A Low Down Dirty Shane Read Online Free Page A

like a battered Nazi.
    Now he looked like an outcast from the Sex Pistols, but it was an improvement.
    His nose had been broken at some point in his life, and it hadn’t healed right, giving the bridge a slight zigzag appearance.
    When she’d touched his hair, he’d opened his eyes and stared at her while she looked him over. Eyes the color of bluebells or midafternoon sky weren’t what she expected from his otherwise dusky features.
    When he grinned at her, she realized she’d been cataloguing him too long. She had crossed the line from passing interest into creepy.
    Shane pretended not to notice and answered her question like nothing strange had happened. “Vampires are the big ones. For me, anyway. I mean the vamp council cuts my checks, and in return I kill their lost boys and girls.”
    “How peculiar.”
    “Well, the way they put it to me, better to deal with your own problems before they become somebody else’s, right?”
    “I wouldn’t have anticipated that kind of logic from vampires.”
    “Hell, lady, vampires have an overabundance of logic. Those bastards spend all damn night debating this and that, and it’s a goddamn wonder they get a single thing done.”
    “What else?”
    “Werewolves.”
    Siobhan nodded. “Yes, thankfully not something I have to deal with in my line of work. My people made a pact hundreds of years ago that we wouldn’t interfere with the wolves as long as they didn’t become a problem for us. So far they haven’t.”
    Shane laughed hoarsely, and she wasn’t sure if it was at her expense. “Monsters are everyone’s problem,” he clarified. “Some are just too close to human most days for it to matter.”
    “Any others?” She wasn’t in a mood to ruminate on the philosophy of what kept a good person with bad luck from becoming an all-out bad person.
    “Fae?”
    Siobhan groaned. “ Fae ?”
    “Yeah…you know, fairies and shit.”
    “Oh, Shane.”
    “Wow, you just channeled my foster mom to a scary extreme.”
    “Saying fae like they’re one entity is like saying you’ve heard of insects .”
    “A pest is a pest.”
    “The fae are much more than that. You understand nothing .”
    “Jesus, lady, take a chill pill.” Shane propped himself up on his elbows and furrowed his brow at her. “How about you differentiate some frigging order or genus or some shit like that? Instead of treating me like an idiot, why don’t you tell me what you want me to know?”
    Just like that she boomeranged from being prepared to kick him to the curb to thinking he might have hope yet.
    “It’s complicated.”
    “Should I be taking notes?”
    Siobhan shifted on the bed, her hand coming to rest on Shane’s knee where she squeezed in a silent message somewhere between shut the hell up and seriously shut up before I stick my giant glowing knife in you. “Have you ever regretted saving someone’s life?”
    “No, but I think I’ve made a few people regret saving mine.”
    She smiled and tapped a finger to her nose before releasing his leg. “I’m sorry. I’m just used to being with people who have been raised to know these things. The ignorance of humans is sometimes…staggering to me.”
    If Shane was offended by her calling him ignorant, it didn’t show. “Are you not human?”
    “I’m…more than human.” She wanted to say better , because pride of her line made her believe she really was better, but she stuck with more seeing as he was being patient with her attitude to this point, and she thought it better not to push him too far before he agreed to help her.
    “Define more than human .”
    “I’m a druid.”
    Shane sat all the way up and crossed his arms over his chest. “Like, ancient Celtic dudes in cloaks who built Stonehenge and sacrificed humans to the gods? Those druids?”
    Siobhan huffed out a breath, blowing her bangs out of her eyes. “Close enough,” she said with a sigh. Trying to explain the different clans, their purposes and the gates they