The Bear's Secret Surrogate

by Amy Star

  She cocked her head to one side. “What’s wrong?” she asked slowly, a hand on his forearm sliding up to his shoulder.

  “Don’t go spreading it around,” Atticus advised cautiously. “The fewer people know, the better for now. I don’t want that information getting back to our most recent unwanted guest.”

  Casey’s eyes widened as realization dawned, and she nodded slowly. “Right,” she agreed quietly. “Got it.” There was no reason to give the hunter any more leverage than she already had, after all. Better to just keep her in the dark for as long as possible.

  Casey looked down at her stomach, fingers splaying across the fabric of her shirt. She had expected pregnancy to come with complications. Of course she had. This was not one of the complications she had been expecting. But she was adaptable. She would be alright.

  *

  “I’ve been given a babysitter,” Casey summarized after Branson finished speaking.

  He rolled his eyes and folded his arms across his chest, shifting his weight to one side as he did. “A bodyguard,” he argued.

  “Semantics,” Casey stated bluntly.

  “Look, we just don’t want anything to happen to you,” he replied, trying for a tone that sounded appeasing. “I promise, I’ll be discreet. You’ll hardly even know I’m around.”

  “Aside from the fact that you’re a dog the size of a large pony,” Casey drawled. “But yeah, sure, alright. I’m sure I’ll never even notice you.” She crossed her arms, and her shoulders rounded as she slumped. “Why can’t Lydia play nanny?”

  Branson cleared his throat, and his hands fell to his sides for a moment, just long enough for him to link his hands together behind his back. “Lydia is a bird,” he pointed out, as if Casey had someone forgotten about that. “A very large bird, but a bird nonetheless. While she would definitely be able to spot any trouble, she’s not exactly big enough to tackle the problem to the ground.”

  Casey cocked one eyebrow. “Aren’t you supposed to avoid doing that with hunters?” she wondered blandly. “Since they apparently like to do whatever it is they do when you’re animal shaped.”

  Branson waved the topic off with a flippant flick of his wrist. “She’s unlikely to do anything really bad until a full moon.” When Casey’s eyebrows simply rose higher in response, he carried on to explain, “We’re sturdy. Killing us generally takes a lot, since most people are not actually good enough shots to land a perfect headshot from a safe distance. Which means hurting us when we still have the capacity to change back will probably still result in us doing just that out of spite, because if we’re going to die, we’re going to saddle our killer with the appropriate murder charges.” He shrugged. “So, it’s generally more convenient to just avoid actually hurting us until the full moon.”

  “Ah.” If Casey didn’t sound entirely like she grasped what he was saying, well, it wasn’t a lie. “So, just… reasons,” she summarized flatly.

  “Reasons,” Branson agreed, his tone dryly amused. “Anyway, I promise I’ll stay out of the way. No one wants anything to happen to you is all.”

  With a slow sigh, Casey relented. “Alright, fine.” It made sense, she supposed. And it was only temporary. Sooner or later, they would deal with Georgia, and she would be a nonissue, and Casey wouldn’t need a babysitter anymore.

  Even so, she was not thrilled at the prospect.

  *

  Branson kept his word, altogether. He stayed out of the way. He lurked at a distance when Casey was outside on the property, and he wasn’t there when she was in the house, of course. When she went into town, occasionally he escorted her in his human form, largely for the sake of convenience, and sometimes he escorted her while shaped like a very large wolf who happened to be pretending to be a very large dog. He didn’t interrupt anything that Casey was doing unless she specifically called on him, and he wasn’t particularly bothersome.

  But still, Casey knew he was there. She knew she was being watched; she knew that she had a babysitter at all times. She knew it was for a reason—a good reason—and that everyone meant well, but it still didn’t sit well in her chest.

  She was resigning herself to the idea of just living with it until they happened to trip over a way to get rid of Georgia, however long that was, when an idea occurred to her. Why couldn’t they involve the actual police? They didn’t need to tell the whole truth, after all. They just needed to catch Georgia trying to break into the house.

  “Do we still have those cameras I found?” she wondered one night at dinner, steering the last few bites of her meal in circles around her plate with her fork.

  “Yeah,” Atticus replied, and he arched one eyebrow. “Taking up spying?” he wondered dryly.

  “Reverse-spying,” Casey returned primly. “I’m going to set them up in some of her favorite places to look, and I’m going to get Lydia to help me hide them, since I figure if she can’t spot them even if she knows they’re there, then there will be no chance that Georgia will be able to see them when she isn’t expecting them to be there.”

  “Okay,” Atticus returned slowly, largely just to signify that he was following along. “Why?”

  Casey leaned her elbows on the table and propped her chin up with both hands. “You can’t go to the cops about her being a hunter, because then you would need to spill the beans about being a were-bear,” she mused, “but you’ve sort of lost track of the bigger picture. Trespassing is trespassing. Harassment is harassment. Assault is assault.”

