2. Alan
2
ALAN
A lan was ready for anything the day care could throw at him.
He’d read seven thick books on various childcare methodologies, gone through child-specific CPR and aced his certification in pediatric emergency trauma care. He’d practiced changing diapers on the infant dummies, timing himself until he got the process down to forty-two seconds. It helped that dummies didn’t struggle, and he knew that it wouldn’t be so simple in real life, because he wasn’t a complete idiot.
But Alan was not prepared for Tiny Paws.
He’d worked on construction sites, witnessed building detonations, and spent plenty of time in shooting galleys. He’d been in active combat, hunkered down listening to massive bombs take out nearby neighborhoods. He’d shot powerful weapons without ear protection or armor to absorb recoil.
Tiny Paws was louder, and arguably more chaotic and full of destruction.
The day care for shifters was located in a historical downtown district behind the false front of an old saloon of dubious authenticity. Alan arrived punctually and was buzzed in at the door. He obeyed the edicts of a cartoon bear poster that admonished him to take off his boots, stepped easily over the baby gate into the back room, and froze in horror.
It was not a large room, but it was absolutely swimming in children. Someone was screaming bloody murder, there was an off-key chorus of a song that Alan vaguely recognized but couldn’t place, a baby was crying, and everyone else was either yelling, babbling at the top of their lungs, or pounding on something. There appeared to be a percussion band practice going on; what order there was in the room was a gray-haired woman leading a drum circle on a big rainbow rug with letters and pictures in the short pile. Some of the drums were tin cans being hammered with mallets. A scooter toy making dying siren noises was being argued over by two older girls. A stack of blocks was being gleefully demolished as rapidly as it rose.
Weirdest of all, the entire room was an electric tingle of shifter recognition, like every one of his nerves was on fire.
Alan’s raven was enthralled and delighted.
Alan, on the other hand, was having serious doubts about this assignment.
A woman sitting in a rocking chair with a baby spotted him and rose awkwardly to her feet. It took Alan a solid moment to realize that it wasn’t just that she was impeded by the wriggling infant, but that she was pregnant.
“You must be Alan!” she said cheerfully. “I’m Addison.” Somehow, her voice managed to carry over the underlying din without having to shout.
Alan strode to meet her. Stocking feet felt unfamiliar and awkward; he was used to work boots in the summer and snow boots in the winter.
“Alan Petrov,” he said gravely as she juggled the baby in order to offer her hand.
Addison wasn’t just pregnant, she was a caricature of pregnant, so round and waddling that Alan was almost afraid to shake her hand. How was that baby still inside of her? Would it fall out if she sneezed?
Try it , his raven suggested. Sprinkle pepper!
You’ve watched too many cartoons, Alan told him. We are not going to try to induce labor with spices.
“Three weeks to go,” Addison said easily, after he’d very gingerly given her hand a tiny squeeze. When Alan started to sputter an apology, she laughed. “It’s everyone’s first question. You get used to it!”
Alan chuckled reluctantly. The general noise and the static of instinct in the room made it hard to concentrate.
“Tell me about your experience with kids,” Addison said, bouncing the baby over to one hip with ease. If her belly was not distracting enough, her breasts were enormous. It wasn’t that Alan was attracted to them, but he was rather awed and had to force himself to look anywhere else… just in time to watch a boy scale a bookshelf and stand up on top of it.
“I can fly!” the boy cried, and without thinking, Alan automatically moved to intercept him…just in case he actually couldn’t.
The boy launched himself from the shelf and Alan had to take three swift steps and a jump, dodging small, shrieking obstacles as he reached for the leaping child. He caught a leathery soccer ball in midair and twisted so that he didn’t fall on any of the children, barely saving his balance with a final swivel that had him standing upright, scared to move for fear of squashing someone small.
Several of the children applauded and one of them burst into tears.
“Gil,” Addison said reproachfully as she waddled up. “That’s an outdoor activity! We don’t climb the furniture. Fingers and feet, right now!”
The ball, which was actually a curled-up armadillo with a little flex left to its youthful armor, gave a mutter of protest, unrolled, and turned into a boy, limbs sticking out everywhere.
Alan carefully set him down.
“GREAT CATCH!” Gil exclaimed, grinning. “Can we do it AGAIN?”
“Gil,” Addison chided.
