“No.” Estelle rounded on Zephyr, her whole tiny body vibrating with fury. “You can’t. Not me and Rufus and Finley and Beth.”
“I’m sorry, Estelle.” Zephyr met her tear-filled glare without flinching. “But you kids are the only ones whose parents are my personal friends. I’ve already spoken to them about the situation.”
“But I can’t wait another year!” Estelle cried. A faint, silvery radiance began to shimmer around her. “I have to learn to shift this summer, Ihaveto! And, and Rufus deserves a chance to meet other kids who can understand him, and Finley would have to go back to Atlantis all alone, and, and—it’s notfair!”
“It’ll be okay, Estelle.” Beth put an arm around the younger girl’s shoulders, though Buck could tell she was fighting back sobs as well. “We’ll have other summers.”
“But we could havethissummer!” Estelle shook off Beth’s attempt to comfort her. She focused on Buck like a heat-seeking missile. “Please, Mr. Frazer. You can fix this. Please say you’ll be our counselor.Please.”
Buck stared into those pleading, mismatched eyes; one blue, one green. He looked back at Zephyr, seated calmly behind his desk.
“You,” Buck informed his nephew, “are an evil, evil man.”
The faintest shadow of a smile tugged at Zephyr’s mouth. “Shall I take that as a yes?”
“Motherloving shifters.” Buck glared at Estelle. “Let’s get one thing straight. I’m not frolicking in the moonlight, or whatever it is you lot do out there in the woods. No weird stuff. I only do normal, sensible activities, understand?”
Estelle nodded eagerly. “That’s okay. Our other counselor can handle that. You won’t have to shift or anything.”
Her tears, Buck noted, had dried with suspicious speed. “And you have to promise not to give me any sass.”
“Absolutely.” Estelle’s expression was filled with sincerity, and also lies. “No sass whatsoever. Cross my heart and hope to die.”
“She’ll be a model camper, Mr. Frazer,” Beth said, in a tone that added an unspoken ‘or else.’ “We all will. I’ll make sure everyone follows all the rules.”
“Then it’s settled.” Zephyr slid a sheet of paper and a pen across the desk. “If you could just sign here, Uncle?”
“Why do I feel like this should be in blood?” Buck scrawled his name at the bottom of the contract. It had, he noted gloomily, already been filled in with all his personal details.
The instant he lifted the pen from the paper, Zephyr whisked the contract away, as though fearing Buck might change his mind and attempt to set fire to it. To be fair, it was a valid concern. Buck was already wondering if a contract was still binding if you signed it while out of your mind. He had clearly gone insane sometime in the last two minutes.
“There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Zephyr tucked the contract away in a desk drawer. Buck heard the distinctclickof a key turning. “Thank you, Estelle, Beth. You’ve been very helpful. You can go now.”
“Come on, Beth, we gotta find Rufus and Finley!” Estelle bounced on her toes, literally sparkling with excitement. “Wait until we tell them who’s gonna be our counselor. They won’t believe it.”
“That makes three of us,” Buck said under his breath as Estelle dragged Beth out the door. “Zeph, this isn’t going to work. You can’t seriously trust me to look after kids when I can’t even hang on to my own pants. Or have you forgotten that little problem?”
“We can work around that,” Zephyr replied calmly. “I’ll juggle the roster so that you won’t have to be on call at night. Normally counselors stay in the dorms with the kids, but there are some private cabins for the senior staff. There’s a spare one you can use.”
Whole new vistas of horror opened up before him. “Wait. You expect me to sleep here? At the camp?”
“Of course. Counselors stay on site at all times, except of course on their days off.”
“Conleth doesn’t.”
“Conleth is not a counselor,” Conleth said without looking up. “A fact for which Conleth is profoundly grateful.”
“And he tends to fly in before the rest of us wake up anyway,” Zephyr said. He quirked an eyebrow. “When you can do that, maybe I’ll let you stay at your own place too. Until then, you live on site, just like the other counselors. Who knows, maybe it’ll do you some good. Your animal won’t need to keep dumping you on a cabin roof if you’re already here, after all.”
There was a certain logic to that, much as Buck hated to admit it. “Fine, that covers nights. What about the days? For the love of sweet little apples, what do you expect me to do with a bunch of shifter kids?”
“The same things you’d do with any kids,” Zephyr replied, as though this was any help whatsoever. “Hiking, swimming, canoeing, that kind of thing. Sports and games. Songs around the campfire.”
Buck gave him a long, level look.
“All right, no singing,” Zephyr conceded, which showed he had at least some sense of self preservation. “But really, there’s so much you can teach the kids. You’ve spent more time in the wilderness than the rest of the staff put together. And you’ve got plenty of experience in leadership and team-building. Being a counselor’s notthatdifferent to running a hotshot crew.”
“Apart from the fact it’s generally frowned upon to lead small children into blazing infernos,” Conleth observed from behind his computer screen. “I realize this will be a novel concept for you, Buck, but please try to keep your campersawayfrom danger. I already have enough paperwork.”
