Celia was not sleeping well in Florida. They’d been there two days and she was utterly wiped out. She’d have liked to say it was because of the heat, but she knew damn well that that wasn’t it at all.

It was Jack Warren and his big mouth that was making her toss and turn. He’d suggested, not subtly at all, that maybe she should comfort Jean Luc… physically. It wasn’t the implication that kept her up all night. No, it was the way that Jack had suggested it. As if it was obvious that Jean Luc would welcome the comfort. Would welcome her. Would want her. Something in the casual way that Jack suggested it implied that she and Jean Luc were in the same league. That a drop-dead gorgeous, famous athlete with abs that could cut glass would want a curvy, nerdy, punk librarian like her.

The fact was, she had no idea whether she wanted that with Jean Luc or not. She’d spent so much time berating herself for having the crush in the first place, she had absolutely no idea what it was she was wanting out of the crush.

Not sex, obviously. Because that would just humiliate her. She’d never enjoyed casual sex. And she’d barely enjoyed the committed sex she’d had. She’d long ago accepted the fact that she just wasn’t a sexual person. She wasn’t good at giving it or receiving it. So yeah. Sex with someone who was likely a sex god was not a good idea. They’d get two seconds into fooling around before he’d be like, uh, what are you doing? Frankly, she’d rather die.

No. Not sex. She couldn’t comfort him that way. But… maybe a little flirting would lift his spirits? Plus, maybe it would help her get rid of this dumbass crush that was dogging her. If she gave it a little room to breathe, let it out of the house to run around, maybe it would just keep on running and she’d be rid of it.

It sort of made sense. Two birds with one stone.

On the morning of the third day, she woke up sweaty despite the chilly air conditioning and tangled in her sheets. It had been another night of weird dreams and tossing and turning. She was so exhausted that she finally admitted to herself that something had to be done. Jack’s words were haunting her.

She couldn’t keep up this awkward dance of worrying about Jean Luc and also avoiding Jean Luc and also spying on him while he swam laps. It was gonna put her into an early grave. It was time to start seriously considering this flirting plan. She wasn’t terrible at flirting. She was cute enough and often funny.

She was also starting to realize that she was really bothered by Jean Luc’s pain. He was hiding it from the group fairly well, but Celia felt as if she could almost taste it whenever he entered a room. It was like his spirit was heavy with it, saturated with pain and grief. Celia thought that maybe Jack was right. Maybe a little levity with a cute girl would help lift him up a bit. Even if that girl wasn’t the Victoria’s Secret models he was used to canoodling with.

She didn’t particularly want to start this flirting experiment with an audience, so, as she flung the covers off of herself, she figured she’d have to find a way to get him alone today.

“Celia!” Caroline knocked at Celia’s door. “Martine wants to have a group meeting in a few minutes, if you’re awake.”

“I’m just going to jump in the shower and then I’ll be out.”

Celia hurried to get ready, and not wanting to keep the group waiting, she just grabbed a dress from her bag and slicked it on over her shower-damp skin. She usually put together a little bit more of an outfit, but she’d always liked this dress. It was vintage style, emerald green with a low V dip at the chest. It showed a bit more cleavage than she was used to, but it was a flattering cut on her. She tucked her feet into her worn, black combat boots, 1. because snakes, snakes, and snakes. And 2. because with her tattoos and piercings and punkish hair style, it completed the look. Her hair was damp and flopping to the side so she pinned it back and into a quick, sloppy French braid and called it all good.

She scrambled out to the living room, not wanting to hold everyone up any longer.

“Morning!” Caroline called from where she sat on the floor next to the coffee table. “There’s muffins that I made if you’re hungry and… wow, Celia! You’re such a babe.”

Celia startled and blinked down at Caroline who was staring up at her with wide eyes.

“Damn,” Tre said from where he sat on the couch, cocking his head to one side. “Seriously.”

The rest of the group nodded and agreed, except for Jean Luc who sat very still on an armchair halfway behind her.

“It’s just a dress,” Celia said, fighting the urge to adjust it.

