by Mandy Rosko
“And ask you some questions,” Alyce, the woman Albert said was their boss, added. She had radiant brown skin and a friendly face, but something lurked below that pleasant exterior. Beverly had the distinct impression that Alyce was not the kind of woman you should mess with.
“And you? Do you need to ask me questions too?” Beverly asked the woman named Mila.
* * *
“No.” She shook her head. “Honestly, I just wanted to see you, and I kind of hoped that maybe me being here would jog your memory. I do have a distinctive hair color.” Her fire-engine-red hair was certainly that, but it wasn’t bringing anything back for Beverly.
* * *
“Did we work together?” Beverly asked.
* * *
“Yeah, but we’re also friends.” Mila gave her a sad smile before standing. “I wanted to let you know, though, that I’m heading out with the team to the area where Albert found you. We’re going to comb it for any evidence of where you may have been before you got there.”
Once Mila left, Nolan pulled the thin curtain around the cot to give them a little privacy. She was surprisingly clean for being out in the wild, but the water she’d been building her dam in was clean, and she’d bathed in it while in her beaver form. Nolan looked for any bruising, scrapes, scratches… anything that would show she had been harmed, but if there had been any, she’d already healed.
“Since the incident the academy’s clinic has been out of service, so I’m not going to be able to do a full workup here,” Nolan told her, pushing back the curtain so she could see Albert and Alyce again. “You’ll want to go to one of the regular shifter clinics, but who knows when they’ll be able to get us the results. They’re usually packed and slow.”
Beverly wanted to ask him more questions, including what was wrong with the academy clinic and what he meant by “incident,” but he seemed like he wanted to get out of there in a hurry. “I’m heading back home. Clarice says I’ve been away too long, but I’ll keep in touch.”
He left, and only three of them remained.
Her disappearance might be a mystery, but what Beverly did know was that she didn’t like to think of herself as the victim of anything, and it was testing her patience to go through Nolan’s check-up followed by Alyce’s questioning. But she endured the investigative procedure because she wanted to do everything she could to help them figure out what had happened to her.
Alyce sat back with a sigh. “If Mila’s team doesn’t find anything out there, we’re not going to be any closer to finding out what happened. I promise you we’ve been doing everything in our power to find out who attacked our academy and kidnapped one of our own.”
A look passed between Alyce and Albert, and Beverly couldn’t figure out what it was about.
It was as though there was something they weren’t saying.
Something big. It was difficult to say whether or not it was all in her head, however.
The students didn’t seem like they were hiding anything as they passed her. No big secret conspiracy that they were in on. But the staff knew something. She could see it in the way they looked at her. And it wasn’t just the knowledge that she’d been missing. They knew more. It seemed as though every member of staff took one look at her and Beverly could almost feel their hearts wilting.
“An attack on the academy? Is that what Nolan meant when he said the clinic was down since the incident?”
Albert gave her no bullshit, just as promised. He stood tall with his arms crossed and filled her in. “The day you went missing, we were attacked.”
She blinked. “What?”
Alyce grumbled under her breath, as though it offended her to have to hear it.
“It came out of nowhere,” Albert said. “None of the students were taken, though there were attempts on some of them. A few of them withdrew from the academy as a result. Others stuck around, wanting to finish their courses. Prove themselves.”
“So, I was the only one taken?”
She’d wondered how it happened, how she could have gone missing like that. She wondered if they could give her more details, if that would spark some memory, but so far nothing seemed to help.
“Do you remember any of it?” Albert asked hopefully.
She thought about that. She really tried then shook her head. “No. I mean it’s like everything else. I know it’s true, so maybe, deep down, I have some memory of what happened, but there’s nothing. I can’t remember fighting or any attack.”
“Some of the students said you saved them,” Alyce said.
She felt pride in that, though it confused her as well. She wanted to ask all sorts of questions to gather the details and see if she could remember any of it. “Was I in my beaver form?”
“No,” Albert said quickly, and he and Alyce shared a strange look. “You would have been using other methods of defense.”
Before she could ask what Albert meant, Alyce chimed in. “Though your animal shape would have been helpful, considering you’re not an everyday beaver. Not supposed to be.”
Now she really didn’t understand. “What’s that supposed to mean? Not that I had a mirror or anything, but I saw my reflection in streams. I looked normal enough. I felt normal enough.” Not that seeing her rippling self in murky water was the same as looking into a clear mirror, but there was definitely something else going on here. She hadn’t gotten the impression that anything was missing. All her little fingers and toes, claws, and tail seem to be in place. At least, for an ordinary beaver. She’d known how to make her den, and she would have finished it, too. It would’ve been beautiful and brilliant had Albert not shown up.
Which was a good thing. As much of a masterpiece as it would have been, it was better to be here than out there, amongst all of the predators hoping to get a piece of her furry butt.
Then Albert got that strangely sad look on his face again. “Despite that, your beaver didn’t use to be normal.”
