Page 41 of Renaissance Bear

"You do that." Jon took a long, languid sip of his own root beer as Laurie sulked off, and Alis laughed.

"You two are pretty close, huh?"

"Yeah. We annoy each other all the time, but yeah, Laurie's got my back. You think Lord Argent's really cheating?"

"I'm sure of it," Alis said, unexpectedly decisively. "But I don't know how to prove it either. The helmet camera is kind of a great idea, but anyway, never mind him. Did you hear anything about what happened to the mayor?"

"Only the gossip that's going around, which is that he wasn't home, either. I don't know. I feel like I should go look for him, which is stupid. It's not like I can track him in the only way I'd be any good at it." A smile pulled at the corner of his mouth at the idea, though, and he dropped his voice. "But that would be pretty great, wouldn't it? All the shifters in town out there sniffing around in their animal forms? It would look like the circus got loose, or something."

"It would look like the second half of Jurassic Park," Alis said with a laugh. "All the running and the screaming from the normies."

Jon winced all the way through his entire soul. "True humans. That's what we call you."

"That's more flattering, but less funny." Alis scooted closer, until her body heat mingled with Jon's, and lowered her voice even more. "Would it work? If you were all able to go sniffing around?"

"I don't know," Jon admitted softly. "It sure looked like a shifter had been at City Hall, but there wasn't any scent of one at all."

"Do shifters…" Alis paused, clearly trying to work through the question, then shook her head. "No, you're just going to have to explain it all to me. Do you have better senses of smell when you're in human form than we do? Do shifterssmelldifferent? Do shifteranimalssmell different from…true bears, or whatever?"

Jon seized on the first question, because it was the only one he knew a concrete answer to: "Yes, we smell better than true hu?—"

Alis, to his horror, leaned in and took a good solid whiff of his armpit, then leaned back again with a delicately offended expression. "I don't think you smell better at all."

Jon curdled red from somewhere beneath his lungs all the way to the top of his scalp. Alis threw her head back and roared with laughter, tears leaking from her eyes, and when she'd about stopped, she looked at Jon's mortified hunch and dissolved into laughter again. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, you smellfine, I just couldn't resist. I didn't ask if yousmelledbetter, I asked if you had bettersensesof smell—" She broke down into laughter again, the giggles so infectious that Jon couldn't help ducking his head and smiling too.

By that time they'd drawn attention, and it was clear that some of the minstrel band were planning to come join them. Jon, still blushing, tilted his head away from the crowd. "I think if we're going to talk about who smells better we should do it somewhere else."

"So they don't all know?" Alis slugged the rest of her root beer back, opened her mouth to say something else, and let out a belch that silenced everybody in a twenty-foot radius. Thensheblushed as furiously as Jon had as a round of applause went upand people started calling "Ten out of ten, top score!", "No, it lacked resonance, eight out of ten," and, "Extra points for style!"

"I think getting out of here is a good idea," Alis said through her blush, and Jon, grinning, got up, offered her a hand, and drew her away into a quieter part of the faire. The attendees were heading out now: the gates closed at six during the week, and everybody who didn't work there had to be off the grounds by seven at the latest. It was nearly that now. Once they'd gotten away from the tavern, Alis repeated, "So theydon'tall know?", then looked up at Jon with a winsome expression he thought would cut his heart right in two. "Sorry if I'm asking too many questions. This is all pretty incredible and I hardly know what I don't know to ask about."

You should tell her about mates,his bear told him in no uncertain terms.

I will,Jon promised.I just…I really want to meet the Black Knight, first. I want to…He sighed internally.I want to understand what draws me to him. I've neverhada boyfriend. I've never really even thought about having a boyfriend!

Mates are mates,the bear said.You worry too much about it all.

Well, that's humans for you,Jon said, then shook his head at Alis, knowing the conversation with the bear had taken essentially no time in the outside world. "No, it's okay to ask all the questions you want. I want you to. It's just that some of them I might not have ever had to think about an answer to."

"Like who smells better," Alis said, her eyes sparkling, and he laughed.

"Yeah, exactly. Let me try that one again: shiftersdoscent better than true humans. Not nearly as well as we do in our animal forms, but better than humans. Cat shifters see really well in the dark. Some of the bird shifters have—well—eagleeyesight. We tend to be stronger than usual, and we almost all hear well."

"So you're saying you're all Wolverine."

Jon made fists like he hoped claws would pop out. "Kind of. Well, yeah, even more than you're thinking, kind of, because shifting helps us heal up. Laurie's knee is actually fine now because he went home and shifted a couple times, but since half the faire crew saw him blow it out, he's stuck in that knee brace for at least as long as it would take for a fast-healing true human to heal."

"I knew somebody in college who smeared himself all over the highway in a motorcycle wreck and they thought he'd be in traction for months. He was out in a few weeks. Like that?"

"Yeah, but don't tell Laurie about that or he'll try tell everybody he healed up overnight. Low profile," Jon said wryly. "We try to keep a low profile, generally speaking."

"So no famous shifters?" Alis asked.

"Well. No, actually, there are some really famous shifters, but medically speaking, I mean."

Alis's eyes rounded. "Who? No, you're probably not supposed to tell me. But now I'm going to be looking at every celebrity and trying to suss out if they're secretly an octopus or something." She paused. "Are there octopus shifters?"

"I…have never met one. That doesn't mean no, but…" Jon blinked down at her, and Alis grinned.

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