Chapter 18

CHAPTER 18

T he call went through faster than Conri Lyell expected, because a video image flashed on before he could turn the phone back to himself. Penny nearly laughed: Maggie was right. Well, she couldn't tell if this Joash person was lazy or big, but he was certainly pretty, even through a six inch video screen. He had dark auburn hair and nearly golden eyes, and skin that looked like he'd been sun-bronzed by an expert. She said, "You really are pretty," with her outside voice, and couldn't even be mortified about it, although her partridge rolled its eyes up and collapsed in a dead faint. Ashley, at Penny's side, gave a staccato laugh.

"And you," the man on the phone said, "are a Sixty Pix. Penny, the drummer, am I correct? It's a pleasure and a delight to meet you."

"Holy shit. I can't—yes, but how did you know that?"

"Your band is taking the world by storm, my dear, and I do like to keep abreast of these things. But I must ask: have you kidnapped Conri Lyell and are using his phone to call me for ransom? I assure you I have no intention of paying it. I can give you his bank account numbers, though, and you can feel free to help yourself."

"How the hell do you have my bank account numbers?" Conri turned the phone back to face himself, and the man on the phone's rich laughter drifted out.

"There you are. Don't ask questions you don't want answers to, Conri. It's lovely to see you."

Conri mumbled something, then more clearly, said, "We have a question we do want an answer to, though. Penny's just discovered she's a shifter."

"At her tender age? Do turn the phone around again, Conri, I've seen your narrow face many times and suspect I'll have very few opportunities to rest my eyes on the visual feast of the young women you're visiting. Maggie, if you'd like to move over there with the other women, I would enjoy that very much."

Maggie laughed. "You see me plenty, Joash. This is Ashley Torben. She lives here in Renaissance."

"I assure you that as magnificent as the Renaissance was, no one in the modern world wishes to return to that misbegotten era. Ah, thank you, Conri." Joash, facing them again, winked, then studied Penny thoughtfully. "A new shifter? In your thirties? Unusual, but not entirely unheard of."

"Does it mean I'm part of a particular shifter line?" Penny asked eagerly. It would be a kind of an answer about some of her history, shifter or not, and she would like that.

"I'm afraid it's more typically a self-preservation technique. There are shifters with long lives, but they don't normally begin shifting late. They just live a long time. But if you've been raised by true humans and have no hint of your heritage, suppressing the shift can keep you safe. If you were raised by shifters?—"

Penny shook her head, and the red-haired man nodded sympathetically. "Almost certainly self-preservation, then. That, and extraordinary willpower. Shifting is a base instinct for us. Most of the shifters I know who were raised by true humans still began to shift when they hit their teen years. You must be very stubborn."

"I guess I am." Penny sagged a little. "I guess I was also hoping I might get an answer that cleared up my entire life. Not that I had all that many questions about it before I turned out to be a magical non-human being."

Joash chuckled, a warm and inviting sound. "I'm afraid I can't provide the answers to life, the universe, and everything, but I do have some friends who could look into your background for you, if you wanted. People with considerable expertise in researching those of us with more unusual family lines, shall we say."

"Oh." Penny held her breath, then bit the inside of her lip. "Can I think about that a little bit?"

"Of course. Conri will provide you with my contact details. Feel free to reach out at any time, and if you're in Italy, do drop by for a visit. Bring the rest of your band. I'm sure we can arrange a little venue for you to play. The Colosseum, perhaps."

He hung up while Penny was still trying to collect her jaw. "The Colosseum ? The Colosseum? He's not serious, is he?"

"Rarely," Maggie said dryly. "But he also probably means it. If I were you I'd write a song for your band that really wants a video shot at the Colosseum. Joash will make it happen."

"How?" Penny's voice rose. "Who is he?"

"He's very rich, very charming, and very well-connected," Conri said in much the same tone Maggie had used. "I'm sorry he couldn't give you any more concrete answers, Penny, but it's not an entirely bad thing to be told you have epic willpower, is it?"

Penny ducked her head. "No, I guess not. And it's probably better to have been safe than sorry. I'm not sure my parents would have reacted all that well to watching me turn into a partridge over dinner."

