Logan bypassed words and gave him images and sensations, like waking dreams:
>
Slowly, Nate began to wag his tail. His wings rustled, and he settled down without losing any more feathers.
> Logan said. He opened the thought to the whole cavern. >
No matter how much he meant it, the words still rang hollow to him. Every day, he had less and less hope that he would ever live anywhere but this cage.
But it seemed to make them feel a tiny bit better, which was the important thing.
He curled up with those thoughts of blue skies and open spaces, and he let his hellhound take over once again. It was a relief to bury all his human doubts and longings.
Even if he got buried along with them.
Chapter Three
In an office full ofshifters who mostly took on high-stakes shifter crime that few other federal law enforcement offices could contend with, Iz ... dealt with an octopus shifter who robbed a Wal-Mart.
“You can’t say a shoplifting octopus isn’t interesting,” Simon said brightly.
Iz was still sponging some kind of octopus-related slime off her face, but she lowered the towel so she could glare at him.
A draconian glare was usually a force to be reckoned with, but Simon looked as unruffled as ever.
“What did your octopus shifter take?” he said.
“A lot of electronics equipment, mostly. She smashed up a bunch of spaghetti sauce jars in the pasta aisle to cause a scene, detoured to whack around some cartons of orange juice, and then headed straight for the iPads.” Iz scrubbed her face one more time for good measure. She wasn’t sure she would ever feel completely unslimed. “Animal Control passed this one to us under the table, so I told the store that’s who I worked for.”
She didn’t like telling these little white lies, but they were part of the job. They weren’t just U.S. Marshals, they were intermediaries between the shifter world and the human world, and it was their job to make sure the two existed alongside each other—and intermingled with each other—without anybody getting hurt. They had a lot of latitude when it came to how they handled shifter-related crimes. It was an imperfect system, but it was the best anyone had come up with so far.
She could live with the secrets and lies. For shifters who wanted to interact with the wider world, those things were just part of the deal.
But she wanted to keep secrets that were more ... prestigious.
Simon brought her back to reality. “What did you do with her?”