“Are you talking about my animal shape or my cooter?” Beverly had no idea why she said that, but Alyce blushed a deep shade from her neck to the top of her forehead. Albert’s eye twitched before he laughed out loud.
“Both, if you’re looking to get your ego stroked.”
That wasn’t the only thing she wanted stroked, but she was not brave enough to say that in front of Alyce. Besides, Beverly had already gotten the impression Alyce could figure that out for herself.
The poor woman.
“Sorry, Alyce,“ she said, even though it was kind of funny.
Alyce refused to look at her, waving her hand. “Never mind, never mind. I should be used to this by now.”
“But we were being serious,” Albert said. “You weren’t just a beaver. You were a saber-toothed beaver.”
She jerked back a little on the cot. Then she snorted and shook her head. “No fucking way.”
Albert frowned at her a little. “You’ve believed me about everything else. Why not this? Why would I lie?“
Good question. “I don’t know. It’s just too ridiculous. Did a saber-toothed beaver ever really exist? Ever?“
“Most likely not in the way you’re thinking about it,“ Alyce offered helpfully, willing to look at her again.
“It’s more likely that you have something in your family ancestry that allows for this. Perhaps one of your great-grandparents was a rare, long thought extinct predator. Something with long, curved teeth. On the other side of your family could be simple beavers. It is possible for two species to intermingle like this. At least for shifters.”
“We won’t tell Miranda that you’ve forgotten the legendary FUC saber-toothed bunny agent,” Albert said.
“Get out of here.”
Albert nodded. He seemed pleased to be able to give her this information. “Yup, fluffy cottontail, teeth and all. Huge, too.”
She’d never thought about size. “Was I big?”
Albert smiled as though reliving a fond memory. “About the size of a small bear. A small adu
lt bear, but you weren’t as big as Miranda,” he clarified.
“But I’m not one now,” she said. Not a question. She’d spent a couple of days stuck in her beaver form. She knew she wasn’t anywhere near that big. “So, wherever I went, they changed me, more than just my haircut. Someone did this to me.” Not that she needed that confirmed. She already knew it, but saying it out loud made it real.
Made her desperate need for payback real, too.
She could sense the change in the room. No one wanted to come right out and state the obvious, that she had been kidnapped, that someone had done this to her and she’d had to get away on her own.
And that pissed her off.
“You’re my husband, right?”
“I am,” Albert said.
“Good, then you can do your wife a giant beaver-sized favor and not treat me like glass. If someone did this to me, shaved off half my hair, made me forget who I am, and tampered with my shifter shape, then I’m going to go out and find them. And you’re going to help me.”
“It would be better if the both of you left this to others on the team,” Alyce said. “No offense, Beverly, but this happened to you. We don’t normally have the victim of a crime doing their own investigating.”
“That’s why Albert is helping.” Alyce’s words meant nothing to her. An army wasn’t going to stop her from tracking down these people.
“And as your husband, he would also be...off-limits, as far as investigations go.”
“Oh, come on!” Albert snapped. She didn’t expect that from him. “I can put my services to good use. I was in the field not so long ago.”
Meaning he wasn’t in the field anymore? Why not? “And you and I both know why you stepped back from that.” There was a warning in Alyce’s voice that got Beverly’s suspicions spiking. Why did she have to stop before he got to the juicy bits?
“What happened? Was he injured?” Albert seemed fine, but these things weren’t always obvious.
Albert and Alyce glared at each other before Albert gave in. “I’ll tell you when we get home.”
“Andrés can give you both a ride.”
“I can drive,” Albert snarled.
With a noise like that, he could have been a canine shifter of some kind, rather than a floofy barn owl.
“He wants to do it for you. Let him help out.”
“If I let him drive us back, then he won’t shut up. He’ll ask too many questions.”
Andrés. The name seemed to strike a chord, but she couldn’t place it. “Why would this Andrés want to give us a ride back home? Is there something wrong with your driving?”
Albert didn’t answer; Alyce did. “Andrés is one of our best transportation agents. And also a good friend.”
Albert’s lip curled in what looked to be half a snarl, showing he likely wasn’t one of the driver’s closest friends. Which got Beverly thinking that she’d been pretty close with Andrés before the incident. It could be a reason that her husband was so annoyed by the thought of him.
The idea of him being jealous soothed a strange emotion she hadn’t quite been aware was festering inside her. “Are you sure we can’t have Andrés drive us home?” she asked, watching the tiny muscle beneath Albert’s eye twitch. “If you’re that upset, then it might be for the best, and you can focus a little more on me until we get back.”
Albert looked at her, as though not quite sure what to make of that. “I mean for talking,” she said, though it wasn’t really what she’d meant. “We can catch up. You can tell me all about who I am, who we are, and I won’t have to worry about you driving into a ditch and killing us because you’re so upset about what happened to me.”
“I won’t drive us into a ditch. That’s the last thing you need to worry about,” he said with a short huff.
“Aren’t owls farsighted? How can you drive at all?”
“Owls are farsighted. I’m not, at least in this form.”
