Bearly Hanging On (The Jamesburg Shifters #6)(2)
With a heavy sigh, he said, “Complainer’s court—ah, I mean, public issue discussions, those happen on Tuesdays.”
He called it complainer’s court because that was a much more apt description, but that sort of savagely non-bureaucratic talk got Duggan all worked up. Of course, so did everything else.
There was a kind of gruffness about the new, and only, audience member that sent a little wiggle up Jamie’s stomach. There were bear girls, there were wolf girls... and Jamie? For every second of her life right up until the present moment, she was definitely neither of them. Lithe, thin, and just a little pale, a vampire guy was just right for her.
Then again, the last one was such a tremendous prick that maybe, she thought as she looked at this flannel-clad giant, maybe it was time for a change of heart.
She felt a hot flush creep up her neck, looked away. Also bashful? Jamie was definitely not the bashful type.
“It is Tuesday,” the man said. “And there are about forty people waiting outside down the hall.”
Duggan looked down at his watch, and then flopped his head backward with a dramatically heavy sigh. “Why can’t we ever get anything done?”
“Because you don’t ever shut up.” All eyes turned to Erik’s mate, Izzy, who was about five months pregnant, and as a human with a wolfy bun in the oven, she deserved to be every shred as irritated as she was. “Everything is always some kind of big argument, some big, dramatic to-do,” she laughed in the crazed, half-exasperated way that only a pregnant woman who needed both some water, and some damn chocolate, can do. Jamie understood, although not the pregnant part.
Where most five-month-pregnant women of a height with Izzy would barely be showing, maybe, this one looked like she had a beach ball under her shirt. Poor thing is gonna be laid out for a month. Two months, three? I can’t remember how long wolf babies gestate. Probably a lot longer than you want. Just like everything else about them.
Thankfully, the moment of distraction got Jamie’s thoughts off the lumberjack son of a bitch she couldn’t stop looking toward.
Izzy teetered to her feet, and propped herself up on the table top. “I’m the damn treasurer, right?”
A round of nods went around the room, because she was, in fact, the town’s treasurer. “Okay, good. Then we’re building stop lights. There’s no good damn reason not to, and if we do, Duggan will shut up, and Jenga’s zombies can stop playing crossing guard every day.”
A long, low groan escaped the lips of an enormous, stitched-together zombie bear who sat at the end of the dais. The very similar looking woman beside him, who was wearing a flower-patterned muumuu, hit him with a closed fist in the side of the face. “Hush, Atlas!” she hissed. “This mean more time... for...” she started making googly eyes at her stitched-together mate.
“Right, yes, yes, very good,” Jenga, their handler, and also the town’s witch doctor-slash-surgeon-slash-diet pill salesman, said. “Everybody will be better if they don’t have to picture the two of you droolin’ bears goin’ at it.”
A shudder crept through the room, from everyone except Izzy, who looked like she was going to yurk, and Jamie, who started giggling. Getting the two zombies on the town council was one of the stranger decisions that had been made in the history of Jamesburg, but it made them really happy. It was sort of like when a fifth grader takes on the hallowed sash and pin of a Safety Patrol Guard. They aren’t going to be directing much traffic, but damn do they get all puffed up about it.
It’s exactly the same, except the zombie bears did, in fact, direct traffic. They were incredibly good at standing in one place and doing the same thing for hour after hour without getting distracted or, apparently, even noticing the passage of time. Oh, and there also aren’t a whole lot of seven foot tall fifth graders put together like Frankenstein’s monster and reanimated. So there’s that.
“So... I can complain now?”
The bear, which is what he must have been, since he didn’t show any signs of being a science experiment, was looking straight at Jamie.
Oh God, am I giving off some kind of pheromones that he smelled? Why is he staring at me and why am I not looking away? And why—why the hell am I really into the fact that all of this is happening?
That flush from earlier came back. She wished suddenly she wasn’t wearing quite so low-collared a top as she was.
Erik sighed, Izzy clicked her teeth together, Atlas drooled and Jenga’s knotted, stuff-filled beard jingled. “The stoplights are happening then?” Duggan asked.
“Yes,” Izzy said with a sigh. “Although, I’m not going to allow you to get the ones with the backlit street names, those are just too stupid for words. We’re getting the standard deal – three lights, one green, one yellow and one red, facing in four directions.” She usually wasn’t this sharp tongued, but in this case, she was just saying what everyone else was thinking.
“But, I—”
“This is called compromise, Duggan,” Izzy said. She was very obviously finished with the compromising.
Duggan grumbled, but didn’t pursue the luxury line stoplights he’d been wanting earlier. Top of the line luxury stoplights; there’s an idea crazier than Jamesburg, but not by much. Jamie looked over at the bear who had walked through that door and straight into her brain.