Chapter 5
FIVE
REED
I sat cross legged in the chair and shivered despite the small heater while my brain caught up with what I'd witnessed. But what had I seen?
Antlers had emerged from Roscoe’s head? The events of the past few weeks and months had taken their toll and I was hallucinating. I guffawed because it reminded me of the ones sales assistants and wait staff wore during the Christmas season. But his weren’t multi-colored with bells or tinsel.
And now all eyes were on me as my giggles subsided.
Roscoe’s antlers seemed so real. I couldn’t make sense of it.
“Okay.” I was shaking and I was glad I was sitting. “Not like me. That’s what you said. How ‘not like me’ are we talking?”
“Reed, I understand how this must look—”
I cut him off because I doubted he did understand. “Antlers blossomed from your head like plants in slow motion at the beginning of spring.” My words made sort of sense in my head.
“Are you a-afraid?” His voice wobbled.
Huh. He was asking me if I was scared and yet of the two of us, he was the one exhibiting fear as his mouth tightened.
“No. I'm overwhelmed and everything in my head, the knowledge and experience, are blending together like play dough and melting. But I’m not afraid of you because you’re you.” I took a deep breath because if ever I needed more oxygen in my lungs, this was it.
Roscoe sent Zelda a glance but she shrugged. Yeah, this was on him but he wasn’t talking.
“Are you going to reveal all or is this similar to twenty questions where I guess?”
“It’s unusual.”
It sounded like a disease and I worried that he was deathly ill. It reminded me of the books my aunt used to read where someone put a curse on another person.
“How unusual?” I needed a scale of one to infinity.
Roscoe didn’t respond and the seconds or minutes passed.
“A lot.”
Gosh it was hard dragging the details out of this guy.
“Okay. Will it make me question everything I thought I knew?”
“Yes.”
Leaning over, I raked my nails over the hard soil beneath the snow—it wasn’t sensible because I tore my nails—but I needed to feel grounded before Roscoe upended my world view.
But he wasn’t helping and I had to get this started because he looked as though he wanted to be anywhere but here.
I longed to whisper that it would be all right.
Maybe stick my tongue in his ear while I was at it.
“Why don't you start from the beginning.”
“I don't know where that is.”
Zelda rolled her eyes and I figured she’d explain but it had to come from Roscoe. Whatever it was, he needed to pluck up the courage and tell me.
“Why don’t you give me an explanation for what I just saw?” I kept my voice even, the same tone I used when one of the trees was struggling and needed extra attention. “Because I'm pretty sure people don't normally grow antlers.”
I studied his profile, noting his jaw that was now its normal shape. Not that I knew what normal was anymore.
“So what is it?” I wanted to say what are you but didn’t want my question to sound like an accusation.
Roscoe was silent for so long I suspected he’d changed his mind about telling me. Was I supposed to go on with my day and accept the man I lusted after was able to grow antlers and retract them? That was a huge ask.
“I’m a reindeer shifter.”
He spoke but the words made no sense. I was familiar with reindeer and they had antlers but what in the heck was a shifter?
“Can you give me more details?” Anything, because I was grappling with a concept I couldn’t grasp.
“A reindeer shifter,” he repeated. “As in I have a reindeer inside me.”
Now I wished I hadn’t asked. How was that possible? And besides, I’d seen reindeer up close. No way would one fit inside him. It would be so squishy.
I did the rolling thing with my hand, telling him to keep talking.
“I’m not human.” He looked around at his family. “None of us is. We’re all reindeer shifters. We can shift between our human form and our reindeer.”
I let that sink in. He’d just told me he and the others weren’t human.
I was surrounded by people and I was the only human.
I didn’t expect that when I woke up this morning.
Thinking back to Aunt Mollie saying magic was real and we could make our own magic, I used to interpret that as we could make things happen if we believed in ourselves.
Opps. Was I wrong? Literally, magic was real and I was maybe the first human on earth to witness it.
“So what happened to the reindeer? I saw the antlers? Where’d he go?” I looked around. I couldn’t have missed a huge wild beast gallivanting off. And how did he get back in?
“I was triggered into a partial shift. I lost control because when I’m stressed or experiencing powerful emotions neither my reindeer nor I can stop the shift.”
