“And you were playing the mandolin and fiddle,” she said, attempting a smile.
“That’s right.” He leaned against the wall, between the front windows, his arms crossed over his broad chest.
Mel glanced around and marveled at the presence of these five huge men in her tiny little apartment. Then she thought about what she’d imagined she’d seen at the pub and felt herself go suddenly still.
“What did the barman mean when he said, ‘your kind’ isn’t welcome here?” she asked softly.
Matt’s hand faltered on her back for a moment then began moving again. She glanced up and saw Matt and Bart exchange looks. The others were looking to Bart.
“What do you remember, exactly,” Bart asked. He kept his gravelly voice low, she supposed, so he wouldn’t alarm her, but it had the opposite effect.
She took a deep breath. “I’m not certain. That…man had me pinned up against the bar, then he hit me, and I went down. I thought I was going to pass out, but then I heard…something. It was like a loud, well, roar, I guess, then the man who had attacked me was pulled away, and…”
“All hell broke loose,” Mark said, snagging her kitchen stool with a foot and dragging it over to sit on.
He should have looked silly, but the fact that he was tall enough to see over the table, even though he was sitting on a low stool, only emphasized how big they all were.
“Please tell me what happened.”
Bart glanced around at the others and took a deep breath. Then he nodded at Matt.
“You must have heard stories,” Matt said, “about how sometimes some people, well, change into something else.”
Mel started. She stared at Matt then around at the others. She was suddenly very conscious of their deep, golden eyes as they watched her. She had noticed their eyes last night, but now she saw that Bart, too, had them.
“You’re…?”
“The word you’re lookin’ for is ‘Shifter.’ We are. All of us.”
“It sort of runs in the family,” John said, sounding awfully cheerful about it. “At least on Pop’s side. Our Ma never Shifted, and our sisters don’t, either.”
“It’s usually the male line,” Mark said, “though there’ve been a few women along the way.”
“So what, you just…become…something else? Whenever you feel like it?”
“Bears,” John said. “In our clan, it’s always been bears.”
Mel raised her eyebrows in surprise. The youngest Saint seemed too cheerful about it all.
“And it’s not whenever we feel like it, exactly,” Luke explained. “Well, when we’re kids, when we’re just comin’ into it, we tend to Shift whenever and wherever, which can be pretty darn awkward.”
“But once puberty hits,” Mark said, “we become pretty good at controllin’ it.”
“Unless we feel threatened,” Bart explained. “Shiftin’ is all about survival, so if we feel threatened—or if someone we care about is threatened—we sometimes Shift without thinkin’ about it.”
“That’s what happened tonight,” John said. “Matt went in to get us some more beer, saw you bein’ attacked, and he just instinctively Shifted.”
“And then when we heard him,” Luke said, “we had to jump in to protect both of you by keepin’ that nasty crowd back while Matt dealt with the lowlife who had you.”
“But you don’t even know me,” Mel said, looking at Matt.
John snorted. “Our big brother’s always stickin’ up for the little guy or gal against bullies. I mean, it’s in his DNA.”
The others laughed, but Matt just continued to massage her neck gently with his powerful fingers. She could feel the calluses caused by his guitar strings on her bare skin and shivered. He smiled, then, as though he knew what he was doing to her.
“That takes us back to the first question,” Bart said. “What the heck were you doin’ in that bar tonight, young lady?”
Mel had to work to bring her gaze away from Matt’s. She took a deep breath as she fought to bring her mind back to where it belonged.
“I work for the Konstantine Talent Agency. My job is to visit as many night spots as I can, looking for promising bands and other performers for the Agency to represent. I got called away last night when my boss texted me, and by the time I got back, you guys had already packed up and left. So I asked around, and the bartender told me where you like to play pool when you’re in town.