The partridge, rousing from its faint, sent an image of flapping wildly over mashed potatoes. Penny sent a picture of herself eating a nice chicken and gravy dinner to go with the mashed potatoes.

The partridge fainted again.

"I'm glad you found yourself," Maggie said as Penny bit back a laugh at the partridge. "I'm also glad Ashley invited us over, because I was going to have to invite myself otherwise. There's something you should know about bird shifters."

"Oh?" Penny straightened, suddenly nervous.

"Shifters tend to be big, you know that?"

Penny shook her head, and Maggie paused, recalibrating. "Well, we do. Bigger than our true counterparts. I'm not sure why, when it comes to bears and wolves and other big ones, but it makes sense for birds. That's a lot of mass to shift."

Conri blew air through his nose and muttered, "Magic. That's why we're bigger."

Maggie rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I know, Con, but it still doesn't make sense. Anyway, wolves and bears and things, they can't change their size. Conri's massive, but he's—well, show her, Conri."

Penny said, "Change their size?" under the rest of what Maggie said. Conri gave his partner a fondly exasperated look and rose, shaking himself loosely and then shifting.

The goddamn partridge woke up long enough to shriek OH MY GOD IT'S A WOLF and then passed out again as Penny gaped at what was, indeed, a wolf. The biggest wolf she could possibly imagine. Rangy and slender, not unlike Conri himself, but it turned out rangy and slender on a wolf that stood as tall as she did was actually fricking massive . He had a huge grey ruff, and enormously large golden eyes to go along with appallingly big teeth and claws. Penny squeaked, and Conri shifted back to human, looking decidedly more wolfish around the edges than he had before. At least to her mind.

"So," Maggie said cheerfully, "that's as big or as small as he gets. Big, very big, but that's it. I, on the other hand?—"

"I saw you last night," Penny said. "You were as tall as he is. As a wolf, I mean. I mean, you as a swan were as big as he is as a wolf. Oh, God, I sound like I'm losing my mind."

"I was showing off," Maggie said with a lazy grin. "I could have been smaller. Here." She didn't bother standing up. She just shifted, and there was abruptly a swan on the couch.

Swans were not small birds, but this one wasn't as freakishly large as the one who'd been at the charity venue the night before. It was big. Bigger than Penny thought of swans as being, even if she knew they were big. But not that big. The swan transformed back to Maggie, who kept talking like she hadn't just taken a moment to be a bird. "That's my smallest size. Maybe a third larger than a regular swan."

"Wait, your smallest size?" Penny's head was spinning, although the partridge, thank god, was still unconscious, and had no opinions to offer. "I thought you just said shifters only…but you were smaller, so…" She stared at Maggie a few seconds. "So what's your biggest size?"

This time Maggie stood up and stepped away from the couch, eyeing the living room cautiously. "This is going to be a little overwhelming. You all might want to…"

"Move the furniture," Conri said dryly. "You can help, Maggie. You're the strongest of us."

Ashley made a sound of protest that caused Maggie to flash a grin at her. "Yeah, I know, bear. You're probably at least as strong as I am in human form and we all know you're much stronger in bear form, but?—"

"Wait, you're extra strong?" Penny turned to Ashley, distracted and a bit fluttery. The wretched partridge woke up enough to flutter, too. Fluttery wings, fluttery eyelashes. Not that birds were known for their eyelashes, but it was certainly trying to flutter them. Penny ignored it, or at least tried to, because the idea of Ashley being very, very strong was for some reason extremely hot. She wet her lips and swallowed, and Ashley gave her a long, slow grin.

"I'm pretty strong, yeah. We can talk about it later."

A tiny girlish giggle burst from Penny's throat and she was absolutely certain she was blushing as the other two shifters in the room laughed.

"— but ," Maggie said loudly, "for the purposes of moving furniture, let's assume I'm going to be more helpful than Penny. Conri's right, we should move it. I'll put it back," she promised, and then with the effortlessness of long practice and great strength, she and Ashley picked up first the couch, then the other seating, and moved them to clear the floor as much as possible. Maggie put the coffee table on the couch, then sat down in the middle of the empty floor. "This is going to be startling," she repeated. "You should probably back up."

Penny, mystified, got about halfway through saying, "How big are you going to get ?" when Maggie shifted and answered that question.

