When he was little. Alejo managed not to grin at that. The moment was far too tenuous, and Sam was deadly serious.
“Mom says she has to share important things in my life with Pater, because she has to be fair. But when I tried to tell Pater, he said thatmendon’t make up fairy stories. When I tried to tell him they were real, he didn’t believe me.” Up came the shoulders again, Sam’s voice thinning. “I tried to tell him another time, and he said he has poison for pests. And he would take me hunting as soon as I was big enough to handle a rifle. Hunting is a manly sport. Not even for food, just…” His voice quavered. He blinked. “Do you think shooting animals for fun is a manly sport?”
“I’m afraid that all my man friends are like me. The only shooting we do is with cameras. And they are very manly men. One is an airline pilot, another teaches martial arts, and the third is a firefighter.”
“Shooting with a camera,” Sam said, his glasses winking in the light of the street lamp. “Maybe when I see better. I think that would be fun. If Pater lets me take a camera and not a rifle.”
Alejo firmly squashed down his opinion of the sport-shooting ‘manly’ dad. “That sounds to me like a good compromise. As for your mom, I’ll just say this, that I believe she is on your side, and it has to be hard for her to try to be fair to you and to your father. But I won’t say anything to anybody. How’s that?”
Down came the shoulders again. Sam took a step back, then another, but turned, question in his whole, small body. And out came the real issue. “Squeak said…you can fly? In another shape?”
Uh oh.
This mysterious Squeak was not imaginary. No human could see a mythic shifter when in invisible mode, and Sam was a human boy. Alejo whistled softly, aware that his entire carefully worked out plan had just been blown to smithereens.
He was at a crossroads. He’d had a plan. One he’d worked out carefully. First get to know Wendy, then reveal his nature. And if she gave him the go-ahead, they might reveal it to Sam together.
He could lie to Sam, but beginning a relationship on a lie seemed a mighty rickety bridge, as his dad used to say.
But if he looked at it another way, Alejo had always wanted to have a family. And if things went right, he would get one. He was ready to love and protect Wendy’s family because they were hers. If he regarded things in that light, maybe it was okay if Sam knew first?
He said, “I can fly. That’s because I’m different from humans in some ways.”
Sam’s whole demeanor changed. It was as if the sun had come up inside him.
“Want to see?”
“Yes,” Sam whispered.
“Okay. We’ll have to go outside, though.”
Alejo opened his French doors and led the way onto the terrace, where there was plenty of space. Sam ran to the ironwork loveseat and climbed onto it.
He nodded to Sam. “Ready?”
Sam nodded eagerly.
Alejo shifted to his lion form, keeping his wings folded.
Sam drew in a breath of awe. “Wow,” he breathed. “You’re…kind of a lion. But a big one. And you’ve got wings! Youcanfly!”
“I can,” Alejo said as he shifted back. “I also have a serpent form, for really fast flying, and for defense. I’m a chimera, which means I have two natures. We’re called mythic shifters.”
As he spoke, he sensed small life forms in the garden, No surprise there. Except that they seemed to be winking in and out, like fireflies.
Then it was Alejo’s turn for a total surprise. With a tiny pop! what appeared to be a very small, round flying squirrel appeared on Sam’s shoulder.
Sam offered a tremulous smile, proud but worried. “This is Squeak.”
Squeak trilled.
Sam whispered, “Squeak, show him your trick.” He added a faint trill, snapped his fingernails twice, and Squeak popped, reappearing on Sam’s other shoulder, and then popped back again. Sam’s tentative grin dawned, this one definitely pride.
“Wow,” Alejo said, looking more closely at Squeak, without approaching. Squeak did look very much like a squirrel—a small one, at a guess an equivalent age to Sam. His ears were larger than most flying squirrels, and the tiny, clever hands looked different from squirrel hands, the thumbs more developed. Those looked like the hands of builders and makers.
Sam said, “Are you the only one?”
“Oh, no, there are lots and lots of shifters. We mythic shifters are a lot rarer, though. Also, mythic shifters as well as regular shifters are kind of like Squeak and his friends. We keep quiet about our existence. We stay in our human forms when we live with humans.”
