3. Lucy

3

LUCY

L ucy hid while the strange boy searched the house for her. She could stay very still when she wanted to, and she was glad when he finally went outside, calling her name softly as he went.

She crept out from behind the radiator and darted into the living room to find Seltzer.

He was on top of the couch, absently licking one paw, and he looked up without much interest when Lucy scaled to the back and chattered at him. Daddy said that Seltzer was getting used to her , and apparently, getting used to her made him boring.

But Lucy was too close to her prize to stop now. She flicked her tail at Seltzer, teasing and taunting, inviting the chase.

She had played with Seltzer enough to know how to best torment him, and she pulled out all the stops now, coming close and then dashing away at just the right speed to get him to reach a paw out for her as if he couldn’t help himself, before he finally gave up on grooming himself and got to his feet to chase.

Seltzer caught her plenty, and he was always gentle, capturing her in soft paws and licking her with his sandpaper tongue. Lucy wasn’t afraid of him, no matter how much Daddy and Olivia warned her that she couldn’t tease too much, that he was a cat, that he might hurt her by accident. She could always turn into a little girl if he got rough.

Or set him on fire.

(But she wasn’t supposed to do that.)

Lucy darted and dashed and led him to the kitchen now, staying just out of his furry reach. She leapt up on the kitchen counter, pausing to let him get close before she dashed up the side of the fridge and chattered from the top.

It worked!

Seltzer followed like he couldn’t resist her flickering tail and taunting call, jumping straight from the counter to the top of the fridge, where Lucy had pushed the cookie jar to the very edge. She scaled the wall beyond it as Seltzer skidded on the slippery top of the fridge, and the jar tottered…and finally fell with a thunk to the floor. It didn’t break, but the lid fell off and made a crashing noise as it rolled across the tiles.

Score!!

“Lucy?”

Darius, his dark hair completely on end, stood in the doorway with something fluffy cupped in his hands. Something fluffy and mad .

It was a squirrel like her, but all gray and wild, without a person inside, and it escaped from Darius to streak across the kitchen table, dodging a chair before fleeing for the living room. Seltzer followed, already riled up for a good chase, and Lucy joined the fray as Darius yelped and grabbed for the broom.

It was the most fun that Lucy had ever had in her life.

The gray squirrel led a merry chase, up the curtains, over the couch, across the bookcase, under the chair. Seltzer was right behind, yowling and swiping with his paws. Lucy bounded after them, yelling her support for the strange squirrel and for Seltzer as she bounced happily off everything in the room. The table by the couch toppled over with a crash as Seltzer launched himself off of it and Lucy had to dodge a falling lamp.

The gray squirrel was momentarily trapped in a corner, hissing, before it leapt over Seltzer’s head for the curtains, which swung wildly with its weight. Seltzer leapt for it, twisting in the air, and nearly caught it, but the squirrel was too fast, climbing like its life depended on it. Seltzer’s claws snagged in the curtain and he dangled there until the fabric gave an ominous creak and began to tear. The squirrel stared angrily from the top of the curtain rod as Seltzer struggled free of the fabric, landed on his back, and rolled over to stare up in challenge, growling in the back of his throat.

Lucy hopped gleefully from the bookshelf to the couch and climbed higher. Maybe the new squirrel could be her sister. Was there a way to put a person in a creature if they didn’t have one?

Then Darius was there, swinging a broom right in the middle of everything. Seltzer yowled and fled down the hall, probably to hide under Lucy’s bed. The strange squirrel bolted for the far end of the curtain rod and leapt for the bookshelf. It froze when it found Lucy there, moving in scared, jerky intervals, like pages in a flipbook that were stuck together, then took a flying leap out into space.

The boy’s broom caught the squirrel midair, batting it down to the floor even as he apologized. “Sorry, buddy! Sorry, but you have to go!”

He chased it back into the kitchen and out the back door, which was still open. He slammed the door shut, and everything was quiet again.

“Lucy!” Darius had Daddy-voice, all firm and full of command, and Lucy froze and sheepishly peered down at him from the top of the bookshelf “Turn back into a little girl right now !”

Lucy gave one hopeful little chirp before she shifted, sitting with her legs dangling off the top shelf.

“Oh, for…”

Darius glared up at her as he dragged a chair to the bookshelf and climbed up to get her down, even though Lucy could have done it five hundred times quicker as a squirrel. He tucked her under one of his arms and clambered down to deposit her onto the couch. Then he turned back and poked the broom at Seltzer, who had come back out to see what was happening. The cat gave a meow of protest and went to sulk under the couch.

Lucy took the opportunity of Darius’s distraction with the cat to scramble off the couch and claim her real prize at last.

Score!

A lot of the cookies had broken on their tumble to the kitchen floor, but cookie pieces tasted just as good as whole ones and Lucy was happy to stuff them into her mouth as fast as possible, as many as she could before Darius came into the kitchen to frown down at her.

“You’re not supposed to shift,” he scolded her. “And you promised your dad you wouldn’t climb up on the fridge and get the cookies!”

“Sezzer knocked them down!” Lucy pointed out around her mouthful. “I just ate them.”

Darius stared at her like he was trying to understand her words. “You got the cat to chase you up the fridge to knock the cookies off so you could eat them without breaking your promise?”

“I promised,” Lucy repeated.

Darius sank down into Daddy’s chair and put his whole face in both hands like a cartoon, elbows on the table.

“Let’s babysit a shifter,” Darius said, though Lucy didn’t think that he was talking to her, exactly. “The money is good. Your little brother can teleport. How hard can it be?”

Lucy picked up a piece of broken cookie and got to her feet.

“Here!” she offered, thrusting it at him.

Darius opened his fingers and peered at her through them. “Is that a peace offering?” he asked.

“It’s a piece offing,” Lucy agreed. “A piece off of a cookie!”

Darius made a funny noise like Olivia did when she was trying not to laugh and then gravely accept the cookie shard. Lucy hopped back to her scattered treasure and gathered up as many crumbs as she could, stuffing them into her mouth when she could get no more in her hand.

“Let’s not eat them off the floor,” Darius said, sounding strangled. “That one is mostly dust bunny.”

Lucy looked at the cookie piece in question, which didn’t look like a bunny at all, but it did have a fuzzy from the dryer stuck to it. Darius helped her put all the biggest cookie pieces back in the jar and put the lid on. It was only a little dented, and he didn’t try to take away the pieces she had in her hands.

Then the jar was back up on the fridge and Darius was sweeping up the rest with the broom.

“We’re going to have dinner now,” he said, sounding weird, like he was still trying not to laugh. “And we will never speak of any of this again.”

That suited Lucy just fine. The cookies had tasted good, but now her mouth was dry and she felt a little queasy and guilty. Probably, she shouldn’t have teased Seltzer. She really wasn’t supposed to shift. And even if she’d won the cookies without breaking her promise, she knew that Daddy had meant for her not to eat them. She helped Darius set the end table upright and the lamp still turned on and off (Lucy tested it several times to make sure, until Darius told her to stop).

The new tear in the curtain wasn’t very noticeable in the folds. Darius fingered the singe marks at the bottom and eyed her suspiciously.

Lucy wiggled her fingers the way most grownups thought was really cute and he gave her a wry smile in return.

“I know that tactic,” he said. “Let’s make some noodles and not burn down the house.”