“You are very bossy,” Kade said, repeating the same thing he had said the night before. Keaton didn’t think so. Maybe he was. No one had ever told him that before. The only thing he knew was that someone was after Kade and he wasn’t going to allow anything to happen to his mate.
If that was bossy, then so be it.
Kade seemed amused by Keaton dragging him along. The man didn’t complain. He just wore a sexy grin as they finally made it to the art festival that was being held in the parking lot of the rec center. Keaton wasn’t sure what to expect, but he was surprised to see so many people, so many renderings, and wow, there were food tables, games, and a few people had vendor tables set up to sell small trinkets.
Keaton went straight to the drawings, getting a kick out of all the pictures and paintings being displayed on the tables. There was even a clothesline hung up, drawings pinned to it with clips.
“These are refrigerator drawings,” Kade leaned in and whispered into his ear.
“They are works of art,” Keaton corrected as he touched a picture that had been hand drawn of the forest bordering Brac Village. In the drawing, the rec center was sketched, but what caught Keaton’s interest was the wolf on the side of the building.
Why would a child draw one of the shifters?
He had a feeling that more of the residents knew what was going on in their small town than they let on. From the looks of this drawing, Maverick’s little secret wasn’t so secret around here.
And there sure seemed to be a lot of secrets around this place. Keaton had always acted like the goofy surfer dude around others, but little did everyone know, that was just an act. He was extremely intelligent. Since first arriving here he had thought something odd. Most small towns did not have howling at night or weird, unexplainable things happening.
But never in his wildest dreams would he have thought the weirdness was shifters and vampires…and creatures from hell. Again—although a mind trip—Keaton had accepted what was going on, even if the thing from hell scared him senseless.
According to this drawing, he wasn’t the only one who had known something strange was in Brac Village, and Keaton hadn’t been here that long. He wondered how many longtime residents knew what truly walked the streets.
“You like that one?” Kade asked. “You’ve been staring at it an awful long time.” Kade waved at a youth and then pointed at the picture. “How much for this drawing?”
“Twenty dollars,” the youth answered. Keaton had been to the rec center a few times but didn’t remember ever seeing this young adult before.
“Twenty dollars!” was Kade’s reply. “For a refr—” Keaton elbowed his mate, scowling at him.
“It’s art,” he once again reminded the man.
“You get a frame with it,” the young teenager said quickly, as if scrambling to explain why the drawings were priced so high. Keaton wanted to knock Kade over the head. It seemed his mate had forgotten how to act around children. Of course, he hadn’t been around them in so long, he probably just saw them as little people.
Keaton plucked the drawing from the clothesline and handed it to the young man. “I’ll take this one.”
“I drew that one,” he stated proudly. “You like it?”
“It’s very interesting,” Keaton said as his finger landed on the wolf. “Very imaginative.”
The guy gave a halfhearted shrug. “I draw what I see, ya know?”
It was as if they were speaking in code. Keaton could see the intelligence behind the kid’s bright green eyes.
“But what do I know,” the youth finished. “I’m just a teenager with a really good imagination. That’s what Thomas says about my drawings.”
The youth sounded wounded, as if hurt that no one would tell him the truth. It wasn’t Keaton’s place to let the guy know what he saw, or had been seeing was real. Once again he found himself keeping someone else’s secret. Keaton was starting to hate that shit. But there was nothing he could do about it.
“Do you have any more drawings?”
The teenager nodded as he walked down to a table filled with art. Keaton followed, his eyes widening slightly when he saw more of the same drawings. They were filled with either wolves or men hiding in the shadows. For such a young man, the teenager had a wealth of talent. Keaton didn’t know the first thing about drawing, but the shading and effects the young man used were masterful.
“You make me want to buy the whole table,” he commented as he picked one up and studied the vampire hiding by the side of a building. Wow. This is good.
“I could give you a discount.”
Keaton laughed. “You are the little hustler, aren’t you?” He held out his hand. “My name is Keaton.”
“Kevin,” the teenager answered as he shook Keaton’s hand.
“I’ll take one more. If I buy them all, I’ll have to sell my business just to stay afloat,” he teased. There were about ten drawings on the table. Although Keaton could afford to buy them all, he wasn’t sure where he would display them.
“What business you got?” Kevin asked as he began to frame his drawings for Keaton to take with him. The frame was a black casing, making the picture stand out without a border. He liked that. It drew a person’s eye to the art immediately.
“What business do I have?” Keaton corrected the youth’s bad grammar gently. “I own the Jammin’ Juice Hut.”
Kevin furrowed his brows as he grabbed the other drawing Keaton wanted. “I never heard of that place. Is it in town?”
“Yes, it’s in town. If you come by, I’ll give you lunch, on the house.” Keaton took both frames from Kevin. The kid had to be around sixteen, seventeen at the most. He wasn’t even sure why he was thinking of the young man as
