“Not my family. Here is what we’ll do. I’ll talk to your aunt first, then my family. You need to tell your mom what you can do. All right? That way, we can work in the open with this information and not have to sneak around.”
“I will.” She hugged him, and he hugged her tightly. “Thank you so much, Uncle Quin. I knew I could talk to you about stuff, but this is freaky, don’t you think?”
“Honey, I’m brother-in-law to a witch. I can change into a lion, and my brother is the king of lions. Now you can talk to animals. Nothing about this is freaky so much as it’s par for the course.” She laughed, which was what he’d hoped for. “We’ll take care of this, Billy. I swear to you. Even if I have to shift into my lion and kill him, we’ll get through this.”
He wasn’t sure how, but he figured he’d go to the one person that would know how to handle this the best. Getting out of the car, he reached for his grandma. She’d either tell him to go kick some ass, or she’d help him. Either way, he’d welcome the help.
Chapter 4
Unsure of what to do with the information, Rogue stared at her glass of water. Jane had been with her when Quin had asked to speak to her, and she told him to come home and do it. That whatever he had to talk about, his mate needed to hear it as well.
“Well, what do you think we should do?” Quin wasn’t being pushy like she might have been had she delivered the news to him, but she wasn’t ready to give him what was racing around in her head just yet. He seemed to understand that and turned to his grandma. “You should have seen Billy standing up to Robin. She didn’t hold back at all. Had I closed my eyes for a moment, I would have sworn it was you or Mom there. Or Rogue. She got right up in his face too. Then she told Robby he should have beaten Robin more as a kid.”
“I wish I could have seen his face. I bet Robby hasn’t been spoken to like that since his missus passed on. Now there was a woman that could get up in a person’s face. She’d not suffer fools well. Also, she would have beaten Robin more.” He’d not known that Robin’s mom had passed away in childbirth. “I’m glad he is giving that child an outlet for her gift. She does think of it as a gift, doesn’t she?”
“We didn’t talk about it much, other than her telling me she’s had it since she was a child.” Rogue asked him if she’d told him any other things about animals. “No. Just the horse named Shire. I do believe she can talk to more than just horses, but she was a little skittish, so I didn’t press her on that. What do you think her mom will do?”
“She’ll take it well. I don’t know why, but I have a feeling Lily will have had some indication that Billy could do something special anyway. She’s hinted about— So the horse was contacted by the pigs to let him know the man in the barn was dumped by Robin to be eaten so no one would find his body. Even out loud, that sounds like I’m off my rocker. I don’t want you to think I don’t believe her, but it is a far stretch from being a shifter to an animal whisperer.” Quin nodded at her and told her she was doing well. “Thanks. But you’re not going to get any brownie points with this. This is big news, and someone is going to have to go to Mr. Quarter and let him know that some pigs told his horse, who told my niece, that his son killed a man. Christ, I’m going to be locked up before I can wrap my head around this.”
“You do believe me, don’t you, Aunt Rogue?” She’d not known that Billy was in the house. Turning to her, she smiled and asked her to come and sit with them. “Mom is here. She wants to talk to Uncle Quin about the job.”
“All right. We might as well share all of this. Did you tell her?” Billy nodded and smiled. “I take it she didn’t think it was all that different.”
“No. She said she’d been watching me with the neighbor’s cats when we lived back home. Also with the animals here.” Quin asked if she could speak to all animals. “Yes. All I’ve come across anyway. You should know that the mother cat in the barn is sick of hard cat food. She’d like something soft now that she’s getting too old to have kitties.”
Jane burst out laughing. It was as if all the tension of the room and the things being said were wiped out. Getting up, Rogue found the stash of cookies Mrs. Barclay had hidden from her husband and put them on the table. Not that she wanted to share the wonderful bits of sugary deliciousness, but this called for sweets and talk.
Rogue let everyone else do the talking. While she had about ten billion questions, they were being asked as soon as she thought of them. The one thing that bothered her the most, however, was what they were going to do about Robin. Something had to be done, or he was going to find out about Billy and hurt her. Worse, kill her.
The rest of the family showed up just as the cookies disappeared. Mrs. Barclay shooed them out of her domain, and they ended up in the living room, a room that Rogue was beginning to love most of all. However, now she understood the reason for four large couches. There were just too many large people in this family to
