Thin Skinned, Margo Collins [recommended reading TXT] 📗

to corner me. If I struck out in any direction, they would see it as an attack.

That left only one option.

Shit. I’m really going to have to do it.

Slowly, I rose as high on my lower body as I could, almost half my body height. Both men reacted by tightening their grips on their knives. But instead of striking out at them, as they both clearly expected me to do, I began concentrating on shifting.

My parents had worked to convince me never to show my serpent form to anyone—and even more than that, to never show anyone that I could shift between forms.

Even as I began to change, I could almost hear my father telling me that getting outed as a weresnake was the worst thing that could possibly happen to me. “They’ll take you away from us, Lindi, lock you in a lab somewhere to study you. I couldn’t bear that.”

As I concentrated on allowing the molecules of my body to swim back into their other form, I found my internal vision of my form slipping back and forth, snake to human and back to snake.

Everything around me disappeared for a moment as my eyes shifted, and in that instant, an image of Abuela’s pendant flashed through my mind, and I realized what it reminded me of: a saint medal, the kind Catholics wore.

A snake goddess.

Was that what she was?

Was that what I was?

When my eyes cleared again, I realized that my focus on the snake goddess’s form had left me in that particular shape—my usual human self in the top half, disconcertingly naked, and the form of a snake in my lower half.

I glanced around for something to cover myself with and saw nothing.

And then the man holding the Bowie knife let out a shrill scream, dropped his blade, and fell to the floor, huddled face-down with his forehead touching the carpeting.

Chapter 8

“Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte!” the man on the floor was shouting, but his voice was muffled.

The two other men took up the shout. “Santa Muerte, Santa Muerte!”

I knew enough Spanish to understand that they were shouting something about Saint Death—but something about the term niggled at the back of my mind, too.

Was that the image on the pendant Abuela wore? Saint Death?

And she looked like me?

I liked my interpretation of her being a snake goddess better.

Baby Paige added to the noise by setting up a weeping howl. For the first time, I glanced over at them. Lori was clutching the toddler to her, holding her tightly around the middle. Lori’s own expression was stunned, her mouth hanging open and her eyes wide as she stared at me. Hale looked more confused and angry than stunned, but I wasn’t sure if that was his usual expression or not.

But Baby Paige was fascinated. She wasn’t screaming because Lori was hurting her. She was screaming because she wanted to come to me.

The baby stretched her arms out to me, grasping for me, asking me to pick her up and hold her. Without the adults’ preconceived ideas about snakes, Baby Paige was fascinated by me.

I could feel my face soften when I looked at her, and she stopped crying for an instant and clapped her hands and laughed.

Lori, seeing that interchange, jerked the baby away, spinning around so Paige couldn’t see me anymore. “You monster,” she shrieked. “You stay away from my baby. You can’t have her.”

That seemed to jerk Hale out of his stupor. He scowled fiercely, glaring back and forth between the baby and me. He’d missed the interplay, but he was ready, as ever, to announce his claim over the child.

I didn’t have a chance to answer Lori, though, because instantly, other people from around us in the plane started shouting, too.

“What the hell is going on back here?” Phil stomped in from where he’d apparently been hanging out with the pilot. We made eye contact first and he frowned as if trying to place my face. Then he took two steps closer and saw my coils supporting me below the top half of my body. His face went completely blank and he stumbled to a halt. “What—” he started but couldn’t find words to finish his question.

“What are you?” Ron finally managed to spit out.

I considered how to answer him. But Hale answered for me first. “That’s our—that’s the counselor.”

I had to clench my jaws to keep from snickering. Especially when Ron said, “What the fuck kind of counselor is that?”

“Santa Muerte!” one of the Spanish speakers insisted.

I shrugged. “I’m the one who’s going to make sure that Lori and Hale don’t leave the country with Baby Paige.”

“You're a little too late for that,” Phil said. “We will be landing in Mexico pretty soon.” He gave me a thoughtful once-over. “You think she’d be worth anything?” he asked Ron.

Ron flipped his knife up into his hand and set it down gently on the closest seat. “You want to take her to the circus, you can work out how to catch her. You didn’t see her when she was a fucking snake all over.”

“What would you say she is now?” Phil asked.

“I’m voting for hallucination.” Ron took a step back, bringing as much distance between him and me as he possibly could.

I took the opportunity to move a little closer to the casket.

A plan was forming in the back of my mind. I was hoping I would not have to use it, but the less frightened Phil and his men became of me, the more likely it grew that I would need to do something to change that.

I caught Phil’s gaze sliding slimily over my exposed breasts.

I turned to Ron and pointed. “You. Get me a shirt out of someone’s bag. I know somebody has to have one.”

He scowled, but he reached into an overhead compartment and pulled out a small suitcase.

The shirt he tossed me look like it was probably his own—slightly worn, Western cotton, button-up. It strained across my breasts,