Chapter 12
Pete had already been on his way back to the bookstore when Abby came out to get him: shifter hearing meant he could pick up on the rising voices inside, and shifter scenting, which he rarely noticed when in human form, told him that Shanti's stress levels were skyrocketing.
Now she was staring at him in bewilderment across the bookstore, where Sabrina Keep sat on the floor and two of the three redheaded women who owned the place were inside, looking pained.
Abby squeezed past him and joined her sisters, her expression also pained.
"What's a shifter?" Shanti demanded. "I don't even know what that means!"
"Shifters are people who can—we turn into animals.
" Pete had never tried explaining this, and discovered immediately that it was even more difficult than he'd expected.
"Not any animal. One each. I can't show you because I'm too big for this space, but…
there are a lot of shifters in Virtue, Shanti. It's a haven town for our kind."
"People don't turn into animals," Shanti said blankly.
All four women ducked their heads and smiled, with Sabrina muttering, "That's what I thought, too," before Abby said, "What are you?" to Peter.
"A grizzly. You wouldn't want me to shift in here." Particularly since he was still standing in the doorway and would very possibly get stuck in it.
Shanti's voice shot up. "A grizzly? Are you kidding? Of course you're kidding—"
Abby made an apologetic gesture toward Peter and shifted into an enormous pale blonde tabby cat with very faintly red markings.
Shanti shrieked and her knees cut out, sending her to the floor with a thump.
Pete jolted a couple of steps toward her, but she thrust a hand up, palm out, stopping him.
Abby prowled forward until she could peer around the edge of the check-out desk at Shanti, who, save for trembling slightly, sat very still as she stared at the cat blinking at her.
After an exchange of glances, the other two redheads also shifted, Hannah into an equally large, very orange tabby with distinct white striping, and Zim into an absolutely huge almost-black cat whose fur glinted with red in the undercoat.
Pete blurted, "Oh, wow, you're actually house cats," and all three of them turned gold-and-green-eyed glares at him.
His bear, cautiously, said, If we swat them now they can't be scary, and despite the considerable tension in the bookstore, Pete chuckled.
We're not swatting them at all.
His bear mumbled about cats puffing up and hissing and generally being alarming, but it didn't argue with him.
Which was good, because Hannah's expression in particular invited him to try it.
After a moment, though, she followed Abby around the check-out desk, and then so did Zim, so Shanti could see all three of them clearly.
Sabrina, sitting almost directly across from Shanti on the other side of the bookstore, next to the door, said, "I didn't believe it either," apologetically. "Luke's a bunny."
The cats all swiveled their heads to give Sabrina scolding looks, but then returned their attention to Shanti, whose dark eyes were huge as they darted from the cats to Peter, to Sabrina, back to the cats over and over, as if she was trying to process what she'd seen.
After a minute she waved her fingers in a feeble circle at the cats.
Abby shifted back to human, still sitting on the floor beside her sisters.
Shanti shrieked again, pulling her knees up and stomping her feet against the floor.
"Fair," Abby said. "I know it's a little weird. And I wouldn't usually have done that, but I really didn't want a grizzly bear in the shop and I don't think you're going to tell anybody anyway."
"Who would even believe me?"
"Yes," Abby said. "There's that, too."
"You're all—" Shanti's gaze was now bouncing between Abby and her two still-cat-shaped sisters. "You're all huge. But also not big enough?"
"It's the magic," Abby said. "Something about the mass conversion. Almost all shifter animals are bigger than their true counterparts, which is another reason I don't want a grizzly shifting in the shop. Are you okay?"
Shanti jerked her attention to Pete, who smiled nervously at her, then winced as she said, "This is what you were talking about! With the moose!"
"It is. I actually thought for a minute, right at the beginning, that you knew about shifters."
She stared at him, clearly running through their conversations, then bared her teeth in a much more aggressive expression than he'd ever seen from her, though he thought it was really more exasperation than aggression.
"When I said about the deer and the car wreck.