  She shrugged, shoulders rising but her chin still in her hands. “Get footage of her trying to break into the house or whatever and give that to the cops, and you won’t even have to mention the word ‘bear’ at all.”

  Atticus blinked at her, and after a moment, he huffed out a breath of laughter. “I suppose I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  “I pride myself on being a breath of fresh air,” Casey returned pleasantly, bringing a hand to her chest as she said it. “I’m always happy to remind you when you have your head stuck too far up your ass to see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

  She ducked to the side as Atticus flicked a baby carrot at her.

  *

  It took two days for Casey to learn how the cameras worked well enough to be sure she wouldn’t make a mess of them and to be sure that any potentially incriminating footage had been erased. By the time she was ready to start setting up the cameras around the outside of the house, they were basically clean slates, as if they had never even belonged to Georgia, and Casey was comfortable saying she was a master at using them.

  Hiding them properly was another story. There were only three cameras, but hiding them properly still took hours of trial and error, as each time, Casey swore they were invisible, Lydia would unerringly land beside them and give them a hearty tap with her beak, even if she was inside during the hiding process and had no idea where Casey was going.

  But finally—finally!—Casey managed to get all three of them adequately tucked away so that even Lydia had to admit defeat, and all three of them were still angled towards what had seemed to be Georgia’s favorite places to gather information.

  Casey was less than pleased at the fact that one of those places was her bedroom window, but that detail was at least less intimidating when she wasn’t sleeping in there at all anymore.

  *

  The next day, there was no noteworthy footage on the cameras.

  Nor the day after that, or after that, or the next three after that. It was slightly aggravating on one hand, but Casey wasn’t going to complain about a shortage of breaking and entering attempts. Even so, she kept checking the cameras every morning, downloading the footage onto her laptop and perusing it.

  And finally, she got what she was looking for.

  On two of the cameras, Georgia popped in and out throughout a four-hour portion of the night, largely just observing the house. It seemed pretty innocuous—mild trespassing that would likely get her a scolding by the authorities and nothing else,
save maybe a fine—but the third camera was a bit more damning.

  Right there on the monitor, plain as day, Casey watched the footage of Georgia slipping the window lock, heaving it open, and clambering inside. For almost a solid half hour after that, there was no activity except for Georgia occasionally walking past the window from the inside, but eventually, she climbed back out and beat a hasty retreat.

  Casey did not enjoy watching the footage. It made her uncomfortable in a very visceral way, knowing someone with malicious intent had been that close to all of her things, and just down the hall from her and Atticus. But she had the footage, and that was the most important part.

  *

  Casey had never spent all that much time around police officers. She had never been in a police station before. She slunk through the doors like a frightened cat, and it took a bit of asking around before she was shown to someone to whom she could actually hand the footage.

  The officer seemed exasperated at first, like he heard the words “someone keeps breaking into the house” and immediately assumed she was just panicking over nothing. Granted, she was a known figure suddenly, so she supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised at strangers looking at her and deciding she was too rich to have any real concerns; clearly, she was just trying to pull his attention away from actually important work for the sake of her own whims.

  But then, he actually watched the footage, and his tone changed very quickly.

  Casey spent most of the evening in the station, answering questions about the situation and explaining that Georgia had been scoping out the property for days at that point, and that they had even found cameras. When asked if she still had the cameras, Casey shrugged and said she trashed them in a rage after finding them. The officer seemed aggravated by the response, but he didn’t seem to actually blame her.

  When she eventually stepped out of the station, Branson was curled up asleep on the sidewalk waiting for her, and he woke up with a jolt when she prodded him with her toes. After that, the trip back to the house was uneventful.

  By the time Casey made it back to the house that night, she was frazzled and tired, but it had worked out. With the newly presented proof that Georgia Carmichael was not on vacation and was most definitely not behaving herself, the police were going to do what they could to track her down.

  Casey decided to keep the cameras set up in the yard anyway. Contacting the police wasn’t going to magically make Georgia evaporate or anything like that, and Casey refused to be taken off guard. As it was, she was barely spending more than the absolute bare minimum amount of time in her suite, just in case Georgia had left something in there and no one had spotted it yet.

  After that, she supposed all that was really left to do was to wait for the police to get in touch with them to offer an update on the situation. It had gone rather well, all things considered. Casey didn’t even have to mention the word “bears.” It turned out that breaking the law was breaking the law, even if there were were-animals secretly involved.

  Casey slept well that night. Just knowing that she had told someone and that something was going to be done was a weight off her shoulders.

  *

  When Casey woke up the next morning, she did so very reluctantly. It was early. Early enough that the sun was only just beginning to rise. Atticus gave her shoulder another shake just to make sure she was actually awake.