She heard Jean Luc mutter something behind her, but she didn’t catch it and was too flustered to ask him to repeat it. Instead, she grabbed a muffin and went to sit next to Thea on the couch. The couch dipped in with her weight and the two women ended up halfway on top of each other. Thea grinned at her as they chuckled and attempted to slide apart again. No dice, the couch dipped even further and just had them sliding into each other again. This time, Thea just shrugged her shoulders and threw an arm around Celia to make them both a little more comfortable. Celia realized that she was comfortable snuggled up against Thea. The way she might have been snuggled up against one of her sisters. In fact, considering her relationship with her sisters, maybe she was even more comfortable with Thea.

“Alright,” Martine said, pushing off from where she’d been leaning against the window sill. She paced slowly into the middle of the living room. “I’ve been thinking about the maps. And why they’ve led us here. Obviously, we all have to stick together, or else we’re going to automatically forfeit one of our lives to the demon. We’re much stronger as a group than we are as individuals.”

“Separate us and we’re vulnerable,” Tre said.

“Exactly.” She pointed at him. “But beyond pointing us to a star in the middle of the Everglades, the map hasn’t given us a ton of guidance on what else to do.” She paced some more. “God knows that none of us are too keen on just waiting around for Arturo to come reap one of our souls for the demon’s lunch.”

Celia and Thea raised their eyebrows at one another. Martine had such a way with words.

“So,” Martine continued, “I’ve been thinking. Arturo turned you three into bear shifters because the shifting transformation, in the beginning, makes you very vulnerable. It adds complexity to your soul, like we talked about, so you’d be… tastier to the demon. But it also makes it easier to take your soul from you while you’re acclimating to this whole new way of life. Obviously, it’s not as easy as Arturo thought it would be, or else Jack would have been toast last week.”

She nodded her head at him and he nodded back. A roll of pride waved out from both of them. They all knew that he’d kicked ass.

“Here’s the thing. I’ve heard of Arturo turning men into bear shifters before, for this exact same reason. But I’ve never heard of him doing three shifters at once. I think he figured more bang for his buck, more chances to succeed. I don’t think he figured on the three of you having the connection that you have to one another. That you make one another stronger, not weaker.” She paced a little more, her coppery hair going golden in the shaft of sunlight she paced through once and twice and a third time. Her knives at her ankles and wrists gleamed and her black stretchy clothes clung to every curve. She was really a force to be reckoned with.

“We’re going to have to go to the star no matter what. We have to go there and attempt to end this with the demon. That’s the location where our battle will take place. But I think we should wait until the full moon in two weeks. And in the meantime, I’ll work with you three to really hone your skills as shifters. I think we could really stand a chance against Arturo if all three of you are working together. We could end this.”

The group shared a mixture of looks. Trepidatious, excited, focused.

“End this… you mean kill Arturo?” Celia asked. “Wouldn’t that still leave the actual demon behind?”

Martine took a deep breath. “Here’s the part I might have to sell you all on. I don’t think we should kill Arturo.”

The three men let out collective breaths. They could all feel the relief rolling through them as a group. None of them had wanted to face killing a man. They would have done it to protect the group, but they hadn’t wanted to.

“Then what are we going to do to him?” Caroline asked, still kneeling on the floor, her caramel eyes wide, her hands nervously fiddling with the ends of her chestnut hair.

Martine’s eyes went around the group, touching on each person’s for just a second. She straightened up tall. “I want to capture him.”

***

“Pass. Hard pass.” That was Celia, staring at Martine like she was a lunatic.

“And how do you propose we do that? Wait in a tree and drop a net on top of him when he happens to walk past?” Tre asked, laughing through the words because there was nothing else to do.

“Um,” Caroline bit her lip and looked at the mutinous faces all around her. “That sounds really hard, Martine. I’m not a huge fan of, you know, murder, but I have to say, killing him sounds easier than catching him.”
Thea caught Martine’s eye, her bright blue eyes holding those green ones. “Is there a reason that you don’t want to kill him?”

Martine suddenly felt old and tired. She was so many generations older than these young mortals. And of course, she was put on this earth to dispatch the evil that demons slimed all over the place. But that didn’t mean she wanted to kill. And that didn’t mean that she wouldn’t avoid it where she could. But that wasn’t the only reason she wanted Arturo alive.