You said something like, oh so you know, but then I didn't and this is what you meant! "
"It is," Pete said a bit shamefacedly. "But I couldn't explain it then, either."
"Because I'd never believe it without seeing it." Shanti slid her fingers into her hair and tugged at it, leaving tufts of short curls standing every which way. "How many…wait, where's Luke?"
Sabrina bounced to her feet. "I'll go get him.
" She scurried out the door, and the rest of them just…
waited. Pete had no idea what to say, and couldn't shift in the shop without making a mess of everything.
The two women who were still cats obviously couldn't say anything, and Abby appeared content to wait while Shanti's gaze roved from one to another of them.
It felt like a long time, although it probably wasn't more than a minute or two, before Sabrina returned, a befuddled Luke in tow.
"Sabrina said it was an emergency? Oh, jeez! Shanti! Are you okay?"
"Are you a bunny?" Shanti was still on the floor, but she lifted both hands this time, palms out again. "No, wait, are you the bunny? The one who does the Easter stuff in the square?"
"Uh." Luke blinked a couple of times. "Um, yes, I'm a bunny, but no, not usually. That's usually my sister. You." His gaze darted to Pete and his eyebrows went up. "Oh I see."
"You see what?" Shanti demanded. "No, wait, never mind, first tell me how many people we went to high school with could turn into bunnies!"
"Hardly any of us? Just my family. But about a quarter of our class were shifters, if that's what you're really asking?"
Shanti said, "Oh my God," and put her face in her hands. "How did I not know this?"
"Well, we don't really advertise it…"
"No, I know, I just…" Shanti fell silent and Pete had to fight the urge to hurry over and scoop her up protectively.
This was not how he'd imagined explaining he was a shifter.
Not that he'd had a clear plan, but this definitely was not it.
All he wanted was to keep her safe and happy, and maybe to apologize until the end of time for handling this badly, but she was obviously still processing and he wasn't sure it would help to try to be a hero of some kind right now.
Hannah, in cat form, leaped gracefully up onto the checkout counter, then shifted to human still sitting there.
Zim rolled her eyes and stalked to the back of the bookshop, disappearing through a door.
Apparently she'd had enough drama for the moment.
"Okay," Shanti finally said into her palms, and looked up again. "Okay, you see what? You said, 'oh I see.'"
A brief, loud silence filled the bookstore before Luke said, "That one's for Peter here to handle, sorry."
"Peter?"
He stepped forward, heart thumping nervously.
He definitely had not planned to explain fate in front of other people, but nothing was going according to plan anyway.
To his surprise and relief, though, Shanti put her hand up so he could help her to her feet.
Her fingers were cold, but she'd had quite a shock.
And it's winter, his bear reminded him. She doesn't have a fur coat.
That was true, although she was still bundled up in her winter gear. Her fingers warmed up quickly in Pete's hand, and she didn't pull away, though her expression was searching and uncertain as she studied him. After a moment, she said, "Maybe we should take it outside?"
On one hand, not explaining fate in front of several other people seemed great. On the other, Pete wasn't sure walking down a snowy sidewalk was the right place for it either. On the third, it would be a very awkward silent walk to anywhere else, too, if he didn't address it once they were outside.
Regardless of how many hands of choice there were, he nodded. "That sounds good, I think."
Shanti shot a nervous smile toward Hannah, who was still sitting on the checkout counter. "I'll come back to shelve books later?"
"It's okay if 'later' is in two days," Hannah said with a wry smile. "You might need time to process."
"I've never processed so hard in my life," Shanti said equally wryly.
Without taking her hand from Pete's, she led him from the bookshop, then stopped on the boardwalk, looking up and down it uncertainly before saying, "I get the idea that maybe we should go somewhere private-ish to talk?
I live a couple blocks away and that seems… "
"You've just had a lot thrown at you," Pete said hastily. "If you'd rather I didn't know where you lived right now, that's fine, I get that."
