The song playing on the jukebox in the corner ended abruptly, and a shout echoed from the other side of the room. “Hey! I paid for—”
The opening beats of “Another One Bites The Dust” began to play, and the shouter’s mouth snapped shut. “Sorry,” he said, his gaze finding Cam. “That sucks man. Been there.”
They’d all been there.
“Raise your fuckin’ glasses!” Davey shouted as I poured a shot on the house for Cam.
A dozen hands went up around the bar, each holding a pint mug or a lowball glass. “Another one bites the dust!” Davey called out, and they all echoed the familiar toast. Then they drank.
And ordered another round.
Yes, this is a sanctuary. It’s also a business.
Cam threw back his shot and gestured for another. “She said I was ‘emotionally unavailable.’”
And the truth was that Tracy, whom I’d never met, was probably right about that.
Natural-born female werecats were few and far-between, and female strays—infected, rather than born as shifters—were so rare that most male strays would live their entire lives without ever seeing one. I was the only one most of my regulars had ever met. Which meant strays had virtually no chance of ever dating or marrying a member of their own species. Of conceiving natural-born shifter babies.
And yet, it was very, very difficult—nearly impossible—for a male shifter to maintain a long-term relationship with a human woman, because one of our most important rules is that we may not, under any circumstances, reveal our existence to the rest of the world.
Davey was the only human I’d ever met who knew about us, and part of the reason I kept her so close was that Titus had admitted when he’d named me Marshal that he could not be sure what would happen if his fellow Territorial Council members found out how much she knows.
So she was our little secret, out here in Hardeman County, in a middle-of-nowhere bar off a cracked two-lane highway. And for her part, Davey did seem to enjoy being the Fat Cat’s “token human.” No matter what she claimed.
She listened to Cam narrate the end of his two-month courtship of a human woman named Tracy—his third romantic failure this year—and I went back to placing orders and pouring drinks as the Friday night crowd grew.
Until an unfamiliar scent drew my gaze to an equally unfamiliar form, as he walked through the door.
I couldn’t remember the name of every stray in the northern zone, but my cat brain never forgot a scent. If I couldn’t place this man’s, it was because we’d never met.
“Tucker.” I tugged him to the far side of the bar and whispered so softly that I was barely speaking, counting on my very low volume and the blasting of the jukebox to cover my voice. “Do we know the guy who just walked through the door? Gray-on-gray canvas jacket over sweater. Tan hiking boots.”
Tucker studied the newcomer’s face and took a subtle sniff in his direction. “I don’t.” He turned to Vance, as my right-hand man pushed his way through the swinging door from the kitchen. “Got an ID on the gray jacket?” he whispered. “Guy with a short beard and blue eyes?”
The new guy did have blue eyes, and they were gorgeous.
Vance shook his head. “Want me to make an introduction?”
“With any luck, he’ll come to us,” I said. “Tucker, you start clearing tables near the door. Vance, you loiter near the restrooms.” Because the rear exit was back there. “I’ll see if Doug recognizes his scent.”
I didn’t really expect the new guy to run; he probably wouldn’t have come in if he had anything to fear from a bar full of shifters. But it was always good to have my bases covered. And a shy stray would be less intimidated by Davey and me than by Tucker and Vance, so I needed them to vacate the service area.
I watched subtly as the stranger hovered in the doorway, taking the place in. He’d likely never seen this many shifters in one place, and he probably wasn’t close enough yet to realize I was a one of them. It never occurred to most guys to check my scent; they just assumed any woman they met was human.
After a couple of minutes, he made his way toward the bar, and I leaned over to whisper to Doug. “There’s a guy in a gray jacket heading our way. When he sits, I need you to take a whiff and give me a signal if he’s one of the strangers you smelled in the common run.”
Doug nodded, his eyes wide at my request. He was always eager to help. Even when no help was required.
“Welcome to the Fat Cat. What can I get you?” I said, as the stranger sat on a stool two down from Doug.
Doug inhaled through his nose, then he nodded at me, a gesture that was more enthusiastic than subtle. This was one of the cats he’d scented. The other one, though, was still in the wind.
“Whatever’s on draft.” The stranger took in my scent, evidently unaware that I’d just been investigating his, and his eyes widened.
That’s always a fun moment.
He sniffed in Davey’s direction, and his mouth snapped shut, cutting off whatever he’d been about to say upon discovering that there was, in fact, a human in the room.
“Don’t worry,” I leaned across the bar to mock whisper. “She knows.”
“She does?”
“I am fully in the know about the feline nature of the majority of our clientele,” Davey assured him with a grin as she slid a bowl of peanuts toward us. “The cat is out of the bag, you might say. But let’s not spread the word about that, okay?”
He gave her a solemn nod, promising to keep her secret, then he twisted to look around the room again. “I thought this place was a rumor.” He turned back to the bar, his dark brows arched, evidently impressed. “In fact, I bet on it. Which means I’m out fifty bucks.”
I smiled as I set a beer in front of him.
The stranger sipped from his glass, still looking around. “You know where I can find Eamon? I need a word.”
The entire bar went quiet. Seriously, you could have heard the ends split on a single strand of my hair.
“Eamon MacLean is no longer a member of the Mississippi Valley Pride,” I said in as neutral a tone as I could muster. “If you have business with the Marshal, you’ll want Charley Studebaker.”
He frowned, clearly put out by the news. “Well, can you point me in his direction?”
Brows arched, I extended my hand for him to shake. “Charlene Studebaker. Marshal of the northern zone.”
“You’re…?”
Davey laughed. “She is.”
“But you’re—” His mouth snapped shut.
“A bartender? Yeah. I can also whistle all of Bohemian Rhapsody. I am a woman of many talents.”
He had the decency not to admit that the word tripping him up was woman. “What happened to Eamon?”
Before I could decide how to answer a question most people would never have the nerve to ask, the bell over the door jingled again, and four women in their mid-twenties came in, giggling. I could tell from the glazed eyes and easy laughter that three of them were already half-drunk.
The tone in the bar changed immediately. The awkward silence surrounding the Eamon question morphed into the buzz of casual conversation and the clink of ice in glasses as the ladies made their way to the bar, but beneath that I could feel a tension that was the natural result of both a secret that must be kept and genuine excitement over the opportunity for a bunch of mostly straight men to drink with the female of the species.