“OUTSIDE!” Gil suggested at full volume. “Can we do it OUTSIDE?”
“Maybe after lunch,” Addison said firmly. “This is Mr. Petrov.”
“HI MISTER PEED OFF.”
“PeeTROFF,” Alan said helplessly.
There was a little chorus of mispronunciations of his name, and Alan realized that he was very firmly the object of everyone’s attention.
“They can call me Alan,” he told Addison uncertainly, but “Peed Off” had already taken fire across the room. The kids old enough to find it funny were laughing, and the younger children were giggling just to go along with it.
He’d done plenty of public speaking, but Alan never had an audience like this. They stared at him without even trying not to stare.
The gray haired woman gave up trying to keep the band together and left her drumsticks to rise gracefully to her feet.
“Nice to meet you, Alan,” she said warmly as she approached, impeded by two shy children who clung to her calves. “I’m Cherry. Thanks so much for coming to help us out.”
To Alan’s surprise, Cherry was not a shifter. There was not the slightest tingle of magic from her, even when they shook hands. She had a soft, tolerant look to her, like everything was amusing and she was a breath away from breaking into laughter. Maybe she was particularly tickled by Alan’s new nickname.
Cherry dumped him into story time, which was less about reading and more about fielding questions that had nothing to do with the book.
“Is that your real hair?” one girl asked after raising her hand but not waiting to be called on. One of the littler kids had simply climbed into his lap and taken double handfuls to test its authenticity.
“That is indeed my hair,” Alan answered gravely. “The next day, the caterpillar…”
“Why is it long?” a boy asked. He put his hand up belatedly. “Are you a girl?”
“He’s a MISTER,” Gil volunteered. “Mister PEED OFF.”
“I wear my hair long to respect my ancestors,” Alan said, choosing to ignore Gil’s well-meant help. Despite his efforts to have the kids call him Alan, or Teacher Alan or even Mr. Alan, Mr. Peed Off had stuck. His attempts to correct the pronunciation (PeeTROFF) were met with helpless giggles.
His raven wasn’t helping matters, echoing the nickname with a cackle of laughter every time it was used.
Are you mad about it? his raven taunted. Are you PEED OFF??
By the end of the book, he had two kids curled in his lap and a third was leaning fearlessly over his shoulder to see the pictures before anyone else.
One of them tried to take his phone from his pocket, and found the carved antler raven he kept there.
Besides being magical, it was small enough to swallow, and the phone was expensive, so Alan took them both back, rubbing the well-worn back of the raven out of habit before putting both items up out of reach on a shelf that Cherry knowingly pointed out.
When the book was finished, he was immediately recruited into games of pretend.
“You be baby!” one girl tried to convince him. “I’m your mom!” The actual babies in the day care wanted no part of this game and no one would let her carry them around.
“He has to be a MONSTER!” Gil protested.
“MONSTER!” another child echoed.
“I’m a monster!” Alan roared, gleefully getting into the game. “I’m a big, terrible, mean monster and I’m going to get away with all your toys if you don’t stop me!”
They dogpiled him, five to one, which might have been very unfair if he wasn’t ten times their size and strength. He pretended to stagger when they clung to his legs and climbed to his arms, and gently kept them from getting too rough. “Catch me, don’t hit me!”
“You’re a bad guy!” one of them insisted.
“I’m a pretend bad guy,” Alan clarified. “No hitting.” It felt ironic to say so. How many times had he hit first and asked questions after?
He came to an abrupt stop and had to catch both his breath and Gil, who toppled forward off his shoulder into his arms.
“HI AMY!” Gil hollered, hanging upside down.
There was a woman standing just beyond the gate, a child in her arms who straddled the boundary between baby and toddler. The girl was adorable, but the woman was absolutely arresting, with brilliant blue eyes in a pale face framed in short, golden curls.
Alan wasn’t sure which of them was Amy until Gil added enthusiastically, “HI AMY’S MOM! I’M UPSIDE DOWN!”
Alan rotated Gil and set him down, completely ignoring the other children clinging to him as he strode forward. He would have guessed it would be impossible to feel instinct underneath the hum of all the nearby shifter children, but it was burning now, like a magnetic draw. Be here, be now.
“Hello, Gil,” Amy’s mom said, but she didn’t look at the little boy at all. She was staring back at Alan like she couldn’t help it. “Are you supposed to be here?” Her voice was suspicious.