"What? No." She turned a startled glance up at him. "No, I was going to say, that seems better than, I don't know, going to a cafe? Not least because I'm full of doughnuts and don't think I could even manage to drink a cup of coffee right now."
Sheer relief swept Peter. If Shanti didn't mind showing him where she lived, she was probably adapting okay.
Which was what was supposed to happen, but it turned out that knowing fated mates usually adapted easily was very very different from experiencing the moment where they had to.
Sure, everybody else's mates adapted, but what if his didn't?
Then she wouldn't be your mate, and she is, his bear said.
That's logic and logic doesn't have anything to do with freaked-out emotion, Pete told it, half-severely and half laughing at himself.
His bear certainly agreed that he was freaking out. It, however, was entirely calm, which helped a little. It let Pete take a deep breath and smile at Shanti. "That sounds good, if you're sure you're okay with it."
"I am. I don't…well, we'll talk when we get there. But I'm okay. Come on. It's just this way." She led him down the stairs at the end of the boardwalk and across the street, then past the courthouse to turn right into what became a residential area almost immediately.
"This is a nice town," Pete said without really meaning to. "It's so well laid-out. Everything's so central. Shkalnik is spread out all over the place."
Shanti smiled. "I read once that older East Coast towns are built like European towns because the settlers here hadn't gotten their heads around the idea of how much space there was to expand into, and that the farther west they went, the more spread out things became.
I don't know if it's true but I liked the idea.
That, and Virtue specifically was planned around that huge town square.
" She fell silent as they walked up another block, and then passed her hand over her face.
"A huge town square which was probably on purpose for all the… people like you?"
Her voice softened and his heart went out to her, appreciating that she'd done what shifters always did: avoided referring to themselves by the shifter name where there was the slightest chance of being overheard.
"Maybe, but it's just a big field, which wouldn't provide any kind of cover, so I'm not sure.
Maybe they just liked huge town squares. "
"It used to be wooded, though. For centuries, apparently.
It was cleared a long time ago—long enough for the gazebo to have been here more than a hundred years—but it did used to have trees.
And they're putting them back, now. This is me.
" She turned up a driveway to a pretty little two-story house with a veranda and steps leading up to it that had grown slightly tilted with age.
The drive led past the house itself to a two-car garage nearer to the back of the lot, snuggled into trees there, and the whole place looked comfortable and cozy.
"This is nice," he said with admiration.
Shanti nodded as she led him up the front steps and opened the door, gesturing him inside an equally cozy interior.
A staircase rose against the wall only a few steps in front of the door, and a living room that clearly hadn't been updated since the nineties spread out to the left.
"Thanks. It's a good little house. Sorry for the mess. "
It wasn't nearly as bad as the word 'mess' suggested, but it wasn't sparklingly tidy, either. "It looks lived-in, that's all."
And it did: there were big, heavily-cushioned couches with pillows and quilts thrown over them, and an older television than Pete had seen in years, and a bulky wooden coffee table that looked like it could withstand a hurricane that was covered in books, magazines, and papers.
Shanti closed the front door and stood there staring at the living room a moment before exhaling. "You really turn into a bear?"
"I really do." Pete gestured at the coffee table. "If I pushed that out of the way there'd be room, if you want me to show you?"
"I think I have to see it," Shanti said quietly. "I watched those women turn into cats, and that was a lot, but…bears are big. Even black bears are big. I've never seen a…did you say grizzly?"
"Grizzlies are much bigger than black bears, and shifter grizzlies are even bigger than that," Pete said almost apologetically. "Is it okay if I move the table?"
"It's fine, it slides easily even if it's made divots in the carpet." Shanti moved as if to help him, but Pete pushed the table out of the way and took a couple of steps back, gauging the size of the space. It was big enough, but he wouldn't want to try anything much beyond standing there.
"Ready?"
A ghost of a smile flickered over Shanti's face. "I doubt it."
There wasn't much Pete could say to that, so he just shifted into a bear.