Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8

N o one could possibly be expected to handle the Collins with as much grace as Aoife was managing, Elliott thought. He didn't think he could manage the line she was straddling, between 'competent professional' and 'not a complete pushover' with a side of 'oh, I see, this is how you all are.'

A queen must know how to fight her rivals, his lion said proudly. Our mate understands that some battles are only fought by the weak. The human queen is no match for our lioness. When will we mate and have cubs?

Not right now!

The lion lay down on its belly with the air of a tremendously disappointed cat, and emphasized its point by folding its front paws over one another. It was so effective Elliot almost felt guilty. We hardly know each other! I haven't even told her about fated mates yet! We can't just start having kittens right away!

She smells good when she is near us, the lion said with regal confidence. She will want to have cubs with us soon. It emphasized the cubs , making it clear Elliott should not mistake something as magnificent as an infant lion for a silly kitten .

That was not, Elliott decided, the hill to die on. Especially when the topic was whether they were having babies or not. Soon, maybe, but not right now ! h e repeated.

Truthfully, right now, watching Aoife deal with a kid who was obviously spoiled rotten, Elliott was torn between thinking possibly he personally never, ever, ever wanted to have kittens—er, kids—at all, and thinking Aoife would be a natural at parenting. She'd made Molly happy with a soft-serve ice cream cone dipped in strawberry goo and sprinkled liberally with tiny bright bits of candy. She'd made Molly's mother happy by spoiling the kid a little.

She had also then made everybody else happy by surprising them all with ice cream, although none of the others were quite as elaborate as Molly's towering, swirling cone. Kanvas had returned from communing with the capybaras and received hers with as much delight as Molly had shown, and the two businessmen looked sheepishly pleased at their own.

Only Ms. Collins refused hers. Aoife stood there a moment, two cones in her hands and an expression of genuine surprise and slight hurt on her face. Elliott's lion growled, although it might have been Elliott himself. The human woman is not a kind queen, the lion said. Her pride will suffer for it.

Elliott thought Ms. Collins's pride , like, her self-satisfaction, might be unassailable. But her pride in the way the lion meant it, her family and those whom she was responsible for…well, the lion was absolutely right about that. Poor Molly already was suffering for it, even if she didn't know it. Limits are important, the lion said. Cubs must learn this, or they may be killed and eaten by hyenas.

"'Never go to the elephants' graveyard,'" Elliott mumbled, fairly sure he was misquoting the line. His lion, which had loved 'The Lion King' when Elliott was small, nodded solemnly.

Aoife looked around at the various people eating their ice cream cones. Elliott could see her considering whether she should offer the extra one to him. His lion perked up. We are large. We require more sweetened milk products than everyone else.

He was about to nobly volunteer to eat the extra cone when a sly look came over Aoife's face and she went to Molly, extending the second ice cream. "Hey, Molly. Your mom didn't want hers. Want another?"

That will make the cub sick, the lion said with mild concern.

Elliott grinned. It'll probably just make her really bouncy from the sugar. But we're more than halfway done going around the park now. She might not get hyperactive until she leaves with her mom and is stuck in a car.

Ah, the lion said wisely. A lesson for the inattentive queen to pay attention to her pride. Our lioness is clever .

Molly took the second cone with the look of a tweenager who had just been handed two ice cream cones, beaming from one to the other. She ran back to ask for sprinkles and chocolate on the new one, and the person behind the cart, with an air of long-suffering patience, gave her what she wanted.

Aoife said, " Grand ," with a huge, if slightly wicked, smile. "Shall we go on? I see there are lemurs and spider-monkeys out today." They headed for the large pond that Aoife had sped them by earlier, where a band of ring-tailed lemurs were lounging and grooming one another. One, sitting by itself and contemplating birds on the lake, glanced up at Elliott as he went by and gave him an obvious thumbs-up.

So there was at least one lemur shifter at the park. Elliott returned the thumbs-up and lifted his eyebrows, swirling a finger around the park at large as if in question.

The lemur shrugged. Either it didn't know if there were more shifters around, or couldn't communicate it without shifting. Elliott said, "Nice to meet you. See you around," and felt both the other men on tour give him weird looks. "You never know," Elliott said. "Never hurts to be polite."

Doug, the guy with the mustache, said, "There's that," but Graham, the tall thin one, kept looking at him like he was nuts.

"LEEEEMUUUUUUURS!" Molly barreled into the scene with an enthusiasm contained only by eleven-year-old girls. "Oh my gosh they're so CUTE!"

They really were: knee-height, with fluffy fur that was grey on their backs and white on their bellies, with the distinct black and grey rings around their tails, they were some of the cutest animals Elliott had ever seen.

And delicious, his lion suggested hopefully.

Even if they are, no !

For such a magnificent animal, the lion sulked remarkably well. Just one? They're small. They wouldn't notice.

They're small, but there are sixteen of them here, not including the shifter. I bet sixteen angry lemurs would be a lot harder to deal with than you'd like to imagine.

The lion imagined swatting them away like they were balls of paper, and for a few minutes Elliott was able to concentrate on eating his ice cream and on Aoife, while the lion bounced around inside his head, pouncing after its imaginary lemurs.

Aoife was talking about the lemurs, their habitat, their endangerment, and how their friendly, inquisitive nature was mostly because these particular lemurs were accustomed to human visitors. Apparently in the wild they were quite territorial and protective.

