Authors: Charlotte Rose
Although she briefly worried that she might disappear into the crowd, she had the sensation that both Xavier’s and Oscar’s eyes were on her all the time. Glancing out of the corner of her eye, she was right. Even though they were chatting with other members of the congregation, she couldn’t help but notice that one of them was always gazing at her.
At one point, Xavier managed to catch her eye and gave her a wink. Adele couldn’t help but blush. She saw him chuckle at her response, and she blushed even harder. Finally, she turned away, surprised by her own reaction.
I barely know these guys, and I’m not entirely convinced that this is all real. Why am I getting so worked up over them?
“Help yourself,” Manuel said. “A guest as important as you deserves all the food she can eat.”
Adele tried to shrug off the comment as she loaded her plate with fried okra and crawfish étouffée.
If they were going to poison me, they wouldn’t all be serving themselves from the same pots and pans, now would they?
Once she’d taken her food, Adele went in search of silverware in the crowded kitchen. With her eyes focused on countertops and drawers, she ran straight into someone and had to grip her bowl to keep from losing her food.
“Oh! I’m sorry!”
Adele thought the apologetic voice sounded familiar. She looked up to see Georgina staring back at her. Adele was startled enough that she once again had to grip the sides of her plate to keep from losing her food.
“Georgina! What—what are you doing here?”
“Professor Roche, I can explain.”
For a moment, Adele didn’t have any idea what Georgina was talking about.
“Explain? Does that mean you know what’s going on here? Did they give you any information already? Do you think you can give me the CliffsNotes version? I’m getting desperate for answers.” Adele could feel her voice getting higher with every statement, but she couldn’t help it. Her nerves were completely shot.
“That—that wasn’t quite what I meant.” Georgina averted her eyes. “I, uh, I sort of blew off the data collection trip today.”
“That’s right, you did.” Adele tried to conjure up some of the frustration she’d felt earlier that day, but her mind was too focused on the strange scenario in which she currently found herself. “I think—I think we’re going to have to have a talk about your lack of commitment to the lab, but I’m a little distracted at the moment. So just be at my office at eight o’clock on Monday morning and we’ll, uh, we’ll chat about your future in the program.”
“I do have an excuse, if you’ll just—”
Adele didn’t let her finish. “I’m sure you do, but right now, I have to figure out why two men turned into alligators right before my very eyes. A lot of confusing things have happened to me today, and I really don’t have the energy to deal with academics right now. Okay?”
Georgina nodded. “Yes.”
“So did they give you answers already, or are you going just as crazy as I am?”
“Professor Roche, I live here. I’m one of them.”
Adele felt her jaw drop, but she closed it as quickly as she could. “Well, then, I guess you didn’t need anybody to give you answers. Um, please excuse me. I have some things I need to get figured out.”
Adele finally found a fork and joined everyone else who had already dispersed to the outer docks. Some chose seats higher up, while others preferred to sit down below, closer to the water. Adele walked outside and saw Xavier and Oscar sitting on one of the lower docks. She had a sudden impulse to approach them but wasn’t sure if it was a good idea. Perhaps they didn’t want anything to do with her. But Oscar caught her eye, smiled, and waved her over.
Blushing over having been caught staring, Adele settled herself close to them. She struggled to ogle them discreetly. Although she was confused and scared by everything that had happened that afternoon, she couldn’t help but feel attracted to their smooth, strong bodies. She bristled with anticipation when Serafine eased her way out of the kitchen and slowly made her way toward them. Manuel kept shooting glances their way and laughed at them.
“Okay, Serafine, what’s goin’ on here?” Oscar blurted out when she finally sat down.
Serafine sighed. “You kids today are so damned impatient.”
“The three of us just had the craziest afternoon of our lives, and you’re withholding information. You’re damn right I’m impatient.”
“Okay, okay.” Serafine set aside her plate. “Adele, I’m willin’ to bet you’re a little confused about what you saw this afternoon.”
“That would be an understatement, but yes.”
“You think you saw two men suddenly turn to gators before your very eyes, and then turn back, right?”
“That’s correct.” Adele withheld a sigh, wishing that Serafine would hurry up and get to the point. She wished she could take a harsh tone the way Oscar had, but she didn’t dare.
“And how might you go ’bout explaining that?”
Adele shrugged. “A dream or a hallucination, I guess.”
“What if I told you that everything you saw was real?”
“I’m not sure I could believe you.”
Serafine grinned. “Need a little more proof? Xavier, go on, prove it to her.”
Xavier shook his head. “I ain’t changin’ again until I get some answers about this afternoon.”
“Aw, come on. Give the girl some peace of mind.”
“I’ll do it, Serafine.” Georgina stepped forward. “It’ll probably mean more coming from me, anyway, seeing as Adele knows me and all.”
“Y’all know each other?” Serafine asked, raising an eyebrow at Adele.
“Yes. Georgina is one of my graduate research assistants.”
“I was supposed to be out on the boat this morning with Adele, gathering water samples,” Georgina said. Her timid face turned to a glare. “And now I’m probably gonna get fired because y’all made me stay home. They’re probably gonna kick me out of school because you’re always finding a reason why I can’t leave.”
“You were needed here,” Serafine snapped. “We had work to do. I don’t know what you need that fancy degree for, anyway. The rest of us do just fine without it.”
“Maybe I’m not like the rest of you,” Georgina snapped.
