“But we know someone who might tell us what’s going on inside him,” Dylan said. “If it’s magical.”
Liam flicked his gaze to his father, then his eyes took on a faraway look as he considered. “True. If he’ll talk to us. We’ll need Sean. And Andrea.”
“Good thing they stayed home,” Dylan said in his dry voice.
“Aye,” Liam said. “Tiger, there’s someone I want you to meet.”
* * *
Sean and Andrea met them on the strip of green behind the houses, in the clump of trees that Tiger avoided for some reason. He’d never thought about why he didn’t like to go there, but something in him made him steer around it whenever he walked down the long common ground.
Sean had brought his sword. Tiger eyed it in its sheath on Sean’s back. A few months ago, he’d watched Sean drive the blade of the sword into the body of an elderly Shifter, the man sighing in relief as his last breath went out of him. His body had crumbled to dust, and the Shifters who’d gathered for the parting ceremony had said prayers, both grieving and thanking Sean for freeing the man’s soul.
Tiger wasn’t sure how a sword could do that, but he saw again the threads that connected it to Sean, and connected Sean to Andrea, as he had when Andrea had started healing him after the accident. Sean unsheathed the sword, which rang faintly, and Tiger stepped back, well out of its reach.
Sean pointed the sword forward, holding it toward nothing. Andrea put her hand over his on its hilt.
“Dad,” she said.
“Open up, it’s the in-laws,” Sean added.
“He’s not big on humor,” Andrea said in her calm way.
Sean grinned. “I know. That’s why I do it.”
A light slit the air. Tiger growled and stepped back again, hackles rising. In the ten months he’d been here, he’d never seen this. He’d never smelled the acrid stench that came out of the slit, which had Liam wrinkling his nose, and Sean looking stoic.
A figure appeared in the opening. He was tall, thin, almost angular. White hair hung over his shoulder in a long braid, and he wore a shirt of linked rings over white leather, a black cloak rolling back from his shoulders.
“What?” he snapped. His voice was rich and full, with a hint of Irish.
“Nice to see you too.” Andrea released the sword and went to the man, enclosing him in her embrace.
The man’s sharp face softened as he allowed the hug, closing his arms around her in return. “Andrea. Child. Let me look at you.”
“I haven’t changed since the last time,” Andrea said.
“Give an old man the delight of seeing his daughter. How’s the wee one?”
“Kenny’s fine. Growing fast.”
“Don’t bother telling me he looks like me or has my nose. He’ll be mostly Shifter.” The man glanced at Sean. “Will smell like one too.”
“Better than the stench of Fae,” Sean said, but with no rancor behind the words.
“I’ll ignore that,” Andrea said. “Father, Liam wants you to meet Tiger. Tiger, Fionn Cillian, my father. My real father. He’s a Fae.”
The Fae moved his gaze from Andrea to Tiger. He stiffened, his stance becoming defensive, a warrior reacting to a threat. “What is that?”
“His name’s Tiger,” Andrea said. “Because, you know, he’s a tiger.”
“I’d never have guessed.” Fionn took in Tiger’s multicolored hair, his build, his golden eyes. “No Fae made that.”
“That’s why we’re curious,” Liam said. “Can you tell us how he was made? Or maybe, how he wasn’t?”
“Why don’t you ask his parents? Presumably pure tiger.”
“He doesn’t have parents,” Liam said. “He was concocted in a lab. None of us, including Tiger, know how.”
“I’d have to touch him to find out,” Fionn said. “And I don’t want to come near him. He’s ready to rip my head off. I can see it in him.”
“He’ll behave,” Andrea said. “Won’t you?” She slanted Tiger a warning glance, and Tiger made her happy by nodding.
Fionn’s lips thinned. “You dragged me across a dimension for me to put my hand on a tiger Shifter? What do I get in return?”
“An hour with your grandson,” Andrea said.
Fionn’s face softened. “You fight dirty, daughter. All right.”
He stepped through the opening without any problem, the cold, nostril-curling smell clinging to his cloak. Fionn stopped in front of Tiger, the man tall enough to look at him eye to eye.
“Don’t try anything,” Fionn warned. “I might not be able to turn into a beast, but I’ve trained as a fighter for more years than anyone here has been alive. Hold still.”
Fionn stripped off a skin-fitting leather glove and pressed his bare, long-fingered hand to Tiger’s chest.
Something snapped through Tiger like an electric shock, shooting through his chest in a bite of pain. His mind whipped back to the dark basement, where researchers had shocked him, jolt after jolt, Tiger screaming, not even aware that he’d opened his mouth.
He brought up his hand to smack Fionn away, but Fionn had jerked back well before Tiger moved.
“What the hell?” Fionn growled. “I told you not to attack me.”
Tiger opened his eyes. The lab disappeared, and he drew a breath of humid Austin air, now tinged with Faerie. “I didn’t,” he said, voice rasping. “You shocked me.”
“No, my friend. I don’t carry a thousand volts in my body. I’m Fae. I don’t even like the human concept of electricity. That was all you. Throwing me out.”
Tiger stared. He’d not consciously reacted to Fionn’s touch.
“It wasn’t Fae magic that surged up,” Fionn said. “In fact, there’s not a glimmer of Fae magic in his entire body. I got that much.”
“There’s Fae magic in all Shifters,” Dylan said. “Passed down through the generations. It’s what formed us in the first place.”
“Not this one.” Fionn shook out his hand and slid his glove back on in quick jerks. “I don’t know what he is. Now, take me to Kenny.”
He put his hand on Andrea’s shoulder and walked off with her, finished with Tiger. Which left Tiger in the middle of the three Morrisseys.
“I can’t take the Collar,” Tiger said before any of them could speak. It would incapacitate him, maybe kill him, and he couldn’t let it. Not yet.