Page 34 of Partridge in a Bear Tree

With athump, Penny shifted back to human. It wascoldin the apartment with no feathers, and she shivered violently as Conri squeaked and spun around, putting his back to her. Ashley, hardly missing a beat, snatched a blanket off the back of the couch and draped it around Penny, and only as it settled on her bare skin did Penny realize she'd forgotten her clothes. "Ohno!"

"It happens to the best of us," Maggie said through a grin. "Usually when we're intoxicated, but it happens. I didn't expect you to go big right away!"

"The damn partridge thought 'I can do that!' and did," Penny said miserably. "I hope I didn't hurt anything."

"Nothing that can't be fixed easily." Ashley hugged her. "Why don't you go get dressed while we put the furniture back, and then if you have any other questions maybe Maggie can answer them."

Instead of going to get dressed, Penny looked pathetically at the swan shifter. "How big were we?"

"As far as I can tell, the biggest we get is about fourteen feet at the shoulder. With my neck I'm, I don't know, twenty, twenty-two feet tall at the tip of my bill, if I'm stretching? You're probably only seventeen feet or so, all stretched out. Maybe not quite. But still, huge."

"Birds that big can't fly, can they?" Penny asked, incredulous.

"True birds, no, but we've got magic to help. Otherwise we'd just be dinosaurs."

Penny stared at her. "Oh my God. Oh myGod. Are there dinosaur shifters?"

"Not as far as I know," Maggie said cheerfully. "It's just us big birds out there representing for our lost ancestors. Go get dressed," she said more gently. "Conri and I have to head out, but now that you know youcanshift big, that's the protection you need against not doing it accidentally."

"I just did it accidentally!"

"But you won't again," Maggie said with confidence, and Penny, with a despairing glance at Ashley, went to borrow more clothes.

CHAPTER 19

It took a few minutes to get the living room straightened out again. There were a number of extremely large feathers lying around. Ashley collected them, then, grinning, put them in a vase. No one would believe they were real, anyway. Penny emerged in a pair of Ashley's sweat pants and a t-shirt with an apologetic expression and examined the scratches she'd left in the floor before they said goodbye to Maggie and Conri.

Then Penny threw herself onto the couch and pulled a pillow over her head. "I'm a disaster."

Ashley crawled after her and tugged her into her arms for a hug. "You're not."

"No, honestly, I think I am. I can't control this thing at all. I scratched up your floor and left feathers everywhere. It's a miracle I didn't poop all over everything."

Ashley, who hadn't considered that frightened birds did tend to loosen their bowels, struggled not to laugh, and ended up burying her face in Penny's shoulder, shaking with giggles. "It is a miracle. Oh, gosh. Thank you for not doing that. That would have been so very gross."

"See?" Penny wailed. "A disaster!"

"You've been a shifter for about…" Ashley twisted, looking for a clock, then gave up and guessed at it: "About twelve hours, Penny. I think you're entitled to a little bit of disaster."

"And I lost your clothes!"

"Well, you can always get naked and try to get them back." Heat flushed through Ashley and she laughed, quick and quiet and nervous. "Um, that sounded…not how I meant it to sound."

Penny craned her neck to smile up at Ashley, her brown eyes sparkling. "Does that mean we're not at the 'get naked' stage of our relationship? I have to say, as far as I can tell, we've always been at it. We just haven't been at the 'Ashley looks at naked Penny' part."

Ashley, face hotter than before, made a faint protest. "We haven't been at the 'Penny looks at naked Ashley' part either!"

"But that," Penny said wisely, "is a lack of opportunity, not a lack of scruples. You have scruples. You are scrupulous. I, on the other hand, am immoral and dishonorable and will happily look at beautiful naked women with only the slightest bit of encouragement. Sorry," she added more quietly. "I'm not really an asshole. Just a little on edge."

"You have every reason to be." Ashley smiled and put her mouth against Penny's shoulder, then left a kiss in that spot. "I'd be lying if I said I wasn't also intrigued by the 'getting naked' prospect. I just don't want to take advantage of you in an altered state."

Penny laughed. "It would be hard for me to get in a more altered state than I've been since last night, it's true. Oh my God, what if I turned into a partridge while having sex?"

Ashley, fervently, said, "Please don't," and Penny laughed again.

"At this point I can't make any promises. Well, I suppose I could promise no hanky panky until I was sure of my shifting abilities?"

"Did you really just say hanky panky?"

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