Chapter 14

CHAPTER 14

P enny was used to staying up late. It came with the job. On the other hand, she was also used to playing music until nearly midnight, and not coming down off that high until two or three in the morning. When the band got done at ten p.m., the performance rush ran out about midnight.

Unfortunately, the Thunder Bear Brewpub didn't stop serving alcohol until midnight on a Sunday, and it was another hour before the pub fully closed. By that time, Penny was nearly asleep on the bar counter, having long since finished her fries and having made the in-retrospect-terrible decision to have a second beer. She propped her chin on her hand, watching sleepily as the bar got cleaned up around her. Ashley managed to look elegant and not get dirt on that gorgeous green elfin dress even as she mopped the floor and cleaned up spilled beer here and there.

It was kind of fun to watch the clean-up crew. They worked together with the efficiency of long-familiar, well-rehearsed efforts, with tired but light-hearted banter bouncing around the otherwise-quiet pub. It was such a comfortable, friendly space: log-cabin style walls, deep booths with leather seat covers and polished brass knobs, gleaming wooden tables both in the booths and standing free around the floor. There were American and state flags hanging high on the walls and in the rafters, and various Pride flags had joined them since the first time Penny had been in the pub. There were small snowdrifts built up against the winter-dark windows, which reflected warm yellow light back into the pub. It was a homey space, warm and comforting and welcoming.

"Pen?" A hand touched Penny's shoulder and she jolted awake, startled and checking to see if she needed to wipe drool off her face, or worse, off the bar.

Ashley was grinning at her, if a grin could be soft and gentle as well as brightly wicked. "You lost it in the last ten minutes," she told her. "I watched your head slide down your arm and hit the bar in slow motion. Can I drive you home?"

Penny dragged in a breath to protest, then thought about getting in her cold, cold van and driving back to the hotel, and nodded. "I think so, yeah, please. But you wanted to talk!"

The fondness stayed in Ashley's smile. "It can wait until you're not falling asleep on the bar, I promise."

"I bet I won't be sleepy anymore once I go outside into the, what's the temperature? Seventeen degrees?"

"We'll pretend it's that warm," Ashley said, amused. "Do you have a coat, or were you afraid of crushing that amazing dress?"

"Right, that'll wake me right up. My coat is in the van." Penny made a face. "Where it's probably turned to an icicle, too."

Ashley laughed. "I'll lend you mine."

"Your dress is not any warmer than mine is."

"No, but I run warm. I'll be fine, honestly."

"I'll probably also step on the hem of your coat." Penny gestured to the difference in their heights as she slipped off the bar stool, and Ashley laughed again.

"It's thigh length on me, so it'll probably hit your ankles. You'll be cute."

"Probably," Penny said in mock despair. "Cute is the bane of short women. Although if I'm being honest, there are much worse things than being cute. All right, if you're sure you won't freeze."

"I'm sure." Ashley got her coat from the staff room, waving Penny over so she could wrap it around her and grin down at her. "I'm right. You're really cute."

Penny, from within a fluffy warm hood and a hem that did in fact reach her ankles, said, "I feel ridiculous and yet adorable."

"That's exactly what you are. Okay, we're the last ones in the building. Ready to make a break for it?" Ashley grabbed her hand and they ran from the pub, although the headlong exit stopped immediately outside the front door, partly because Ashley needed to lock up, and partly because although the parking lot was pretty well cleared, it was also winter in Colorado and ice was a thing. They were much more careful approaching Ashley's car, which, to Penny's delight, was warmed up and defrosted. "Oh," Ashley said brightly, "didn't I tell you I've got an automatic starter?"

"And to think I even considered taking my van!" Penny bundled into the car, trying to see around the edges of the hood, and finally fell into the passenger seat with a laugh. "This hood is deep enough for two of me. I feel like I'm seven."

"You don't look like you are." Ashley's warm voice warmed up even more, and Penny felt a blush rising as the taller woman leaned forward and peered through the windshield. "If you're awake enough, it looks like we might be getting some Northern Lights. We could drive out of town a ways and see if we can get a good view?"

"Oh, yes!" Penny sat up from where she'd been nestling into the blessedly heated seat. "No one should ever be too tired to go stand around in the freezing cold and stare at the dancing lights in the sky for a while."

Ashley chuckled as she drove them out of the parking lot. "A woman after my own heart. Did you talk to Maggie Ross again?"

"The wrestler? No, she disappeared after the swan visit. Actually, before it, I think. I assume she waited back at the car to load that ginormous thing back in again. It's a good way to slip out without people mobbing you."

"Sounds like you know something about it."

Penny turned her head against the window, smiling at the streetlight-illuminated darkness as it slipped by. "Yes, but I don't mean it in a bad way. Some days you really want to get down into the grind with the fans and others, no matter how high you are from the performance, you just need some space to breathe. And the Sixty Pix aren't nearly as famous as Maggie Ross is. Well, Gwen is, but she's different."

