Chapter 9
INTERESTING
all it takes is a little scratching and
all doors eventually open… to gus.
— gus
Most supes are too oblivious to notice that Gus is flying through the air. But when a witchling about five or six-years-old tries to grab his tail, we decide it’s a better idea if Gus perches on my shoulder until we reach my storefront.
It never even occurred to me to try to leave Gus behind. It’s like we’re the three furry musketeers: one for all and all for one. Wherever me and Ash go, Gus is coming with us.
Gus is chittering away happily. Without Riordan’s wolf glaring at me, I allow my raccoon to find some humor in today’s chaos. And Ash… he’s quiet for most of the walk.
Until, suddenly, he glances at me and says, “I hate imposing on you like this.”
What? Why? Take out the fact that he’s my mate, I’d do this for anyone that needed help so long as they were desperate enough to come to Roxy Kane for it.
“Don’t. You’re cursed, not crashing on my couch after a bad breakup.”
A faint smile touches his mouth. “Still.”
We just reached the store. I take a moment to unlock the door and shove it open before saying, “You’re not imposing. If anything, it’s Gus who’s cramping my style.”
In response to my tease, the opossum digs his claws into my shoulder before jumping down to the floor. He lands easily on all four feet, then starts scampering through the store, toward the back staircase.
“I just feel like—”
“That’s easy. Don’t.”
“Roxy…”
I bound ahead of him, ready to leave this conversation behind me.
Ash sighs softly and follow me upstairs.
He finds me in the kitchen where I’m digging through my cabinets, looking for something I can make to eat.
When I peek around the edge of the cabinet to find him watching me, I don’t even think. I just offer. “I’m gonna make some chow. You want me to cook for you, too?”
The second I ask, Ash stills. Then, “If I could, I’d happily eat anything you made for me.”
It’s not that I didn’t remember that he was a ghost and that he can’t eat. The brownie/mate conversation is still loud and clear in my brain. So’s the realization that Ash wants to find his mate… and he has no idea that it’s me.
But, you see, I do know. And, without even meaning to, I made an offer to a male shifter that could be taken two ways.
One? I’m being polite, he’s my guest, and I’m going to feed him the same way that I’ve got to get Gus’s lunch together.
Two? I’m coming onto him.
Seriously. In shifter culture, offering food to a member of the sex you’re attracted to means something, especially when you’re both unmated adults.
Predators bring food to prospective mates to prove they can provide.
Prey shifters usually dance around the subject entirely because nobody wants to accidentally start courtship rituals over a bowl of soup.
In my experience, most male shifters would be insulted by the implication of a female taking care of them—but not Ash.
He’s looking at me with hope in his eyes.
So, of course, my instincts are to try to avoid the emotion and the implications. Damn right, I start to backpedal.
“I didn’t mean anything by it. Shit, if you were a predator like Riordan, you’d probably be snapping my head off for assuming you need me to do anything for you.”
Ash just smiles crookedly at me instead.
“I’m not a predator,” he says in a low voice. “I’m an opossum. If a pretty raccoon wants to feed me, I’ll happily take whatever scraps she offers. And you’re wrong.”
“I am?” I squeak.
“I need you to do so much for me, I don’t know how I’ll ever thank you, Roxy. You’re letting me stay close. My ‘dead’ body is in your room. My clan… Gus is relying on you. Honey is relying on you. And you’re doing this all because—”
I gulp. “Because someone asked me to. And no one… no one… ever asks a raccoon for anything, Ashton.”
His expression shifts, his brows drawing together, his forehead furrowing. “Ash,” he corrects. “Please.”
“What?”
“I like it when you call me Ash.” He floats right next to me, tucking a stray lock of white hair out of my face. “I like that you think you’re my friend.”
How would he feel about me if he knew I was his mate?
Later that night, long after a dinner that feels strange when Ash watches intently as I eat, we attempt normalcy again—or as close to normal as you can get when your mate is haunting your apartment while his unconscious body sleeps in the next room over, that is.
Once the three of us finish the horror flick I put on for us after dinner, I get up and, yawning, let them know I was ready for bed. Ash disappears into the spare bedroom, Gus toddling faithfully behind him with all the seriousness of a tiny opossum bodyguard.
During our walk home tonight, I finally had to ask. I know Gus isn’t my biggest fan, but the way he took to Ash so easily had me curious. Was it because Ash is an opossum and Gus recognizes that even when the opossum shifter is stuck in his ghostly skin or did they have history?