“The simple fact is that if we kill him, the demon will replace him with someone more dangerous. But if he’s alive and captured, he’ll still be tied to his master, and he won’t be replaceable.”

“So,” Jack said slowly, crossing one leg over the other at the ankle, “this is a strategy. If we capture Arturo, we’re putting the demon at a loss.”

“Well,” Martine legitimately considered lying for a moment before her nature got the best of her. “No. If we kidnap Arturo, it’s likely to enrage the demon. He’ll be more aggressive and more vicious. So far, we’ve only encountered Arturo’s brand of warfare. The demon’s will be quite different.”

“You… want to make the demon angry?” Celia squinted her eyes at Martine.

“I want to know what we’re dealing with here!” Martine paced away and back. “We’re sitting ducks waiting for Arturo to slap at us, weaken us, maybe even take one of us. If we have Arturo at our whims, we have information from him and we have a guarantee that the demon will be coming at us soon and hard.”

“Makes sense to me,” Jean Luc said, shrugging.

The rest of the group turned to him, looking at him like he’d just said he liked to put sugar on spaghetti.

“Which part?” Tre asked. “The part where we’re supposed to capture and contain someone who’s tried to kill at least two of us? Or the part that doing so will cause a demon to really try to kill us.”

“The part where we’re doing something besides waiting here on the defensive.” He shrugged. “I mean, this bear shifter thing has gotta be good for something, right?” He looked at Martine who held his gaze but didn’t answer one way or another. “We get good at shifting, we’re three grizzly bears who can read each other’s thoughts. Don’t you think we could take down Arturo?”

The meeting hadn’t lasted much longer after that. It had devolved into question after question, lots of tension, disagreements. Until finally, Caroline had stuck her fingers into her mouth and whistled like she was calling for peanuts at a baseball game. “Time out,” she’d said, stomping her foot. “We can talk about this again tomorrow. But right now, we’re splitting up and taking a break.”

They’d all muttered agreements and had started to split up when Caroline had stomped again. “And we’re having family dinner tonight!”

That huffy little proclamation was met with some smiles and more agreements and then the group really did disband. Celia did her best to appear causal, but she couldn’t help but let her eyes follow Jean Luc out to the backyard. For a second, she’d thought he was going to swim laps, but he kept on going beyond the pool and straight to the small canal that snaked along through the back property.

She perseverated for a moment, wringing her hands in the kitchen before she took a deep breath and forced down the chorus of voices in her head. They sounded suspiciously like her siblings. So what if she went out there and flirted a little bit? So what if she put herself out there and made them both feel better? So what? It didn’t mean that she thought she was Miss Thang. It didn’t mean that she’d had her brains scrambled and she suddenly thought she could nab a man like Jean Luc outside of the vacuum of this crazy experience. All it meant was that she thought she was good enough to trade flirtation with him. Which, she reminded herself, she did think. She thought that wholeheartedly. Plus, he just looked so sad out there.

Celia quietly crossed the porch, taking care not to let the screen door slam. And then she stepped across the pool deck, mindful of snakes as ever.

She crossed to the canal, where his uncle’s old airboat floated innocuously, looking like some sort of ancient Greek sea creature with its huge fan. He crouched at the edge of the canal, one hand on the fan of the boat, leaning in, inspecting something.

“Going for a ride?” she asked him.

“Oh.” He turned quickly. “I didn’t hear you come up.”

“Sorry.”

“Nah, no, that’s okay.”

She noticed that he was almost pointedly not looking at her. She scrolled back through the morning and realized that she didn’t actually think he’d looked at her the entire morning. Interesting. Either he hated the green dress or he really liked the green dress. She peeked down at herself and her eyes snagged on her own two inches of deep cleavage showing.

She guessed that he really liked the dress.

Bolstered by this idea, she went to stand on the cement wall at the edge of the canal. “So, ride?”

“Ah.” He cleared his throat and sat back from his crouch so that his legs dangled down over the wall, toward the boat, the water about four feet down from the tips of his running shoes. “No. I don’t even know if it would run at this point. But I figured I should take a little inventory and see what needs fixing. I figure this is probably what we’ll use to find that star out in the swamps.”