She heard Ashley's quick smile in the other woman's voice. "Is that weird? You don't have to answer, obviously, but is it weird?"

"No. Yes. Totally. Not at all." Penny laughed and turned her gaze to Ashley's smiling profile. "Ninety percent of the time, ninety-five percent of the time, it's extremely normal and not weird at all. The other five or ten percent it is crazy weird. Gwen's very chill about it, except she's also not. Everything with her dad, with really her whole childhood, she really doesn't make a big deal about it. She never has. Myles, our bassist, actually didn't know until this year that she'd been a child star, and he's been with the band for years. But when she has to deal with it, she's either really cool and open and relatable or she's an absolute ice queen bitch demon about her privacy. She's legit inspiring."

"Did you know who she was when you joined the band?"

Penny gave an ungainly snort. "I recognized her when I went into the audition and nearly peed myself." Ashley laughed out loud, and Penny went on, raising her voice a bit until Ashley's laughter died down. "But I tried not to freak out and I guess I succeeded, because she didn't realize I'd recognized her for a couple years and we've been pretty much BFFs for almost as long as I can remember, now."

"That's wonderful." Ashley cast her an incredibly sweet smile. "I was always best friends with my zillions of boy cousins. It must be nice to have a best girl friend."

"It is. You'll love her too," Penny promised. "Actually, she thinks you're amazing anyway, so, yeah. Oooh." She leaned forward, catching a glimpse of green in the sky as they left the city lights behind. "Oh, it's going to be a good show tonight!"

"There's a parking lot for a hiking trail right up ahead," Ashley said. "We're not supposed to go up on the trail in the middle of the night, obviously?—"

"And we're not exactly dressed for it," Penny said wryly.

Ashley blinked between them, and laughed. "Right. No, we're not. So we'll stay in the parking lot, but the view should be pretty good there. Especially if the lights are out."

"It looks like enough of them are," Penny reported a moment later as they climbed the road toward the lot. "As for the rest, well, I've got a mean throwing arm."

"Penny!" Ashley sounded genuinely shocked.

"I wouldn't!" Penny paused. "I totally would. As long as there were no security cameras."

"There aren't," Ashley said, sounding unexpectedly confident. "People in Renaissance aren't big on surveillance."

"Well, then." Penny mimed warming her throwing arm up, and Ashley gave her another dubious, shocked look. "Okay, I won't! Not if you're going to look all moral and conflicted at me!" They tumbled out of the car into the frigid air, both of them looking skyward at the columns of green stretching across the sky. Penny shivered happily. "Oh, that's perfect. Look at that. It's been a good year for the lights."

"Lots of sunspot activity." Ashley, tentatively, slipped her hand into Penny's, and Penny nestled up close, smiling as they watched the sky for several minutes.

Then, abruptly, Penny realized she was shivering, and Ashley wasn't wearing a coat at all. "Oh my God. We have to get back in the car. You're going to die of hypothermia."

"I'm honestly okay. No hypothermia, no frostbite. Here, see?" Ashley put her fingers against Penny's cheek, where they felt like heating elements warming her skin.

"That's crazy," Penny said breathlessly. "How are you doing that?"

Ashley hesitated. "I can tell you, but it's kind of a…it's crazy. It's a lot. It might be more than you want to know."

"Oh no. I want to know. I wish to master this strange ability."

"I don't think you can," Ashley said sheepishly. "It's innate to me. To my kind of people."

Penny's eyebrows crawled upward. "To tall blondes?"

"No." Ashley laughed. "No, although my whole family can do it. Um. Okay, you, I, I need to step back."

"Sure, that's fine, I'll just go over here and shiver." Penny took a few steps away, speaking in her most pathetic voice.

Ashley eyeballed her. "That isn't fair."

"No, it wasn't. Sorry. Go on, tell me what this thing is."

"I really have to show you. Because I'll say it and you won't believe it. So this is me saying it." Ashley swallowed nervously. "I can shapechange. I can shapeshift into a bear."

"Okay, that's a brand-new weird one on me," Penny announced. "I don't even know what that's supposed to mean. Is it code for something?"

Ashley, still visibly nervous, shook her head. "No. No, it's just…well…watch."

She took another step back, and then two more, before she shapeshifted into a bear. A huge, fluffy, golden-brown grizzly bear whose expression was somehow identical to the nervous look Ashley had had on her face. On her human face. Because she was a bear now. She had just shapeshifted, right there in front of Penny. That was a thing that had happened.

Penny looked around in her brain for a response, because screaming and running away seemed obvious, or maybe fainting, or maybe peeing herself, but none of those things seemed to be happening in her head.

Instead, a small bright voice somewhere in the back of her mind said, I can do that! and Penny shapeshifted into a partridge.