They have history. Even when Honey was living with Gus in Glenville, she caught up with Ash often enough that he has his own little bond with Gus.
According to Gus—and translated by Ash—Gus knew Ash was out there the moment he slipped into the kitchen yesterday afternoon, but had to wait until I opened the door wide enough to let him escape so Gus could see Ash.
Not like he expected to find him like a ghost or anything, but he sensed him.
Smart little rat.
I actually feel a little better knowing that Gus is in there with Ash. If anyone tries something and I—miraculously—sleep through it, Gus will be sure to sink his fangs into any threat to Ash’s unconscious body.
Once they’re in their room, I head into mine, shut the door behind me, drop on my back in the middle of my bed, and stare at the ceiling for maybe two minutes before accepting that there’s no fucking way in hell that I’m going to sleep.
Again.
It doesn’t help that my raccoon immediately starts scratching away beneath my skin.
I get it, too. Part of me—and not just my mating instincts—wants me to shift to my fur, crawl into the other room, and curl protectively around Ash’s body.
If he was my bonded mate, I could. With only a whisper of a bond between us currently, that would just look psycho.
Unless I explain that—surprise, Ash—I’m your mate, but it just doesn’t seem right to do that under these circumstances.
At least, that’s what I think. And I’m trying to explain that to a stubborn raccoon who just doesn’t want to hear it when I suddenly pick up on notable scratching sounds against my bedroom door.
What the…
Scratch-scratch-scratch.
Scrape-scrape-scrape.
I sit up, bracing my back against my headboard. “If that’s you trying to murder me in my sleep, Gus, try again later. I haven’t knocked out yet.”
And, if tonight’s anything like last night, he hasn’t got a prayer of being a murderous marsupial anytime soon.
For a moment, the scratching pauses before it resumes more aggressively than before.
I drag myself out of bed, cross the room, and yank the door open to discover Gus sitting on the floor, whiskers twitching in annoyance. He’s perched next to Ash, who’s hovering awkwardly in the narrow hallway, chin tucked toward his chest, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans.
I swear, even as a ghost, this male looks like he belongs at a winery, sipping some expensive vintage. I usually look like I’d fight a wild raccoon for two paws full of cat food behind some old lady’s house.
He has a Master’s degree and works with books. I barely got my diploma from Onancock High, and I make my living selling items I picked out of other people’s trash cans.
And Fate decided we were meant for each other?
I cross my arms over my chest. “Can I help you two?”
Gus chitters a response.
Ash tilts his head slightly, obviously listening to the wild opossum. “He says you need company.”
What was that? I scoff. “Talking to the rat again, Ash?”
Ash gasps softly in what I recognize belatedly is mock offense. “Rat? I’ll have you know that Gus Morgan is a fine specimen of a wild Virginia opossum.”
He’s teasing me. I know he is. But if there’s any part of Ash that might’ve been offended on his behalf that I’m poking fun at Gus, I need to make sure Ash knows where I’m coming from.
“Okay, no, I’m not really insulting him. It’s like… this vibe we have. I call him a rat, he threatens to stink his little rat teeth into my arm, we move on with our day. I steal Honey’s pastries, he glares at me from his flour throne… you get it.”
Gus chitters again.
Ash’s lips twitch. “So does Gus. He says that he’s just playing with his cousin.”
Cousin? I thought Ash was Honey’s cousin. “Gus has a cousin, too?”
In answer to my question, Gus bounds forward until he’s next to my foot. He lashes out his tail, wrapping it around my ankle.
I blink. “Me?”
“That’s what Gus says.”
I don’t know how to react to that so, instead, I say, “Wow. You really can understand him, huh?”
“Sort of. It’s less words and more… intuition. Like I know what he’s trying to say and I translate it into English. What? It doesn’t work like that with you and real raccoons?”
I shake my head. “Nah. Maybe it’s another opossum thing, like playing dead.”
“Or maybe it’s just Gus,” suggests Ash. “I’ve never met another wild opossum other than him. Most of them sense there’s something different about us shifters and they keel over before we get too close.”
“Definitely not the same for us raccoons then. I can’t tell you how many times I crawled into a dumpster in my fur and discovered there were two or three more raccoons eating out of the trash who welcomed me to share in their bounty.”
“Really?”
“Yup. Back in Virginia, we even accepted the local raccoons into the clan. I once thought I was sharing a beer with my Uncle Martin before he came out from the woods and I realized it was their pet raccoon, Scooter. Never could get in ol’ Scoot’s head, but he enjoyed his beer.”