"Why kids aren't insane?" she asked brightly.
Luke all but gave up with a laugh of his own. "No! Again, I mean yes, discussing kids probably is insane! But I meant being willing to follow you anywhere! Here." He put her on her feet and Sabrina pouted, which he couldn't resist kissing. Then he stepped back, trying to remember he wanted totalkwith her. "This is my last bit of real insanity, though, I promise."
"I doubt that, but I'm listening." Sabrina was all smiles again, her eyes bright and happy.
"Shifters know when they've met the person they're supposed to be with," he explained swiftly, afraid he would find some way to mess it up otherwise. "We call it fate, but whatever you call it, we know. And I knew from the moment Emmy called me over to you that you were my mate. The love of my life," he corrected hastily, because even he thought 'mate' was a little…unusual, in human relationship terms.
And clearly Sabrina did too, from how her eyebrows rose. "Mate? That sounds very Aaron Attenborough about it all, doesn't it?"
"Yes, but, well, we are animals part of the time. All of the time, because we're human animals too, but—you know what I mean!"
By that time Sabrina was grinning broadly. "I do, yes. So…youknew, from when we met, that we should be together? And you didn't say anything? Why not? I was out there in Vegaspiningfor you!"
"Were you?" he said happily. "I hoped you might be, but I wasn't sure."
"How can you not be sure if you knew we were meant to be together?"
SEE????his rabbit yelled.SEE, you were just making it TOO COMPLICATED!!!
Luke ducked his head and shrugged a little. "It's one thing to know it myself, but it's something else to just come out and say to someone else, hey, you and me, we're meant to be."
They both squinted, and after a few seconds Sabrina said, "Isn't that a line from a…one of those really old bands like the Beatles or something? From one of their songs?"
"I don't know if it's the Beatles but it sure sounds like a line from a song. Probably a hundred of them have used it." Luke shook his head. "Anyway, it's just…it's a lot to tell somebody. And I wanted to explain about the shifter thing first, and Ididn'twant to do that in Vegas where you were stuck with me for days."
"That's…really thoughtful," Sabrina said slowly. "Even if you were absolutely sure I'd take it well, and how could you be, it's really thoughtful."
"Mates do tend to take it well," Luke admitted. "It's part of just being able to accept what we are, I guess. Like if you can handle the fact I turn into a fifty pound rabbit, probably the idea of true love everlasting coming along with that isn't so weird."
"And 'mates'dojust accept that you can turn into rabbits or bears or whatever? I know I did, but honestly, you'd basically set me up for the whole joke already so I just thought it was funny and cool. Does everybody?"
"Sometimes there's screaming and throwing things, but it usually only takes a few minutes for our mates to adjust. It wouldn't be much of a fated happiness thing if they had to go away for ten years and get used to the idea, you know?"
"I guess not." Sabrina worried her teeth into her bottom lip, head tilted as she studied him. "Does it always just work out? Even if, for example, your mate has a job in the city and you're a small-town boy?"
"Like I said, I can really do my job from anywhere. But yes, fate doesn't…it doesn't throw us together with people we can't work it out with. Not as far as I know."
"That's pretty wonderful," Sabrina whispered. "And I'm…I'm part of that now? I. Wow. Boy. I know I can't, but is it wrong that I kinda wanna rub that in The Girls' faces? All that time they spent haranguing me about not finding a boyfriend and it turns out it's because I was waiting for fate to strike?" She looked incredibly satisfied, and Luke laughed, gathering her into his arms again.
"Yeah, you can't tell them, but you can sit around being smug about it with me, if you want."
"Yeah? Are we going to sit around here someday and be smug about it?" She gestured at the old house whose empty living room they stood in, and Luke looked around, too, before bringing his attention back to her.
"That's probably up to you. You're the one whose job is in the city. I'm not going to ask you to choose Virtue over your career."
"But where would a giant rabbit stretch his legs in New York?" Sabrina asked, a faint frown between her eyebrows now.
"I'm almost sure fancy architects get vacation time," Luke said reassuringly. "And once the train line is in we could pop up here for a weekend easily enough. But honestly, Sabrina, most of us don't spend much time in their animal forms. I don't know if we used to when the world wasn't quite so citified and connected, but these days for sure it's just not something we do a lot."
"But that's bad," Sabrina protested. "What's the point in being a shifter if you can't shift? Doesn't it seem like—well, maybe it's not a 'use it or lose it' kind of thing, but…it seems like it might be," she added with obvious concern. "Maybe notyoulosing it, but generationally. Are there fewer shifters than there were?"
"I don't know," Luke said slowly. "It sure doesn't feel like it in Virtue, where more and more of us seem to be moving in every day. And there are so many people in the world it doesn't seem like our numbers could be diminishing. But I don't really know for sure. We've always assumed we were endangered, though. It's why Virtue exists. It's been a sanctuary town for centuries."
"I have so much to learn about your world," Sabrina breathed. "I'm so happy I get a chance to. And…well." She straightened suddenly, becoming brisk. "The question of whether we live here or in the city is a problem for later, isn't it? I'm here through October. Iwashere through October. It'll be longer now, with…"
Her energy suddenly collapsed into fear. "It seems likely that somebody burned the building site to try to keep the train station from being built, doesn't it? To keep the railroad from coming in?"
"It does," Luke admitted unhappily. "But on the other hand, their timing was bad. It's not like everything was nearly done and has to be started from scratch now, right? We've got to get you set up again, but it's not that much work lost. Is it?"
