the word.”

Reed didn’t think she’d ever seen Troy grin so widely. His voice was full of warmth and good humor. “I’ll let you, Nipper, like I let you just now,” he said.

Trent grinned back, then punched him once in the chest, hard. Troy rubbed the spot absently, and just stared at his brother, drinking him in.

Trent turned to Reed, gratitude in his eyes. He headed her way. She looked to her left and to her right, trying to figure out who he was going for. He stopped right in front of her.

“You’re Reed,” he said, easy sincerity in his voice. “Thank you.”

“Ah, you’re welcome,” she told him, not entirely sure what he was thanking her for, or how he could possibly know what she had done.

Trent looked back at Troy and made a circling motion in the air with his forefinger. “Let’s go,” he told Troy. “I need you and your mate with me.” To Trevor he said, “Once I’ve got my female safe and on board, I’ll need to talk to you, Wade, and Eventine.”

Trevor nodded once.

Trent went out the door.

Reed stared after him, until Troy grabbed first her pendant, then her hand and pulled her that way.

Action hero time again. This time, she felt almost prepared.

34 - The Story

Rowan Atenboro pulled out her hair tie, then re-tied all her hair back, all the while staying focused on her work, even though the sun was up and she had not slept all night long. The quicker she found some sort of neutralizer, the quicker she could ensure no more animals had to die.

She held up the beaker of poison to the early morning light, noticing her night’s work had enhanced the poison’s potentiated sheen, not muted it. She bent to her book and made a note, then held the poison up again. It really did look like liquid fire when concentrated and held to the sunlight.

The company she worked for, Danark Environmental Cleanup, had isolated twelve ingredients in the poison before she’d come to work for them, but it was that final ingredient that gave the poison the look of shifting, oozing fire, and no one could say for sure what it was. On the company books, it was referred to simply asreagent 13.

The other twelve ingredients combined together were still deadly to any animal that drank it, but all of them could be counteracted if caught early enough. This liquid fire ingredient? When isolated and exposed to air, it only evaporated into a foul-smelling red mist, but when mixed with the other ingredients, it was deadly to any animal who evensmelledit.

A “supernatural phenomenon,” they called it. The poison welled up from the ground or sometimes dropped from the air into the water, creating a deadly mixture that killed the local wildlife any time they got too close.

Her job was not to figure out where the poison came from or why—her company and the local government had been at that for years and seemed to have given up. Her job was only to find a neutralizer. She’d been a star at this in school and in all the internships she’d worked. That’s why she’d gotten the job.

Everyone who worked on this project was sworn to secrecy. When Rowan had been hired, she’d had to sign a few dozen forms that said she would never talk about the poison or the project to anyone, under penalty of jail time. She had no guesses yet as to what was really going on, but she hoped she would figure it out eventually.

Rowan’s cell phone rang on the counter next to her and the contact name came up. Vanessa Atenboro. Her mother. She swiped it quickly.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Rowan, baby, where are you?”

“I’m at my new place, Mom, in the lab.”

“Lab?” her mom said, sounding confused already.

Rowan sighed. “I’m in Illinois, Mom, remember? In Serenity. It’s west of Chicago.”

“Illinois?”

“I got a job out here,” Rowan told her patiently. “Remember, the laboratory job with the environmental cleanup company? Remember how excited I was about it? Full benefits. Full salary. A place to live. The chance to help animals.”

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