Head Hunter (City Shifters the Pack #3) - Layla Nash Page 0,45

table who couldn’t use chopsticks, but at least I stood a chance of getting some of the barbecue before Todd and Miles inhaled all of it.

Which they’d started doing the moment the platters hit the table.

I cleared my throat and said a quiet, “Thank you,” to Dodge. He grunted and jerked his chin at one of the platters.

“Try the galbi. They make it right here.”

When I hesitated, trying to decide which one he meant, Dodge leaned over to scoop up thick slices of beef to put on the small plate in front of me. Then he scooted a basket of lettuce leaves in front of me as well, and pointed at the little dishes of a red bean paste. “Beef in leaf, then sauce.”

I watched him make a beef-leaf taco, stunned when he nearly swallowed it whole, and took a moment to appreciate the way his forearms flexed each time he used the chopsticks and reached for more food. When I caught Deirdre watching me with that faint damn smile, I flushed more and tried to drag my thoughts back to the matter at hand.

“Look, I understand you’re probably – concerned about this, but I promise, the moment our business is concluded, I’ll just go back to my boring life without any interaction at all with this... community.” I forced a smile. “I like boring. Boring and normal. I’ll work on the habitat for Silas, if you still want me to and assuming I survive the next few days, but after that... I’m fine with closing the door on our acquaintance.”

She made a thoughtful noise, nodding along as I talked as if she agreed, and watched as Miles kept putting more and more food on her plate. “I can appreciate you wanting to limit interaction with the shifters. They’re very pushy, aren’t they?”

Miles elbowed her and gave her a dark look. “Eat, woman.”

Deirdre rolled her eyes with a “see what I mean?” expression, but picked up her chopsticks to make her own beef-and-leaf pocket. “But I can say from recent experience, Percy, that when the various supernatural elements realize you know about them, they’re unlikely to let you simply disappear.”

A knot tied up my throat. “What does – what does that mean?”

“It’s not dangerous,” Dodge said. He shook his head and half-stood so he could lean down the table and retrieve thick slices of pork belly for both of us. “It’s rare for humans to know about us, so if you have a particular skill that they would find useful, once everyone knows that you know about us, it’s less risky to bring you in to work on different jobs. They don’t have to worry about dancing around the specifics of a requirement, like we tried to do with Silas.”

“I can’t imagine there’s a lot of demand for habitat specialists,” I said, and tried to laugh it off. The thought of being an in-demand architect for a bunch of werewolves and witches and whatever Smith was sent chills down my spine. “Unless everyone has some kind of mutant in their basement? Is that common?”

Todd made a face. “No. Silas got caught up in a conflict with a sorcerer and ended up... changed. We’re still not sure how to fix it.”

“What’s wrong with him?” I stuffed down the demand to know what a sorcerer was and how it was different from a witch, since apparently knowing more about them just meant getting roped deeper into the craziness. I was already neck-deep; going any deeper meant drowning.

“He was forced to shift his form and then frozen in between,” Deirdre said. Her expression hardened and grew icy around the edges. “We just need to understand how to force him back.”

I studied a piece of pork belly as I tried to understand all the layers of impossibility in that conversation. It could have all been a really crazy, intense dream or nightmare. Maybe a hallucination or bad trip. “How does it all work? I mean, the turning into an animal thing. Are they always people in their head? Is there a – a wolf brain or something?”

It was ridiculous. A completely ludicrous series of questions. If any of the waitresses overheard us, they’d call the police and have us all committed to the psych ward.

But Dodge didn’t hesitate to answer as he tore up a few lettuce leaves and handed me one, along with more rice. “There’s a wolf half and a person half. The person usually stays in control in both forms, though