“Well, now,” Marty said as she dropped her paws—now hands—onto her hips. “Don’t you feel better for getting that off your chest? You been carrying the guilt of a bunch of tarts around since you were ten years old.”
Mr. Max snorted and folded his arms across his chest. “You knew from the beginning.”
“Might be the case. Might be I was waiting for the guilt to eat you alive and make you confess. Didn’t think it would take twenty years.”
He snorted. “I was just a boy.”
“And full of mischief. But you got enough to think about in your life without feeling guilty for a bunch of undercooked tarts.”
“Undercooked? Is that why they were sitting out?”
Marty grinned. “They were a bad batch. Those weren’t for the party. I was just practicing.”
Max’s jaw dropped. “And you let me feel guilty all these years?”
“Well, I figured if you didn’t confess, I didn’t have to, either.”
They stared at each other, Marty with a lifted chin and a laugh bubbling on her lips. Mr. Max was indignant, but his expression soon shifted to amused. A moment later, he pulled her into a big hug—hell, it was a bear hug—and they chuckled together. And all the while, Becca just stared, her mind reeling from what she’d seen.
Were-grizzlies? No way. It couldn’t be.
“I’ve been infected,” she murmured. Whatever the chemical spill or hallucinatory poison in the water—she’d somehow gotten it. She was insane now, just like everyone else.
Then Marty turned to her, her hands on her hips. “You’re not one of those stubborn people who won’t believe no matter what, are you? I thought you had more sense than that.”
Becca swallowed. Were-bears? It couldn’t be possible. But then her gaze landed on the hair on the floor. Tufts of dark brown with white tips. Without fully realizing what she was doing, she knelt down and picked some of it up. She rubbed the coarse hairs between her fingers, even sniffed them. They were real. Not a hallucination, but real hairs from a real creature.
“Where’d the rest go?” she murmured, looking up at Marty. The grizzly had been almost double her size and weight, and now she was back to being an average middle-aged woman in an oversize sack of a dress. “The hair here doesn’t account for all that size.”
Standing behind her, the detective snorted. “You can buy were-grizzly but get hung up on the fur.” The woman shifted to look her in the eye. “It’s an energy exchange. Did you notice the change in temperature? Or it’s magic. Or maybe it’s some sort of special biological DNA that draws from the Force. Who the hell knows? Can’t you just accept this and move on so we can talk about your nephew?”
The tone was irritated and the words downright rude, but it was exactly what Becca needed to jolt her out of her shock. Which meant she had a simple choice. She could either cling stubbornly to the mass hysteria idea or leap straight into were-creature land. Given that crisis mode forced her to boil life down to the raw facts, she had to go with the evidence of her five senses. The fur was real. The change was real. Ergo, bear shifters were real.
Maybe if she wished real hard, she could find a knight in shining armor, too.
“Okay,” she finally said. “Tell me why you think Theo is one of you.”
“Good,” approved the detective. “You’re rational. There’s hope for you.”
Becca wasn’t so sure, but she let the comment go. Meanwhile, Mr. Max answered her question.
“Theo’s father was a shifter like us. He was kind of wild?—”
“Feral,” inserted Marty.
Mr. Max winced. “He fathered a few children on different women before he died.” Marty opened her mouth at that, but the man shot her a quelling look. She pressed her mouth closed and tilted her head completely to the side. It was a strange reaction that Becca didn’t have the brainpower to process. “Theo was one of his children. Not every child shifts, so we stayed away. But just in case…”
“You bring them to camp,” Becca said, remembering that her sister had never had to pay full price for the weeks away. She’d said it was a scholarship for special kids. Translation: potential shifter kids. “And once here, you teach them how to navigate Gladwin Park if it’s needed.”
“Yes.”
“But why do you think Theo’s shifted now?”
“Because he’s been fighting at school. His temperature has been running hot, which is normal before First Change.”
“No it hasn’t?—”
“Remember all those fevers that got him out of his French tests?”
