“Fart,” Birdie choked out around a mouthful of what tasted like peanut M&Ms.
She lay sprawled like a starfish across what looked like the floor of a bar. She was butt-naked.
Birdie let the candy dribble out of her mouth and onto the floor.
To her infinite horror, Lance was standing beside her looking down at her with unblinking, shocked eyes. “Raisin?”
“I’m not a Raisin,” she said around very tight vocal chords. She tried to get up, but her body wasn’t working quite yet.
“You’re a hamster shifter?” Ava (the Avashe had waited three months to meet) exclaimed.
“I can’t move,” Birdie rasped out.
“Oh my God, I’ve got this.” Ava yanked on the edge of a tablecloth. Now, surely she’d meant to be smooth about it, and remove the cloth without all the dishes even moving, but as it stood, all the glasses, dishes, peanut baskets, and a candle came raining down with the tablecloth.
Tonight simply could not get any worse.
“My stomach hurts,” she said.
“You atea lot,” Lance said, still looking shocked and a little disturbed.
“What did you feed me?” she ground out.
“Uuuh, Cheerios, fruit roll-ups, cereal, other kinds of cereal, crackers, more kinds of crackers, a spoonful of peanut butter, some grapes and a strawberry, a chocolate bar, some M&Ms, beef jerky, bean dip, three kinds of chips, a pretzel stick with some cheese sauce—”
“Okay,” she groaned, scrunching her face up. “You could’ve given me some nuts and called it a day.”
“I did. There were peanuts in the M&Ms.”
Feeling like roadkill, Birdie rolled over gingerly under the tablecloth Ava had thrown over her and curled into the fetal position, like that would make her stomach feel better.
“You’re a hamster,” Lance said in a strange tone. “I’ve carried you around all day in a cage and introduced you as Raisin to at least twenty people. You were in my coat pocket for fifteen minutes. You bit my finger.” He held up his finger with a Band-Aid on it. “I thought you were a boy for the first three hours I knew you.”
“Definitely not a boy,” she said, pushing up into the sitting position. She looked around. The bar seemed to be closing soon, thank God. There was no one in here right now except for them and the bar tender and a girl with braids and an uncertain smile behind Ava.
“I didn’t even know there was such a thing as hamster shifters,” the pretty woman with the braids uttered.
“There’s one,” Birdie said.
“You’re the only one?” Ava asked, her glowing green eyes wide as full moons.
The woman with the braids said, “My husband almost ate you like three times tonight.”
“Natalie’s husband, Reed, is a Cheetah shifter,” Ava said blandly.
“That’s good. That’s nice.” Her mortification had her wishing Reed had just ingested her so she didn’t have to exist in this moment right here.
“I bought you a hamster ball,” Lance said. Oh yeah. He seemed to be in some kind of shock.
“Well, thank you. You can probably get your money back on that one. Sorry about your cage.” The plastic container was in about a dozen pieces on the floor right now.
“I bought you one of those hamster wheels for your cage,” Lance said.
“Okay, buddy,” Ava said. “You’re doing good, why don’t you take a little minute to process out of earshot, and do us a favor, okay? Can you tell Brock I need the extra pair of clothes from his truck? I’m going to take…” She arched her eyebrows at Birdie…
“Birdie Grenadine,” she introduced herself, finally, finally, to Ava.
“I’m going to take Birdie to the ladies room and get her cleaned up and feeling a little better. Post-Change aches can be a little brutal.”