Several of them had sidled up to Molly, clearly eyeing the two ice cream cones she held. She realized it, and stepped back to hide under a tree, then scowled at Elliott. "How come they don't want your ice cream?"

"Probably because I'm much bigger than you are and only have one ice cream." And because he could shift into a huge, dangerous predator who thought the lemurs were just the right size for playing ping-pong with. "Oh, look up! Monkeys!"

Molly twisted, looking up in time to see a small white-masked and yellow-armed monkey reaching for her ice cream cone. She shrieked with laughter and pulled it away. "Hey! No way! My ice cream!"

Another monkey, looking entirely as if it was working in cahoots with the first, reached down and snatched the other ice cream from Molly's other hand. Even half-eaten, the ice cream was nearly as long as the monkey (not including the tail), and the little animal had quite a juggling act to get the comparatively huge treat up the tree with it. Molly screamed in outrage as every other monkey in the tree chattered gleefully and rushed up to join the thieving one, their long-fingered orange hands dipping into the soft ice cream with enthusiasm.

"And," Aoife was saying blandly, "the squirrel monkeys will absolutely steal your food if they can get within reach of it. Like the lemurs, these monkeys are accustomed to human interaction, and recognize a good snack when they see it. Of course, the wildlife park strongly discourages people from feeding them, but sometimes, the monkeys are quicker than we larger primates."

Molly was still screaming, tears rolling down her face. Her mother looked up from her tablet, a line of irritation drawn between her eyebrows. "Who is upsetting my daughter?"

"The monkeys, ma'am," Graham mumbled.

Ms. Collins turned an expectant gaze on him. "Then do something about it."

Sheer bewilderment crossed Graham's thin face. He looked up at the ice-cream-eating monkeys, a dozen feet above them in the tree, and looked back at Ms. Collins as if wondering what exactly she imagined he was going to do.

The bohemian woman, Kanvas, who had been watching the whole thieving incident with an ill-hidden grin, turned to Aoife. "Should we take our food back from the monkeys if they steal it?"

"Oh, goodness, no," Aoife replied very sincerely indeed. "First, that would probably make them aggressive, and while they're very small, they are certainly capable of defending themselves. But even more than that, who wants to eat food monkey fingers have been in?"

"B-buh-but my ice cream, " Molly wailed.

"You still have one," Aoife pointed out. "You're fine, and it was pretty clever of them, wasn't it? Do you think one distracted you so the other could take the second ice cream?"

"They shouldn't be allowed to dooooooo thaaaaaaaaat!"

"Oh!" Aoife smiled. "You mean, there are boundaries they shouldn't cross?"

"Y-yu-yuh-y—" Molly's response suddenly cut off as she realized what Aoife was doing. Her tears turned to a furious glare. "That's different !"

"You're right," Aoife said rather gently. "They're only monkeys with brains the size of a walnut. You're a bright young woman with an entire complex human brain to rely on. You're capable of a great deal more thought and compassion than they are, and I know this is an incident that will help you to remember that."

She will be good with cubs, the lion said admiringly. Elliott could only nod, although Molly looked furious, not mollified.

"I think I've seen quite enough," Cindy Collins said icily. "Come, Molly. We're leaving now."

Molly, who could apparently turn from one outrage to another on a dime, shrieked, "But I want to see the lion! The African lion!"

A sinking feeling went through Elliott's belly, although the other adults were mostly looking at Molly with faint, incredulous embarrassment. Elliott had a sister not much older than Molly, but she'd outgrown the kind of tantrums the little girl was displaying years ago. He guessed that was a result of Molly having been hopelessly spoiled. For a moment he actually felt sorry for the kid.

Then he went back to wondering how he was going to return to the enclosure so Molly could see the African lion, because he had no doubt her mother would agree. It amazed him that she could be so hard-nosed with her business and so soft with her kid, but he supposed parents came in all sorts, just like everybody else did.

"Fine," Collins said impatiently. "Where is this lion enclosure? Is it on the way back to the front gates?"

"We passed it earlier," Aoife said with a politely apologetic note in her voice. "I'm afraid the lion wasn't out right then."

She didn't quite look at Elliott, who was not quite looking at her, either. The lion had, of course, been out. Entirely out. Out of the enclosure entirely, wheedling a sulky tween along with the rest of the tour.

Cindy Collins actually said, " Ugh ," like a tv character might. Elliott had never heard anyone say it quite so theatrically before. He guessed Molly was coming by her dramatics naturally, although Ms. Collins had the advantage of age, and so presumably threw fewer actual tantrums. The CEO said, " Fine ," again. "Someone fetch a golf cart. I'm certainly not walking all the way around this place again."

Doug began to say, "It's not that far," but cut himself off at a warning look from Graham.

"Tell you what," Aoife said brightly, "why don't you go get a golf cart, Elliott? The rest of us can wait here for it."

She cocked her hip out. His gaze followed the line of it appreciatively, but he didn't have any idea why she was doing that until she also nudged her elbow against the small radio attached to her hip pocket. "Oh!" he said, much too loudly. "Oh, sure, yeah, I'll go tell them we need a golf cart!"

It was a good thing he wasn't an actor. That had been the worst delivery of a line since performance had been invented. But Aoife nodded encouragingly and Elliott, his heart racing, loped off to return to his enclosure.