She nodded and tucked her dress under herself as she sat next to him. Yesterday’s Celia might have put a good foot and a half between them. Today’s Celia put a hair’s breadth between their shoulders, and she felt him stiffen beside her. Hopefully that was a good thing. “Did you spend a lot of time in the swamps as a kid?”

“Not unsupervised or anything. They’re really dangerous. All sorts of animals and ways to get lost. But Uncle Claude would take us out. Before I got all wrapped up in football I used to do tours with him. I can show you some pictures.”

“Think you’ll go back and see your high school while you’re here? The football field where it all began?”

He laughed, half humorlessly. “That would be a no. I hated high school football and want zero reminders of it. Besides. The field where it all began is right over there.” He pointed to the empty field at the other side of the house. That’s where Uncle Claude taught me and Hugo how to play football.”

Celia knew that she was supposed to be flirting right now, but she was momentarily stunned by what he’d just said. “Wait. Hold on. You didn’t like high school football? I would have thought they would have been your glory days.” She stopped and reconsidered, grimacing when she realized how dumb that was. “Well, actually, I’m sure you consider winning the Superbowl to be your actual glory days.”

He laughed. “Yeah. I think the Superbowl counts as glory.” He leaned forward, planting his palms on the edge of the wall and succeeding in jumpstarting Celia’s heart. The warm heat of his hand was an inch from her knee. “But no, to answer your question, I hated the whole high school athlete thing. I was big, but not very good. I was still growing and clumsy. I was third string all the way through my senior year. My coaches didn’t know what to do with me, had me in all sorts of defensive positions even though I could throw with some accuracy. Didn’t matter. They just needed a big man in the line.”

“But still,” Celia cut in, “being on the football team had to have had some perks. The jocks in my high school strutted around like they were gods and they never so much as won a regional championship.”

Jean Luc tipped his head to one side. “I never really knew how to do that. Take advantage of those particular perks. Like I said, I was big and clumsy. My letterman jacket barely fit. I was busy enough trying not to look like a total dork. I didn’t have time to figure out how to be a god.”

“A dork,” Celia repeated, her mouth falling open.

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, and then remembering that she’d come out here to flirt, she laid her hand on his forearm. “But I’m really having trouble picturing Jean Luc LaTour as a dork.”

His forearm flexed a little under her hand and she could have sworn he was blushing. “No, seriously, I can show you pictures of that, too. I was a major dork. And I hate it when people say my name like that.”

“Like what?”

“Jean Luc LaTour.”

“What, are you having a stroke? That’s your name!” She gave him a smile and little look under her lashes. Was it just her or had he just swallowed really hard?

“I know that’s my name. But sometimes people don’t say it like it’s a name. They say it like it’s a brand. Or a concept.” He squinted his eyes and spread his hands through the air. “What’s next for Jean Luc LaTour…?”

She eyed him, her eyebrows going up her forehead. “You make it sound like a cheap cologne or something.”

“Trust me, there were plenty of offers for that.”

“You’re kidding!”

“Nope. I had two different cologne companies try to convince me to be their poster boy for some perfume bullshit whatever. I said no. I only endorse products I actually use.”

“You mean you actually use that athlete’s foot powder?”

He winced. “Gah. I was hoping you hadn’t seen that ad. And yes… there might have been a battle with athlete’s foot in the beginning of my career. I learned the hard way that locker rooms are funky as hell.”

She laughed. A good laugh. A real one. It was working! Her plan was totally working! See, his lips were twitching at the corners. He’d come out here to sadly look over his uncle’s broken-down boat and mourn the past and here she had him close to chuckling, swinging his legs like a kid over the edge of the canal. Jack had really been onto something with this. She was totally doing both of them a service by just womaning up and flirting. It was gonna solve both of their prob—

“Gator,” Jean Luc said, almost lazily, nodding twenty feet down the canal with a point of his chin.

“What?” Celia whispered, completely freezing. It was like her once-warm body had been dunked into the Arctic Ocean. Not even penguins got this cold. Only her eyes followed his finger as he pointed at what looked to her like an innocuous log floating on its own.

“Just a little one. Maybe four feet—oof!”