Alan wasn’t sure there was anywhere else in the world that he could possibly be at this moment. “I’m Alan,” he said gravely, which didn’t really answer the question.
“MISTER PEED OFF!” Gil volunteered.
Amy’s mom chuckled at that.
“ Petrov ,” Alan said, mortified. “Alan Petrov.” His raven only chortled.
“I’m Kendra,” she said with a cautious smile. “Kendra ‘Amy’s mom’ Emerson. Is…Addison here? Or Cherry?”
“Cherry’s in back with Shea,” Alan told her.
“And Addison was peeing,” the person in question said, coming up from behind Alan. “I will be so happy to have this baby off my bladder.”
“PEED OFF!” the children chorused.
“You’ve met Alan PEEtrov, ” Addison said, flashing Alan a sympathetic look. “He’s helping out at Tiny Paws for a little while.”
Kendra’s look was definitely skeptical, and she didn’t immediately offer to pass Amy over the gate. Alan felt his raven fluff in affront. Wasn’t instinct telling her that he was safe? Sudden doubt stabbed at him. Was it possible he was unsafe? A fighter’s instincts weren’t always appropriate for nurturing. He was here to protect the children, but was he really the best choice?
Kendra seemed to make up her mind, and she nodded courteously and passed the sunny-haired child to Addison. “I feel like I should wish you luck,” she said wryly to Alan.
“He’s done great so far,” Addison said warmly, bouncing Amy in her arms. Amy stared at Alan with the same reserve as her mother did, eyes round with stranger danger, clutching at Addison. “We threw him right in the deep end, and he’s changed two diapers so far and not dropped anybody.”
“HE CAUGHT ME!” Gil explained. “CAN YOU CATCH ME MORE?”
“Maybe after lunch,” Alan suggested. He realized rather belatedly that the children who had been clinging to his legs had given up on coaxing him back to play and had wandered back to the toys while he stared at Kendra like a loon.
Like a raven, his bird corrected. Ravens are better than loons.
Addison walked away with Gil pestering her. “When is lunch? Is it now? What will I get to eat?” Amy waved back over her shoulder at her mother.
And Kendra and Alan were still in a weird standoff over the gate.
“Amy’s an owl, right?” Alan said, exactly as Kendra said, “So, Amy’s an owl.”
They both laughed. “I am, too,” Kendra said warily, and Alan wondered if her cheeks weren’t slightly pink. It could still be from coming in out of the cold.
“Raven,” Alan said, offering the same trust in return. He was already realizing that working in a day care required a certain amount of necessary transparency, but mostly he wanted to tell her.
Give her something shiny , his raven suggested, when Alan cast about for something else to say or do. STEAL IT FOR HER.
“I’m not doing that,” Kendra muttered, and Alan realized she must have been talking with her owl at the same time. “Sorry,” she added. “I’m getting terrible advice right now.”
“Birdbrain is a definite thing,” Alan agreed. “I’m being advised to pick up a life of crime and shoplift you some diamonds or something.”
SHINY, his raven repeated.
“Diamonds are better than the dead rodents my owl is suggesting,” Kendra giggled.
Alan’s raven perked up. Dead rodents are delicious.
“I’m not eating mice,” Alan insisted.
“And I’m not going to be an accessory to crime,” Kendra countered.
They both smiled at each other, a little foolishly, Alan feared.
“So, have you been a…ah…nursery aid for very long?”
“Is my incompetence showing?” Alan asked in a whisper.
“You seemed to have them well in hand. And arm. And leg,” Kendra said. She was definitely blushing now, and Alan’s raven was delighted. “But the hair looks like a career hazard.”
“I am thinking about cutting it before tomorrow,” Alan confessed.
“Don’t you dare!” Kendra seemed to realize belatedly how loudly she said it. “Sorry, I have no right to say that.”
Alan was shallowly pleased by her vehemence and he couldn’t quite keep himself from preening. “It’s okay…”
“No, I’m mortified that I said it,” Kendra said fiercely. “You do with your head whatever you want to. I hated it when people told me to grow my hair out. It’s so presumptive, and it’s absolutely awful of me to do it to someone else.”
Alan later recognized that as the very moment he fell helplessly in love with her.