Doris said, “I only found out recently when Joey recognized one of her grandkids, who was one of the zombies we dog-whistled to cure. Since I don’t know Mattie that well, neither Joey or I was going to say anything. We figured they had to be one of the shifter clans who feel safest keeping themselves to themselves.”
“Turns out Mattie is a squirrel shifter,” Godiva said. “Her family are all squirrels. She married another squirrel—it was an arranged marriage between the families, but it turned out great. I got all that in about half an hour, and Mattie still hadn’t finished a single sentence.”
Doris grinned. “I don’t think Mattie has finished a sentence in all the half a dozen times I’ve met her. But you’d have to look hard to find a nicer, kinder woman.”
“Very true,” Godiva said.
They were sitting on the patio behind Joey and Doris’s ranch house, as Joey’s army of student volunteers swarmed around setting up a pot luck meal in celebration of the defeat of the red dragon and the breakup of his gang. Joey, still looking a little wan, was over at the barbeque chatting as one of his exchange students did the cooking, sending delicious smells wafting through the air.
Godiva had been to Joey’s many times. He was famous among students at his university for his great cooking. But until now, she’d of course only seen humans at the gatherings.
She glanced around the yard, which stretched away toward scrubby undeveloped land—and now she knew why Joey had chosen a home on the very edge of town. Clearly this was a shifter-and-allies only party. Some of the guests were in animal form, some human. Two or three small children, belonging to faculty friends of Joey and Doris, played among the trees, the smallest ones popping in and out of animal shapes—bobcat and opossum.
Godiva leaned forward. “Mattie saw me in Cang’s claws, which is why she called me after a whole night of inner debate, I gather. Poor thing! I reassured her that I was human, but in on the secret, and I’d never tell. That’s when she told me about the squirrel thing, and added that I could tell you.”
Doris and the other two nodded, Bird smiling to herself. Godiva suspected strongly that Bird was secretly imagining Mattie as a squirrel, and enjoying that inner vision.
“So let me get this straight,” Godiva said. “Mythic shifters can go invisible to humans, except their mates, right?”
“Pretty much,” Jen said.
“But regular shifters can’t go invisible. So if Cang had been a . . . well, say, a squirrel, and Rigo was a squirrel, and they got into a squirrel fight, all the humans on the beach would see those tails bristling and heard the squeaking.”
“True,” Doris said.
“But the shifters can all see the mythic shifters, unless they have a cloaking power.”
“Some do, some don’t. . .”
“But that day, Rigo and Cang weren’t cloaking.”
“Nope,” Jen said.
“So, in fact, all the shifters in Playa del Encanto saw me nearly take a nose dive into the drink that day, am I right?”
Doris said, “Every shifter who came to the beach that day, yes. And from what I hear, word spread pret-ty fast.”
Bird looked away, but couldn’t hide her laughing eyes. Doris was obviously trying not to snicker, but Jen just grinned. “Godiva, you were a hero. The local shifter world saw you and Rigo being heroes. They now know you’re paired with one of the toughest shifters alive, which will be reassuring to the quiet, law-abiding ones like Mattie, and will give the bad ones second and third thoughts about trying to step into Cang’s place. You are notorious. Get used to it.”
“If notoriety means an end to the zombiepocalypse,” Godiva said, “I’m all for it.”
But it wasn’t the notoriety. It was how, in a handful of days, she’d gone from feeling herself so closed out she might as well leave, to being thoroughly, irrevocably a part of the shifter world.
She felt like she’d come home.
The thought made her throat tighten and her eyes sting. She blinked quickly, fighting it back—the last thing she wanted was to be sniveling and snorting in the middle of a celebration. She sensed Rigo’s concern, and threw a smile his way. He gave a tiny nod, and turned back to stacking used serving dishes. Godiva realized the pause had become a silence, and looked up, to meet an understanding gaze from Doris.
And Jen.
And Bird.
They knew. She knew they knew. They knew she knew they knew—and they also knew how much she hated getting maudlin, and because they understood, Doris said nothing, and Jen turned to Bird to ask if her agent had gotten back to her about the doll book.
Bird’s whole face brightened. “She loves it! It’s off to the editor.”
As they speculated about when the book might come out, Godiva let herself relish this moment of the four of them in balance again. She hadn’t begun to realize how important these three women were to her until the morning Doris and Bird had come to her house wanting only to hear the truth—and help if they possibly could. That, right there, was proof of a real bond. And she’d come very near to letting anger win, throwing it all away.
But she hadn’t. She’d won that battle. All of them had won their own particular private battles. And the reward? None of them had ever expected romance, not at their age, but romance had found them.