Page 82 of Red Boar's Baby

As they went out the back door, Aunt Maura called, “Dinner’s in ten minutes!”

“We’ll be there!” Costa called back.

Behind the main ranch house, there was a small playground area with kiddie swings, an inflatable pool that was rarely filled in the summer due to water shortages, and a homemade miniature golf course that Costa remembered helping build with Marco when they were kids. Dusk was gathering rapidly, turning the hills blue and the sky purple.

Diana reached for the buttons on her shirt, and Costa leaned close to Farley. “You’re going to turn your back and not turn around until she’s shifted.”

Farley gulped and spun around. “Got it.”

Costa carefully averted his eyes, for the most part, but he was peripherally and viscerally aware of Diana disrobing. She folded her clothes and put them on a patio chair. “Okay,” she said.

Costa turned back. The roadrunner was standing at the edge of Aunt Lo’s rock garden.

He had seen plenty of her in the desert recently, but now he looked at her closely, trying to determine if anything was different.

Roadrunners were large birds, relatively speaking, about two feet long from their tail to the tip of their spearlike beak. Aside from their general shape, they looked very little like the cartoon. Diana’s feathers were mottled dark brown and cream, with long, nearly white legs. She held herself low and lean, like a running velociraptor—which, indeed, she more or less was.

Seeing Delgado and Costa both watching her, joined after a moment by Farley, she straightened up and preened a little, nibbling at the feathers under one wing. She stretched her wings out, tentatively flapped them, and turned her head around on her supple bird neck to look at her back.

“Two wings,” Costa said, relieved.

“She doesn’t look any different,” Delgado said. “Do you mind if I take a picture of you to show the lab?”

Diana shook her head, a weird effect on her roadrunner body, and Delgado took pictures from a few angles. Diana obligingly spread her wings and turned to display different angles. Then, while Delgado flipped through the photos and texted them to work, Diana shifted back and reached for her clothes.

“Nothing?” she asked, sounding disappointed.

“You look completely normal,” Costa said, finding himself deeply relieved. “Maybe it didn’t take. You might need several doses or something.”

“I only got one dose,” Farley said. “Maybe it doesn’t work if you already have wings.”

As much as Costa hated to agree with Farley, it wasn’t a bad theory. Then Aunt Lo came out to call them in for supper, so the work conversation was put on hold until after the food.

As usual, the table groaned under a delicious spread, with a huge pot of spaghetti and Aunt Brill’s patented marinara and meatballs, garlic bread, a salad from Aunt Maura’s winter garden, side dishes of sweet golden corn and yams and Aunt Lo’s beet salad. There were two kinds of pies for dessert, with homemade vanilla ice cream.

Emmeline ate some mashed yams sitting in Costa’s lap, took half a bottle, then was passed between the aunts until she was placed in her playpen and fell asleep on a blanket.

“I’m never leaving here,” Vic said, as they all drifted into the living room with coffee or, in Molly’s case, a glass of juice. “Roll me to a bunkhouse. I’m a city kid, but I’ll learn to wrangle horses. You don’t even have to pay me, just feed me.”

Costa grinned, and accepted a small jot of brandy in his coffee from Uncle Roddy. “Did you learn anything from the shifter underground?”

Vic tilted his head towards Molly. “Let me get Princess Hummingbird settled in the guest bedroom with a story, and then I’ll fill you in.”

Vic and Molly went off to one of the guest rooms. Delgado and Farley appeared to be looking at family albums with Aunt Maura. Costa decided to steer clear of that entire situation, so he and Diana went to a sofa by the window. Now that it was dark, there was little to be seen, just reflections and the pale glow of the halogen light by the entrance to the ranch yard.

“You still feel okay?” Costa asked Diana.

“I really do.” She took his hand, ran her lightly callused fingertips over the ridges of tendons on the back. “I think if it was going to do anything, it would have by now. I have to say, I’m a little disappointed.”

“In what?” Costa asked. He turned his hand around to squeeze hers. “Not being the world’s first four-winged roadrunner?”

Diana laughed softly. “It would certainly have been interesting. I guess that must be what happened to Emmeline.” They both turned to look at the baby in her crib. “But why on earth do they want to put wings on people?”

“I think I can answer that, sort of,” Vic said. He had just come in and angled to join them at the window. Sitting on the end of the couch beside Costa with his elbow on his knee, he went on. “There are rumors in the shifter underground of really unusual fighters. People with talents and skills, and sometimes shift forms, that they’ve never seen before.”

“Oho,” Costa murmured. “Okay, that makes more sense.”

Diana looked back and forth between them. “They’re giving people wings to compete in shifter fights?”

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