Jean Luc’s breath came out in a heavy whoosh as, in one smooth motion, Celia launched herself into his lap, her fingers clawing at his back, her legs locked around his hips, her head swiveling to keep an eye on the alligator floating in the canal.

“Up! Up!” she hissed at him, gripping his shirt and whipping it up and down, like he was a horse whose reins she held. “Jesus fuck for the love of Christ, UP!!!”

“Uhhhhh.”

She buried her head in his shoulder and clung even tighter. Was this chick serious? The gator was, like, a preteen, and not interested in them at all. Plus it was twenty feet away in a canal that was ten feet deep. Jean Luc felt a tremor between them, where she was pressed so tightly to him, and at first he didn’t realize what it was. Then it happened again. And this time it had a sound. It was coming from him. An ancient and familiar feeling. One he thought he might never feel again.

He observed almost in detached amazement as laughter rumbled up and out of him. He’d so rarely laughed since his brother had died. Almost never. Maybe once or twice with Jack and Tre. But this laughter was something else entirely. This was because something was funny. Celia, of course, clinging to him like a koala and commanding him to do her bidding like he was her steed. But also, it came from a place of deep joy. Just having her there, clinging so tight to him, pressing all that soft warmth all over him. It caused a real, bursting happiness in the core of him. He realized, with a bit of a jolt, that whatever factory inside of him that was in charge of manufacturing happiness hadn’t burned to the ground the day his brother died. In fact, it had just closed up shop for a while. Because here he was, and this gorgeous, insane, little punk in his arms was giving him a few moments of real happiness.

“Up!” she commanded again.

This time, even through the laughter, he followed her directions and hauled both of them up. He stood, with her koala’ed around him, and marveled at how she was both so little and so flipping soft. She was like nothing in his arms, yet she was so dang juicy at the same time. How’d she do that? It was like some sort of magic trick or something.

“Jean Luc!” Celia lifted her head from his shoulder and her dark brown eyes blazed into his caramel brown ones. She lifted her hands from his back and gripped his cheeks, intensity in every line of her face. “Go! Run! It’s gonna get us!”

And that really did it for him. He straight up burst out laughing, two hands planted firmly at her luscious ass, holding her up, her body straitjacketed around him. Something about the very real panic in her eyes only made this funnier.

“Stop laughing!”

That made him laugh harder.

“We’re in danger, you…”

He waited while she searched for a bad word appropriate for this situation.

“Lunatic!” was what she settled on and that only made it funnier to him.

“I,” he gasped out, “am not the lunatic in this scenario.”

“You’re choosing to face down a wild animal, I think that makes you a lunatic!”

Another wave of laughter overtook him. “I’m not facing it down. It’s over there minding its own business while you’re doing… whatever the hell this is.”

Her face iced into utter intensity. “Get. Me. Out. Of. Here.”

Still laughing, he complied, walking both of them across the backyard and the pool deck. It was only when the screen door of the porch slammed behind them that he let himself really feel what was going on here. The lush warmth of her, the press and tightness. He was pretty sure she’d hooked her feet at his back, that she was holding each of her elbows around his neck. Her cheek was pressed to his. Her ass was overflowing his hands. You couldn’t get much closer than this. Well. You could. But, uh, he probably shouldn’t be thinking about that right now.

“You’re safe,” he told her and it took a second, but she unstiffened and unclamped, allowing herself to slither down his body until she came to a stand.

Her hands still gripping his shirt, just in a different place than before, she let herself lean back, her head tipping up. Finally, her eyes snagged on his and she bit her lip, fighting the curl of a smile that he could just tell was fighting to get out.

“Upon reflection,” she said carefully, “that may have been a bit of an overreaction.”

He broke, laughing hard, his hands on her shoulders and hers bunched in his shirt. They sagged against one another, wiping tears and letting rolls of laughter from the other set them off all over again. It wasn’t until she finally tore away and had to sit down to catch her breath that he calmed down at all.

“Wow,” she murmured, wiping a finger under her eye. “I really needed that.”

“Which part?” he asked. “The laughter or the battle royale with an alligator?”

She laughed again, and if he could have swallowed it whole he would have. “The whole shebang.”

“Yeah.” He knew exactly what she meant. “I needed that, too.”