  She sat up slowly, squinting at him, only half awake. “Why am I up?” she mumbled, scrubbing one fist over her eyes. Atticus’s expression was fond as he looked at her.

  “Because I wanted to talk to you,” he answered wryly, “and I wanted to do so before I left for work.”

  Everything seemed normal enough, but there was something off about his tone, and Casey asked fuzzily, “What’s wrong?”

  Atticus cleared his throat. “I think you should stay in the house for a few days,” he stated after a moment, foregoing dressing his words up in favor of simply getting to the point. “In case there’s some sort of blowback from going to the police.”

  Slowly, Casey’s eyebrows rose, and she opened her mouth to protest, only to pause and close her mouth with an audible click of teeth when her thoughts actually caught up with her.

  She had no real self-defense skills to speak of. She didn’t know how to use any weapons. In theory, she knew she could figure a gun out—point, pull, repeat—but it wasn’t something she would be remotely comfortable with. The idea of murder was not one that sat well with her.

  She also couldn’t say it was entirely out of the picture for Georgia to try something drastic once it became obvious that she was on the police radar, and if that happened… well, it wouldn’t be Casey getting hurt. It would be Branson, since he was the one in charge of following her around and keeping her safe.

  As much as she wanted to protest being kept inside—and Atticus wasn’t even making a demand, but rather a request—she knew she didn’t have a leg to stand on. If she went gallivanting out the door because she didn’t want to feel like a child, she would be acting like a child and potentially putting someone else at risk for her own sake.

  She wasn’t comfortable with that either.

  Slowly, Casey sighed out a breath and flopped forward, faceplanting on her pillow. For a moment, she simply stayed there, face buried, until she slowly pried herself off the bed just enough to sit up on her elbows.

  “Alright,” she agreed glumly, her tone caught somewhere between rational and sullen. “I’ll find something to do around the house.” Granted, she didn’t have much faith in being able to do that, considering previous attempts had mostly left her feeling stir-crazy with a case of cabin fever. But even so, Atticus had a good point, and if a bit of boredom could keep everyone a bit safer, then she would just suck it up and put up with it.

  *

  It felt like the longest day in history. There was just nothing Casey could think of to do. She could only browse around on the Internet for so long before she got bored or got a headache or a case of eye strain, and while there was a fully stocked library, even that offered only limited entertainment; Casey had never been one to keep her nose buried in a book nonstop. She didn’t dislike reading, and she had a pile of books she intended to read; she just didn’t really want to just then.

  As a matter of fact, she didn’t really know what she wanted to do, as if agreeing to stay in the house had sucked every idea out of her head like a siphon. So instead, she sprawled on the floor in the living room on the ground floor, staring at the ceiling with her hands clasped together beneath her head.

  At least until Lydia leaned over her, peering down at her. She had one eyebrow cocked and a look on her face that said she was supremely unimpressed.

  “Are you going to stop being a whiny baby sometime today?” she wondered blandly, folding her arms over her chest.

  Casey scowled up at her. “I’m not being a whiny baby. I haven’t even said anything.”

  Lydia rolled her eyes. “No, you’ve just been moping since you got up. Are you really that unimaginative that you can’t think of anything you want to do? In a house this size?”

  Casey’s scowl intensified. “I didn’t really have the time or money to build any non-work-essential skills before,” she pointed out. “And I can only read for so long before I get tired of it for the day.”

  Lydia lifted a hand, pinching the bridge of her nose between two fingers. When she stepped back, it was so she could look upwards, as if she was beseeching some sort of deity for patience.

  “You’re not an idiot, and you’re not inept. Learn how to do something. If you don’t have any hobbies that don’t involve roller skates, then acquire a few. No one’s going to stop you, and it’s not like you’re short on time.”

  Casey stared up at her and slowly pushed herself up onto her elbows. “Like what?” she asked slowly, eyes narrowing slightly, as if it was supposed to be some sort of trick.

  Lydia rolled her eyes so emphatically it almost looked as if they were goi
ng to fall right out of her head. “You’re on your own when it comes to finding out what you’re interested in,” she stated flatly. “I wash my hands of your sulking.” Just for effect, she brushed her hands together as if to rid them of invisible dust before she turned on her heel and left the room.

  Casey flopped back down on her back, intent on sulking for a while longer. Though the longer she stayed there, the more Lydia’s words chased themselves in circles around in her head.

  She supposed, just maybe, she was being a bit of a child, annoyed that no one was just volunteering to entertain her. She was even thinking like a child, acting as if adulthood meant it was too late for her to actually learn new things. She had all the time in the world and an Internet connection; she could probably learn anything she wanted.

  She stalled out for a moment as she tried to decide where to start, casting around the room as if it would help her.