Bruno frowned at Alan. “Gil came home upset yesterday,” he said reluctantly. “He said some of the older kids were teasing him about having leprosy.”
Alan sobered. “I wasn’t aware, but I will definitely keep an eye out today.” He cocked his head curiously. “Why leprosy?”
“Armadillos can be carriers.Nine-bandedarmadillos, which we are not.” Bruno could hear the ire in his own voice and the analytic part of him recognized his own baggage.I see the child I was and acknowledge his pain.“I assure you, we have nothing communicable.”
“Oh good. One of the new littles is a biter. She hasn’t broken anyone’s skin yet, and we’re working on self-control, but she’s definitely a spitfire, and really, none of them are great about keeping germs to themselves.”
“It must be very challenging to work with shifter kids,” Bruno said. “Isn’t one of them a squirrel shifter who can breathe fire?”
“Boyenergy is the veryleastof my worries,” Alan said with a chuckle.
Bruno was good at assessing intentions and reading moods and he was grateful to sense that Alan was teasing him now. “Good luck today,” he said, just as Gil hollered at the top of his lungs, “I’m HIDING NOW. Come FIND ME!” and a little girl burst into noisy tears.
Tara, one of the older girls that went to half-day Kindergarten with Gil, looked up at Alan. “I’m lucky,” she said gravely.
“Then you can help me find Gil,” Alan said, offering her his hand. The two of them went to search the shelves and ignore the giggling beanbag. Bruno slipped out of the day care, making sure the door was secure behind him, in part because of the demonstrated escape risk and in part because of the cold, driving wind.
The season was well into winter, with only a few stretches of bare ground still showing between thin drifts of snow where it had been cleared down to patches of ice. Bruno pulled his coat tighter around him and hurried down the block to where he had been forced to park. He passed Veronica Chase’s realty office and slowed, remembering that the woman who had picked up Gil the day before worked there.
Clarice. She’d been so adorably flustered and confused and Bruno wished he’d done a better job of thanking her.
But she worked forVeronica Chase.
Veronica Chase was the landlord of the Tiny Paws property, and gave the owner, Cherry, an unreasonable amount of grief. She was considered by the shifter community to be one of the greatest risks to their secrets, as she was snooping around the day care and asking uncomfortable questions. Cameras had been discovered near the property, and Alan suspected a listening device had been brought into the day care, though he’d never been able to find one. If there had been one, Alan, being a not-so-secretagent for a federal agency that protected shifter interests, would certainly have discovered it.
Bruno hated hiding. He disliked lying at the best of times, and detested deceit at any time. He wanted to live in a world that accepted what he was. He also knew, entirely too well, what human—and shifter!—nature really was, and how people would react to finding out that an entire shifter society was living secret second lives right next to them.
Witchhunts were a sad and predictable truth. Clarice wouldn’t be so pretty holding a pitchfork or a torch in front of his house if she knew what Gil truly was.
I am shaped by my experiences, but not controlled by them, Bruno said to himself, closing his eyes and then opening them to look at the windows of the real estate office with determined serenity. He was planning to buy a house in Nickel City, and the sad fact was that Veronica Chase had her fingers in all the best places, either as a broker or an outright owner. The market for short term rentals had shrunk significantly since the city council started imposing restrictions, but Veronica had already snapped up all the properties she could, in all the best neighborhoods.
And Bruno wanted Gil to have the best neighborhood. He wanted Gil to have everything he hadn’t, a totally natural knee-jerk reaction for any father. He checked his phone, looking at the time and double-checking his schedule. His next client wasn’t for another hour; he had plenty of time.
To his surprise, there was a swirl of anticipation and a tug of instinct. This wasn’t just a convenient time, it was therighttime. Maybe the perfect house had just come onto the market, or had been there long enough to take a lower offer.
Maybe Clarice was in today?
Armadillos had long, thin fur under their armored shells, and it acted like a cat’s whiskers, sensing vibrations and movement to compensate for their poor vision. Bruno had long-ago learned that his sensitivity to instinct was similarly well-honed. When other shifters might have an unexplained uneasiness, he could pinpoint the exact cause of underlying sudden wariness, and he was aware of it long before his cohorts. He could use it to avoid traffic snarls and always chose the fastest line in grocery stores, even when it wasn’t the obvious choice.
It was strongest in conjunction with people; he knew when someone was at a breaking point, when they were going to fold or dig in stubbornly. He could tell at a glance when someone was ready to talk or needed space. It was a useful skill in counseling, and more than one friend had tried to convince him to use it for games of chance, but Bruno had a strict code of honor.
The realty office was warm, after the pins-and-needles Montana wind, and cheerfully decorated for the holidays. White twinkle lights were up around the perimeter of the room, and a white and blue fake Christmas tree brightened one corner. The presents underneath it were probably empty. There were a few Jewish stars up as well, and a Hanukkah menorah on a side-shelf. Bruno wiped his boots on the mat politely as—sure enough!—Clarice bounced up from behind the desk.
The comfortable swirl of instinct sharpened to a point and Bruno could feel his armadillo uncoil in his head.Feels good. Feels right. Feels…
Thick glasses like his own covered brown eyes made small by optical distortion over a petite nose. Her mouth was a little too wide for beauty standards, and her forehead a tad too tall, but Bruno found her easy to look at. Her hair was light brown with subtle blonde highlights, wavy andpulled back behind her ears with sunflower barrettes. She wore a pink cashmere sweater and had pierced ears but no earrings. Her lips were glossy, but uncolored. If she was wearing eye makeup, it was entirely lost behind her glasses.
She felt like coming home.
Bruno wasn’t sure if he should take his armadillo’s sense of instinct at face value. It probably wasn’tClaricethat was instilling this feeling of belonging in him. She was just some factor in getting to where he should be, playing a role in a bigger purpose. Maybe she really did have the perfect home for him; she was a realtor, after all. He shouldn’t read too much into the way her lips looked kissable or how cute she looked when she unconsciously tucked a loose lock of hair behind her ear.
It had just been a long time since he’d had such a strong reaction to a good-looking woman, and it surprised him, Bruno reasoned. A starved libido paired with a strong instinctive reaction to a path he ought to take was a dangerous combination.
That was all.
She wasn’t his destiny.
6