Adele’s head began to swim with confusion, which only got worse as Georgina closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and began to transform right in the middle of the party. Her skin developed a green armor, her face lengthened, her hair disappeared, a tail emerged from her lower back, and she suddenly dropped to all fours.
“Go ’head, touch her,” Serafine said. “She won’t bite. Or at least, she won’t bite you.”
With a trembling hand, Adele reached out and brushed Georgina’s nose with her fingertip. As she began to develop more courage, she traced her fingers along the thick flesh. She couldn’t deny that the woman who had been standing before her was now an alligator.
“Okay, change back now,” Serafine commanded as Adele stepped away and sat down.
“What are you?” she asked as she watched Georgina resume human form and hurry to put on the clothes that had fallen away during her transformation.
“Sometimes we’re humans, sometimes we’re gators,” Serafine said with a shrug. “That’s really all there is to it.”
“But—but how…” Adele let her voice trail off as she struggled to find words. Her brain was short-circuiting from shock.
“I can answer that,” Xavier said. “About two hundred years ago, my ancestors fled Haiti for New Orleans. Bunch of other Haitians came over here, too. New Orleans was doin’ pretty well for itself back then, but most of the refugees had to struggle. My great-great-grandparents, they wound up in a boarding house with four other families. They all bonded together through the hard times, sticking together to get through the worst of it. Now, these families were all well schooled in the art of Haitian voodoo, and there was quite a market for it, even then. These families, well, they decided to start selling voodoo services as a way to make ends meet.”
“Which a true practitioner would never do,” Adele interjected. She’d been a skeptic most of her life, but having grown up in a city where people did believe in it, the knowledge had rubbed off on her, and she’d never been able to quite shake the idea that there was some validity behind it.
Maybe voodoo is real. And maybe, if voodoo is real, shape-shifting alligators aren’t so far-fetched, either
.
Xavier nodded at her response, looking impressed. “You know a thing or two about this stuff?”
“I grew up in the area. The locals learn these things one way or another.”
“Anyway, in addition to taking money, they started creating fake rituals and false charms. They made a hell of a lot of money off of the students who didn’t know any better. But one day, a voodoo queen by the name of Apolline Marcos caught wind of their shenanigans. Apolline wasn’t too happy with this little group. To punish them, she placed a curse. They, and all their future offspring, would straddle the line between human and animal. We became gator shifters.”
“And you’ve never found a way to break the curse?”
Xavier shook his head. “Never. The first couple years, they had real trouble with it. No control over their bodies. Spontaneous shiftin’. Nothin’ good. They had to leave the city. Otherwise they were in danger of gettin’ caught shiftin’. That would’ve been the last thing they needed. You can’t just walk around the Quarter on a Saturday night if you might turn into a gator at any second.”
“So they came out here?”
Xavier nodded. “They built houseboats and started a fishin’ business. The same fishin’ business we’re runnin’ today, in fact. The five families stayed together through everythin’. And things got easier over the years. We got control of our bodies, makin’ it easier to go out in public without worryin’.”
“Or so we thought,” Oscar interjected. “But I ain’t so sure now. Serafine, you got some answers ’bout this afternoon?”
Serafine nodded, a giant grin spreading across her face. “Boys, Adele here is your mate.”
Adele felt the blood leave her head. She steeled all of her muscles together, willing herself not to faint.
“Mate?” she eked out.
Serafine nodded. “Mate. Once she cursed our ancestors, a funny thing happened. Ain’t like a curse is supposed to be easy, after all. The queen made it so that two men would always always fall in love with the same woman. This led to a lot of fightin’ at first. Most of the time, men demanded the woman choose between one of ’em. But that didn’t work, either, ’cause she loved ’em both equally.”
“There were years of strife,” Andre interjected. “But eventually, our ancestors decided everyone would be happier of they quit fightin’ and started sharin’. A woman could love both men, and the men didn’t have to compete for her affections. Ever since, we’ve had a special matin’ ceremony, where both men turn their mate into a shifter. Makes all three people feel connected as one. We been doin’ it that way for generations now, and I, for one, ain’t complainin’.”
Adele wasn’t sure which to ask about first—what it meant to be turned or what the mating ceremony entailed. Finally, she whispered, “Turned?”
“Yep, turned. The human mate agrees to become a shifter as a show of commitment to her mates. She gets bitten during the mating ceremony and becomes a gator shifter.”
Adele shook her head, as though that would wake her up from the strange dream she was most certainly having.
“Wait a second. But why am I the mate? Why not a female gator shifter?”
“That’s another part of the curse,” Serafine said. “Our sons could only love human women, our daughters could only love human men. As you might guess, it ain’t easy to convince humans to even give us much of a chance, much less mate for life. Even harder on our women. They gotta convince two men that it’s okay for them to both love her.”
Adele still couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You’re telling me that these guys think I’m their mate, and that I have to become a gator shifter during some sort of special mating ceremony?” She started fumbling around for the ignition key to her boat. “Thank you very much for your hospitality, but I think I’d better be going now. I have work I need to take care of.”
“Adele, please don’t go,” Xavier said, reaching out to take her hand. “Oscar and I are just as confused as you are.” He turned to Serafine. “And why haven’t we heard anything about this before? We’ve grown up seeing people take their mates, but we ain’t never heard of gators losing control of their shift when it happens.”
“There are some things we don’t just go tellin’ everyone.” Serafine said. She crossed her arms, and her robes swirled around her, as though punctuating her sentence. She lifted her chin and Adele swore she saw the woman’s eyes flash gold. She couldn’t help but shiver.