Immensely, enormously huge , that was how big. Even sitting, even with her long neck curled down and her wings tucked in and her feet not visible under a truly incredible amount of white feathers, Maggie the swan, at her largest size, quite literally filled the room. There was clearance between the top of her back and the ceiling, but only just, and none of them, not even Conri, had stepped far enough back. The sheer size of the swan pushed them farther away, faces full of feathers.

Penny's partridge shrieked, BIG! I CAN DO THAT! and, to Penny's horror, shifted.

There was absolutely no room in the apartment for one, much less two, ginormous birds. Maggie shifted back to human instantly, while Penny gave a triumphant ka-chu-CHU! call.

She was so big. She didn't fit in the apartment, either, not if she stood up. She hunched down, sitting on her feet but perking her head up, looking around, and bumped her head on the ceiling. The partridge shrieked ATTACKED! and flung its wings open, trying to make Penny bigger.

No! We're big enough already! And knocking things off Ashley's walls, and knocking people over, and all sorts of terrible chaotic things. Penny pulled her wings back in, trying to shift back to human, but the partridge was hopping around, whacking its head on the ceiling and bumping back down to the floor, shouting ka-chu, ka-chu-chu! in a panic. Penny could hardly imagine what her claws were doing to the carpet. Bad things. Very bad things. CALM DOWN!

Because yelling 'calm down' at anything was, historically, an enormously successful way to get things to calm down. Penny hopped around the apartment even faster, wrecking everything she came into contact with, until suddenly Ashley was right in front of her, murmuring, "It's okay. It's okay, baby. I know, you're awfully big, aren't you? It's scary. But it's all right. Nothing here will hurt you. You know me, right? It's Ashley, your mate. Remember me, sweetheart? Yeah, it's okay."

The smooth gentle cadence of her voice sounded so much like a mother hen crooning over her chicks that the partridge's feathers began to settle. Penny turned her head, looking at Ashley from first one eye, then the other. She was very small. That was funny: Ashley was anything but small. But right now she was. Penny had to be at least eight feet tall, herself. More than that, because the ceiling was probably eight feet and her back was pressed up against it when she straightened her legs.

A thought trickled through the partridge's mind: maybe squishing up against the ceiling wasn't necessary. With some effort, it settled down, looking at Ashley from an equal height now. She still looked quite small, her entire head smaller than Penny's beak, but she smiled. "Good job, that's good, sweetheart. See, you're nice and safe. Do you think you can shift back now?"

With a thump , Penny shifted back to human. It was cold in the apartment with no feathers, and she shivered violently as Conri squeaked and spun around, putting his back to her. Ashley, hardly missing a beat, snatched a blanket off the back of the couch and draped it around Penny, and only as it settled on her bare skin did Penny realize she'd forgotten her clothes. "Oh no !"

"It happens to the best of us," Maggie said through a grin. "Usually when we're intoxicated, but it happens. I didn't expect you to go big right away!"

"The damn partridge thought 'I can do that!' and did," Penny said miserably. "I hope I didn't hurt anything."

"Nothing that can't be fixed easily." Ashley hugged her. "Why don't you go get dressed while we put the furniture back, and then if you have any other questions maybe Maggie can answer them."

Instead of going to get dressed, Penny looked pathetically at the swan shifter. "How big were we?"

"As far as I can tell, the biggest we get is about fourteen feet at the shoulder. With my neck I'm, I don't know, twenty, twenty-two feet tall at the tip of my bill, if I'm stretching? You're probably only seventeen feet or so, all stretched out. Maybe not quite. But still, huge."

"Birds that big can't fly, can they?" Penny asked, incredulous.

"True birds, no, but we've got magic to help. Otherwise we'd just be dinosaurs."

Penny stared at her. "Oh my God. Oh my God . Are there dinosaur shifters?"

"Not as far as I know," Maggie said cheerfully. "It's just us big birds out there representing for our lost ancestors. Go get dressed," she said more gently. "Conri and I have to head out, but now that you know you can shift big, that's the protection you need against not doing it accidentally."

"I just did it accidentally!"

"But you won't again," Maggie said with confidence, and Penny, with a despairing glance at Ashley, went to borrow more clothes.