Page 34 of Renaissance Bear

"No, I know it doesn't, I just…ah, hell. I was trying to tell you something earlier, and then I thought maybe I didn't have to tell you rightnow, since we've got another week before you leave, but… you saw those marks on the desk outside?"

Alis smiled briefly. "Yeah, they look like claw marks. What's that about? Some kind of old Colorado folk tale about how Davy Crockett wrassled himself a bear and the town made a desk out of the trees they scarred up?"

Jon groaned. "That would be a great story, but no. The reality is maybe less believable. Alis…" He glanced around the little security room and sighed. "You're going to want to back out of the room for this."

"Forwhat? Why?"

"Because I'm going to…" Jon grimaced again, then cast his gaze upward, said, "This isnothow I wanted to do this," and met her eyes. "I'm going to take up a lot of room in here in a minute, and it'll be a little easier on you if you're not squished up in here with me. I think."

She smiled uncertainly. "I kind of like being squished up against you."

"Not in this case. I mean." He looked around a little wildly. "It'd probably be pretty snuggly? But no, no, definitely not right now. You definitely need breathing room on this one. Can you…will you just trust me on this and go into the hall? But leave the door open."

"I'm very confused, but okay, fine." Alis backed out into the hall, bracing the door open on a bit of scrap. "Okay. I'm out. What's going on?"

"Um. God, is this always this hard? Why don't we have classes in how to explain this? Does everybody just—agh. Okay, look, Alis. I'm what's called a shifter. My whole family is. I can change into a bear."

Alis laughed, and halfway through her laugh, Jon changed into a bear.

Not just a bear. Abigbear. A huge, shaggy, dark blond grizzly bear who in fact filled up the whole security room as he lifted his huge, shaggy, dark blond head to give her what seemed to be an incredibly apologetic look.

Alis's laugh turned into a shriek. She lurched sideways, grabbed the nearest thing that looked heavy, and lifted it, preparing to throw it. A piece of paper stuck to its bottom crinkled at the corner of her eye and she grabbed it, shoved it in her pocket, and hauled the—she checked her hand. She was holding what appeared to be the plinth of some kind of small butsturdy statue. She hauled the plinth farther back, threatening to throw it.

Jon turned back into a man, holding his hands out as if to stop her, his eyes wide and his expression every bit as apologetic as the bear's. "No no no no nonono! Please no! It's just me! I'm just me! Please don't throw things at me!"

"What do you mean you're just you, you just turned into a bear!"

"I know! I know! Just me turns into a bear! It's a family thing! I swear I'm not going to hurt you!"

She hefted the plinth again, warningly. "Do it again."

For some reason she was possibly even more shocked when he did it again. "What!"

The bear looked like it wanted to cry. So did Jon, when he shifted back to human, his hands still extended and spread in supplication. "There aren't lots of shifters in the world, but there are enough of us. More than you'd think. There are a lot of us, comparatively, in Renaissance."

Alis still wasn't sure she wouldn't throw the plinth. "Are you telling me Renaissance is full ofbear people? People bears? What even do I call you?"

"Shifters," Jon said again. His whole body was bent toward her like he could help her understand with his intensity. "You call us shifters. And my whole family are bears, but there are a lot of other types of shifters. Big cats. Wolves." A smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. "Partridges."

Alis's arm was starting to quiver from the weight she held.Stop that, she told it. She could lift a sword forever. A plinth shouldn't make her shake.

Of course, a sword was balanced very differently from a plinth, but that wasn't what she wanted to be thinking about right now. "Partridges? How does that even work? Birds hardly weigh anything." Her eyebrows drew in tightly enough to startgiving herself a headache. "And bears are much bigger than people. How did you even—and where did yourclothesgo?"

"Magic," Jon said, hands still extended. "It's just the magic. I don't know how it works. I just know that it does. Could you please put that thing down?"

"Are you telling me," Alis said, putting it together without quite thinking it through, "are you telling me that those scars on the desk out there were caused by a, ashifter?"

"Yes," Jon said desperately. "I mean, I think so, which means Renaissance is in some kind of trouble I don't understand, and if we get the wrong authorities involved, it's going to get much, much worse."

Alis slowly lowered the plinth, then let it fall to the floor with a crash, and sighed. "Well, then, I guess we'd better get therightauthorities involved."

She thought Jon might melt through the floor with relief. For a moment it looked like all his bones had turned to jelly. Well, that was only fair enough, because hers had when he turned into a bear six feet away from her. "All of you?" she added a little faintly.

Jon took a deep breath. "My whole family, yeah."

"And here I told Ashley I thought all of you big friendly blonds weregolden retrievers."

Jon smiled hopefully. "No. Not golden retrievers, no."

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