“How can I be sure of that?”
Albert grinned at her. “Owls also can’t move their eyes. They have to swivel and turn their heads around to look around. I’m not doing that either.”
“Wait, what?”
“Yup. So you’re getting in the car with me. I’m driving us home. Andrés just wants to spy on us anyway.”
“That’s not what he’s doing,” Alyce insisted. “He’s worried about the both of you is all.”
“Then he can wait for me to send a text. For now, I’m taking Beverly home.”
“And you’re both going to stay there for a couple of days.”
Albert glared at Alyce. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“What if I remember something?” Beverly asked, knowing good and well she wouldn’t pass over her leads to random FUC agents to look into for her.
“Then you can call me. Ever since Mastermind first showed up, followed by the whole Bunyip thing, we’ve needed to be extra careful. If someone else is kidnapping and experimenting on shifters, then we’re going to have the higher-ups in FUC on our asses soon, and you’d be doing me a favor if you behaved.”
“So, this happened before?” Stupid question to ask; of course it had. Not that either of the two bothered to answer her, which was all kinds of annoying.
Not so annoying was the way Albert grabbed her hand and walked out of there with her, hissing about how he would be back to deal with Alyce later.
Four
Albert did drive them back home. To what she figured was their home, because, honestly, what else could this small house be?
When he stopped, Beverly looked at it, taking in the details.
Two stories. Yellow paint, with a flower bed, a few hanging pots, and trees everywhere.
It looked like a postcard picture.
She and Albert sat in the car, looking at it as if he was giving her the chance to take in the sight.
They weren’t entirely hidden away from their neighbors. She could see their houses, but they were at a distance.
“I guess living here keeps the humans from knowing?” she asked, her seatbelt still in place.
Albert nodded, keeping his hand on the wheel, even though the engine was dead. “That blue house way down there is the one with the humans. Mrs. Mortimer lives over there. She’s older. Likes to feed the birds, which is nice for me.”
Beverly smiled. “She throws you mice, does she?”
“Better, she’ll toss all kinds of scraps and wait for me to take them away. One time I didn’t for a good month,” he said. “At your insistence. You were too worried she would figure something out, but when I didn’t show up for all that time, she came and had a talk with you about how she was worried about her cute pet owl.”
Now Beverly was smiling. “She sounds really sweet.”
“Yeah, she is. So I went back to hooting outside her door some nights, and that seemed to make her feel better. She needs glasses, but she’s not blind, so you just have to be careful about shifting when you see her curtains open. Otherwise, she keeps to herself.”
“And our other neighbors?”
“That house down there.” He pointed, but it still took her a few seconds to see it.
“It’s…really hidden behind those trees.”
Albert nodded. “For people like us, that’s something of the point.”
Beverly nodded, though, as per usual, the more that was pointed out to her, the more it felt like puzzle pieces settling into place.
Things that seemed like common sense, stuff she shouldn’t need to re-learn, but for now, she didn’t mind the refresher.
That it was perfectly natural for shifters to live in the cities as well as out in the boonies. They could have condos, apartments, or townhomes. Not everyone needed to be tucked away like she and Albert were. Some shifters could walk and work amongst the humans just fine, but she and Albert were apparently the sort that enjoyed their solitude.
She got the impression that didn’t have anything to do with their shifter status. It was just who they
were.
“What do you think?” Albert asked, as though remembering that this was her first memory of this place as of now.
Was he really looking for her approval?
“It’s beautiful. Did I pick out the flowers?”
Albert seemed to relax. “Yeah, you did, though the official story is that I picked them out. You’ve got a reputation to protect.”
She couldn’t help but smile at that. “Did we pick out the house together?” She wondered what house hunting must have been like. Her beaver nature and his owl nature probably both wanted trees and woods, but did they agree right away or have to come to agreements?
“We were actively looking for a place when this fell into our laps. You were really more a city gal, or at least suburbs, wanting something with more of a white picket fence. The neighbors didn’t need to be so scarce either. I think it was the close proximity to water that really made you like it.”
“I think that makes sense, and if it makes you feel any better, I really do think it’s beautiful. I can’t even remember what my ideal version of a dream home would have looked like anyway.”
That was definitely the wrong thing to say. Albert cringed. Beverly pretended not to see that. She unclipped her seat belt and got out of the car. “Well, time to give me a tour of the house I live in. Come on, Owlbert.”
That got him smiling back at her as he got out of the car, locking up, both of them walking to the threshold.
“You used to call me that all the time.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “Whenever you were teasing me. I never minded it, but you always said it whenever you thought I was being a smartass. It’s nice to hear it roll off your tongue again.”
Beverly cleared her throat, a low burning heat working its way up her chest and into her neck and face.
“Does that embarrass you to hear?” he asked, working his key into the door. He seemed to have to wiggle it a little to make it go.
“Maybe a little,” she said.
Not true.
Really, it was the mention of a tongue that did it. He’d mentioned hers, but she couldn’t help but think of his.
