Trudy was now fanning said cheeks. “Dani called, Dad. She wanted to talk to you.”

“Well, hot dog! Hand me the phone.” Suddenly, the image on the screen blurred and the four of them were presented with a picture of a wrinkled ear, complete with a little tuft of white hair on the lobe.

They could hear the muffled voice of Trudy saying, “No, Dad, it’s just like calling on the laptop. You hold the phone in front of your face.”

“This is why we never introduce my farfar to technology,” Bael muttered to Jillian.

Dani nodded. “Probably the right idea.”

Trudy must have pulled the phone out of Grandad’s ear and positioned it in front of his face. His eyes lit up at the sight of his granddaughter. “Well, hey there, Dani-Girl! . . . And a bunch of other folks. Who are your friends?”

“Dani-Girl?” Zed whispered, only to have Dani elbow him in the belly.

The introductions were made again, and once Grandad realized that Zed had his arm around Dani’s shoulders, the questions began.

Grandad asked, “How old are you, son?”

Jillian grimaced, glancing at the two shifters, who sometimes forgot that humans didn’t live well into their two hundreds. But Zed answered smoothly, “Just a few years older than Dani.”

“And how long have you been dating my Dani?”

Zed, suddenly realizing this was the equivalent to a relationship job interview straightened up his posture and began speaking in a much more serious tone of voice. “Long enough to know I’m not going to let her go any time soon.”

Grandad nodded in what could be mistaken for approval, but his eyes narrowed and he asked, “Do you have a job, with all that hair flying everywhere?”

“Yes, sir, I’m the mayor of Mystic Bayou, have been for almost two years. Our budget is small, but balanced. Our high school graduation rates are high and we keep our taxes low.”

Grandad raised a fluffy gray eyebrow. “The mayor? With a beard that long?”

“You should have seen the other guy,” Zed offered.

Grandad stared at the screen incredulously for a half a beat, threw his head back and laughed. “That’s a good one. All right, boy, good for you for not letting an old man push you around. So I take it that you might be staying on in this town for a while, Dani?”

“For the foreseeable future. I’m thinking about taking a permanent job with the,” Dani paused and added, “tourist commission here in town.”

“Well, it will be nice to know where we can find you for a while. Even if it is far away, at least it’s in the same country.”

Dani checked the surrounding sidewalks to make sure everybody was in human form and behaving relatively “normal” for Mystic Bayou. “Do you want to see it?”

Grandad nodded. “Sure!”