The Shifters Read Online Free Page B

in Caitlin MacDonald’s lap, either.
    Instead, here she was, going straight to the police, which was not necessarily in Ryder’s best interests, not by a long shot—but it meant she knew something. And he intended to find out what.
    Beautiful as this Caitlin was— those silver eyes— she was only a means to an end. He would follow where she led only as long as it was useful, and no longer.
    He stepped into the stairwell where he’d left theunconscious street musician while he stole his form and his sax, gently deposited the sax on the step beside him, and let his own face change again.
    Â 
    Inside the police department, Caitlin passed impatiently through security, gathered the belongings she’d had to send through the X-ray machine—shoes, belt, jewelry—and pulled them back on, then raced down the hall toward the Homicide Division.
    She forced herself to slow down, then stopped, hovering outside in the doorway. Seated at a prime desk in the detectives’ bullpen was her future brother-in-law, homicide detective Jagger DeFarge.
    Jagger looked like a rugged, exceptionally attractive man. In reality he was not a man at all. Caitlin had been horrified when Fiona—who had always been the steady one, the most rational sister, the one who’d fought to keep the family together ever since their parents’ deaths ten years ago—fell in love with the vampire. There was no outright ban against Keepers intermarrying with Others, but separation was part of a long tradition, and to Caitlin the idea would have seemed unnatural even if such an intermarriage hadn’t led to the long and bloody battle that had cost her parents their lives. While Others fought in the streets of New Orleans, ripping each other apart with claw and fang, Liam and Jen MacDonald had summoned all the powers they possessed to cast a circle of peace….
    The effort had killed them both.
    How could Fiona forget that? Our parents died because a few Others couldn’t keep to their own kind.
    And then there was the whole “cemetery murders” disaster. If Caitlin herself hadn’t been enmeshed in a secret and totally disastrous interspecies relationship of her own…
    But I cut it off , Caitlin told herself. And I’m never going there again. Ever.
    She forced her mind back to the problem of Jagger DeFarge.
    Jagger was a good cop, and even, Caitlin had to admit—reluctantly—to all intents and purposes a good man. In fact, he had saved her own life as well as Fiona’s when the “vampire killers” had held them hostage in a crypt.
    But she still didn’t trust him—with anything, much less her sister. Fiona deserved the best.
    Her ace in the hole was that she knew that Jagger knew he had not yet won her over, which meant he would bend over backward to help her in the hope of scoring brownie points. Which made him useful right now.
    Caitlin took a breath and stepped through the doorway. Jagger was behind his desk in the bullpen, writing some report with a scowl of concentration. But at Caitlin’s first step into the room he looked upsharply—that annoying sixth sense of a vampire—then rose to his feet instantly as he saw her with equally annoying grace, an elegance just a little too good to be real. Or human.
    Damn vampires.
    â€œCaitlin,” he said, and moved around his desk to her side. “Nothing wrong, I hope.” The concern in his voice was genuine; Caitlin knew he was thinking of Fiona, worried that something had happened to her.
    â€œNo, not really,” she said ambiguously, knowing he would bite. So to speak. “I was just wondering if there had been any—” she paused, pretended to search for words “—any unusual activity in the city recently. I don’t know…a spike in crime…murders, maybe…”
    Jagger looked at her so sharply that she knew she had her answer. She felt a prickle of excitement