Something caused him to show me what was inside his body.
Maybe he was stressed about money, cause they’d given me a chunk, or that the barn wouldn’t be ready by Christmas.
While I couldn’t put myself in his place, I understood how stress affected you.
It colored the world in shades of gray instead of the rainbows.
My stress had been alleviated by the lease money but now I wondered if I should have charged more.
He rambled about shifters, packs, and shifter councils and how shifters lived among humans.
That was a lot to deal with and I’d wrestle with the implications later, but why was a shifter pack leasing my land?
Surely, they didn’t come because they wanted to buy Christmas trees and get in line before everyone else?
“And someone stealing your land, was that a fib?”
There was a resounding no from everyone. Okay. I got that.
The pieces started clicking into place. "And the urgency about getting settled before Christmas?”
“We needed to find a permanent home by Christmas Eve because some of our pack members are on call for special duties that night. And other things.”
“What?” I screeched but everyone put a finger to their lips. Damn, I had to wait until the day before Christmas. I ignored the ‘other things’ reference because my head would explode with more information.
But instead of going home to bed, I pressed on. “You came here prepared to negotiate a lease agreement, but you ran out of my office as if you were being chased and today you almost shifted. What caused that?”
“You changed everything,” he said, though his voice rose at the end of the sentence. “You and your ridiculous love for these trees. You made it impossible to see this as just a business transaction.”
The words hit me like a series of huge waves, and my heart did that pitter patter thing I hadn’t experienced in years. “Roscoe.”
“I was supposed to be professional and complete the transaction and leave." His head drooped and his face was smeared with confusion. "But you offered me terrible coffee and talked to your trees as if they were your children.”
Me? I was the one who’d messed with his head and maybe other parts of him? Hope stirred inside me. Was his behavior that of a typical shifter when they met someone with a little flare? One who was a tad quirky like my aunt?
Our eyes locked and we stared at one another. Time passed and neither of us moved. I sensed a new connection between us but that could have been because I was the only person who knew about shifters. But I so wanted it to be more.
He broke the spell and said I should process what had happened. I asked him to stay close and it was then I discovered the rest of the group, or I guessed the pack, had drifted away.
I ran over to Noelle and she waved her branches. I confided in her that the guy I fancied was magic. “He’s adorable, right? Do you like him too? Do you think Doug does?”
The tree rustled and I suspected she and all the trees whose ancestors had stood on the land for centuries had witnessed shifters changing to their animal form and passed that knowledge down.
Maybe that was what Aunt Mollie had talked about. She said this place was special, but especially during that one Christmas when the reindeer appeared.
“She knew about the magic.” A gust of wind swept through the farm, setting all the trees to singing and I blinked away tears of both joy and sadness, wishing I could hug her.
“I love how you talk to them.” Roscoe was at my shoulder. He was so close, if I turned around, our faces would be inches apart. “But I should go.”
“No!” Yikes, that was too loud. “No, I need a favor. Am I allowed to see all of you?” I clarified with, “Your reindeer. Not, you know…” Gods, I should learn when to shut up. But I did want to see the rest of him.
“I can do that.”
Shoot, he was getting naked. My face burned and I told myself to look away.
I imagined the trees covering their eyes with their branches.
I slapped both hands over my face but peeked between my fingers.
Oh my! He was… well… he was… I had no words to describe what I was seeing. I gulped and fanned my face.
Where the man had been standing, there was now a magnificent reindeer. This creature was more regal than any animal I'd seen in nature documentaries and the creature’s dark eyes were similar to Roscoe’s when he was serious.
“Holy shit.”
The transformation back to human form was just as smooth and within moments, Roscoe was standing in front of me again, pulling his clothes on, but not before I took a good look at what was between his legs.
“So.” I was trying to think of what to say that didn’t include the words cock, dick, or length. “That's not something you see every day.”
My face flamed again and I flapped the air with one hand wanting to shove those words inside me. “A reindeer. You don’t see reindeers every day.” Except he did. He was one and so was his family. Ahhh!
“Thank you for not freaking out.”
“The day's still young,” I said with a grin, and was rewarded with one of Roscoe's smiles. Lucky me.