I felt the grin forming even as I thought it.
Maybe tiger me weighed less than half of what Bessie here was hefting, but there was one key difference: tiger me was a predator.
In a flash, I shifted shape into the Bengal tiger that formed the other side of my dual nature. Then I prowled up and stared into the cow’s eyes.
The animal, who’d certainly never seen or smelled a tiger in her entire bovine life, yawned in my face.
Mildly insulted, I stalked around to block her path across the road, and her big head swung to watch me. Then I turned to face her.
And I roared.
The cows of Dead End, Florida, may have never seen a tiger before, but this one was no fool. She bellowed, turned tail, kicked up her heels, and ran.
Luckily, she ran straight back into her field and up the slight elevation toward Rooster’s barn.
Unluckily, she kicked me in the head first.
I was lying on the pavement, staring up at the sky, wondering why the clouds were spinning around like carousel horses, when Shelley walked up, stood over me, and looked down. Since her face was upside down, it added to the bizarre carnival effect going on in my brain.
I tried to ask her why she was upside down.
"Rowr?"
"You’re still a tiger, Uncle Jack."
Oh.
Wincing at the pain in my head, I shifted back to human. Through some fortunate quirk of the shifter magic, I pulled clothes into the shift, so I never turned back to human in my birthday suit like a lot of shapeshifters did. So now, I was lying on the pavement in my jeans, T-shirt, and running shoes, with a headache the size of Alaska.
"Maybe you should get up before a car comes," she said, giving me a worried look.
"Yeah," I managed.
She held out her tiny hand to help me up, and I gently took it so as not to hurt her feelings. Then I climbed to my feet, feeling like I’d been run over by a truck.
Or a cow.
Stupid cow.
"I’m definitely eating steak for dinner," I muttered.
"Uncle Jack!" Shelley, the staunch vegetarian, gasped.
"Sorry." I brushed myself off and trudged over to the fence, where I muscled the downed rail back into place, wedging it against the fencepost. "Text Rooster to fix this bit of fence, will you? That should fool them for a little while."
We got back in the truck. I drove while Shelley texted, and then we carefully avoided the subject of witch school all the way to the swamp.
"You know, you don’t have to call me Uncle Jack if you don’t want to," I ventured. "I’m technically your brother-in-law now that I married Tess. You could just call me Jack."
She wrinkled her cute little nose. "Euw. That’s too weird. I’ll stick to Uncle Jack until I’m old, like you."
Old like me. Great.
I could almost feel my hair turning gray.
"ThenI’ll call you Jack."
"I’m good with that." I felt a wave of warmth somewhere near my heart, which kept gettingfeelingsthese days.
